Daily news coverage of politics, policy, and issues shaping the nation.
Conservatives who belong to the House Freedom Caucus are trying to corner any Republicans thinking twice about impeaching the head of the Internal Revenue Service. They’ve framed the debate as a strict binary, telling fellow members of the GOP that they either can be with conservatives or with the IRS. Members of the Freedom Caucus took their…
President Barack Obama will be speaking this week for the last time during his presidency to annual dinners for black and Hispanic members of Congress, even as his record for the two largest minority groups in the country is at best questionable, based on government numbers. A Census Bureau report this week found wages have climbed…
The race to become the next chairman of the Republican Study Committee expanded Wednesday morning as Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., announced he will challenge a fellow conservative, Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., for the helm of the largest GOP caucus in Congress. Harris, a physician and the only Republican among Maryland’s congressional delegation, told The Daily…
Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest showdown with the Obama administration over the White House plan to give up control of the internet could help bring wayward conservatives back to Republican leadership’s heel on a stopgap spending measure. Arguments about internet freedom and federal spending have become intertwined on Capitol Hill, affecting how some House conservatives say…
The latest front in a debate over the reach of U.S. control of federal land is a 1.9 million-acre retreat of mesas and canyons located in Utah’s poorest county. The stakes are large for this remote land, which President Barack Obama is considering designating as a national monument, in his continued pursuit of being the…
Although the United States has not issued a draft since the Vietnam War in 1973, Congress is in the final negotiating stages for a measure that could require women over the age of 18 to register for the draft. While some members say requiring women to register in the Selective Service is another step toward…
Members of Congress need to be held individually responsible if they allow President Barack Obama to hand the internet over to international control next month, over 100 conservative leaders say. “On October 1, 2016, President Barack Obama will hand to Iran, China, Russia, and others control of perhaps America’s single greatest strategic asset—the World Wide…
Attacks on the rental-car giant Enterprise over social media demonstrate how liberal pressure groups, labeling opponents as “climate change deniers,” coordinate efforts to bully companies to agree with them or face condemnation orchestrated by the groups. In the name of preventing global warming, labor and affiliated groups planted a negative story about Enterprise in a liberal,…
The federal government is mulling a decision to protect state election systems on par with national defense and the power grid, citing recent hacking efforts. But state officials and other critics worry this move, under the guise of thwarting cyberterrorists, would be a back-door means of nationalizing local election functions. Neither the Constitution nor Congress…
Sen. James Lankford introduced legislation last week that would ban late-term dismemberment abortion across the country, in efforts to build consensus and find common ground among Americans. “There are a lot of arguments right now about life and about its role in American society,” Lankford told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Friday. “Obviously,…
Deirdre Folley is one of more than 600,000 people nationwide who is considered uninsured. Yet when her daughter suffered a hairline fracture in her leg, requiring visits to an urgent care center, radiologist, and orthopedist, Folley and her family didn’t end up paying anything for the cost of her care even though charges totaled nearly…
The Obama administration upped its commitment to get the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty ratified, a tall order since a bipartisan coalition of 50 senators have already said they oppose the gun treaty Secretary of State John Kerry signed three years ago. Second Amendment advocates are concerned the treaty could provide an international law rationalization…
More than two months after a majority of voters decided that Britain should withdraw from the European Union, the architect of the “leave” movement has a message for economists who predicted the result would cause economic chaos. “I think the economists have been proven massively wrong,” says Matthew Elliott, the CEO of Vote Leave, the…
House Republicans huddling in the basement of the Capitol Friday morning weren’t strategizing to defeat Democrats. They were trying to quell dissension inside their ranks over the length of a stopgap spending measure. And they’re running out of time. Congress must decide how to fund the federal government before its spending authority expires on Oct….
Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Oregon bakers who refused to make a cake for the wedding of two women, filed new documents Thursday with the Oregon Court of Appeals in response to the same-sex couple’s arguments that the Kleins had no legal right to refuse them service. “We are hopeful that these judges will understand that…
With the presidential election two months away, a Kansas law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship remains in legal limbo. Late last month, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate a provision of a law requiring Kansans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote while obtaining driver's…
A group of students and parents from Minnesota filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the federal government and their school district for allowing a transgender student who was born male but identifies as female into the girls’ locker rooms, showers, and restrooms. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of challenges to the Obama administration’s…
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen made the rounds Wednesday on Capitol Hill to discuss his potential impeachment, meeting with two of the largest GOP House caucuses. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus were furious about Koskinen’s visits with lawmakers who belong to the moderate Tuesday Group or the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee. These conservatives have…
KYIV, Ukraine—There is a memorial to murdered Ukrainian journalists on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s central boulevard. It’s a simple, nondescript metal plaque flanked by flowers on the side of a building. Some of the names are faded now, worn down by the years and the elements. The names date from 1992, the first year after Ukraine gained…
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., isn’t just honoring his own pledge to serve no more than 12 years in office. The outgoing lawmaker also is pushing for a constitutional amendment on term limits, to lock other senators into the same time frame. “We have seen the disastrous effects of what happens when politicians stay in Washington for too long,” Vitter,…