Republican Liberty Caucus Endorses Tennessee U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles for Reelection

Andy Ogles

The Republican Liberty Caucus endorsed U.S. Representative Andy Ogles’ (R-TN-05) reelection bid for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.

“The Republican Liberty Caucus proudly endorses Andrew Ogles in TN-5,” the political organization wrote in an X post on Thursday. “[Ogles] has become one of the top defenders of liberty in the House. An unwavering voice for freedom and smaller government, he scored a 95 on our Liberty Index during his first year in Congress.”

Read the full story

Vance: ‘Ukraine-First’ Border Package ‘Being Shoved Down the Throat of the U.S. Senate’

JD Vance Ukraine

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said today that his fellow Republicans “have to” defeat the “Ukraine-first” border package being “shoved down” their throats.

“There’s an Ukraine first package being shoved down the throat of the US Senate,” Vance posted on X. “It doesn’t secure our border, gives away all leverage to achieve real border security, and no one has had time to read through the details. Let’s defeat this package. We have to.”

Read the full story

Analysis: Diversity Politics Undermined Federal Air Traffic Control Skills-Based Testing

Air Traffic Control

The Federal Aviation Administration under the Biden administration has pledged to continue diversifying its workforce under its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility goals.

At the same time, a lawsuit that has long flown under the radar provides a glimpse into just how far the agency is willing to go to achieve those goals, even at the expense of skills-based tests for air traffic controllers.

Read the full story

Newly-Resigned AZGOP Chair Jeff DeWit Told NBC ‘No One Believes Kari Can Attract Independents’ and Win Senate Race

Jeff DeWit

Information regarding a recorded conversation between newly-resigned Arizona Republican Party Chair Jeff DeWit and Kari Lake continues to trickle out as speculation increases regarding who the “very powerful people” “Back East” were who told him to offer her a job to keep her out of politics for two years. An inside source told The Arizona Sun Times that it was the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which was denied by NRSC Chair Senator Steve Daines (R-MT).

DeWit told NBC News after resigning that the offer “had everything to do with her being a drag on the ticket. There are people who want to make sure we win the election and that’s it. No one believes she can get across the finish line, particularly with independents.” Lake is running for U.S. Senate and is a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, with some circulating her name as a possible vice presidential candidate. She flew to New Hampshire before the primary on Tuesday.

Read the full story

Arizona U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs Demands Answers on Invasive Surveillance Program Said to Be Tapping Into Trillions of Private Communications

U.S. Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) wants answers from the Biden administration about a spying program targeting Americans’ domestic communications.

Biggs this week sent a letter to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) after details emerged about the so-called Hemisphere Project.

Read the full story

Carol Swain’s Morning Memorandum: New Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Brown Is Sacrificing a Strong Military for ‘Diversity’

All star panelist and author Carol Swain joined Michael Patrick Leahy in-studio on Wednesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report to introduce listeners to her first-ever Morning Memorandum. In her first installment, Swain discussed the importance of a strong U.S. military, and her concerns surrounding the weakness of the current leadership heading the world’s premier fighting force that instead is being directed to focus on “diversity.”

Read the full story

GOP Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Says He’d Win a Legal Challenge to His Plan to Slash the Administrative State

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy knows there would be legal challenges to his sweeping plan to drastically reduce the size of the administrative state. The 38-year-old political outsider knows the big government left won’t give up the heart of the D.C swamp without a bruising fight.

Ramaswamy’s good with that.

Read the full story

AG Merrick Garland’s Reason Why DOJ Has Prosecuted Few Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Firebombers: They Are Bombing at Night

Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland told Republican senators Wednesday his Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more pro-life Americans for peaceful protests at abortion clinics than enraged anti-life terrorists firebombing pregnancy care centers and vandalizing churches because pro-life people conduct their activities during the day while the domestic terrorists are doing their bombing at night.

Read the full story

Democrats Celebrate 100 Federal Judicial Nominee Confirmations But Michael Delaney ‘Problematic’ for Biden and Schumer

The Democrat-controlled Senate is celebrating the confirmation of 100 of Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, approved by radical left-wing organizations, but Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing saw Biden nominee Michael Delaney struggling against an onslaught of confrontation over his move in 2015 to publicly release the name of a minor female victim of sexual assault while he represented her school.

By nominating representatives of these radical positions, Biden is “paying back the left-wing dark money groups who spent over a billion dollars to help elect him and Senate Democrats,” Carrie Severino, president of JCN, formerly known as Judicial Crisis Network, told Fox News Digital.

Read the full story

Tennessee Senator Blackburn Readies for Debt-Ceiling Fight

Having received an appointment to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee this week, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is poised to play a major role in this year’s fight over raising the debt ceiling. 

Earlier this week, Blackburn joined her Utah Republican colleague Mike Lee in penning a letter, signed by 22 of their fellow senators, insisting a rise in the federal debt limit must only happen as part of a deal to pare back government spending. In an interview with The Tennessee Star, Blackburn explained her view that fiscal circumstances demand such an agreement so debt does not snowball into an even more unmanageable burden on American families. 

Read the full story

Conservative Senators Demand Spending Cuts, Fiscal Reform in Debt Ceiling Deal

Fiscal hawks in the Senate reiterated their demands for fiscal reforms and spending cuts Tuesday as they voiced their support for House Republicans to lead the heavy-lifting on addressing the nation’s debt ceiling crisis. 

“We have an opportunity to stop the madness, and it’s incumbent on the Republican majority in the House and Republicans in the Senate to use every lever point we have,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at a press conference on the debt ceiling and runaway spending. 

Read the full story

Sen. Ron Johnson Argues to Eliminate $9.8 Billion in Earmarks From $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Bill

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R) joined with his colleagues Senators Rick Scott (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Rand Paul (R-KY) to oppose the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill and argue for an amendment that would eliminate all earmarks.

“Thousands of individual projects here, both Democrat and Republican,” Johnson said Tuesday during a press conference

Read the full story

House Democrats Block Religious Liberty Amendment to Same-Sex Marriage Bill to Assure Passage Before Republicans Take Over

House Democrats have blocked an amendment that would have strengthened religious liberty protections to their legislation to codify same-sex marriage to ensure swift passage of the bill before Republicans take over leadership of the House in the new year.

“If we were to amend this, and it goes back to the Senate, for all intents and purposes it’s dead for the year,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), who rejected Representative Chip Roy’s (R-TX) amendment for advancement to the House floor.

Read the full story

Retiring Ohio Senator Portman Helps Codify Gay Marriage into Law

Same-sex marriage is on track to becoming codified in federal statute and retiring U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) is celebrating his role as a key driver of the change.

In 2013, Portman became the first Republican senator to support redefining marriage as something other than the matrimonial union between one man and one woman. He attributed his reversal of his prior opposition to gay marriage to his son having come out two years earlier.

Read the full story

Sen. Mike Lee’s Amendment to Safeguard Religious Liberty for Americans Who Hold to Traditional Marriage Fails By One Vote

Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) religious liberty amendment to the Democrats’ same-sex marriage bill failed by just one vote, 48-49, an outcome that, if the legislation is signed into law, could give a green light to the federal government’s retaliation against nonprofit faith organizations, such as schools and businesses, whose religious beliefs are incompatible with gay marriage.

Senate Democrats voted Tuesday, 61-36, to codify same-sex marriage into federal law with the help of 12 Republicans, as the Senate Press Gallery noted.

Read the full story

Senator Sounds Alarm for Same-Sex Marriage Bill as It Clears Another Hurdle with GOP Support, ‘Without Sufficient Protections for Religious Liberty’

A bill that would enshrine same-sex marriage in federal law progressed further in the Senate Monday evening with significant Republican support, but without sufficient religious liberty protections, and is now headed to a vote on Tuesday.

The Senate voted, 61-35, with four senators not voting, to end debate on the House-passed bill, dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage in federal law as between one man and one woman.

Read the full story

‘Devastating’: Biden Ignores Lawmakers’ Pleas, Orders Massive Expansion of Utah Monuments

President Joe Biden will order the Department of the Interior Friday to vastly expand two Utah monuments which the Trump administration reduced in size.

The president will restore protections for both the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments located in Utah, the White House announced. Biden’s order will re-expand the monuments from their reduced size of slightly more than 1 million acres to 3.2 million acres.

Read the full story

Hawley, Cruz, Lee Call for Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade

Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee

Leading Republican senators filed an amicus brief Monday urging the Supreme Court to overrule its decisions in two major abortion cases.

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas filed the brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the court is scheduled to hear beginning in October, calling on the court to revisit its rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

The senators pushed the Court to return questions of abortion legislation to the states and challenged the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence as unconstitutional.

Read the full story

Half Dozen Attendees at White House Announcement for Supreme Court Nominee Contract COVID

At least a half dozen attendees at last weekend’s White House announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Most of those who became infected announced their diagnoses on Friday, hours after President Trump and first lady Melania Trump announced they had tested positive for COVID-19 and were quarantined. The president was later helicoptered to Walter Reed Medical Center for precautionary treatment.

Read the full story

Mike Lee Slams Senate Judiciary Democrats for ‘Wildly Inappropriate’ Questions on Religion – Mazie Hirono Fires Back an Accusation

by Molly Prince   Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee condemned the Senate Judiciary Democrats on Thursday for questioning judicial nominees’ religious beliefs before the committee. Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono denied ever instituting a religious test and scolded Lee for what she believed was censuring her. “You can’t openly, publicly question a nominee about that nominee’s religious beliefs, about what he or she believes to be sinful conduct without subjecting that nominee to ridicule and simultaneously demeaning some of the fundamental tenets of our constitutional republic,” Lee said.”You can’t ask a nominee questions like those to which Neomi Rao was subjected just the other day and those that I’ve seen asked of some of our other nominees and then later ask the question ‘how did we get here?’” Lee’s condemnation came two days after Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey questioned Rao on her view of homosexuality and LGBTQ Americans during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to vet her for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court. Booker asked Rao if she considers gay relationships to be “immoral.” “I can’t fathom a circumstance in which it’s ever appropriate for us to ask a nominee about his or her religious…

Read the full story

Republican Senators Doxxed By Someone In House Shortly After Questioning Kavanaugh

by Peter Hasson   An unknown person located in the House of Representatives on Thursday posted the personal information of Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as well as Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch of Utah. All three senators sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and their personal information was posted shortly after each questioned Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Thursday’s hearing. “They appear to be targeting Republican members of the committee after they question Judge Kavanaugh,” a Hatch spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The staffer noted the change revealed Hatch’s home address and that Thursday was the senator’s wife’s birthday. The changes were immediately highlighted by a watchdog account that monitors Wikipedia changes made using IP addresses located in the House. A Lee staffer confirmed the senator’s home address in Utah and personal cell phone number were posted to the public page. A spokeswoman for Graham did not immediately return TheDCNF’s request for comment. The information posted on Wikipedia and Twitter matched with a listed personal address for Graham. Wikipedia appears to have removed the changes. Graham delivered a fiery criticism of Senate Democrats shortly before his personal information was posted, a technique known as “doxxing.” “What you want to…

Read the full story