<.....He demonstrated that again on Tuesday. His committee has been working for months to tie Hunter Biden’s business activity to President Biden, without success. Until, that is, they stumbled onto something offered up as a smoking gun: money sent by Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partners in mid-2019 that listed Joe Biden’s house as the receiving address! Comer posted on social media about it with the requisite siren emojis; Fox News filed a story.

But even in that story, an asterisk was presented: Hunter Biden had long used his father’s Delaware address as his own, particularly in the 2018-2019 time frame. Comer himself had been quick to point out that Hunter Biden used the address as his own when trying to imply that maybe the president’s son was intertwined with the discovery of documents marked as classified in Joe Biden’s garage. In that period, Hunter Biden was actively abusing alcohol and illegal drugs; in his memoir, he describes spending the early months of 2019 in various Los Angeles area hotels. In 2018, he’d used his father’s address on his driver’s license.

To CNN, Hunter Biden’s attorney made this exact argument.

“This was a documented loan (not a distribution or payout) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Abbe Lowell said in a statement.

A source who has seen the documentation of the payments but wasn’t authorized to speak publicly confirmed that the payments were wire transactions and not checks. This means the transfer of money was between two financial institutions — the recipient address was not in any way determinative: the destination was the bank, not a house. And the listed beneficiary for the recipient account, according to the documentation? Robert Hunter Biden.

In the committee’s press release, Comer tried to imply that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter Biden’s relationship with his Chinese business partners. He noted that Hunter’s former partner Devon Archer offered testimony that Joe Biden “wrote college recommendation letters for his children.” What Archer actually testified was that Hunter did get his father to write a recommendation for the man’s daughter — but when asked if Joe Biden had taken action to benefit the man’s company, Archer stated flatly that he hadn’t.

This latest example of Comer getting out over his skis will not serve as a disincentive, of course. He’s seen repeatedly that his false claims and exaggerations are ignored by his ideological allies in the right-wing media, where the unassailable narrative of Biden’s obvious culpability is both assumed and defended relentlessly. Instead of moving forward with new caution given the presumed solemnity of potentially impeaching a president, he’s just doing the same thing under a new banner. Like putting a sign in the window of a McDonald’s claiming that it has a Michelin star. Still the same food and atmosphere.

It is important to note that there may still emerge new, indisputable evidence showing that Joe Biden was directly involved in his son’s business in some way, or that he leveraged his authority to benefit his kid. Just because you cry wolf doesn’t mean a wolf won’t show up.

But it might be useful to have someone else be the guy telling the public that a wolf has been sighted.>

<As the Senate marches ahead with a bipartisan approach to prevent a government shutdown, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is back to square one — asking his hard-right Republicans to do what they have said they would never do: approve their own temporary House measure to keep the government open.

The Republican speaker laid out his strategy Wednesday behind closed doors, urging his unruly Republican majority to work together. He set up a test vote for Friday, one day before Saturday's shutdown deadline, on a far-right bill. It would slash federal spending by 8% from many agencies and toughen border security but has been rejected by Democrats and his own right-flank Republicans.

“I want to solve the problem,” McCarthy told reporters afterward at the Capitol.

But pressed on how he would pass a partisan Republican spending plan that even his own right flank doesn't want, McCarthy had few answers. He rejected outright the Senate's bipartisan bill, which would fund the government to Nov. 17, adding $6 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief while talks continue. Instead, he insisted, as he often does, that he would never quit trying.

Congress is at a crossroads days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for millions of federal workers, leave 2 million active duty military troops and reservists to work without pay, close down many federal offices, and leave Americans who rely on the government in ways large and small in the lurch.

President Joe Biden in California at a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said Wednesday he didn’t think a federal shutdown was inevitable.

“I don’t think anything is inevitable when it comes to politics,” he said.

But later at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden said of McCarthy: “I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests.”

As the Senate pushes ahead in bipartisan fashion, McCarthy is demanding that Biden meet to discuss border security measures. But the speaker has little leverage left with the White House without the power of his House majority behind him. The White House has panned his overtures for talks after McCarthy walked away from the debt deal he and Biden reached earlier this year that is now law.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the right-wing extremes that “seem to exult in shutting down government.”

The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was in rare agreement with the Democratic leader, urging his House colleagues to consider the Senate's stopgap approach, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, and move off the shutdown strategy.

McConnell said that he, too, would like to do something about the “Democrats’ reckless spending” and boost border security. But he said, “these important discussions cannot progress” if the functions of government “end up being taken hostage.”

When McConnell mentioned a vote against the bill would mean voting against pay for border patrol agents and others, it sparked a response from Biden on social media.

“You know, I agree with Mitch here. Why the House Republicans would want to defund Border Patrol is beyond me,” Biden wrote.

With the Senate expected to spend the rest of this week working to pass its bill over the objections of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and others on the right flank. Like their House colleagues, the conservative senators want to halt aid to Ukraine and push for steeper spending cuts, all action in Congress is crushing toward a last minute deadline.

The federal government would begin to shut down if funding is not secured by Sunday, Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

A new economic assessment from Goldman Sachs estimated a federal shutdown would subtract 0.2 percent points from fourth-quarter GDP growth each week it continues, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Running out of options, McCarthy revived the border security package he first tried to attach to a temporary government funding bill earlier this month. But he still faces a handful of hard-right holdouts led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who say they won't vote for any CR, denying a majority for passage.

It's late in the process to be pushing the border security provisions now, as McCarthy tries to salvage the strategy. He is seeking to shift blame to Biden and Democrats for not engaging in an immigration debate about the record flow of migrants at the Southern border with Mexico....>

<.....Facing holdouts in his own ranks, McCarthy is trying to cajole his hard-right members who have refused to vote for any temporary spending bill — even with the border provisions. He told reporters, “I don’t understand where somebody would want to stand with President Biden on keeping an open border and not keep government open.”

The holdouts are determined to force the House to debate and pass all 12 individual funding bills for all the various government agencies. It's a grinding weeks-long process with no guarantee the bills will even pass with days to go before a shutdown.

“If that means we close and we shut down, that’s what we’re going do [sic],” said Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who wants the House to vote on all 12 bills, as he exited the morning Republican meeting.

On Wednesday the House slogged through debate over four of those bills — to fund Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture and State and Foreign Operations.

One amendment to gut $300 million for Ukraine was backed by 104 Republicans, more than ever as resistance to war funding grows, but it — and another like it — overwhelmingly failed. One from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to cut the Defense Secretary's salary to $1 was approved without dissent.

But late at night, facing the prospect that the Defense bill would fail with any Ukraine aid intact, the Republicans held an emergency Rules meeting to strip the $300 million — a stunning maneuver that the committee's top Democrat called “pathetic,” since the House had already decided the issue.

Republicans defended the action, saying the Ukraine money, which is routine and separate from Biden's larger request for funds, now will be voted on separately — and will likely pass with overwhelming support.

Lawmakers are prepared to work into the weekend, but one leading Republican, Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, said he believed Congress was headed towards a government shutdown.

“Somebody is going to have to flinch or break, or there will have to be something negotiated,” he said.

But the hard-right is threatening to oust McCarthy if he joins with Democrats and Womack, who is not among the holdouts, explained such a move could be “problematic for the speaker.”

While the White House has said it's up to McCarthy and the House Republicans to “fix” the problem they have created, Biden's chief rival in the 2024 election, Donald Trump, is urging the right flank to fight for steep spending cuts. If Republicans don't get what they want, Trump the former president says, they should “shut it down.”>

<Last week, a Fox News reporter caught Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in a moment of candor declaring, “I honestly don’t know what to say to my fellow Republicans other than you’re going to eat a s*** sandwich, and you probably deserve to eat it.” For months, House Republicans have squabbled over discretionary spending cuts.

To be clear, we need to have an adult conversation about spending, deficits and debt. As a nation, the time for kicking the can down the road on our spending is over. It’s time for action. As demonstrated in recent weeks, there is not a general consensus among Republicans on where spending should be cut, and the goalposts continue to shift within the various sects of the Republican Party whenever there seems to be a hint of an agreement coming together.

The current breakdown in the GOP Conference means there is a real opportunity for break away Republicans to look to Democrats for solutions by way of a discharge petition, effectively ending Republican control of the House. The discharge petition would allow Democrats to bring a continuing resolution to the House floor for a vote that would temporarily fund the government while bypassing regular order.

Government funding is set to expire on Sept. 30, and the House has passed only one of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. In an ideal world, Congress would create an annual budget on time and it would reduce the cost and size of the government. Sadly, the last time Congress passed all of the regular appropriations bills on time was in 1996 for FY 1997. The question must also be asked: why did GOP leadership wait until the last minute to bring the appropriations bills to the floor for a vote when the House Appropriations Committee reported 10 of the 12 regular appropriations bills for consideration more than 100 days ago?....>

<....The current display of dysfunction on Capitol Hill is a reason why millennials and Gen Zers identify as politically independent. The largest voting bloc in the 2024 elections longs for a Congress that can get things done without the political drama. And the irony is that the millennial voter will be the one to pick up the tab for both higher taxes and a lower standard of living as a result of this generation’s failure to address spending.

Republicans want to keep control of the House in 2024, but they should focus on not losing it before then. If a breakthrough is not made within the coming days, we know a handful of Republicans are looking to unite with Democrats on a resolution that does nothing to cut spending. This is a legitimate threat that fiscal conservatives must take seriously.

There is a real threat that a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair will be filed, and should it be filed, there is a legitimate possibility the outcome could be Republicans forced to share governing authority with Democrats. House Democrats are playing the long game. They know that if they let Republicans fall into self-inflicted chaos, gaining control of the House in 2024 is that much easier.

Independent voters in the critical swing districts determine which party holds the majority every cycle. They want to see a serious effort to address our spending problem. As the economy softens, Republicans have an opportunity to show how trillion dollar deficits drive up inflation and interest rates, hitting independent suburban voters directly—making kitchen table economics more difficult. Connecting on this issue is the path for Republicans to hold the House in 2024.

The immediate danger for the House GOP is to stop working as a conference, cultivating an “every man for himself” mindset. Democrats strategically want to see something like that take place so they can pick off Republicans one by one in swing districts.

Everyone in Washington knows that some Republicans are working with Democrats to secure a deal. The consequences of a deal could result in a power-sharing agreement between a handful of Republicans and the Democratic caucus for the remainder of the 118th Congress. Committees would be split evenly—forcing Republicans to relinquish their power, and an evenly controlled House would be a massive help to the Biden agenda.

Our nation’s financial situation is in bad shape. The national debt that we now face, more than $33 trillion, is irresponsible and unsustainable. If Congress cannot find solutions to basic discretionary spending cuts, there is no chance of tackling the true reforms in mandatory spending that must be addressed. By 2035, we will exceed $50 trillion in debt. Our interest payments alone will exceed $1.5 trillion, our market competitiveness will dissolve, and our standard of living will deteriorate.

Now that Congress is back, it is time for the GOP Conference to settle on a spending deal that includes real cuts, and take it to the negotiating table with President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The GOP can show the American people, specifically the independent voter, they are serious about fixing our budget and averting an approaching sovereign debt crisis that would fundamentally reshape the American way of life. Good policy will make good politics ahead of 2024.>

<A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dug in Thursday, vowing he will not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans' struggle to unite around an alternative.

Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government's roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers and curtail government services.

But the House and Senate are pursuing different paths to avert those consequences even though time is running out before government funding expires after midnight on Saturday.

The Senate is working toward passage of a bipartisan measure that would fund the government until Nov. 17 as longer-term negotiations continue, while also providing $6 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief.

The House, meanwhile, has teed up votes on four of the dozen annual spending bills that fund various agencies in hopes that would cajole enough Republicans to support a House-crafted continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government and boosts security at the U.S. border with Mexico. It's a longshot, but McCarthy predicted a deal.

“Put your money on me; we're going to get this done,” he said in a CNBC interview. “I think we can work through the weekend. I think we can figure this out."

Lawmakers were already weary from days of late-night negotiating. The strain was evident at McCarthy's closed-door meeting with Republicans Thursday morning, which was marked by a tense exchange between the speaker and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., according to those in the room.

Gaetz, who has taunted McCarthy for weeks with threats to oust him from his post, confronted the speaker about conservative online influencers being paid to post negative things about him. McCarthy shot back that he wouldn’t waste his time on something like that, Gaetz told reporters as he exited the meeting.

McCarthy's allies left the meeting fuming about Gaetz’s tactics.

With his majority splintering, McCarthy is scrambling to come up with a plan for preventing a shutdown and win Republican support. The speaker told Republicans he would reveal a Republican stopgap plan, known as a continuing resolution or CR, on Friday, according to those in the room, while also trying to force Senate Democrats into giving some concessions.

But with time running out, many GOP lawmakers were either withholding support for a temporary measure until they had a chance to see it. Others are considering joining Democrats, without McCarthy's support, to bring forward a bill that would prevent a shutdown.

With his ability to align his conference in doubt, McCarthy has little standing to negotiate with Senate Democrats. He has also attempted to draw President Joe Biden into negotiations, but

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Congress and the White House had already worked out top-line spending levels for next year with an agreement this summer that allowed the government to continue borrowing to pay its bills. But McCarthy was deviating from that deal and courting a shutdown by catering to Republicans who say it didn't do enough to cut spending, he said.

“By focusing on the views of the radical few instead of the many, Speaker McCarthy has made a shutdown far more likely,” Schumer said.

McCarthy reiterated to CNBC that the House will have its say. “Will I accept and surrender to what the Senate decides? The answer is no, we’re our own body.”

He acknowledged divisions within his own conference, saying members have made it difficult to pass appropriations bills. But he added that he still is working with the Republicans who won't support short-term funding legislation.

"Well, if you won’t do any of that, it’s hard to govern," McCarthy said, before adding, “I don’t give up on any single one of them, and I try to find a place that we can bring it all together.”

President Joe Biden also sought to apply more pressure on McCarthy, urging him to compromise with Democrats even though that could threaten his job.

"I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests," Biden said....>

<....The White House, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, notified staff on Thursday to prepare for a shutdown, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press. Employees who are furloughed would have four hours on Monday to prepare their offices for the shutdown.

The White House plans to keep on all commissioned officers. That includes chief of staff Jeff Zients, press secretary Karine Jean Pierre, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior-level personnel, by declaring them “excepted” during a shutdown, according to the White House email.

Military troops and federal workers, including law enforcement officers, air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers, will also report to work because they are essential to protecting life and property. They would miss paychecks if the shutdown lasts beyond Oct. 13, the next scheduled payday, though they are slated to receive backpay once any shutdown ends.

Many Republicans have voiced fears they would be blamed for a shutdown — including in the Senate, where many GOP members are aligned with Democrats on a temporary bill.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he agrees with many of the goals of the House Republicans, but warned a shutdown will not achieve any of them.

“Instead of producing any meaningful policy outcomes, it would actually take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward," McConnell said.

But McCarthy's House allies were hoping the threat of a shutdown could help conservatives with their push to limit federal spending and combat illegal immigration at the U.S-Mexico border.

“Anytime you have a stopgap situation like this, you have an opportunity to leverage," said Rep. Garret Graves, R-La. “This is another opportunity. America does not want an open Southern border. The polls are crystal clear. It’s having a profound impact on us.”>

Like this one, do ya, <stalker>?

<Republican Kari Lake, a Donald Trump ally who has refused to acknowledge her loss in last year's race for Arizona governor, will soon launch her campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by independent Kyrsten Sinema, a senior adviser said Thursday.

Lake's entrance in one of next year's top Senate contests likely complicates Republican efforts to nominate candidates with a broader appeal after a disappointing showing for the party in last year's midterms. She will enter the race as the front-runner for the GOP nomination.

Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, confirmed that she will open her campaign with an Oct. 10 rally. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

A charismatic former television anchor who is well known in the Phoenix market, Lake built an enthusiastic following among Republicans with her unflinching support for Trump and her steadfast promotion of false claims of election fraud.

Lake's star power stretches far beyond Arizona. Lake is seen as a potential running mate for Trump, who is leading polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Arizona race is a top target for Republicans looking to regain the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 edge that includes Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 but still receives her committees [sic] assignments from Democrats. The 2024 Senate map heavily favors the GOP, with Democratic-held seats up for grabs in three states that Trump won in 2020.

Courts have repeatedly rejected Lake's lawsuits challenging last year's election results. The litigation has juiced Lake's fundraising but not advanced her false claim to be the “duly elected governor” Arizona, rather than Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Lake joins Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the Republican Senate primary. Several other Republicans have considered running but have stayed out of the race while Lake considered her plans. They include Blake Masters, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, all businesspeople who lost 2022 races for Senate or governor.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran and one of the most prominent Latino officials in Arizona, is the only major Democrat in the race.

Sinema is raising money for a potential reelection campaign and is stepping up her public appearances in Arizona, but she has said she's in no hurry to decide whether to seek a second term in the Senate. Her party switch came after she had infuriated many Democrats who saw her as too close to business interests and an impediment to progressive change.

Lake's presence in the race could help Sinema if she chooses to mount an independent campaign for reelection. Lake alienated many establishment Republicans during her campaign for governor, even telling “McCain Republicans” to “get the hell out” of a campaign event, describing the late and beloved Arizona Sen. John McCain a “loser.”

To win, Sinema will need to win over a sizable chunk of Republicans and Democrats along with a majority of independents.

Until Trump's presidency, Arizona had been a reliably Republican state since World War II. Republicans still maintain a registration edge over Democrats, but the GOP lost three consecutive Senate races and last year watched Democrats win the top state offices over a slate of Trump-endorsed election deniers, including Lake.

The state is emblematic of the party's struggles to win over suburban voters turned off by Trump. In Lake's loss last year, 11% of voters who identified as Republicans backed Hobbs, including 25% of Republicans who identified as moderate or liberal, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in Arizona.

Democrats posted surprising success in last year's Senate races despite a tough economic picture and an unpopular Democratic president after voters rejected Trump-backed Republican nominees in battleground states, including Arizona. Republicans in Washington have pledged to take a more active posture in primaries next year, hoping to ensure the party nominates candidates who can win in November.

GOP officials in Washington have taken a wait-and-see approach to the Arizona race, viewing Lake as the odds-on favorite to win the primary but fearing the serious baggage she would carry into a general election.>

<Representative Matt Gaetz is using a looming federal funding deadline to force the government into a shutdown unless his demands are met. He’s also using it as an opportunity to raise money for his reelection bid.

The Florida Republican is a vocal member of a group of hardline House conservatives blocking deals to fund the government, which is all but certain to shut down on midnight Sunday without Congressional action.

He described the spending battle as a “historic fight to stop a corrupt government funding system” that’s been in place since the 1990s, according to an email his campaign sent to supporters Wednesday.

“Unlike Swamp politicians and their media puppets, we aren’t holding the government hostage. We are holding this Speaker to his word,” the email, captured by Pundit Analytics, said. He asked for donations in amounts ranging from $5 to $100.

Gaetz, one of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s toughest critics, is opposing temporary measures to keep the government open that would allow more time for negotiations. Gaetz says McCarthy promised votes on individual year-long spending bills, which have no chance of being considered in the Democratic-controlled Senate. He has repeatedly threatened to force a vote on ousting McCarthy from his job as speaker if McCarthy doesn’t acquiesce to his demands.

A federal shutdown would mean that federal agencies will cease many functions and government employees will go unpaid for the duration of the shutdown, though they are likely to receive back-pay when it reopens. A prolonged shutdown could affect many households in Gaetz’s district in the Florida panhandle, where nearly 7% of working adults are federal employees.

Gaetz isn’t the only Republican who is using the looming shutdown as an opportunity to ask their supporters for cash.

Wisconsin Republican Scott Fitzgerald asked supporters to tell him whether “Washington’s spending problem needs to be addressed.”

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee told donors on Wednesday that he “would vote against any short-term bill to keep the government open.” Because of the $33 trillion national debt, he promised to dig in his heels and send something tough to the Senate. He asked for $15.>

<Georgia Republicans have removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' biggest threat.

State Senator Colton Moore announced on Thursday that the state GOP voted to oust him over his calls to defund and investigate the district attorney in the wake of her sweeping RICO indictment that named former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies as co-conspirators in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

"Today's removal is a direct result of me calling on my Republican colleagues in the Senate to do their job and sign onto an emergency session to investigate Fani Willis," Moore said in a statement shared with Newsweek. "The Georgia Constitution clearly outlines the legislature's power to call an emergency session to investigate a judicial officer. After urging my Republican Senate colleagues to join me...they responded by acting like children and throwing me out of the caucus."

Days after Willis indicted Trump, Moore asked Governor Brian Kemp to call for a special session and bring legislators back to the state Capitol to review Willis' actions in the probe and "determine if they warrant impeachment." Under state law, there can only be a special session at the governor's request or if three-fifths of both legislative chambers sign a letter demanding it. While Republicans have the majority in both chambers, their majorities are not large enough to clear the three-fifths threshold.

Kemp has also signaled his refusal to take such action, saying in August that while Georgia law allows for the removal of local prosecutors who violate their oath, "Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis' actions, or lack thereof, warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission."

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns has also spoken out against Moore's demands, saying that defunding Willis' office "flaunts the idea of separation of power, if not outright violates it."

"A select few are calling to defund a duly-elected district attorney of this state and her office in an attempt to interfere with the criminal justice system," Burns wrote to his Republican colleagues in an August memo. "It is unfortunate some would knowingly suggest such a reckless course of action despite the devastating effects it would have."

Despite being removed by his fellow Republicans, Moore defended his efforts to investigate Willis and insisted that Georgia voters were 100 percent with him.

"I stand by my Republican principles. I stand by the Republican platform. I will continue to serve as a Republican Senator from the great state of Georgia," Moore said. "Unfortunately, now I will be forced to refer to my colleagues, who ran on being 'Trump conservatives' as the RINO caucus." RINO refers to Republicans in Name Only.

"This is the fight of our lifetime, and I will continue to double down to defend the rule of law and do what is right," he added.

In response, far-right political activist Laura Loomer called the development an abomination and expressed her continued support for Moore. Trump supporter and co-founder for the America First Media Group Matt Couch also criticized Moore's ousting, writing on X, formerly Twitter: "The corruption in the GOP is evident in EVERY single state in America.. Its [sic] out of control.."

Newsweek reached out to the Georgia Republican Party via email for comment.>

<An upcoming case that will be heard by the Supreme Court could potentially have far-reaching implications on the United States tax structure, according to a new report.

The Roosevelt Institute and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) collaborated on the report released Wednesday about Moore v. United States. The case, which is scheduled to be heard in December, deals with whether the U.S. Constitution's 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states.

Charles and Kathleen Moore are minority shareholders in an Indian farming firm, and they have disputed a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress in 2017 after the IRS presented them with a $15,000 bill for their investment. The Moores argue the reparation tax is not on income and violates the 16th Amendment that requires direct federal taxes to be apportioned among the states. After losing a suit in District Court in Washington state in 2022, the Moores' dispute will be heard by the Supreme Court.

The Roosevelt Institute and the ITEP explained that before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, American individuals and corporations "owning stock in a foreign corporation were allowed to defer payment of U.S. tax on profits generated by the offshore company until those profits were 'repatriated.'"

The think tanks wrote that legal scholars believe the Supreme Court "could rule in a variety of different directions—each with different impacts on Congress' past and future taxing powers."

If the high court sides with the plaintiffs, almost 400 multinational corporations could collectively receive $271 billion in tax relief. The report noted Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito are said to own stock in 19 companies that could receive a combined $30 billion if the court strikes down the repatriation tax.

Newsweek reached out to the public information officer for the Supreme Court via email for comment.

The report also argues that depending on the scope of the decision, the Supreme Court could "supplant Congress as a major American tax policymaker, putting at legal jeopardy much of the architecture of laws that prevent corporations and individuals from avoiding taxes, and introducing great uncertainty about our democracy's ability to tax large corporations and the most affluent."

Common Dreams wrote about the report on Moore v. United States and said that while justices could take a narrower view on specific parts of the Moore case, a broader ruling could possibly protect individuals from a wealth tax.

The Manhattan Institute, one of eight conservative advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to hear the Moores' case, argued in a filing that "the case presents the court with an ideal opportunity to clarify that taxes on unrealized gains, such as wealth taxes, are direct taxes that are unconstitutional if not apportioned among the states."

The Roosevelt Institute and the ITEP report further warned that the Supreme Court's ruling could even affect social programs and the federal deficit.

"In Moore, the Roberts Court could decide with the stroke of a pen to simultaneously forgive big business decades of tax dues, increase the federal deficit over the long run, jeopardize future public revenue and essential social programs, escalate these multinational companies' already sizable after-tax profits, and further enrich their shareholders," the report authors wrote.>

<It's all well and good to treat the House Republicans' careening toward a government shutdown as a cabaret farce staged for our amusement.

However, the threat to ordinary Americans, especially those dependent on government programs, is no joke.

Even if the Republicans don't provoke the shutdown currently likely to begin at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the budget cuts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has said he would support to meet the demands of his caucus' far-right wing would devastate government assistance to the most vulnerable Americans.

As outlined by the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, two progressive think tanks working from official communications including the budget resolution released Sept. 20 by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, they would involve these cuts in the social safety net:

A cut of $14.7 billion, or 77%, in Title I education grants to school districts with high levels of poverty, which fund services and supports for students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds. The CBPP calls this funding "a core federal support for K-12 education."

Reduction of the fruit and vegetable benefit in the Agriculture Department’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) by 56% to 70%, affecting about 5 million participants.

Unsustainable reductions in low-income assistance programs for housing and heating. $1.9 trillion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years.

These cuts go well beyond those agreed upon in the debt-ceiling negotiations last May, which McCarthy accepted.

As a sop to the Republicans' rich patrons, the House caucus would rescind all of the $88 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service that was enacted as part of last year's Inflation Reduction Act.

This exceeds the $21-billion cut in the debt-ceiling negotiations. It's the usual GOP penny-wise-and-plain-foolish approach to IRS funding, since it hamstrings the agency's enforcement capabilities and taxpayer services such as phone advice.

Every dollar spent on enforcement yields multiples in recovered taxes. The IRS reported in July that it had recovered $38 million in delinquent taxes from more than 175 high-income taxpayers in previous months, using the enforcement funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. Obviously, that sticks in the craw of a party devoted to protecting its patrons from paying their obligations.

The absurd truth of all this "negotiating" is that it won't help Speaker McCarthy, America's most outstanding political invertebrate, get a funding proposal through his chamber that would be even remotely acceptable to the Senate. That includes Senate Republicans, who have signed on to a bipartisan spending scheme....>

<....There are doubts that McCarthy can get any proposal through his caucus, which is effectively controlled by extremists who keep moving the goalposts by insisting on ever more draconian spending cuts. They show every sign of determination to shut the government down this weekend, even though it's a political article of faith that the public always blames the GOP for shutdowns (as it should), leading to disaster at the ballot box.

The lack of character among congressional Republicans, not excepting those aligned with McCarthy, is truly amazing. These are people who have no compunctions about slandering working Americans while taking every opportunity themselves for slacking off.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), one of McCarthy's lieutenants, remarked during the debt-ceiling negotiations that Democrats were "willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work."

The serene nerviness of this slander was truly impressive, given that the House of Representatives had taken 12 of 20 workdays off in April and 10 of 22 workdays (not counting Memorial Day) off in May. Overall, the House has been scheduled to be in session only 117 days in 2023, fewer than half the 240 days most of the rest of us are at work.

The House took off the entire month of August and didn't return to session until Sept. 12, all while the possible shutdown was looming. The rest were officially designated "district work days," to which we can only respond, "Oh, sure."

Graves has resurfaced during the shutdown negotiations, telling the Washington Post that the Republicans' “bottom line is we’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives," which include "huge savings."

As the Post toted up the numbers, those savings involved "taking more than $150 billion per year out of the part of the budget that funds child care, education subsidies, medical research and hundreds of additional federal operations."

If there's a silver lining in the House GOP's performative horseplay, it's that it has cured the political press of treating the standoff as a symptom of congressional dysfunction. It's not; as is being reported more accurately and sensibly in recent days, it's a symptom of Republican dysfunction and, more than that, McCarthy's dysfunction.

No one doubts that a workable budget plan can be enacted by the House. McCarthy's problem is that it would involve House Democrats agreeing to get it over the finish line. But any action that requires him to reach agreement with the Democrats would provoke his own right wing to mount an ouster campaign. So McCarthy is as guilty as the rest of them.

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes went about with a lantern in search of an honest man. We don't even need that much: Just a man with a hint of steadfastness in his makeup. Apparently we'll have to keep looking.>

<As the second-tier GOP presidential candidates were flinging venom at each other during the second primary debate — without frontrunner Donald Trump in the room — Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairperson Ronna McDaniel was focused on a Democrat, not a Republican, as she reminded voters that she’s leading a charge against Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA).

McDaniel says that Gov. Shapiro is “springing an unclear and unnecessary last-minute rule change on PA voters just weeks ahead of a key November election,” and that the RNC and the state-run Pennsylvania GOP “are continuing our shared mission of fighting for election integrity by demanding immediate answers.”

Governor Shapiro recently announced a plan to automatically register new voters when they get their driver's licenses or state identification. It’s a change in the PA voter registration default setting to opt-out instead of opt-in.

Note: The Washington Post reports that Pennsylvania "has calculated that 1.6 million people who are currently eligible to vote in Pennsylvania are not registered" and quotes Shapiro saying: “I see voter participation as key to strengthening democracy.”

McDaniel is expected to do more than criticize Shapiro. The Delaware Valley Journal reports that the demand letters sent by the RNC and PAGOP to the governor “are commonly issued immediately prior to a lawsuit.” (The RNC is currently involved in almost 60 election “integrity” lawsuits nationwide.)

GOP frontrunner Trump has railed against Shapiro’s new automatic voter registration rule, claiming more voters is disadvantageous to Republicans.

“Pennsylvania is at it again! The Radical Left Governor, Josh Shapiro, has just announced a switch to Automatic Voter Registration, a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!" Trump posted on Truth Social. "This is a totally Unconstitutional Act and must be met harshly by Republican Leadership in Washington and Pennsylvania.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 24 states and Washington, D.C. have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration. It is not compulsory — individuals may choose to opt out of registration when, for example, they getting [sic] their driver’s license or later by returning a mail. (Opt-out options vary by state.)

Trump added: “the RNC and Ronna McDaniel must spend their time working on this, instead of meaningless Debates where I am up by more than 50 points.”

Note: The “meaningless” GOP debate participants at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.>

<A teacher at a Wisconsin school made an antisemitic gesture and remark in class, but allegedly didn't "intend to cause harm," according to an investigation by the district.

According to the local parent newsletter "Elmbrook Community Need to Know," on Sept. 21 an eighth grade math teacher from Wisconsin Hills Middle School gave the Nazi salute to her class and told the students to respond with either "Heil Hilter" or "Heil [Teacher Surname]."

After garnering media attention, the school sent a letter to all families following a similar message that was only sent to students and families directly impacted earlier in the week.

The Elmbrook school district declined further comment, but provided FOX News Digital with the letter Principal Matt Schroede sent to all families of the middle school Friday.

The Elmbrook school declined to provide further comment to Fox News Digital, but confirmed antisemitic remarks were made by providing a letter that was sent to the middle school's families this week.

The letter acknowledged the incident occurred and said a "complete investigation" took place.

"Regrettably, one of our teachers made an antisemitic gesture and remark during class that is highly offensive to both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals, something we would not tolerate from any student or staff member at Wisconsin Hills," the letter said. "Following a complete investigation, it was our determination that the teacher did not intend to cause harm, yet it was a clear violation of our staff professional responsibilities."

The letter added that in the course of the past week, "disciplinary action and corrective measures" were implemented "including antisemitism education."

"To be clear, the behavior described above is not condoned nor does it represent the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of our staff members," the letter concluded. "As we do with our students, we will hold our staff to the highest standard of professionalism and respond quickly when that standard is not met."

An anonymous parent of Elmbrook schools said the incident seemed to be "part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior in staff at Elmbrook in the last few years," citing a sex survey given to students, an inappropriate link in an email signature and explicit books brought into school that didn’t follow policy guidelines.>

<An anonymous whistleblower claims Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ office improperly altered and withheld public records related to ongoing scrutiny of the office’s spending, according to the whistleblower’s attorney.

Rogers-based attorney Tom Mars sent a letter Friday to state Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, offering his client’s testimony and documents to aid a requested legislative audit.

On Wednesday, Hickey asked the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee to investigate Sanders’ office’s purchase of a $19,000 lectern, which has been widely criticized on social media. He also asked the committee to look into the retroactive shielding of several government records after Sanders signed additional Freedom of Information Act exemptions into law this month after a special legislative session.

Mars provided a copy of his letter to the Arkansas Advocate and declined to comment further, saying it “speaks for itself.” The Arkansas Times first reported on the letter.

The letter says Mars’ client “can provide clear and convincing evidence” that Sanders’ office altered and withheld documents that Little Rock attorney and blogger Matt Campbell of the Blue Hog Report requested in recent weeks. Campbell has been scrutinizing and reporting Sanders’ use of the Arkansas State Police airplane for in-state travel as well as her office’s spending habits and purchase of the lectern from an out-of-state events company with a state-issued credit card. Mars’ client alleges that members of Sanders’ staff, including Communications Director Alexa Henning:

Altered a FOIA-accessible document “to give it a different meaning” and directed the state Department of Transformation and Shared Services not to share the original document with Campbell.Withheld FOIA-accessible documents, including some that reflect Amazon purchases by Sanders’ office.Removed portions of FOIA-accessible email threads.Directed the Department of Transformation attorney in charge of FOIA responses “to deliver a ‘flash drive’ to the Governor’s Office with TSS’s proposed responses and thereafter returning the sanitized version to TSS on a ‘flash drive.’”

Henning did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon.

Mars and his client claim that Sanders’ office altered and concealed the original copy of an invoice from the event design and management firm Beckett Events LLC, which Campbell posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sept. 15. The 3% credit card processing fee of $554 brought the $18,475 lectern purchase to a total of $19,029.

Beckett Events founder Virginia Beckett is a Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist. Mars and other critics of Sanders’ administration have posted photos on X linking Sanders to Beckett and another D.C.-area consultant, Hannah Stone of Salem Strategies. Social media posts also show that Stone and Beckett were in France over the summer at the same time as Sanders was visiting on a “trade mission.”

Mars states in his letter to Hickey that if the auditing committee concludes that his client’s allegations are true, those responsible will have likely violated two state laws regarding public records. Violating the state FOIA is a Class C misdemeanor, and tampering with public records that are not court records is a Class D felony.

Hickey sent the request for a legislative audit to committee chairs Sen. David Wallace, R-Leachville, and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould. The request seeks to examine “all matters, involving the Governor or the Governor’s Office, made confidential” by Act 7 of 2023, a new law that went into effect immediately upon Sanders’ signature and applied retroactively back to June 1, 2022.

Act 7 shields from public access all records and communications concerning the planning or provision of security services to the governor and other state elected officials. Sanders initially supported legislation that proposed much broader exemptions but was narrowed down after bipartisan pushback.

Cortney Kennedy, interim chief legal counsel for Sanders’ office, received Mars’ letter in addition to Hickey. Kennedy defended the proposed exemptions to the FOIA before a state Senate committee earlier this month.

Hickey told the Advocate Friday he had no comment on the letter.

He said he requested the legislative audit partly to clarify how the auditing committee will report its findings to the Legislature, since Act 7 specifies the committee’s ability to do so despite the new exemption to the FOIA.

He also said he believes the audit is necessary in light of “everything with the timeline, the way it’s transpired, the special session we had, the exemption that we made [to the FOIA] and the fact that we made it retroactive.”

<In an op-ed published Friday legal expert Jonathan Turley addressed his testimony as the GOP's star witness in the first hearing of the House impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden on Thursday saying that, as expected, his testimony angered people both on the left and on the right.

"Today, caution is considered cowardice and impartiality is viewed as chicanery," Turley wrote in the op-ed published at The Messenger. "Yet our Constitution demands more of each of us at these moments. We can rise to that challenge, as the Framers hoped we would, or we can continue our national descent into rage and ruin."

"It is the difference between laying the groundwork for a real impeachment or for just another political hit-job," he added.

Turley testified, that in his opinion, there is sufficient evidence to warrant an impeachment inquiry – but not yet for actual impeachment. But as he points out in his op-ed, that was not enough for some Trump loyalists, namely Steve Bannon, who slammed Republicans for not calling someone to testify that the evidence is strong enough for actual articles of impeachment.

But according to Turley, if he fulfilled Bannon's wishes, it would be like, "calling a special grand jury and demanding an indictment before any witnesses or evidence are presented."

Turley writes that Republicans "rightly criticized" the last two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, and praised them taking a more "principled approach" to President Biden. "They have spent months developing a record on what is now a clear influence-peddling scheme operated by Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their associates," Turley wrote.

"Even some past critics now recognize that this was a corrupt influence-peddling operation, but most insist that Hunter was simply selling the 'illusion' of influence."

But as far as declaring Biden "guilty," Turley says we don't know enough yet.

"This is a constitutional process, not just some trash-talking cable show (although, admittedly, it was hard to tell at moments in the hearing).">

<House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said that there will be a government shutdown when funding runs out on Sunday, but blamed this on Democrats during an appearance on conservative network Newsmax.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress must agree a new funding bill by the end of Saturday to avoid a government shutdown. This would see millions of federal workers furloughed and many others forced to work without pay.

Currently, there is no indication the two parties are anywhere near an agreement. Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed to get a short-term spending bill through the House on Friday after GOP hardliners joined Democrats to vote it down. Even if passed, it almost certainly would have been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, since it mandated steep government spending cuts.

Appearing on Newsmax's Eric Bolling The Balance on Friday, Greene said: "Yes, there is unfortunately going to be a shutdown, but you know who we can really blame for that? Democrats."

A clip of the remarks was posted on X, formerly Twitter, by the Acyn account where it received more than 161,500 views.

Greene's comments are just the latest contribution to an ongoing war of words over who is responsible for any shutdown, which is likely to intensify if one does go ahead.

The official White House X account has been giving an hourly countdown to the beginning of shutdown, which it blames on "extreme House Republicans."

For example, at 9 a.m. ET, the White House X account posted: "15 hours until Extreme House Republicans shut down the government.

"This shutdown would jeopardize vital nutrition assistance for nearly seven million women and children across the country."

McCarthy has taken a different view, commenting: "I don't have a journalism degree—but why does the media expect the Republican House to just follow the Democrat Senate's lead on government funding?"

As the House failed to put through a stopgap spending bill on Friday, the Senate was pushing its own legislation, which passed a procedural vote earlier this week with a bipartisan split of 76-22.

Another procedural vote is due on Saturday, but it is unlikely the bill will pass the Senate before a shutdown begins. Even if it does go through the upper chamber, it is unlikely to be accepted by many Republicans in the GOP-controlled House.

If McCarthy makes concessions to the Senate, he risks hardline Republicans calling a vote to remove him from the speaker's office. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said earlier this month that the House GOP leader must be in "total compliance" to avoid a motion to vacate the chair.

In an interview with ProPublica, due to be published on Sunday, President Joe Biden said: "The speaker has made a terrible bargain. In order to keep the speakership, he's willing to do things that he, I think, knows are inconsistent with constitutional processes, No. 1."

Biden added: "No. 2, I think it says that there is a group of MAGA Republicans who genuinely want to have a fundamental change in the way that the system works. And that's what worries me the most.">

<Special counsel Jack Smith is calling on the federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's 2020 election subversion case to urgently install a gag order, flagging several social media incidents he believes warrant restrictions on the former president.

Smith said in a court filing on Friday to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that Trump should not be permitted to "obtain the benefits of his incendiary public states" and then "avoid accountability" through "feign[ed] retraction." He was referring to Trump's appearance at a gun store in South Carolina on Monday, during which he was videotaped holding a custom Glock.

Trump's spokesman Steven Cheung posted a video to X, formerly Twitter, saying, "President Trump purchases a @Glock Inc. in South Carolina." However, Cheung later deleted the post and said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that Trump "wanted to buy one" but did not confirm the purchase.

However, Smith believes the video caught Trump "potentially violating his conditions of release, and tried to walk that back in a similar fashion." While under a federal indictment, Trump is allowed to possess existing firearms but may not receive new ones.

"The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters' mistaken belief that he did so," Smith wrote.

Smith also stated that Trump's attacks on Gen. Mark Milley, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a prosecutor in Smith's office, are evidence to support imposing a gag order.

"In sum, the Court may enter an order in this case restricting the parties' extrajudicial statements if the statements present a 'substantial likelihood of material prejudice' as long as the Court's order is narrowly tailored to the objections of preventing comments that are likely to influence the actual outcome of trial or are likely to prejudice the venire," Smith said.

Chutkan scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. on Oct. 16 to hear arguments on the gag order request. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday, a fact that the defense says is a reason to dismiss the gag order, arguing it would censor a presidential candidate during the 2024 election.

Trump's team has pushed back against Smith's claims that Trump's statements have intimidated potential witnesses and "it is absurd to suggest the prosecution and the Court are ‘intimidated’ by critical social media posts.” The former president is known for posting inflammatory remarks on social media, including calling out prosecutors and judges in his indictments for being politically motivated or "radical" liberals.>

<The Archdiocese of Baltimore announced Friday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization days before a new state law goes into effect removing the statute of limitations on child sex abuse charges and allowing victims to sue their abusers decades after the fact. The step will "allow the archdiocese to equitably compensate victim-survivors of child sexual abuse" by clergy while the local Catholic Church continues its mission and ministries, Archbishop William Lori said in a statement posted on the archdiocese website, the AP reports. The move is the best way to compensate survivors, since the archdiocese's resources would have otherwise been exhausted on litigation, Lori said.

"Staggering legal fees and large settlements or jury awards for a few victim-survivors would have depleted our financial resources, leaving the vast majority of victim-survivors without compensation, while ending ministries that families across Maryland rely on for material and spiritual support," he said. On Sunday, Maryland will end its statute of limitations for filing civil lawsuits for child sexual abuse against institutions. Victims are already planning to file suits when the law takes effect. Lawmakers included a provision in the law that would put lawsuits on hold until the Supreme Court of Maryland can decide on the law's constitutionality, should it be challenged. (A state investigation found the archdiocese often did little to stop "horrific and repeated abuse" by clergy.)>

<The 14th Amendment isn't going to save us from Donald Trump. Nor is a ruling in New York state that he defrauded multiple banks and insurance companies over a ten-year period. Nor are the 91 charges against him in his four criminal indictments. Nor is another ruling by a New York judge that he raped E. Jean Carroll and is liable for $5 million in civil damages. His base loves him for every scam he pulled, every norm he trashed, every law he broke.

There may be red state after red state across the South and Midwest voting for Trump every time he says "jump," but there aren't enough of them, and they don't have enough electoral votes. What will save us are our numbers. Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once in the last 35 years, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004. In every other election, Democrats won the popular vote, even when they lost the election overall because of the electoral vote count. Put simply, there are more of us than there are of them.

What we're going through today, right at this moment, are the beginning rumblings of the ground beneath the feet of Republicans that will become an earthquake in 20 years, when demographers predict that White people in this country will reach minority status. For a long time, they said it was going to happen in 2050, now they say it will be 2045, but check this out: non-Hispanic White Americans under 18 are already a minority.

And it's happening from both directions.

There are more non-White babies being born at the same time that there are more White people dying. They're dying for all the reasons people do – heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, liver disease, diabetes, emphysema – and now they are also dying because of the political party they belong to. Nate Silver reported on his Silver Bulletin Substack on Friday that the death rate from COVID in red states is 35 percent higher than in blue states. A study from Yale University published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July found that Republican-leaning counties in Ohio and Florida had excess death rates from COVID that were 43 percent higher than Democratic-leaning counties. Silver pointed out that the methodology behind the study was simple math: Researchers cross-checked voter registrations against death records, county by county, and added them up. After COVID vaccines became widely available early in 2021, "Republicans began having considerably higher excess death rates," as compared to Democrats, Silver reported. Note that the study was done by comparing people by party registration. The people dying from COVID were voters, and more Republican voters than Democratic voters died by a large margin.

Republicans know this, and they are terrified by it, or at least they should be. This isn't a normal shift in death rates that could be attributed to ecological factors or more people in one party than the other working in higher risk jobs. This statistical anomaly was brought on by the Republican Party on its own members as they opposed vaccines and started scare mongering about "the government" putting microchips into you using COVID shots. Some Republicans even spread the utterly bogus rumor that more people were dying of the vaccine than of COVID. Too bad they can't interview the corpses. Maybe that would change their minds....>

<.....Republicans know they have had only one candidate win the presidency by a majority vote since 1988. They know the numbers are against them. They know people of color will be a majority in twenty years. That's why they appointed Supreme Court justices who would deliver Shelby County v. Holder for them, the decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and led to a tsunami of voter suppression across the country. What do you do when the number of your voters is going down? Why, you make it harder for the voters of the opposing party to vote. What do you think the panic in the Republican Party over immigration is about? They know immigrants coming over the Southern border aren't taking jobs from American citizens. They know immigrants don't commit more violent crime than American citizens – in fact, it's the opposite. What scares Republicans is that the immigrants who crossed the border yesterday fleeing oppression and poverty and seeking asylum and opportunity will become voters not tomorrow, but soon enough. And they will remember who was on their side as they struggled to better their lives and eventually become citizens.

So will young people reaching voting age this year and next year and the year after that. They'll remember which political party was pushing enormously unpopular restrictions on abortion, which party had banned books in school libraries in their high schools and colleges. Already the 18 to 29 vote nationally goes to Democrats by a 28-point margin, 63 percent to 35 percent. And young people vote. A study by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life found that 27 percent of young people between 18 and 29 cast votes in the 2022 midterm elections. The same study found that the aggregate youth voter turnout was 31 percent in 10 of the most electorally competitive states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Another piece of very bad news for Republicans.

Republicans know that they will eventually have to appeal to voters with policies that don't turn them off and turn them against their party, but they're not there yet. You would think that having won the war over abortion at the Supreme Court, Republicans would be celebrating their win and resting on their laurels. But no, they're doing just the opposite. They are attempting to make abortifacient medication illegal, to ban buying it online and having it shipped by mail, and some states are even attempting to pass laws to make it illegal for women to travel out of state to get an abortion. Right now in the Senate, Tommy Tuberville is holding up the promotion of over 300 general officers because he opposes a Pentagon policy that allows female soldiers to take leave and travel away from the posts to which they are assigned to get an abortion when they are posted in a state that forbids the procedure. How do you think that makes women who serve in the military feel about the Republican Party?....>

<.....This kind of regressive, authoritarian politics is costing Republicans votes, and because their party is led by the Authoritarian in Chief, Donald Trump, they are stuck. Even voter suppression is working against them – look at the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and Arizona. Look at the overall results of the 2022 midterms, usually a blow-out for the party out of power. They failed to retake the Senate and held onto the House by a margin that has plunged the Republican Party into such disarray that they are on track to shut down the federal government this weekend because Speaker Kevin McCarthy cannot control his caucus with the narrow majority Republicans hold over Democrats in the House.

Republicans are holding onto red states with gerrymandered majorities, but their control is slipping, and it is beginning to weaken in presidential election years. Georgia isn't going to go to the Republicans next year. Neither is Arizona. The abortion issue is beginning to turn reddish but competitive states like Ohio into toss-ups. Abortion is also costing Republicans votes of women in the suburbs and across the board in states like Kansas, which recently voted to keep abortion legal in the state by voting down a state constitutional amendment that would have made it illegal. Voters affirmed by referendum abortion rights in 2022 in California, Michigan and Vermont, and turned away statewide referendums that would have further restricted abortion rights in Kentucky and Montana.

Even if Republicans wanted to do something to appeal to voters more broadly, they are hamstrung by what we call the Trump base – voters in thrall to the man more than to the party. That base is White, and it's old, compared to voters in general, and they are headed into two decades when this country will get increasingly younger and less and less White.

This is not a good trend for the Republican Party, because politics is a game of numbers, and the numbers are going against them. It's good news for Democrats that there are more of us than there are of them, but only if we turn out and vote. We can't sit back and let the actuarial tables and the issue of abortion carry the day for us. There is power in numbers only if we exercise it with our votes. It's either that, or we won't have a vote that's worth anything anymore. Stand up and be counted. Vote.>

<The Trump Organization is poised to pocket millions of dollars from its recent deal to sell its contract to operate Trump Golf Links Ferry Point in the Bronx to casino operator Bally’s Corp., according to sources familiar with the transaction.

This payout comes just in time for the Trump Organization, as a New York judge ruled this week that the former president’s company is liable for fraud, and said he would cancel its New York State business licenses.

Even though the Trump Organization is appealing the anti-real-estate-industry judge’s ruling, sources say if the negotiations between Bally’s and the Trump Organization had dragged on another week or two, a deal may not have been possible given the uncertainties involved in the appeals process.

A source familiar with the talks told The New York Post, son Eric Trump had been negotiating up to the last minute seeking to fatten the deal with Bally’s.

While terms of the Bronx golf course deal were not disclosed, the price Bally’s will pay for the 20-year lease could top $100 million if specific performance targets are met.

The transaction is a shot in the arm for Bally’s, since the gaming company needed to secure the golf course contract as a prelude to bidding on one of New York’s new casino licenses this spring.

Despite the Trump Organization’s legal troubles, sources say Bally’s was also motivated to close the golf course deal quickly rather than face the possibility of protracted negotiations with a court-appointed receiver. Meanwhile, New York State Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling casts further uncertainty over the future of the Trump brand in New York real estate.>