Poli Alert Political & Civics

Republicans who have pledged to use their narrow majority in the House to pursue steep federal spending cuts have sent a clear message in recent days: The bloated Pentagon budget is safe, but Social Security, Medicare, and other key government programs are not. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) expressed that sentiment …

Ashley Murray, Colorado Newsline U.S. House Republicans filled their top committee seats this week, choosing the leaders who will set the course for bills and issues for the new majority in the 118th Congress. Veteran GOP lawmakers from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri were among those …

Global health officials are warning of an expected surge in cases of COVID-19 in the United States and other countries as the latest, most transmissible omicron subvariant continues to circulate. That new subvariant is called XBB.1.5 and it’s been rapidly growing in the United States. Both the World Health Organization …

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams Rep. Kevin McCarthy finally seized the House speaker’s gavel in the early hours of Saturday morning, capping off a chaotic week of voting and heated floor confrontations that were nationally televised and closely documented by reporters stationed at the U.S. Capitol. What remains less clear, though, …

Jennifer Shutt, Arkansas Advocate The U.S. House adopted rules for the 118th Congress on Monday, though several of the concessions Speaker Kevin McCarthy made with more conservative members of the Republican Party to secure the gavel weren’t included in the document, or publicly circulated ahead of the vote. The 55-page …

Dick Polman, Pennsylvania Capital-Star Decades ago, Holocaust scholar Hannah Arendt warned: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, i.e. the reality of experience and the distinction between true and false, i.e., the …

Second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president, the speaker of the House occupies a central role in our national government. But what is it that a speaker actually does? Most people think the speakership is a party office. It’s not. The speaker is selected by the …

Julia Conley, Common Dreams Brazil on Sunday faced “its own January 6,” one progressive journalist said as thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential offices and the nation’s Congress in Brasilia a week after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, was sworn …

Uriel J. García and Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune President Joe Biden toured El Paso for about four hours on Sunday, visiting the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since taking office in the White House. He was greeted by Gov. Greg Abbott upon arrival at the El Paso airport. …

Jacob Fischler, Ohio Capital Journal Two years after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undo Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, Democrats in Congress on Friday vowed to remember the Capitol police officers who died, hold Trump accountable and prevent similar …

Ariana Figueroa, Nebraska Examiner On the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, President Joe Biden on Friday awarded citizen medals to 14 Americans who protected democracy and law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol. “Two years ago on Jan. 6 our democracy was attacked,” Biden …

Jennifer Shutt, Georgia Recorder The U.S. House elected Kevin McCarthy speaker early Saturday after most of the chamber’s Republicans finally gathered behind him, ending a four-day stalemate that led to the most rounds of voting for a speaker since before the Civil War. The California Republican was able to clinch …

Casey Quinlan, Florida Phoenix The $1.7 trillion federal spending bill President Joe Biden signed last week ushers in expanded protections for workers who are pregnant or nursing. Proponents of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act — both included as amendments to the spending bill — say …

The South Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state’s 6-week abortion ban in 3-2 vote Thursday. In its conclusion, the court said the ban violates the constitutional right to privacy.The majority opinion was written by Justice Kaye Hearn, the only woman on South Carolina’s five-person Supreme Court bench. While the Legislature …

Ariana Figueroa, Kansas Reflector On the eve of the second anniversary of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, congressional Democrats and dozens of veterans on Thursday in a press conference called on incoming House Republican leaders to condemn political violence and hold their members who supported the attack accountable for their actions. …