Tag: republicans

‘Tell you a secret’: Speaker compares himself to Moses at event he thought was media free

Mike Johnson’s calling to serve as House Speaker reportedly came from the heavens.

Appearing as the keynote speaker during Tuesday night’s award fete for the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C., the newly appointed speaker from Louisiana opened up about his direct channel to God and how he was directed to become the next speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was unceremoniously sacked.

“Look, I’m a Southern Baptist, I don’t wanna get too spooky on you,” he told attendees who apparently chuckled, according to Rolling Stone. “But, you know, the Lord speaks to your heart.”

Johnson explained how he was readying to prepare for his “Red Sea moment”.

Apparently he assumed that he was talking in an intimate, media-free setting at the NACL, an organization said to be aiming to push for right-wing fundamentalism to be adopted into law.

As Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson points out, he may have been oblivious that his speech was being recorded and streamed on the NACL Facebook page.

Keep reading

Ohio ACLU Slams GOP Plan To Gut Voter-Approved Marijuana Law

Less than a month ago, Ohio voters approved marijuana use, possession, and sales for adults. It was a 57 percent to 43 percent vote, a considerable landslide in voting terms. The margin was not a surprise. Legalization is popular across numerous demographics and, apparently, across the state.

Issue 2 also passed as an initiated statute, not a constitutional amendment. The difference is the initiated statute process, by design, invites some level of input from state legislators. In fact, because it was state law—not the Ohio Constitution—that was changed, legislators have the power to tinker with, improve or entirely scrap all of Issue 2 anytime they want.

No one expects legal sales to start when Issue 2 is officially enacted this week, 30 days after its passage. Understandably, there is a regulatory framework that takes a little time to put together. This is true even if Statehouse politicians were 100 percent on board with every word of Issue 2.

However, “on board” is the opposite of what Senate Republicans have in mind. Before this week, House Bill 86 was a non-controversial bill tweaking state liquor laws. It passed the House 85–6. On Monday, with very little notice, it became the vehicle for the Senate GOP’s planned demolition of Issue 2.

Keep reading

Former Ohio public utilities chairman indicted on federal bribery charge

The former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has been indicted by a federal grand jury on bribery and embezzlement charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio announced in a news release Monday.

Sam Randazzo, 74, of Columbus, self-surrendered at U.S. District Court in Cincinnati Monday morning, the release said. Randazzo is charged in an 11-count indictment that was returned on Nov. 29 and he was scheduled for an initial appearance later Monday.

The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into what federal prosecutors have called the biggest political bribery scandal in state history, where Akron-based FirstEnergy paid more than $60 million in 2018 and 2019 to get the legislature to pass and protect a $1.3 billion bailout that was mostly intended to benefit FirstEnergy.

Former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, in June was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of racketeering for his role in the scheme. Former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges was sentenced to five years in the same case.

FirstEnergy fired two of its top executives, CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President Michael Dowling. And it signed a deferred prosecution agreement admitting wrongdoing and committing to pay a $230 million fine.

Keep reading

Ohio Senate Committee Advances Bill To Eliminate Marijuana Home Grow, Reduce Possession Limits And Raise Taxes—Days Before Legalization Takes Effect

An Ohio Senate committee has given initial approval to a newly unveiled proposal to fundamentally alter the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law that’s set to take effect later this week.

The legislation being advanced in the GOP-controlled chamber would eliminate a home grow option for adults, reduce the possession limit, raise the sales tax on cannabis and steer funding away from social equity programs and toward law enforcement—along with other amendments concerning THC limits, public consumption and changes to hemp-related rules that stakeholders say would “devastate” the market.

During a 30-minute hearing on Monday, the Senate General Government Committee voted 4-1 to attach the cannabis legislation to an unrelated House-passed bill on alcohol regulations. As revised, the legislation contains several provisions that Republican leaders have previewed in recent weeks since voters approved legalization at the ballot last month, but it also goes further, for example, by proposing to criminalize people who grow their own cannabis at home.

Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said he’s aiming to pass it on the floor as early as Wednesday before it’s potentially sent over to the House for concurrence. The plan is to get the changes enacted on an emergency before the legalization of possession and home cultivation becomes legal on Thursday.

Advocates and Democratic lawmakers have already expressed frustration with the leaderships push to revise the voter-initiated statute. Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine (R), have insisted that voters were only supportive of the fundamental principle of legalizing marijuana without necessarily backing specific policies around issues such as tax revenue.

But while they’ve made that argument in the context of more incremental changes, the idea of eliminating home grow is likely to generate sizable pushback given its centrality to Issue 2. That could complicate its path to being enacted. An emergency clause would mean the bill would require a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority to pass.

Keep reading

Former Michigan GOP House speaker surrenders to serve marijuana bribery sentence

Former Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson has surrendered at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Minnesota to serve a 55-month sentence for pocketing bribes and corrupting the state’s marijuana industry, according to an inmate database updated Saturday.

The database shows Johnson, 70, among the 433 inmates at FPC Duluth near the western edge of Lake Superior. The prison is about 700 miles northwest of Lansing where Johnson was one of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in the state before becoming a lobbyist and chief regulator of Michigan’s marijuana industry.

That career ended in scandal after the politician from LeRoy received more than $110,000 in bribes from marijuana lobbyists and a businessman while serving as chairman of the medical marijuana licensing board from May 2017-April 2019. The illegal payoffs included repeated trysts with a sex worker who called him “Batman.”

Johnson had been ordered to surrender by Saturday after losing a last-ditch attempt to shorten his time behind bars and serve part of the sentence under house arrest as he recuperates from heart bypass surgery.

Keep reading

Ohio GOP Senate President Outlines Plan To Amend Voter-Approved Marijuana Law Next Week, Days Before Legalization Takes Effect

Ohio’s Republican Senate president says his chamber will take the first step toward amending a voter-approved marijuana legalization law at the beginning of next week, with just days left before key provisions of the initiated statute take effect. But the House speaker, for his part, still says he doesn’t necessarily see the urgency.

GOP legislative leaders and Gov. Mike DeWine (R) have been discussing revisions to the cannabis statute ever since voters passed the reform at the ballot last month, with the main focus being on possible changes to provisions concerning tax revenue,  youth prevention and impaired driving.

Two Republican-led bills to amend the legalization law have been introduced so far, but Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said the plan is to take up separate, unrelated House-passed legislation in the Senate General Government Committee on Monday, attach yet-to-be-seen cannabis amendments as an emergency clause and advance the proposal on the floor on Wednesday. The House would then need to concur with the changes.

An emergency clause would mean the bill would require a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority to pass, but it’d mean the legislation would take effect immediately rather than after a standard 90-day period following signature by the governor. That seems to be the only option if lawmakers want to revise the marijuana law before possession and cultivation become legal on Thursday.

“It would be better for people going forward to know what the law is than people begin spending money or taking actions and then the law changes six months from now or 90 days, you know, a year from now,” Huffman told WCMH.

Keep reading

Washington State Republican Party Files Formal Ethics Complaint Against WA Secretary of State Hobbs for Using Public Funds to Surveil and Censor Political Opposition

Today the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) filed a formal ethics complaint with the Washington State Ethics Board against Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. A big thank you to WSRP Chairman Jim Walsh for initiating the complaint and attorney K. Garl Long, Long Law office, for writing and filing the complaint.

After the complaint was filed the WSRP issued a press release here.

Full Complaint, Exhibits, and Footnotes here:

Summary of Complaint: Secretary of State Hobbs (“Secretary Hobbs”) is using public funds to pay an offshore artificial intelligence company to surveil voters. Speech objectionable to Secretary Hobbs is “fact-checked,” reported as a “threat,” and suppressed. It is unethical and illegal to use public funds to aid Secretary Hobbs and/or his political party in suppressing opposition views. Such government censorship is a spreading cancer in our society.1

Keep reading

‘Performative clown’: GOP candidates slammed for assuming terrorism caused car explosion

Two Republican candidates seeking higher office were both shouting terrorism and publicly shamed.

GOP presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy jumped the terrorism gun — early after a car bulleted toward a U.S.-Canada bridge checkpoint and then smashed and blew up causing the deaths of two people.

Fox News quickly called the event a “terror attack” and said the car was “full of explosives.”

They later backed off its claim of a “terror attack” and instead labeled the motive as “unclear.”

“I’ve been saying it for a long time & will say it again: we must secure our *NORTHERN* border too,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “It’s the forgotten frontier of the border crisis in our country.”

Kari Lake, the failed Arizona pro-Trump gubernatorial candidate who is now running for Senate, also shouted terrorism.

“This looks like at attempted terrorist attack along our Northern border,” she tweeted. “Our worst fears are being realized. @JoeBiden’s open border invites chaos & misery into our country.”

Keep reading

House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned with disgraced reality TV Star Josh Duggar, one of several accused sex offenders connected to his ‘mentor’ Tony Perkins

Like many self-identified Christian conservatives, House Speaker Mike Johnson has long been preoccupied with sex — who’s having it, how they are having it, and why they are having it. In 2004, he proclaimed that “sex outside of the marriage of one man and one woman is ultimately destructive.” In 2022, he introduced the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, a bill premised on the notion that Democrats were on a “crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery.”

But a Business Insider review of Johnson’s social media postings and political affiliations found that while he was busy seeking to regulate private sexual behavior and castigating his opponents as “groomers” of children, the Louisiana Republican was associated with a coterie of right-wing activists with a history of overlooking, tolerating, or ignoring the sexual abuse of children and teens in their own midst.

Most notably, according to a photo posted to his Facebook account and unearthed by Business Insider, Johnson proudly campaigned in 2014 with a man who would become one of the most notorious sex offenders in recent history — disgraced reality TV star Josh Duggar.

Duggar, who was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2021, worked as a lobbyist for the Christian evangelical activist group Family Research Council from 2013 to 2015, when allegations surfaced that the former “19 Kids and Counting” star molested several minors, including his own sisters.

The man who recruited Duggar, FRC president Tony Perkins, is a long-time friend and political ally of Johnson. The new Speaker recently described Perkins as his “original mentor” on a recent episode of his “Truth Be Told” radio show. According to the Washington Post, “Perkins goes way back with the Duggar family.”

Keep reading

Maryland Republicans Want To Let Police Search Cars And People Based On Smell Of Marijuana, Which Is A Legal Product

Republican lawmakers in Maryland are aiming to undo a law that prevents police from stopping or searching people and vehicles based merely on the smell of marijuana, claiming the measure has put motorists at risk and took away an important tool used by law enforcement to seize people’s firearms.

The effort is one of five legislative proposals that the Maryland General Assembly’s Joint Republican Caucus unveiled this week as part of its public safety agenda for the coming legislative session, which runs from January to April of next year.

“There is no doubt about it, people using cannabis while riding in or operating a vehicle makes our roads less safe,” House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy (R) said at a press conference Tuesday. “The Drug Free Roadways Act of 2024 will remove the prohibition from stopping and searching vehicles due to the odor of cannabis.”

Keep reading