Free Republic

The House has a narrow (currently a 220-213 Republican majority that should be finalized at 222-213), and this slim majority has given the Republicans a unique opportunity to beclown themselves and sow doubt as to their ability to organize something as simple as a two-car funeral. The problem facing the new House majority is the same one that confronted Nancy Pelosi in the outgoing Congress. It takes 218 votes to pass a bill. If five Republicans defect, the bill goes nowhere unless the GOP starts corralling Democrat votes. Passing a bill with opposing party votes because you can’t get your...

Washington — The House Ways & Means Committee now has access to several years of former President Donald Trump's tax records, days after the Supreme Court declined to block their release. The Treasury Department said in a brief statement that it has "complied with last week's court decision." ... ...The dispute between Trump and the Ways and Means Committee arose from an April 2019 request from Chairman Richard Neal to the Internal Revenue Service for Trump's individual tax records and those of eight of his business entities for 2013 to 2018.... ...After the change in presidential administrations, and with the...

House Democrats just picked a successor for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has decided to give up the gavel at the end of this term. Their choice is Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), a progressive. On the surface, this choice makes sense. However, in one key way, going with Jeffries makes hypocrites out of the Democratic establishment. Why? Well, Democrats have rightly lambasted former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. They have decried, albeit often painting with far too broad a brush, Republicans as the party of “election deniers” and made the GOP out to...

Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, and Mike Braun are warning Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell against greenlighting Democrats’ massive omnibus spending bill before the newly elected, GOP-controlled House of Representatives is officially sworn in.The coalition of senators sent a letter on Wednesday urging the GOP head to ignore pleas to extend the government’s funding beyond when the new Congress takes office to encompass the entire 2023 fiscal year, including increased spending on Ukraine.“We must not accept anything other than a short-term Continuing Resolution that funds the federal government until shortly after the 118th Congress is sworn in,” the...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that congressional leadership is in “widespread agreement” that the lame-duck session of Congress should pass an omnibus spending bill. On Tuesday, McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy met with President Joe Biden and discussed legislative priorities for the remainder of the year. “We’re going to work together, to fund, I hope, work together to fund the government, COVID, and war in Ukraine,” Biden said. “All controversial and consequential issues.”

President Joe Biden risks alienating some of his strongest supporters as the White House and congressional leaders look to avert a devastating rail strike before the holidays. Biden, who often calls himself the most pro-union president in history, is now working to prevent a rail strike by using century-old legislation to end negotiations on terms multiple rail unions have rejected. “As a proud pro-labor president, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement,” Biden said in a statement. “But in this case, where the economic impact of a shutdown would...

President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to pass legislation to reach an agreement between railroad workers and management after he failed to reach an agreement. “I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators – without any modifications or delay – to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown,” Biden wrote in a statement issued by the White House. Biden admitted in the statement his advisors and cabinet officials believed there was “no path to resolve the dispute at the bargaining table,” despite his and his administration’s best efforts.

President Biden on Monday called on Congress to pass legislation to avert a rail shutdown before Dec. 9, warning of major disruptions to the U.S. economy if lawmakers don’t act. He said Congress should pass a bill “immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators — without any modifications or delay — to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown.” Biden’s plea to Congress comes amid an ongoing labor standoff that could shut down crucial shipments of food and fuel. The tentative Biden-backed agreement in September was approved by labor and management negotiators, but not every rail...

Congress can end the war in Ukraine and win a Nobel Peace Prize by enacting a statute withdrawing the United States from NATO — transforming it from a mighty offensive oak into a tiny acorn unalarming to Russia. As early as 1798, Congress nullified a defense treaty with France by statute. A congressional end to United States participation in NATO would be no constitutional novelty. At the very latest, NATO became obsolete in 1991 when its raison d’etre — the Soviet Empire — dissolved. By remaining in NATO and spearheading its expansion to Russia’s borders with 30 members, the United...

The Securities and Exchange Commission was seeking information from collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX earlier this year, the Prospect has confirmed, bringing a new perspective to an effort by a bipartisan group of congressmembers to slow down that investigation. The March letter from eight House members—four Democrats and four Republicans—questioned the SEC’s authority to make informal inquiries to crypto and blockchain companies, and intimated that the requests violated federal law. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), whom the Republican caucus just elected as majority whip, the number three position in the House GOP leadership, led the letter. In a contemporaneous Twitter thread, Emmer...

MOSCOW, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Russia's parliament approved on Thursday a bill that widens a prohibition of "LGBT propaganda" and restricts the "demonstration" of LGBT behaviour, making any expression of an LGBT lifestyle almost impossible. Under the new law, which still needs the approval of the upper house of parliament and President Vladimir Putin, any action or information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality - whether in public, online, or in films, books or advertising - could incur a heavy fine. Previously, the law had outlawed only promotion of LGBT lifestyles aimed at children. The new bill also...

New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman has a knack for propping up President Joe Biden's atrocious economy at the expense of making himself look foolish. Krugman belched up another word salad worth 846 words with a blaring headline: “How Democrats Can Fight This G.O.P.” After haranguing Republicans for supposedly not having “policy ideas,” Krugman bleated that a GOP-controlled House of Representatives with a narrow majority will be more “destructive” in part because the “economic environment, which was a headwind for Democrats this year, will probably (although obviously not certainly) begin to look better heading into 2024.” Inflation, praised Krugman,...

Now that the Republicans have a slim majority in the House, they need to use all the powers available to them to slow down the Dems’ abuse of power and assault on the Constitution. This means both now and next term, no “bipartisanship,” no preemptive cringes to ward off media attacks, and no “negotiations,” over raising the debt ceiling, for example, that don’t get some substantive concessions for pruning back the Democrats’ fiscal excesses. Come January, the most obvious actions are House committee hearings and investigations. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with Jim Jordan (Ohio), James Comer (Ky), and other...

As Republicans make plans for taking control of the House of Representatives in January, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are warning that Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who won the GOP’s nomination for Speaker of the House last week, may not actually have enough votes to earn him the Speaker’s gavel.Just because he won the Republican nomination doesn’t mean Kevin McCarthy automatically becomes Speaker; he essentially needs the backing of every GOP House member when the entire chamber votes early next year. Here are the numbers:219: The projected number of seats that Republicans will hold in the new Congress.218: The...

"We’ve all heard of people being cancelled, thrown off social media, even fired from jobs … But how many years before a Christian minister [who speaks] on marriage and sexual orientation is reported [to] a government anti-terrorism program?"For Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall, that time has already come. The chaplain of a Church of England School was suspended, fired for gross misconduct, and reported to child protective services simply for restating what the Church of England believes. If his story sounds like a distant outlier, it’s not. Randall’s nightmare will be every Christian’s nightmare if our Senate passes the Respect for...

Republicans have secured a U.S. House majority, barely. Barely is better than not at all. But a slim margin will pose daunting challenges to Republicans, who will be led by Kevin McCarthy. The Californian will win the speaker’s gavel with the full backing of his conference. He’ll notch a win because the stakes are enormous. Even, finally, tough-nosed conservative Matt Gaetz knows this. McCarthy wins because he’ll cut a deal with Freedom Caucus members who backed Arizona’s Andy Biggs for speaker. Biggs won 31 votes to McCarthy’s 188. Biggs was trounced but really not, because those 31 votes loom large....

Now that Republicans have officially captured majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and will soon assume control of powerful House committees with subpoena power, there’s much work to be done.Given the party deadlock that will likely prevent any significant legislative accomplishments, Republicans are expected to launch a series of investigations that could eventually lead to impeachment proceedings, but not necessarily against President Joe Biden, USA Today reported.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas would likely be at the top of the list for potential impeachment targets since Republicans will probably focus heavily on the crisis at the southern...

What in the world … ?Apparently, to use Dave Wasserman‘s phrase, Adam Frisch has seen enough — even though the state of Colorado by statute has not. While his challenge to Lauren Boebert for the CO-3 race will have to undergo a mandatory recount, Frisch has decided to throw in the towel. He conceded to Boebert a few minutes ago:“The voters have spoken and while we showed great progress, I remain down by a few hundred votes. This small margin triggers an automatic recount in Colorado’s election system. This recount is what Colorado voters have asked for in order to...

WASHINGTON — Republicans managed to make their victory in the House seem like a loss by underperforming so badly. But while they did not win control by anywhere near the margin that they anticipated, they did win. And in the House, even the barest majority can work its will if it can hold together to produce 218 votes. The main question going forward is whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who was nominated Tuesday to lead the new Republican majority, can achieve the unity necessary to perform fundamental tasks such as funding the government, or whether unyielding far-right members will...

More than four months before voters handed Republicans control of the House of Representatives, top White House and Department of Homeland Security officials huddled in the Roosevelt Room to prepare for that very scenario. .... ...White House officials believe Republicans are bound to overstep and that their investigative overreach will backfire with the American public. In the meantime, they are prepared to push back forcefully...