Republicans

The Senate passed a $95.3 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan in a bipartisan vote early Tuesday morning — but like pretty much everything these days, it seems destined to end up in the House GOP’s legislative graveyard.  In a 70-22 vote, a rare supermajority in the upper chamber, the Senate approved $60 billion in aid for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, $23 billion in security and humanitarian assistance to Israel, and $4.8 billion for partners in the Indo-Pacific region.  They…

The Joe Biden presidential campaign is positioning the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy. But a new poll suggests that defending America’s constitutional system of checks and balances is no longer an electoral slam dunk.  A startling 39 percent of Americans, including 74 percent of Republicans, think it’s a decent idea for Donald Trump to act as a dictator for a day to begin his prospective second term, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Wednesday.  In a series of…

House Republicans announced a resolution Monday to “authoritatively express” that Donald Trump “did not engage in insurrection or rebellion.” The stunt comes days before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Thursday in an appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that the former president “engaged in an insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, and is constitutionally ineligible to be president. Introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the bill has 63 cosponsors and will…

The big bipartisan border reform deal is all but dead, thanks to MAGA Republicans obeying Donald Trump‘s wishes to kill it. The legislation delivered many of the immigration measures conservatives have long wanted, but the former president and his allies in Congress worry progress on the issue would make Joe Biden look good ahead of the presidential election. Therefore, addressing what Republicans say is the most pressing crisis facing America today is going to have to wait until a later date when the party feels it’s…

The Senate has finally released its long-discussed, much-debated, bipartisan border package. Despite their demands for many of the increased security measures the bill would provide, House Republicans are setting aside their self-proclaimed commitment to border reform in favor of blocking a potential PR victory for the Biden administration.  Only hours after the 370-page document was released, House Republican leadership was already shutting the doors on its prospects in the lower chamber.  “I’ve seen enough.…

Last year, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans eligible for Medicare were on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.  Conservative operatives have already sketched out what the GOP’s policy agenda would look like in the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency. As Rolling Stone has detailed, the proposed Project…

In North Carolina, “unaffiliated” voters outnumber registered Democrats who, in turn, outnumber registered Republicans — yet Republicans hold not just a slim majority, but a veto-proof one in both chambers of the state’s General Assembly. That veto-proof majority is what allowed Republicans to pass an abortion ban last year that 45 percent of North Carolina voters oppose and only 23 percent support. How is that possible? And why is it the case that Republicans have been able to wield such power, not just in North…

Credit: The Conversation Both Republicans and Democrats regarded people with opposing political views as less moral than people in their own party, even when their political opposites acted fairly or kindly toward them, according to experiments my colleagues and I recently conducted. Even participants who self-identified as only moderately conservative or liberal made the same harsh moral judgments about those on the other side…

Amid Texas’ refusal to grant federal agents access to a 2.5 mile stretch on the southern border, the Republican Governors Association has backed this Lone Star rebellion against the Biden administration. And the vast majority of that committee’s corporate donors, including some of the most recognizable brands in America, are standing by silently.  As part of an escalating campaign to repel migrants attempting to cross into the United States — including refugees who have a right under international law to seek…

Republicans and Democrats rarely agree on anything in the highly divided US House of Representatives. But one thing they have agreed on – unanimously this time – is electric bikes. Just not in the way we all hoped. The last electric bike bill to hit the floor of the US House of Representatives was the EBIKE Act, which sought to create a federal tax incentive for e-bike purchases. The concept was similar to the tax credits already available for buying electric cars, except that instead of helping…