House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the recent attack on her husband will affect her decision on whether to retire from Congress if Democrats lose control of the chamber as a result of the midterm elections.
“I have to say my decision will be affected about what happened the last week or two,” said Pelosi during a CNN interview that aired Monday.
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Republicans are keeping a firm grip on their attempt to retake control of Congress, showing a massive lead over Democrats just three weeks away from the midterm elections, according to a new Rasmussen poll.
Forty-eight percent of likely U.S. voters reported that they would vote Republican if the election was held today, compared to 41% who said they would vote Democratic, according to the poll. The poll shows a continuously climbing lead for Republicans compared to last week when Republicans were at 47% and Democrats were at 43%.
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The government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1, but as per usual, Congress has failed to complete the annual appropriations process to provide spending authority for federal agencies.
Congress will enact a continuing resolution to maintain current spending and policy, and to prevent a partial government shutdown of nonessential programs, but Americans concerned about inflation should hope that resolution extends into the new year and the new Congress.
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Andrew Weissmann is one weird dude, to say the least.
Weissmann, an author, law professor, and MSNBC legal analyst, is a prolific user of social media—but rather than post a head shot on his Twitter bio page, Weissmann has a photo of a dog staring down a doll resembling Donald Trump lying face-up on the floor. It’s unclear if the dog is supposed to represent Weissmann, described as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” during the Russia election collusion investigation, or it’s just another indication of Weissmann’s insatiable obsession with the 45th president of the United States.
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More than two dozen members of Congress and nearly half the states are supporting Navy SEALs in their legal efforts to secure religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, rejecting the Biden administration’s invocation of judicial deference to military decisions.
They filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, arguing the “near-total denial rate” for religious requests and preference for nonreligious requests violates the Free Exercise Clause, the “overwhelmingly bipartisan” Religious Freedom Restoration Act and state RFRAs.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has circulated a memo to Department of Justice personnel articulating DOJ policy that its personnel are not to communicate with Congress directly, but to go through an internal office first.
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Congress claims that not all unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are man-made in a new budget for U.S. clandestine services.
In an addendum report to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, Congress noted, “Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena.”
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Big Tech controls more and more of the news and information we read. Although Big Tech platforms employ few, if any, journalists, most Americans read news on large tech platforms, such as Facebook News and Google News. Profits and ideology motivate Big Tech managers more than promoting a free press, so Big Tech often fails to fairly compensate the small and local news outlets whose stories appear on their platforms.
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With so much recent finger-pointing in Washington over foreign influence in U.S. elections, it seems as if lawmakers would be doing everything they could to try to close loopholes that allow illegal political donations from China, Russia, and other overseas interests into U.S. campaigns without detection.
A group of GOP House members introduced legislation to do just that as far back as 2015. Their bill attracted significant bipartisan support, but stalled amid partisan sniping over Democrats’ pursuit of the now-discredited Trump-Russia collusion allegations.
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Without sufficient support in Congress and state legislatures to pass sweeping green energy measures, environmentalists are now targeting the oil and gas industry through a financial movement that pressures companies to support liberal policies, according to critics.
“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that could be adopted through a legislative process,” said Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks. “The Green New Deal didn’t make it through Congress, so its proponents shifted the battlefield to the capital markets.”
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While U.S. intelligence has been unable in two years to determine for sure if COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, Congress has decided it no longer wants to take the risk of funding medical research at labs controlled by Beijing or other American adversaries.
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One Connecticut-based firearms industry trade group has spent more on lobbying than the National Rifle Association.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade association based in Newtown, has spent 40% more than the NRA lobbying Congress since 2019. For 2021 alone, OpenSecrets – a nonpartisan nonprofit tracking money into politics – reports an estimated $5 million spent by NSSF on lobbying; the NRA spent $4.92 million.
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Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase an affordable home as large investors increase their market share. The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing Tuesday to address private equity ownership of single-family rentals and the impact it’s having on average Americans.
“Today’s hearing will examine troubling issues regarding the mass predatory purchasing of single-family homes by private equity firms,” said Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.
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This week produced yet another example of the shameless collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice, the Democratic Party, and the national news media to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him. The ink was barely dry on the not guilty verdict for Michael Sussmann, just one of many figures who acted as a pass-through between Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the FBI to manufacture the Russia collusion hoax, before the same players were up to their old tricks.
Members of the January 6 select committee blanketed the Sunday news programs last weekend promising bombshell revelations would shake the nation during a primetime hearing Thursday night. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told CBS News’ Robert Costa the committee would present findings to show an “extremely broad . . . extremely well-organized” conspiracy to overthrow the government that day. What the committee uncovered related to the alleged conspiracy, Cheney warned, is “really chilling.’
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A number of Republican members of Congress are gearing up to launch a bid for GOP whip, should the House flip in November, Politico reported Thursday.
Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks has allegedly called up fellow Republicans in the House to get a picture of the type of support he would have if he made the attempt, three GOP sources told Politico.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that he will not immediately hold a vote on gun control legislation, following the mass shooting Tuesday at a Texas elementary school.
The New York Democrat says he does not think any such measure will attract enough bipartisan support to move forward.
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There are few words available to describe the shock and loathing in the wake of the murder of innocent children. The tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas crystallizes these feelings as people seek to grapple with what went so wrong with an eighteen-year-old that he would choose to murder children, an adult in the school as well as shot his own grandmother before traveling to the school.
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High turnout in the 2022 Republican primaries could signal a red wave that allows the GOP to retake Congress in November, according to data from JMC Analytics & Polling.
As of Wednesday, GOP voters are projected to have made up about 54% of the turnout in the Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania primary races, according to JMC. Republican turnout increased to about 61% when the states that held primaries prior to Tuesday are included.
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The Biden Administration last June unveiled its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” Despite its anodyne-sounding name, the “national strategy” was anything but anodyne. The pamphlet represented the logical culmination of the Left’s cynical use of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot as a means of ginning up large-scale, nationwide anti-Republican/anti-Trump voter sentiment.
The result, evinced again by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s disgraceful October 2021 memo directing the FBI to intrude on local school board meetings and crack down on anti-critical race theory parental revolts, has been a roiling cold war waged by the ruling class against us “deplorables” and our political “wrong-think.”
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Everything in this world is either grown or mined, and if we don’t grow it or mine it in America, we import it. Events from the past few years, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have highlighted America’s hunger for metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum-group elements, and more. Therefore, Congress needs to boost domestic production. Instead, the majority is putting up more arbitrary hurdles, like the so-called Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act.
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday threw a wrench in the Senate’s plans to swiftly pass the $40 billion Ukraine package this week, delaying the vote until at least next week, and possibly beyond.
According to the Hill, Paul wanted to include language in the bill to expand the Afghanistan inspector general’s role to include oversight of the Ukraine funds. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered him a deal that would have set up votes Thursday afternoon on the funding bill and on an amendment from Paul.
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When American citizens look to Washington, D.C., they find much to be disappointed in and even less to believe in. The fundamental problem is that the federal government has, through its regulatory and spending powers, usurped much of the governing authority for the republic.
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Republican members of Congress are asking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for key immigration enforcement data they argue the Biden administration is hiding from the public, according to a letter exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The letter, sent Thursday, is led by Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy and co-signed by 19 other Republican lawmakers who argued that delayed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fiscal year 2021 Enforcement and Removal statistics that showed significant decreases in arrests only provided a “limited” look into the agency’s enforcement and removals.
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Deep blue Washington State contains a U.S. House district that is being targeted for Republican pickup.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has announced that it is targeting Washington’s 8th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat incumbent U.S. Representative Kim Schrier.
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Congress is demanding answers from a multinational British investment bank after American citizens’ accounts were frozen for running afoul of the Chinese Communist Party during the Hong Kong protests.
In a letter from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) to HSBC Group Chief Executive Noel Quinn, Congress raised “questions and concerns” regarding “restrictions placed on the accounts of American citizens and the freezing of accounts of Hong Kong activists, independent media, and civic groups,” asking the second largest bank in Europe to “justify” why such actions were taken and if “actions were requested by Hong Kong authorities or officials from the People’s Republic of China” in the wake of the June 2020 National Security Law.
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The Supreme Court heard arguments in West Virginia v. EPA on Monday, a blockbuster case that could have major ramifications in future separation of powers cases.
The case, which stems from an Obama administration climate rule, has wide-ranging implications for how the federal agencies may issue future regulations and rules, according to the parties that brought the case before the high court. States, environmental groups, large power utility companies, civil liberties organizations and pro-coal industry groups have inserted themselves in the case over the last several years, signaling the importance of the questions it has raised.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has undercut his own promise to restore trust in the Justice Department by “doing the bidding of the radical left,” such as suing to block voter ID laws and launching FBI probes of school parents, a former top agency lawyer says.
Gene Hamilton, who served as counselor to Trump-era Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, told Just the News he hoped Garland would focus the department on core law enforcement priorities and away from ideological agendas but has been sorely disappointed.
“For all of his rhetoric, and for all of his talk about returning the Department of Justice to norms and all of those other such things, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has betrayed the trust of the American people,” Hamilton said during an interview Friday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
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Democrats are weighing whether to extend an individual stock trading ban to spouses of lawmakers.
The Ban Conflicted Trading Act “prohibits a Member of Congress or certain congressional officers or employees from (1) purchasing or selling specified investments, (2) entering into a transaction that creates a net short position in a security, or (3) serving as an officer or member of any board of any for-profit entity.”
The legislation in its current form would not apply to the spouses of lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul has made headlines over the years with his millions of dollars in stock purchases, particularly with technology companies.
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The inspector general for the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has opened a formal investigation into allegations that the law enforcement agency has been improperly spying on Republican members of Congress, their staff, and visitors to their offices, the Federalist reported on Tuesday.
Concerns that the USCP have overstepped their bounds have been simmering for months, with some Republican lawmakers alleging that the Capitol Police have been transformed into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “personal Praetorian Guard.”
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The U.S. Department of Transportation’s “National Roadway Safety Strategy” includes promoting the use of speed cameras in cities and towns as a “proven safety countermeasure.”
DOT received $6 billion to issue grants to “help cities and towns” with road safety, which was part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed.
“That law creates a new Safe Streets and Roads for All program, providing $6 billion to help cities and towns deliver new, comprehensive safety strategies, as well as accelerate existing, successful safety initiatives,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during a speech on Thursday about the launch of DOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy.
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Last week there was quite a lot of news media chatter about swapping Hillary Clinton for Joe Biden on the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket, a fascinating concept that pundits couldn’t stop talking about. It didn’t receive nearly the headlines, but whispers involving the impending retirement of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and her eventual replacement — have also begun in earnest.
Of course, there’s been no formal announcement that she’s leaving — either from the Speaker herself or the poohbahs at Democrat National Committee headquarters. But like all worst kept secrets, everyone with a brain and some knowledge of American politics understands that Pelosi shares characteristics with a ticking time bomb set to go off later this year.
With the prospects for Democrats holding the majority after this year’s federal midterm elections growing dimmer by the day, folks have initiated a political death watch for the soon-to-be 82-year-old gavel bearer. A large number of veteran party incumbents have officially indicated they’re heading for the exits after this session concludes. Combined with redistricting changes (after the 2020 census) and a basketful of “moderate” (they’re really not balanced, but that’s how the media refers to them) Democrats facing fierce headwinds in their swing districts, and the numbers bloodbath could/should be scary.
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