Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — A freshman Republican congressman from Wisconsin is refusing to apologize after he yelled and cursed at high school-aged Senate pages during a late night tour of the Capitol this week, eliciting a bipartisan rebuke from Senate leaders.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.

Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.

“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Jay O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”

Filing your taxes could be free starting this year. The IRS is running a direct-file pilot program. The goal is to make companies like TurboTax obsolete through a system where your taxes are filled out for you. But tax prep companies are spending millions to block them.

Why are Intuit and H&R Block so against making filing your taxes free and easy? Because they're making billions by charging you. Americans spend $31 billion each year on tax filing.

No kidding... finally a Republican who understands.

"Tim Scott slams Florida's Black history curriculum: "There is no silver lining" in slavery"

#TimScott #GOP #Republicans #Democrats #Politics #Slavery #Racism #Africa #BlackHistory #News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tim-scott-florida-black-history-standard-no-silver-lining/

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Civil rights activists cheered when Ron DeSantis pardoned four Black men wrongfully convicted of rape as one of his first actions as Florida’s governor. But four years later, as DeSantis eyes the presidency, their hope that the Republican would be an ally on racial justice has long faded.

Andrew Dorn

(NewsNation) — Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed new legislation Wednesday banning the practice of so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth in the state.

Michigan is the 22nd state to outlaw conversion therapy, which aims to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations. Major medical organizations have denounced the practice as unscientific and harmful.

“As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I’m grateful that today we’re banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan,” Whitmer wrote on Twitter.

Mental health care providers who engage in the practice with a minor are subject to disciplinary action and licensing sanctions, according to House Bill 4616.

A separate bill, which the Democratic governor also signed, amends the state’s health code to define conversion therapy as “any practice or treatment by a mental health professional that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including, but not limited to, efforts to change behavior or gender expression or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward an individual of the same gender.”

The ban does not apply to counseling that “provides assistance to an individual undergoing a gender transition” as long as the counseling “does not seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Both bills passed the legislature in close votes along party lines. Republican state lawmakers, all but one of whom opposed the measures, argued the definition of conversion therapy was too broad.

State Rep. Neil Friske, a Republican from northern Michigan, said passing the bills would criminalize providers “who are simply upholding natural law and refusing to buy into the new age left-wing gender schemes,” The Hill reported.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats pointed to the dangers of conversion therapy.

Democratic state Rep. Jason Hoskins, a sponsor of the bills, told The Associated Press conversion therapy “works on the false premise that LGBTQ+ children are wrong and they need to be fixed” and that banning the practice will give LGBTQ+ youth “one less thing” to worry about.

The new measures are set to take effect in October.

"Just say aye," Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray repeatedly pleaded to Feinstein during the vote. Eventually, Feinstein did just that.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday appeared confused and attempted to deliver a longer speech during a Senate hearing, the latest in a string of episodes that have raised further questions about her ability to continue serving in office.

"Just say aye," Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray repeatedly pleaded with her colleague.

Instead of a short reply, Feinstein began her response by saying, "I would like to support a yes vote on this, it provides $823 billion ...." As the California Democrat continued to speak, an aide also intervened to try to remind the lawmaker that this was not the time for speeches.

"OK," Feinstein then said as Murray reminded her one final time to "just say aye." "Aye," she finally said.

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Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-A-Lago maintenance official, was also added to the docket in the case against Trump and his aide Walt Nauta.

Carlos De Oliveira allegedly helped Walt Nauta move boxes around Mar-a-Lago and allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage there.

Federal prosecutors announced new charges against Donald Trump in his alleged hoarding and hiding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, alleging the former president and a newly-charged aide tried to keep security camera footage from being reviewed by investigators.

Trump was also hit with a fresh charge, in addition to the 31 counts he already faces, of illegally retaining national defense information.

The indictment charges that Trump and two aides, Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, requested that another Trump employee "delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

De Oliveira is the second Trump aide to be charged in the documents case. Nauta was indicted alongside Trump in June, accused of helping the former president mislead investigators as they sought to retrieve all of the classified documents that remained at the former president’s home and private club after he left the White House.

People familiar with the investigation have told The Washington Post that investigators for special counsel Jack Smith repeatedly pressed De Oliveira to explain his actions from June 2022, when he helped Nauta move boxes around Trump’s home, and in July 2022, when he allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss secret grand jury proceedings, have said investigators grew increasingly skeptical of De Oliveira’s answers as the investigation proceeded.

De Oliveira’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the charges unveiled Thursday “a continued desperate and flailing attempt” to harass the former president, who is again seeking the GOP nomination for the White House, and those around him.

Trump was indicted last month in Miami, accused of illegally keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago long after he left the White House, and obstructing government efforts to get them back.

That earlier indictment charged him with 37 separate counts, 31 of them for alleged willful retention of national defense information. Each of those 31 counts represents a different classified document that Trump allegedly withheld — 21 that were discovered when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago last August, and 10 that were turned over to the FBI in a sealed envelope two months earlier. Nauta, his longtime valet, originally faced six charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, concealing a document and scheming to conceal.

The new indictment adds a total of four charges to the earlier case. All three defendants are now charged with altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object, as well as a similar crime of corruptly altering destroying, mutilating or concealing a document or object.
De Oliveira was also charged with lying to the FBI in a January interview in which he allegedly denied seeing boxes being moved or helping move boxes.
Both Trump and Nauta pleaded not guilty after the first indictment, and U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon last week scheduled a trial to start next May, when the 2024 presidential campaign will be well underway and the GOP nomination could already be wrapped up.

Because the case involves highly classified documents, the process of reviewing evidence will be complicated and could bring considerable delays.
Separate from the documents investigation, Smith and his team have been examining efforts by Trump and his allies to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, including the events that led up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump announced last week that his lawyers had been informed by the Justice Department that he could face charges in that case as well. On Thursday, his lawyers met with prosecutors about the investigation, according to a message Trump posted on Truth Social.

Investigators have looked at ads and email messages that sought to fundraise off false claims of election fraud, as well as the decision by Republican electors in some states won by Biden to send signed statements purporting to affirm Trump as the victor.
Trump is also criminally charged in New York state for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments during the 2016 election. The New York case is scheduled for for trial in March; Trump has pleaded not guilty.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

When Trump needed $225 million, an unlikely partner came to the rescue: Axos Bank, an online-only financial firm headquartered in suburban San Diego.

A historic wave of tenant organizing is on the verge of winning renter protections that would be attached to federal loans—affecting 1 in 4 apartments. But Greystar, Blackstone, and AvalonBay are spending millions to block it.

They're a part of a coalition of massive landlords, baks, and investors who are pooling resources to block rent control and renter protection policies.

One of the biggest landlord industry lobbying groups is called the National Multifamily Housing Council. That group has spent almost $10 million lobbying against rent control.

Despite this opposition, we're seeing one of the largest upticks in tenant organizing since the 1970s, as renters across the country face worsening housing crisis. Groups like KC Tenants are at the forefront of this movement, fighting to stop unfair rent hikes and corporate slumlords.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would create a new agency called the Digital Consumer Protection Commission that would be empowered to go after giant tech firms for a slew of anti-competitive behaviors and failing to protect consumer privacy.

It’s on Mr. Biden to stop this madness. In fact, promoting a humane immigration and asylum system is exactly what Mr. Biden promised to do when he ran for office.

On the campaign trail and early in his presidency, Mr. Biden vowed to put an end to the “cruel and reckless immigration policies” of his predecessor Donald Trump and build a “fair and humane immigration system in the United States that welcomes immigrants” and “keeps families together.”

...

[Instead, he has] imposed new asylum restrictions that cut off access to protection for far too many, while leaving thousands more to wait for weeks or months in squalid tent camps in Mexican border towns, where they suffer alarming rates of kidnapping, sexual assault or worse. This “prevention through deterrence” framework risks worsening the humanitarian crisis at the border. When those who simply can’t return home for fear of violence or death are prevented from applying for asylum at legal ports of entry, they’re left with little choice but to take dangerous, illegal routes into the United States and walk right into Mr. Abbott’s death trap.

Mr. Biden must change course, and that begins by stopping Mr. Abbott. The president should order the immediate removal of the lethal razor wire and obstructions in the Rio Grande and ensure that Border Patrol are unimpeded by Texas Department of Public Safety officers — today. He must then take prompt action to replace Mr. Abbott’s disregard for human life with leadership that upholds our values as Americans, including by providing better legal pathways for those with valid asylum claims to safely and in an orderly fashion apply for refuge at legal ports of entry instead of desperately crossing dangerous stretches of the river. This is the president’s chance to show Americans that a humane approach is not only the right thing to do but also that it is the best way to establish order and safety at our southern border.

New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected.

There has been relatively scant data collected on the number of LGBTQ+ residents in the U.S., particularly intersex people — those born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female categories. That means lawmakers are often writing laws without the same kind of baseline information they might have for other demographic groups.

“We can’t study the impact without knowing the population,” said Christy Mallory, legal director of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.

Here’s a look at what we know and what we don’t know about the number of people in the U.S. who are LGBTQ+ or intersex.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that he’s “fine,” after freezing during a news conference on Wednesday.

Rudolph W. Giuliani said he still had “legal defenses” in a case brought by two election workers who said he had defamed them as he asserted that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

Museum on site of former concentration camp said host wasn’t being historically accurate

Tactics used to censor the teaching of American history in Florida schools bear much in common with those seen in the illiberal democracies of Israel, Turkey, Russia and Poland.

Florida law that took effect on July 1, 2023, restricts how educators in the state’s public colleges and universities can teach about the racial oppression that African Americans have faced in the United States.

Specifically, SB 266 forbids professors to teach that systemic racism is “inherent in the institutions of the United States.” Similarly, they cannot teach that it was designed “to maintain social, political and economic inequities.”

We are professors who teach the modern history of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and we know that even democratically elected governments suppress histories of their own nations that don’t fit their ideology. The goal is often to smother a shameful past by casting those who speak of it as unpatriotic. Another goal is to stoke so much fear and anger that citizens welcome state censorship.

We see this playing out in Florida, with SB 266 being the most extreme example in a series of recent U.S. state bills that critics call “educational gag orders.” The tactics that Gov. Ron DeSantis is using to censor the teaching of American history in Florida look a lot like those seen in the illiberal democracies of Israel, Turkey, Russia and Poland.

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The death gap between Democrats and Republicans was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates.

A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits.

The legislation is part of a spate of appropriations bills that lawmakers will debate this month, and which Congress must reach a decision on by the end of September in order to pass a budget for the 2024 fiscal year and avoid a federal shutdown. It was already approved by a House appropriations subcommittee in May, while being condemned by Democrats and causing internal rifts among Republicans. Republicans have added several provisions to the bill that would have wide-ranging effects on reproductive rights, health policy and benefits. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, at the Capitol in May.

The food and agriculture spending bill is the latest front in the rightwing campaign against reproductive rights. In the year since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Republicans have passed bills in more than a dozen states that ban or severely restrict abortion access. Ending access to mail-order pills that induce abortions would complicate and limit efforts from abortion rights groups and physicians to provide care for people in states with abortion bans.

Specifically, the bill would reverse a 2021 Food and Drug Administration policy that allowed people to get the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone – which can be used up to 10 weeks after conception – through the mail rather than via in-person visits to providers. The FDA had temporarily lifted restrictions on the drug during the Covid-19 pandemic, before later making those changes permanent. But the drug, which is widely used for abortion and can also be used for managing miscarriages, has been the center of legal challenges and rightwing attempts to prevent its use ever since.

House Republicans’ messaging on the bill claims that their provision “reins in wasteful Washington spending” and “protects the lives of unborn children”. The bill would also decrease the Snap benefit program – formerly known as food stamps – by $32bn compared with 2023 levels, as well as prevent the health and human services department from putting limits on the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

The approaching fight over spending bills has echoes of the standoff over debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year, when Democrats accused Republicans of holding the government hostage in an attempt to exact sweeping cuts to federal programs. Hardline Republicans similarly pushed to shift their party towards far-right policies during those negotiations as well.

Democrats are eager to prevent a government shutdown such as the one in 2018 during the Trump administration that left about 800,000 government workers without pay and lasted longer than any previous closure in US history. But some have called for establishing red lines around what compromises they are willing to make, with a number of House Democrats such as the Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern pushing back against attempts to cut Snap funding and other conservative provisions in recent legislation. House Democrats previously tried to add two amendments to the food and agriculture spending bill that would have eliminated the anti-abortion provision, but both failed.

Several Republicans have also spoken out against the food and agriculture bill, including the New York representative Marc Molinaro, who told Politico he will vote against the legislation if it comes to the floor. Molinaro, along with another New York Republican lawmaker, previously denounced a conservative Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to remove FDA approval of mifepristone.

Molinaro’s opposition to the bill highlights a rift within the Republican party over just how far to push an anti-abortion agenda that has proven nationally unpopular and contributed to electoral losses in many states. skip past newsletter promotion

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Abortion policy has divided the GOP as hard-right Republicans, as well as powerful Christian conservative activist groups, have demanded far-reaching bans on abortion access. Others, such as the South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace, have warned that Republicans need to “read the room” on abortion or face defeat in elections.

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has meanwhile been left scrambling to manage the different factions of his party as votes on must-pass appropriations bills loom. In addition to limiting abortion access and benefits, far-right Republicans have sought to use spending bills to greatly reduce military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from earlier this year saw that support for abortion access was at an all-time high, and included a finding that about one-third of Republicans also broadly back the right to abortion access.

A right-wing nonprofit that “offers a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology” has announced that Florida has become the first state to approve the organization as an educational vendor.

“This fall in schools across America, students will be watching PragerU videos in their classrooms as states officially make PragerU an approved educational resource,” the group said in a press release, according to the Miami New Times.

The professor, an expert on the opioids crisis, was placed on paid administrative leave and investigated, raising questions about the extent of political interference in higher education, particularly in health-related matters.

Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful cuts 38 jobs, including two senior advisers

There have been calls for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,to be investigated over the attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Republican presidential candidate and North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum is offering $20 gift cards to donors who give $1 to his campaign — but some supporters of Joe Biden say they have been funneling the gift card money to the president’s re-election campaign.