Republicans

Rough weekend for Kentucky senators. The Louisville Courier-Journal reports: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul says he’ll be sidelined from the Senate until September after undergoing lung surgery over the weekend. Part of Paul’s lung was damaged when he was assaulted by his neighbor in November 2017, the senator said Monday morning in a Twitter post. He underwent an operation over the …

The Washington Post reports: A Republican state lawmaker in Nebraska is calling out President Trump and his party for “enabling white supremacy” in the United States. In a series of tweets written Sunday night in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that left 29 people dead, state Sen. John McCollister said it pained him to …

The New York Times reports: Representative Kenny Marchant of Texas is planning to announce his retirement on Monday, according to two Republican officials, becoming the fourth Republican House member from Texas in recent weeks to head for the exits rather than face re-election in 2020 in a state that is rapidly becoming more competitive. Mr. Marchant, who was first elected …

“I’m calling on the president and the Congress to come back in session. Let’s do the work in Washington. Do the background check bill that we passed out of the House. We’ve got to ban these assault weapons. This is ridiculous. Honestly for a guy to drive 10 hours to go kill Mexicans like what happened in El Paso is …

Obviously only Americans have video games. Mediaite reports: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R) embarked on an tirade about video games on Sunday in response to the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton this weekend. In an interview with Fox & Friends, Patrick mourned for the dead before pivoting to argue that video games were the root cause of …

The Louisville Courier-Journal reports: National derision followed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell home as Democrats taunted the GOP leader with T-shirts, signs and continuous chants of “Moscow Mitch” during his speech at St. Jerome Catholic Church’s annual political picnic. McConnell and his team have taken the attacks, spawned from his refusal to take up election security measures, more personally than …

The Washington Post reports: A Republican senator held up the confirmation of a White House budget official this week in an attempt to obtain sensitive information about border wall contracts he has been trying to steer to a major donor, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post. The emails show Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) blasting the “arrogance” of the …

The Washington Post reports: Republicans have long idealized Texas as a deep-red frontier state, home to rural conservatives who love President Trump. But political turbulence in the sprawling suburbs and fast-growing cities are turning the Lone Star State into a possible 2020 battleground. “The president’s reelection campaign needs to take Texas seriously,” Sen. Ted Cruz said. He added that it …

The New York Times reports: President Trump on Friday abruptly dropped his plan to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, as the nation’s top intelligence official. The announcement, made on Twitter, came after questions about his qualifications and whether he had exaggerated his résumé. Law & Crime reports: In a 2015 press release, Ratcliffe’s House website stated, “When serving …

Via press release: Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of Dr. Julia Nesheiwat as Florida’s first Chief Resilience Officer (CRO). The CRO is tasked with preparing Florida for the environmental, physical and economic impacts of sea level rise. The CRO reports to the Executive Office of the Governor and will work in partnership with the Florida Department of Environmental …

The Louisville Courier-Journal reports: Gov. Matt Bevin says suicides are part of the societal costs related to casino gambling, as he lashed out at his opponent’s support for expanded gambling as a way to help fund pensions. In a radio interview Wednesday, Bevin said: “Every night somewhere in America, somebody takes their life in a casino because they’ve wasted the …

The Washington Post reports: Rep. Will Hurd, the lone black Republican in the House and the rare GOP lawmaker to criticize President Trump at times, will not seek reelection, he told The Washington Post. Hurd’s retirement is the third by a Texas Republican in the past week and the ninth by a party incumbent, dealing a blow to GOP efforts …

The left is getting better at quickly weaponizing hashtags. The hashtag #LeningradLindsey trended on Twitter Thursday after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) forced a controversial asylum bill through committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced a bill to overhaul U.S. asylum laws, waiving committee rules to force the bill through to the full Senate, where it likely won’t get the …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is mulling a run against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “I’m seriously considering it,” Lewandowski wrote in a text message to POLITICO today. A New Hampshire TV station, WMUR, reported earlier today that Lewandowski had been discussed as a potential candidate at a Republican National Committee meeting in Charlotte, N.C. Shaheen, …

Mediaite reports: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he believes Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republicans “want the Russians to interfere” in the next presidential election. “They want the Russians to interfere because they think it’ll help them. It’s clear. Mueller made this clear that the Russians wanted Trump to win,” Schumer said. The Senate minority leader spoke on SiriusXM’s “The …

Splinter reports: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Lindsey Graham was a dickhead for no reason today. Graham has successfully evolved from a Bush-era relic who desperately wants war with Iran to a Trump-loving Kavanaugh defender who desperately wants war with Iran. On Thursday, in one of his final acts before the Senate officially closes for the August …

Politico reports: Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel grew visibly emotional during a meeting with senior GOP officials on Wednesday, as she insisted that she isn’t personally profiting off a new, President Donald Trump-endorsed small-donor platform. The party chairwoman choked up as she kicked off a closed-door panel discussion on WinRed by addressing ongoing rumors that she and other …

The Associated Press reports: All eyes will be watching both the Ohio crowd’s behavior — and how Trump reacts. Even his closest advisers seem uncertain as to what may transpire. “If it happened again, he might make an effort to speak out about it,” Vice President Mike Pence said recently. Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, who represents a Cincinnati-area district, said …

The Huffington Post reports: Republican Party leaders scoping out locations to renominate Donald Trump for president next year have arrived in a city that has labeled his statements “racist” and that wishes it had never invited them in the first place. Last week, the council went so far as to discuss the possibility of backing out of the agreement, but …

The Hill reports: Kansas GOP Senate candidate Kris Kobach blamed his gubernatorial loss last year on “propaganda” and is vowing to take a new approach to his Senate bid. “I’d failed to anticipate just how powerful the propaganda would be,” the former Kansas secretary of State said in a five-minute video released by his campaign. “When someone is called a …