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Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee has a habit of irritating fellow senators when it comes to his no votes on broadly popular legislation.

In 2022, he was the only senator who opposed efforts to create a national historic site at a former Japanese internment site in Colorado. And for every year except one since his 2010 election, Lee has voted against the annual defense authorization legislation, passed yearly with a veto-proof bipartisan majority. His criticism of Washingtons ongoing financial support for Ukraine since Russia invaded the country last year has also put him at odds with the Republican mainstream.

That obstinance typically doesnt win many friends in Washington. But it gave him a leading role as just one of just five GOP senators to speak at this weeks marquee Heritage Foundation conference marking the conservative think tanks 50th anniversary. Heritage has long played an outsized role in shaping Republican policy, but it has lately been distinguishing itself by staking out foreign policy positions at odds with the hawkish national security establishment.

Lees Thursday speech at the conference touted the Constitution as his guidepost on foreign and domestic policy, even if many of his foreign policy positions take him out of the conservative mainstream. He has argued that the executive branch has long overstepped its constitutional mandates on foreign policy issues and that Congress has not sufficiently stepped up to its role as the entity that can declare war.

The No. 1 priority for us was looking at something through the lens of the Constitution, so looking through the enumerated powers, figuring out if something was clearly delegated to the executive versus what was clearly a function of Congress, said Robby Smith Saunders, a former foreign policy advisor to Lee. A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to a request for comment.

What this amounts to in practice is a skepticism of American engagement in foreign conflicts and a broad desire to limit American spending abroad. Just dont call him an isolationist, his allies say.

I think hes definitely a restrainer. But I definitely would not ever characterize him as an isolationist, said Saunders.

Still, Lee has often found himself on the outside on major foreign policy issues, particularly on Ukraine. The American people need to speak up on this and make clear that while were concerned about Putin and Putins a bad guy, and I hope sincerely that hes stopped this cannot be ours to fight, nor can it be ours to fund alone, he said on Fox News in February, on the first anniversary of Russias invasion.

This sentiment echoed comments by former President Donald Trump, who has long argued against American support for Ukraine, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said in March that getting involved in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not a vital national interest for the U.S. DeSantis later attempted to walk back his comments.

The critical responses from many Republicans indicate that among senior lawmakers, support for continued American military and financial assistance for Ukraine remains strong. Just because someone claims something doesnt mean it belongs to them. This is an invasion, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in response to DeSantis remarks. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) called DeSantis comments disturbing.

While Lees foreign-policy worldview may have been relatively uncommon among U.S. senators when he was first elected a dozen years ago, his approach to the world has now gained several powerful ideological allies, Trump chief among them.

Hes been very consistent since he was first elected. What is different is that its no longer just him and Sen. Rand Paul [R-KY]. Its that theres more people that are willing to stand alongside him, particularly on the Republican side, and challenge the prevailing status quo around foreign policy, said Dan Caldwell, vice president at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank closely aligned with Trump.

Trumps embrace of the America First banner was a turning point in moving the Republican line from internationalism to a more isolationist approach. Lee doesnt hew to all the same positions as Trump; for instance, where Trump embraced Saudi Arabia, Lee routinely criticizes Washingtons close relationship with Riyadh, citing Saudi human rights abuses. (Last year, he was the lone Republican to sign onto a letter with progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioning U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing their impact on civilian casualties in the war in Yemen.) But Lees overlap with the former president on many other issues is clear.

I think the future of Republican foreign policy will not deviate much from concepts and principles adopted by Trump, but Republicans will pursue them with a bit more finesse and nuance, said Bilal Saab, the director of the defense and security program at the Middle East Institute and a former senior advisor at the Department of Defense.

In the Senate, Lee has found allies in Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and J.D. Vance (R-OH), both of whom also spoke at the Heritage summit this week.

I think [L]ee feels like if were going to spend this money, we need a rationale for it, or else we shouldnt be spending it, said Victoria Coates, a former advisor to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a close friend and ally of Lees.

This mentality has put Lee at odds with more traditionally hawkish Republicans, who think it is both morally right and in Americas national interest to get involved in some overseas conflicts.

The reality is that some investments abroad make Americans safer and more prosperous at home. That reality is not always evident to average Americans busy with their lives. Responsible leaders explain that what America does or does not do abroad matters at home, said Brad Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which represents a more interventionist strain of conservative foreign policy. As Russia, China, and Iran cozy up with one another, it would be pretty foolish for America to neglect its closest friends and allies. We need them more than ever.

One notable exception to Lees approach to foreign spending is Israel. Unlike Rand Paul, an isolationist with whom Lee frequently partners, Lee has not criticized Washingtons $3.3 billion in annual security assistance to Israel. The reason may be that Lee views American support for Israel as strategic for the U.S. whereas security assistance to Ukraine does not necessarily benefit America, in Lees worldview.

I know in some ways, on a certain level, it seems like maybe an exception to his rules, said Saunders. I think for him, whats so important about Israel is the fact that theres a mutuality of benefit in terms of R&D, technological capabilities, cooperation when it comes to certain missile-defense programs and knowledge, and hes driven by his faith.

Lee traveled to Israel in 2018 for the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, along with Cruz and the more hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

If you had Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham at the same event, you probably have the full spectrum of conservative national security policy, said Coates. Lee earned the endorsement of the American Israel Public Affairs Committees political action committee in his 2022 reelection campaign.

The efficacy of the Lee approach, at least in the current Congress, is in question. Neither Congress nor President Joe Biden appears likely to make any major changes to Washingtons aid to Ukraine anytime soon. And while Lee has joined with some progressive Democrats to criticize American support for Saudi Arabia, they are in the minority.

Lee has also been one of the loudest voices seeking an end to the 2002 legislation authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, which he argues has been applied too broadly and for too long. The Senate voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF, and if the House follows, they will hand the Lee camp an ideological victory but the bills future in the House remains uncertain.

Nearly half of Americans (48%) support the U.S. sending weapons to Ukraine, while 29% oppose it, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll from February. But Americans are divided on whether the U.S. should directly send government funds to Ukraine. Support for both policies has decreased since last year, when the AP found that 60% of Americans supported sending weapons to Ukraine.

I think that more of the country is probably now in alignment with [Lees] position on issues than even when I worked for him five years ago, noted Saunders.

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Utah Sen. Mike Lee breaks with his party on foreign policy - Jewish Insider

The U.S. government wastes billions of taxpayer dollars every year.

Improper payments, which refer to payments that are made incorrectly by the government, cost the U.S. $247 billion in 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office. The U.S. government has lost almost $2.4 trillion in simple payment errors over the last two decades, by GAO estimates.

"The government has just lost, as if you dropped it on the sidewalk, trillions and trillions of dollars over the last few decades," said Richard Stern, a budget and spending expert from the Heritage Foundation. "That is money that was stolen from hardworking Americans to just simply get wasted."

But that's not all. Oversight reports from nonprofits and lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., claim billions more are being wasted every year from spending $1.7 billion maintaining empty government buildings to accidentally investing $28 million on forest camouflage uniforms to be used in the deserts of Afghanistan.

Duplicated programs are another cause for concern.

"The Government Accountability Office every year issues a report on duplicative and overlapping programs and every year they find more and more of these programs," according to Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

The problems mainly stem from the way our government tries to solve an issue, according to critics.

"In the private sector, if somebody is doing something, they see what they're trying to do or sell and then determine how to do it and how much it will cost," Schatz said. "In the federal government, everything is 'Go spend more money' and if that doesn't work, it's 'Go spend more money.'"

It's the job of the GAO to audit and report any wasteful spending by the federal government.But experts argue that it doesn't influence policy changes in the way that it could or should.

"I think they have enough power, but I don't think they have enough manpower or resources," said Elaine Karmarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Nevertheless, wasteful spending by the government can have painful consequences to the health of the economy, according to watchdog groups.

"As the government spends it runs up a deficit," Stern said. "What happens is, it's sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It's destroying investment. It's mortgaging our futures. It's slowing our growth. Today, the inflation you're seeing is a large result of that."

Watch the video to find out more about why taxes feel so high in the U.S. and why so much taxpayer money gets wasted.

The rest is here:
The federal government wastes at least $247 billion in taxpayer money each year. Here's how - CNBC

Former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress on Tuesday that Anthony Faucis testimony under oath on gain-of-function research did not comport with the available intelligence at the time.

Appearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Ratcliffe was asked by Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.) about Faucis sworn testimony before the Senate in November of 2021. In that hearing, Fauci told Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research. Malliotakis said this was despite the fact Fauci had been told in an email in January of 2021 that NIH had a monetary relationship with the Wuhan Institute through the EcoHealth Alliance. Malliotakis then asked Ratcliffe if he thought Fauci had lied under oath.

Some of Dr. Faucis testimony is inconsistent with some of the intelligence that we have that remains classified as well as inconsistent with some information that is publicly available, replied Ratcliffe.

Gain-of-function research is a controversial practice that involves making pathogens more deadly or transmissible in order to better understand current or future pandemics, and thus be able to respond faster. Funding for the research was halted in 2014 during the Obama administration due to concerns about the risks, but the NIH lifted that funding pausethree years later after the creation of an oversight framework. In 2021, it emerged that U.S. taxpayershad funded such research into bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through an intermediary that is, EcoHealth Alliance.

Fauci insisted during multiple appearances before Congress that the research conducted in Wuhan did not match the NIHs definition of gain-of-function, contradicting independent experts such as Dr. Richard Ebright, who have said the experiments being performed clearly qualify as gain-of-function research.

The Biden administration continues to support the practice despite widespread concerns in the scientific community that it may have contributed to the outbreak of Covid. National security council communications coordinator John Kirby explained in February that [the president] believes that [the research is] important to help prevent future pandemics.

Story continues

Gain-of-function research continues to be probed by Congress due to the competing theories of the origins of the coronavirus: the lab-leak hypothesis and the natural-transmission hypothesis. The Energy Department joined the FBI in preferring the lab-leak hypothesis in February. Other agencies disagree.

Ratcliffe weighed into the debate on Tuesday.

My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense, he explained.

From a view inside the [intelligence community] if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab-leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural-origins or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, and overwhelming, while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous, said Ratcliffe. Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence compiled by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilty to an accusation that coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for the pandemic.

David Feith, former deputy assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, who appeared alongside Ratcliffe Tuesday, revealed that some of his colleagues in the State Department warned against gain-of-function research early in the pandemic.

By late 2020, colleagues flagged new U.S government information that underscored the plausibility of a lab leak, Feith explained. [That] Wuhan lab had a long record of secrecy about its coronavirus research and undisclosed ties with Chinas military. Working with ODNI, we at State worked to make this information public. Some of our colleagues warned us not to. They said not to highlight Chinas gain-of-function research lest we draw attention to the U.S. governments own role in such research and open a Pandoras box.

Feith also offered his view on various agencies in the intelligence community staking a position between the two competing theories.

We dont need a running intelligence community straw poll as much as we need a transparent whole-of-government campaign to recognize the gravely high stakes of the lab leak possibility and pursue policy reforms, Feith explained.

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Fauci Testimony on Gain-of-Function Research Was Inconsistent with Existing Intel, Says Ex-Director of National Intelligence - Yahoo News

Over the past three years, we reporters learned there were certain things that we werent allowed to say. Not long ago, in fact, my new video may have been censored.

One dangerous idea, we were told, was that COVID might have been created in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That seems very possible, since the institute studied coronaviruses in bats, and Americas National Institutes of Health gave the lab money to perform gain-of-function research, experiments where scientists try to make a virus more virulent or transmissible.

A Washington Post writer worried the lab leak theory could increase racist attacks against Chinese people and further fuel anti-Asian hate.

The establishment media fell in line, insisting that COVID most likely came from a local market that sold animals.

Left-wing TV mocked the lab theory as a fringe idea that came from a certain corner of the right.

This coronavirus was not manmade, said MSNBCs Chris Hayes, confidently, That is not a possibility.

Not even a possibility?

Debate about it, we were told, posed a new threat: misinformation.

Facebook banned the lab leak theory, calling it a false claim.

But now the U.S. Department of Energy says the pandemic most likely came from a lab leak. FBI director Christopher Wray now says the origin of the pandemic is most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.

For two years, the most likely explanation was censored.

Do the media gatekeepers apologize for their censorship? No.

The closest to an admission of guilt I found was from Chris Hayes, who eventually said, Theres a kernel of truth to the idea that some folks were too quick to shut down the lab leak theory.

There was more than a kernel of truth. Again and again, politically correct media silenced people who spoke the truth.

Facebook throttled the reach of science journalist John Tierneys articles simply because he reported, accurately, that requiring masks can hurt kids.

YouTube suspended Sen. Rand Paul for saying, Most of the masks you get over the counter dont work.

But what they said is true. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to say cloth masks are not very effective. And now a big study failed to find evidence that wearing even good masks stops the spread of viruses.

Probably the most blatant censorship was Twitters shutting down the New York Posts reporting about Hunter Bidens laptop.

Twitter wouldnt let users decide for themselves. The company just called the Posts report potentially harmful and blocked users from sharing it.

Facebook, as usual, was sneakier, suppressing the story instead of banning it outright. Thats what they do to my climate change reporting.

Today, the media admit the Post story is true. But they dont admit they were wrong. Now they just say things like, Nobody cares about Hunter Bidens laptop.

Bad as the media are, whats worse is that government wanted to censor.

Sen. Mark Warner complained, Weve done nothing in terms of content regulation!

Fortunately, his colleagues were not as irresponsible as he; no censorship legislation passed. But government did apply lots of pressure.

The White House asked Facebook to kill what they called disinformation, even urging them to censor private WhatsApp messages.

Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter and opened up the companys internal files, we know that censorhip requests came from every corner of government, as journalist Matt Taibbi put it.

Even individual politicians tried to censor.

Maine Sen. Angus Kings staff complained about Twitter accounts that they considered anti-King. Rep. Adam Schiffs office asked Twitter to suppress search results.

Fortunately, Twitter refused.

But the sad truth is that lots of government agencies and media tyrants want to limit what you read and hear.

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Not allowed to say that | News, Sports, Jobs - The Inter-Mountain

April 11, 2023 FEDmanager

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

The Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs has advanced a slew of legislation that could impact the federal workforce.

The Saving Money and Accelerating Repairs Through (SMART) Leasing Act (S.211)

This legislation would create a program that allows federal agencies to lease underutilized and vacant properties to the private sector. The Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) must approve the leases. The rent payments would be used to fund capital project and facilities maintenance.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI), Senator James Lankford (R-OK), Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) authored the legislation.

Federal Agency Performance Act of 2023 (S.709)

The legislation aims to improve accountability and transparency among federal agencies by requiring regular reviews of an agencys performance goals and then making more of that data public. It updates the Government Performance and Budget Act.

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) authored the bill.

Increased transparency and accountability are key when it comes to improving the performance of federal agencies for taxpayers, said Senator Braun.

Clear and Concise Content Act (S.717)

The bill would ensure that information published by the government, including guidance, instructions, and other key information, is written in plain language. It also updates the Plain Writing Act of 2010 to expand the types of information that agencies must publish in plain writing.

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senator James Lankford (R-OK) authored the legislation.

Duplication Scoring Act of 2023 (S.780)

This legislation, sponsored by Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Rand Paul (R-KY), aims to prevent duplicate programs in the federal government. The bill directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to analyze legislation reported by any congressional committee, and then report if the legislation would create a duplicate program, office, or initiative, with the goal of cutting down on wasteful spending.

Guidance Clarity Act of 2023 (S.108)

The legislation would require federal agencies to include a guidance clarity statement, which states that the guidance is not issued in accordance with the rulemaking process and therefore is not legally binding.

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) sponsored the bill.

Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (S.933)

The legislation instructs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop security protection requirements at federal data centers. That includes both cyber and physical threats such as wildfires.

Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) sponsored the bill.

GAO Database Modernization Act of 2023 (S.679)

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) sponsored this legislation that would require federal agencies to report to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) any rules that are revoked, suspended, replaced, amended, or otherwise made ineffective.

IMPACTT Human Trafficking Act (S.670)

This bipartisan legislation enhances the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) ability to fight human trafficking by making permanent and expanding the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Victim Assistance Program. The bill also improves and makes permanent a program that promotes the wellbeing of HSI employees who deal with the stress and associated trauma of supporting victims of human trafficking.

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), Senator James Lankford (R-OK), and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) sponsored the bill.

The federal government must support victims of human trafficking, as well as the professionals who work each and every day to stop these crimes, said Senator Peters.

END FENTANYL Act (S.206) (Eradicating Narcotic Drugs and Formulating Effective New Tools to Address National Yearly Losses of Life Act)

The legislation aims to cut down on illegal drugs, by requiring U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to review and update policies related to inspections at ports of entry and the border. The updates would be required every three years to ensure the guidance is up to date.

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) is the chief sponsor.

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Key Bills Advance out of Senate Homeland Security Committee - FEDmanager