Free Republic

Senate Votes Against Measure to Reinstate Troops Kicked Out over COVID Vaccines By Eric Lendrum December 16, 2022 On Thursday, the United States Senate overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have ordered the Department of Defense (DOD) to reinstate military personnel who had been discharged or otherwise separated from their branch due to refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine. As reported by the Washington Examiner, the measure was defeated with 54 votes against and just 40 votes in favor. The vote precedes the coming vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual bill that funds the DOD. Republicans...

The Senate on Thursday passed the annual defense authorization bill, sending the $858 billion measure to President Biden’s desk for signature just before the year-end deadline. The measure, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 83-11. It provides $45 billion more for defense than called for in Biden’s budget, including allocating $817 billion to the Department of Defense and $30 billion to the Department of Energy. Thursday’s vote caps weeks of wrangling over floor timing and controversial policy changes, such as language demanded by conservative Republicans to end the military’s COVID-19 vaccine...

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday predicted that Democrats will keep holding on to the Senate through the 2024 presidential elections. “I absolutely do, if we stick to our North Star, which is, help people with things that they need help with,” Schumer told NBC News. Democrats fended off the Republicans’ hoped-for “red wave” during this year’s midterms and bucked the historical precedent of a sitting party losing big in the off-year elections. The party kept the Republicans’ takeover of the House to a minimum and then expanded their majority in the Senate, bumping up their upper chamber...

It has now been over a week since I wrote about the abominable border bill that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cosponsored with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Tillis’s motivation for doing this is still a head-scratcher for me. The particulars are in that column, so I won’t rehash them here. This is going to be a broader examination of the pitiful state of congressional Republicans.Immediately after the midterms, I told my colleagues that I truly believe that the GOP has maybe two election cycles to get its you-know-what together before it is relegated to permanent minority party status. That’s the...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that she remains intent on finishing out her term in the Senate and will decide this spring on whether to call it quits in 2024. “Yes. Absolutely,” she told the Los Angeles Times about finishing her term. “There’s still two years, you know. A lot can happen in two years.” Feinstein, 89, is the oldest member of the upper chamber and speculation has run rampant since her 2018 win over when she would retire, with questions mounting in recent years about her mental acuity and fitness to serve. Her latest remarks, health permitting,...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters on Monday that he won’t rule out leaving the Democratic Party, as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) did last week — but he added it won’t be in the near future. “I’ll look at all of these things. I’ve always looked at all those things, but I have no intention of doing anything right now,” Manchin told CNN reporter Manu Raju, before adding: “Whether I do something later, I can’t tell you what the future is going to bring.” The centrist Manchin has been a member of the Democratic caucus since he was elected to...

Indiana Rep. Jim Banks (R) said Monday he is “strongly considering” running for Indiana Sen. Mike Braun’s (R) seat in 2024 after Braun announced he will instead launch a campaign for the state’s governorship. Braun had previously filed paperwork to run in Indiana’s governor’s race and on Monday made a formal announcement at a steakhouse event. “Indiana deserves a proven conservative to continue Senator Braun’s work in the United States Senate,” Banks said in a statement. “I am strongly considering running for the open Indiana Senate seat in 2024, and I will spend the upcoming holidays praying and talking with...

Insider and several other news organizations have identified 76 members of Congress who've recently failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act. Congress passed the law a decade ago to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings....

Kyrsten Sinema has decided to make her unofficial status official, as Beege wrote earlier. The Arizona senator becomes the third independent in the upper chamber, but perhaps the only truly independent figure in the chamber. Both Bernie Sanders and Angus King identify as independent, but have rarely if ever bucked Chuck Schumer’s leadership during their entire tenures — especially to the center, as Sinema has done.That raises another question about the only other member of Schumer’s caucus to follow that same pattern. And that question will only grow more acute for Joe Manchin as his own re-election date approaches. Manchin...

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has announced she has left the Democrats and is registering as an independent senator. Sinema made the announcement Friday morning by publishing an op-ed in the Arizona Republic. The senator blasted the increasingly partisan interests and radicalization of the Democratic Party as the reason for her departure. She suggested that she had felt under pressure to “demonize people” as a member of the Democrats. Sinema continued by explaining that such divisive tactics are causing lawmakers to become “distracted by political drama.” In her op-ed, Sinema explains that she decided to become an independent as her moderate...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Wednesday defended the GOP’s crop of midterm Senate nominees and pushed back on accusations that candidate quality was the reason for their downfall. Scott, who led the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, lamented the party’s losses following Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) victory over Republican Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff on Tuesday. The race handed Democrats a 51-49 majority, marking a net gain for the party in power.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday morning took a victory lap after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won his runoff election, declaring the Supreme Court’s decision striking down abortion rights and the House Jan. 6 hearings were key factors in Democrats expanding their Senate majority. “It is a good morning, a great morning!” Schumer exulted at a press conference Wednesday, pointing out that this year was the first time since 1934 that the president’s party did not lose a single Senate incumbent in a midterm election.

Republican candidate Herschel Walker conceded the Georgia Senate runoff race to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) on Tuesday. “I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials most of all,” he said. “I’m never gonna stop fighting for Georgia.” “There’s no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now, because we put up one heck of a fight,” he continued. Walker made no mention of Warnock in the speech.

Listen to this article 0:00 / 4:18 1X BeyondWords Now that the U.S. Senate run-off in Georgia between Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock is behind us, the final results of the 2022 midterm elections are in. This is an opportune moment to examine what happened at the polls and what we can expect from the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives in the 118th Congress starting in January 2023. With incumbent Raphael Warnock’s victory, Democrats will return to Washington with a 51 to 49 majority in the U.S. Senate. Although Senate Democrats only managed a net pick-up of...

North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema have reportedly reached a framework deal on immigration reform they would like to push through in the lame duck session before Republicans take the House in January. The deal would include a pathway to citizenship for two million Dreamers, or DACA recipients who were brought to the U.S. as children, resources to speed up asylum processing and removal of those who do not qualify, more funding for border officers, and a one-year extension of Title 42 until new processing centers are up and running, according to the Washington Post. The...

The headline is a rhetorical question. Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have come up with the framework for immigration reform. Is it something that can pass in the Senate in the lame duck session before Republicans take back control of the House in January? Nah. But, Senator Sinema can tell her constituents that she fulfilled her promise to make immigration reform her first priority after the midterm elections. There is a time crunch even if there was the support of 50 Democrats, much less 10 Republicans, which is highly unlikely. Any legislation would have to pass in...

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) on Tuesday announced he’ll try for the appointment to replace outgoing Sen. Ben Sasse (R) and represent the state in the U.S. Senate, according to local outlets. “For me, it came down to a single question: How can I best serve the people of Nebraska and advance our conservative values? In Congress, we’re in a fight for the future of our nation, and it’s a fight we have to win. We must cut taxes, strengthen public safety and our national security, and protect our most sacred freedoms,” Ricketts said in a statement shared with The...

Meanwhile, Sens. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) are negotiating on a narrower bill based on a House-passed measure that provided a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented farmworkers. The senators have not yet reached a deal but are hoping to get to one before the end of the lame-duck session this month, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation candidly.

Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose any spending bill that would go on beyond the 117th Congress.After a long effort to pass an omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2023, Democrats were forced to accept a short-term continuing resolution (CR) instead.CRs, while they prevent the government from shutting down, make no changes to long-term federal spending. Rather, they simply continue to spend at levels set the prior fiscal year.Earlier this year, Democrats passed a CR that will fund the government through Dec. 16, at which point the government will shut down if lawmakers have not passed a new spending bill.One...

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to pass a resolution imposing a contract on freight rail workers but rejected a concurrent measure that would give workers seven guaranteed paid sick days. H.J. Resolution 100 passed the Senate by a margin of 80-15, surpassing the 60-vote threshold. The Biden Administration brokered a tentative deal in August between the unions and carriers, but rank-and-file members of four of the twelve unions in the deal rejected it. Paid sick leave for workers was a central hold-up to the deal moving forward.