Commentary: House Should Plan to Drain the Swamp in January 2025

Drain the Swamp

The sad reality is that the Republicans in the House after a narrow victory in the 2022 Congressional midterms do not have enough of a majority to be able to accomplish many big things. 

This is not the fault of anyone in leadership, but instead is just the reality of what is at this time a one-vote majority with wildly divergent priorities amongst the GOP members in the House.

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Conservative House Freedom Caucus Members Secured over $900 Million in Earmarks: Watchdog

weber Johnson

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus sponsored more than $900 million worth of earmarks over the last two years, according to a study conducted by OpenTheBooks.com and published on Thursday.

While the Freedom Caucus does not publicly list all of its members, OpenTheBooks said they based their study off of a list of 49 lawmakers that Pew compiled, which includes lawmakers who publicly identified as members of the caucus or are “closely aligned” with it.

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‘We Have Been Sold Out’: Tennessee U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles Slams Passage of Minibus Spending Bill

Andy Ogles Speaking

U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) slammed the passage of a “minibus” $1.2 trillion spending bill on Friday that would fund six of the 12 appropriations divisions for Fiscal Year 2024.

Moments before the House passed the bill by a 286-134 vote, Ogles, along with other members of the Freedom Caucus, held a press conference where he said the American people had been “sold out.”

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U.S. Senate Passes $95 Billion Foreign Aid Bill to Ukraine, Israel

Chuck Schumer

The U.S. Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after days of delay from Republicans who did not want to pass the funding without provisions to secure the southern border.

The legislation passed early Tuesday morning after a filibuster largely led by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ended. Now the legislation goes to the House, where it remains unclear if they can get the votes.

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Nearly 75 House Republicans Demand Mike Johnson Oppose Reauthorization of Gun Control Law

House Speaker Mike Johnson

A group of nearly 75 Republican members of the House of Representatives are demanding that Speaker Mike Johnson oppose the reauthorization of a decades-old gun control law, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Undetectable Firearms Act (UFA) was enacted by the 100th Congress in 1988 and bans the manufacture, sale or import of any firearm that isn’t detectable by a door-frame metal detector or other security technology, which are commonly termed “ghost guns.” The law’s provisions need to be reauthorized before their statutory expiry date of March 8, with House Republicans demanding that Johnson not bring the Senate’s reauthorization bill, which was passed in July of 2023, to the floor.

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House Dems Float Trading Border Deal in Exchange for Helping Save Mike Johnson’s Job

Johnson Thompson

Several House Democrats are weighing trading a border deal in exchange for helping Republican Speaker Mike Johnson keep his gavel as tensions rise over how to address the record surge in illegal immigration amid a contentious election year, Politico reported Friday.

The Senate is expected to unveil a bipartisan border deal soon tied with funding for Ukraine, while Johnson is receiving pressure from former President Donald Trump not to give Democrats a win on the topic ahead of November. As some House conservatives are threatening to oust the new speaker over the prolonged spending fight, several House Democrats have floated opposing such a motion to vacate in exchange for Johnson bringing the eventual Senate deal to the floor, according to Politico.

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Mike Johnson Says He Won’t Back Out of Spending Deal Despite Freedom Caucus Opposition

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he will not withdraw from a controversial spending deal to avoid a government shutdown that is opposed by several members of his conference.

Johnson, on Sunday, announced a deal with other congressional party leaders on a spending package of $1.59 trillion for Fiscal Year 2024, which has been attacked by members of the House Freedom Caucus as insufficiently conservative. After negotiations with dissident members, Johnson announced Friday that he would stand by the deal, even as members have threatened to remove him from office over the matter.

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Johnson and Schumer Spending Deal Ignores Biden’s $106 Billion Request for Israel, Ukraine Aid, and More

Schumer Johnson

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s spending deal doesn’t include President Biden’s $106 billion request for a supplemental foreign aid package, Just the News has learned. Congress faces two appropriations deadlines of Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 before the federal government runs out of money.

The deal sets a top line for domestic and military spending through September 2024 at $1.59 trillion. The total reflects the parameters of the previously passed Financial Responsibility Act of 2023, which passed after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a spending agreement with President Biden that raised the nation’s debt ceiling. 

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Border Residents to Congress: ‘Stop Holding Press Conferences, Shut Down the Border’

Illegal Immigrants

As another Republican congressional delegation arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas, Wednesday to hold another news conference and meet local residents, many Texans living at the border say they are fed up and want Congress to shut down the border.

If Congress continues to use taxpayer dollars to fund policies that facilitate the border crisis, they argue, Congress is complicit in creating it and a national security threat.

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10 Revelations That Changed Americans’ Understanding of Events on January 6

Videotape of a Capitol door being mistakenly unlocked. Photos of gallows being set up outside without any police interference. Officers exhorting protesters to storm the Capitol. Intelligence warnings of potential violence that went unheeded. Major changes to testimony.

A year after the Democrat-led House Select Committee on Jan. 6 ended it works, major new revelations have emerged from House Republicans led by Rep, Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga, about how the Capitol riot unfolded that fateful day and the security failures that occurred in the days and hours ahead of the violence.

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Commentary: Republicans in Congress Need to Do More to Defund ESG

“Anti-woke economic terrorists have now wiped out $5 trillion in stock value.”

That was a headline from Afru.com bemoaning the sideways performance of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds the past year or so, accusing anyone opposed to ESG with inflicting “economic terrorism” and “erod[ing] financial portfolios of color” as “global investments in ethical companies have nosedived by nearly $5 trillion over the past two years.”

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George Santos Announces Effort to Expel Jamaal Bowman from Congress

George Santos and Jamaal Bowman

Republican Rep. George Santos of New York announced on Thursday that he will file a resolution to expel Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, even as Santos faces the threat of expulsion from the House of Representatives.

Santos, who has been indicted on federal charges regarding alleged campaign finance felonies and faced numerous attempts of expulsion by Democrats and Republicans, is facing expulsion from the chamber following a report by the House Ethics Committee that found “substantial evidence” he committed the crimes alleged against him. On Thursday, Santos told reporters that he would introduce a resolution to expel Bowman, who recently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for pulling the fire alarm at the Cannon House Office Building on Sept. 30, The Hill reported.

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Speaker Mike Johnson to Post More than 40,000 Hours of January 6 Footage Online

January Six Riots

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday announced that he planned to post nearly all of the Capitol Hill security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot online for the public to view.

“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021,” he said in a statement obtained by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. “Truth and transparency are critical.”

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Commentary: The Speaker We Need

It might have been embarrassing, and it might have given the enemies in the political class ample opportunities to snicker and hurl insults. But at the end of the day, the result reached when Mike Johnson won a 220–209 vote over wannabe Def Poetry Jam participant Hakeem Jeffries was the best one America could have asked for.

We have, after three weeks of infighting and paralysis, a Speaker of the House — and what we have, by all indications, is something of which we can be very proud.

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Catholic Leaders Demand Answers from FBI on Bombshell Discovery Agency Probe into Traditional Catholics ‘Bigger than Believed’

National Catholic leaders said the FBI’s probe of Catholics, as revealed by documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, went far beyond a so-called rogue agent in a single field office in Richmond, as was explained in testimony by agency Director Christopher Wray.

The leaders of Catholic civil rights groups reacted to a letter to Wray sent Wednesday by Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government Chairman Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who informed the FBI director evidence obtained by the Judiciary Committee shows the agency’s “assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists” was developed through information obtained “from around the country,” rather than from an isolated source.

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House Democrats Oppose Resolution Condemning Violence Against Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers

Nearly all House Democrats opposed a resolution Wednesday condemning the political violence against pro-life pregnancy centers and their supportive allies that occurred in the aftermath of the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The House voted, 222-209, to approve the resolution, introduced by Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) that states since the leak of the draft opinion, “individuals professing anti-life views have targeted, destroyed, or vandalized numerous pro-life facilities, groups, and even churches to further their radical cause.”

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106 GOP Members, Including Five from Tennessee, Soon to be Six, File Amicus Brief in Texas SCOTUS Election Lawsuit

A total of 106 House Republicans on Thursday filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs in Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al, including Tennessee’s U.S. Representatives Mark Green, Tim Burchett, Chuck Fleischmann, David Kustoff, John Rose, with U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) taking the lead.

U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) tweeted, “100+ House Republicans and I have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the Texas case. The election for the presidency of the United States is too important to not get right.”

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New YouTube Video Warns Against ‘Bad Parking Meter Scheme’ in Nashville

  Nashville residents who oppose a proposed plan to privatize parking have upped their game and have released a new YouTube video to encourage people to protest. Nashville resident David F. Roberts said in an emailed statement that the video is part of a digital ad campaign to get his neighbors active on this issue. In the video, Nashville resident Mike Johnson warns that everyone needs to learn about what Democratic Mayor David Briley and members of the Nashville Metro Council “are trying to rush forward that will cost us a lot of money.”   “In their latest crazy scheme, they want to take away free parking. They want to raise the price to park citywide by 20 percent. They want to double the cost of parking fines, and they want to add up to 5,000 new parking meters to charge more people more money for parking in our own neighborhoods. We were having dinner the other night with some friends, and I saw this parking meter scam come up on the news. When the reporter explained that the city is about to sell a 30-year contract selling our parking assets to an out-of-state company it just got me fuming, and…

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$22 Trillion in National Debt Not ‘Sustainable Trajectory,’ House GOP Leader Says

by Rachel del Guidice   Restoring fiscal sanity to Congress is a matter of national security, the chairman of the House’s largest Republican caucus says. “It’s not a sustainable trajectory,” Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said of a national debt that has topped $22 trillion. “It’s not when we have military officials, the Pentagon officials, the top brass come in and testify to Congress under oath,” Johnson said. “They always say when they’re asked the question, ‘What is the No. 1 threat to national security?,’ they say debt is not a sustainable trajectory for the country. We have to address it.” Johnson, joined by Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the RSC’s budget and spending task force chairman, spoke in a conversation Tuesday at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill moderated by Genevieve Wood, a senior adviser and spokeswoman at The Heritage Foundation. Banks said he believes the national debt can be decreased by reforming programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. “We have to find ways to reform those programs to, one, make them sustainable and allow them to survive into the future, but also make reasonable and responsible modifications,” Banks said. The Republican Study…

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Ranking GOP House Members Reveal Plan to Bypass Pelosi on Anti-Infanticide Bill

by Molly Prince   Republican leaders in the House of Representatives gathered outside the Capitol Building on Wednesday to announce the party’s strategy to bring anti-infanticide legislation to the floor after House Democrats rejected a vote 17 times. “There are some issues you really can’t believe that you have to have a debate about and this is certainly one of those,” GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney told the crowd. “The idea that we would not protect babies after they are born — the idea that we have one party now in this Congress that refuses to put a bill on the floor to stop infanticide — it’s really unbelievable.” Cheney and six of her Republican colleagues joined pro-life activists in condemning the Democrats’ 17 attempts over the past 40 days to avoid voting on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require medical care for babies who survive abortions. A similar bill failed in the Senate in February by a vote of 53 to 44. As a way to bypass Democrats’ refusal to bring the legislation from committee to the House floor, Minority Whip Steve Scalise announced a discharge petition would be available in the coming weeks, which…

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