Tag: republicans

Marijuana Opponents ‘Have Lost’ The Debate, GOP Senator Says, Arguing ‘It’s Time’ To Regulate It Like Alcohol And Tobacco

A GOP senator says opponents of marijuana legalization “have lost” the fight to maintain prohibition and that “it’s time” for lawmakers to address that reality by creating a regulatory framework treating cannabis “in the same way that we do with alcohol and tobacco,” so that states can set their own policies without federal intervention.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that featured witnesses from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) pressed the DEA representative on cannabis policy issues.

“I have tried to keep pounding the table and saying, ‘Folks, those of us who were not necessarily eager to legalize pot have lost,’” the senator said. “The majority of states have legalized it at some level or another. I don’t really have a whole lot of emotions about it personally, but for the fact that I don’t think we’re regulating it properly, and I do believe it’s just become another distribution channel for the cartels.”

Tillis seemed to be arguing that the absence of federal regulations, and the policy disconnect with states that have increasingly enacted legalization, has created a vacuum that’s allowed illicit operators to thrive.

“We’ve got to get this under control. We have to realize that pot is going to be legal in this country in one form or another, and virtually every other state,” he said. “We can either figure out how to regulate it by putting a U.S. Department of Agriculture regimen in [and] an [Food and Drug Administration, or FDA] regimen in the same way that we do with alcohol and tobacco are.”

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Map Shows Where 250 Million Acres of Public Land is Being Sold Off

The largest single sale of national public land in modern history could be carried out as part of President Donald Trump‘s budget bill to help pay for his sweeping tax cuts.

However, a professor who is an expert on climate policy questioned the efficacy of the proposals, telling Newsweek that “selling off public lands will not reduce federal spending to any significant degree.”

Newsweek has contacted the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service via email for comment.

Why It Matters

The Senate committee said that a lot of the land owned by BLM and USFS cannot be used for housing, and so by opening up portions of federal land for large-scale housing construction, they intend to solve the “housing crisis.”

However, the nonprofit land conversation organization The Wilderness Society argued the opposite—that research suggests “very little of the land managed by the BLM and USFS is actually suitable for housing.”

It warned that much of the public land eligible for sale in the bill include “local recreation areas, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, critical wildlife habitat and big game migration corridors.”

The organization said the measure “trades ordinary Americans’ access to outdoor recreation for a short-term payoff that disproportionately benefits the privileged and well-connected.”

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Texas medical marijuana companies spent big on Republican lobbyists to push THC ban

Gov. Greg Abbott has a choice when it comes to banning hemp-derived delta-8 and delta-9 THC products: listen to hundreds of thousands of Texans who enjoy them or a handful of powerful Republican lobbyists working for marijuana investors.

Abbott is in the crossfire of a cannabis civil war. Medical marijuana and retail hemp companies are fighting over who can legally get people high. The standoff is typical Texas politics, with the medical marijuana companies hiring former aides to Abbott and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick to lobby for them, and the hemp industry relying on public pressure.

The Texas Legislature authorized medical marijuana in 2017 for a tiny number of patients. Three medical cannabis companies have spent millions complying with the Texas Compassionate Use Program to legally sell products with THC, the ingredient in marijuana that makes you high. They expected exclusivity. Since then, lawmakers have steadily expanded TCUP to treat more conditions, adding people with chronic pain this year.

In 2021, cannabis-focused venture capital firm AFI Capital Partners led a $21 million Series B investment in Texas Original Compassionate Cultivation. The company supplied 77% of the medical cannabis consumed in 2022, the latest full-year data available in an annual Texas Department of Public Safety TCUP analysis.

The investment had horrible timing. In 2019, federal and state lawmakers legalized hemp, a type of cannabis with low levels of THC. Hemp entrepreneurs figured out how to concentrate the THC, and today, the hemp industry primarily sells edibles containing enough THC to get you stoned.

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Ohio Republicans Introduce ‘Prenatal Equal Protection Act’ to Abolish Abortion in the State

Ohio State Representatives Levi Dean and Johnathan Newman have filed a bill to abolish abortion in the state by granting pre-born babies equal protection under the law.

The Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act, House Bill 370, points to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws’ to protect the life of preborn persons.”

“This bill recognizes that we are a country and state governed by laws, and that our laws must be constitutional,” Rep. Newman said in a press release. “Article I, Section 22 of Ohio’s Constitution, which was adopted by popular vote in 2023, has created an obvious conflict between the Ohio Constitution and U.S. Constitution.”

“We have a mandate from God to protect human life, which is of higher authority than any constitution,” Newman said. “Proverbs 24:11 commands us to ‘rescue those who are being carried off to death.’ Proverbs 17:15 says it is an ‘abomination’ to God for those who are guilty of doing harm to be called innocent.”

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Ohio GOP Lawmakers Can’t Agree On How To Amend Marijuana Law, Causing Planned Vote To Be Canceled

Despite efforts in the Ohio legislature to pass a bill to significantly change the state’s voter-approved marijuana law, last-minute disagreements between the House and Senate Republicans seemed to have derailed that plan for now—with House lawmakers signaling that a deal won’t be struck before the summer recess.

After taking public testimony and adopting certain changes to the Senate-passed legislation, SB 56, in recent weeks, the House Judiciary Committee ultimately declined to advance the proposal as scheduled at a Wednesday hearing, making it so the measure couldn’t advance to a floor vote planned for that day. Evidently, the revisions didn’t sit well with key senators, according to several legislators.

“Apparently the Senate changed their mind,” Rep. Jamie Callender (R), a pro-legalization lawmaker, told News 5 Cleveland.

Changes approved at a hearing late last month, for example, rolled back some of the strict limits included in a version of the measure passed by the Senate in February, including a criminal prohibition on sharing marijuana between adults on private property.

“They wanted to make a mandatory jail sentence for passing a joint between friends,” Callender, who has spent weeks working on additional changes to the legislation, said. He also complained about the Senate’s proposal to put all cannabis tax revenue in the state’s general fund, which would have prevented local municipalities from getting a share of those dollars as is currently the law.

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Ivy League Researchers Scaremonger About GOP Health Policy But Say Nothing About Similar Democrat Plans

Ivy League faculty members have a leftist bias — would you believe it?

That sarcastic conclusion comes from the latest example of rhetorical scaremongering over the budget reconciliation bill being considered by Congress. When Republican lawmakers decide to scale back health care benefits, the professoriate loudly proclaims that people in their legions will die. But when Democrat lawmakers do the same thing, these same commentators decide to join the Witness Protection Program.

Deaths Metric

On June 3, a series of researchers affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Yale School of Public Health released a letter regarding the House-passed budget reconciliation bill. In it, they claimed that several specific provisions in the bill “would result in more than 42,500 deaths annually.” They further claimed that allowing enhanced Obamacare subsidies to expire at year’s end, as they are scheduled to do under current law, “will cause an additional 8,811 deaths,” meaning that “altogether, we project that these changes will result in over 51,000 preventable deaths.”

The letter leaves much to unpack. For starters, the idea that anyone can know with any level of certainty the precise number of deaths attributable to a specific policy — not 8,810 or 8,812, mind you, but exactly 8,811 — is absurd on its face. If the researchers know the specific number of people who will die due to one policy change, then why not tell us the names of said individuals, and where, when, and how those people will die, while they’re at it?

Second, the expiration of the enhanced subsidies at year’s end comes because of Democrats, not Republicans. When they controlled Congress and the presidency, Democrats passed provisions letting these subsidies expire. Democrats fully expected future Congresses to extend them but wanted to try to disguise their true cost, just like they tried to hide the full $5 trillion cost of the failed Build Back Bankrupt legislation. They should neither complain nor blame Republicans for not wanting to fix or extend Democrats’ bad law. (The same applies to Republicans when it comes to tax gimmicks they might include in reconciliation.)

Ideological Bias

But the real “tell” regarding this letter comes in the form of a question the researchers didn’t answer. I emailed the lead authors, Rachel Werner at Penn and Alison Galvani from Yale, with a simple question: “Do you plan on conducting similar analyses on the number of deaths associated with Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s proposal to freeze enrollment of undocumented immigrants in MediCal, and charge existing undocumented enrollees a $100 monthly premium? Why or why not?”

Astute readers may not be surprised to learn that, even after following up, I received nary an acknowledgement, let alone a reply. The researchers might claim they never received my message or that they only published their letter in response to a request from Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for an analysis of the effects of the reconciliation bill. (Any Republican lawmakers in California reading this should please — please — ask the researchers for the type of analysis I requested, if only to highlight their hypocrisy.)

But it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to recognize the real reason for the disparate treatment. The letter was a headline — “Republican bill will kill X people per year!” — in search of a story and a justification. That’s why Wyden and Sanders requested it, and that’s why the researchers gladly complied. But when it comes to attacking Newsom, or Democrat Govs. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois or Tim Walz of Minnesota, all of whom have proposed scaling back taxpayer-funded coverage of illegal immigrants — not because they believe such benefits should go only to citizens, mind you, but because of skyrocketing costs — they suddenly become mute.

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Josh Hawley Wants To Raise the Minimum Wage

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) has introduced a bill to increase the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2008. Hawley wants it to be $15 an hour. Many of us thought that the minimum wage issue was settled, but here we are again.

This is freshman-level economics: If you introduce a price floor on labor, the supply of people willing to work at that wage will exceed the demand, resulting in unemployment. If an employer can either have three employees making $10 an hour or two at $15 an hour (and one on public assistance), which do you think he would choose? Politicians like Hawley seem to think companies will simply accept lower profit margins. But they won’t—they’ll raise prices, cut staff, or go out of business.

Since hardly anyone earns $7.25 an hour these days, the federal minimum wage doesn’t cause serious economic distortion. A $15 mandate, by contrast, would wreak havoc, especially in low-cost-of-living areas. A simple thought experiment would be to imagine what would happen if we had a $10,000-an-hour minimum wage. This would obviously eliminate most jobs. The same principle applies to smaller hikes, even if the effects would not be as drastic. If prosperity could be legislated, we would have done it long ago.

Hawley is an interesting mix: socially conservative, economically populist. He has supported tax hikes on the rich, expanding the power of unions, capping credit card interest rates, expanding Social Security, imposing tariffs, and imposing prescription drug price controls. He’s frequently on the same side as such left-wing figures as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). In fact, he and Sanders, a self-described socialist, co-sponsored the bill to cap credit card interest rates.

What does it mean to be a Republican these days? What defines Republican economics? It used to be lower taxes or balanced budgets, but no longer. The Democrats are getting a lot of mileage out of being anti-tariffs, but that’s not because they are philosophically committed to free trade—most of them are reflexively opposing Trump. If a Democrat is elected in 2028, there’s a good chance they’ll maintain his tariffs. Voters don’t have many free market choices remaining.

We are a long way from 2005, when President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary John Snow made an honest attempt at privatizing Social Security, or from 1998, when President Bill Clinton was pondering a bipartisan move along similar lines.

The camera loves Hawley; he’s handsome, articulate, and dangerous. When it comes to economics, there isn’t much daylight between him and the furthest-left factions of the Democratic Party. It is all about the packaging. If Hawley seems less crazy to the average voter than Warren and Bernie, that should worry us all.

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GOP Rep Introduces Resolution Labeling ‘Free Palestine’ Slogan as ‘Anti-Semitism’

The resolution is non-binding but seeks to exploit the recent violence in Boulder, CO for political purposes

Colorado GOP Congressman Gabe Evans introduced a non-binding resolution on Friday that labels ‘Free Palestine’ as “an antisemitic slogan.” The bill seeks to limit immigration of people who oppose Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv’s genocidal onslaught in the besieged Gaza Strip. The bill is expected to be voted on some time next week.

The bill reads, “Whereas, while shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish people, Mohammed Sabry Soliman attacked the peaceful demonstrators with homemade Molotov cocktails.”

The term “Free Palestine” refers to the desire to end the nearly 60 -years-long brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, illegal per international law. It also implies support for ending Israel’s apartheid regime, replacing it with either a two-state solution or a single state with equal rights, including the right to vote, for all citizens currently living under the rule of the Israeli government.

The introduction of the bill follows a terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado by 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who was living in the United States on an expired nonimmigrant visa. He had applied for asylum subsequent to his visa’s expiration. Over a dozen people were injured after the assailant threw Molotov cocktails at attendees at a small pro-Israel demonstration.

The attendees were calling for the release of the hostages taken during the October 7th Hamas attack in southern Israel. Hamas has repeatedly offered to release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza including the end to the blockade on the Strip which has pushed the population closer to full-scale famine amidst constant bombardment. Both Tel Aviv and Washington strongly oppose a ceasefire despite the fact that it is the only way to secure the hostages’ release and safety. Top Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are committed to continuing the war and finishing its ethnic cleansing campaign.

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Prosecutors say Republican South Carolina lawmaker used ‘joebidennnn69’ to send child sex material

A Republican member of the South Carolina House who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

RJ May was arrested at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and was ordered Thursday by a federal judge to remain jailed until his trial.

The three-term Republican is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

Each charge carries a five-to-20 year prison sentence upon conviction and prosecutors suggested May could spend over a decade in prison if found guilty.

The files were uploaded and downloaded using May’s home Wi-Fi network and his cellphone, prosecutors said. Some were hidden by the use of a private network but others were directly linked to his internet addresses.

May says someone else could have used his Wi-Fi

At his arraignment, May’s lawyer suggested someone could have used the Wi-Fi password that was shown on a board behind a photo May’s wife may have posted online. Attorney Dayne Phillips also suggested investigators didn’t link each Kik message directly to May.

Prosecutors asked that May, 38, not be given bail because he lives at home with his wife and young children, and some of the files he is accused of sharing feature children of about the same age as his.

May investigated for paid sex in Colombia

Prosecutors said they also investigated whether May used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times after finding videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three women. An agent from the Department of Homeland Security testified the women appeared to be underage and were paid. U.S. agents have not been able to locate the women.

Prosecutors said May created a Facebook account with his fake name and his internet history showed him switching between his real account and the fake one and even searching his primary opponent from the fake login.

Phillips, May’s lawyer, told the courtroom that no sexual images of toddlers or young children were found directly on his laptop or cellphone.

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GOP-Led Congressional Panel Demands Investigation On Biden’s Marijuana Rescheduling Process, Citing ‘Deviations’ And ‘Mental Health Hazards’

A key GOP-led House committee is asking for a review of the cannabis rescheduling recommendation issued under the Biden administration, expressing concerns about “deviations” from a prior review process as well as the “mental health hazards of regular use of high-potency marijuana.”

In a report attached to a large-scale spending bill for the 2026 fiscal year, the House Appropriations Committee included several sections focused on marijuana and hemp—while also encouraging further research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. The panel is set to vote on the bill and report language on Wednesday.

For cannabis advocates and stakeholders, however, the report’s marijuana scheduling language is troubling, with members stating that they’re “concerned about deviations from established drug scheduling evaluation standards in the [Food and Drug Administration, or FDA] 2023 marijuana scheduling review.”

Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that cannabis be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). That process has since stalled out amid legal challenges from witnesses in DEA administrative hearing proceedings.

“The Committee directs the HHS Inspector General to complete a report on the 2023 marijuana scheduling review including but not limited to: deviations from the established five-factor currently accepted medical use test, justification for a new, two-factor currently accepted medical use test and whether this will be the standard for all future reviews, use of a limited number of hand-selected comparator substances, and inclusion of research results that are not statistically significant or inconclusive,” the report section says.

The flagged issues largely echo concerns raised by prohibitionist organizations such as Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM). And the language is consistent with an earlier version of the agriculture spending legislation that advanced though committee but was not ultimately enacted last session.

“The Committee is concerned about reports of the mental health hazards of regular use of high-potency marijuana, particularly among adolescents,” it says. “The Committee encourages the FDA to support research on high-potency marijuana and its effects on the adolescent brain, specifically regarding addiction and mental illness such as schizophrenia or psychosis.”

“Marijuana Rescheduling.—The Committee is concerned about deviations from established drug scheduling evaluation standards in the FDA 2023 marijuana scheduling review. The Committee directs the HHS Inspector General to complete a report on the 2023 marijuana scheduling review including but not limited to: deviations from the established five-factor currently accepted medical use test, justification for a new, two-factor currently accepted medical use test and whether this will be the standard for all future reviews, use of a limited number of hand-selected comparator substances, and inclusion of research results that are not statistically significant or inconclusive. The Committee is concerned about reports of the mental health hazards of regular use of high-potency marijuana, particularly among adolescents. The Committee encourages the FDA to support research on high-potency marijuana and its effects on the adolescent brain, specifically regarding addiction and mental illness such as schizophrenia or psychosis.”

Elsewhere in the report, the panel also talked about their problem with “the proliferation of products marketed in violation of the [Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA)], including products containing derivatives of the cannabis plant,” which is consistent with provisions of the underlying bill that would ban all hemp items containing “quantifiable” amounts of THC.

“The Committee is aware that non-FFDCA-compliant products pose potential health and safety risks to consumers through misleading, unsubstantiated, and false claims that cannabis and cannabis derivatives can treat serious and life-threatening diseases and conditions, including COVID–19 and cancer,” the report says. “Such products may also be contaminated with harmful substances.”

“The Committee recognizes FDA’s use of existing authorities to undertake cannabis-related efforts, including research, requests for data, consumer education, issuance of guidance and policy around cannabis-based drug product development, and enforcement against wrongdoers,” it continues. “The Committee expects FDA to continue and increase these efforts given the proliferation of non-FFDCA-compliant, cannabis-containing products and the risks they pose to public health.”

“Cannabidiol Oil Enforcement.—The Committee is concerned about the proliferation of products marketed in violation of the FFDCA, including products containing derivatives of the cannabis plant. The Committee is aware that non-FFDCA-compliant products pose potential health and safety risks to consumers through misleading, unsubstantiated, and false claims that cannabis and cannabis derivatives can treat serious and life-threatening diseases and conditions, including COVID–19 and cancer. Such products may also be contaminated with harmful substances. The Committee recognizes FDA’s use of existing authorities to undertake cannabis-related efforts, including research, requests for data, consumer education, issuance of guidance and policy around cannabis-based drug product development, and enforcement against wrongdoers. The Committee expects FDA to continue and increase these efforts given the proliferation of non-FFDCA-compliant, cannabis-containing products and the risks they pose to public health. The Committee also expects FDA to take enforcement action against the manufacturers of any cannabis products marketed with unlawful therapeutic claims to preserve the integrity of the drug development and approval processes, which ensures that products, including cannabis-containing products, marketed as drugs have undergone a rigorous scientific evaluation to ensure that they are safe, pure, potent, and effective for the diseases and conditions they claim to treat. It is also imperative that FDA continue to exercise its existing authorities to preserve incentives to invest in robust clinical study of cannabis so its therapeutic value can be better understood.”

The report further states that members expect FDA to “take enforcement action against the manufacturers of any cannabis products marketed with unlawful therapeutic claims to preserve the integrity of the drug development and approval processes, which ensures that products, including cannabis-containing products, marketed as drugs have undergone a rigorous scientific evaluation to ensure that they are safe, pure, potent, and effective for the diseases and conditions they claim to treat.”

“It is also imperative that FDA continue to exercise its existing authorities to preserve incentives to invest in robust clinical study of cannabis so its therapeutic value can be better understood,” the committee said.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies advanced the underlying bill last week, stirring controversy over provisions to prohibit cannabis products containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC or “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals” as THC.

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