President Donald Trump took to social media to urge congressional Republicans to “work as fast as they can” to send the massive budget reconciliation bill to his desk by July 4.
This four-week deadline is a tall order, especially because the Republicans are facing significant internal divisions over the contents of the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill.’
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Pollster John McLaughlin said Republicans are making a strategic mistake by not being more aggressive in highlighting the risks of allowing the 2017 Trump tax cuts to expire this year, explaining how recent polls he has conducted of voters across the country strongly suggest that the GOP possesses a winning message with taxes and other policy issues.
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President Trump stormed Capitol Hill today, delivering an ultimatum to the GOP’s fractious factions: vote for his “big beautiful bill” or face the consequences.
Gone was the dealmaker’s smile. In its place—raw political muscle. Trump confronted the conservative hardliners in the Freedom Caucus with unmistakable clarity: he’ll slash waste from Medicaid but won’t tolerate benefit cuts. His message boiled down to six words: “We are NOT ‘f-ing’ cutting Medicaid.”
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Congressional GOP leaders are demanding a non-profit organization explain how it has used taxpayer money after an undercover video purportedly showed its employees instructing audience members how to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest.
The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), a behemoth non-profit group based in New York City, must hand over documentation and communication relating to its immigration seminars and explain how roughly a million dollars in taxpayer funds were used in the past several years, according to a House Homeland Security Committee letter first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The demands come as the Trump administration has made clear that overtly obstructing ICE operations will not be tolerated.
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Paul Teller, executive vice president of Advancing American Freedom, sat down with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on Tuesday for an exclusive interview to discuss his journey in the conservative political movement through the years and how is working to advance conservative principles through Advancing American Freedom.
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Donald Trump has remade the GOP in his image. Once a gadfly whose ideas were widely derided as late as 2016, Trump now dominates his party. This is odd because Trump isn’t particularly ideological. His governing style is transactional and heavily focused on settling scores with his real and imagined opponents.
Yet he has remade the GOP on several key issues. This is due in part to Trump’s appeal to his unswerving base. It is also due to the ideological roots of conservatism and the GOP in America. The party is returning to its pre–World War II views on issues such as protective tariffs, international isolationism, and immigration, with one important addition. Trump hasn’t shown the GOP a new direction so much as he has awakened slumbering ideas dormant since America confronted the realities of World War II and the Cold War.
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Perhaps nothing signifies the transformation of the Republican Party into the party of the working American more than an estimated 45 percent of union households that voted for Trump in 2024. If public sector union members were excluded from the exit polling, that estimate would likely rise to a majority.
This reality puts America’s union membership at odds with union leadership, which generally remains loyal to the Democratic Party. The choice this presents union leadership in America is not subtle. They can continue to align themselves with a corporate uniparty establishment that is increasingly indifferent to the challenges facing American citizens, or they can honestly confront the consequences of establishment policies over the past 20-30 years. The implications are profound.
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Not only have America’s priorities shifted as a nation – as evidenced by President-elect Donald Trump winning the popular vote on a largely conservative populist set of priorities – but divisions are emerging between conservatives who consider themselves part of “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) and those who do not.
The 2024 election was a powerful nation-wide referendum on the decades-long failed globalist experiment, with voters strongly aligning with President Trump’s populist, America First platform.
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Mike Johnson appears to have come up short in his bid to remain Speaker of the House, with several Republicans voting for other candidates and no one securing a majority.
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In today’s digital era, where social media platforms serve as the battlegrounds for ideas, information and cultural exchange, the conversation around banning TikTok must be approached with caution and a deep understanding of its implications.
With over 170 million American users, TikTok has transcended mere entertainment to become a vital tool for communication, creativity and, notably in the 2024 presidential election, political engagement. President-elect Donald Trump’s strategic embrace of this platform, known for its cultural influence among the younger demographic, was instrumental in clinching his win.
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Republicans are projected to maintain their majority in the House of Representatives, securing unified control of the federal government for the first two years of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.
House Republicans, under Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s leadership, will win at least 218 seats necessary for control of the chamber, Decision Desk HQ first projected Monday evening. CBS News projected GOP control of the House Wednesday, with Republicans netting at least 218 seats and Democrats holding 211. Six races have yet to be called, according to CBS News.
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Who actually are the “garbage” people?
Are they one and the same with Joe Biden’s “semi-fascists,” “chumps,” and “dregs of society?”
Or Barack Obama’s “clingers?”
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Hennepin County, Minnesota, fired an election worker who left several boxes of mail-in ballots unattended after a local GOP group exposed the alleged negligence, according to a statement from county officials released Friday.
Minnesota Senate District 50 Republicans — the Republican Party’s official political unit for portions of Minnesota cities Edina and Bloomington — snapped a photo outside of Edina City Hall Friday showing a courier vehicle’s “rear door ajar with ballot transfer cases inside.” A review of parking lot surveillance footage found the ballots were not tampered with, and a comparison of the votes with the statewide voter registration system for absentee ballots found a perfect match.
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Security measures implemented by the largest payment platform used by Democratic candidates to process political donations failed to address GOP concerns that spurred the payment processor to respond in the first place.
In 2023, Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil both raised concerns that ActBlue not requiring users to input a credit verification value (CVV), the three numbers on the back of credit cards, when making donations increased the risk of fraudulent contributions being made. ActBlue has since required that donors using debit or credit cards on their platform input CVVs. The requirement, however, can be easily circumvented by donating through PayPal, Google Pay or Venmo, all of which are still options on ActBlue.
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The American people believe the American political system is corrupt.
This is alarming – but it also represents an enormous opportunity.
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The latest polling suggests that the Republican Party is likely to retake control of the United States Senate in November, presenting further complications for the ruling Democratic Party regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.
As reported by Newsmax, the poll by the New York Times and Siena College focuses on three Senate races this year: Montana, Florida, and Texas. Despite Democratic efforts to take the former swing state of Florida or break through the traditionally red stronghold of Texas, both incumbents there are polling ahead of their challengers.
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Traditionally a Democratic-leaning group, Catholics have increasingly shifted toward the GOP in recent years and that constituency appears likely to prove critical in the key battleground of Pennsylvania, where they constitute nearly a quarter of the population in the narrowly divided state.
Catholics represent roughly 24% of Pennsylvanians, according to the Pew Research Center. With former President Donald Trump currently trailing Vice President Kamala Harris in the Keystone State by just 1.0% on average, bolstering support among Catholics could conceivably hand the state and the White House to Trump. The Senate race, meanwhile, loosely favors incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, D, who leads Republican David McCormick by 4.5% on average.
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The Republican National Committee has sued the city of Racine for failing to hire more Republican citizens as election inspectors during the partisan primaries and instead mostly selected volunteers unaffiliated with either of the two major political parties.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley called the lawsuit a response to “Democrat interference” in a Tuesday press release. The release incorrectly claims the city of Racine “hir[ed] disproportionately more Democrats in the primary election” than Republicans.
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Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will soon meet in a high stakes nationally televised debate, perhaps the only one of this campaign.
In previous elections – 1960, 1976, 1980, 2000, and 2020 come immediately to mind – the election contests were heavily influenced by such encounters. This year, for sure, it is “high risk, high reward.” With an election so close, we believe this debate will be important – maybe even decisive – in determining the winner.
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Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is working to get his name removed from presidential ballots across various states, which has resulted in lawsuits in swing states where his requests were initially denied. While those lawsuits started as losses for him, upon appeal, Kennedy has seen success in removing his name from some of the ballots.
Following his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Kennedy has tried to get his name removed from presidential ballots in swing states. However, in some of those states, Democrats have attempted to prevent him from doing so, even after they had initially tried to keep him from being placed on the ballot.
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Arizona Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen on Monday set the trial date in the “fake electors” case, which saw charges brought against multiple allies of former President Donald Trump, for January 5, 2026.
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The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has led his supporters and some, though not all, of his opponents to acquire a greater perspective on the most important things in life. It has also led his supporters to a broader recognition what is not necessarily important in the present campaign. This is a healthy development for the Republican Party and the Make America Great Again movement. Mr. Trump continues to lead and is, again, its presidential standard bearer. Yet, if not properly channeled, the ensuing enthusiasm can engender overconfidence among the campaign and its supporters.
The temptation to feel overconfident is all too human. For quite some time, Mr. Trump had been being persecuted as someone beneath the law by the left’s noxious lawfare cabal and was deemed a threat to democracy to be eliminated by Democrats and their mockingbird media. Following the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, his supporters and all decent people offered an outpouring of gratitude that his life had been spared. Having witnessed the twist of fate that allowed a turn of Mr. Trump’s head to save him and allow his life and candidacy to continue, two potentially contentious GOP political events possessed far less potential to ignite divisive intraparty arguments.
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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said the 2024 Republican Party Platform is an “aspirational,” “modern” agenda that Republicans can unite behind ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican Party Platform Committee overwhelmingly approved former President Donald Trump’s 2024 Republican Party Platform on Monday.
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The 2020 presidential election witnessed a nationwide surge in the prevalence of early voting and vote-by-mail practices, which featured heavily in former President Donald Trump’s claims that mass election fraud influenced the outcome. According to the Pew Research Center, 46% of voters in the 2020 race voted by absentee or mail-in ballot, and 27% reported having voted early.
Republicans were subsequently reluctant to embrace such practices, though a lackluster midterm performance and the about-face of the presumptive GOP nominee on the matter appears to have the Republicans rethinking their approach.
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Chris Spencer, a Republican candidate challenging incumbent Tennessee State Senator Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) in the August 1 TN-18 GOP primary, refused to answer whether he’d vote for or against Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill during the next legislative session of the General Assembly if elected.
The governor’s school choice bill, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, failed to pass the General Assembly during the most recently convened session of the General Assembly.
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Changes in congressional district boundary lines across several states do not appear to have damaged Republicans’ chances of maintaining a majority in the House of Representatives after 2024’s elections, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and New York have experienced redistricting processes ahead of the 2024 election. While experts had previously forecast adverse changes from redistricting in these states that could have cost GOP incumbents their seats, the processes have resulted, on balance, in races where likely losses of some GOP seats could be offset by the gains in other states, experts told the DCNF.
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Google’s artificial intelligence isn’t particularly bright when it comes to evaluating publishers’ compliance with its advertising policies, if the experience of a heterodox economics blog with outsized influence is any indication.
With a megaphone from Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, both darlings of progressives in the “Occupy Wall Street” era, Naked Capitalism accused Google of making “flagrant errors” in its threats to demonetize the 18-year-old site for verboten content.
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As Alabama has banned ballot harvesting and Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are fighting ballot drop boxes, GOP campaign efforts are using those same tools where legal.
Democrats have long focused on mail-in and early voting while Republicans have warned of potential insecurities of those methods. Now the GOP is starting to embrace it this election cycle. However, the acceptance of mail-in voting as a tool isn’t preventing Republicans from looking to secure or ban certain aspects of it, such as ballot harvesting and ballot drop boxes.
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As I’ve watched some of President Donald Trump’s former appointees and allies say they can’t support him in 2024, I was reminded of a similar scenario in American history.
In 1936, Former New York Gov. Al Smith decided that he could not support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-election.
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Outgoing Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck on Thursday signed a Democratic discharge petition that seeks to force consideration of a Senate-passed foreign aid package that includes funds for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.
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For the first time in my 94 years on earth, I fear for the future of our democracy. I see the federal government using its enormous powers with contempt for the governed instead of with the consent of the governed as our founders envisioned.
Fundamental change in America is occurring by executive order or the force of the government’s police powers instead of through the legislative process required by the Constitution. From this, I fear that free market capitalism may be replaced by big government socialism. I also fear the erosion of our rights and freedoms, including parental rights, freedom of speech and religion, and due process.
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The Biden administration appears poised to put the government’s thumb on the scale in the 2024 election, House Republicans say.
The administration’s lack of transparency about implementing President Joe Biden’s executive order for federal agencies to help get out the vote—combined with a warning from Attorney General Merrick Garland—has sparked some concern among lawmakers.
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In December 2021, the Phoenix City Council approved a pilot guaranteed income program for 1,000 low-income families that would provide $1,000 a month from taxpayers.
Like many guaranteed income programs, it was funded by federal emergency money from the American Rescue Plan Act.
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Former President Trump continued his romp through the Republican primary, easily winning all but one Super Tuesday contest and demonstrating a dominance so absolute that his stacked victories now seem nearly routine.
“We want to have unity,” Trump told a crowd gathered at Mar-a-Lago, “and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly.” On the eve of perhaps the greatest political comeback in modern American history, his remarks were relatively subdued by his standards. He never mentioned his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, almost as if the competition did not exist and a third nomination was guaranteed all along.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday announced plans to step down as GOP conference leader in November, marking an end to his more than 20-year stint in Senate leadership that saw the U.S. accumulate a mountain of debt.
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said on the Senate floor. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. However, I’ll complete my job. My colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January.”
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Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell plans to resign from his position as Senate GOP leader this November.
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Ronna McDaniel said she will resign from her position as Republican National Committee chair days after Super Tuesday.
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Former President Donald Trump humiliated Nikki Haley in her home state Saturday night, scoring a convincing win in the South Carolina GOP primary that opens the door for him to focus full time on a fall rematch with Joe Biden.
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National political reporter Neil W. McCabe said the tone of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is “completely Trump,” noting how the “Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment” is not present this time around.
“It’s completely Trump,” McCabe explained on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “In the past you would kind of have sort of the Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment, but they’re not here.”
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A few weeks ago, a “Morning Joe” panel concluded that if Donald Trump were to become the Republican nominee (spoiler alert: he will), Republicans will lose in the fall. This is by no means a unique sentiment – former House Speaker Paul Ryan expressing this idea here, journalist Bernard Goldberg wondering if Trump is trying to lose here, and so forth.
As I read these analyses, I wonder if I’ve somehow been transported back to 2016, when such takes were de rigueur. Here in 2024, we know that Donald Trump won in 2016 and came close to winning in 2020. He carried Republican senators across the finish line in both years, and the GOP gained House seats in 2020, much to the surprise of most election analysts. And, at a comparable time in the campaign cycle when he trailed Hillary Clinton by 4.5 points in the RCP Average and Joe Biden by 5.6 points, Trump actually leads Biden by 1.9 points in national polling.
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A Democrat in the battleground state of Pennsylvania voiced concerns over her party increasingly losing Latino voters to the GOP ahead of the November election, Politico reported Friday.
Democrat Nicarol Soto of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who ran an unsuccessful city council campaign in 2023, told the outlet that she’s seen signs of the voting bloc moving toward the Republican Party within her own family. Soto, who immigrated to Pennsylvania from the Dominican Republic, believes the shift is largely due to the community’s views on the economy and abortion, according to Politico.
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Rutherford County Property Assessor Rob Mitchell hired the son of the Rutherford County GOP chairman for a position he was unqualified for ahead of Mitchell’s bid for reelection in 2024.
Mitchell hired Michael Maxwell, son of Rutherford County GOP Chairman Austin Maxwell, in January 2024 despite not meeting the minimum requirements of the position he applied for, according to documents obtained by The Tennessee Star with an open records request.
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Mitch McConnell has to be finished as the caucus leader for the Republicans in the Senate. Now. He has to resign, and if he won’t, then that caucus needs to get together and force him out.
Now. Not next week, not next month, not after this election cycle. Now.
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The Democratic Party has hemorrhaged black and Hispanic support over the course of President Joe Biden’s tenure, according to Gallup polling data published on Wednesday.
The substantial advantage that the Democratic Party previously held over Republicans in terms of black Americans in general and Hispanic Americans aged 18 to 29 has diminished by almost 20% in the last three years, according to Gallup. The Democratic Party now has a significantly smaller lead over the Republican Party with these demographics.
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Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is reportedly planning to step down from her position after long facing calls to do so amid poor fundraising hauls for the GOP.
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Thanks to the Dobbs decision and pro-life leaders, 24 states have laws protecting unborn children at 12 weeks or sooner. Through ballot measures, abortion activists are trying to reverse that progress so anyone can get an abortion anytime, anywhere. These activists are targeting ten pro-life states which have laws that protect 30,000 babies in the womb annually.
The proposed constitutional amendments go far beyond Roe to establish unlimited abortion, eviscerate parental rights, and remove health and safety requirements for women. Though some of the measures include the word “viability,” the broad exceptions in the law ultimately allow elective abortion in all nine months. Ohio Democrats have introduced legislation that does this following the vote on Issue 1 laying bare the policy agenda they are pursuing but denied during the amendment campaign.
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It was a wise decision for Ron DeSantis to end his presidential campaign when he did. There would have been no point in prolonging a bitter and divisive primary battle when Trump has clearly won already. By endorsing Trump, DeSantis opened the door to repairing some of the damage from what turned out to be a disastrous career move. And he did the right thing for the country by signaling to his supporters that it was time to unite and focus on ending the Biden regime.
Unfortunately, just a day later, DeSantis took a gratuitous swipe at Trump. It was chum for many of DeSantis’ hardcore supporters, who remain full of spite after months of back-and-forth with the MAGA “cult.”
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Former President Donald Trump won the New Hampshire GOP primary on Tuesday, the Associated Press projects.
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The Hawkeye state has held a caucus every four years since the 1970s and is one of only nine states that still implement the practice, according to WQUAD8, a local ACB News affiliate. Eligible voters who are registered with the party and over the age of 18 will meet at 7 p.m. Central Time on Jan. 15 in schools, churches and event centers across the state after weeks of aggressive campaigning by Republican candidates.
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The Iowa caucus is not the most reliable predictor of who will be the Republican nominee, but it fares better for Democrats, according to a study by WalletHub.
Republican voters will be the first in the U.S. to choose their pick for president in the caucuses held at 99 precincts on Monday night. Democrats are caucusing by mail and will reveal the results on March 5, Super Tuesday.
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