Tag: republicans

GOP Rep Calls For Jill Biden To Face Criminal Charges For ‘Elder Abuse’

Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller has called for former first lady Jill Biden to face criminal charges for elder abuse after her husband, former President Joe Biden, announced his cancer diagnosis following reports of significant mental deterioration throughout his term.

“Jill Biden was complicit in covering up Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline,” the congresswoman said in a post on X. “She should face CRIMINAL CHARGES for elder abuse!!”

In an interview with The Post , geriatric medical specialist Elaine Healy said that the former president is showing “telltale signs of elder abuse.”

“Visible bruising and other injuries from physical violence are obvious forms of abuse. Non-violent actions — like deprivation of food, causing weight loss, or intimidation, causing social withdrawal and personality changes — are also defined as abusive behavior,” she said.

“A more sinister type of elder abuse, however, involves the exploitation of an elderly individual for the abuser’s financial, personal, or — in this case — political gain,” the doctor said.

She also spoke about what the former first lady did with her husband after his infamous debate with then-GOP candidate Donald Trump, where she had to guide him off the stage.

“What was behind her insistence that he run for office when she, above all others, had to be aware of his failing cognitive capacities and declining physical health?” she said. “Is she a loving spouse or a master manipulator, using his dependency on her to control his decision-making? If the latter, she is engaged in elder abuse.”

Even Sally Quinn, a Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of Trump, criticized Jill Biden.

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“It May Blow This Whole Thing Open” – GOP Senator Schmitt Announces ‘First-Of-Its-Kind” Action on Biden Autopen Scandal

On Thursday evening, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt (MO) demanded access to sealed Biden autopen records after Neera Tanden admitted she controlled the autopen for more than a year and a half.

Ex-Biden official Neera Tanden admitted under oath to the House Oversight Committee during a closed-door testimony on Tuesday that she controlled Joe Biden’s autopen.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer recently identified five Biden aides who were involved in the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline and autopen scandal.

Director of Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden was brought before the Committee on Tuesday and admitted she was authorized to use Joe Biden’s autopen between October 2021 to May 2023.

According to the Washington Examiner, Neera Tanden testified that she was also authorized to direct the autopen; however, she denied manipulation or abuse.

Additionally, Neera Tanden admitted she would utilize the autopen without actually verifying from Joe Biden himself that it was an authorized action.

Earlier this year, the Oversight Project revealed six criminals were pardoned by Biden’s autopen on December 30, 2022, while Joe Biden was vacationing and golfing in St. Croix.

Based on Neera Tanden’s Tuesday testimony, she was likely behind the Biden autopen pardons while Joe Biden was golfing in the US Virgin Islands.

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GOP Senators Present Evidence China Bankrolls Environmentalist Lawsuits To Cripple U.S. Power

Senators met yesterday for a subcommittee hearing to discuss claims that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), foreign donors, and leftist legal activism are behind a “systematic campaign” to dismantle American energy dominance.

Throughout the hearing, Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, emphasized how foreign funding and activist litigation are undermining U.S. energy infrastructure, posing a national security threat. His four Democrat colleagues repeatedly dismissed the concerns as a “conspiracy theory,” instead focusing on energy costs and “global warming.”

The “assault by the radical left,” “paid for by the [CCP],” seeks to “seize control of our courts [and] to weaponize litigation against U.S. energy producers,” Cruz said. He noted the assault is “three-pronged,” weaponizing “foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination” against “American energy independence.”

In describing the first prong, Cruz highlighted a “strategic alliance … between leftist billionaires, radical environmental organizations, and the Chinese Communist Party.” He said, “One of the primary vehicles for this alliance is Energy Foundation China, which has funneled upwards of $12 million to U.S.-based climate advocacy groups since 2020.”

This money flows “directly to aggressive litigation outfits” that file lawsuits against American gas and oil companies, Cruz said. He later said the “second prong” of the assault is a “legal barrage” aimed at bankrupting such companies. Cruz said more than 30 lawsuits have been filed in “at least 15 Democratic-run jurisdictions, including by 12 states” against U.S. oil, gas, and coal producers.

Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, testified during the hearing. He said, “Many environmentalist groups funded by the multitude of left-wing billionaires have disturbing foreign ties,” citing big-money international players such as Neville Roy Singham.

Singham lives in Hong Kong and was investigated by the FBI in 1974 for being “potentially dangerous” because he engaged in “activities inimical to the U.S,” according to Influence Watch. Walter also highlighted Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who spent $650 million on left-wing organizations, including “ClimateWorks Foundation, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council,” Walter’s testimony cites.

Climate lawfare groups suing American energy have raked in $500 million in 2023 from lawsuits, according to IRS forms Cruz cited during the hearing.

“They are using theories that are preposterous, legally speaking, and most of these theories will eventually hit a wall when they hit the final court,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach told The Federalist. Kobach said in his written testimony that some states have overstepped their bounds by “regulating conduct and industries far beyond their borders.”

Cruz said the “third prong” of the assault against American energy is “judicial capture,” primarily by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), which holds “near total control over climate-related judicial training.” ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) seeks “to ‘educate’—from a left-wing perspective—federal and state judges about climate change and related litigation designed to extract billions of dollars from energy companies,” Walter said in his written testimony.

The program claims to be nonpartisan but pressures judges into a specific “predetermined political narrative” and is funded by “left-wing bankrollers,” Cruz said. He said “more than 2,000 judges have participated” in the program.

“I’m skeptical that the CJP wants to help energy,” Walter said in response to a question from Cruz.

The four Democrat senators at the hearing unanimously wrote the CCP allegations off as a “conspiracy theory,” with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, saying global warming is the real threat Congress should address. Witness David Arkush, the director of the Public Citizen’s Climate Program at the left-wing Roosevelt Institute, also dismissed the CCP allegations as “conspiracy theory.” Arkush told The Federalist, “I don’t see why [CCP] would be funding litigation against the U.S. oil and gas industry.”

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House Republican Introduces Bill to Increase Penalties for Spies Working for US Adversaries

Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.) has introduced new legislation that would mandate harsher prison terms for those responsible for carrying out espionage for America’s top adversaries, namely China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

Harrigan, who serves on the House’s Armed Services and Science, Space and Technology committees, introduced the Foreign Adversary Federal Offense (FAFO) Act (HR 4081), which would set a minimum prison sentence of 15 years for defense-related espionage and at least 10 years in prison without parole for economic espionage.

Corporations or other organizations found guilty of economic espionage would face a fine of $20 million or five times the value of the stolen trade secret.

“My FAFO Act is a direct response to the growing threat posed by foreign adversaries targeting the United States from within,” Harrigan said in a statement on June 24. “When individuals steal defense secrets or compromise our critical infrastructure on behalf of China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, they are committing an act of betrayal against this country.

“This legislation ensures they face severe, unrelenting consequences. There will be no plea deals, no light sentences, and no path to parole. If you betray America, you will face the full weight of American justice.”

According to the bill, the penalties would be specific to those advancing the interests of a “covered nation” under a U.S. law restricting the Department of Defense’s procurement of sensitive materials from a list of foreign countries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

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Mike Lee’s proposed public lands sale blocked by Senate parliamentarian

A proposal by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, to sell millions of acres of public lands to private housing developers hit the skids late Monday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it couldn’t be included in President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill.

Why it matters: Lee’s plan would have ordered federal land managers to sell up to about 3.3 million acres of land for housing and infrastructure.

Driving the news: The Senate parliamentarian decided Monday night that Lee’s proposal violated rules limiting “extraneous” measures that can be added during budget reconciliation.

  • To overcome the ruling, Lee’s plan would require a 60-vote majority.

Catch up quick: Lee’s proposed land sale prompted widespread backlash, including from some Republicans.

  • Lee said the land sales would make room for more housing in western states — but the policy language didn’t require homes built on the land to meet any standard for affordability.

The intrigue: Shortly before the parliamentarian’s ruling, Lee posted to X that he planned to make major revisions to the proposal, making national forest land ineligible for sale and “significantly” reducing other lands that would be available.

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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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