McCarthy Wins Speakership in Dramatic 15 Round Voting Marathon for the History Books

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy captured the House speakership in dramatic fashion early Saturday, winning enough votes on a historic 15th ballot that saw 20 renegade Republicans changing their votes under enormous pressure after winning significant concessions about how Congress will operate going forward.

The final vote was 216-212-6.

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House Adjourns Until 10 p.m. After McCarthy Comes Up Short for Speaker in 13 Rounds

The House of Representatives convened on Friday for the fourth day of voting for speaker and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has picked up 15 votes from GOP holdouts but he’s still short of the simple majority needed to win.

The House passed a motion to adjourn until 10pm. McCarthy told reporters he’s confident he will have the votes to win Friday evening.

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Bills Damar Hamlin Has Breathing Tube Removed, Team Says He Continues to Make ‘Progress Remarkably’

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is breathing on his own after having a breathing tube removed by doctors, his team said on Friday. 

The Bills said in a statement posted to their website that “per the physicians at [University of Cincinnati Medical Center], Damar’s breathing tube was removed overnight. He continues to progress remarkably in his recovery.”

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Legendary Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, Sponsor of SB 1070, Dies at 75

Longtime Arizona Legislator Russell Pearce of Mesa, who served as Senate President in 2011, passed away Thursday at age 75. The sponsor of Arizona’s nationally known SB 1070 curbing illegal immigration, which Governor Jan Brewer famously signed into law in 2010, died peacefully at a hospital surrounded by family and friends after becoming sick earlier in the week. 

Pearce was loved on both sides of the aisle, famous for his friendship with Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) going back to when she was in the state legislature and considered the most liberal member — the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers awarded her the Vladimir I. Lenin Award. According to one source, Sinema moved her desk at the legislature to sit next to Pearce. 

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Social Media Use in Children Linked to Significant Brain Changes

Person on phone with Twitter open

A new study from the University of North Carolina shows children and teens who frequently check social media may become more sensitive in the long term to “social feedback” in the form of “likes” and “dislikes” at a time when the brain is experiencing significant developmental changes.

In the study, published at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, researchers Maria Maza, et al, investigated whether the frequency with which middle-school age children check their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat social media accounts is associated with long-term changes in brain development as they mature further into adolescence.

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Lawmakers Profit from Sending Billions in Aid to Ukraine

Members of Congress raked in profits from defense contractor stocks after voting to send billions in military aid to Ukraine, according to financial disclosures and voting records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Congress approved more than $20 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24, a month before Russia invaded, and Nov. 20, including $12.7 billion in direct drawdowns from existing U.S. weapons stocks, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations. To make up for that aid, top defense companies have boosted production, and lawmakers trading on company stocks saw a financial windfall as a result, according to publicly available stock trading data.

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South Carolina Supreme Court Axes State’s Abortion Ban

South Carolina’s Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the state law restricting abortions at around six weeks, finding that it violated the state constitution.

Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law in February 2021 barring abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen at around six weeks into a pregnancy. The state can limit a woman’s privacy rights with regard to abortion decisions, but only after she’s been given “reasonable” time to pursue an abortion legally, the court found.

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Ex-Capitol Police Boss Says Politics Hampered January 6 Security Under Pelosi: ‘Recipe for Disaster’

The Capitol Police chief who handled the Jan. 6 riot says political bureaucracy under Speaker Nancy Pelosi put optics over safety and hampered his department from crafting an appropriate security plan to protect the home of Congress that fateful day.

Steven Sund, who resigned as the head of the $600 million a year Capitol Police Department after the tragedy, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show on Wednesday that significant lapses occurred inside his department, inside the political leadership of Congress and across federal law enforcement and security agencies in the days before the Capitol riot.

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Councilman in Arizona Successfully Restores the Invocation of Prayer to Local Town Hall Meetings

During a Tuesday Fountain Hills Town Council Meeting, Councilman Allen Skillicorn led a successful effort to restore an invocation of prayer to the beginning of future meetings.

“For over 200 years, this [prayer] has been part of our legislative process. This isn’t about a church. This is about people coming in from the community and praying for the board and praying for the town or state or the country,” Skillicorn said following the approval by the board.

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Commentary: The Coup We Never Knew

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

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Top Zelensky Adviser Rejects Peace Talks with Russia

Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov this week rejected the idea that Kyiv would engage in peace talks with Moscow as the Russian invasion of Ukraine rages on.

“There’s no way to have conversations with them; you can’t talk with terrorists,” he told NatSec Daily, adding that Ukraine would not end the war until it had reclaimed all of its territory, including Crimea.”

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Commentary: Make Elections Normal Again

Americans can’t seem to agree on much of anything anymore. We’re deeply divided on a wide range of issues: abortion, illegal immigration, gun rights, and so-called climate change, to name a few. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a major political issue on which Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree.

Political polarization is nothing new: Many countries experience it at one point or another. In America, we once could put our differences aside and settle things at the ballot box. Our electoral system, when functioning as intended, transcends partisan politics. Things are different today, though. COVID-era voting policies need to be reversed in order to restore faith in our electoral process.

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Six Policies That Anti-Abortion Leaders Expect a Pro-Life House Majority to Prioritize

A letter signed by leaders of more than 40 pro-life organizations has been sent to every Republican member of Congress, urging action on eight related bills.

“We write to urge you to exercise Congress’s constitutional authority to legislate abortion policy at the federal level and pursue a robust pro-life agenda,” reads the letter to House and Senate Republicans authored by organizations ranging from March for Life and Live Action to The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

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Soros Doubles Donations to Far-Left Group Seeking to Pack Supreme Court

Far-left billionaire George Soros has increased his financial support for a radical group that is determined to pack the Supreme Court of the United States, continuing to wage a war in favor of a policy that is widely unpopular with the American people.

As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Soros’ Open Society Foundation donated $4.5 million in 2021 to the group Demand Justice, which “supports policy advocacy on court reform.” Open Society had previously donated $2.5 million to the same group in 2018, the year Demand Justice was first created out of opposition to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court.

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Kohberger Murder Affidavit: Left-Behind Knife Sheath, DNA Led to Capture, Arrest

The man accused of stabbing four University of Idaho college students to death was identified through DNA evidence left on a knife sheath at the crime scene and cellular data showed his phone was in the area of the Moscow, Idaho, crime scene at least a dozen times before the murders, officials said in an affidavit released Thursday.

The Idaho State Lab discovered DNA on a knife sheath left on the bed next to victim Madison Mogen, Moscow Police Department Cpl. Brett Payne said in the affidavit. 

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