Tag: Republicans

Commentary: Two Tiers of Justice Aren’t Democrats v. Republicans, But Bureaucratic Insiders v. the Rest of Us

RealClearWire

The elite set of individuals that sit atop our federal agencies have completely weaponized our entire government apparatus. It is no longer a one-off “mistake,” but rather the intentional creation of a two-tier system of justice that has gone unchecked. The resulting impact is a death knell for American faith in all three branches of government.

Allow me to preface with one important factor: This is not an indictment of the men and women who are our “boots on the ground.” They remember every day why they signed up to serve. They investigate real crimes, protect the public from acts of terror, and root out rampant corruption. These men and women across the country serving in all agencies remain heroes and are equally as frustrated with the leadership at the top of our federal government.

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GOP Presidential Candidates, Sans Trump, Descend on Iowa for Senator Joni Ernst’s Annual Roast and Ride

M.D. Kittle

In many ways, the start of the 2024 presidential election year began Saturday at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines — with Iowa U.S. Senator Joni Ernst’s annual Roast and Ride. 

Eight Republican presidential hopefuls assembled all under one roof, making their case to some 750 Iowans on why they’re best suited to lead the most powerful nation in the world. 

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GOP Takes on Biden Executive Election Takeover

Admin

Republicans in Congress are moving to rein in President Joe Biden’s executive order putting federal agencies in the business of getting out the vote. Their proposed legislation would defund any federally backed voter mobilization drives and prohibit the government from entering election-related agreements with private, nonprofit organizations to mobilize voters. 

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who co-chairs the House Election Integrity Caucus, plans to introduce a bill Tuesday called the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act. 

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Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman: House Debt-Ceiling Bill a ‘Big Step in the Right Direction’

M.D. Kittle

While President Joe Biden has preemptively declared the House debt-ceiling bill dead on arrival, U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) remains hopeful the budget-slashing proposal will bring big spender Biden to the negotiating table. 

“Some people question the will of Republicans to fight for a conservative bill. In my first eight-plus years in congress this was the most conservative bill that we have passed yet,” Grothman told The Wisconsin Daily Star on Thursday’s edition of the Vicki McKenna Show. 

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Republican Candidates Vie to Challenge Kentucky Gov. Beshear

Admin

Republicans have the opportunity to take back the Kentucky governor’s mansion from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear – who narrowly won in 2019 – in November, and numerous GOP contenders are itching for the nomination.

Beshear is running for his second term in 2023 in a state with a Republican supermajority in the legislature. Though 12 Republicans are running in the May 16 GOP primary, there are three clear frontrunners whose campaigns will largely hinge on issues such as education and crime while also targeting Beshear’s record on COVID-19, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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After Abe Hamadeh Files New Pleading in Request for Retrial Alleging Hobbs Withheld Evidence, Judge Grants Oral Arguments

Rachel Alexander

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen scheduled oral arguments for May 16 on whether Abe Hamadeh should get a new trial.

Jantzen dismissed his complaint challenging his loss to Kris Mayes for Arizona Attorney General in December. Jantzen’s ruling came shortly after Hamadeh filed an additional pleading to bolster his request, which accused then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of withholding evidence from him and cited new arguments due to the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Kari Lake’s election contest.

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Leftist Lawmakers Raising Money Off of Their Expulsions from the Tennessee House

M.D. Kittle

Tennessee State Representatives Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) are looking to cash in on their expulsion battles — and their friends on the far-left are, too.

Jones and Pearson, who were expelled last week from the Republican-led House of Representatives, are back in their seats after each was reinstated this week — Jones on Monday, Pearson on Wednesday. They were removed from their positions after being accused of inciting a riot on the House floor amid a chaotic protest demanding gun control laws. State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), who helped lead the protest, survived expulsion by one vote.

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Former Arizona AG Attorney Denounces Maricopa County’s ‘Lackluster’ Investigation Dismissing the Printer Issues in the 2022 Election

Rachel Alexander

Maricopa County officials tapped former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor to investigate the printing problems in the 2022 election, and on Monday, the county released her report blaming the thickness of the ballot paper. Jennifer Wright, who was the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office during the election and who performed her own investigation of Maricopa County’s election problems going back to the 2020 presidential election, told The Arizona Sun Times the report was “meaningless” since it did not include an analysis of the printer logs.

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With Record Number of Rejected Legislation, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs Becoming Known as the ‘Veto Queen’

Rachel Alexander

New Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is piling up vetoes of bills sent to her from the Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature. By Thursday, she had vetoed 37 bills this session, more than any other governor in Arizona’s history except Democrat Janet Napolitano. The progressive Phoenix New Times dubbed her the “Veto Queen.” 

The Kari Lake War Room Twitter account had a strong reaction to all of the vetoes. “.@katiehobbs is Arizona’s very own Ron Burgundy,” the account tweeted. “She’s wedded to the teleprompter and she’ll VETO anything that’s put in front of her. Even when it’s language that she herself (supposedly) wrote. She’s not even reading these bills. Hobbs isn’t a Governor. She’s a clown.”

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Commentary: The GOP Has an Obligation to Protect Its Voters

Admin

One of the most startling gaps in the literature on the function of political parties is the lack of discussion about the most important reason they exist: to protect their voters from the abuses of government and the totalitarian temptations of the opposition party.

The formation of political parties grew from a need to organize people and get them to the polls around a set of ideas that could be put into practical action. As they originally functioned, there was a reciprocal relationship between citizens and parties. Yet, on a practical and self-interested level, the party had appeal for voters because of the benefits it bestowed on those who supported it.

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Mark Finchem Adds New Exhibits in Election Contest, Including Expert’s Declaration That Printer Settings Were ‘Intentionally Changed’

Rachel Alexander

Former Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem, who is contesting his loss last fall to Democrat Adrian Fontes, filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority and Evidence in Support of Contestant’s Motion for Reconsideration last week. A Maricopa County judge dismissed his lawsuit in December. Finchem included 10 exhibits consisting of mostly declarations from observers, election workers, and experts, including one who believes the election printer settings in Maricopa County were deliberately modified to create misreads of the ballots. 

Exhibit K was a declaration from Bob Hughes, who has 50 years in the printing industry and 16 years printing ballots for the Maricopa County Elections Department. Last month, Hughes and a team examined the Logic & Accuracy tests that were performed immediately prior to the election, the ballots used for testing, the certification reports for each voting center, and the tabulator reports printed from the testing. He concluded, “An intentional change was made to the printers affecting the DAY OF Election ballots.”

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Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil Hopes Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Won’t Have to be Subpoenaed to Testify on Trump Probe

M.D. Kittle

Liberal Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has proved to be a hostile witness to the three House committees trying to find out if he’s illegally using federal funds to target the Democrats’ No. 1 political enemy.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) says he’s “hopeful” Bragg will respond to a straight forward request for information — without the use of a subpoena, or contempt of congress charges.

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Commentary: Asian Voters Have Democrats Worried after Midterm Shift Toward Republicans

Admin

The marked shifts of Black and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party is something Americans for Limited Government Foundation (ALGF) has covered in depth, but new data shows Asian Americans are also abandoning the left.

The New York Times recently published analysis of voter turnout in the 2022 gubernatorial election in New York and showed New York City neighborhoods with a heavy Asian population shifted toward the GOP by 23 points compared to 2018. The Times analysis showed, it was the “largest electoral shift in Asian neighborhoods in the period from 2006 to 2022.” 

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GOP, Dems Have Entered the AI Arms Race Ahead of the 2024 Election

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by Mary Lou Masters   Republicans and Democrats are entering an arms race to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in upcoming 2024 campaigns to complete simple, daily tasks previously accomplished by droves of interns, according to The New York Times. Both parties are racing to develop AI technology to carry out basic functions like advertising, writing and sending out personalized campaign statements, predicting public opinion and analyzing voter behavior, the NYT reported. The use of AI in political campaigns comes with worry of disinformation as deep fakes continue to mount across the internet. “A.I. is about to make a significant change in the 2024 election because of machine learning’s predictive ability,” former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager and founder of a digital company that utilizes AI technology, Brad Parscale, told the NYT. Recent deep fake images of Trump being arrested in connection to the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into the former president’s alleged hush money payments to porn star actress Stormy Daniels have gone viral on social media. Deep fake photos of Pope Francis wearing a puffy white jacket have also made headwinds across the internet. “Unfortunately, I think people are going to figure out how to use this for evil faster than for improving civic life,” chief strategist…

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Trump Says GOP Has ‘No Choice’ But to Embrace Ballot Harvesting

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump on Monday asserted that Republicans must embrace ballot harvesting in the states that permit the practice in order to win the next election.

“So for 2024, should Republicans embrace early voting, voting by mail, and embrace the tactics of the Democrats and follow the ballot harvesting laws of their respective states?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked in an interview that premiered Monday.

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Commentary: Why Not ‘America First?’

Admin

It’s challenging to say something original about the Ukraine war. It’s been debated now for more than a year, and it’s not over yet. But that’s bad news for those supporting the war. Most Americans’ interest in foreign policy matters is limited, and many expect quicker favorable results than are probably ever possible in war. A year of war in a far-off land – another war in another far-off land – is not something Americans are likely to support for long, especially if it’s led by a stumble-bum president who picks incompetents for cabinet secretaries, campaigned for a mentally challenged stroke victim, and may be compromised by his son’s business dealings. 

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Arizona Democrats, Republicans Spar over Which Side Has Best Teacher Raise Plan

The Center Square

Teacher pay in Arizona has become a hot-button issue, with both Democrats and Republicans proposing increases but not supporting the alternative. Meanwhile, teacher’s unions are demanding a spending hike worth more than both parties’ plans.

Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, has introduced H.B. 2800 – seeking to increase the salary of teachers statewide by $10,000 by 2025. The bill would cost taxpayers $1.1 billion over two years but it makes Arizona’s average teacher pay the fourth-highest in the nation. 

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Biden’s Approval Rating Sinks Towards Lowest Point of His Presidency: Poll

Admin

President Joe Biden’s approval rating plummets towards the lowest point of his presidency on Thursday, according to a new poll.

The president’s approval sank to 38% this month, nearly reaching the lowest point he has received in office where he received a 36% rating in July 2022, an AP/NORC poll found. Biden‘s March approval has dropped from a 45% rating since February and 41% in January.

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Bill to Cut Grocery Tax in Arizona Arrives at Katie Hobbs’s Desk

Neil Jones

The Arizona State House passed Senate Bill (SB) 1063 by State Sen. Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu), which aims to eliminate the grocery tax across the state, sending it off to the governor’s desk for a final decision.

“At a time when thousands of Arizonans are already struggling to make ends meet, government shouldn’t be contributing to higher costs for basic necessities like food,” said State Rep. Matt Gress (R-Phoenix) following his vote in the bill’s favor. “With Arizonans facing one of the highest inflation rates in the nation, I’ll never stop fighting to lower costs for families, seniors, and our most hard-hit fellow citizens.”

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Wisconsin Legislature Passes Key Crime Bills, Stops Evers Administration Rule on ‘Conversion Therapy’

M.D. Kittle

In a busy and divisive day, the Republican-led Legislature on Wednesday passed several crime bills, a measure blocking what some say is the Evers administration’s assault on the First Amendment, and a resolution demanding the governor call an election for Secretary of State.

Many of the measures passed mostly along party lines, including a bill that defines “serious harm” and “violent crime” in state law. The proposal is tied to a bail reform constitutional amendment on next month’s spring election ballot. Under the amendment, judges would be allowed to consider expanded factors when issuing bail to violent offenders, beyond whether the defendant would show up for his court date.

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Commentary: DeSantis Charms GOP by Condemning ‘Leaks’ and ‘Palace Intrigue’

RealClearWire

On its face, there wasn’t anything unusual about the email that landed last week in the press office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Background interview request from the Washington Post,” read the subject line that summarized the industry-standard process whereby information is shared with reporters under pre-negotiated terms, usually anonymity. When sanctioned by a politician or their team, it is called “going on background” to shape and broaden a story with additional facts and contexts but without direct attribution. When not sanctioned, well, then that is just called leaking.

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Commentary: Centrist Parties Will Try and Fail to Sway the 2024 Election

Admin

You’re forgiven if you didn’t hear the news – or didn’t pay attention to it – but former Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced last week that he won’t run against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

This didn’t mean Hogan accepted the inevitable and intends to throw-in with the wisdom of his party’s voters and simply do what most loyal politicians do when the grassroots selects in a primary someone he or she doesn’t necessarily agree with. No, Hogan said he hopes like heck that someone other than Trump or DeSantis will earn the GOP nod – and henceforth release him from taking drastic measures. But should Republican primary participants opt for a Trump or DeSantis candidacy… Larry may run instead on a third-party ticket.

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New Arizona Party No Labels Confirms It Has No Current Plans to Run Candidates Outside of the Presidential Race in 2024

Neil Jones

Following Tuesday’s news that the political party, the No Labels Party (NLP), qualified for Arizona’s 2024 ballot, the party confirmed to The Arizona Sun Times that it would only be using its presence on the ballot for a potential presidential candidate.

“Right now, we do not have any plans to use the ballot lines for races other than the presidency,” said a spokesperson for the NLP.

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Registered Republicans in Arizona and Maricopa County Continue to Increase Their Lead Over Democrats

Rachel Alexander

Registered Republicans in Arizona increased their lead over Democrats from about three percent to over four percent over the past year. This is the biggest gap since 2018.

Similarly, in Maricopa County, Republicans increased their lead from about four percent more than Democrats to almost 4.5 percent more, according to the latest numbers from the Arizona Secretary of State.

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Michigan Democrats Strip Two Republicans of Committee Assignments

The Center Square

After Michigan Republican senators blocked their Democrat counterparts’ plan to send state taxpayers $180 inflation-relief checks, Democrats stripped two lawmakers of their committee assignments.

Democrats relieved Sen. Joe Bellino, R-Monroe, of his leadership position, and removed Bellino and Sen. Dan Lauwers, R-Brockway Township, from their committee assignments for voting against House Bill 4001 and blocking the ability to issue the $180 checks.

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Nikki Haley, Stumping in Iowa, Suggests Trump’s the Past and She’s the Future

M.D. Kittle

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley brought her freshly minted campaign for president to Iowa Monday evening, telling a town hall crowd in suburban Des Moines that she’s the candidate who’s got the experience and the energy — and the competency — to lead. 

The Republican and former ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump didn’t spare her old boss in her headline-grabbing call for a competency test for elected officeholders over the age of 75. 

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Commentary: Republicans Can Expose Joe Biden’s Phony Nationalism by Embracing MAGA

Admin

Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, like his entire presidency, was an astonishingly cynical performance. There were plenty of hollow boasts about things Biden hasn’t actually achieved, but he went further than the usual partisan spin. He conveyed, to a primetime audience, a Potemkin village version of his administration’s goals. While he did plug gun control and an anti-police bill, there were few mentions of identity or race. He mostly talked about economics. In fact, he presented himself as a champion of national revitalization.

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Arizona Governor Candidate Kari Lake Tells Iowa Republicans to Demand Presidential Candidates Put America and Election Integrity First

M.D. Kittle

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made her second stop in her two-day trip to Iowa with a message to conservatives in the kick-off caucus state: Back candidates who put America and election integrity first. 

“First of all, you know who I’m supporting for president,” Lake told some 250 people at a standing-room-only rally at the District Venue in Ankeny, Des Moines’ largest suburb. 

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Republicans Say Biden Lied About Their Position on Social Security, Medicare to Scare Seniors

Just the News

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t alone Tuesday night in openly arguing President Biden in his State of the Union address misstated House Republicans’ position on the future of Medicare and Social Security. 

“I think, because he lied, it was a frustration,” Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie told Just the News after Biden’s roughly 72-minute address.

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Popular AI Less Likely to Flag ‘Hateful Content’ That Targets Whites, Republicans, Men, Research Finds

Admin

OpenAI, the company behind the headline-grabbing artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has an automated content moderation system designed to flag hateful speech, but the software treats speech differently depending on which demographic groups are insulted, according to a study conducted by research scientist David Rozado.

The content moderation system used in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products is designed to detect and block hate, threats, self-harm and sexual comments about minors, according to Rozado. The researcher fed various prompts to ChatGPT involving negative adjectives ascribed to various demographic groups based on race, gender, religion and various other markers and found that the software favors some demographic groups over others.

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Commentary: 2024 Is Going to Be Close

Admin

If the November midterms proved one thing, it’s that Republicans have a less-than-breezy path to a majority in Washington, D.C.

Most of the attention on the 2024 election will center around the race for president. But don’t forget to watch the down ballot congressional races because the control of Congress really matters.

Both chambers are narrowly divided and control for both is up for grabs.

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Maricopa County GOP Censures Republican Maricopa County Supervisors, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer over Election Integrity at Annual Meeting

Rachel Alexander
Stephen Richer

The Maricopa County Republican Committee voted on January 14 at their annual meeting to censure Maricopa County Stephen Richer and the four Republican members of the Maricopa County Supervisors; Bill Gates, Thomas Galvin, Clint Hickman and Jack Sellers. The vote for the censure resolution was 1,460 for, 138 against, and 36 abstaining.

Maricopa County Member-at-Large Brian Ference told The Arizona Sun Times, “The PCs in Maricopa have spoken, overwhelmingly censuring Richer and the MCBOS, the key line being ‘Ceases immediately any and all recognition and support of the above individuals being censured and encourages all registered Republicans to expel them permanently from office.’”

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Commentary: Voters Can No Longer Tolerate Business as Usual, So It’s Time for Ronna McDaniel to Go

Admin

Kevin McCarthy’s speakership vote should have sent a clear message to GOP establishmentarians everywhere: conservatives have real power to leverage against Establishment-era Republicans, and they aren’t afraid to use it.

Even before the battle began on the floor of Congress, polling from Trafalgar Group and Convention of States revealed that Republican voters were dissatisfied with Republican Party congressional leadership. Capitalizing on the frustration of their constituents, a small band of Congressmen rebelled against the status quo and successfully managed to break up business as usual in our broken federal government.

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New Polling Finds Republicans Hold Sight Edge over Democrats in Party Preferences

Admin

For the first time in more than three decades, a higher percentage of Americans are identifying as Republicans or saying that they are GOP-leaning than those who are saying they are Democrats or leaning toward the Democratic Party, according to a new poll.

While 44% of Americans say they are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, 45% of Americans said they lean toward the GOP, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

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Republican Faction Works with Democrats to Move the Party Left, Push Open Primaries, Ranked Choice Voting

Rachel Alexander

With Democrats taking over the top leadership positions in Arizona, progressives are boldly moving onto their next steps in the state. Save Democracy Arizona (SDA) is looking into getting a ballot initiative that would open up primary elections to everyone and possibly implement ranked choice voting. The new group is composed of Democrats and moderate Republicans who seek to stop conservative Republicans from getting elected to office.

Arizona has a semi-closed primary system, meaning Republicans and Democrats automatically receive a ballot in the primary, but independents and other political parties must request one of those. With an open primary, any voter can vote with any party ballot. Save Democracy executive board member Sarah Brown Smallhouse explained why the group wants the change. “Because so few people (request a ballot), we almost have closed primaries,” she said. In recent years, independents have outnumbered both Republicans and Democrats in much of the state. 

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Commentary: Lowering the Bar on the ‘New McCarthyism’

Admin

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That seems to be Kevin McCarthy’s favorite mantra. Friday night, on the 15th vote for speaker of the House, he finally got his moist little palm around Nancy Pelosi’s still-warm gavel. Welcome to the new Republican-ish speaker of the House!

The contest was brutal, occasionally absurd, and the occasion of hilarity and consternation among the punditocracy on both the Right and the Left. The Left clucked their tongues about the “chaos” on view on the other side of the aisle. Some among the GOP agreed and wondered why “their side” could not govern as effectively as the Democrats. Would Nancy Pelosi have put up with this level of dissension among the Democratic rank and file? Others said, no, no, the 20 freedom caucus members (and others) holding up the inevitable were just giving the world a reality show, live-action look at how “democracy” (if not quite Our Democracy™) works and should work.

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