Tag: Sen. Rand Paul

‘Serious Blow to Trust in Our Government’: Lawmakers Torch Wray, Mayorkas for Skipping Out on Hearing

Daily Caller News Foundation
Alejandro Mayorkas, Christopher Wray

Senate Republican and Democratic lawmakers joined together in a display of bipartisan condemnation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray after the two declined to testify on Thursday before the Senate on global threats facing the U.S. homeland.

Mayorkas and Wray requested to move the annually-scheduled Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) hearing to a classified setting, which would have broken with 15 years of precedence according to Democratic Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, Chairman of the HSGAC.

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Key Democrats Endorse Gallego After Sinema Retirement

The Center Square
Rep. Ruben Gallego

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., now has the backing on Gov. Katie Hobbs and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in his bid for U.S. Senate.

The endorsements come after Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced last week she’s retiring at the end of the year and not seeking re-election. If she decided to run, it would have set up an unusual three-way race between two major parties and an incumbent. Sinema left the Democratic Party in December 2022.

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RFK Jr. Says Rand Paul Would Be ‘Incredible Successor’ to Mitch McConnell

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RFK Jr And Rand Paul In front of white house

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be an “incredible successor” to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in a post on X.

McConnell announced in a Wednesday floor speech he would step down as the leader of Senate Republicans in November, but would serve out his term in the Senate, which ends in January 2027. Kennedy, a longtime environmental advocate, suggested McConnell’s fellow senator from Kentucky, as the replacement.

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Sen. Rand Paul Proposes Fed Audit as Regional Bank Bailout Hits $141 Billion

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Legislation offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the “Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2024,” would conduct an audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for the first time since the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 required an audit of the central bank’s purchases of mortgage-backed securities.

This time around, the GAO would look at the Fed’s entire balance sheet, including the recently enacted Bank Term Funding Program — now $141 billion according to the central bank’s latest H.4.1. release — that has been lending banks money in exchange for U.S. Treasuries after the spike in interest rates caused there to be a reported $620 billion of unreported losses including regional banks that experienced failures in the interest rate crunch.

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Prestigious Science Journals Confirm Censored Views: Masks at Best Don’t Reduce COVID Infection

Just the News

The best-case scenario for one of the most common COVID-19 interventions may be that it has no measurable effect on infection, recent studies suggest.

A systematic review of studies of mask mandates for children, published Saturday in the British Medical Journal’s Archives of Disease in Childhood, found “no association” with infection or transmission in 16 of the 22 observational studies and “critical” or “serious” risk of bias in the six countervailing studies. It got the attention of Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter.

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‘Six Smoking Guns’: Doctor-Turned-US-Senator Roger Marshall’s Reasons for His Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

Just the News

Long before key components of the intelligence community acknowledged they believed COVID-19 came from a lab leak, Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall had drawn a bull’s-eye around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Marshall, a doctor turned politician, argued early and often that the virus’ emergence and genetic characteristics did not seem like those of a naturally evolving animal-to-human virus. But senators like him and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul were marginalized and even demeaned early on by detractors ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to TV comedian Stephen Colbert.

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Activists Push States for Free School Meals

Just the News

At least a dozen states are considering implementing or already have free student meal programs to continue the federal government’s COVID-19 giveaways, while some activists are demanding for more things to be made free.

Congress allowed a pandemic-era free student meal waiver to expire on Sept. 30, returning to the pre-COVID posture where only students at some schools or those whose families met specific income requirements were given free or reduced-price meals.

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Senate Fiscal Hawks Johnson, Scott, Lee, and Paul Call for an End to Pandemic Spending

M.D. Kittle

While hagglers appeared to have reached a bipartisan framework agreement on a full-year omnibus spending plan, fiscal hawks like Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson are asking an important question: Why haven’t we gone back to normal spending now that the pandemic is over?

On Thursday, the Senate easily passed a a one-week continuing resolution, keeping the government funded through December 23. A worked-over spending plan is expected to be unveiled Monday, as negotiations continue in the shadow of another government shutdown threat in the days before the Christmas break.

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Commentary: The Difference Between Free Speech and Violent Rhetoric (It’s Not What You Think)

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United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hit the airwaves to connect the recent assault on Paul Pelosi with “fascism” and “white nationalism.” She insists that both are now ubiquitous. And both prompt increasing politically motivated violence. (Ocasio-Cortez remains oblivious to the greatest sustained political violence in our recent history; the 120 days of Black Lives Matter and Antifa-fueled rioting, arson, looting, and mayhem of summer and fall 2020—often cheered on or defended by public officials and social media.)

The deplorable violent attack on Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has been described as the logical reification of increasing bitter political discourse. Shrill accusations spread even as full details of the attack are still not known. But the general picture of the assailant is one of an unhinged conspiracy freak of all flavors. He seems to have been a lunatic, drug-crazed white supremacist and anti-Semite, a former hemp jeweler, and nudist, who was either homeless or was living in a cluttered hippie-like commune in Berkeley plastered with pride and BLM flags. 

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Trump Wins CPAC Poll While Support for DeSantis Grows

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Former President Donald Trump won the CPAC 2022 straw poll for the 2024 presidential primary with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) coming in second.

The poll, conducted from Thursday to Sunday with 2,564 attendees, shows that 59% of people said they would vote for Trump in the 2024 primary. DeSantis has less than half the support of Trump, 28% as the second-highest-ranking primary candidate.

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Commentary: History Will Grind Out the Truth

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“History will figure that out on its own.” That is what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently replied to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  

In a heated congressional exchange, Fauci derided the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was due to the leak of a dangerous virus, engineered in the Chinese Wuhan virology lab—and in part funded by U.S. health agencies, on the prompt of Fauci himself.  

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Sen. Paul: Gen. Milley’s Calls to China Could Have Sparked ‘Accidental Nuclear War,’ Wants Polygraph

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Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “could have started an accidental nuclear war” if he indeed made unauthorized phone calls to China in the final weeks of the Trump presidency to assure Beijing that the U.S. would not attack the country.

The assertion that Milley made two such calls is reportedly included in an upcoming book titled “Peril” by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

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GOP Candidate for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District Robby Starbuck on Rand Paul Endorsement and Why He’s Running

Julie Carr

Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed GOP candidate for Nashville’s Fifth District, Robby Starbuck, to the newsmakers line to discuss his motivation for running, an endorsement by Senator Rand Paul, and his upcoming Critical Race Theory event in Franklin on May 19.

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Sen. Ted Cruz Supports Dr. Manny Sethi Because ‘Washington Needs Strong Conservative Fighters’

Laura Baigert

MT. JULIET, Tennessee – At the last of three events held in the state Friday, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said he was in Tennessee supporting Dr. Manny Sethi because Washington needs strong conservative fighters.

The support rally featuring Cruz was held at the Music City Baptist Church in Mt. Juliet, was attended by nearly 400 fro all over middle Tennessee who filled out the main auditorium and an overflow room to a standing-room-only situation that started filling up more than a half-hour before the official start time.

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‘Penny Plan’ Falls as National Debt Exceeds $21.5 Trillion

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Rand Paul

by Bethany Blankley   The U.S. national debt exceeds $21.5 trillion. That’s almost quadruple the national debt when President George W. Bush first took office in 2001. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate held a vote on Sen. Rand Paul’s Penny Plan, which would reduce federal government spending and implement fiscal restraint reforms. Only 22 U.S. Senators voted for the Penny Plan, with 25 Republican senators and all Democrats voting against it. The Senate vote came months after about 130 U.S. leaders called on President Donald Trump to lead a “transparency revolution,” and reign in out-of-control federal government spending. “With the economy booming, wages rising, competitive tax rates, domestic energy production flourishing, and unemployment at a near 50-year low across every demographic – the federal debt continues to skyrocket. This is unsustainable,” they wrote in an open letter to the president. Trump responded by directing his federal agency heads to cut five percent of their budgets. Former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, and honorary chair of OpenTheBooks.com, and Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the watchdog advocacy group, said Trump’s “war on federal government waste” was “a great first step and an achievable goal.” However, his “willingness to lead by example” was…

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Commentary: Libertarians and Donald Trump’s #MAGA Republican Party

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Donald Trump

by Jeffery Rendall   Does Donald Trump upset your libertarian soul? It’s a question conservatives and Republicans are asking of late, especially in the wake of the president’s unbending defense of his America First trade policy and always front-and-center advocacy for sealing America’s southern border (as well as his travel ban and other proposed shifts in immigration procedure that would effectively limit the number and types of legal immigrants). Trump’s fondness for big government resolutions and big spending has the liberty movement upset. It’s a crack in the GOP coalition that could easily widen if not addressed. Such Trumpian measures reek of system generated “solutions,” something dyed in the wool libertarians profess to abhor. There aren’t many such (pure libertarian) creatures in elected politics these days – at least not in the Washington swamp – but those who are here are becoming restless with Trump’s willful use of state power and resources to achieve his aims. In a piece titled “Donald Trump and the libertarian crack-up,” W. James Antle III wrote at the Washington Examiner last week, “Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., confirmed on Monday he would vote for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh despite concerns over his Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Rep. Justin Amash,…

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Sen. Rand Paul Back at Work in Washington After Attack by Neighbor, Calls for Repealing Obamacare Individual Mandate

Wendy Wilson
Rand Paul

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is back at work in the Senate after being attacked and seriously injured by a neighbor outside his home in Bowling Green on Nov. 3. Paul, who was hospitalized with several broken ribs and bruised lungs, returned to work Monday, tweeting that he was “still in a good deal of pain” but “ready to fight for liberty and help move forward with tax cuts in the coming days and weeks.” Kelley and I want to thank everyone once again for your thoughts and prayers for my recovery. While I’m still in a good deal of pain, I will be returning to work in the Senate today, ready to fight for liberty and help move forward with tax cuts in the coming days and weeks. — Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 13, 2017 Paul was attacked by anesthesiologist Rene Boucher after stepping off his riding lawn mower. Initial reports suggested a landscaping dispute between the two neighbors prompted the attack, but Paul’s office has said there no such quarrel and other neighbors are casting doubt on that explanation, according to Fox News. Boucher pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. Paul’s office has been told to also expect…

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Alexander And Corker Both Vote For Failed Obamacare “Skinny Repeal” Amendment

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

Tennessee’s Republican senators both voted early Friday for a health care bill amendment that would have repealed parts of Obamacare, though less dramatically than an amendment defeated earlier this week. The latest amendment, defeated by a 51-49 Senate vote, was dubbed “skinny repeal” and was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The stronger amendment defeated Wednesday was sponsored by his fellow Kentucky Republican senator, Rand Paul. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who voted against Sen. Paul’s amendment because it didn’t have an immediate replacement plan, but who voted to advance Sen. McConnell’s “skinny repeal” said: I voted to take the next step toward what I believed was our best opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare. The Senate’s failure to do this leaves an urgent problem that I am committed to addressing: Tennessee’s state insurance commissioner says our individual insurance market is very near collapse. Unless Congress acts, many of the 350,000 Tennesseans who buy health insurance in that market—songwriters, farmers, the self-employed—face the real prospect of having zero options to buy insurance in 2018 and 2019. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said in a statement: My strong preference was for Congress to advance legislation I supported earlier this week to repeal Obamacare…

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Sen. Corker Votes To Repeal Obamacare, Sen. Alexander Votes No

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

Tennessee’s Republican senators in Washington, D.C., were divided Wednesday on repealing significant portions of Obamacare. Sen. Bob Corker voted for a health care bill amendment to repeal the Affordable Care Act, while Sen. Lamar Alexander voted against it. Put forward by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the amendment would have given lawmakers two years to develop a replacement plan. The Senate will now debate measures that won’t alter Obamacare as much as the amendment defeated Wednesday. Radio talk show host Phil Valentine speculated on his show Wednesday that Corker, considered a moderate by some conservatives, voted for repeal because he is up for election next year and knew the vote would play well with Tennessee voters. Corker has not said whether he will seek a third term. In a statement released before Wednesday’s vote, Corker said: As I have said before, I believe the best path forward is for Congress to repeal Obamacare after a reasonable transition period. This amendment would take us back to a level playing field where, by a date certain, all sides have incentive to work together to develop a health care replacement that would generate broad support and stand the test of time. I urge my…

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Senate Health Care Legislation Stalls, Corker and Alexander Were Still Mulling Bill

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

The Senate health care bill appeared to stall late Monday for lack of votes needed to pass. Last week, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said he was encouraged by the direction of the bill, while Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said he had concerns about its effects on Tennesseans and was waiting to see a report from the Congressional Budget Office. The bill was to have been considered this week, but was delayed until at least next week to give Arizona Republican Senator John McCain time to recover from surgery to remove a blood clot. McCain’s presence was needed to advance the bill, which has faced growing opposition. Then news broke late Monday that the bill in its current form has been brought to a halt after more senators stepped forward to say they wouldn’t support it. That means leaders will need to revamp the bill or scrap health care legislation this year. Some senators are opposed to the bill because they say the proposed cuts to Medicaid are too steep, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says it keeps too much of Obamacare intact. Paul mounted a campaign to convince fellow Republicans that the bill is not a repeal as promised. The bill has…

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