Tag: republicans

Former Florida congressional candidate sentenced to prison for threatening to kill opponent

A former Florida congressional candidate was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday for threatening to kill his opponent in a primary race in 2021.

William Robert Braddock III, 41, of St. Petersburg, was sentenced in Tampa federal court after being charged with interstate transmission of threat to injure. He pleaded guilty in February.

According to court documents, Braddock viewed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who was the Republican frontrunner in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, as “his only obstacle to winning that race.”

While campaigning, Braddock, a former Marine, would disparage Luna and her peers to inject himself into his life. During a 2021 phone call with Luna’s acquaintance, a private citizen, Braddock threatened to have Luna murdered if she continued to poll well, specifically to “call up my Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” and make her “disappear,” according to a release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). 

Braddock subsequently fled to Thailand and eventually settled in the Philippines.

Keep reading

Trump’s ‘big’ and ‘beautiful’ tax bill retains hundreds of billions (maybe trillions?) in ‘Green New Deal’ spending

Congressional Republicans are the absolute worst, for many reasons, but this time, it has to do with the “big” and “beautiful” tax bill that’s working its way toward Donald Trump’s desk—Republicans, despite holding both houses, as well as the Oval Office, are set to retain hundreds of billions of dollars in Green New Deal provisions, if they get their way. Here’s the context, from Adam N. Michel and Joshua Loucks at the Cato Institute:

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was pitched as a climate solution. In practice, it turned the tax code into a multi-trillion-dollar energy entitlement program, creating subsidies without caps, sunsets, or accountability. The recently passed House Ways and Means Committee tax bill repeals eight of the IRA credits, phases out five, and keeps or expands several others.

Keep reading

Senate Republicans Won’t Work 5 Days A Week To Confirm Trump’s Key Nominees

The first American-born pope, Leo XIV, celebrated his inaugural Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square before a large crowd that included Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, two prominent Catholics in the Trump administration. Missing, however, was our country’s official envoy. When the new pope met with the Vatican’s diplomatic corps on Friday, America’s ambassador wasn’t there. We don’t have one right now. 

Brian Burch has been nominated by President Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, but his is one of nearly 80 nominations now languishing on the Senate’s Executive Calendar. Last week, Senate Republicans tried to fast-track Burch’s nomination in time for Pope Leo’s inauguration. Democrats objected. So Republicans, despite having the power to overcome that objection simply by scheduling the vote on a Friday, shrugged and skipped town.

This is becoming a habit. After confirming Trump’s Cabinet in record time, the Republican-led Senate has returned to its traditional two-and-a-half-day work week and lackadaisical work ethic.

The Trump administration is waiting on all manner of assistant secretaries, under secretaries, deputy secretaries, general counsels, and financial officers. As of this writing, the comptroller of the currency and assistant secretary of the Treasury are both awaiting confirmation, as is the director of the Office of Personnel Management, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the deputy secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, and the general counsels for the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development — among more than 50 others. The nominee to be the deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency has been sitting on the calendar since mid-March.

Cabinet secretaries are certainly important and often famous. But everyone in Washington knows agencies’ sub-Cabinet-level officers and below are just as critical to executing the president’s agenda. 

The entire country watched the permanent bureaucracy subvert President Trump’s first term. And most Republican voters now understand how critical these appointees are — everyone, it seems, except the people whose job it is to confirm them.

Keep reading

Decade after Tea Party movement, conservatives still unable to meaningfully cut debt

As President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” moves toward a final vote in the House, conservative budget hawks are livid that it largely fails to offer spending cuts to their satisfaction, marking the latest in a long line of punts for the House GOP that has repeatedly vowed to address the national debt.

Republicans have long campaigned on addressing the debt, with the Tea Party movement notching historic election wins under President Barack Obama. In 2010, Republicans won control of the House and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate. Yet, even when Trump first took office, Congress did not pass a balanced budget. 

Under President Joe Biden, House conservatives aggressively pushed then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy to agree to budget concessions when challenging his leadership. His attempts failed to satisfy debt hawks and McCarthy lost his post in October 2023. His replacement, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., reportedly frustrated fiscal conservatives, perhaps even more so than his predecessor.

The mega-bill

Johnson repeatedly passed continuing resolutions to maintain spending at Biden-era levels, despite promising to separately pass all 12 appropriations bills to fund the government through the traditional process. His tenure has seen firebrands, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.; Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; and Chip Roy, R-Texas, all publicly lament the unwillingness of Congress to address spending and other campaign promises. The three voted “present” in a late Sunday night session, allowing the bill to go forward, with Roy revealing there was progress on moving up the start date for new Medicaid work requirements and speeding up the phaseout of green energy incentives.

The current House plan of passing a mega-bill to address all of Trump’s key priorities is still drawing fire from the same livid budget hawks. Several of them delayed the bill’s advancement through key committees, although a floor vote is now in the offing. “The US credit rating being downgraded is evidence of how our fiscal house is out of order,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Monday.

The Trump administration has pinned most of its legislative hopes on passing a single piece of legislation through the House and Senate and using the budget reconciliation process to include many of his tax and border security promises. Trump has repeatedly hinted at passing a balanced budget during his second term, though the mega-bill appears nowhere close to accomplishing that goal.

Keep reading

GOP seeks to bar James Comey from federal positions

Lawmakers on the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) have proposed a resolution that aims to block former FBI Director James Comey from ever taking a role in the federal government again because of a now-deleted social media post that read “8647.”

Republicans, including President Trump, have interpreted Comey’s post of seashells on a beach on Thursday as a call to assassinate the 47th president.

The proposed House GOP resolution “urges the relevant authorities to take every relevant action to ensure that [Comey] is never again permitted to serve as an employee of the federal government” and requests the Justice Department “conduct a full and comprehensive investigation … and release the findings of that investigation to the relevant House Committees and the public.”

Comey, 64, has denied that the Instagram post was a call for Trump’s death and clarified in a follow-up statement that he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.”

“It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took down the post,” he wrote.

The numeral “86” is typically understood as slang for rejecting or throwing out something or someone.

But RSC Chair Rep. August Pfluger (Texas), one of the authors of the House resolution, called Comey’s social media post a “shocking betrayal of the trust once placed in him by the American people” and accused Comey of “the unthinkable: calling for violence against our Commander-in-Chief.”

“That someone who once held one of our nation’s most sacred positions of law enforcement would incite such dangerous rhetoric is not just alarming — it’s disqualifying and un-American,” Pfluger said in a statement. “This resolution demands the accountability and transparency the American people deserve, ensuring Comey never again holds a position of public trust.”

The resolution states that “Congress must take all available action to hold Director Comey accountable, preserve the rule of law, and protect our legal institutions from those that seek to sow discord and promote violence against their political opponents.”

A Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement that the agency will “vigorously investigate anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees.”

Keep reading

Sen. Mike Lee’s obscenity bill is a free speech nightmare straight out of Project 2025’s playbook

A new bill in Congress threatens to dictate what Americans can read, watch and say online. On May 8, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah and Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill.,  introduced the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act” (IODA) — a recycled attempt to ban online pornography nationwide.

While concerns about pornography, including moral and religious ones, are part of any healthy public debate, this bill does something far more dangerous: It empowers the federal government to police speech based on subjective values. When lawmakers try to enforce the beliefs of some Americans at the expense of others’ rights, they cross a constitutional line — and put the First Amendment at risk. 

The legislation aims to rewrite the legal definition of obscenity, an area of law that represents a very narrow exception to First Amendment protections.

The IODA seeks to sidestep the Supreme Court’s long-standing three-part test for obscenity, established in the 1973 case Miller v. California. The material must appeal to a prurient interest, depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Lee’s bill would scrap that standard and replace it with a broader, far more subjective definition. It would label content obscene if it simply focuses on nudity, sex or excretion in a way that is intended to arouse and if it lacks “serious value.” 

By discarding the concept of community standards, the IODA removes a key safeguard that allows local norms to shape what counts as obscenity. Without it, the federal government could impose a single national standard that fails to account for regional differences, cultural context or evolving social values.

The bill also deletes the requirement that material be “patently offensive,” a crucial element that keeps the obscenity test anchored in societal consensus. Instead, it replaces it with a subjective inquiry into whether the work was intended to arouse or titillate. But intent is notoriously difficult to prove and easy to allege. That language could easily sweep in a wide range of protected expression, including art, health information and sex education.

Keep reading

President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” Bill FAILS in Committee After Five House Republicans Vote NO – Largest Tax Increase in American History Looms

The Trump agenda suffered a major setback today after a handful of Republicans voted a key bill delivering it down in committee. Now, the largest tax increase in American history looms unless the GOP does an about-face.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee—led by Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO)—previously released the text of a monumental new tax reform package titled “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill.”

The bill, strongly backed by President Donald Trump, is aimed at delivering historic cuts to American families, workers, and small businesses.

The 389-page bill includes a long list of pro-growth, America-First provisions that echo many of the successful features of the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts—this time with added firepower. This includes no taxes on tips and overtime.

But five GOPers in the House Budget Committee shot it down primarily over cost concerns. One particular gripe was the Medicaid “cuts” and the expiration of several wasteful ‘green’ energy tax credits were pushed back several years, while most of the “goodies” were delivered up front.

The final vote was 16-21 against. Here were the Republicans who voted against the President’s agenda:

Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas

Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina

Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania

Keep reading

13 Republicans press leadership for more flexibility in green energy tax credit phaseout

A group of 13 House Republicans is asking for more flexibility for climate-friendly tax credits than what’s in the party’s current budget bill, underscoring the difficulty of getting the entire party on the same page.

In a written statement posted by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) on the social platform X, the 13 Republicans ask House leadership to “consider three thoughtful changes” to the legislation that phases out a significant chunk of Democrats’ tax credits for low carbon energy sources. 

They point to provisions that are expected to make it difficult for energy companies to actually claim the credits during this phaseout period.

Specifically, they ask for more flexibility on newly proposed supply chain requirements and a provision that could make it more difficult for projects to get financing. They also ask for more time, saying the credit phaseout should be based on when projects “start construction” rather than when they’re “placed in service.”

“The last thing any of us want to do is provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families,” they said.

Keep reading

Redefining Obscenity: Lawmakers Take Aim at More Online Content

Two Republican lawmakers are advancing a bill that could dramatically expand the federal government’s ability to criminalize certain content online.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Mary Miller of Illinois have introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), legislation that aims to overhaul the legal definition of obscenity and give prosecutors wide authority to target more online content.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Supporters of the bill claim it is designed to protect families and children from harmful material, but civil liberties advocates warn that its sweeping language threatens to criminalize large swaths of constitutionally protected expression.

IODA discards key elements of the Supreme Court’s long-standing Miller test, which has served as the nation’s benchmark for identifying obscene content since 1973. Under that framework, courts assess whether material appeals to prurient interest, depicts sexual conduct in a “patently offensive” way by community standards, and lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Lee and Miller’s bill replaces that careful balancing test with a rigid federal definition. According to the proposed language, content is considered obscene if “taken as a whole, [it] appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion,” if it “depicts, describes or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person,” and if it “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Promoting the bill, Lee declared, “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children.” He added, “Our bill updates the legal definition of obscenity for the internet age so this content can be taken down and its peddlers prosecuted.”

Keep reading

GOP Congressman Humiliates a Grandstanding AOC as She Plays to the Cameras While Asking Questions About Medicaid – AOC Then Completely Snaps

Far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lost it early this morning after a GOP congressman humiliated her by calling out her grandstanding tactics during a committee hearing.

While the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entered the early morning hours as part of its marathon mega bill markup, AOC attempted to disassemble the GOP’s plans to reform Medicaid by asking witnesses a series of leading questions. Of course, she wanted to play to the cameras at the same time.

When she did finally act like a professional, Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) took notice and roasted her.

“Um, in terms of some of the exemptions, pregnancy is covered, correct?” AOC asked.

“May I interrupt? I’m glad you’re addressing us instead of addressing the camera,” Weber quipped.

AOC then repeated her question about pregnancy, and the witness answered that pregnancy was covered. AOC then tried to ask a gotcha question about abortion laws.

“Given the Dobbs decision and the fact that many women and the fact that many women in many states are forced to…” she began before Weber cut her off.

“Okay, what about miscarriage?” AOC asked.

“Reclaiming my time. I just want to make the point that we’d like for you to address the Republicans and let’s have a dialogue this way & not through a camera,” Weber said.

“But, but, I’m just asking about a miscarriage,” AOC whined.

“The gentlelady is out of order!” Weber shouted.

A short time later, AOC started grandstanding again after getting some backup from Rep. Yvette Clarke.

“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen there. Hello, hello,” Ocasio-Cortez stated, waving to the camera. “I’m talking to you because I work for you. They deserve to see what is happening here because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid.”

“Will the gentlelady yield?” Weber asked.

Upon hearing this, AOC finally snapped completely.

“I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men!” she whined.

Keep reading