Day: January 17, 2025

Arizona House Republican Majority Issues Conservative Blueprint for 2025

Rachel Alexander
Arizona State House Speaker Steve Montenegro

The Arizona House Republicans issued a “2025 Majority Plan” this week, laying out their plans for this year’s legislative session. The conservative blueprint contains sections on securing elections, securing the border, protecting individual rights and liberties, economic prosperity, improving education, and streamlining government.

Under the direction of new House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Glendale), the plan to secure elections states, “Arizona voters deserve elections that are free, fair, and transparent. It shouldn’t take weeks to count ballots. We will protect the integrity of Arizona elections from anyone who chooses to tamper with them, and we will ensure that ballots are counted faster and results are known sooner.”

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Biden’s Green Loan Office Offers Up a Staggering $22 Billion in Admin’s Final Hours

Daily Caller News Foundation
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

The Biden administration’s green loan office is shelling out nearly $23 billion to utility companies for green energy development and other projects in its final days.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced its conditional commitment to provide a combined $22.9 billion in financing to numerous utility companies across the country to “modernize” their grid systems by adding new green energy generation, building transmission lines needed to harness renewable generation and more. The LPO is continuing its lame duck lending spree through the very end of the Biden administration, even though Republicans and the DOE’s internal watchdog have called for a freeze on LPO activity due to concerns about the office’s safeguards pertaining to conflicts of interest.

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Virginia Democrats Shelve Bill to Protect Girls’ Sports Despite Support from Youngkin, Earle-Sears, Athlete Riley Gaines

Tom Pappert
Women's Volleyball

A Virginia State Senate subcommittee on Thursday shelved legislation that would have prohibited biological men who identify as transgender women from competing on sports teams with biological women, despite the bill receiving support from Governor Glenn Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, Attorney General Jason Miyares, and former college athlete Riley Gaines.

Senate Bill 749 by State Senator Tammy Brankley Mulchi (R-Clarksville) would have required schools to clearly state whether sports teams are for men, women, or are coed, and also required student athletes to obtain a signed document from a physician stating they seek to compete on a team that corresponds to their biological gender. The bill would have also allowed students who suffered from a school’s failure to adhere to the law to sue for damages.

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Commentary: Time to Ask Tough Questions About These Student Loan Bailouts

American Greatness

Even as the Trump inauguration nears, Biden continues to cause controversy, including with student loan cancellations.

On January 13,  his Education Department announced yet another round of student loan forgiveness—this time, for more than 150,000 borrowers—bringing the Administration’s total number of individuals with student debt canceled to over 5 million.

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Review: Norm Grant’s ‘Tales of Young Patriots’

ConservativeHQ
Tales of Young Patriots

P. Norman Grant has written “Tales of Young Patriots,” a delightful collection of 12 short stories of historical fiction celebrating the story of America, and the virtues that made our people great, through the eyes and ears of young participants in key moments in our country’s history.

From the ocean passages of the 1600s to our modern desert wars, Young Patriots contains lessons in virtue driven by action. The stories are written in a style and with language to appeal to middle or high school students of social studies or history.

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Arizona Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee Passes Bill to Speed up Election Tabulation Modeled After Florida Law

Rachel Alexander
Maricopa County election processing

The Arizona Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee passed election integrity bill SB 1011 with a 4-3 vote along party lines on Wednesday. Sponsored by Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa), the bill is modeled after Florida election law, in order to speed up ballot tabulation. Florida announces election results overnight after an election, whereas Arizona has come under criticism for taking up to two weeks due to lengthy signature verification on mail-in ballot affidavits.

The bill provides that voters who return their early ballots to early voting locations after 7 p.m. the Friday before the election would be required to present identification. Only if they drop the ballots off at the actual county recorder’s office that late would they be allowed to skip showing ID. Currently, voters can drop early ballots off at any location without ID up until 7 p.m. on Election Day. Additionally, in-person voting would be expanded past Friday before the election to Saturday and Sunday before the election.

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Lee Zeldin Tells Senator He ‘Doesn’t Believe’ in ‘Armed Bureaucracy’ When Asked About ‘Outrageous’ EPA Raid

Daily Caller News Foundation
Lee Zeldin

Former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York said Thursday he believed the Environmental Protection Agency should not be an “armed bureaucracy.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) carried out a raid with dozens of armed agents on a mine near Chicken, Alaska, in August 2013, according to Fox News. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska asked Zeldin, who President-elect Donald Trump nominated to serve as EPA administrator, about the use of armed agents to conduct raids during a Thursday hearing, saying that the Biden administration was conducting armed raids similar to the 2013 raid on “small mechanic shops” in his state.

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