Recall that ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy committed to individual floor votes on each of the dozen separate appropriations bills. His position, and he was right IMNSHO, was that lumping them all together into a single omnibus spending bill only led to increased Federal government spending by preventing Congressmen from debating and voting on those bills individually—omnibus made the lot of them an all or nothing proposition.
The House Freedom Caucus wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) to attach a House-passed border security bill that’s sitting in the US Senate to the next spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. Freedom Caucus member Bob Good (R, VA):
I think we ought to be willing to have a fight over securing the border. I think we ought to refuse to fund the government if the administration continues to be unwilling to secure the border, then we ought to tie the funding of the government to border security implementation where some funds are held back until the measurables are met, the performance metrics that demonstrate that the border is being secured. And we do it to through Sept. 30 at the FRA levels[.]
Stipulate, arguendo, that Republican Primary Presidential candidate Donald Trump was, indeed, guilty of civil fraud as New York judge Arthur Engoron ruled regarding the way Trump valued his properties in order to obtain loans. As a result of that civil conviction, Engoron has ordered, among other things, that Trump must pay more than $350 million in “ill-gotten profits” which are some sort of “damages.”
I have to ask: what damage? What ill-gotten profit? All the bank loans were repaid in full along with all of the associated interest accumulated over the lives of the loans. Think about that for a moment. The question of damage goes, or should go, far beyond the proximate question of whether the banks got all that was due them under the terms of those loans.
Battery car sales seem to be falling off in California.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that Tesla sales fell significantly in the back half of 2023, declining by 10% in the final quarter alone. This sales drop came despite California’s previous pledge to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.
The LA Times is busily spinning the reason for the fall-off. The outlet is claiming
“controversial pronouncements” from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
It added
First, it was the Internal Revenue Service targeting Conservative organizations that were applying for tax-exempt status by slow-walking approvals or outright denying approval on purely political grounds. Then it was the IRS “leaking” of a plethora of Conservative and Republican Americans’ personal tax information. There were, too, a host of similar IRS failures between those and since.
Now we get the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration report that shows that this IRS misbehavior is longstanding and a feature of the agency. Here are a few of the things TIGTA found.
Israeli forces—the IDF, Shin Bet, and a police counterterrorism unit—successfully raided a specific target in the Gaza Strip southern edge city of Rafah and rescued two hostages that were being held by the terrorist Hamas.
This came while Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden stepped up his pressure on the Israelis to not go into Rafah, unless they have a plan to protect the civilians, even though Biden has no evidence that the Israelis aren’t already taking extreme measures to protect civilians, measures that include telling civilians where the Israelis intend to strike next and when—measures that also give the terrorists time to leave the target zone. Nor does Biden have any evidence that the Israelis haven’t been taking such measures all along in this war that the terrorists have inflicted on Israel.
That’s NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s request of Republican Presidential Primary candidate Donald Trump over Trump’s continued, bluntly phrased, pressure on NATO members to meet their spending commitment of 2% of GDP to NATO.
It isn’t Trump’s rhetoric that risks NATO destabilization, though. When Trump was President, he threatened US withdrawal from the alliance if the other member nations didn’t start meeting that commitment. At the time, only a handful aside from the US were meeting the commitment, and after his threat, a few more stepped up and met theirs. This after 50 years of “pretty please” had fallen on deaf freeloading ears.
Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City government has a new way to spy on American citizens resident in that city, or even just visiting.
New York City drivers buckle up because Big Brother (aka the MTA) is keeping a watchful eye on you by installing cameras along New York City streets to track you. But why? Well, it all boils down to money, of course. The MTA is rolling out a controversial $15 per day congestion fee for all drivers venturing south of 60th Street. They’ve even given this area of Manhattan a snazzy name: the toll congestion zone.
Denver’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Mike Johnson is upset that the Federal government didn’t solve his biggest civic problem. When the Senate voted down the Federal bill in question, he posted on Instagram,
Today is a day the residents of Denver should be heartbroken. And they should be furious because we know we have a humanitarian crisis in this city[.]
Aside: Caldwell and Hackman had this in their piece at the link:
This city of 713,000 people has absorbed nearly 40,000 migrants in a little over a year, more per capita than any other US city.
The Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General Office has found problems in the VA’s process for vetting the contractors it hires. The IG’s audit findings include these (not an exhaustive list by me):