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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Senate Republicans will block a procedural motion this week to start debating a bipartisan border security deal following intense opposition to the legislation from the House GOP and former President Donald Trump.
The bill includes more than $60 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, and the move leaves funding for the war-torn nation in limbo, according to The Hill.
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Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott is leading a bloc of 19 other Senate Republicans in an effort to stonewall all legislation unrelated to government funding until Congress approves all of its appropriations bills.
The lawmakers warned Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of their intentions amid an intense congressional battle over spending that saw House conservatives take the unprecedented step of ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy. At issue are 12 annual spending bills, which Congress must approve by Nov. 17 following the passage of a continuing resolution this weekend to avert a government shutdown.
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Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R) led the Senate Republican conference in a letter to Senate Democrat committee chairmen urging them to hold hearings and investigate human trafficking, a press statement from Johnson’s office stated Monday.
The letter, sent to Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; Richard Durbin (D-IL), who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary; Gary Peters (D-MI), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, urges increased oversight and investigations into human trafficking.
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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) joined Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and other GOP senators Tuesday in a public comment to Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that opposes the department’s proposed rule to expand Title IX to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports, and specifically points out how the rule will undermine the original intention of Title IX.
The education department’s proposed rule, titled “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance: Sex-Related Eligibility Criteria for Male and Female Athletic Teams” was published in the Federal Register on April 6.
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Arizona State Senator John Kavanaugh (R-Fountain Hills), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told The Arizona Sun Times Friday that attempts to work with Democrats on a state budget have not received necessary responses.
“This year, nobody is going to be able to claim that we shut them out,” Kavanaugh said in a phone interview.
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Republican Arizona state legislators of the House and Senate are moving forward with their previously proposed continuation budget, referred to as a “skinny budget,” which members call the financially responsible move to ensure state entities are funded and continue without issue.
“This is a budget that recognizes the political and economic realities in our state right now. It’s a responsible plan based on the budget funding approved last session with bipartisan support. It fully funds our state’s obligations and ensures that essential functions of state government will continue without interruption,” said State Representative David Livingston (R-Peoria).
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Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R) and Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker (R) led 45 of their Republican colleagues in introducing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, a measure that would permanently prohibit federal funding for abortion.
Johnson and Wicker introduced the legislation Wednesday, a measure that would establish a “permanent prohibition on federal funding for abortion, replacing the current restrictions with a single, government-wide standard,” said a press release from Johnson’s office.
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) are leading their Republican colleagues in an effort to demand Senate Republican leaders insist on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would end the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In a letter Wednesday to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senators John Thune (R-SD), John Barrasso (RWY), and Roy Blunt (R-MO), Johnson and Paul joined 11 of their Senate GOP colleagues in voicing their opposition to forging ahead with the NDAA for the Fiscal Year 2023 without a Senate vote on an amendment that would ban discharges from the armed services due to failure to take the COVID shot.
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Senate Republicans re-elected Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as leader 37-10 on Wednesday.
South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune was also re-elected as Senate Republican whip.
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Arizona State Sen. Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) spoke against a proposed suspension of Senate rules to revote on a previously failed gun control Senate Bill (SB) on Tuesday.
“The reason why this bill should not be supported is because it will stop law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves. Criminals do not follow gun laws. They will not abide by this law. Only law-abiding citizens will abide by this law, so you will simply restrict more opportunities to protect people,” said Petersen when explaining his vote.
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Five Republican senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are demanding answers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about royalty payments made by third parties to NIH employees.
In a letter Wednesday to NIH Director Lawrence Tabak, the senators noted that “the agency has taken no action to disclose such payments to the public at large.”
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The day before FBI Director Christopher Wray explained to a Senate appropriations subcommittee why his department deserves a $527.8 million raise in 2023, his agents were credited with foiling an ISIS-linked plot to assassinate George W. Bush. An Iraqi national was arrested on May 25 and charged with attempting to smuggle four other Iraqis into the United States then “murder” the former president in retaliation for the war in Iraq. (I will address the sketchiness of this story in a separate column.)
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Senator Ron Johnson, joining 48 other Republican Senators, signed a statement to declare opposition to a potential new Iran nuclear deal.
The statement follows multiple reports that the Biden administration is negotiating a revived nuclear deal between the two countries, similar to a move enacted under President Obama.
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Forty-six Senate Republicans demanded Wednesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland respect the independence of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI’s Russia probe of the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.
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Four Senate Republicans announced bills they called the “Parent’s Bill of Rights.”
In a morning press conference, Sens. Justin Eichorn of Grand Rapids, Michelle Benson of Ham Lake, Paul Gazelka of East Gull Lake, and Roger Chamberlain of Lino Lakes announced the bills they said would increase school transparency.
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On August 24, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memo to senior Pentagon leadership announcing that he was implementing a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for all military service members. The day before, the FDA had issued full authorization to Pfizer for their Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine product (the nomenclature of which is meant to be a mashup of the words “COVID”, “mRNA”, and “community”) . At first glance it would seem that the mandatory vaccination policy, while scientifically unsound and strategically foolish, was at least a policy being implemented according to both the letter of the directive and in accordance with the law. But a further examination of the facts and the manner in which this order is being implemented makes clear that the military’s implementation of this order is illegal and highly unethical.
In the memo, Secretary Austin issued a directive and a promise, that “Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.” The problem with this is that the Comirnaty vaccine product that was approved by the FDA is not available anywhere in the Military Health System. It is not even in production, according to the military’s TRICARE healthcare providers. If a soldier goes to a military hospital or a private provider to receive an approved Pfizer COVID vaccine, he will be administered the unapproved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which is a vaccine that is not approved but has been administered under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). We are told that this is but a brand name difference, that the formulation is the same, and they can be used interchangeably. But as the FDA was approving the Comirnaty product, they were renewing the authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech product. If it’s just a matter of brand name, why issue an approval for one brand name and an EUA renewal for the other? This is because they are not actually the same.
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Gov. Tom Wolf recalled his nomination for acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid on Monday after alleging that Senate Republicans would not vet her fairly amid the chamber’s controversial election investigation.
“It is clear that instead of providing advice and consent on my nominee for Secretary of the Commonwealth, they instead plan on using her confirmation as an opportunity to descend further into conspiracy theories and work to please the former president [Donald Trump] by spreading lies about last year’s election, instead of working together to address real issues facing Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said in an emailed statement to reporters on Monday.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed The Star News Network’s Washington Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to illustrate the dynamics of anti-Trump Republican Senators and infrastructure spending.
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Three Senate Republicans introduced a bill Wednesday requiring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to consider collecting revenue from major tech companies to fund broadband internet.
The Funding Affordable Internet with Reliable Contributions Act, introduced by Sens. Roger Wicker, Todd Young, and Shelley Moore Capito, directs the FCC to consider collecting Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions from Big Tech companies “such as YouTube, Netflix, and Google,” the lawmakers announced in a statement Wednesday. USF is a subsidy fund of the FCC that dispenses around $10 billion a year for broadband internet infrastructure in rural areas, according to the FCC website.
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Senate Republicans rejected an effort Wednesday to begin debate on the bipartisan infrastructure deal endorsed by President Joe Biden, saying that the vote came too early and that the bill was not yet finalized.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer scheduled the procedural vote in an attempt to begin debate on the package, but after filing cloture on Monday Republicans came out against it on the grounds that the deal had yet to be put into text and that senators were still finalizing how the plan would be financed. The bill failed 49-51, with Schumer voting no so that he can bring it up again in the coming days.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Washington Correspondent for the Star News Network Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to discuss the mechanics of an infrastructure bill passing and cognitive abilities of Joe Biden.
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Senate Republicans stopped Democrats’ sweeping voting rights bill from advancing on the Senate floor Tuesday, unanimously voting against beginning its debate and therefore essentially killing it.
Though every Democrat voted to advance the bill, Republicans labeled it as nothing more than a power grab by the majority, with GOP leadership vowing to stop it. The bill, dubbed the “For the People Act,” received 50 votes in favor, but needed 60 to overcome a legislative filibuster.
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Ahead of the Senate vote to federalize elections, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) hosted a press call to predict the outcome and explain her position against the bill. As Blackburn predicted on the call Tuesday morning, Senate Republicans blocked the bill.
On that press call, Blackburn told The Tennessee Star that local governments are better built to handle elections than the federal government.
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Senate Banking Committee Republicans have expanded an investigation into regional Federal Reserve banks over their alleged “woke mission creep.”
Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee sent letters to regional Federal Reserve banks in Minneapolis, Boston and Atlanta demanding a briefing with leaders and documents related to a recent “Racism and the Economy” initiative, GOP staffers said during a press briefing Monday morning. Engaging in political advocacy is out of the Fed’s purview, the letters said.
“Of course, racism is abhorrent and has no place in our society…. I recognize the interest in studying economic disparities along demographic lines, such as race and gender,” Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey wrote in the letters sent Sunday.
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When the Senate opens the second impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump Tuesday there will be two defendants: Trump and the Senate Republicans.
Trump is charged with one count of inciting an insurrection against the United States, in connection with the Jan. 6 mob that surged the Capitol, while Congress was in a joint session to certify the results of the Electoral College: “Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
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The Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate rejected almost all budget amendment proposals from Republican members during a lengthy session Thursday afternoon.
As the Senate moves closer to a passage vote on its comprehensive budget, Thursday’s session made it clear that Senate Democrats are ultimately running the show.
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House Democrats blocked discussion of a police reform bill sponsored by Congressman Pete Stauber (R-MN-08). Democratic leaders argued that the more important issue at hand is the “postal crisis.”
Stauber criticized the focus of their session.
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Minnesota Senate Republicans unveiled their “2020 Vision” agenda during a Monday press conference, highlighting their priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
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by Henry Rodgers A group of Republican Senators introduced legislation Friday that would permanently prevent the federal government from ever shutting down. Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, Montana Sen. Steve Daines, Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced the legislation – the “End Government Shutdowns Act,” which will make it so the federal government can never shutdown. This comes as the government has been partially shutdown for 21 days. Republican members of Congress have lobbied members of Congress to reach an agreement on a bill that would fund the government and protect the border. “It’s disappointing that both sides didn’t resolve this matter weeks ago. Shutdowns inevitably costs taxpayers more money once the government reopens. I hope that both parties come together and reach an agreement that brings a resolution to this issue as quickly as possible,” Portman said in a statement. “Moving forward, we should end government shutdowns for good. This bipartisan legislation will accomplish that goal, providing lawmakers with more time to reach a responsible resolution to budget negotiations, giving federal workers and…
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