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We must engage the global economy to ignite growth and opportunity at home May 22, 2015 | 202-228-7561 WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), today released the following statement regarding legislation to establish trade promotion authority: "The American middle class is getting crushed by the Obama economy," said Sen. Cruz. "Middle class incomes are stagnating, and the labor force participation rate has not been this low since the Carter Administration. While I have serious concerns about the all-too-typical Washington backroom deals that enabled this bill to get to the floor, I could not in good conscience vote against...

On Tuesday night, Senator Ted Cruz appeared on Fox News to respond to the State of the Union address — and talked about how the US economy was only working for the "top 1 percent," who he said have gotten "fat and happy" under Obama's administration.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cruz's rhetorical move is unusual for a prominent Republican, particularly a presidential contender. This emphasis on the "the 1 percent" has long been condemned by many in the party as class warfare. For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio said in 2012 that "convincing one group that their life isn't doing better because another is doing too...

Ireland became Saturday the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages by popular vote. Within the U.S., Maine, Maryland and Washington in 2012 were the first states to legalize such unions through popular votes. Meanwhile, 37 states and the District of Columbia recognize same-sex marriages, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A measure to legalize such unions via popular votes could be added to the ballots in the 13 other states during the 2016 general elections, when it conceivably could have the support of at least one presidential candidate, as IrelandÂ’s action motivated one White House...

It has been an Iranian tradition since 1979 to end Friday prayers with chants of “Death to America!” In a purely rational world, that would be all one needed to know that Iran is not a reliable negotiating partner. Alas, we do not live in such a world. But there’s more evidence. Iran, according to our State Department, has been the chief exporter of terrorism for the last three decades. It has worked closely with al-Qaeda, facilitating its attacks on America and our allies. Most of the September 11 hijackers traveled through Iran with the help of the Iranian government....

Just recently Secretary of State John Kerry ridiculed Tom Cotton, the Freshman Republican Senator from Arkansas, regarding the letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran that Cotton championed, and which was signed by forty-five other Republican senators. Secretary Kerry expressed disdain for the fact that Senator Cotton was “someone who had spent only sixty days in the Senate”. It seems that Kerry, who himself served in the United States Senate since 1984 until he took over from Hillary Clinton as secretary of state following Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, feels that Senator Cotton’s brief tenure in the Senate just doesn’t...

Tom Cotton, the Iraq war veteran from Arkansas turned Republican senator, has a message to fellow soldiers: "We should not be ashamed of the war we conducted in Iraq." Leading Republicans are sticking by the Iraq war, declining to follow the Democrats into full retreat and regret. Cotton, while conceding that there are lessons to be learned from the conflict and that it might have been handled differently in retrospect, maintains that President George W. Bush made the best decision he could at the time based on the available intelligence about Saddam Hussein's presumed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction....

One of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate my have just gotten more vulnerable. In an interview aired Wednesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said his GOP opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton, feels entitled to the seat because of his service as an Army infantry officer in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There's a lot of people in the Senate that didn't serve in the military. ... I think it's part of this sense of entitlement that he gives off — almost as like 'I served my country, therefore elect me to the Senate.' That's not how it...

Via the Examiner, he’s not the only State Department official to admit this within the past 24 hours. Jen Psaki also acknowledged last night that a nuclear deal with Iran wouldn’t be legally binding, with good reason. The only way to give an international agreement the force of law vis-a-vis future presidents and Congresses is to have the Senate ratify it under its treaty power. Until that happens — and it won’t happen — this is a deal between Barack Obama and the Ayatollah Khamenei. Once one of them is gone, the deal remains valid if and only if his...

A day after Josh Duggar apologized amid allegations that he molested several underage girls while he was a teenager, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee criticized “those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins.” “Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable,’ ” Huckabee said in a statement posted on Facebook Friday. “He and his family dealt with it and were honest and open about it with the victims and the authorities. No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his...

Mystifying. But then this is the same guy who decided to pick a culture-war fight with Beyonce despite knowing that he’d have to break out of his niche as a social-con warrior to have any chance at the GOP nomination. Not being too judge-y about youthful intra-family child molestation seems like a smart hill for the GOP to fight on in 2016.

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer said that he is ” finding some interesting, compelling things” in his investigation of Jeb Bush on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Schweizer reported, “We’re about four months into the research project, obviously not as global in scope as the Clintons, but you know, as governor of the state of Florida, you have a lot of things that you can do. So we’re following the money. We’re looking at land deals. We’re looking at an airport deal. We are looking at some of the educational reforms that were instituted, and some of the big corporate winners...

Let’s assume, as I do, that the Supreme Court finds a constitutional right to same-sex marriage when it decides Obergefell v. Hodges sometime next month. What happens next? It may be a morning-after landscape of more confusion than clarity, with some rain falling on the victory parades. Conservative Christians, claiming victimization by the onrushing tide of marriage equality, aren’t like to be deterred in their quest for the right to withhold goods and services from same-sex couples. Indiana’s retreat last month, under pressure from some leading corporations, from a law that would have given businesses a religious excuse for discriminating...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- What a difference a border can make. Sometimes it marks a difference not just in altitude but attitude. When our neighbors in Oklahoma find the ground shaking beneath their feet, they know well enough what's causing it. Or they should know by now. As quake follows quake in the center of that state, the cause becomes undeniable: the injection of wastewater into deep wells as part of the process called fracking. The number of good-sized tremors in our neighboring state has multiplied tenfold within just the past three years. The revolution in oil-and-gas production that's making...

U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont “independent” who caucuses with the Democrats and calls himself a “democratic socialist,” announced this week that he is seeking the Democratic Socialist Party’s nomination — er, I mean the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. One of the Vermonter’s most visceral claims to left-wing fame is his maintenance of a more ferocious hatred of the billionaire Koch brothers, David and his elder brother Charles, than any other progressive on the planet.Sanders is kompletely, krazily Koch-phobic. Back in 2013, when the scandal broke of veterans dying due to a lack of care from the VA,...

http://media.salon.com/2015/05/hillary_warren_de_blasio.jpgEarlier this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with a gaggle of bored reporters and some boldfaced names in the progressive movement, unveiled a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” Much like the media event that accompanied its unveiling, the agenda is supposed to be understood as a kind of 21st-century, liberal version of the storied “Contract with America,” the PR stunt that, as legend (erroneously) has it, rocketed Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to power after the 1994 midterm elections. As my colleague Joan Walsh reported on Thursday, this backward-looking attempt to lay out a...

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

Last night in Georgia, Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100% spoke to the delegates at the Georgia Republican Convention. Regular readers of RedState know that the Speaker of the House in Georgia, collaborating with gay rights activists, left-wing Democrats, and big business, scuttled a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Action in exchange for Democrat votes on a billion dollar tax increase. If conservatives wanted RFRA passed in Georgia, the Speaker demanded they gut the legislation with “anti-discrimination” language that would actually expand protected classes in Georgia for the left. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100% spoke last night and he called B.S....

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, announced he would run for president of the United States on Tuesday and he already has the support of Chuck Norris. "I still believe Mike Huckabee is the most qualified,” Norris told the New York Times. “He has the moral clarity and experience to lead our great country forward.”

Our republic as America’s founders created it is under assault from extremists outside our country and anti-constitutionalists inside our country. Combined with the flailing American economy and global markets, Western civilization remains on the brink, as experts and all the GOP presidential candidates agree. ....................................................... For my wife, Gena, and I, we sincerely believe former Speaker Newt Gingrich is the answer to most of those questions and deserves our endorsement and vote.

Blooper reel from the "Conversations with Chuck" video series.