Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) pointed out that President Donald Trump and Republican voters are frustrated because they "don't see" Senate Republicans fighting to pass the SAVE America Act.
The post Exclusive — GOP Sen. Jim Banks: Trump, Republican Voters ‘Don’t See’ GOP Senate ‘Fighting for SAVE America Act’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Texas is poised to make the Bible required reading for five million public school students.The Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote Friday to approve legislation to scrap teaching about “World Cultures” and make Bible stories and verses a permanent part of the K-12 curriculum—a blatant violation of the separation between church and state.Critics of the measure argue that the changes risk alienating children from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds and infringe on the ability of parents to guide their children’s moral and religious education, CNN reported.If the proposed reading list is approved, primary school-aged students would be taught stories like Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Middle school students would study the Shepherd Psalm from the Book of Psalms, as well as the religious writings of poets like Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. High schoolers would read from the second chapter of Genesis, detailing the creation of Adam and Eve—a story that exists across multiple religions but in vastly different forms.Students would be able to opt out of these lessons, but as the texts would be made a part of the official curriculum, that could potentially affect their grades.The proposed curriculum would only allow the use of verses from specific Bible translations, including the King James Bible, which is not embraced by the Roman Catholic Church but is widely used by Protestant and Evangelical churches, according to CNN.In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains in schools, and the next year the state offered extra money to public schools willing to provide optional Bible instruction. Last year, Texas became the largest of a slew of red states to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.These newest proposed changes come as President Donald Trump’s administration takes up the guise of “Christian nationalism”—while practicing policies that aren’t very Christian or particularly nationalist.
Unaffordable home prices are not the kind of thing billionaire President Donald Trump has had to worry about his whole life, but his voters are having a hard time with it in his economy. Locally elected Republicans are feeling more heat over the economic situation than Trump in his gold-plated Oval Office, however, and this is pressing Columbia, SC. Mayor Daniel Rickenmann to plead Trump for mercy. “I think it's terrible for the Republican Party, to be quite honest,” said Rickenmann, speaking to an MS NOW “Weekend” panel Saturday morning about the possibility of Trump vetoing a popular housing bill to force Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act. “… When you have Senator (Rick) Scott and Senator (Elizabeth) Warren working together, this is what this country is based on, so we're really excited. You know, look, in 10 days this bill will be law. And I don't think the President would be wise to even think about vetoing something like this. This is monumental. This is the beginning. First housing bill in 30-plus years.”Trump is facing a likely disastrous midterm election threatening to remove his protective Republican buffer in the House and Senate — which is the only thing protecting him from numerous investigations into claims of fraud and various tampering. Knowing this, Trump is determined to pass the SAVE Act, an election bill that critics say will make it harder to vote.But passing the SAVE Act means also means nuking the Senate filibuster and removing the Senate parliamentarian, which Senate GOP leaders are loathe to do. For this reason, Trump is holding all bills hostage until the Republican majority commits to passing the SAVE Act to the White House for a signature.But Trump may have other reasons behind his indifference to the Housing Bill, said MS NOW Eugene Daniels, who played footage of Trump dismissing the need for lower housing prices.“I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody. Maybe anywhere. It is all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rate. You can have all the housing you want. But you have to understand: I don't want to … hurt people that own houses too. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses, they become rich. I don't want to hurt them either.”“What's interesting is several weeks ago, a month ago, he talked about how this is important,” responded Rickenmann. “This is the number one issue across America in every city. … If you're a Democratic city, Republican city, whatever, there's three and a half million units needed across this country. … We had over 1,800 [building permits issued] in our city. We're pushing everything we can. But to say that it's just interest rates is not true. And to say this isn’t monumental as also very disappointing, in my point of view.”“It is very important for us to protect the integrity of elections,” Rickenmann insisted. “But at the same time, we can't hold one bill for other. We've got to work on thousands of things together, and I don't like the impression that one bill is being held up for another. That's just not the way things need to work.”
Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson said he was worried that House and Senate Republicans had tied themselves so thoroughly to President Donald Trump that the president knows he can blow up their November midterms chances without Wilson told MS NOW anchor Katy Tur that Trump is the kind of personality that deliberately hurts those who show fealty because he sees their kindliness as weakness, and weakness must be abused.“I think this is a real moment where the Republicans, if they were politically smart about it, would try to get some daylight between themselves and Trump, but they are so locked in this abusive marriage with him,” said Wilson. “He is the Ike Turner of their lives. He's going to torture them and hurt them, and they can't seem to escape.”Semafor Congressional Bureau Chief Burgess Everett described Trump’s refusal to pass a popular housing bill until his GOP cohorts pass the SAVE Act — despite the bill’s inevitable doom from Democrats and a few centrist Republicans. But with the November midterms approaching fast Republicans desperately need new laws to brag about.“They need to get together to be able to say, ‘hey, voters, you can trust us with another two years in Congress,’: Everett said. But may be unlikely if Trump refuses to sign any bills until he gets his precious SAVE Act.Wilson said Republicans have only themselves to blame for the monster hounding them out of their Republican majority in November.“Donald Trump started the week in very bad shape. He went in Wednesday and blew up his already tattered relationship with the Senate, threatening to veto this bill. You could see the air going out of Republicans in the House who desperately needed anything, even a symbolic lightweight, ephemeral sort of thing to take to the voters and say ‘yeah, we looked at affordability. We're working on housing costs.’ But I think there's also a great chance that Donald Trump will get bored or restless or change his mind, or somebody will get in his ear over the weekend and he'll blow it all up again,” said Wilson.“The idea that the House is going to be somehow saved by Donald Trump, from its own worship of Donald Trump — which is what's put them in this terrible political position. I think that is a big old category error. And I don't think they see the freight train coming at them.”Tur pointed out that the American public is “speaking pretty clearly” about their own 'fealty' to Trump, with the president suffering a 30-point popularity drop in just over a year.“No president in modern times, with numbers that low doesn't end up splashing some radiation onto the members of his own caucus, of his own House and Senate,” said Wilson, “so these guys are really running up against a very steep hill.” - YouTube youtu.be
Dispatch writer David M. Drucker dropped some truth on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” show on Saturday, explaining exactly why Republican leaders in the Senate are finally defying President Donald Trump by refusing to pass the SAVE Act.Passing the act, which critics say will severely constrict voter access, will require unprecedented moves in the Senate, including the dismantling of the Senate filibuster and the removal of the Senate parliamentarian. Neither of that’s going to happen, however, because Republicans in the Senate can see the future whereas Trump — who is pushing 80 — sees very little future at all.“What I find silly about this, but it kind of shows you where the President's head is at — which is the same place it's always at —,” he said suggestively, “is that what Republicans do unto you today, Democrats can do unto you tomorrow.”“So go ahead and fire the parliamentarian, go ahead and scrap the filibuster. Democrats are going to be in power again sometime soon. Look at the past 25 years. This goes back and forth. And they will trash this bill. They'll [install] universal mail-in balloting. They'll do all these things that will force Texas and Florida and Idaho and all these red states to govern elections the way they want. We just played ping-pong doing this. So, the whole thing is just ridiculous,” Drucker said.Drucker added that Trump’s time would be much better spent helping his party focus on economic issues to smooth Republicans' slide into the midterms — only that’s not going to happen, he said.Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.), who Trump had removed in the Republican primaries for daring to release the Epstein files, said on Thursday that Republicans can expect “an absolute shellacking” in November because “we’re wasting the opportunity that voters gave us.”Drucker agreed on Tuesday, writing that Republicans hoping for Trump to pivot to the economy would be better off spending their time hunting “proof” of the “tooth fairy.” The very next day, Trump stomped a Congressional effort to pass a housing bill that would make home ownership for affordable.“I am prescient, man,” Drucker told the MS NOW panel. “[Trump] is … a complicated political figure, but not a complicated man. He is singularly focused on his things that interest him and his grievances.”“[H]e is approaching this presidency doing everything that he ever dreamed he might want to do from the very beginning,” Drucker added. “He never had any use for Congress from the very beginning. He never took well to criticism from voters, and so this is how he has been, and this is how he will be to finish out his last two and a half years.” - YouTube youtu.be