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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that President Donald Trump’s budget bill will not pass because it has a “grotesque” level of spending. Johnson said, “The president and Senate leadership has to understand that we’re serious. They all say, ‘Oh, we can pressure these guys.’ No, you can’t. Again we’re we’re being very respectful. You know, I ran 2010 as part of the Tea Party Movement. We were mortgaging children’s future. We were $14 trillion in debt then now we’re over $37 trillion. We’re serious about this. They need to take us seriously. Don’t insult us....

Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bump stock ban late last week and the legislation also allows local municipalities to ban the carry of firearms in buildings where public meetings are held. A bump stock ban once existed at the federal level but the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on June 14, 2024. In the majority opinion for the bump stock decision, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the ban faltered in claiming bump stocks turn semiautomatic firearms into machine guns: Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case...

President Donald Trump is proposing staggering spending cuts. In his budget request for fiscal year 2026, the president demands that Congress slash an eye-popping 20% of spending which lawmakers allocate each year. "You're going to see $150 billion (in cuts) passed in the House and the Senate. That is real money," said Budget Director Russ Vought on Fox News. "I think for the first time, this budget is not dead on arrival." To be clear, the budget which Mr. Trump sent to Capitol Hill is aspirational. All presidential budgets are. It’s what a president proposes that lawmakers – and his...

President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed the Senate-passed budget resolution, saying it will help advance the “one, big, beautiful bill” to cut taxes and secure the border. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night, calling on the House — and by extension, every House Republican — to vote to pass the Senate-passed budget resolution: The Budget Plan just passed by the United States Senate has my Complete and Total Endorsement and Support. All of the elements we need to secure the Border, enact Historic Spending Cuts, and make Tax Cuts PERMANENT, and much more, are strongly covered and represented...

President Donald Trump has called for Congress to produce “One Big Beautiful Bill” and pass his legislative agenda. Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday to push the House and Senate to bundle “all of our priorities” into a single piece of legislation. The bill would be passed through the reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to bypass the critical 60-vote threshold for a simple majority vote instead. The House has shown an inclination toward a single full agenda-encompassing bill, while Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham introduced a budget resolution on border security and energy. This legislation notably omits...

Musk’s SpaceX team visiting key FAA command center — despite past frictions Multiple sources reporting. Placeholder discussion for FR blog

Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that after last week’s budget battle, it would be difficult for Republicans to pass President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. Co-host Dana Bash said, “We’ve heard Democrats touting what ended up happening in the early wee hours of yesterday morning as a victory over Donald Trump. But in the end, the bill that you all voted for didn’t include a lot of Democratic priorities that were initially in the deal with Speaker Johnson. So what does that portend about what’s going to come up? I mean, this fight is going...

House Republicans have reached an agreement on a pathway to stave off a looming government shutdown — and President-elect Donald Trump is calling on all members of the conference to pass it as soon as Thursday night. The new funding deal would keep the government’s lights on for three months, re-up farm aid, add a two-year suspension of the debt limit until Jan. 30, 2027, and replenish disaster relief, while cutting out other aspects of a prior deal that went up in flames on Wednesday, according to the 116-page bill’s text. “Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to...

Two bills making it easier to tap the Earth’s heat for on-demand clean power have passed the House. The CLEAN Act and HEATS Act remove many of the federal permitting regulations currently necessary to drill for geothermal power plants, which produce electricity by drawing on the boiling-hot rock miles below the earth’s surface. As House energy bills go, the measures were notably bipartisan. All Republicans voted for them, with 18 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with the GOP on the HEATS Act, and 31 on the CLEAN Act. If they make it through the Senate, the CLEAN Act and...

Voters in Washington State have approved a referendum known as Initiative 2066, which would block state and local authorities from limiting access to natural gas stoves and appliances, which environmental groups have tried to do. The Seattle Times reported: Washington voters approved Initiative 2066, a measure that explicitly protects access to natural gas in Washington, and also weakens building codes that make it more difficult and costly to add natural gas heating in new construction. The initiative marks a moment when the state, long known for its progressive climate policies, has taken a step in the other direction. It throws...

Sunday, June 16, 2002 The Associated Press State & Local Wire Principal Frances Gupton, Jacksonville, FL, and Kevin Twomey, president of the Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co -- Do business leaders belong in public schools? This principal now says: YES! School-business program aimed at raising grades By Ron Word Principal Frances Gupton stopped celebrating her school's high marks on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests to fire off an e-mail to a businessman who helped her inner city school make an academic U-turn. The message was for Kevin Twomey, president of the Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co., who had volunteered as a...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday morning announced an agreement to advance the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill before Christmas weekend. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Democrats have been working to pass the omnibus bill before a self-imposed deadline of Thursday to avoid a shutdown at midnight on Friday. But negotiations become sticky after Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) Title 42 amendment threw a wrench in the Senate process. As a result, many critics of the deal were hopeful Congress would be forced to pass a short-term spending resolution (CR) to keep the government open, pending a continued standoff between...

Three people were killed during an off-roading tour of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains when their Jeep plunged over a cliff on Monday... Arizona tourists Diana Robles, 28, Ofelia Figueroa-Perez, 60, and hired driver Don Fehd, 72, were all killed when their 2022 Jeep Gladiator drifted off the edge of Ouray County Road 361 and landed hundreds of feet below... The vehicle first fell 100 feet to the bottom of a cliff... It then rolled about 140 feet down a rocky embankment, ejecting Fehd... ... Before the crash, Robles, a Yuma nurse, had reportedly just snapped a picture of the iconic...

Some of fast food’s splashiest plant-based chicken rollouts have seriously impressed us in the past. First, there was the debut of Impossible Chicken Nuggets in 2021, a product that managed to capture the brothy flavor of real cooked poultry and deliver both crunch and chew without tasting springy or spongy. (Burger King tested these nuggets at various locations last fall.) Then, KFC released Beyond Fried Chicken in January 2022; these were essentially nuggets as well, and tasted “pretty spectacular,” according to our taste test. Both of these, however, were small-format chick’n products. The Impossible Original Chick’n Sandwich at Burger King...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gn_alAgOCo

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted Wednesday that both chambers of Congress will pass the $2 trillion expansion of social benefits and climate programs — a massive package at the heart of President Biden's domestic agenda — before Christmas. "We feel very confident about what is in Build Back Better," she told reporters in the Capitol. "We know what some possibilities are, and it would be my hope that we would have this bill done before the Christmas vacation." That same bullish timetable is also being trumpeted across the Capitol by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is scrambling to...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Tuesday he hopes the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill will pass the House by the end of this week. “I would like to hope it passes Wednesday evening,” Manchin said, and noted to reporters President Biden needs a win with New Jersey and Virginia holding gubernatorial elections this coming Tuesday. “By the end of the week,” Manchin said as a last resort.

Protests have erupted across Italy with thousands taking to the streets against the mandatory Green Pass which came into force today for all workers. Police were out in force, schools closed early and embassies issued warnings of possible violence after ugly scenes at the protests in Rome over the weekend. Workers blocked ports as they refused to follow the new rules which require them to show proof of vaccination, a recent negative test or of having recovered from Covid-19 in the past six months. Implementation of the new requirement varies. Electronic scanners that can read mobile phone QR codes with...

While speaking with the Riders Alliance on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) discussed the timing of passing the next round of coronavirus relief, the American Relief Act, and said that “we’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month-and-a-half.” Schumer said, [relevant remarks begin around 20:00] “[I]n the new bill, which President Biden has put together with my help, there are lots of other — there’s more money for transit and other things. It’s called the American Relief Act, and we’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month-and-a-half.”

The coronavirus pandemic has spread to the upper echelons of Hollywood and professional sports, with icons Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson among those infected by the disease. The virus, COVID-19, has infected more than 180,000 worldwide and has killed more than 7,000, according to recent media reports. In the US, more than 4,400 Americans have contracted the virus and 77 have died.