Tag: republicans

Letters Confirm Liz Cheney Secretly Worked ‘Hand-In-Hand’ With Jack Smith

Two newly released congressional letters confirm years-long reporting that the anti-Trump Jan. 6 committee had quietly colluded with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. 

The letters, from Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and disgraced former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., reveal the lawmakers’ rush to hand over evidence before Republicans took control of Congress in 2023. 

In those exchanges, they produced at least 16 interviews, deposition transcripts, exhibits, phone numbers and spreadsheets as part of their investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. 

One letter, dated Dec. 5, 2022, shows Thompson and Cheney informing Smith that while the body was concluding its work, they wanted to make the evidence they gathered “available to the Department of Justice.” 

In that letter, the anti-Trump politicians told Smith he would receive “16 transcripts of interviews and depositions taken by” the committee, including “exhibits associated with those transcripts.” They even promised to facilitate “additional evidence as soon as possible.” 

Just four days later, Thompson and Cheney wrote again to Smith, announcing the production of documents obtained from John Eastman and text messages from Mark Meadows, then Trump’s White House chief of staff. 

“Along with the latter, we are producing a staff-created spreadsheet of the Meadows texts that contain additional information from privilege logs that Mr. Meadows provided to the Select Committee,” they added. 

Even after those documents, they vowed to produce more materials to Smith “on a rolling basis.” 

Now, the never-before-seen letters confirm what many suspected: the controversial committee worked “hand-in-hand” with Smith, the House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday. 

Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to target Trump after the 2020 election. Smith later used those materials to indict Trump, first over a document dispute between Trump and the Biden-led National Archives, and later over his objections to the certification of the 2020 election results. 

The origins of that collusion trace back to the Jan. 6 committee itself, which was created in 2022 by then–Speaker Nancy Pelosi and excluded pro-Trump lawmakers. 

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Senator Blackburn backs bill to maintain SNAP benefits amid government shutdown

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is backing a new bill to keep food assistance flowing during the government shutdown.

The Keep SNAP Funded Act aims to ensure uninterrupted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, even as government funding stalls.

“Roughly one in 10 Tennesseans receive SNAP benefits for food assistance, and they shouldn’t have to worry about where their next meal will come from…” said Blackburn.

The announcement of the new bill comes after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Friday that SNAP recipients across the state face a benefit lapse starting Nov. 1.

Sen. Josh Hawley is leading the charge on this legislation, with support from Blackburn and other senators including James Lankford, Susan Collins, Bernie Moreno, Kevin Cramer and Lisa Murkowski.

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Indiana Governor Calls Special Session to Redraw Congressional Maps

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, on Oct. 27 called for state lawmakers to return to Indianapolis for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an escalation of a growing multi-state, mid-cycle redistricting showdown.

President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Republican governors to call special legislative sessions to draw new congressional maps to give the GOP additional House seats in next year’s midterms, a key election in which the incumbent party in the White House historically loses seats in Congress.

The multi-state redistricting battle kicked off with Texas and Missouri, and now California Democrats have responded with a voter proposition to consider their own redistricting plan to blunt the GOP’s impact.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, signed his state’s congressional redistricting bill into law on Sept. 28. California voters will vote in November on Proposition 50, which would allow the state government to redraw its districts in response to Republican gerrymandering in other states. Former President Barack Obama recently joined California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in endorsing the ballot measure.

While lawmakers in Indiana had been more hesitant about redrawing their congressional maps and had held off for weeks on engaging in the effort, Braun is now calling for the Indiana General Assembly to convene on Nov. 3.

The plan would likely involve targeting the state’s First Congressional District that spans Gary and nearby cities in Indiana’s northwest corner near Chicago. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) has held the seat for three terms and is running for reelection next year.

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Ex-Tennessee Rep. Robin Smith Sentenced to 8 Months in Prison in Corruption Case Plea Deal

A former state lawmaker whose testimony under a plea deal about a taxpayer-funded mail business scheme helped prosecutors land the conviction of a former Tennessee House speaker has been sentenced to eight months in prison.

Former state Rep. Robin Smith, a Republican who had pleaded guilty to one count of honest services wire fraud more than 3 1/2 years ago, said during her sentencing hearing that she had “failed the trust of the public,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

“My mom and dad raised me to be much better than this,” Smith, 62, said Friday in Nashville federal court before U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson. “I ask for the forgiveness of the public.”

Smith must report to prison by Jan. 5.

As part of her March 2022 plea, Smith agreed to the “full, complete and truthful” cooperation with the federal government, the newspaper said. She testified earlier this year at the public corruption trial of former Speaker Rep. Glen Casada and his onetime chief of staff, Cade Cothren.

A jury in May found Casada guilty of 17 of 19 charges while Cothren was found guilty of all 19 counts against him. In September, Richardson acquitted Casada and Cothren of three of those counts each but let stand 14 for Casada and 16 for Cothren.

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Randy Fine’s ‘Disqualifying Dual Loyalty Act’ Bans Foreign Citizens from Serving in Congress

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) believes elected officials should be America First, and he has a new bill putting his money where his mouth is.

The freshman Congressman introduced the Disqualifying Dual Loyalty Act of 2025 on Friday to prohibit the election of any person holding foreign citizenship, Breitbart News learned ahead of the bill’s filing.

The short, straightforward bill states simply that “no person, without regard to whether that person is a United States national, may be elected to the office of Representative or Senator if that person is a national of any country other than the United States.”

“I think it’s a fair argument to make that you can only swear allegiance to one country and if you’re in Congress, that allegiance should be to America,” Fine told Breitbart News.

Fine’s legislation would not only apply to future candidates but would also require any current member of Congress holding dual citizenship to renounce foreign citizenship if seeking reelection.

“People who may have dual citizenship can choose to give it up,” he said. “It’s not that if you’ve ever been a dual citizen” you are prohibited from ever serving, “it’s just as you can’t be one moving forward.”

Fine said he did not look to target any particular member of Congress – “I don’t think anybody knows” how many dual citizens serve in Congress, he said – but wants to push back against antisemitic accusations that pro-Israel, especially Jewish, politicians possess dual loyalties.

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Biden AG Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray Personally Approved Opening of “Arctic Frost” Investigation Into Trump

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday released documents revealing that Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, former FBI Director Chris Wray and corrupt DOJ official Lisa Monaco personally approved opening the “Arctic Frost” investigation into President Trump.

Arctic Frost led to Jack Smith’s Trump 2020 alternate electors case.

Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson earlier this year released new records detailing the FBI and DOJ’s sweeping investigation that formed the basis of Jack Smith’s DC case against President Trump.

Grassley and Johnson previously blew the lid off another sham investigation orchestrated by Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice and compromised FBI.

According to the documents released earlier this year, the FBI and DOJ weaponized their power to target President Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, and their allies through a probe dubbed “Arctic Frost.”

“Operation Arctic Frost” was a taxpayer-funded witch hunt launched in April 2022 that seized government-issued cell phones belonging to Trump and Pence while conducting a barrage of interviews across the country.

It was recently reported that Joe Biden’s FBI – and later Jack Smith – spied on eight Republican Senators during the ‘Arctic Frost’ investigation into January 6.

Jack Smith tracked private phone calls of eight GOP Senators.

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The GOP’s ‘Capitalism’ is Central Planning with MAGA Branding

When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) lashed out at last weekend’s “No Kings” rallies soon to arrive on Washington’s National Mall, he reached for an old conservative refrain: “They hate capitalism. They hate our free enterprise system.”

I am sure he’s correct about some of the protesters. But the message rings hollow coming from a party leader that stands by as President Donald Trump does precisely what Johnson rightly decries: substituting political control for market choice and ruling by executive order.

Indeed, what began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control. Take a look.

Recently, the Trump administration quietly converted CHIPS Act subsidies into an $8.9 billion equity purchase in Intel, making Washington a 10 percent owner of one of America’s largest technology companies. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insists “this is not socialism.” That’s semantics.

Socialism is government control of the means of production. When the government becomes your largest shareholder, that’s a strong first step.

The Intel case offends two basic economic truths. First, no group of officials can ever know enough to guide a complex industry better than millions of private investors, engineers, and consumers spending their own money. Second, the power to “partner” with business is the power to control it.

The more political capital the government invests, the more it demands in return. It’s only a matter of time until politically favored locations, suppliers, or hiring quotas shape Intel’s decisions. That isn’t capitalism.

The administration has taken shares in companies before, and it likely will again. In July, the Pentagon became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, considered the only fully operating rare-earth mine of scale in the U.S. The deal guarantees a 10-year price floor for MP output at nearly double the current market rate. MP competitors were rightly shocked.

Yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently told CNBC that Washington will continue to “set price floors” and “forward-buy” commodities “across a range of industries” to encourage more investments into U.S. production and away from China.

While this may encourage more U.S. investments in the short term, guaranteeing an unfair advantage over competitors by setting a minimum price reduces American companies’ long-run incentives to innovate and produce better output. Economists have understood for more than a century what happens when the government fixes prices above their market level: Buyers purchase less, sellers produce more, surpluses pile up and waste follows. It’s the logic of failed farm-price support in the 1930s.

There are far better options than schemes like these. As for those rare-earth minerals, the U.S. sits on billions of dollars’ worth, yet MP is almost alone in extracting them. That’s in part because excessive regulation keeps the potential locked underground, deterring investment in innovative mining solutions, processing plants, magnet factories, and the skilled workforce needed to turn our geological abundance into economic value. Deregulation is the free-market way. Mimicking the Chinese model isn’t.

If that’s not enough, the administration has nationalized all but in name the company called U.S. Steel. To approve its market-driven purchase by Nippon Steel, Trump required a “golden share,” giving him veto power over plant closures, production levels, investments, even pricing. The White House effectively dictates how U.S. Steel can operate inside the United States.

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Massive SCOTUS Case Could Guarantee House Control For GOP

The Supreme Court took a second look at a case that could result in handing the Republican Party guaranteed control of the House of Representatives last week, and initial reports suggest a major ruling is on the horizon. If the highest court in the land strikes down Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, the GOP’s hold over the House could become insurmountable.

Reports say that if Section 2 is removed, which has been interpreted previously as requiring the creation of majority-minority districts, the Republican Party could toss out a dozen Democratic-held districts in the South.

It all started when a group of voters challenged a 2024 congressional map by claiming that it pushes unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. This means the map sorts voters based on their race, which is a violation of the 14th Amendment.

The court heard two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments, with conservative justices signaling they are most likely going to undermine a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, though they might not strike it down completely.

“Wednesday’s oral argument was the latest chapter in a dispute that dates back to 2022, when Louisiana adopted a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. Roughly one-third of the state’s population is Black, but the 2022 map had only one majority-Black district out of the six districts allotted to the state. That prompted a group of Black voters to go to federal court, where they argued that the 2022 map violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which bars discrimination in voting practices,” SCOTUS Blog reported.

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick agreed that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2. She then forbade the state from using this particular map in future elections and ordered the state to create a new map featuring two majority-Black districts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit supported that ruling. It then gave the state until January 15, 2024, to produce a new map; otherwise, the lower court would develop a plan for the 2024 elections.

Louisiana then created a new map that created a second majority-Black district. Complaints came forward from a group of voters who referred to themselves as “non-African American.” A three-judge federal district court ruled that the 2024 map violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, as it sorted voters based on race. The court banned the state from using the map in future elections.

“In May 2024, the Supreme Court put the three-judge district court’s ruling on hold, which allowed the state to move forward with using the new map in the 2024 elections. Voters in the 6th District, the new majority-Black district, elected Cleo Fields, a former member of Congress who had represented another majority-Black district during the 1990s, to represent them,” SCOTUS Blog writes.

Louisiana and the Black voters then appealed to the Supreme Court, which listened to oral arguments for the first time since spring. The state stated that once the lower courts determined the 2022 map likely violated the VRA, it directed the state to redraw a map with a second majority-Black district. State Republicans’ primary goal was to provide protection for the state’s GOP incumbents, such as Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, who is an active member of the House Appropriations Committee.

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Key State Passes New Congressional Map ‘Locking In’ Additional GOP Seat

Duke University math professor Jonathan Mattingly conducted an analysis to discover if a new Trump-supported congressional map in North Carolina would result in the Republican Party locking in additional seats. The answer, he uncovered, is a resounding yes.

Three days before publishing his results on Sunday, the GOP revealed another mid-decade congressional map proposal that would bolster the party’s grip in Congress. It does so by expanding the boundaries of the state’s 1st Congressional District, which is currently held by Democrat Don Davis, pulling in some of the 3rd Congressional District, which is represented by Republican Greg Murphy.

The 1st District is the only one in the state considered a swing district, meaning it’s not a guaranteed win for either Democrats or Republicans.

A report from The News Observer shared Mattingly’s findings after the state’s Senate passed the map, sending it down to the House for final approval.

“Lawmakers returned to Raleigh on Monday and are expected to pass the proposed map, after failing to pass a full state budget before the end of the fiscal year in June or approve during its session last month additional funding to avoid Medicaid cuts,” the report said.

Mattingly claims the new map is all but certain to shift a House seat to the GOP for the foreseeable future if passed by the state’s full legislature.

“The previous map was not very responsive to changing public sentiment. But there was one district that was in doubt, and this one (new map) has largely removed that district,” he explained. “It’s very effectively shifted one district from the Democrats to the Republicans,” and “seems to lock in, 11-3, no matter what happens.”

North Carolina’s congressional map was redrawn in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature in order to provide the GOP with a boost, leading to the election of 10 Republicans and four Democrats during the 2024 elections. The article goes on to say that the map replaced a previous one drawn up by court-appointed “experts” for the 2022 midterm elections as a replacement for one drawn following the 2020 Census. It was ruled unconstitutional by federal courts in Harper v. Hall.

The map that was drawn after the intervention of the court led to a 7-7 split in the 2022 elections. The North Carolina Supreme Court gained a GOP majority that year, and the new court ruled it didn’t have jurisdiction over claims of partisan gerrymandering.

Mattingly’s latest analysis reveals the latest map would preserve a total of three seats for the Democratic Party under a variety of scenarios taking into consideration how residents might vote. Even if the statewide vote should shift significantly along party lines, the same number of Republicans, 11, would pull in victories.

“That pattern appears in a graphic from the new analysis, which looks at several statewide elections from 2016 and 2020, including races for governor, auditor and others, where the Democratic vote share ranged from just over 46% to more than 52%. The graphic shows how many seats Democrats and Republicans would likely win under different simulated map scenarios. It indicates that under the newly proposed map, Democrats would win only three seats across more than 10 elections tested, except in one case — the 2020 auditor’s race,” The News Observer wrote.

“When the electorate changes its mind dramatically — when it switches from 46% statewide to a 52% … you’d like to have a map with a number of districts that would change who controls them,” Mattingly stated in his analysis.

Researchers used the results from past elections to show how the new map packs voters into a district or splits them across district lines, which they claim will dilute their influence.

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Sen. Tom Cotton Urges DHS Audit of High-Risk Biden-Era Visas After Arrest of Alleged Hamas Terrorist

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the Senate Republican Conference chair and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to audit every visa approved under the Biden administration for applicants from high-risk countries, warning that Biden’s vetting policy “allowed dangerous individuals tied to terrorist groups to enter the United States.”

In a letter sent Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Cotton urged a full review of all visas granted since 2021 from what he called “high-risk regions,” following the indictment of Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi — a 33-year-old Gazan national living in Louisiana, accused of taking part in the October 7 Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel before entering the United States on a fraudulent visa.

Cotton wrote in the letter that the case “highlighted the extreme danger posed by the previous administration’s policies,” referencing Justice Department filings that identify Al-Muhtadi as a Hamas operative tied to the assault.

He detailed how Al-Muhtadi “applied for a visa through the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, falsely denying his paramilitary training and terrorist affiliations.”

“Despite blatant evidence of these activities on his social media,” Cotton added, “the Biden administration approved his application, granting him legal permanent resident status and entry into the United States.”

The letter stated that the vetting process “overlooked easily accessible evidence of his terrorist ties.”

The Arkansas senator warned that the incident underscores a broader failure in the system.

“Since October 7, 2023, thousands of visa applications from Palestinians have been processed through Egypt, often without adequate review of digital footprints or terrorist watchlist cross-checks,” he wrote — cautioning that such lapses could mean other terrorists have already entered the country under Biden-era approvals.

Cotton called on DHS to “conduct an audit of all visas issued through high-risk countries since 2021, prioritizing potential affiliations with Hamas or other designated terrorist groups,” and to “implement enhanced social media monitoring for visa applicants from high-risk regions” along with “mandatory real-time FBI watchlist checks to ensure no terrorist slips through undetected.”

He concluded with a blunt warning: “The safety of Arkansans and all Americans depends on reversing the damage done by Biden’s open border policy.”

According to federal filings, investigators say geolocation data placed Al-Muhtadi’s phone near Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the October 7 attack, and his social media featured photos of him undergoing weapons training and wearing terrorist insignia.

Records show he arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on September 12, 2024, and later lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, before relocating to Lafayette, Louisiana, where he was arrested.

He faces charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and making false statements in the immigration process, and remains in custody pending proceedings.

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