Mediaboss Marketing

The Air Force confirmed it provided unauthorized access to the military records of seven Republican congressional candidates in 2022.

The Air Force made the admission in a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers. R-Ala., and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., dated Friday.

In addition to the five Republicans already known to have been affected by the breach, the Air Force confirmed the data of GOP candidates J.R. Majewski and Robert "Eli" Bremer were also accessed this brings the total number of compromised Republicans to seven.

TWO MORE REPUBLICANS IDENTIFIED AS HAVING AIR FORCE RECORDS IMPROPERLY RELEASED TO DEM-LINK RESEARCHER

Ohio Republican candidate for Congress J.R. Majewski leaves the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

"The Department of Defense failed to protect the private information of our service members," Rogers said in response to the Air Force letter. "To publicly rectify this unacceptable mistake, we hoped DoD would provide full transparency in their response unfortunately, full transparency is not what we received. We are extremely disappointed in DoDs inadequate response to our questions."

The other Republican candidates whose records were released to the Democratic Party-aligned research firm are Rep. Donald Bacon, Rep. Zachary Nunn, Kevin Dellicker, Jennifer-Ruth Green and Samuel Peters.

The firm in question is Due Diligence Group, whose Abraham Payton was named by the Air Force in letters to Peters and Dellicker as having made "multiple requests" for their records.

GOP REP LIVID AT DEMOCRAT POLITICAL DIRTY TRICKSTERS WHO OBTAINED AIR FORCE RECORDS OF REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

"We asked Secretary Austin for information on all service members who had their records improperly released to the Democrat-aligned research firm Due Diligence Group," Rogers said. "However, DoD only provided our committees with answers from the Department of the Air Force,despite public reporting that DDG attempted to gather information from other services. DoDs response did not give us confidence that all services have put safeguards in place to ensure that service members' private information is not mishandled."

Due Diligence Group received more than $110,000 from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) from January 2021 to December 2022, according to FEC records, although it is unknown if the campaign committee used or received these or any other materials from Due Diligence.

HOUSE GOP DEMANDS ANSWER FROM PENTAGON ON LEAKED RECORDS OF JENNIFER-RUTH GREEN'S SEXUAL ASSAULT

Logo of the Department of the U.S. Air Force (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

The Air Force told Fox News, "There was no evidence of political motivation or maliciousintent on the part of any employee."

"During the two-year period covered by the timeline in your letter, AFPC received a total of 19,597 requests for military personnel records. Immediately after we became aware in October 2022 of the improper records release concerning Ms. Jennifer-Ruth Green's records, AFPC conducted a Personal Identifiable Information (PII) breach investigation, as required under OMB and Department of Defense (DoD) policy."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"AFPC also initiated a seperate audit of all third-party requests (10,599) received between early 2021 and early 2023. That audit identified a total of 11 individuals who had their military records released without proper authority."

The Air Force said their discovery came from an internal audit that began following the discovery that Republican Indiana House candidate Greens military records were improperly released. Those records, reported on by Politico in October 2022, included details of a sexual assault.

The release of Green's records led Rogers and Comer to send a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanding information, including a list of the improperly released records of congressional candidates over the past two years and a list of punitive actions taken against those responsible for the leak.

Fox News' Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.

View original post here:
Air Force confirms 2 more Republican candidates whose records were improperly accessed - Fox News

Advocates on both sides of the abortion fight stress, however, that a ballot initiative fight in Oklahoma is still possible whether the state approves exceptions for rape and incest or not. | Sue Ogrocki/AP photo

Oklahomas leading anti-abortion group is pushing GOP lawmakers to loosen the states near-total ban.

In a recent letter to legislators, Oklahomans for Life Chair Tony Lauinger argued that if they dont amend the states anti-abortion law to add exceptions for rape and incest, there is a real chance a citizen-led ballot initiative to make all abortion legal will eventually succeed.

His efforts, which other lawmakers and anti-abortion groups have slammed as immoral and politically naive, are the latest example of the national scramble to prevent voters from restoring abortion access by popular vote.

Legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma are debating bills this session that would hike the filing fees, raise the number of signatures required to get on the ballot, restrict who can collect signatures, mandate broader geographic distribution of signatures, and raise the vote threshold to pass an amendment from a majority to a supermajority. While the bills vary in wording, they would have the same impact: limiting voters power to override abortion restrictions that Republicans imposed, which took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

After watching the pro-abortion rights side win all six ballot initiative fights related to abortion in 2022 including in conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky conservatives fear, and are mobilizing to avoid, a repeat.

It was a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do, said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot initiative fights on abortion over the next two years. Were going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.

In Mississippi, where a court order froze all ballot efforts in 2021, GOP lawmakers are advancing legislation that would restore the mechanism but prohibit voters from putting abortion-related measures on the ballot.

I think it just continues the policy of Mississippi and our state leaders that were going to be a pro-life state, said Mississippi state Rep. Nick Bain, who presented the bill on the House floor.

But in most states, the GOP proposals to tighten restrictions on ballot initiatives are not explicitly targeting abortion. The push to change the rules began years before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022 spurred by progressive efforts to legalize marijuana, expand Medicaid and raise the minimum wage in several red states though it reached new heights over the past year as voters and elected officials clashed over abortion policies.

Still, some anti-abortion activists worry that the trend could backfire, preventing groups from using the tactic to pass their own constitutional amendments via popular vote.

In Florida, its a double-edged sword, said Andrew Shirvell, the leader of the group Florida Voice for the Unborn that is supporting efforts to put an anti-abortion measure on the 2024 ballot. So were conflicted about it, because there is a large contingent of pro-life grassroots advocates who feel our governor and legislature have failed us on this issue for far too long and want to take things into our own hands.

Interest on the left in using ballot initiatives to protect or expand abortion access exploded in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections. Efforts are already underway in Missouri, Ohio and South Dakota to insert language restoring abortion rights into the states constitutions, while advocates in several other states are mulling their options.

The campaign is furthest along in Ohio, where abortion rights advocates began collecting signatures this week. A coalition of anti-abortion groups called Protect Women Ohio formed in response and announced a $5 million ad buy this week to air a 30-second spot suggesting the proposed amendment would take away parents rights to decide whether their children should obtain abortions and other kinds of health care.

At the same time, some Ohio lawmakers are pushing for a proposal that would raise the voter approval threshold for constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent.

In Missouri, where progressive groups have submitted several versions of an abortion-rights ballot initiative to state authorities for review, lawmakers are similarly weighing proposals to impose a supermajority vote requirement and mandate that the measure pass in more than half of Missouri House districts to take effect.

Its about making sure everyone has a voice, and that includes middle Missouri as well, said Missouri Right to Life Executive Director Susan Klein. We have known for some time that the threat to legalize abortion was going around different states and would ultimately come to Missouri. Weve been hard at work preparing for this challenge and were ready.

In Idaho, lawmakers are trying to require backers of initiative petitions to gather signatures from 6 percent of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.

I call these bills death by a thousand cuts, said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the progressive ballot initiative group The Fairness Project. When you hear about each one in isolation, they seem like not that big a deal. But taken together, they have an exclusionary effect on peoples participation in democracy.

Conservative lawmakers and advocates pushing the rule changes say they reflect their beliefs about how laws should be crafted and are not solely about abortion but they are upfront about wanting to make it harder to pass the kind of broad protections voters in California, Michigan and Vermont enacted last year.

I did not start this out due to abortion, but Planned Parenthood is actively trying to enshrine a lack of protections for the unborn into constitutions, said North Dakota state Sen. Janne Myrdal, who heads the state legislatures Pro-Life Caucus. You can sit in California or New York or Washington and throw a dart, attach a couple million dollars to it, and you change our constitution.

The resolution Myrdal is sponsoring, which passed the Senate last month and is awaiting a vote in the House, would require proposed constitutional amendments to pass twice during the primary and general elections and bump up the signature-gathering requirement from 4 percent to 5 percent of residents. If approved, the proposed changes would appear on the states 2024 ballot.

Major national anti-abortion groups say theyre not formally endorsing these efforts, but support the GOP lawmakers behind them.

It starts to diminish the importance of a constitution if it can be changed by the whim of the current culture, Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, said.

Even in states that have not yet taken steps to put an abortion-rights measure on the ballot, conservative fears of such a move are driving some surprising legislative action.

In Oklahoma, the anti-abortion leader Lauinger is arguing to lawmakers that polling shows overwhelming support for rape and incest exceptions as one lawmaker has proposed in a bill that cleared its first committee last month and overwhelming opposition to leaving the states ban as-is.

If the state didnt have a ballot measure process, he said, he wouldnt support exceptions. But since that threat exists, he argued, We must not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

The abortion industry has the weapon to defeat what we regard as the ideal policy, Lauinger told the lawmakers. The initiative petition is their trump card.

Lauinger did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Yet National Right to Life, the parent group of his organization, told POLITICO it backs his argument that its better to make exceptions for rape and incest than risk a sweeping ballot initiative enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.

This isnt a betrayal, insisted Tobias. If you really look at what were facing, we could either save 95 percent of all babies or we could lose everything and all babies could be subject to death. Its kind of hard to not see the reality.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion fight stress, however, that a ballot initiative fight in Oklahoma is still possible even likely whether the state approves exceptions for rape and incest or not.

Theyre probably going to try to do one anyway, regardless of what we do, said Oklahoma state Rep. Jim Olsen, a Republican who launched an effort with other conservative lawmakers in the state to defeat the exceptions bill. The fight hasnt even come and were already backing away.

Read more from the original source:
Abortion on the ballot? Not if these Republican lawmakers can help it. - POLITICO

Let's say you were a Republican member of Congress with a sincere desire to craft a federal budget that would achieve balance by the end of the decade.

That's a noble goal! Balancing the budget wouldn't pay down the $31 trillion national debt, of course, but it would at least stop adding to it. There's just one small issue, your advisers tell you. Well, three issues, actually. You can't cut spending on the military (including veterans programs) or entitlement programs, and you can't advocate for letting the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire. That's sacred ground, they say, and suggesting any of those three ideas will end with you getting hoisted out of office by pitchfork-carrying voters, a loud-mouthed primary challenger, and/or the angry ghost of Ronald Reagan.

You can't pass a balanced budget if you're not a member of Congress, so you agree. Those three things are off the table. Now, all you have to do is get a majority of Congress and President Joe Biden to agree to cut literally every dollar of discretionary spending out of the budget and you'll have accomplished your goal. Almost.

This isn't an exaggeration. It's the actual results of a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) review of potential paths for using spending cuts to balance the federal budget over 10 years.

In one scenario outlined by the CBO, Congress would have to cut 86 percent of all discretionary spending if it wanted to balance the budget by 2033 without touching the military, veterans programs, or entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. In a slightly altered version of that same scenario in which the Trump tax cuts were not allowed to expire as intended in 2025, Congress would have to cut 100 percent of discretionary spendingand the country would still face a $20 billion deficit.

The CBO analysis helps to illustrate the seriousness of America's fiscal dilemma. While many libertarians might cheer the prospect of the federal government zeroing out all discretionary spending over 10 years, that's simply not a realistic proposal that could get anywhere near the requisite support in Congress.

Instead, it should be clear that any attempt at bringing the federal budget deficit under control must kill (or at least wound) the Republicans' sacred cows of military spending, entitlements, and the recent Trump tax cuts. Right now, however, leading Republicans including former President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (RCalif.) have vowed to keep Social Security out of any long-term spending deals. Rep. Jim Banks (RInd.)has promised to oppose any bill that cuts defense spending.

As for the tax cuts, they're technically temporarya gimmick that allowed Republicans to game the CBO's scoring of the tax cut billbut keeping the lower individual income tax rates in place past 2025 is a top priority for Republicans.

This CBO analysis was a response to a question submitted by two of the top Democrats in the Senate's budget-making process: Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (DR.I.) and Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (DOre.). As such, there's an element of it that comes off as a partisan exercisean opportunity to point out that spending cuts alone can't balance the budget, or just to highlight the impossibility of Republican demands surrounding the debt ceiling fight.

"As this analysis shows, no amount of cuts can make their math add up," Whitehouse said in a statement. "It is a farce."

But the CBO's numbers aren't partisan and neither is the blame for America's massive budget deficits. These latest projections only reveal how difficult the choices ahead will be. If Republicans are serious about trying to balance the budget, there can be no more sacred cows.

See more here:
Balancing the Budget Is Impossible Without Killing a Republican ... - Reason

Records arent kept on such things, but Donald Trump is clearly the most promiscuous user of the word RINO in Republican Party history. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Opinion by Rich Lowry

03/23/2023 04:30 AM EDT

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of National Review and a contributing writer with Politico Magazine.

You might have heard that Ron DeSantis is a RINO.

Of course, the former congressman and Florida governor hasnt departed from Republican orthodoxy in any significant way during his career (and, in fact, now hes helping to define it); hes loyally supported the partys candidates across the spectrum, and, as his fame and power have grown, campaigned for them; and hes been a determined party-builder in Florida.

In any rational world, the pejorative Republican In Name Only shouldnt show up within hailing distance of DeSantis, but former President Donald Trump is trying to make it stick.

Records arent kept on such things, but Trump is clearly the most promiscuous user of RINO in Republican Party history. He applies it to everyone from Republicans who now have a genuinely strained connection to the party, like Liz Cheney, to stand-out governors like DeSantis and Brian Kemp of Georgia.

Its not as though RINO, an insult and not the most subtle one, was ever a precise term. Once upon a time, it was an acronym applied to moderate Republicans who accommodated the other side on substance and process. In recent years, though, Trump has appropriated it as completely as the phrase fake news.

In a sign of the personalization of the Republican Party, one doesnt get deemed a RINO for showing disloyalty to the party as an institution, or to its political principles and policy commitments, but for crossing one man, who himself, as it happens, has little loyalty to the party.

On top of everything else, Trumps use of the term is a case study in projection.

Trump called Kemp, one of the most stalwart Republicans in the country, a horrendous RINO who has betrayed the people of Georgia, and betrayed Republican voters.

Hes inveighed against RINO former Attorney General Bill Barr.

He endorsed Kari Lake in last years Arizona gubernatorial race by saying she will do a far better job than RINO Governor Doug Ducey.

These, and many other Republicans, earned the sobriquet by not acquiescing in Trumps schemes to overturn the 2020 election, or endorse his conspiracy theories about it. The 2022 midterms proved that an obsession with the 2020 election is electoral poison, such that a true RINO scheming to destroy the party from within would want as many Republicans to share this fixation as possible.

Of course, thats exactly what Trump has sought. Its not that he is trying to deliberately to undermine the party, but that his own personal interests and psychological needs take precedence. Hed no more sacrifice anything he truly cares about for the sake of the party than hed jump off the Verrazano bridge.

Pretty much everyone he calls a RINO has devoted his or her adult life to the Republican Party. Trump is different. Prior to 2012, he ping-ponged back and forth among various party affiliations. So attenuated was his connection to the party in 2016, RNC chairman Reince Priebus famously fashioned a loyalty pledge to get him to commit to supporting the eventual nominee.

This makes Trump an odd arbiter of whos a genuine Republican or not. Its not the zeal of the convert, because his own conversion is still tenuous and situational. A fear that haunts Republicans about 2024 is that someone will beat Trump in the primary campaign, and the former president will turn around and try to sabotage the nominee out of spite.

This isnt a far-fetched worry. When Brian Kemp wouldnt do his bidding after 2020, Trump issued forth with arguably the most RINO-worthy sentiment of any major Republican in recent memory. Stacey, would you like to take his place? Its OK with me, he said of Stacey Abrams at a rally. Of course having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think. Might very well be better.

Its hard to see any other Republican living that down, but Trump cant himself be a RINO by definition. If he decides to try to blow up the GOP in 2024, bizarrely, the supposed RINOs will be the ones who decide to stick with the Republicans.

The level of personal deference required to pass the Trump RINO test is extraordinary, and apparently escalating. Days ago, his loyalists were braying for DeSantis to speak out about the possibility of a Trump indictment. DeSantis ended up making a cogent and pointed critique of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, while stipulating that he doesnt know about paying hush money to porn stars.

This set off the likes of Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell who cant bear the slightest criticism of Trump, as if he were St. Francis of Assisi instead of Donald J. Trump of Mar-a-Lago. When DeSantis doubled down by talking about the importance of truth and character in an interview with Piers Morgan, Donald Trump Jr. lashed out by slamming the governor for what else? acting on orders from his RINO establishment owners.

Yes, truth and character are now RINO values.

Obviously, the label itself has outlived its usefulness, although its not going away until Trump goes away. For that to happen Republicans will have to become, in Trump terms, a RINO party not any less conservative, less fierce, or less Republican, but no longer beholden to the man who has successfully made himself the measure of all things.

Trumps definition of a RINO is a travesty, and its used to abuse Republicans in good standing whose commitment to the party is deeper and more principled than his will ever be.

The rest is here:
Opinion | The Trump RINO Test Is Ridiculous - POLITICO

MADISON Gov. Tony Evers today released a statement after Republicans on the State Building Commission (SBC) deadlocked the Commission on a 4-4 vote on every motion that included projects in the governors capital budget recommendations, rejecting the governors proposed nearly $3.8 billion in investments in state infrastructure. Gov. Evers plan, releasedlast month, represented one of the strongest investments to date for Wisconsins facility infrastructure and included major projects in both Republican and Democratic legislative districts in 28 counties across the state. Additionally, the governors recommendations were expected to provide approximately 45,000 family-supporting jobs and an estimated $6.8 billion in economic impact.

Our capital budget addressed critical infrastructure needs across our state in a way that kept borrowing low, saved the taxpayers money in the long run, and created critical local jobs and economic development, said Gov. Evers. While Republican leaders claim to support these goals, their action today shows that they would simply rather play politics than have a meaningful discussion about how these projects would serve the needs of the folks they represent. Despite todays unfortunate outcome, we willcontinue to fight for these projects as we work to invest in and build 21st centuryinfrastructure in communities across our state.

Republicans rejected important projects such as:Continued investments in correctional facilities to further work towards closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake as juvenile facilitiesbycompletingthe Milwaukee Type 1 facilityand anew Type 1 facility on Department of Corrections-owned property in Oregon, the expansion of the Grow Academy in Oregon,and astudy and plan for a third Type 1 facility in the Northeastern region;Significant investment of approximately $1.8 billion for capital improvement projects through the University of Wisconsin (UW) System at campuses across the state. These projectsincludethe Engineeringreplacementbuilding at UW-Madison, theEauClaire Science/Health Science Building phase II, and the Camp Randall Sports Center replacement at UW-Madison. In addition, numerous critical maintenance and repair projects at Central Utility Plants, replacement of deteriorating facilities such as the Humanities building and Music Hall at UW-Madison, and important renovation work to address deferred maintenance at key campus buildings atUW-Oshkosh and UW-Stevens Point, and many more;Upgrades to the Wisconsin Veterans Home at King and purchasing the Wisconsin Veterans Museum location for future upgrades;Investments in state parksandforests and upgrades to Fire Response RangerStations;Investmentsin health services facilities, including utility infrastructure, support services, and patient care;Projects withfederal support for Wisconsin National Guardfacilities;Additional investmentto complete thenew Wisconsin History Museum; andAddressing the states backlog of deferred maintenance by providing the largest investment to date for all state agencies, including the UW System, for small to mid-sized capital maintenance and repair projects across the state in theAll AgencyProgram.This action is a repeat of the same obstruction by Republican SBC members during the 2019-21 Capital Budget and the 2021-23 Capital Budget by abandoning the decades-old institutional tradition of recommending project requests with bipartisan support. Todays decision by Republicans on theCommission marksthethird time in SBC records the Commission has failed to collaborate on a State Building Program. This action is contrary to the regular meetings when SBC memberscome together multiple times throughout the year toagreetoprovideauthority to construct projectsin the State Building Program.

The complete 2023-25 Capital Budget agency requests and the governors recommendations can be foundhere.The SBC is chaired by Gov.Eversand made up of the following members:Sen. RobertWirch;Sen. JoanBallweg;Sen.AndrJacque;Rep. Jill Billings;Rep. Rob Swearingen;Rep. RobertWittke; andBarb Worcester, citizen member. An online version of this release is availablehere.

Read the original:
Gov. Evers: Reacts to Republican rejection of historic investment in ... - WisPolitics.com