Free Republic

A lawsuit filed last year by West Virginia's Republican attorney general Patrick Morrisey has resulted in a new Trump administration directive to evaluate the opioid production quota system, which Morrissey says is "responsible for many deaths across the country." Morrisey, who has been attorney general since 2013 and is now running for U.S. Senate, has long viewed the Drug Enforcement Agency's quota system on controlled substances as broken, believing it was setting limits based on sales numbers instead of true medical needs of Americans. He told the Washington Free Beacon he has been digging for information on the system for...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A week ago today, Gov. Jim Justice announced a proposed settlement to West Virginia teachers walkout that barely lasted the evening. Today, Justice received cheers as he signed the bill that will lead to an average 5 percent pay increase for educators. The agreement worked out with legislators also applies an average 5 percent pay increase to other state employees. Schools were expected to open again on Wednesday, bringing to an end a statewide strike that caused classes to be empty for nine days straight. “We have to move away from the idea that education is a...

West Virginians will have the chance to vote on a constitutional amendment that makes it clear that their state does not recognize abortion as a “right.” On Monday, the state House of Delegates passed the proposed constitutional amendment in a 72-25 vote, WVVA News reports. The ballot measure, which does not require the governor’s approval, passed the state Senate in February. West Virginia Senate Joint Resolution 12 will be on the ballot in November. If approved by voters, the following would be added to the state Constitution: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires...

Last week President Trump announced a new 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent hike on aluminum imports. Foreign leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the move "unacceptable" and the European Union threatened to respond to the U.S. with their own tariff. Try it, Trump dared. He'll just add a new tax on European cars.British Prime Minister Theresa May shared her own "deep concerns" with Trump directly in a phone call on Sunday. What he should have done was pursue "multilateral action," May reportedly told the president.At least one person sees where Trump is coming from.Sen....

It turns out it’s tough to give teachers raises when you slash taxes for a decade. Striking teachers and other public employees in West Virginia have shut down schools across the state for more than a week, flooding the capitol in Charleston each day to rebuke their lawmakers. The workers are demanding significant raises to their stagnant pay and a clear plan to curb rising premiums in the state employee health care program.

President Donald Trump embraced Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) gun control bill but rejected Rep. Steve Scalise’s (R-LA) push for national reciprocity during a bipartisan meeting with lawmakers Wednesday afternoon. After listening to Sen Chris Murphy (D-CT), Trump looked at toward the end of the table and asked Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) to detail their gun control bill. The Manchin/Toomey gun control bill is the same universal background check legislation supported by Barack Obama in the wake of the heinous attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School. It the very bill that was defeated in the Democrat-controlled...

BLUEFIELD — Extending the King Coal Highway’s “bridge to nowhere” in Bluefield to the Airport Road area is still on track for next year. Del. Marty Gearheart, R-Mercer County, said the project remains on the Department of Highways six-year plan for a 2019 start. “Dirt should be moved next spring (2019),” he said. “It will be built when it is supposed to. It’s been part of the six-year plan and was not scheduled until next spring.” The bridge, which connects to Rt. 460 and then to Interstate 77, was finished almost 10 years ago but funding for the highway has...

A new interview with Mitch McConnell this week showed the first cracks in the wall of his optimism about the midterms. While not going down a path of gloom and doom, he no longer sounds positive of breaking a long-standing trend of the party in power losing ground in such scenarios. He’s not coming out and saying the GOP’s majorities in both chambers are toast, but he seems to think they’ll be losing seats. (The Hill) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says in a new interview that he expects to see GOP majorities in the House and Senate shrink...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — There will be no public school next Thursday or Friday anywhere in West Virginia. Whether classes resume on Monday remained up in the air. The West Virginia teachers unions and service personnel organizations all agreed to authorize the first ever walkout in all 55 counties of teachers and service personnel. “We’re done. We’re done waiting. We waited and have given them chances and they didn’t want to take it seriously,” said Teacher Christiana Frye of Cabell Midland High School. “Honestly I’m praying two days is enough because some people can’t afford to be out longer than that,...

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — The widening of Interstate 81 from West Virginia into Maryland remains on track to be finished in 2020. "Work is still continuing in the cold," Stephen Bucy said Wednesday. Bucy, an engineer with the Maryland Department of Transportation, reported on the project and other Interstate 81 work Wednesday afternoon during a meeting of the Hagerstown/Eastern Panhandle Metropolitan Planning Organization's Interstate Council in Martinsburg. The current I-81 work is widening the highway from two to three lanes in each direction from about U.S. 11 (Exit 23) in West Virginia across the Potomac River to Md. 63/68 (Exit 1)...

It’s doubtful you can find a more succinct example of TDS than a seemingly inebriated Democrat Senator asking the aggregate intelligence apparatus, during a public session of congress, to give specific details of U.S. covert intelligence efforts to thwart Russian, Chinese and North Korean cyber-warfare. As Democrat Senator Joe Manchin professionally restrained himself from laughing, even Democrat Senator Kamala Harris couldn’t avoid the eye-roll. ‘Muh Russia’ is real. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of armed services committee, began his mid-day sluration with a ‘resist-we-much‘ effort to continue the vast White House Russian conspiracy narrative, and slowly morphed into a...

Lissa Lucas, a candidate in this year’s Democratic primary for West Virginia delegates, was escorted out of the Charleston state house because she read a list of House members and how much they pocketed from oil and gas companies. Newsweek reported that the meeting was about a proposal, the Co-Tenancy and Majority Protection Act, or H.B. 4268, that would allow these companies to drill on “minority mineral owners’ land without their consent.” The report said that some landowners worry that the bill will allow these companies to drill on their properties for the minerals located below. The West Virginia Oil...

WEIRTON, W.Va. — A fired Weirton police officer is getting $175,000 from the Hancock County city as part of a settlement agreement which includes other relief and brings to an end a lawsuit filed in May 2017 challenging his termination. Timothy O’Brien and the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia sued Weirton for wrongful termination, due process violations and reputation damage on behalf of former Weirton Officer Stephen Mader. Mader claimed he was fired because he did not shoot a black man with a gun on the night of May 6, 2016 when, as a probationary officer, Mader was...

A West Virginia bill that would end taxpayer funding for abortions in the state is slated for a public hearing Monday in the state House. West Virginia is one of 17 states that funds elective abortions for low-income women through Medicaid. State House Bill 4012 would end taxpayer funding for abortions except when medically necessary to save the mother’s life, the AP reports. Since 1977, state taxpayers have been forced to pay millions of dollars for tens of thousands unborn babies’ abortion deaths, according to West Virginians for Life. “The federal government limits tax funding of abortions to cases of...

A Republican congressman says the U.S. government should significantly raise the gas tax in order to fund President Donald Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan. Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania told Bloomberg TV that the tax should be increased by 15 cents per gallon of gasoline. The current rate is 18.4 cents, and hasn't seen a hike since 1993. Shuster said Thursday at a Republican congressional retreat in West Virginia that for the average American, a 15-cent increase would equal the cost of 'a cup of coffee a week that they might have to forgo.' 'Or if you're a Starbucks person, half...

Hundreds of West Virginia teachers held walk-outs and protested at the state Capitol on Friday over low wages and proposed rules that eliminate teacher seniority. Schools in Logan, Mingo and Wyoming counties closed for Friday over the teacher shortage as many were expected to protest in Charleston, according to The Charleston Gazette-Mail. Several more counties are expected to follow suit. In solidarity with the protests, other teachers in Kanawha and Berkeley counties staged a "walk-in," standing outside of their schools with signs supporting public education for about one hour before starting the workday.  ADVERTISEMENT The West Virginia state Senate is expected to take a vote...

President Trump is expected to approve the release of a classified memo spearheaded by the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. According to a Thursday afternoon pool report, a White House official confirmed upon arrival to West Virginia that the president "has read the memo." Trump will declassify the controversial four-page memo that reportedly details surveillance abuses by the Department of Justice and FBI, and send it back to House Intelligence for a Friday morning release.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — President Trump on Thursday likened House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s calling the recent tax law-related bonuses “crumbs” to Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorable” comments from the 2016 campaign. “That could be like ‘deplorable,’ ” Mr. Trump said of Mrs. Pelosi’s comments. “Those two words — they seem to have a resemblance. I hope it has the same meaning.”

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — President Trump tried to fire up congressional Republicans at the Greenbrier resort here Thursday, using a lunchtime speech at the GOP’s annual policy retreat to tout their accomplishments in 2017 and spur them to action in what could be a tough election year. “Working together, we’ve accomplished extraordinary things for the American over the last year, and I really believe this is just the beginning,” the president said. “You folks have done well,” he told Republican leaders gathered onstage. “We’re now in battle together.”

CROZET, Va. (AP) — In a story Jan. 31 about a fatal train crash carrying dozens of Republican members of Congress, The Associated Press, relying on information from a congressman at the scene, misidentified who was killed in the pickup truck. It was a passenger who died, not the driver. A corrected version of the story is below: Train carrying GOP lawmakers strikes trash truck; 1 killed A train carrying dozens of Republican members of Congress to a policy retreat has slammed into a garbage truck in rural Virginia By ALAN FRAM and HEIDI BROWN Associated Press CROZET, Va. (AP)...