With the Iowa Caucuses 39 days away, the final four Republican presidential aspirants vying for second place behind the absent yet dominant former President Donald Trump took the stage at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa for the fourth time this year to make their case to voters. The wide-ranging and often combative exchanges between […]

With the Iowa Caucuses 39 days away, the final four Republican presidential aspirants vying for second place behind the absent yet dominant former President Donald took the stage at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa for the fourth time this year to make their case to voters. The wide-ranging and often combative exchanges between Florida […]

The Iowa Caucuses are 61 days away but the 2024 Election Cycle begins today. Americans nationwide head to the polls on Nov. 7 for municipal and school board contests. In addition, those in New Jersey, Mississippi, and Virginia are electing state lawmakers and those in Kentucky and Mississippi are casting ballots in gubernatorial elections. Also […]

KISSIMMEE, Florida—The $14.3 billion emergency assistance bill adopted by the Republican-led House in a near-partisan Nov. 3 vote is dead on arrival in the Senate, while the Democrat-majority Senate’s proposed $106 billion supplemental funding package, which includes the Israeli aid measure, is a non-starter in the House. Who blinks first will be a sub-current theme […]

The House has adopted a $25.4 billion Interior-Environmental appropriations package that trims more than 35 percent from this year’s budget, including nearly 40 percent from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding, in a partisan Nov. 3 floor vote. With the 213-203 adoption of HR 4821, the proposed Department of the Interior (DOI) FY24 spending plan, the […]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have qualified for the third Republican presidential debate, set for Nov. 8 in Miami. On the outside looking in as of Nov. 2, four days before the Republican National Committee’s (RNC’s) […]

The House in a partisan Nov. 1 vote advanced a $5.3 billion Legislative Branch appropriations measure that cuts spending for Congressional operations by more than $1.5 billion from this year’s budget. With the adoption of HR 4364, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, the House has now approved six of the 12 appropriations packages that constitute […]

GOP Attorney General snares 52-percent of tally in 14-candidate field, avoiding run-off to win succession of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The House is scheduled on Sept. 26 to stage another procedural vote on allowing budget bills to be debated individually on the floor when it convenes to consider four Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) appropriations packages less than four days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. The House Rules Committee advanced the four budget […]

While the United Nations was convening its 78th General Assembly on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with an address from President Joe Biden on Sept. 19, another forum was gathered in Midtown’s St. Regis Hotel. That group noted that in the year since the international body concluded that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be engaging […]

It’s a fine litigative line: Gerrymandering by a majority party for political purposes is legal because elections have consequences. But if the consequences of gerrymandering predetermine election results by diluting the voting efficacy of racial minorities, then it is illegal. Defining when “racial gerrymandering” is constitutional and when it is not is a nub of […]

DES MOINES, Iowa—President Joe Biden garnered more than 60 percent of ballots cast by under-30 voters in 2020 while former President Donald Trump mustered less than 36 percent, according to Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life. That glaring gap, boosted by surging turnout—50 percent of Americans between 18–29 years old voted in 2020, an […]

DES MOINES, Iowa—Even “Iowa nice” has an edge these days, but former Vice President Mike Pence, raised in Indiana, knows that Midwest decorum calls for direct, plain-spoken responses to questions, including those that draw hisses and hoots. Why, asked a man in a Boston Red Sox cap, didn’t the vice president “do his duty to […]

The U.S. Senate has adopted a proposed fiscal year (FY) 2024 $866.3 billion defense budget that does not include the “culture war” amendments the House installed in its version of the massive appropriations package, setting up a chamber clash in the coming weeks that could imperil the “must-pass” bill’s approval before the new fiscal year […]

The U.S. Senate on July 25 overwhelmingly adopted two amendments to the proposed defense budget that would require American tech companies to notify the Treasury Department of any dealings with China-based companies and to prevent entities and individuals from four nations, including China, from acquiring agricultural land anywhere in the country. The “Protection of Covered […]

House conservatives are bundling the nation’s defense budget with “culture war” amendments they say are needed to reverse the Biden administration’s “woke” politicization of the military through “radical race theories” instituted in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. In the span of 10 hours on July 13, the Republican-led House repealed the Department of Defense’s […]

A day after he called NATO leaders “absurd” for failing to clarify a timeline for Ukraine’s long-deliberated entry into the 32-nation alliance, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was far more upbeat on July 12 as NATO’s two-day summit in Lithuania neared its conclusion. He may not have secured the big win—advancing Ukraine’s stalled 2008 request to […]

While defined as “dual purpose,” the “hundreds of thousands” of cluster munitions the United States is sending to Ukraine have one but function: Annihilate everything within its 7.5-acre blast spread. Used since at least World War II because of their low-tech efficiency and flexibility—and now banned by 123 countries—they can be launched from aircraft, drones, […]

Only days after adopting a proposed $886 billion Fiscal Year 2024 defense budget focused on countering China’s growing military threat in the Western Pacific, key House Armed Services Committee members are returning to the United States after completing three days of unannounced conferencing with officials in Guam, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Committee chair Rep. Mike […]

Conservatives waged a 50-year battle to overturn Roe v. Wade, but when the U.S. Supreme Court gave them that long-sought victory in its Dobbs ruling last summer, the dog that caught the car lost its nose for the chase. In that vacuum, six-of-six pro-life ballot measures failed, and Democrats blunted an anticipated “red wave” in […]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is shadowboxing while former President Donald Trump is going in for the knock-out punch even before the fight officially begins. The contrasting styles of the leading contenders in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race were evident in speeches on successive nights before the 2023 North Carolina Republican Convention. While DeSantis alluded […]

PELLA, Iowa—If President Joe Biden is reelected, Democrats will “pack” the Supreme Court, eliminate the Electoral College, and make the District of Columbia a state, ensuring their party has two reliable additions to the U.S. Senate, Florida Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis warned during a May 31 campaign speech. Republicans “are not going […]

CLIVE, Iowa—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said May 30 in the first formal stump speech of his 2024 presidential campaign in Iowa that former President Donald Trump has “moved left” on federal spending, abortion, and crime, gives only lip service to the “America First” policies that he failed to implement when in office, and cannot win […]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not say he was running for president but he sure sounded like a man with plans beyond the Sunshine State during a Monday night address to the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention. “Get ready. Put on the full armor of God,” DeSantis said in closing a 30-minute speech, paused 25 […]

The 70-year-old alliance between the United States and South Korea preserved a frail peace that allowed a new nation founded on the principles of free-market democracy to prosper, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said in an address to Congress. And now, in a “decisive moment” in history, South Korea will use its economic prowess […]

PALM BEACH, Fla.—Former President Donald Trump warned that the United States had sunk to the level of the “old Soviet Union” during a speech given from the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on April 4, hours after pleading not guilty to felony charges brought New York prosecutors. “I never thought anything like […]

NEW YORK—Donald Trump, former president and frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, pleaded not guilty in New York on April 4 to an unprecedented indictment brought by the Manhattan district attorney. News of the historic indictment on March 30 set off several days of media mania which culminated on April 4 in coverage […]

Any federal department head with a $60.4 billion annual spending request is going to see fiscal hawks on Congressional panels flash their budget-cutting knives in appropriations hearings. But when it comes to embattled United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—literally, the face of President Joe Biden’s much-maligned border and immigration policies—House Republicans […]

ORLANDO, Fla.—The 500-acre Ritz Carlton Grande Lakes, with its 580-plus luxury rooms, Greg Norman-designed golf course, and waterpark, is figuratively if not geographically a million miles away from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach or New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan office. With events in both locations dominating the news, more than 150 House Republicans […]

President Joe Biden’s $886.3 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) defense budget request includes $842 billion for the Pentagon, a $26 billion, or 3.2 percent, increase over this year’s military spending plan with the “growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” again named the nation’s most pressing “pacing challenge.” Both Deputy Defense […]

President Joe Biden’s surprise six-hour visit to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 20 was planned by the White House for months but wasn’t “a go” until Feb. 17, administration officials told journalists during a phone conference after Biden left the embattled nation without disclosing when and how he did so. […]

When President Joe Biden openly advocates for phasing-out oil and gas as primary energy generators in the United States within a decade, what appears as a news scroll blip for most Americans is a clap of thunder across the rolling West Texas sage of the Permian Basin. “The messages, virtue signaling, and rhetoric that have […]

A 25-year United States Border Patrol agent and a Texas Sheriff told Congressional lawmakers that Mexican cartels are pushing illegal immigrants across the border in orchestrated surges to distract law enforcement from drug-smuggling operations targeting other sections of the border, contributing to the corresponding wave of deaths related to fentanyl poisoning. “Each and every day […]

It is standard procedure for committees at the start of a new Congressional session to outline their goals for the next two years, especially when a chamber is under new management. With Republicans assuming control of the United States House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, the newly installed GOP leadership has been doing just […]

Among reasons why Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was selected to deliver the Republican rebuttal to Democrat President Joe Biden’s Feb. 7 State of the Union address was because at 40, she’s the nation’s youngest governor while at 80, Biden’s the oldest president in the history of the United States. But Sanders in her combative […]

With state legislatures entering their third sessions since the 2020 pandemic pumped trillions in federal recovery and stimulus assistance into state and local government coffers, tax reform across a range of levies is among front-burner priorities for lawmakers in 2023. During 2022 sessions, Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation reports at least 38 states adopted “noteworthy tax […]

Rep. Brian Seitz (R-Branson) will enter his third session when the Missouri General Assembly convenes in Springfield on Jan. 4 and, for the third time, he is sponsoring a bill that would require state lawmakers to scrutinize and, potentially disregard, some presidential executive orders. Under his proposed House Bill 174, the Missouri House must review […]

California agencies approved more than 8,000 no-bid contracts with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and many have since been “auto-renewed” with little or no oversight under the state’s public health emergency declaration, which has been in effect for nearly three years. The no-bid contracts, awarded mostly by the California Department of Public […]

Apple Inc.’s Twitter account remains online and CEO Tim Cook continues to post on his Twitter account, quelling speculation that the tech giant will remove the platform from its App Store, which would dramatically restrict iPhone access to the site. Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, who leads Apple’s App Store and Apple Events, deactivated his Twitter […]

Republicans’ projected “Red Wave” was reduced to a ripple in congressional contests and subsumed by a blue undertow in state elections with Democrats winning most key gubernatorial races and gaining control of four state legislative bodies nationwide in the Nov. 8 midterm elections. Before noon on Nov. 14, the GOP held a 212-204 lead in […]

Missouri and Maryland voters on Nov. 8 adopted ballot measures allowing adult-use marijuana, boosting the number of states where recreational weed is legal for those over 21. Midterm voters in Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota, meanwhile, rejected proposals to legalize recreational marijuana use by those 21-and-over, marking what is believed to be the first […]

LAS VEGAS—By late morning the day after Election Day, about a quarter of ballots cast in Nevada’s midterm elections remained untallied, leaving results in five key races undetermined. Toss-up races for the U.S. Senate, three House seats, and the governor’s office are still too close to call, with elections officials warning that it could take […]

LAS VEGAS—Tossup races for the U.S. Senate, three House seats, and the governor’s office are too close to call in Nevada, especially after the state’s two largest counties stopped counting ballots a half-hour after polls closed on Nov. 8. In Clark County, where 70 percent of Nevadans live in and around Las Vegas, and in […]

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will return to Washington after decisively turning back Democrat challenger Rep. Val Demings’ (D-Fla.) bid for an upset in their U.S. Senate race. According to a projection by Decision Desk HQ, Rubio garnered 56.4 percent, 3.7 million votes, to Demings’s 42.5 percent, 2.8 million, with 86 percent of the votes counted as […]

More than 120 million Americans are expected to cast ballots in the 2022 midterm elections before Election Day polls close on Nov. 8. When the smoke clears Nov. 9—and, in some places with close races, in the days after—what is likely to emerge is a reshaped legislative playing field in Washington and in state capitals […]

There are 435 U.S. House and 34 U.S. Senate seats on midterm referendums nationwide, with voters also set to elect 36 governors. But these contests will only be seen by people in most states when they go to the polls on Nov. 8. Also on tap will be 133 ballot measures in 37 states and […]

If reelected on Nov. 8, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’ll fix Florida’s property insurance crisis, make teacher salary hikes a permanent component of the education budget, eliminate sales taxes on “baby items” and pet food, and lobby lawmakers to amend a state statute that requires death sentences for convicted murders be handed down only […]

Ballot measures related to abortion, marijuana, and slavery are among a diverse array of issues that voters in 37 states will decide at the polls this fall. Taxes, infrastructure bonds, crime, minimum wage, elections, and the structure of state governments are also among common themes on Nov. 8 ballots nationwide. An expected flurry of measures […]

Nevada Republican Adam Laxalt is challenging incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in one of the nation’s most pivotal—and expensive—tossup showdowns of the 2022 midterms. At stake on Nov. 8 in the Laxalt-Cortez Masto contest, according to an array of analyses and projections, is control of the now-split U.S. Senate in 2023.  Both campaigns have […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The FBI paid the primary source of the notorious debunked Steele dossier nearly $220,000 between March 2017 and October 2020 to be a “confidential human source” for the bureau. And Russian business analyst Igor Danchenko was worth every penny of it, FBI special agent Kevin Helson said during the third day of testimony on Oct. […]

LAKELAND, Fla.—A Trumpian firebrand, a former Florida secretary of state, and an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran running in his first election are among Republicans advancing to likely victories in November elections for open seats in three central Florida congressional districts. Air Force veteran Anna Paulina Luna, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, edged two challengers to […]

CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Three-term Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Aug. 16 became the eighth of 10 Republicans who voted for Donald Trump’s impeachment to either retire or be defeated by party rivals endorsed by the former president. Cheney, one of Trump’s most vociferous critics, was defeated in Wyoming’s Aug. 16 Republican primary for the state’s lone congressional […]

CHEYENNE, Wyo.—When former President Donald Trump announced in September 2021 that he was supporting Harriet Hageman in challenging Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in the Aug. 16, 2022 Republican primary for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat, the three-term incumbent defiantly shot back: “Bring it.” Cheney fell into disfavor with the Republican party and her constituents—70 percent of […]

CASPER, Wyo.—Aug. 16, 2022, has been circled in bright red on former president Donald Trump’s calendar for nearly two years now. It’s the day he’s been waiting for—the day when Wyoming Republicans tell Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) what he told her during a May Casper rally: “Liz, you’re fired.” Despite a massive fundraising advantage in […]

November general election slates for 16 congressional, four gubernatorial, and three U.S. Senate seats were set in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Vermont in Aug. 9 primaries. Among first-glance takeaways are triumphs by four candidates endorsed by former President Trump and the narrow victory by “squad” honcho Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her Democratic primary. Meanwhile, […]

The majority of Kansas voters disapproved of a ballot measure that proclaims there is no right to abortion under the state’s Constitution in an Aug. 2 special election that drew intense interest as the nation’s first public referendum on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Roe vs. Wade decision in June. According to […]

As expected, all seven incumbent Maryland congressional representatives and a U.S. senator on the state’s July 19 primary ballots easily won their parties’ nods and will defend their seats in November. Not expected were anticipated close races in both party primaries for governor, the Republican preliminary in Congressional District 6 (CD 6), and the Democratic […]

Trump-endorsed Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick) cruised to a surprisingly easy victory over a strong party rival backed by a popular Republican governor and outspoken Trump critic to win the July 19 Maryland GOP primary. Now, the first-term state delegate will take on a charismatic Democratic political newcomer buttressed by Oprah Winfrey in November’s general election. […]

Conservative leaders in Georgia and Ohio are spearheading calls for Republicans to close their state primaries and allow only voters registered with their parties to participate in inter-party preliminary elections. Atlanta Tea Party co-founder and President Debbie Dooley and Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci both told The Epoch Times that Democrats are “weaponizing” crossover […]

Two Republican congressional incumbents who incurred former President Donald Trump’s wrath were defeated, while two survived inter-party challenges in June 28 runoffs and primaries. Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), who is being investigated for federal campaign violations, fell in a Republican runoff while a Trump-endorsed incumbent defeated Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) in their GOP primary. They […]

Maybe former President Donald Trump should stop endorsing Republican candidates in Georgia because his hand-picked contenders have lost five of six 2022 GOP primary contests in the Peach State. The latest Trump-endorsed Georgia candidates to fall in nomination battles against GOP rivals is Vernon Jones in the 10th Congressional District (CD 10) and Jake Evans in CD […]

LAS VEGAS—Nevada’s anticipated 2022 midterm red wave was forecast to come in a fresco of fiery pink with women favored in the June 14 Republican primaries in three of the state’s four congressional seats now occupied by incumbent Democrats. But with results slowly trickling in, as Election Night slipped into the morning after, only one […]

As expected, all 11 of New Jersey’s 12 congressional incumbents seeking reelection—nine Democrats and two Republicans—secured their party’s nods during the state’s June 7 primary to advance to November’s ballots. But four sitting Democrats now await what are anticipated to be stiff challenges from Republican opponents come this fall with the GOP aiming to claw […]

Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman went on trial in May 2022 for allegedly lying to the FBI. Sussmann took claims of a secret link between Donald Trump and Russia to the FBI ahead of the 2016 election. He told the bureau he was not acting on behalf of a client. Under oath in late […]

Two Republican incumbents spent six months and more than $6 million trying to out-Trump each other but, in the end, only one got the former president’s endorsement and that proved to be the difference. Rep. Alex Mooney (R) defeated Rep. David McKinley (R) in a battle of sitting congressmen Tuesday in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional […]