COMPASS: The Last Compass of 2022
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Before departing for the holiday last week, Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus. Given the speed at which it was released and then passed, it’s safe to assume that members hardly knew what was in the more than 4,000 page bill. So just like Nancy Pelosi said back in 2010, […]
COMPASS: Senate races to pass an ill-considered omnibus
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. It’s officially Christmas time and we’re well into Hanukkah, but here in DC, it’s Washington at its absolute worst. The holiday deadline is a cynical excuse to jam through thousands of pages of legislation covering not only the nation’s annual spending, but billions more for Ukraine, passage of actual bills […]
COMPASS: Earmarks grease the skids of spending deal
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. It’s spending season in Washington and things are about to get real. Democrat and Republican appropriators are still desperately trying to salvage a trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill. Republicans reportedly want higher defense spending, while Democrats want parity between defense and nondefense spending. There are three ways out of this: 1) […]
COMPASS: An omnibus ascends?
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are both in session, and it’s a big week in Washington. The Georgia Senate runoff is tomorrow, and, depending on the outcome, Democrats will either have a 50-49 seat majority, or the Senate will remain in a 50-50 tie. The continuing resolution, which is propping up […]
COMPASS: Will 12 GOP senators continue to help pass the Respect for Marriage Act?
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate return to session this week. Last week, I wrote about the battle over religious liberty brewing in the Senate on the Respect for Marriage Act, which claims to “codify same sex marriage” (it doesn’t – nothing in the bill changes the status of, or benefits afforded […]
COMPASS: Senate Respect For Marriage Act threatens religious liberty
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. It’s Thanksgiving week, so Congress is out of session. Former president Donald Trump last week officially declared he will seek re-election to the presidency in 2024. And by week’s end, his Twitter account was officially reinstated after over 15 million people voted approvingly in a Twitter poll put out by […]
COMPASS: Conservatives urge a delay in GOP leadership elections
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Congress is back in session and the lame duck session starts now. On deck is a government funding deadline on December 16th, the defense authorization bill, more aid for Ukraine, and possibly even a same sex marriage bill. But before we even get to that point, the tight majorities in […]
COMPASS: The political realignment moves forward
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. It’s T-1 day until Election Day. America has been undergoing a tectonic political realignment for at least the last two decades, one I would argue was reflected in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. One thing his election reflected was how broadly the demographic parameters of each party are […]
COMPASS: Elon Musk takes the helm at Twitter
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are still out of session. The midterm elections are in 8 days. And Happy Halloween! I was trying to come up with a fun pun or a cute turn of phrase but then I realized that a town full of politicians collaborating with America’s biggest corporations […]
COMPASS: CDC looks to add COVID vaxx to immunization schedule
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are still out of session. Pennsylvania Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman debate for the one and only time tomorrow at 8pm. If you missed it last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee voted unanimously to add the COVID vaccine and […]
COMPASS: “The economy is strong as hell”
Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are still out of session. If you miss the Capitol Hill Sturm und Drang, you can live vicariously through the midterm debates going on around the country. Rep. Tim Ryan and JD Vance face off in a debate for the open Ohio Senate seat tonight at […]
COMPASS: The DOJ arrests pro-lifers; PayPal goes woke
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The Senate returns this week to debate the National Defense Authorization Act, but won’t return to vote until November 14th. The House is still out. Yet the regime presses forward. Apparently in response to the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v Wade in June, the Department of Justice is now moving […]
COMPASS: Congress is out, but SCOTUS is in
/The House and Senate are officially out of town for the next six weeks until they return for a lame duck session in mid- November. And that lame duck will be a busy one. Before they left, both chambers passed a Continuing Resolution to December 16, setting up another government funding deadline. (You can see […]
COMPASS: Funding the government-induced chaos
Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Shona tova to all those observing Rosh Hashanah. The House and Senate are both in session this week and are up against a federal funding deadline on September 30. The forthcoming Continuing Resolution is rumored to fund the government until December 16th. I say “rumored” because, of course, no one […]
COMPASS: The Case For A Short Term CR
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The Compass is a day late this week as I have been out in Miami at the Conference for National Conservatism. Videos from the conference, including speeches from Gov. Ron DeSantis, Peter Thiel, Sen. Rick Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Sen. Josh Hawley, are being posted here. My remarks are […]
COMPASS: Congress re-engages, CR on the horizon
Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. They’re baaaaack. Well, almost. The Senate returns to Washington this week, while the House will be back next week. But looming over Congress’s return is the September 30th government funding deadline and all the drama that entails. Reports indicate Democrats are considering a continuing resolution (a CR, which is a […]
COMPASS: Social Media as Surrogates for State Censorship
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Both the House and Senate are still out of session, which means the city is quiet as we all soak up the waning days of summer. D.C. is sleepy, but the news cycle is not. Mark Zuckerberg made news last week, confirming that Facebook suppressed circulation of the New York […]
COMPASS: Taking On A Corrupted FBI
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. There continue to be more questions than answers as it relates to the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago. However, this morning Judge Bruce Reinhart rejected the Justice Department’s argument to keep the affidavit under seal. The affidavit would likely describe, among other things, the assertion of probable cause that President Trump […]
COMPASS: The raid that shook the country
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. In an absolutely shocking event with no historical precedent, the FBI last Monday raided the Florida home of former president Donald Trump. According to the release of the warrant (but, critically, not the affidavit), the raid was based on a dispute over Trump’s handling of classified documents, and in fact […]
COMPASS: Senate passes $740 billion reconciliation bill
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. After a little more than 15 hours of vote-a-rama, the Senate yesterday passed the $740 billion reconciliation bill by a vote of 51 to 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie vote. All previous skeptics of the large reconciliation package – Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema […]
COMPASS: Republicans get “rinky-doo’d”
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. As of Saturday, President Biden is in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 – again. Biden has been vaccinated four times and has a so-called “rebound” case after taking the Pfizer antiviral, Paxlovid. The White House reports that he has no symptoms. Down the street, the House is in recess. […]
COMPASS: The Mad Dash to August
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. I’m back in the host seat after my husband and I welcomed our baby boy in early June. Thank you all for your well wishes. The three of us are getting on marvelously (and with a lot of coffee!). Congress is back and with a major to-do list. Longtime Hill-watchers […]
COMPASS: Stopping the Invasion
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Both houses of Congress are out this week for the Independence Day recess – giving America the badly needed birthday present of not making things worse for a few days! The biggest news of the week comes from Texas. Several counties along the southern border have declared the relentless influx […]
COMPASS: Guns and baby formula
/Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are back in session this week and the focus is on everything from Ukraine funding to baby formula. The Senate will take a cloture vote this evening on another $40 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine. (The original request from the White House was $33 billion; […]