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Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Friday on CNN's "Inside Politics" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "absolutely" should not have been invited to address Congress.
The post Pelosi: Netanyahu Should Not Have Been Invited to Address Congress — ‘This is Wrong’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint session of Congress on July 24 at the behest of U.S. congressional leaders.
The post Netanyahu Set to Address Joint Session of U.S. Congress appeared first on Breitbart.
In our modern political dumpster fire, there has never been an art so refined and illustrious as pointless pearl-clutching.
In this, the ninth year of 2016, most everyone is fairly desensitized to the political drama emanating from the Left’s ardent claims that any conservative policy or protest is an appeal to fascism as their own organizations and protesters set fire to cities (and sometimes themselves).
Republicans pass a bill banning sexually explicit content in public schools from kindergarten to third grade? Florida Democrats and media labeled it fascism.
A U.S. Supreme Court justice’s wife flies a Revolutionary War flag commissioned by George Washington? Salon’s senior writer described Justice Samuel Alito and his wife as “extremely invested in the semiotics of American fascism.”
The New Republic, The Guardian, taxpayer-funded PBS—any time a Republican so much as upholds parliamentary procedure, defends former President Donald Trump, or questions the surge of gang and cartel members amid waves of illegal immigrants—these outlets are ready in the wings to call any to the right of Chairman Mao a fascist.
The latest banner of fascism to be shouted down in a “Two Minutes Hate” session out of George Orwell’s “1984”: flying the flag of the United States upside down. The horror!
As ridiculous as it might sound—the group that has spent the past eight years defending those who burn, shred, and desecrate the U.S. flag is suddenly outraged over many in the nation who have flown the U.S. flag upside down in a symbol of distress over Trump’s political prosecution and conviction.
Many on the Left and precious few on the Right have taken to social media to lambast those who would fly the U.S. flag upside down as “disrespectful,” “treasonous,” and “idol-worshipers.”
Is this the case? Are those who reacted to Trump’s felony convictions in New York City simply bowing at his feet in a brutal backstabbing of the United States? Is this heinous, unspeakable act the very hallmark of fascism and the alleged “cult of personality” that the Left has predicted for almost a century?
Of course not, and you know that.
We needn’t walk down the halls of easily accessible history to discern how this wrist-shattering pearl clutch is both hypocritical and ignorant. But we’ll do so, not out of necessity but because heaping good data en masse against poorly constructed arguments is entertaining.
First and foremost: Flying the flag of the United States upside down is not disrespectful, illegal, treasonous, or even unprecedented.
Although 4 U.S. Code § 8, commonly referred to as the “Flag Code,” isn’t legally enforceable (because U.S. citizens retain First Amendment rights to do with their own flags whatever they wish), flying the flag upside down under appropriate circumstances wouldn’t violate the law.
The law clearly states: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” (The “union” refers to the patch of blue with 50 stars.)
Thousands in the U.S. have flown our flag upside down to express their “dire distress” in such instances over the past century.
Leftists consistently flew the U.S. flag upside down throughout Trump’s presidency to signal their deep disquiet and fear, from Washington state to Louisiana. Democrats in New Jersey resolutely flew the flag upside down in protest of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Some Republicans flew their flags upside down when Barack Obama was reelected in 2012.
The American flag has been flown upside down as “a tribute to veterans’ sacrifice,” and was one of the many symbols of protest against the Vietnam War used by leftist demonstrators in the 1960s.
The Flag Code doesn’t specify what “extreme danger to life or property” entails, nor does it restrict such interpretation to a physical danger or a political one. Might there be a situation today in which many Americans feel in deep distress over a perceived danger to the life and property of their republic?
Never before in American history has a former president, much less one running for office again, been charged and convicted in such a kangaroo-court fashion that even his political adversaries note the insanity of the circumstances.
In an extremely heated presidential election campaign, indicting one of the two frontrunners would be considered enough of an anathema—but the case of New York v. Trump was more than precarious, it was a circus.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, ran on the promise of doing anything he could to find something to indict Trump with. Outside his jurisdiction, Bragg used a federal election statute—which the Federal Election Commission already had stated Trump didn’t violate—as a convoluted lever to turn 34 counts of “falsifying business records,” misdemeanors that by this point were outside New York’s statute of limitations, into felonies.
As if that weren’t enough, Judge Juan Merchan refused to allow a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission to testify, refused to allow the defense to speak to the jury before deliberation, and informed jurors that to convict they didn’t have to reach a unanimous decision on what crime was committed.
Such actions by Merchan set a nation on fire even as trust in institutions already was wavering.
Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for New York magazine, an extremely liberal publication: “Prosecutors got Trump—but they contorted the law.” Honig pointed out that never before in U.S. history has there been a state prosecution using federal election law.
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned Trump’s sex life, his character, or his business decisions—in fact, many of those expressing extreme distress at this forded Rubicon aren’t being protective of Trump like he was some kind of nonsensical religious idol.
Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who have spent the past few years as Trump’s chief opposition within the GOP, both called this case and conviction despicable.
When a reporter asks President Joe Biden whether he used this case to politically persecute Trump and he casts a wicked grin in her direction, how is the nation supposed to respond?
Reporter: "President Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What's your response to that, sir?"
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) May 31, 2024
Biden: *smiles*pic.twitter.com/CZY8JUMvKO
Why is the left side of the aisle afforded the right to ride through towns and cities shouting about the impending doom of the republic like some bastardized caricature of Paul Revere, and the right side isn’t allowed to call out the very sham John Adams unpopularly fought in court to prevent?
Spare me your clutched pearls, neoconservatives. Your faux dignity and condescension at the concerns of Americans whose carcass of a justice system is paraded openly don’t move me.
I don’t have to defend Trump’s personal life and sign onto a “cult of personality” to recognize that each of us has a right to be free from political persecution and election interference.
Commentator Alyssa Farah’s silly claims that flying the flag upside down signals “selling out” are as pathetic and hypocritical as the rest of the cast of “The View” with whom she clucks and quacks about abortion rights, gun confiscation, and anti-Catholicism.
Whistling past the graveyard and sending a “strongly worded letter” have only mired us further in the muck of Third World antics.
I reserve the right to fly my flag upside down to signal my extreme distress at this danger to the life and property of the republic I love, and I’ll do so whenever I find it appropriate.
The post To the Condescending Cranks Faking Outrage Over Upside-Down Flags appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The United States of America, a few years short of its 250th birthday, is at war.
This is not a war with Russia or China. It is not an amorphous war on terror or a war on drugs. This is a war from within. It is an unconventional war. It is a systems-level attack on the foundations of this nation. It is an insidious, sophisticated attack built on decades of a sustained, strategic decay of our nation’s infrastructure: our legal system, our election system, our culture, our commonality, our civic intelligence, and our institutions.
This is not an insurrection, a series of race riots, or even a police riot at a protest over a stolen election.
It will be the last war in which the United States participates if it’s not won by Americans.
You are not living in the same country you were born in.
Right now, a president, who record numbers of Americans don’t think even won the last election—and for good reason—has ordered the legal, intelligence, and law enforcement services of this country to arrest and detain his chief political rival. It is the product of a sustained, nearly decade-long covert and overt operation using every tool at the government’s disposal and their command of the propaganda machine of the legacy media to destroy Donald J. Trump.
Joe Biden is not the head of this lynching, however. He is a senile patsy serving as a prop figurehead. Even on his best day, he could not have orchestrated and overseen this project. His very presence as the source of authority from which the domestic terrorists draw their appeal to legitimacy is proof positive of the enemy’s success in overtaking the apparatuses of governmental power. Joe Biden is merely the tragic comedy illustration of how much real power the enemy has taken. That he can be the puppet shows how little effort needs to be expended to fake legitimacy for this takedown operation.
As the enemy actually utilizes the power of the systems that it has corrupted, the professional organizational apparatus of the opposition party meekly and pathetically appeals to those same structures for its salvation. Such weak acts are playacting. The con is based on a fundamental miscalculation that the American people believe such acts constitute a legitimate effort to protect and save this country.
In no place is this more clear that in the halls of the United States Congress. Take, for example, the one institution in which the American people are alleged to have access to actual power right now: the House of Representatives. The 2022 midterm elections, once billed as an incoming “Red Wave,” were supposedly an opportunity for Americans to provide a check on the lawless occupation of the U.S. government.
Instead, the enemy was unfazed. They had fundamentally changed the structure of the U.S. government two short years before, in 2020, in a way that protected their power. The election system itself had been conquered with illegitimate changes to the very way in which people are meant to realize the promises of a constitutional republic.
The election system, much like the legal system, is no longer a neutral instrument. In 2020, there was a dramatic and hostile transformation of the election system from a voting system into a contest of one party’s political machinery and its ability to distribute and collect unaccountable mail-in ballots.
Only one side has a machine. The professional Right—the politicians and their consultants—fails to understand that the rules changes themselves were designed to ensure a permanent advantage to the Left. The best knockoff imitation of the Left’s illegal voting operation on the Right only gives legitimacy to this new government structure where ballots are collected instead of votes to select our leaders.
The professional Right was willfully clueless about this point on the night of the midterm elections. In fact, the vipers instead used it to support the Left and its attack on Trump.
I sat in my living room watching Fox News on the evening of the midterms and watched talking head after talking head attempt to spin the results as a referendum on the man who wasn’t even on the ballot. And just like that, the 2024 Republican Primary was off in full swing. The result was Trump-hating Republicans paying parasitic consultants and pollsters hundreds of millions of dollars to distract and detract resources and protection away from Trump.
The professional Right on Capitol Hill has been spectacularly useless in its ability to protect America from the damage being wrought by the Left. It has settled into a pretzeled rhetorical defense of Trump while leaving every resource on the table that could be used to protect this country, like withholding funding and releasing an avalanche of actually enforced subpoenas.
While the Jan. 6 committee proved the damage that such committees could cause, this recent Congress also has proved their uselessness. Take, for example, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and its chairman, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. That subcommittee was the pound of flesh extracted for Kevin McCarthy to become speaker of the House and was supposed to be a supercharged committee aimed at de-weaponizing the attacks on Trump and all Americans.
It has been none of that. As I write this, the subcommittee is on pace at the end of this Congress to return nearly two-thirds of the $15 million supplemental budget it was given. Members are literally “tipping” the Biden administration for election interference while pretending to be fighting it in their cable news appearances and their fundraising letters.
Part of the problem is that the elected Right is too busy fighting itself to fight the Left. The biggest fight comes from a class of elected politicians trying to resist the fundamental transformation of the conservative movement that Trump created. They are content to give lip service to “America First” appeals if it means that they can get back to the business of funding foreign wars and serving as lobbyists for special interests.
And House members are still fighting over who gets to be in charge of this mess. Any limitation that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has politically imposed on himself to gain the support of the furthest Left elements of the Republican caucus has also been accepted by Jordan, who is desirous of Johnson’s job. That kind of capitulation does not create the type of environment in which a hard-charging legal process and investigations can be conducted—elements that are critical to see any positive results out of the weaponization subcommittee.
Perhaps the only bright spot is the work of House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and his staff. Unlike his counterparts, Comer’s team has meticulously proved the corruption of the Biden family with ample evidence, to include the literal receipts.
Legacy media and establishment politicians will never give him the credit he deserves. But the truth can be seen in the data. Since Comer got to work, poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans now accept that the Bidens engaged in corrupt activity.
So, what the hell do we do about all of this? We do everything at the same time—now.
Congress must immediately hire a congressional special counsel and equip that individual with all constitutional authority to do the job. In other words, the weaponization subcommittee should give its unused budget to someone else. This work includes a record-setting number of forced depositions and subpoenas backed by the enforcement authority of holding people in contempt of Congress. And no more requiring votes for every minor investigative change. Have one vote now and let the special counsel get to work. And nothing done by the special counsel gets referred to Biden’s Department of Justice. Instead, it is delivered to relevant state and local prosecutors for action.
On the election, we must first admit that the 2024 election has already been interfered with in a substantial and incurable way. The basic demographics of this country have been altered by an illegal invasion of illegal aliens organized by Biden. Simultaneously, every reasonable preventive mechanism to keep them from voting is forcefully opposed by the Regime. The basic fundamental structure of flooding the country with unaccountable mail-in-ballots exists.
The Right has made incremental and positive gains in some areas, only to be outdone by a matter of degrees because of the Left’s control of the basic election machinery. The country is flooded with propaganda from regime media, creating conspiracies to try to keep Trump off the campaign trail and out of office by subjecting him to a series of kangaroo court cases—and finally, a conviction. There is no chance of a free and fair election. That ship has sailed. The only question is if we will have a certifiable election.
What can happen is that Trump can win by a margin bigger than the other side’s capacity for cheating. Every step must be taken to mitigate the ability of the Left to illegitimately alter the election. This includes mass litigation, of course, but also immediate overt action by state and local officials to protect the integrity of their elections.
One area to immediately begin with is kneecapping Biden’s ongoing efforts to use the whole-of-federal-government approach he has created as his get-out-the-vote operation, where agencies that deal with members of the public who most likely lean Democratic are used to help them register to vote. States have the ability to kick this activity out of their jurisdictions.
Members of the general public need to demand the change they wish to see. There is a war happening right now, and only one side is fighting it. The other side maintains its limited hold on power by providing rhetorical mentions of Americans’ concerns but in every real sense, does nothing to fix them.
Politicians on both sides are able to survive in this political landscape by the entrenched power of party politics, obscene amounts of money in politics, and the support of the dying power of traditional media, who—in a search for content—is willing to provide pomp and circumstance to the doldrums of fundraising letter-sending and low-budget government hearings.
We don’t have to live this way. There is still time to turn the ship around. The real damage is made permanent if the Left is able to finalize its takeover of the election and judicial systems in a way that makes elections and prosecutions pro forma. That day could come very soon, but for now, it is not today, and there is still time to fight.
The post America Is Under Attack appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Traditional media outlets are failing—badly. Whether it’s the lack of public trust in their ability to report the news accurately and fairly or their reactionary approach to world events, the American people deserve something better.
Ten years ago today, we launched The Daily Signal as an alternative to the establishment press. We believed then that major news outlets and broadcast networks were leaving a massive audience of conservatives and independent-minded Americans unserved. We set out on June 3, 2014, to inject competition into the market.
Our hypothesis was correct. Outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR were shocked by Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. They never saw it coming because they never paid attention to the populist movement that propelled Trump to the White House.
Sadly, despite some promises to reform their ways, many media outlets have resorted to even worse behavior today. They have further alienated millions of Americans.
A recent I&I/TIPP poll, which measures trust in media, found that a mere 34% of Americans trust traditional media outlets.
With the future of America at stake, this is a warning sign—but also an opportunity.
That’s why we’re announcing an exciting new era for The Daily Signal. We view the public’s crumbling faith in media as a moment to put rocket boosters on our scrappy news outlet.
As of today, The Daily Signal is officially an independent media organization with our own leadership team and board of directors. Over the next month, we will complete the process of separating from The Heritage Foundation, although we will continue to adhere to the same conservative principles that have guided our journalists for the past 10 years.
>>> Meet The Daily Signal’s Team of Journalists
Importantly, this change will allow us to publish a wider range of content than we have in the past, including coverage of political news in this critical election year. We’ve given our website a fresh look and we’re also adding a new Journalism Fellowship Program with the goal of training the next generation of conservative journalists, two of whom start today.
What does this mean for you?
You can expect the same insightful reporting and thoughtful commentary we’ve produced for the past 10 years. Just as our name implies, we will continue be your signal that cuts through the noise to transmit the news quickly and simply.
We will always tell you the TRUTH.
That’s our promise.
If we’re serious about saving America and creating a better future for the next generation, it requires an informed public.
Our nation’s leaders, and the people who elect them, need clearheaded, truthful information to make wise decisions—the intel to understand what’s really going on in centers of influence.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, you can expect The Daily Signal to make investments in three areas where we see traditional media lacking:
Over the past decade, our small but hardworking team has consistently delivered fair, accurate, and trustworthy journalism to a loyal audience that reaches tens of millions of people each year. As we’ve embraced new forms of storytelling, including short-form documentaries and bite-sized videos, that audience has grown exponentially.
>>> A Look Back at The Daily Signal’s First Decade
We won’t ever be content with the status quo. Innovation is part of our culture. And there’s really no other option with the radical Left determined to alter America in ways that will make this country unrecognizable for our children and grandchildren.
To all the patriotic Americans and supporters of our work, thank you for making the past 10 years possible. When we launched in 2014, I embraced the words of a mentor, Andrew Breitbart, who believed we needed more voices, not fewer. And it’s with that same spirit today that we embark on this new era for The Daily Signal.
By focusing on quality journalism, the unmatched knowledge of our contributors, and insider intel thanks to our access policymakers, we’re ready to take The Daily Signal to the next level.
Thanks for making us your trusted source for news. And if you’re not already a subscriber, please sign up for our newsletters.
The post Independent and Ambitious: A New Era for The Daily Signal appeared first on The Daily Signal.
South Africa's opposition parties have a chance to take power from the ruling African National Congress (ANC), as the final results appear to show the Democratic Alliance (DA) could have enough votes to form a governing coalition.
The post Shock as South African Opposition Has Chance to Take Power appeared first on Breitbart.
For the past 18 years, Senate Republicans have had one leader: Mitch McConnell took the job in 2006 and has retained it ever since. But with his decision to step down from the post after November’s elections, there are three Republicans vying to replace him.
One of them is Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. He was first elected to the Senate in 2018 and ran against McConnell two years ago.
He’s now competing with Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota to win the support of his Senate Republican colleagues.
The Daily Signal invited all three senators to discuss their plans, and Scott was the first to accept our request. Listen to our interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read a lightly edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: Senator, why did you decide to enter the race for Republican leader?
Sen. Rick Scott: First off, we’ve got to have big change. Let’s think about just the citizens we represent. They’re fed up with a budget that’s not balanced. They’re fed up with an open border. They’re fed up with all this wasteful spending. They’re fed up, basically, with the federal government that’s out of control.
If you want change, you’re going to have to change your way the Senate is run. We need to go back to represent our states. We need to be fighting over issues. The bill shouldn’t be decided by McConnell and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer. We should go through a committee process. There’s so many things we’ve got to do to get this country back where it needs to go.
We need to have a Republican leader that has a relationship with President [Donald] Trump. He’s going to win. He’s going to have an agenda. We got to do everything we can to help him get his agenda done.
Republican Senators Pledge to Block Democrat Agenda Following Trump Verdict
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 1, 2024
Via Rob Bluey:https://t.co/eW5hAc59Ld
Bluey: When you talk about those big changes, in some ways, it seems that you’re suggesting the Senate is broken right now and needs fixing. What are some of the ways that you would go about making sure those reforms are put into place?
Scott: No. 1, I don’t think a leader should have a term of more than six years. No. 2 is the bill shouldn’t be done by McConnell and Schumer. They should be done at the committee level where everybody has the opportunity to have input that are on those committees.
And then after that, we ought to have a robust amendment process on the Senate floor. So, if I would like an amendment that’s going to represent my state better, I ought to be able to do that.
If I can’t talk people into it, that’s my problem. If I don’t even have a chance because the bill never went through a committee or we never had any amendment votes, I have the opportunity to say yes or no. That’s not the way the Senate is supposed to represent work. I’m supposed to be able to represent my state and fight for the issues that are important to my state. That’s not how the Senate works right now.
Bluey: As you’ve observed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s approach to running the Senate, what you see as some of his biggest or most glaring failures?
Scott: He wants to, and he does a lot of this with McConnell, but they want to write the bills. It’s not written out of a committee. It doesn’t come up through a committee.
There’s one or two people who have input and then if they put them on the Senate floor where you just have an up-or-down vote, you don’t even have a chance to improve it. We all have ways we could improve these bills and we don’t even have a shot at trying to improve the bills.
That’s not the way the Senate is supposed to work. I’m supposed to be able to fight like hell for my state. Every senator should have the opportunity to fight for their state, but if you don’t go through a committee, you have no input on the bill, and you don’t have any amendment votes, it’s pretty hard to represent your state.
Bluey: Some of the early chatter in Washington seems to revolve around a leader’s role in raising money for members of his party. I’m curious to know your thoughts on that and perhaps why that shouldn’t be the sole qualification for somebody to get the job as leader?
Scott: Any leader is going to be able to raise money. A lot of the money flows through PACs that the leader might be or is tied to. Anybody is going to be able to raise the money as long as you’re willing to do the job.
As you know, I’m from a big state, so for my governor’s race I had to raise a lot of money and my Senate race. But the real job of the Senate leader is to represent the conference. Our bylaws, Republican bylaws, require us to have a legislative agenda. We haven’t had a legislative agenda since I’ve been up here for five years.
We need to come together as a group and say, “What do we want to get done the next two years?” And then let’s say, “OK, so now this is what we want to get done. How do we get it done? What’s going to be our strategy? What do we have to do to get these things done?”
That’s what we ought to be doing every day. We shouldn’t be sitting there and be reactive to what Chuck Schumer does.
And then, if we can get the majority, which I’m very optimistic, then let’s lead. Let’s focus on how do we secure the border? How do we balance the budget? How do we improve our foreign policy and have a positive agenda to solve the problems that the American public has sent us all to D.C. to do?
Bluey: Conservatives were clamoring for that legislative agenda back in 2022 for the midterm elections. You offered one, Sen. McConnell rejected your idea, instead said he wanted to merely run against President [Joe] Biden. Looking back in retrospect, why was McConnell’s strategy a mistake?
Scott: He has the belief that you shouldn’t stand for anything. You should just talk about how bad the Democrats are. And the Democrats are bad, there’s no question about it.
But my experience as a business guy is I was able to attract talent to work with me on my management teams because I had an agenda to get done and they bought into the agenda. If they didn’t like my agenda, they wouldn’t come to work with me. The public wants a plan. The public wants a plan. I had a plan when I ran in 2010 to be governor to turn the economics of our state around, give people a job. When I came to D.C., I had a plan for how to make Washington work for you.
The public is clamoring for a plan. The public is clamoring for somebody that’s going to fight like hell to defeat the policies and the ideology of the radical Left, which we all know is destroying this country. That’s what the public wants. That’s what we all talk about when we run. While we ought to do it when we’re here.
Bluey: You’ve mentioned your role as a successful businessman. You have served as Florida’s governor. You have also worn the hat of being chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In all three of those roles that you’ve had, what is your leadership style? What can people expect from you as somebody who is aspiring for this job?
Scott: First off, I’m very goal-oriented. I want to accomplish something. I became the governor, I built businesses because I wanted to accomplish something. I ran to the Senate because I wanted to accomplish something.
I’ve been very clear with my Senate role, we’ve got to change the way Washington works. It’s not working the American public right now. What they’re going to see is somebody that’s very focused on getting a result. That’s No. 1.
No. 2, if you look at my business career, my government career, this is a team event. You’ve got to bring people together to find a common goal to get anything done. And it’s not going to be just your ideas. You have to have a consensus. And so, you’ve got to figure out what it is and then you have to work and have a strategy to accomplish it.
If you look at any successful business, if you look at successful governors, that’s what they do. They have a plan and they work their plan. They surround themselves with people that believe in what they’re trying to accomplish.
That’s what they’ll see. If I can become the Republican leader, hopefully the majority leader, you’ll have a Republican conference that is very results-oriented and the goals will be very clear.
We will solve the problems that the country believes are the most important problems today. Those are securing the border, making sure that we get inflation under control, balancing the budget, making sure we fix our foreign policies so we don’t have wars going all around the world.
Bluey: On that specific note, what are some steps that you would like to take to empower those individual Republican senators to have a greater role in the legislative process?
Scott: The biggest thing is ask for their opinion, ask for their advice to get them in the middle of everything.
We have very talented Republican senators. And we are to say, “OK, with your background, would you like to be involved in this?” And you get people in the middle of it, of the issues.
And guess what? You bring out new ideas, you bring out new energy, and you get a lot of things done. But the biggest thing is, you get people in the middle of the problem. Republican senators, they want to solve problems, so let them do it, get them in the middle of it.
Bluey: What is your vision for reducing this reliance that it seems that Washington has year after year for omnibus spending bills and emergency supplementals?
Scott: Not having a budget to me is foolish. It’s not fair to the American public. Not having a budget is just basically having spending bills. What that means is we’re going to have more inflation.
That’s wrong. We should do everything we can to help all of our families by getting inflation under control. You cannot do it with a balanced budget, so we now have almost $35 trillion worth the debt. We have interest expense that exceeds our national defense budget. We have a Federal Reserve whose balance sheet is out of control.
What’s going to happen is, in that environment, interest rates can’t come down. That means that if you think you’re going to get a lower interest rate for a house, you’re foolish. Your credit card rate, interest rates are not going to come down. On top of that, we’re not going to see a reduction in gas prices and food prices and these things. So, spending matters.
I’ve always, my business life, I balanced the budget. The governor’s job, we balanced the budget every year. We actually paid off a third of the state debt in my years as governor. We can do this at the federal level.
The way you do it, is you say, this is my anticipated federal revenue, so that’s how much money we’re going to spend. You can do it, but if you just always say to yourself, “I don’t think I can get that done,” that’s going to be reality, you will not get it done.
Bluey: Will there be any backroom deals with a Leader Rick Scott in charge of things?
Scott: No, no. We all are part of this. You need to be transparent, you need to tell everybody what’s happening. If you want people to support what you’re doing, you don’t do it behind closed doors. You do it by talking to people, by getting their information, by getting them involved in what you’re trying to accomplish.
Bluey: You challenged Mitch McConnell for this job in 2022. What lessons did you learn from that race that you hope to apply this time?
Scott: Unfortunately, in that race, they rushed the vote to the next day, so we didn’t have time to actually go and sit down with everybody.
What I’m hoping to do is sit down with every Republican senator and say, “What do you want to accomplish?” And then my role will be if I can win is to say, “How do I help you accomplish your goals? How do I help you represent your state?”
The Republican leader’s responsibility is to help each senator be successful. A successful senator is somebody that is successfully representing their individual state.
Bluey: Sen. McConnell has served 18 years as leader. You would like to have a six-year term limit for this position. Why is that change important to you?
Scott: I’ve always believed in term limits because, No. 1, nobody consolidates power for a long time that way. No 2 is everybody realizes that you only have six years to get what you want to accomplish, so everybody gets more results-focused.
We have term limits for the governor, we have term limits for our legislature, and what that means is you’re going to get new leadership with new energy every few years, you’re going to have people very focused on what they can get done in their time in leadership or their time in office.
Bluey: Two of your colleagues, Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn, are also in the mix for Republican leader. What distinguishes you from each of them?
Scott: First off, they work hard to represent their state. Probably the difference to what I bring to the table is my business background. I built the largest hospital company; I built a variety of manufacturing companies. I’ve been involved in a variety of businesses. My first business was a donut shop when I was 22 and I got out of the Navy, so my mom could have a job. I had the opportunity to serve in the military. I had the opportunity to be the governor.
Those are the types of things I bring to the table, but the biggest thing is, and I tell people, I’m a turnaround guy. If you think the country’s headed in the right direction and you don’t think there has to be dramatic change, no one should vote for me. I believe the country’s in trouble. I believe there’s so many people in the American public who are struggling. The only way we’re going to make their lives better is if we have dramatic change. And that’s what I bring to the table.
Bluey: Have you seen examples of your entry into the race or even just the chatter about you potentially entering the race before you formally did that has moved either of them in your direction when it comes to some of the reforms that maybe Mitch McConnell has not necessarily endorsed in the past?
Scott: One thing everyone has started talking about is term limits. Most people who are elected don’t really believe in term limits, but the average person believes in it. I know the public believes in it. Now we’re having a real conversation about. Should there be a six-year term?
We have a six-year term for every other leadership position in the Republican Senate. We ought to have one for the leader. There’s no reason it should be different. I think that’s No. 1.
No. 2, we’re starting to have conversation about it. How should we be managed? Because the leader’s role is not to be a dictator. The leader’s role is to be a leader of a group of individuals that get to represent their individual states.
Bluey: I recently had the opportunity to talk to Sen. Roger Marshall about the Republican-wide discussion that took place. It seems that those types of events may occur more frequently in the future, should this play out the way you hope.
Scott: I believe in it. I believe we ought to have real conversations and then have real discussions and let everybody bring their ideas to the table without any negative ramifications.
I don’t get why I was kicked off and [Sen.] Mike Lee was kicked off the Commerce Committee just because I ran against McConnell. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think I’ve run the biggest company of any person ever in the history of the Senate that’s served. And then Mike and I got kicked off because Mike nominated me to be the Republican leader. That stuff is wrong.
>>> Sen. Roger Marshall Prescribes Solutions for Congress’ Budget Woes
We ought to say, “Hey, Rick, you bring this to the table. Mike, you bring this to the table.” Whoever it is, “This is what you bring to the table. You ought to be really active in those ideas. And let’s fight over who’s got the best idea and then let’s come together with the goal that we get a result.”
I know that we have to secure the border. I know that we have to get inflation under control. These are things that are so simple to me that the public needs and deserves.
Bluey: Those, of course, are big priorities of former President Donald Trump as well. You sound confident that he’s going to be victorious in November. Why are you the one who’s best positioned to not only advance his agenda, but also those critical votes on the nominees he puts forward to serve in his administration.
Scott: I knew President Trump before either of us ran for office. I’ve known him for a long time. I believe in what he’s trying to accomplish. He’s in the same position I am, that we have to have a dramatic change. We can’t nibble at the edges. There has to be a significant change in how our federal government is run. The public realizes that, that’s why he’s going to win.
What he’s going to need is a partner in the Senate who wants that to happen and help to make sure that’s exactly what happens in the Senate, not just in the White House.
Bluey: And finally, what kind of reaction have you received either from your constituents in Florida or some of your colleagues in the Republican conference since making the announcement?
Scott: I’ve had a lot of positive feedback. No. 1, my colleagues that want to sit down and talk about where we go, so that’s a positive. No. 2, in the state of Florida, people are excited that there’s a possibility of a Republican leader and hopefully the majority of their leaders are coming from our state.
The post Battle for Senate GOP Leader: Rick Scott Aims to Shake Up Status Quo appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Democrats might control the Senate, but they’ll have a hard time getting things done if 10 of their Republican counterparts have anything to say about it.
Following a New York jury’s guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump—and President Joe Biden’s subsequent cheerleading of the decision—10 Republican senators vowed to oppose Democrats’ legislative priorities and nominations.
“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” the Republican senators said in a statement released Friday.
It currently has 10 signatories:
Notably missing from the list is Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose milquetoast response Thursday—about four hours after the jury’s decision—drew scorn from conservatives.
These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) May 31, 2024
The statement signed by the 10 Republicans outlines three areas where they plan to stymie Democrats:
Democrats currently control 48 seats with three independent senators who caucus with them. Their narrow majority gives Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., little room to navigate, particularly on matters requiring a 60-vote threshold.
Now, with 10 Republican senators promising to make things even more difficult for Schumer, Democrats face the prospect of a Senate stuck in a stalemate.
Lee spearheaded the effort and wants to recruit more senators to the cause.
I hope to have every Republican senator sign this.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 31, 2024
This is a call for Senate Republican Conference unity.
Now is a time for choosing.
Will we let the Republic fall or are we going to do something about it? https://t.co/QcYQwsYv4E
“We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand,” Lee wrote on X.
Scott, who is running to for GOP leader in the next Congress, endorsed the effort Friday.
“Our country is in real trouble,” Scott said. “Republicans must stand together and end this madness.”
PRIMETIME EXCLUSIVE: @SenRickScott is vowing legislative retaliation against the Democrats who supported Trump’s prosecution. pic.twitter.com/s95CJXmE8u
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) June 1, 2024
Marshall put the blame on Biden’s “partisan hack judges,” accusing them of weaponizing the judicial system against the president’s political opponent.
The jury found Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to hide “hush money” payments in 2016 to former pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels.
Upon leaving the courthouse, Trump called the trial a disgrace and said, “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt.” He continued: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people.”
His sentencing hearing will take place July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention convenes in Milwaukee.
Business as usual is no longer an option—Biden and his leftist regime have, by their actions, decreed it’s no longer “politics as usual.”
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) May 31, 2024
They’re trying to steal the election—which is why they are already weaponizing the full power of the federal government against President… https://t.co/9Vi62Esreg
“The White House’s weaponization of our government to target President Trump for political gain represents the pinnacle of two tiers of justice,” Blackburn wrote on X. “We cannot allow this grave injustice to prevail in the United States of America.
Tuberville, who last year delayed the promotions of military officers over a dispute with the Biden administration, signaled he was once again willing to engage in a similar tactic.
Just one of those military officers remains in limbo today: Air Force Col. Ben Jonsson, whose controversial statements endorsing critical race theory in 2020 prompted an outcry. Schmitt is blocking his promotion to brigadier general.
“Democrats have destroyed the integrity of our justice system, and made a mockery of the Constitution—all in the name of maintaining political power,” Schmitt wrote on X. “My colleagues and I aren’t going to go along with the status quo. Enough is enough.”
The post How Republicans Plan to Stymie Democrats After Controversial Trump Verdict appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, a New York jury brought the country to an unprecedented brink by finding Donald Trump guilty of financial fraud, making the former president a convicted felon for now (unless or until the conviction is overturned on appeal) and making the upcoming election a referendum, he now hopes, not just on his record against Joe Biden’s but the entire political system.
Republicans call it a miscarriage of justice; for Democrats, it’s proof that no one is above the law.
History will remember it as a new chapter: Donald J. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. I am a very innocent man,” Trump told reporters after the verdict, dressed in his trademark blue suit and too-long tie at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.
Then a familiar script as the former president embraced martyrdom, arguing that his conviction was part of a larger war for the soul of a nation.
“I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our Constitution,” he said. “Our whole country is being rigged right now.”
Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Each count carries a maximum prison term of four years.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just four days before Trump is slated to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive time.
Although questions abound about the fate of the former president and the nation, there is little to no chance Trump will end up behind bars before the end of the year. He is expected to remain free on bail pending appeal, a process that is not likely to be exhausted until well after Election Day.
The case now shifts to the appellate courts—as well as the proverbial court of public opinion.
Democrats have been desperate to cast the election as a rematch of Biden v. Trump with an emphasis on character, not a judgment on President Joe Biden’s first term in office. They may have gotten what they wanted.
“Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter, and a threat to this country,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “He can now add one more title to his list—a felon.”
Sources close to the former president prefer a different description.
A senior Trump campaign official predicted weeks before the decision that a conviction would “make him the Nelson Mandela of America,” comparing Biden to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his imprisonment of political rival and late dissident Alexei Navalny.
The framework suits Trump, who blasted out an email fundraiser shortly after his conviction calling himself “a political prisoner,” arguing both that “justice is dead in America” and “our country has fallen.”
This kind of rhetoric, complete with comparisons of the U.S. to the Third World, is likely to accelerate in the weeks and months ahead. Both major presidential campaigns now argue that the other could end democracy.
“These people would do anything and everything to hold onto political power. They don’t care if they destroy our country in the process,” said the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Martyrdom has been a central theme of Trump’s return to politics. After his indictment in New York last year, the GOP nomination was practically a fait accompli and his campaign nearly told RealClearPolitics as much at the time. It is unclear whether that phenomenon will translate to a general election.
Court has not crippled Trump so far, however, and Biden has not surpassed his rival a single time this year in the RealClearPolitics Average of polls. Well aware of those numbers, the Biden campaign attempted to tamp down jubilation on the left over the bad legal news consuming the right. They warned that Trump still could win.
“There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box,” said Biden-Harris communications director Michael Tyler.
Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office reacted to the news by saying only, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.” By remaining silent, however, he ceded the spotlight to Trump, allowing his rival to shape the first 24 hours of the narrative.
[Biden didn’t comment until early Friday afternoon, when he noted before turning to the Israel-Hamas war that, “just like everyone else,” Trump will have an opportunity to appeal the verdict. The president added: “That’s how the American system of justice works. And it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”]
Nothing bars Trump from running for president as a felon. It is unclear, however, if he will be able to cast a vote for himself while his case goes through the appeal process.
A more immediate consequence of the trial ending: Trump’s schedule just opened up, and Trump can return to the campaign trail in earnest.
Sources in regular contact with the former president report that the prospect of prison has not cast a shadow over Trump personally. One told RealClearPolitics that Trump “sincerely believes” that divine providence now guides his steps and “that he has been chosen for a time such as this.”
Trump has six months to convince the country to return him to the White House, and in the most extreme circumstance, to preserve his freedom. Republicans were as bullish over those odds as they were angry.
“Today’s verdict from this partisan, corrupt, and rigged trial just guaranteed Trump’s landslide victory on Nov. 5, 2024,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, told RealClearPolitics.
Former Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump, echoed that sentiment, warning that a conviction would backfire on Democrats. “The chain reaction will cause infinitely more damage than whatever they think they are preventing,” he told RCP.
The conviction created a tidal wave of donations as Trump began fundraising almost immediately after leaving court. The Trump campaign buckled briefly at the surge. The fundraising website, WinRed, temporarily crashed under the strain of heavy traffic.
“I’ll lose friends for this,” wrote Shaun Maguire in a lengthy post on X announcing his $300,000 donation to Trump. A partner at Sequoia Capital and a former Democratic donor, Maguire said that “lawfare” in part inspired his donation:
“Fairness is one of my guiding principles in life,” he said, “and simply, these cases haven’t been fair for Trump.”
Following the conviction, there was a discernable shift on the right among conservatives who normally argue that the judicial system ought to remain apolitical. Some Trump allies described the guilty verdict as “the Rubicon.”
Asked about the new Republican appetite to use the courts to go after political opponents, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller told RCP that “the good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed.”
The field of potential vice presidential candidates snapped to attention in their immediate condemnation of the conviction.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the verdict was “a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, called it “election interference.” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said it was an “absolute injustice” that “erodes our justice system.”
“From the start, the weaponized scales of justice were stacked against President Trump. Joe Biden, far left Democrats, and their stenographers in the mainstream media have made it clear they will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., in a lengthy statement to reporters.
“This lawfare should scare every American,” said a more succinct North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican. “The American people will have their say in November.”
The safest thing for any Republican elected official anywhere Thursday night was to attack the judicial system. Defending that institution, meanwhile, was verboten.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent Trump critic now running for Senate, appeared to miss the memo when he shared a statement calling for GOP leaders to “reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
Replied Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser dispatched to oversee the Republican National Conventio: “You just ended your campaign.”
The most common sentiment among Trump’s close circle of advisers and friends was that something had changed permanently, not in the former president personally but in the country.
“Today marks a turning point,” said Brooke Rollins, who led Trump’s Domestic Policy Council before launching the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank often described as a Trump White House in waiting. “I see it as a fire that has been lit. I see the sleeping giant of the American people awakened.”
On the second day of jury deliberations, Trump had kept up appearances with a smile. A verdict was not expected Thursday, and by the afternoon, Judge Juan Merchan was preparing to dismiss the jury for the day.
The foreman replied instead that the jury had reached a verdict. He read each of the 34 charges and followed by a one-word pronouncement: “guilty.”
A smile turned to a grimace, and Trump, surrounded by his defense team, stared forward stone-faced as he listened to the verdict and American history. He vowed in brief remarks to reporters afterward that he would “fight till the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell.”
It was like so many of the pronouncements he has made after so many of the other controversies that have defined his political life. It was also different. A loss, if the conviction stands, could mean prison.
Rollins predicted that Trump would persevere, as he has before.
“From my perspective,” she said, “it is almost biblical to see this sort of courage and leadership and unwillingness to back down even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.”
The post Trump Vows to Fight On Despite Conviction appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The GOP raised a record amount of money after former President Donald Trump was found guilty in his Manhattan business records trial.
The post ‘Republican Voters Are FIRED UP’: GOP Hits Record Fundraising Numbers Post-Trump Conviction appeared first on Breitbart.
Four years after the 2020 census and the redistricting that occurred across the nation, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday held that a lower court in South Carolina failed to distinguish between political and racial motivations by that state’s Republican-controlled Legislature when lawmakers made slight revisions in the boundary lines of the state’s seven congressional districts to improve GOP election prospects in one in particular, the 1st Congressional District.
That was a very important holding, because it pushed back on a recurring tactic now being used by Democrats to attack redistricting plans that disadvantage their party politically; namely, falsely claiming that partisan redistricting is tantamount to racial discrimination that violates the Voting Rights Act.
And if you can believe it, this entire case that went all the way to the highest court in the land was over a district in which the Legislature increased the projected Republican vote by 1.36% to 54.39% and the black voting-age population from 16.56% to 16.72%.
No, really.
The NAACP, which acts as an arm of the Democratic Party, made a federal case out of a change in voting percentages of 1.36% and 0.16%!
In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by five of his colleagues, concluding that the district court’s finding that race dominated the design of the 1st District was clearly erroneous.
South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District had been a reliably Republican district until a Democrat, Joe Cunningham, was barely elected in 2018 with just 50.7% of the vote. Republican Nancy Mace took the district back in the 2020 election by another slim margin, just 50.6% of the vote.
Republicans in the state Legislature issued guidance after the 2020 census explaining that they would follow “traditional districting principles, such as respect for contiguity and incumbent protection.” However, they “also made it clear that [they] would aim to create a stronger Republican tilt in District 1.”
The GOP-dominated Legislature maintained and protected incumbent Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, who has represented the single majority-minority congressional district in South Carolina since 1993, the 6th, because, as Republican state Sen. George “Chip” Campsen said, Clyburn “has more influence with the Biden administration perhaps than anyone in the nation.”
The Supreme Court reiterated that courts must distinguish between partisan and racial motivations in redistricting since, as the court previously held in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause, partisan motivations are not justiciable in federal court, while racial motivations may be unconstitutional if they were a predominant factor in the redistricting.
The majority chastised the lower court for only paying “lip service” to the rules the court has set out for evaluating this issue in a redistricting case.
In fact, the district court’s “misguided approach infected” that court’s findings, which “were clearly erroneous under the appropriate legal standard.” In other words, the lower court committed clear error because it failed to disentangle race from politics.
Moreover, Alito wrote, the NAACP did not provide any direct evidence of a racial gerrymander by state legislators and the NAACP’s circumstantial evidence was very weak.
Instead, the NAACP relied on deeply flawed reports by four “experts” who ignored traditional districting criteria such as geographical constraints and the Legislature’s partisan interests in strengthening Republican districts.
The NAACP also failed to offer a single alternative map to show that the Legislature’s partisan goal could be achieved while raising the black voting population in the challenged district, a requirement that the Supreme Court has laid out in previous redistricting cases.
The NAACP separately claimed that the slight change in the percentage of GOP voters in District 1 diluted the vote of black residents, violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But the majority found that the district court made the same mistakes in evaluating the vote-dilution claims that it made in evaluating the first claim.
That is, the NAACP failed to show that the state’s redistricting plan had the purpose and effect of diluting the minority vote. In light of these errors, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.
It is probably no surprise that the three liberal justices disagreed.
In a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan urged the court not to second-guess the district court’s factual findings on whether partisanship or race was the predominant factor in the redistricting process by the state Legislature.
In her view, the court should have given the district court’s view of events “significant deference” and upheld it as long as it is “plausible.”
At the end of his majority opinion, Alito criticized that dissent, concluding that none of the points raised by Kagan was “valid.” That includes her bald assertion—with no evidence to back it up—that the legislators must have used racial data, rather than political data because, the dissenters claim, racial data “is more accurate than political data in predicting future votes” and not using racial data would have required the “self-restraint of a monk.”
But as Alito pointed out, “this jaded view is inconsistent with our case law’s long-standing instruction that the ‘good faith of [the] state Legislature must be presumed’ in redistricting cases.” That is particularly true since “the political data, unlike the racial data that the dissent prefers, took into account voter turnout.”
Alito concluded by saying that “there is no substance to the dissent’s attacks.”
The South Carolina opinion serves as a warning shot across the bows of district court judges who presume bad faith on the part of state legislators and who fail to distinguish between political motivations and racial motivations in the redistricting process.
The Voting Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination in voting, not partisanship, and its provisions should not be abused to achieve political goals.
The post Supreme Court Rebuffs Claim of Partisan South Carolina Redistricting as Race Bias appeared first on The Daily Signal.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Friday on MSNBC's "Deadline" that the "MAGA extremists" on the Supreme Court must be controlled with a "legislative effort to implement an ethical code of conduct."
The post Jeffries Calls SCOTUS Justices ‘MAGA Extremists’; Says Congress Must Get High Court ‘Under Control’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.
The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.
For starters, 26 Senate Democrats—a majority—scored lower than the 7.14% rating for Sanders, the one-man gold standard for American socialism. Such reputedly “middle of the road” lawmakers as Virginia’s Mark Warner (5.56%), Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey (5.45%), and Maryland’s Ben Cardin (3.57%) are all Left of Sanders.
At 7.14%, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has the same score as … Bernie Sanders! So does alleged “centrist” Democrat and former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. Schumer is just seven points from the Left’s 0% “wall.”
Meanwhile, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky’s 66.04% score puts him fully 33 points from the Right’s end zone and that much nearer the center. Indeed, while 26 senators are Left of Schumer, 40 are Right of McConnell.
Many conservatives, not least moi, slam McConnell mercilessly and justifiably for sacrificing the Right’s principles an exquisite one-third of the time and more so when it really matters. McConnell ate out of Schumer’s hand on omnibus spending bills, a hike in the debt limit, and April’s betrayal on border security. Still, if McConnell votes Left 33.96% of the time, Democrats should stop calling him an extremist.
The Senate’s ideological anchors are Connecticut’s hard-Left Chris Murphy (1.79%); its most conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia (35.19%); the most-liberal Republican, Susan Collins of Maine (a severely centrist 50.00%); and the most-stalwart conservative, Mike Lee of Utah (100.00% pro-individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise).
Across the Capitol, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, earned a 1.61% rating and the House’s farthest-Left trophy. The whole world was watching on May 16, when she participated in a juvenile, verbal melee with AOC and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. The House’s most conservative Democrat is Maine’s Jared Golden (33.33%), and its most liberal Republican is Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick (36.51%). Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Texas’ Chip Roy, and Virginia’s Robert Good—Republicans all—share 100% ratings and the House’s Top Conservative award.
An 87.06% rating puts House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., closer to the center than Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York’s 7.14%. Shamefully, Johnson’s McConnell-style white flags likely will lower his numbers even further in next year’s ILA scorecard.
Meanwhile, 33 House Democrats are Left of “Squad” leader and proud socialist AOC. Nearly three dozen of her colleagues must wish that she would stop voting so often with Republicans.
In both chambers, Democrats march with North Korean conformity while Republicans are more diverse. Senate Democrats range from 1.79% to 35.19%. Republicans stretch more widely from 50.00% to 100%. House Democrats run from 1.67% to 33.33%. Republicans even more broadly span 36.51% to 100%.
Most fascinating is how the parties address two key issue areas. On cultural questions like abortion, gender, and race, Senate and House Republicans jointly score 97.57% versus 0.87% for Democrats. On tax-and-spend fiscal matters, congressional Republicans earn 50.66%, Democrats: 1.04%.
“On cultural issues, Republicans have become very hardcore, while trending much more moderate on fiscal affairs,” says ILA President Fred McGrath. “Democrats, conversely, are extreme on cultural, fiscal, and every other issue.”
“Nearly 95% of Democrats score below 15%,” McGrath adds. “By contrast, fewer than 33% of Republicans score above 85%.”
Next time President Joe Biden and his Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics and buy mirrors, so they can stare at Capitol Hill’s genuine extremists.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Reflect on the words of Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in his Washington Post article titled “Why Is Congress So Dumb?” Thereby hangs a tale of congressional anemia and languor.
The veteran congressman laments, “our available resources and our policy staff, the brains of Congress, have been so depleted that we can’t do our jobs properly. … Congress is increasingly unable to comprehend a world growing more socially, economically and technologically multifaceted—and we did this to ourselves.”
While the size of the federal government was mushrooming, staff levels in House member offices ticked down from 6,556 in 1977 to 6,329 in 2021. Congress’ annual budget is $5.3 billion, a tiny fraction of the $1.5 trillion spent on the military-industrial-security complex. And only 10% of the $5.3 billion is spent on human capital as opposed to buildings, the Capitol Police, and maintenance.
“For every $3,000 the United States spends per American on government programs,” Pascrell writes, “[Congress] allocates only $6 to oversee them.”
The congressman’s diagnosis is spot-on. It deserves further amplification.
Congress is largely run by rookies paid miserly wages who then move on after a few years to lucrative lobbying on K Street as a financial necessity. Congress is starved of institutional memory and expertise. Members and staff are constitutionally clueless, political tyros. The executive branch runs circles around them, stiff-arms oversight, and typically originates major legislation for Congress to entertain.
Congressional staff commonly parachute into high-level, well-paid executive branch positions. The reverse—executive branch talent coming to work for Congress—is as rare as unicorns.
This is a disaster for Congress as a coequal branch of government and for the Constitution’s separation of powers. It is also a break in history, tracing back to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who in 1995 seized the lion’s share of legislative powers from committees and member offices by shrinking their budgets and prerogatives and enfeebling their intellectual infrastructures.
Gingrich also defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, tantamount to a congressional lobotomy. His objective was to handcuff any challenges by members or committees to his personal policy predilections and compromises with the White House. None of Gingrich’s Republican and Democratic successors—Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mike Johnson—have undone his dumbing down of Congress.
The typical chief of staff or chief counsel in the House is a recent university or law school graduate in their mid-20s hired primarily because of their loyalty and campaign work. They are awed by the White House and ignorant of the vast powers the Constitution entrusts to the legislative branch: the war power, the power of the purse, the power to supersede treaties or executive orders, and the inherent power of contempt to sanction summarily any executive official for withholding documents or testimony from Congress.
The result, among other things, is secret government and a reliance on whistleblowers, who commonly have ulterior motives, to disclose executive branch crimes or wrongdoing in lieu of Congress.
In the pre-Gingrich era, the Watergate crimes were exposed by the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, and the Church Committee disclosed the crimes and wrongdoing of the intelligence community. In the post-Gingrich era, Congress goes on its hands and knees, like Henry IV at Canossa, pleading for the White House voluntarily to share information.
The House and Senate Armed Services committees need vastly greater manpower and experts to oversee the nearly trillion-dollar annual, unaudited Pentagon spending. On 9/11, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shared that $3 trillion in Pentagon funds accumulated over an unknown number of years could not be accounted for.
Congress retains the power to return to the pre-Gingrich era. Under the Constitution, the House and Senate decide their respective budgets with no outside interference. Congress can and should raise salaries and retain experts to attract talent and make serving as congressional staff a financially viable professional career. Congress should institutionalize the recruitment of staff and experts from universities and the private sector based more on competence in discharging constitutional responsibilities and less on personal loyalty or nepotism.
Overseeing and reforming a federal government that spends more than $6.5 trillion annually, regulates every nook and cranny of economic life, and groans under a national debt exceeding $34 trillion is too important to do anything less.
President John Quincy Adams left the presidency in 1829. He served in the House of Representatives from 1831 to 1848, acquiring fame in opposing the gag rule, which forbid discussion of slavery in the House, and the Mexican-American War, fueled by presidential lies.
Adams’ congressional service was not a demotion but a professional and constitutional step up. Today, it is inconceivable that a president would follow in his footsteps. That needs to change fast, or the executive branch will continue to run roughshod over the Constitution, Congress, and the American people.
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A new study has revealed that roughly 10% to 27% of noncitizens living in the U.S. are illicitly registered to vote, which could result in up to 2.7 million illegal votes being cast in the November elections.
Experts say the significant amount of potential illegal votes could be enough to alter election results.
The study, released last week by the research institute Just Facts, notes that the 2022 U.S. census recorded approximately 19 million adult noncitizens living in the country. “Given their voter registration rates, this means that about 2 million to 5 million of them are illegally registered to vote,” the report observes. “These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including congressional seats and the presidency.”
On Tuesday, James Agresti, president of Just Facts, joined “Washington Watch” to discuss the scope of noncitizens casting ballots and the implications of the study’s findings.
“[T]here are very broad openings for noncitizens to vote,” he explained, adding:
In no state in the nation are they required to provide proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Now, a couple of states like Arizona tried to enact that requirement, but they were blocked by a court ruling supported by the Obama administration.
And if you look at the federal voter-registration form, it says you can submit all different forms of ID to register. That could be a Social Security number; it could be a driver’s license number; or it could just be a utility bill.
I mean, these are things that anyone can get by living here. They do not prove you’re a U.S. citizen.
And more than that, a lot of noncitizens have faked Social Security numbers, especially illegal immigrants. That’s what they do to work. A recent estimate by the Social Security Administration tallied 2.5 million noncitizens who had Social Security numbers gained by using fake birth certificates or stealing those numbers from somebody else.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and board member of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, concurred. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
“[T]he problem is, states aren’t doing very much to verify citizenship, so it’s extremely easy for someone who’s not a citizen to register to vote and to vote in elections,” he remarked during Monday’s edition of “Washington Watch.”
“And when that is discovered, oftentimes nothing is done about it.”
Agresti went on to point out the effect that lax enforcement of citizen verification could have in November. “[B]ased on the latest available data, approximately 1 million to 2.7 million noncitizens are going to vote in the upcoming presidential election unless something changes. And that is more than enough to tip the results of congressional races, Senate races, and yes, the U.S. presidency.”
Von Spakovsky echoed Agresti’s concerns. “[I]t doesn’t matter whether they’re black or white, Asian or Hispanic. It doesn’t matter which political party they support. Every time an alien illegally votes, that alien is voiding, negating the vote of a citizen, no matter which political party they support,” he contended. “And the Democrats just don’t seem to want to understand that or to basically ignore it.”
Agresti further reflected on the motivations behind the Democrats’ opposition to efforts to improve election integrity.
“[I]t’s always hard to read people’s minds, but I can tell you this: The vast bulk of these noncitizens are voting for Democrats. According to the best data we have, about 80% of them will vote for Democrats when they vote illegally. And Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to prevent any kind of checking of people’s citizenship. It does benefit them. Is that their reasoning? It’s an obvious incentive, but I can’t read their minds.”
Earlier this month, House Republicans attempted to address the issue by introducing a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and would remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls. But Agresti expressed doubt about the bill’s chances of passage. “My guess is it will move in the House and die in the Senate, but that’s just an educated guess. And again, even if somehow it got through the Senate, there’s no way [President] Joe Biden’s signing that bill.”
“However,” he added, “I do think in the aftermath of the election, and we hate to have a repeat of 2020, that there should be some accountability, some lawsuits that demand proof that people are who they say they are in tight races. None of that was secured in the last round of election lawsuits, and it needs to be there.”
Agresti concluded by urging candidates involved in tight elections to demand verification that only citizens voted. “A candidate has to make a plea and say, ‘Hey, I want this data to prove that these people who are registered and voted actually are citizens.’”
Originally published at WashingtonStand.com
The post Up to 2.7 Million Noncitizens Could Vote Illegally in November, Study Warns appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The bipartisan border bill failed in the U.S. Senate Thursday, even losing the support of two key negotiators who helped craft the legislation. This marked the second time the Senate voted against moving forward with the bill.
The vote on the border bill “is not an effort to actually make law, it is an effort to do political messaging,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Thursday ahead of the vote. Lankford worked to negotiate the bill with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., but he and Sinema voted against the bill Thursday, criticizing the reintroduction of the bill as being politically motivated.
Sen. Lankford helped to craft the border bill, but voted against it today.
— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) May 23, 2024
"Everyone sees this for what it is. It is not an effort to actually make law, it is an effort to do political messaging." pic.twitter.com/0Ab0M2l2fe
The bill, which needed 60 votes to pass, failed with 50 senators voting against it and 43 voting in favor.
The vote broke largely along party lines with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska being the only Republican to vote for the bill. Six Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill.
WATCH: Border bill fails in the Senate a second time. pic.twitter.com/bM9PfY3UZl
— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) May 23, 2024
During the first vote in February, Lankford voted in favor of advancing the border bill, along with Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
Analysts expected the latest vote on the bill to fail following Republicans’ outspoken criticism of the measure.
The bill “spends $20 billion to not secure the border, but to more efficiently encounter, process, and disperse illegal migrants,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said during a news conference Wednesday.
Johnson and other GOP senators bashed the bill for allowing up to 5,000 illegal aliens to enter daily in a seven-day period.
The bill directs the Department of Homeland Security to close the southern border “during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, [if] there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.”
Over 1.8 million illegal aliens a year still would be permitted to enter the United States under the now twice failed legislation.
Republicans bashed the bill as an election year stunt.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are promoting the bill because “poll numbers are showing [Democrats] that, after months and months of throwing the border open to anyone who wants to come in, that the public doesn’t like the policy.”
Gallup reports that immigration is the No. 1 issue not specifically related to the economy on the minds of American voters right now.
“And now, all of a sudden, six months before an election, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have got religion on border security,” Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio., said ahead of the vote.
Under the Biden administration, Customs and Border Protection has encountered over 9.5 million illegal aliens on America’s border and at ports of entry. With five months remaining in fiscal year 2024, CBP encounters of illegal immigrants under President Joe Biden’s leadership are expected to far surpass 10 million before the start of the new fiscal year.
An additional nearly 1.8 million illegal aliens have crossed the border managing to evade Border Patrol. Authorities refer to them as “known gotaways.” It is impossible to know how many unknown gotaways have entered the country in recent years.
Senate Republicans continue to advocate for the passage of the border security bill known as H.R. 2, which the House passed in May 2023. If passed into law, H.R. 2 would end “catch and release,” restart construction of the border wall, and reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, among other things.
“The Democrats don’t want border security,” Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a statement. “Every single Democrat in the Senate supports these open borders. And I can say that because every single time we push to implement real border security to stop this invasion—to stop Joe Biden from releasing criminal illegal aliens that are threatening our families—every single Democrat votes no.”
On Tuesday night, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Cruz, spoke on the Senate floor and called for the Senate to pass H.R. 2 by unanimous consent. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., reserved the right to object and blocked the bill.
The post Border Bill Goes Down in Flames on Senate Floor appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—After President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to work with private organizations to mobilize voters, senior White House officials asked agencies for “bold ideas” and explained plans to coordinate with “stakeholders.”
One message from the White House, obtained by The Daily Signal, said: “We look forward to working with you to”—but the rest of the content is blacked out by a redaction.
The specifics of those “bold ideas” and “stakeholders” isn’t knowable right now because “upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office, the information is being withheld under the presidential communications privilege,” according to a cover letter to The Daily Signal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The letter accompanied 99 pages that The Daily Signal obtained from USDA through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Since Biden signed his executive order on elections in March 2021, members of Congress, the press, and watchdog groups have struggled to get basic information on how the administration is implementing the order. Some details have trickled out through FOIA law, which requires that basic information from the government be available to the public.
Earlier this month, two House committees intensified their investigations of Biden’s order on turning out voters.
Although records obtained previously by The Daily Signal under FOIA requests contained redactions and cited exemptions, the responses didn’t refer to “presidential communication privilege.”
“The presidential communications privilege protects communications among the president and his advisors,” the cover letter to the released but redacted documents says.
“The records being withheld here consist of email communications concerning President Biden’s Executive Order 14019 and attached records that were solicited and received by the president or his immediate White House advisers who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given to the president,” says the letter signed by Alexis R. Graves, director of the USDA’s Office of Information Affairs.
Other exemptions to disclosure cited in Graves’ cover letter include the deliberative process privilege and attorney-client privilege.
Critics of Biden’s executive order, some of whom refer to it as “Bidenbucks,” argue that its implementation could cause bureaucrats to violate the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits political activity using resources of the federal government. Critics also say the order may violate the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits agencies from spending taxpayers’ money for reasons not approved by Congress.
Separately, the Justice Department has invoked presidential privilege to shield documents about Biden’s order in a public records lawsuit brought by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a watchdog group.
“In recent years, the presidential communications privilege has become an increasingly common excuse used by federal agencies to sidestep their disclosure obligations under federal law,” Stewart Whitson, senior director of federal affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Daily Signal.
“During the current administration, federal agencies have shown an increasing willingness to stretch the presidential communications privilege well beyond what is allowed under current law—documents or other materials that reflect presidential decision making and deliberations that the president believes should remain confidential—to any and all documents received by White House advisers and their staff,” Whitson said.
“If allowed to persist, federal agencies and the politically appointed bureaucrats leading these agencies will gradually render the FOIA law meaningless. Government transparency and our very democracy are under threat,” he said.
Stephonn O. Alcorn, then the associate director of racial justice and equity at the White House, sent an April 1, 2021, email to all federal agencies that is heavily redacted in the released version.
Alcorn’s email was about an interagency meeting to be convened eight days later, on April 9, by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Domestic Policy Counsel. The agenda is completely redacted.
Alcorn notified agencies that taking the White House lead on Biden’s election executive order would be Justin Vail, special assistant to the president for democracy and civic participation with the Domestic Policy Council, and Larry Schwartztol, an associate White House counsel.
In September 2021, Kumar Chandran, senior adviser for nutrition to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, notified Vail of a change of plans for how the USDA wanted to implement Biden’s order. In the released record, however, the change is blacked out from public view.
“After input from Sec. Vilsack this week, we are considering a change to one of our proposed actions, which would result in [redacted],” Chandran wrote.
“We need to do some further diligence to determine if it is viable, but if it is, we think it might be more meaningful,” he added.
A White House press release that month gave a broad overview of how the USDA would implement Biden’s order on mobilizing voters.
“The Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service will encourage the provision of nonpartisan voter information through its borrowers and guaranteed lenders, who interface with thousands of residents in the process of changing their voting address every year,” the White House press release said. “In addition, Rural Development agencies—which are spread throughout field offices across the country where rural Americans can apply for housing, facilities, or business assistance—will take steps to promote access to voter registration forms and other pertinent nonpartisan election information among their patrons.”
Getting to the point of how the USDA would push Americans to vote appears to be a tedious process, based on what’s discernible from the released records.
Some messages were more heavily redacted than others. For example, a September 2021 message from USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Rural Development Farah Ahmad says only “This is” before the text is blacked out.
A June 2021 email from Vail to Chandran was about the “interim report template.”
“At this point,” Vail’s message began, followed by several lines of redacted information. He continued: “We just want to ensure that all agencies are taking steps to generate bold ideas and begin to flesh out those ideas; it will also allow the opportunity for us to provide feedback.”
This statement is followed by more heavy redactions.
White House official Devontae Freeland, special assistant to the racial justice and equity team, notified agencies on July 2, 2021, about an upcoming conference with “stakeholders” on Biden’s executive order.
Separate document releases show that a Zoom conference the following July 12 involved Biden administration officials and numerous far-left political organizations, among them unions. The groups included the Southern Poverty Law Center, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations, the Stacey Abrams-founded Fair Fight Action, and the Al Sharpton-founded National Action Network.
“As you know, we’re coordinating some input from stakeholders, including what we hope you found to be an informative session yesterday afternoon with state and local election officials,” Freeland wrote.
“We’ve also planned a session for nonpartisan nonprofit organizations engaged in voting rights advocacy to provide their recommendations and thoughts on best practices; we will follow up shortly with an additional session from nonprofit organizations with substantial expertise in reaching out to and engaging particular populations of voters who may be more difficult to reach. We hope that each of these sessions will provide helpful feedback,” he wrote, before more redactions blacked out the text.
In another heavily redacted message, Vail wrote USDA officials in late September 2021 with the subject line “Voting EO/Follow up items.”
On Oct. 6, 2021, Vail wrote to agencies about meeting on Biden’s executive order in coming days.
“We look forward to working with you to [redacted],” he wrote.
The next interagency meeting would be Oct. 20, Vail wrote.
Spokespersons for the White House and the Agriculture Department didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiries about this report before publication.
The post ‘PRIVILEGE’: What the White House Doesn’t Think You Should Know About Biden’s Order on Mobilizing Voters appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is vowing to oppose an immigration expansion bill, supported by President Joe Biden, because it does not include provisions offering amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
The post Hispanic Caucus Opposes Biden-Backed Immigration Expansion Bill for Failing to Include Amnesty for Illegal Aliens appeared first on Breitbart.
The House Oversight Committee will debate a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress after President Joe Biden claimed executive privilege for audio recordings of his meetings with Special Prosecutor Robert Hur.
The post Watch Live: Oversight Committee Debates Merrick Garland Contempt of Congress Resolution appeared first on Breitbart.
The resolution, largely symbolic, must be approved by the full House to officially hold Garland in contempt. Republicans maintain a narrow majority in the House to pass the resolution.
The post Panel Passes Resolution to Hold Merrick Garland in Contempt of Congress appeared first on Breitbart.
An agency of the District of Columbia held a training session last month to teach illegal immigrants and other noncitizens how to vote, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.
News of the training session held by the local government in the nation’s capital comes as House Republicans push a bill—with the backing of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.—to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
The D.C. Board of Elections conducted the April 10 event, called “Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training.”
Judicial Watch obtained 13 pages of the training session’s PowerPoint presentation through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. On one slide, the presentation says:
Non-U.S. citizen residents can vote in District elections for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, Chairman or member(s) of the D.C. Council, member(s) of the State Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s) Non-U.S. citizen residents cannot vote for Federal Offices.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project previously raised concerns about noncitizen voting in the District of Columbia. (Heritage established The Daily Signal in 2014.)
Washington, DC’s Voter Guide for Illegal Aliens is up! pic.twitter.com/COeIpOba5w
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) May 1, 2024
The District of Columbia is joined by local governments in California, Maryland, and Vermont in allowing foreign citizens to vote in local elections. Federal law allows only U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections.
State courts blocked New York City from allowing noncitizen voting there.
“Illegal aliens and noncitizens should not vote in any elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That Congress allows the votes of citizens to be legally stolen by illegal aliens in our nation’s capital is inexcusable.”
The District of Columbia amended its election code last year to allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote for local D.C. offices.
As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Democrats long have sought to change election laws to gain a political advantage. These noncitizen voting laws mimic a tactic used by New York City’s legendary Tammany Hall and other political machines that controlled big city politics.
The District’s presentation explains the qualifications for registering to vote when someone isn’t a U.S. citizen.
“To register to vote in the District of Columbia as a non-citizen, you must: Be at least 17 years old and 18 years old by the next General Election; Maintain residency in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days prior to the election in which you intend to vote; Not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; Not been found by a court to be legally incompetent to vote,” the presentation says.
Neither the D.C. Board of Elections nor the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on this report.
The post DC Holds Training Sessions for Noncitizens to Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.
In just nine years, the oldest Gen Xers will reach Social Security’s normal retirement age of 67. But they will have a rude awakening when they learn that the program’s trust fund is empty, leaving it able to pay out only as much in benefits as it takes from the paychecks of those then working.
That’s straight from the Social Security trustees 2024 report. It also notes that without congressional action, benefits will have to be cut by 21% across the board—including for those already retired—beginning in 2033.
For the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 a year from Social Security, that 21% cut will translate into a loss of $4,600 per year. As Social Security benefits will grow faster than payroll taxes for the foreseeable future, benefit cuts will reach 31% at the end of the trustees’ 75-year projections.
Simply maintaining currently scheduled Social Security benefits would require large tax increases. The program’s trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%, adding $2,500 to the median household’s annual Social Security taxes.
Even that projected hike may be too conservative. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 17.5% tax, or an extra $3,800 per year for the median family, is necessary to maintain current Social Security benefits.
Such high tax rates are a far cry from Social Security’s original intent. The program started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised it would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks.
And for a program that currently replaces about 40% of workers’ earnings during retirement (and will decline to 32% beginning in 2033), the current 12.4% tax is a hefty price to pay. If workers invested that amount in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds, they should have enough at retirement to replace at least 75% of their earnings.
Even as Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of income in retirement, its rising taxes have made it increasingly difficult, particularly for lower- and middle-income workers, to save for retirement.
In fact, Social Security’s growing size and scope could be exacerbating wealth inequality because the hard truth is that Social Security is not a savings program, and workers have no ownership of the Social Security taxes they pay.
Despite Social Security’s original intent to be a predominantly prefunded and effectively a forced-savings program, it now functions as a pure intergenerational transfer program. That happened because Social Security’s benefits increased more than its tax hikes.
In every year since 2011, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has received in tax revenues. This means that workers’ payroll tax “contributions” aren’t saved and don’t earn a positive rate of return over time.
Although the formula that determines retirees’ benefits is based on what they paid in Social Security taxes, their actual benefits come directly from younger workers’ paychecks. After 2033, retirees’ benefits will be entirely dependent on how much future lawmakers are willing to extract from workers’ paychecks.
The fact that Social Security taxes aren’t saved makes the program a bad deal for most Americans. It can also exacerbate wealth inequality among low-income and minority Americans who have lower life expectancies.
One out of every four black men dies between the ages of 45 and 64, having paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in Social Security taxes. But because they have no ownership of their contributions, they and their family members receive little or nothing in return.
What could have been a $350,000 retirement account that a low-income worker would have to pass on to his family is often just a $255 death payment instead.
With less than a decade left before Social Security runs out of money and automatic 21% benefit cuts ensue, lawmakers must act now to prevent insolvency and to improve the program for future generations.
Some commonsense solutions include gradually shifting to a universal benefit based on years of work instead of total earnings, automatically updating the program’s eligibility age to align with changes in life expectancy, and using more accurate statistics to adjust benefits.
These reforms would translate into bigger paychecks for all Americans by allowing Social Security’s tax rate to decline over time.
Moreover, if coupled with a personal ownership option, Social Security reform could help more Americans build wealth that could increase their retirement incomes and provide a leg up to help their children and grandchildren pursue goals like education, homeownership, or starting a small business.
Whatever lawmakers do, they must act soon. Time isn’t on our side.
Distributed by Tribune News Service
The post Someone’s Going to Have to Pay a Lot for Your Social Security appeared first on The Daily Signal.
House Democrats voted unanimously to continue including foreign nationals, illegal aliens among them, when apportioning congressional districts in states.
The post House Democrats Vote Unanimously to Count Foreign Nationals in Congressional Apportionment appeared first on Breitbart.
DEI (racial and other quotas) is intrinsically evil. At The Hill, Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson reveal a shocking, practical downside to DEI hysteria: “DEI killed the CHIPS Act.”
The issue is critical because Taiwan now produces 90% of the world’s advanced microchips, and China has indicated its intention to annex Taiwan in the near future. So the CHIPS Act sought to incentivize chip production in the U.S. Unfortunately, that isn’t what is happening.
Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. …
***
Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as [the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] discovered to its dismay.Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.
It isn’t only TSMC that is being stymied by DEI:
Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.
In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. …
[C]hipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”
No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland.
Access to microchips is a national security issue, as well as being fundamental to a modern economy. And yet Congressional majorities care more about DEI shibboleths and feeding pork to their constituencies than about American security and prosperity. Of course, that isn’t really an irony. The whole point of DEI is hating America, and if it imperils our security and our prosperity, so much the better.
Vaunce News 
