Republicans

The Texas Tribune reports: The Texas Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the State Bar of Texas’ lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, extending a cascade of legal and political wins for the once-embattled Republican leader. The state bar had sought to sanction Paxton, which could have carried a …

The Washington Post reports: A Louisiana law professor’s return to teaching in the aftermath of using profanities to criticize President Donald Trump and his state’s governor is on hold after an appellate court intervened Thursday. Tenured professor Ken Levy was placed on leave by Louisiana State University Jan. 17, three days after he made comments about Trump and Gov. Jeff …

The Hill reports: House Republicans are pledging to bring up impeachment articles against federal judges who have blocked Trump administration actions, including those of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), backing up tech billionaire Elon Musk’s call for a “wave of judicial impeachments.” Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) said he is drafting articles of impeachment against Judge Paul Engelmayer of the …

Kansas City’s NBC affiliate reports: A group of Christian counselors and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey have filed a lawsuit against the city of Kansas City and Jackson County over their conversion-therapy bans. In 2023, the Jackson County Legislature passed an ordinance banning the practice. The city of Kansas City banned conversion therapy in 2019, an effort led by KCMO …

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports: Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent an internal directive to state health workers Thursday ending long-standing mass vaccination efforts and banning staff from promoting seasonal vaccines, while publicly issuing a letter criticizing the state’s COVID response and public health institutions. The letter was posted on the Louisiana Health Department’s website as the U.S. Senate voted …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: An ongoing fight in Utah to ban pride flags in schools entered new territory Thursday after Rep. Trevor Lee proposed new legislation to ban the flags not just in public schools, but in any government building or on any government property. The bill, HB0077, originally applied only to schools. But an update to the bill …

Iowa Public Radio reports: LGBTQ topics would be banned from middle school and high school curriculum under a bill advancing in the Iowa House that seeks to expand a law that currently applies to Kindergarten through sixth grade. Republican legislators passed a law in 2023 that bans instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation before seventh grade. That law is …

The Birmingham News reports: Alabama lawmakers debated Wednesday whether to require schools to start their day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a Judeo-Christian prayer. If a school refuses, it could lose a quarter of its annual state funding. The measure, HB231, is a state constitutional amendment that would appear on ballots in a future election. But the legislation could …

Yashar Ali reports at The Reset: Matt Schlapp, the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the CPAC convention, allegedly engaged in lewd conduct and allegedly sexually assaulted a man at a restaurant and bar in Virginia on Saturday night, six witnesses and the man who alleges he was assaulted tell me. Schlapp has repeatedly been accused of sexual …

NPR reports: “For just a few minutes, it feels like the whole world stands still and yet everything changes,” says Corinne Brevik, a physicist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. But only a sliver of the country gets this first-hand view. For the 2024 eclipse, Brevik used money from a National Science Foundation grant to help middle schoolers host a …

McConnell writes for the Louisville Courier-Journal: But no matter our best intentions, tariffs are bad policy. As Sen. Rand Paul, put it: “Tariffs are simply taxes… Taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.” So Republicans ought to be clear-eyed about the full, unadulterated impact of tariffs as we work to restore sound fiscal policy to our government. Blanket …

Politico reports: Karrin Taylor Robson, an attorney and business executive with ties to the state’s GOP establishment, launched a second run for governor of Arizona on Wednesday — this time with Donald Trump’s backing. Her bid comes roughly three years after she lost a brutal Republican governor primary to Kari Lake in a race that drew national attention because of …

The Washington Post reports: The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman turned Trump supporter, to serve as President Trump’s director of national intelligence. The Republican-led Senate voted to confirm Gabbard by a party-line vote of 52 to 48 after a handful of Republican skeptics said she had assuaged their earlier concerns about her views on the …

The Hill reports: Senate Republicans are urging President Trump to respect the rulings of federal judges who have blocked his executive actions to freeze spending federal grants and loans, dismantle USAID, and ban birthright citizenship. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday said the growing tensions between the White House and federal judges is a “natural give and take” …

“Keep in mind the president beat lawfare going after him when he was a candidate. The president is going to beat this in my opinion. Yes, I think he should take a page out of Andrew Jackson’s playbook. “At some point JD Vance is right when he said hold on you can’t have a judge step in when the president …

Mother Jones reports: On the House floor Monday night—in a speech that was jarring, graphic, and nearly an hour long—Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) made disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against four men from her home state, one of whom is her ex-fiancé. All of this has, unsurprisingly, attracted ample news coverage. But one aspect of the explosive speech has gone …

“Based on what we’re actually looking to do with the JFK investigation, I’m looking to actually bring in some of the attending physicians at the initial assassination. “Then also people that had been on the various commissions looking into it, like the Warren Commission looking into the initial assassination. There’s been conflicting evidence. And I think that even the FBI …

The Independent reports: A GOP congressman has announced new legislation to bolster Donald Trump’s efforts to take over Greenland, while also giving the autonomous Danish territory a new name: “Red, White and Blueland.” The president has recently escalated calls to purchase Greenland for national security purposes, despite Denmark insisting the Arctic island is not for sale. On Tuesday, Georgia Representative …

Politico Magazine reports: Over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance delivered a warning shot to the federal judiciary: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive branch’s legitimate power,” Vance wrote in a post on X. The post — which landed as several federal courts have issued orders temporarily slowing or stopping the Trump administration’s early executive orders — prompted consternation …

MANU RAJU: “Should the White House comply if a federal court orders them to do something, such as destroying the records that they downloaded from the Treasury Department?” MIKE JOHNSON: “Well, look, there are appellate processes and all of that. I haven’t followed the latest on the litigation, but obviously we have systems that have to work. We’re fully supportive …