Free Republic

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) raised the alarm over a bill that would send billions of U.S. dollars to Ukraine, telling Tucker Carlson that he and other lawmakers are doing everything they can to “kill” the legislation. In Episode 74 of Carslon’s show on X, the senator detailed the red flags in funding Ukraine’s war and what is being done to derail what he called out as “political calculation” in the bill. Carlson kicked off the episode on Monday with an assessment of the futility of funding Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, saying “It’s not simply a fool’s errand, it’s...

One of the authors of a Senate bill that would enable the US commerce department to ban technologies with links to foreign governments has said the Biden White House is “very in favor” of the measure, but stopped short of saying whether the administration has discussed possibly prohibiting the Chinese-owned platform TikTok in particular.

The deal that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin reached with Majority Leader Charles Schumer that contains billions for clean energy programs also would mandate offshore oil and gas drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, the package commits Democratic leaders to moving new legislation to streamline permitting process for pipelines and other projects – a move Manchin called essential to his own backing for the package, which would include $433 billion in new spending as well as $739 billion in new revenue over a decade. 'Without what you just mentioned there is no bill,' Manchin told MetroNews in...

House Democrats are undercutting bipartisan legislation to bolster security for Supreme Court justices as heated protests erupt outside their homes. The Senate passed an emergency, bipartisan bill to beef up security for the justices and the Supreme Court building, sending it to the House on Monday night. Democrats in the House, however, don't appear to be eager to get the bill passed into law. Leadership members said on Wednesday they haven't even read the legislation, which is a single page, and they are now considering a new bill with an added provision that extends the security to the Court's 40-odd...

Twitter adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan, often called a “poison pill,” a day after billionaire Elon Musk offered to buy the company for $43 billion, the company announced Friday. The board voted unanimously to adopt the plan. Under the new structure, if any person or group acquires beneficial ownership of at least 15% of Twitter’s outstanding common stock without the board’s approval, other shareholders will be allowed to purchase additional shares at a discount. The plan is set to expire on April 14, 2023.

The unity of Senate Democrats allowed the minority party to prevent a COVID relief package from being debated. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) cited "the inclusion of a 'poison pill" for his Party's filibuster. The "poison pill" is allowing parents to choose the school their children will attend. "The Republicans know that there is no way a Democrat could vote to permit school choice," Schumer fumed. "The whole reason why we have public schools is because parents aren't fit to decide where or how their children should be educated. In states where school choice is permitted, segments of the...

WASHINGTON - Conservative groups and lawmakers are lining up against a proposal by Senate Republicans to impose automatic tax increases on millions of Americans — if their sweeping tax package doesn't grow the economy and raise tax revenues as much as projected. The opposition comes as the tax package cleared a key procedural vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The Senate voted 52-48 to start debating the bill. Wednesday's vote potentially could pave the way for the Senate to pass the package later this week. The Senate could start voting on amendments Thursday evening. Opposition to the tax "trigger" could...

Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) are demanding that the tax reform bill include a trigger that automatically raises taxes in the future if tax receipts fall below projections. This is a bad idea. Raising taxes is never a good policy, but this provision also adds complexity and uncertainty to the tax code that will limit its impact on economic growth. Bob Corker and Jeff Flake want people to believe they're concerned about the deficit, but if that were true they would not have supported so many bills to increase the debt limit and increase spending. If there...

The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate after a series of votes in June 2013. Democrats, who controlled the Senate at the time, unanimously supported the bill, while most Republicans opposed it. The four Republicans on the gang - Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake - of course voted for it, and also agreed with Democrats on a plan to kill almost all GOP amendments. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allowed just a handful of amendments to reach the Senate floor. One, from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, would have prohibited the legalization of...

<p>Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is lashing out at Marco Rubio and Donald Trump on immigration while facing New Hampshire voters for the first time since his Iowa caucus victory.</p> <p>Cruz charged that Rubio led the fight for "amnesty" for immigrants in the country illegally. He also said Trump didn't do anything to fight immigration reform as the debate raged on Capitol Hill in 2013.</p>

9:37 AM - 19 Jun 2013 We need to secure the border. Any bill this body passes should have border security first & then legalization. Not the other way around.

The office of Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, sent out a press release Wednesday pushing five amendments he filed to the bill, which generally tightens enforcement and provides a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants. Cruz's amendments seek to further tighten border security, streamline the legal immigration process, deny public benefits to those here illegally, reform the high-skilled worker visa program and prohibit a path to citizenship for the undocumented. "The amendments filed today to strengthen border security and reform our legal immigration system will not only bring meaningful, effective improvements to our immigration system, but also...

Ted Cruz has coined a new term in the fight over immigration: "undocumented Democrats." Speaking in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate portrayed the idea of a path to citizenship as a ploy to beef up Democratic voter rolls."Proponents of the Gang of Eight were being hypocrites. They were not telling the truth," he said. "What they claimed they were interested in was not in fact what they were interested in. What they were interested in, what Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama wanted, was very simple: They wanted millions of new Democratic voters. There's a...

excerpt In fact, Cruz is 100% right about what he supported and why he supported it, as a brief trip through history suffices to show. The tale actually starts with Rush Limbaugh.

News Corp. said its board of directors has approved plans to split its entertainment and publishing businesses into two separate companies. The company also adopted a shareholder-rights plan designed to prevent a hostile takeover in the volatile trading period after the split is complete. The New York-based media conglomerate also said Friday that the target date for the split is June 28. The company holding its TV and movie properties will be 21st Century Fox. The new News Corp., a smaller entity, will be focused on newspapers and publishing. Both will be publicly traded, under separate ticker symbols. … The...

Wyoming rejects plan to buy aircraft carrier in case U.S. fell apart When the zombie apocalypse is upon us, we'll look back on how legislators from the land-locked state of Wyoming were mocked for wanting to buy an aircraft carrier. The carrier was just one part of a so-called "Doomsday Bill," which explored emergency scenarios in the event of the United States collapsing. In addition to suggesting the purchase of an aircraft carrier, the bill called for $15,000 in funding to investigate how Wyoming might acquire airplanes, enact a draft for all branches of the military, obtain and distribute food...

Mark Steyn had a pretty good editorial over on Investors.com on Friday. He agrees on my point that Democrats in Washington are perfectly willing to give up control of Congress if they can get federal health care legislation. Steyn writes…

When someone proposes an initiative ballot measure, the attorney general gives it an official title and summary. There's always been much political angst, as well as legal wrangling, over the wording of controversial issues. . . . When the Legislature places a measure on the ballot, however, it often bypasses the attorney general by specifying the ballot title and even indirectly designating those who write ballot pamphlet arguments. In other words, the Legislature, in league with the governor, tries to fix the election by fixing how measures are portrayed. Cases in point are the six measures that the Legislature and...

NEW YORK, March 14 (Reuters) - Independent power producer Calpine Corp. (CPN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it planned to scrap its anti-takeover poison pill and eliminate the staggered election of its board members. The San Jose, California-based company said its board unanimously agreed to amend its shareholder rights agreement -- the so-called poison pill -- to allow early termination by May 1. Calpine gave no other details on the move and officials at the company were not immediately available for comment. Its board also adopted a resolution to eliminate the classification of its directors, meaning the election of...