Swing state voters broadly rejected candidates in last year’s midterms who questioned the results of the 2020 elections. But unfounded accusations of fraud and other malfeasance continue to tear at the machinery of U.S. elections.
The latest example comes from Alabama and its newly elected secretary of state, Wes Allen. His first official act upon taking office earlier this month was unusual: The Republican fulfilled a campaign promise by withdrawing Alabama from an obscure interstate compact that helps states maintain voter rolls, citing data security concerns.
That consortium — known as Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC — has been a genuine bipartisan success story, finding buy-in from red states like Florida and Texas and blue states like Colorado and Connecticut to help them remove duplicate voter registrations and catch potential instances of double voting.
But conservative conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit and the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit that filed lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to overturn the 2020 election, have attacked ERIC as part of a liberal plot to control the underpinnings of American elections.
Not sure how this helps the debt ceiling, but a sneaky way of increasing taxes.
Now that the U.S. has hit the debt ceiling, lawmakers need to revisit the federal budget and find ways to make cuts, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat representing West Virginia, said in interviews this weekend. But that should not include cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, he said.
“I’ve got 60% of my population that that’s all they have is Medicare and Social Security,” Manchin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “You think I’m going to go down that path and put them in jeopardy? No,” he said.
In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Manchin called for a key change to help shore up Social Security’s ailing funds — raising the cap on payroll taxes that are used to fund the program. “The easiest and quickest thing that we can do is raise the cap,” he said, while also curbing “wasteful spending.”
House Republicans will delay action on a border security bill after some centrist members of the party voiced concerns about the scope of the legislation. Republicans initially sought to bring H.R. 29 to the floor for a vote sometime this week, following through with a pledge from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to usher in tougher immigration policies quickly. However, the legislation was met with some backlash from centrist lawmakers who argued the bill’s language would threaten the United States’s practice of providing asylum.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), seeks to control the surge of immigration at the southern border further by giving the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security control to bar autonomously immigrants from coming into the country at any point of entry as a way to “achieve operational control” over the border. Under the legislation, that decision could be made whenever the secretary determines at their own discretion.
One of the interesting changes from the negotiations over the speaker’s chair.
“The House Republican majority is committed to allowing all members to participate in the legislative process,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., wrote to members of the House late last week.
Scalise’s letter outlined the process for allowing what is known as a “modified-open amendment process” for a bill up this week that would require the government to develop a plan for oil and gas development on federal land before any withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are made. Under this process, the House will allow consideration of any amendment offered by a House lawmaker from either party that is submitted and printed in the Congressional Record by Tuesday. When the bill comes up for debate on Wednesday, lawmakers will debate and vote on any of those amendments that are offered.
The Australian Parliamentary Education Office has a number of infosheets on the formal stages for the passage of Bills, including opportunities for amendments outside of sittings.
peo.gov.au
If amendments are only possible at a sitting stage, that would delay progress and might not be democratic in reality.
I recall the voting processes in the US, when you could change your vote, get an amendment to an unrelated Bill , then vote again.
Some unsavoury outcomes in the trade offs.
Streaming service is saying ‘maybe we DON’T want to keep giving air time to a bunch of crazed terrorist propagandists…’ and the allies and beneficiaries of said crazed terrorist propagandists are preparing to run about in circles flapping their arms and shrieking about ‘freeze peach’
It means one of the biggest cable providers will cease broadcasting Newsmax.
There may be other cable providers that still carry it, or you can view it via a streaming service.
But it also seems the GOP doesn’t like a “free market” after all and wants some intervention at a government level!
