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Former Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) are joining the board of directors for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a prominent Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on fiscal policy. Maya MacGuineas, the president of the organization, said in a statement on Wednesday that the additions underscore “the committee’s longstanding commitment to fostering bipartisan solutions to our nation’s fiscal decline and working to put forward solutions for America’s elected leaders.” “Both former senators have been staunch advocates for responsible budgeting, but more than that, they have not shied away from working across the aisle to find solutions...

Recognizing that free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it, allow me to offer Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent some insight on his new gig as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau, originally the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was built on the misguided principle that protecting consumers in the financial services arena should be “above politics.” In Washington-speak, that means an entity that’s not accountable to elected politicians — or, by extension, to the people who elected them. That was bad enough. But under the leadership of Barack Obama appointee Richard Cordray, the bureau...

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm dropped nearly $125,000 in taxpayer money on pricey hotels and other expenses during her electric vehicle-boosting summer 2023 road trip — flanked by a gas-guzzling car — while her staff improperly exceeded their daily, federally determined allowances, according to the department’s watchdog. Granholm’s team submitted 42 travel vouchers worth $124,824 for the taxpayer-funded tour — but 36 of the them had lodging costs valued over the government’s per diem rates to the tune of $9,487.50, the watchdog found. Some of the travelers also received higher reimbursement amounts than they were supposed to and several travel reports...

A United Nations watchdog group says the infamous UN relief agency that provides $1.5 billion a year to Palestinians should be disbanded for colluding with terrorists and “enabling crimes against humanity.” “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is neither independent nor neutral,” says a scathing new report by the Swiss-based group UN WATCH. “UNRWA’s senior management not only employs individuals tied to Hamas terrorism but also allows terrorist groups like Hamas to influence and obstruct critical agency decisions and policies. “UNRWA’s failure to maintain neutrality, combined with its susceptibility to influence from terrorist groups, undermines...

A conservative watchdog group is calling a ruling by the Arizona Superior Court of Maricopa County pertaining to a list of noncitizens registered to vote a “huge win.” The court’s ruling said officials in Maricopa County must give America First Legal (AFL) the list of those individuals, Fox News reported on Thursday. AFL filed the lawsuit on behalf of its clients in August against Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer, asserting he failed to remove illegal aliens from the voter roles, according to Breitbart News. The court’s recent order said, “As the Court admonished the parties prior to and during the...

The Republican Party gives Detroit a list of 676 Republican election worker candidates. Detroit hires only 52 off the list.Election officials in Detroit, Michigan need more elephants in the room to get right with the law that calls election workers to equally represent both major parties. Currently, they are hiring mostly Democrats. Poll workers handle ballots and are well-placed to speak up if anything seems out of order. They are an important part of election integrity infrastructure. Many states have laws requiring counties to hire an even mix of election workers to create poll worker parity, with a goal of,...

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is suing election officials in Alameda County, California, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, for refusing to disclose those foreign nationals who are on the voter rolls and have voted in past elections. This month, PILF filed a lawsuit against Alameda County Registrar of Voters Timothy Dupuis, accusing him of violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) when he failed to turn over all records related to foreign nationals voting in the area. “For more than four months, we have been trying to obtain records about foreign nationals getting on the voter roll,” PILF President...

White House spokespeople Karine Jean-Pierre and Andrew Bates violated the Hatch Act when they had been warned against using the word 'MAGA' to describe certain Republicans, a government watchdog agency said on Friday. The independent Office of Special Counsel said the two took actions 'contrary' to official guidance on the law when they slammed 'MAGA' Republicans' budget plan this year. In their letter, first reported by NBC News, the office notes the violations came days after Jean-Pierre was warned she had violated the law intended to prevent federal employees from using their offices to influence elections....

Former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden, who has fashioned a post-government career attacking and censoring conservatives, is spending his Thanksgiving week smearing patriotic American Christians who own firearms, claiming they are “no different” from Hamas terrorists. On Wednesday, Michael Hayden responded to a post on X that juxtaposed two photos: one of a woman holding an American flag, Bible, and handgun; the other of Palestinian terrorist Reem Riyashi, who killed herself along with four Israelis in a 2004 suicide bombing that was claimed by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

X owner Musk came out swinging against the leftist media hall monitor NewsGuard and called for the whole company to be “disbanded immediately.” Musk responded to criticism from WikiPedia co-founder Jimmy Wales who whined in a post Oct. 17 about the X platform allegedly removing “all the core features that made it even remotely possible to tell real journalists from fakes.” Through discussion on the X thread, Foundation For Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz pointed out to Musk that Wales was an advisor to the leftist biased NewsGuard, “which is knee deep in a plot to get gov’ts to...

CNN — The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year, according to a government watchdog group. The surge stems largely from a sharp decline in tax revenues, coupled with an increase in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and interest payments, as well as in other areas. It follows a sharp drop in the budget shortfall in fiscal year 2022 after two years of giant deficits swollen by record government spending on Covid-19 pandemic relief measures.

At a hearing before a House committee on Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog warned lawmakers that the agency's recent surge in funding — part of President Biden's climate policy spending — comes with "a high risk for fraud, waste and abuse." The EPA — whose annual budget for 2023 is just $10 billion — has received roughly $100 billion in new, supplemental funding through two high-dollar pieces of legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The two new laws represent the largest investment in the agency's history. Sean O'Donnell, the EPA inspector general,...

**SNIP** The latest situation earning the ire of watchdogs is Rep. Cori Bush's (D-MO) newly announced marriage to a security guard for her campaign, despite her husband, Cortney Merritts, reportedly not holding a St. Louis private security license. Bush's marriage, which was quietly inked in January, is part of a string of alleged ethics issues for Squad members, which include the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and five other Democrats, watchdogs say. **SNIP** Ocasio-Cortez is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, per a December 2022 government press release. While it's...

The Secret Service has located hundreds of pages of records tied to the investigation of a gun belonging to Hunter Biden – despite having denied they existed, a government watchdog group said Thursday. Judicial Watch is investigating whether the Secret Service intervened on behalf of President Biden’s son after the incident, and it has sued the agency for all materials related to the reported purchase, possession, and disposal of the firearm owned by Hunter Biden. The group has accused the Secret Service of repeatedly changing its position on whether it has any documents related to the investigation. “The Secret Service’s...

It’s 2022. Two years after one of the most hotly contested elections in U.S. history. And elections security “watchdog” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, also known as CISA, is finally admitting what many have known all along: Dominion Voting Systems has serious election security vulnerabilities. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday about CISA issuing an alert about the Dominion voting machines. It is heavily weighted with verbiage meant to spurn anyone who might come to the conclusion that the 2020 election was “stolen.” It is worth citing the AP, nonetheless. “Electronic voting machines from a leading vendor used in at...

An ethics watchdog organization asked the House Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) for allegedly abusing the proxy vote process. Under the House Clerk’s coronavirus policies, members of Congress are allowed to vote by proxy if they are unable to vote in person on the House floor due to the “public health emergency.”

President Biden’s pick to lead a top bank regulator withdrew her nomination Tuesday after blistering attacks from Republicans and concerns among moderate Democrats. Saule Omarova, who Biden nominated to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), pulled herself from consideration in a letter Biden released Tuesday, calling her nomination “untenable.” “As a strong advocate for consumers and a staunch defender of the safety and soundness of our financial system, Saule would have brought invaluable insight and perspective to our important work on behalf of the American people,” Biden said in a statement.

Mobs overwhelmed U.S. Park Police hours before the U.S. Capitol was breached on Jan. 6, according to government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). According to Park Police radio recordings obtained by CREW, officers had been overwhelmed and left with insufficient resources to control crowds along the National Mall. The recordings reveal that Park Police were confronted with one crowd at the Washington Monument the morning of Jan. 6. The officers were told to do their best to hold them back, but the situation was worsening quickly.

An election watchdog has found 21,000 dead individuals still on Pennsylvania voter rolls in the final weeks of the 2020 election. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, says 92 percent of the registrants died more than a year ago. The group also says there is evidence of voting activity after death. The findings were mentioned in an amended lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of State over its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls. The PILF says that as of October 7, 9,212 registrants have been dead for five years, 1,990 registrants for 10 years, and 197 registrants...

President Donald Trump has removed the inspector general who was tapped to chair a special oversight board of the $2.2 trillion economic package intended to help businesses and individuals affected by the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. Glenn Fine, the acting Defense Department inspector general and a veteran watchdog, had been selected by peers last month for the position. Now it’s unclear who will oversee the rescue law. The move threatens to upend the rigorous oversight that Democrats in Congress had demanded of the huge sums of money being pumped into the American economy because of the virus. “The president now...