GOP Senators Demand Biden Account for Taxpayer Money Used in Federalized GOTV Effort

As the Biden administration goes about the legally suspect quest of federalizing get-out-the-vote efforts, more than a dozen U.S. senators are asking for an accounting of the “Promoting Access to Voting” campaign. 

U.S. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Bill Haggerty (R-TN) are among the 14 Republican senators who sent a letter to Biden requesting full transparency on Executive Order 14019, which directs federal agencies to submit strategic plans to the White House describing how they will use taxpayer-funded resources to “provide access to voter registration services and vote-by-mail ballot applications.” 

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Senators Draft Bipartisan Framework to Legalize DACA Recipients and Extend Title 42

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have drafted a framework that seeks to grant DACA recipients citizenship and bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The two senators are seeking to take advantage of the lame-duck session—the period between the midterm elections and the new Congress—to pass legislation, including several immigration reforms. 

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Commentary: America Needs a Red Flag Law For Senile Senators

America’s geriatric senators increasingly represent a threat to themselves and to others. Take Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for example. She has filed paperwork to run again in 2024, despite the fact she turns 90 next year and associates say she can’t hold a coherent conversation or remember the names of close colleagues.

This is a woman who has the power to vote to send Americans to war. Just this past spring, she helped pass legislation that sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, a country currently at war with a nuclear power. America’s senators have enormous power to harm the country. They have access not just to firearms but to the world’s most powerful military force and even nuclear weapons.

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Amid Pro-Police Messaging Pivot, Biden Planning Woke Criminal Justice Push: GOP Senators

Even as President Biden strives to project a more police-friendly posture in public amid a historic surge in urban violence, his administration is quietly planning sweeping, unilateral executive action, GOP senators suspect, that is “tantamount to defunding the police” and “would only further demoralize law enforcement.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged this week that there’s been “a surge [in] crime over the last two years,” adding that the “underfunding” of police departments is partially to blame.

“The Department of Justice has announced $139 million in grants to cities for community policing, which will put 1,000 more officers on the streets,” Psaki said. “[Biden has] also proposed doubling those grants, and he’s called for an additional $750 million for federal law enforcement.”

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House Approves Debt Ceiling Increase, Temporarily Delaying Nationwide Default

The House on Tuesday voted to lift the debt ceiling by $480 billion, temporarily averting widespread economic calamity after weeks of partisan gridlock and sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The House briefly interrupted its weeklong recess to pass a rule governing debate for three separate bills to which the ceiling raise was attached. It passed on a party-line vote given Republicans continuing opposition to lifting the ceiling.

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GOP Senators Put the National Institutes of Health on Notice for ‘Complete Disregard for Congressional Oversight’ Surrounding Risky Virus Research in China

Ron Johnson

The National Institutes of Health’s refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight on risky gain of function virus research in China is unacceptable, a group of seven Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter Thursday obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The lawmakers, led by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, railed against the agency’s director, Francis Collins, for blowing off their previous May 20 letter demanding answers to 17 questions related to gain of function research, noting that the NIH’s response to that request was nearly identical to the response provided to Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who had asked a completely different set of questions about its funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Your refusal to provide detailed responses that fully address each oversight request is unacceptable,” the GOP lawmakers wrote to Collins on Thursday. “NIH’s lack of response to the May 20 letter shows a complete disregard for congressional oversight and transparency.”

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Senators Propose $1 Billion to Aid DHS in Addressing Future Migrant Surges

Members of Galveston County S.W.A.T. work with with Customs and Border Protection Agents during Maritime Tactical Operations Group vessel boarding training in the Houston Ship Channel, Aug. 23, 2016.

Senators introduced legislation that would require federal agencies tasked with managing migration at the border to make strategic plans and allow access to $1 billion in contingency funding, lawmakers announced Friday.

Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly introduced the Border Response Resilience Act that would establish a $1 billion “Irregular Migration Border Response Fund” for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide food, clothing, blankets, and transportation for unaccompanied migrant minors and family members without having to transfer funding allocated to border security, according to the lawmakers. The act would require federal officials to make plans and “conduct exercises to improve the federal response to increased migration at the border.”

“DHS has been unprepared for unlawful migrant surges at our southern border in 2014, 2019, and again during the current crisis. This is unacceptable. DHS and other federal agencies must be able to respond immediately to the need for shelter for migrants as well as additional personnel to handle surging numbers of unlawful migrants at our border,” Portman said in a statement.

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Senators Introduce Bill to Amend Rule Over Third-Party Internet Content

In the wake of allegations of big tech companies suppressing political speech and news stories on their platforms, Republican senators and congressmen introduced legislation to amend Section 230, part of a federal code that regulates third-party content on the internet.

Federal Communication Communications (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai also weighed in on Thursday after senators announced they were subpoenaing Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey.

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Commentary: If Republican Senators Were Like Crazy Mazie

As I emerged from the Jewish Holy Season, marking the beginning of Year 5781 since Creation, I was jolted from the spirituality and meaningfulness of Sukkot, Sh’mini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah into the reality of the New Filth that permeates American politics. The media like to blame the president for the degradation, but he is not the cause. He is the response and the reaction.

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Capitol Police Arrest Ex-Democratic Staffer Suspected of Doxxing GOP Senators

by Andrew Kerr   U.S. Capitol Police arrested Wednesday a former Democratic staffer suspected of posting the personal information of at least one United States senator to the internet. The home addresses and other personal information of Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch of Utah were posted to Wikipedia on Sept. 27 from an individual located in the House of Representatives. Jackson A. Cosko, 27, was charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, threats in interstate communications, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary and unlawful entry, according to a Capitol Police statement. Additional charges may be forthcoming as the investigation continues. Cosko has most recently worked as an intern for Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. He has also worked under Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and former California Sen. Barbara Boxer, according to Fox News. Jackson Lee’s Chief of Staff Glenn Rushing told Politico that Cosko has been fired. “We’re just cooperating with law enforcement right now,” Rushing said. Cosko is a “Democratic Political Professional & Cybersecurity Graduate Student,” according to his LinkedIn page, which states that his job duties in the U.S. Senate included assisting senior staff “with…

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GOP Senators Demand EPA Fix Permitting ‘Abuses’ Used by Democratic States to Block Energy Projects

Tennessee Star

by Michael Bastasch   Republicans senators asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review its implementation of a key provision of the Clean Water Act being used by states to block energy projects. “We ask that you work with other federal agencies to determine whether new clarifying guidance or regulations are needed in light of recent abuses of the Section 401 process by certain states,” five GOP senators wrote. “A select number of states have hijacked Section 401 to delay or block the development of natural gas pipelines and a coal export terminal,” Republicans wrote in a letter sent Thursday to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “While the focus of these abuses today is fossil energy, the approach could be used to target any type of project that is disfavored politically,” lawmakers told Wheeler. Lawmakers are concerned that Democratic-controlled states will continue to use Section 401 to block energy infrastructure projects instead of trying to protect water quality. For example, Washington state and New York have been particularly zealous in their blocking of energy projects. Washington officials blocked the Millenium coal terminal, and New York regulators have blocked pipeline projects to bring natural gas to energy-starved New England. Environmentalists support states’ use of the…

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