Free Republic

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said his sons almost drowned after he had dinner with former President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida last fall, according to a new profile on Johnson by The Atlantic. The Speaker visited Palm Beach, Fla., the week of Thanksgiving for a fundraiser, and he and his sons had dinner with the former president while on the trip, according to The Atlantic. The following day, Johnson’s security detail came into a conference room when he was meeting with donors at a hotel near the beach and told him “Mr. Speaker, we need you right...

The Louisiana legislature is in the process of strengthening the current state preemption law regarding weapons and the right to keep and bear arms. Local governments seeking to push gun control have been clever about finding ways to restrict people’s right to keep and bear arms in ways not foreseen by previous preemption laws. For example, in Iowa, the Dubuque City Council voted to create a zoning ordinance to prohibit otherwise legitimate gun sales. In Montana, the city government of Missoula, dominated by the University of Montana, voted to require government approval of all firearm sales in the city. In...

@_wake_up_USA 🚨BREAKING: House Speaker Mike Johnson moves forward with a $95 billion dollar aid package, including funds for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. $61 Billion for Ukraine $26 Billion for Israel $8 Billion for Taiwan

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who faces ramped-up threats of a motion to vacate, will not have enough Republican votes for a rule to merge separate foreign aid bills for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, meaning he will need to turn to Democrats for help. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) both announced Tuesday morning that they are against the rule. Biggs said he supported Johnson’s initial plan “announced in conference to allow the House to vote on the various aid packages separately. But his since-announced intent to merge them together before sending them to the Senate is...

Parents opted out of vaccines for Louisiana’s kindergartners at the highest rate in at least a decade as several new bills to weaken vaccine requirements continue to advance in the Louisiana Legislature. During the 2022-23 school year, about 2.3% of children entering school requested exemptions, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 0.1% of those were due to medical reasons. That’s around double the year before, when 1.1% of kindergarten students requested nonmedical exemptions. From 2011 to 2017, the average exemption rate was around 0.75%. … “It’s a slippery slope,” said Dr. Mark Kline, physician...

The House is poised to barrel into the debate over foreign aid this week as Johnson looks to put legislation on the floor to assist embattled U.S. allies — a highly anticipated move that has been months in the making. But the parameters of that bill, or package of bills, remain unknown, leaving lawmakers waiting to see how the Speaker approaches the politically prickly topic — especially after Iran attacked Israel over the weekend, as lawmakers sound the alarm about Ukraine’s beleaguered forces, and amid a threat by Greene to bring a motion to vacate against Johnson. The Speaker told...

Spare some pity for Mike Johnson, the stuck speaker of the House of Representatives. A relatively obscure congressman thrust into leadership six months ago when the ungovernable Republican majority threw out the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, Mr Johnson may be defenestrated too if he does something that he seems to think that he must: provide additional military aid to Ukraine, over the objections of the isolationist wing of his party. While the European Union and its member countries have contributed considerably to Ukraine’s budget and humanitarian needs, America has been Ukraine’s largest provider of military aid, amounting to $44bn since...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday he will try to advance wartime aid for Israel this week as he attempts the difficult task of winning House approval for a national security package that also includes funding for Ukraine and allies in Asia. Johnson, R-La., is already under immense political pressure from his fellow GOP lawmakers as he tries to stretch between the Republican Party’s divided support for helping Kyiv defend itself from Moscow’s invasion. The Republican speaker has sat for two months on a $95 billion supplemental package that would send support to the U.S. allies, as...

Caitlin Clark, who is to basketball what Taylor Swift is to pop music and culture, albeit with far more talent, scored 42 points and added 12 assists while leading her Hawkeyes to a 94-87 victory over Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers.

The Louisiana State Senate has passed a senate bill with a unanimous vote. This bill is a bold declaration of state sovereignty, setting the stage for a legal barricade against the overreach of globalist organizations: the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Senate Bill 133, co-authored by Republican state Sens. Valarie Hodges and Thomas A. Pressly, as well as state Rep. Kathy Edmonston, aims to ensure that these international bodies have no jurisdiction or authority within the state’s boundaries. “The World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall have...

Aww: isn't he sweet? Good boy! On Monday's CNN This Morning, CNN's Dana Bash and Kasie Hunt gave Republican Lance Trover a pat on the head for being "evolved" about the supposedly disparate press treatment of male and female sports coaches. The matter arose in the context of a long Washington Post profile of LSU women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey. After noting that the article "details her kind of pugnacious coaching personality," Hunt skeptically wondered: "Would we talk about that with a male coach? I don't know."Republican strategist Lance Trover, who recently toiled for Doug Burgum for President, replied: "I...

Mayor John Whitmire proposing a 5% cut across the board, except for fire and police departments.. Tax hikes and increased fees for parking and city services are likely .. The Mayor of Houston says the city is 'broke' after overspending for decades. Experts say the problem has existed for years, but COVID handouts from the federal government helped mask them. ... A tax hike through a bond is expected in November. ... The city has been struggling to make firefighters whole, from meeting its contractual obligation to their pension, to paying backpay and wage hikes that have been promised years...

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy is inarguably the most witty person in the U.S. Senate. With a folksy quip or quotation always at the ready, Kennedy can effortlessly dismantle an opponent’s argument with his deadpan delivery while keeping the whole room in stitches. And the reason why his delivery hits so well is that he makes sense — the common kind, which has become almost extinct in these woke times. For example, discussing some of his Democratic colleagues who support transgender athletes in women’s sports on Fox News’ “The Story,” Kennedy once said, “One of my Democratic colleague’s witnesses testified that...

The results of the Louisiana Republican primary are in and Trump won the day. Louisiana is a ‘winner takes all’ state, so Trump also won every delegate. Trump won Louisiana in the general elections of 2016 and 2020. Former President Trump, the likely GOP nominee, has won the Louisiana Republican presidential primary, Decision Desk HQ projected. Trump went into the Louisiana primary with 1,636 pledged delegates and won all 47 delegates available Saturday. The state awards its delegates in a “winner-take-all” manner. The former president has already crossed the threshold needed to clinch the party’s nomination, setting up a rematch...

(The Center Square) – Two dozen Republican U.S. senators are pushing back against the Biden administration's plan to increase taxes on the U.S. oil, natural gas and coal industries to the tune of over $110 billion. U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., led a coalition of 24 senators expressing “grave concern regarding the administration's continued hostility towards American energy production.” In a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, they wrote, “America's working families and small businesses are facing immense challenges including high energy prices. At the same time, our allies and partners across the globe are asking for reliable American...

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) gave us another amusing demonstration of his ability to humiliate Joe Biden’s unqualified judicial nominees during Wednesday's confirmation hearing. United States District Judge Nancy Maldonado of the Northern District of Illinois, who has been nominated by Joe Biden for a spot on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, had previously signed a brief supporting a ban on "assault weapons" in Illinois state courts in the 2010s, yet, when he asked her to define "assault weapons,” she couldn’t. “You said, ‘assault weapons may be banned because they’re extraordinarily dangerous and are not appropriate...

Free speech is on trial at the Supreme Court, but Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson is no fan of the First Amendment. The Constitution, you see, limits the government. But leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution. During Monday’s oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri, formerly known as Biden v. Missouri, Jackson claimed to oppose any ruling in favor of Americans’ constitutional right to free speech if it limited the government’s ability to censor that speech via Big Tech. “My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways...

Democrats are no longer coy about their disdain for constitutional freedoms. They used to put on a show, pretending to be champions of free speech and swearing that they didn't want to take our guns. Biden era leftists have abandoned all pretense and now sneer at freedoms that many of us hold dear. After they leveraged COVID panic to help usher Team Biden into the Oval Office.. they got tired of carrying on the fiction. Biden's puppet masters have been flying one freak flag after another .. Ketanji Brown Jackson is Joe Biden's legacy on the court .. a real...

the appeals panel agreed that several federal offices and agencies, including the White House .. violated the First Amendment by coercing the platforms’ content moderation decisions. ... A federal appeals court ... finding that several agencies likely violated the First Amendment. ... The original case was brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who alleged that federal officials unduly pressured social media firms to limit speech on their platforms, as they communicated concerns about posts related to the Covid pandemic or elections. ... The decision had an immediate impact. Following the district court’s order in July, the State...

Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy on Sunday criticized his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, saying that former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about illegal immigrants “reflected poorly” and that he’s spoken about migrants in a “dehumanizing fashion.” Asked about Trump’s recent comments that not all undocumented immigrants are people, Cassidy told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “The president’s rhetoric has reflected poorly ... regarding folks who are coming here illegally — illegally — and they shouldn’t be, but in a dehumanizing fashion. And that’s why again, many people continue to have reservations.” “The best thing going for Donald Trump running for president...