After a trial run during the June primary for the Arlington County Board in Arlington, Virginia, the board decided not to use ranked choice voting (RCV) for local races in the upcoming November election.
Board members made the decision to halt the RCV pilot program after hearing mostly from proponents of RCV at a July 15 board meeting, because the members want more outreach and education provided to voters to help them understand how RCV works.
“I know we’ve heard some people who have asked that we commit to it now and for every election thereafter,” remarked outgoing Chair Christian Dorsey. “I don’t think that’s the proper thing to do at this point while we’re still gathering data, information, and socializing this with the community.”...
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party hosts a Thunderdome debate with policy experts on trade and economic engagement with China at 2:00 p.m. ET on July 19.
The event features two bipartisan, two-person teams debating three main policy areas, including China trade relations, technology export controls, and investment flows.
Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) will moderate.
...
June data on illegal immigration across the southern border indicates that total encounters along the Southwest border were the lowest in over two years, dropping nearly a third from the level it was at in the month of May.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has released its operational statistics for June 2023, showing the substantial and continuing decline in migrant encounters, according to a July 18 press release.
The agency attributes this decline to enforcing consequences under Title 8 authorities and expanding lawful pathways and processes. Additionally, CBP reported successful drug interdiction efforts, which have resulted in a significant increase in narcotics seizures....
Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed a joint session of Congress on July 19, reaffirming the U.S.-Israel alliance, warning about the Iranian threat, and reiterating Israel’s independent judiciary amid controversy surrounding it.
Before a packed crowd in the House chamber, where he got multiple standing ovations throughout, Mr. Herzog expressed gratitude for the United States’ support for the Jewish state.
Iranian Threat
Mr. Herzog remarked that the greatest threat to Israel is Iran, whose nuclear program he said is not peaceful and that the regime “has spread hatred, terror and suffering throughout the Middle East and beyond, adding fuel to the disastrous fire and suffering in Ukraine.” Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova was in attendance....
President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign edited the words of one of his most ardent critics, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), as an endorsement of his presidential record.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign published a new campaign ad, which takes a portion of a speech Ms. Greene gave at a Turning Point Action Conference over the weekend, to present her saying the Biden administration has been heavily investing taxpayer dollars in such issues as infrastructure, education and healthcare. The Biden campaign video features a segment of Ms. Greene’s TPUSA speech, set to uplifting music and interspersed with footage of Mr. Biden in the White House and along the campaign trail....
Ron DeSantis rolled out his plan to “rip the woke out of the military and return it to its core mission” at a campaign stop in Columbia, South Carolina, on July 18.
DeSantis’s plan doesn’t address military weaponry or theaters of engagement, subjects he often touches on in his speeches.
The program instead focuses on another side of revamping the military: undoing what he says is the Biden administration’s military preoccupation with diversity and inclusion, critical race theory, and climate change—so the armed forces might focus once more on how to fight wars.
In his speech, Mr. DeSantis assailed the American military’s current path....
Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday evening that mainstream media outlets are lying about the Russia–Ukraine war by not reporting the true death toll and destruction.
In an event with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump again said that he would push to end the war. In that event, the former president said that he believes the death toll is far greater than what is being carried in reports, noting that there are cities with totally destroyed buildings.
“You have cities with no building standing. It looks like just a demolition zone. It’s so horrible and, you know, and then they’ll say two people were hurt,” Mr. Trump told Hannity....
A second Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower told the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Wednesday that lawyers with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Tax Division recommended felony and misdemeanor charges be brought against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 tax years.
“In Early August of 2022, federal prosecutors from [DOJ] drafted a 99-page memorandum. This memorandum recommended approving felony and misdemeanor charges for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 tax years. If the Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss followed DOJ Policy as he stated in his most recent letter, Hunter Biden should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge. We need to treat each taxpayer the same under the law,” the whistleblower said in his prepared opening statement (pdf) prior to a hearing scheduled for July 19....
The House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight holds a hearing on “Oversight of the U.S. Capitol Police Office of Inspector General” at 2:00 p.m. ET on July 19.
United States Capitol Police Inspector General Mr. Ron Russo will testify.
...
The Senate voted on July 18 to begin consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year 2024, bringing it one step closer to a final passage.
Senators voted 72 to 25 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to its version of the bill, which sets forth policies for Department of Defense (DOD) programs and activities, as well as military construction, and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) national security programs.
While the bill authorizes appropriations, it does not provide budget authority.
The $886 billion defense package authorizes $844.3 billion for the DOD and $32.4 billion for national security programs within the DOE....
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blasted the nine Democrats who voted against a pro-Israel resolution in the House of Representatives.
The resolution passed on July 18, 412-9-1. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) voted “present.” The members who voted against the resolution were Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Andre Carson (D-Ind.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).
“Well, if you look at the nine Democrats there, they’ve got a real antisemitic problem inside their confidence, and it seems to be growing with their leadership doing nothing about it,” Mr. McCarthy told The Epoch Times on July 19. “They allow them to continue to say the things they have, to equate the U.S. military to the Taliban, to say Israel is evil, to say only members’ relationship with Israel is all about the Benjamins.”...
House Republicans hold a press conference at 12:30 p.m. ET on July 19 to commemorate Israel’s 75th birthday following a Congressional joint meeting address by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
...
President Joe Biden’s administration has suspended funding to the laboratory in China located in the same city where COVID-19 cases were first identified, according to a new document.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is cutting off the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to U.S. grants, an HHS official said in a memorandum dated July 17.
The institute (WIV) has received more than $1.4 million in U.S. funds over the years for testing under a project dubbed Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, including experiments that made a bat coronavirus more infectious.
Mice infected with a modified version of the virus, according to documents made public in 2021, became sicker than those infected with the original virus....
A whistleblower, IRS criminal investigator X, and IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley testify to the House Oversight Committee in a hearing on “the Biden Criminal Investigation” at 1:00 p.m. ET on July 19.
...
The “consensus enforcement mechanism” of censorship on social media has not only been an attack on civil liberty but has also sapped the public square of a desire to reach the truth, according to journalist Matt Taibbi.
Where there was once a hunger for freedom, there is now a collective apathy over fighting to keep it preserved, Mr. Taibbi said.
“In parallel to this censorship program, I think what they’re doing with things like shadow banning and deny listing is they’re trying to simplify controversies and reduce everybody’s field of view,” Mr. Taibbi said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”...
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed for legislation in his state to combat the “woke” movement led by leftist social groups. In a recent presidential campaign, Mr. DeSantis declared that if elected, he would work to eradicate the erosion of cultural Marxism all across the United States.
During his speech at the Republican Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual gathering on June 23, Mr. DeSantis addressed the audience, expressing concern over what he sees as a cultural revolution initiated by the left.
“The left is lighting the fire of a cultural revolution all across this land. The fire smolders in our schools, it smolders in corporate boardrooms, it smolders in the halls of government. We are told that we must accept that men can get pregnant,” he stated....
The U.S. Commerce Department has placed two European-based Israeli-owned spyware companies on its trade blacklist, citing national security concerns.
Intellexa S.A. in Greece and its entity Intellexa Limited in Ireland, and Cytrox AD in North Macedonia, along with its entity Cytrox Holdings Crt in Hungary, were added to the technology export blacklist, the Commerce Department said in a July 18 press release.
The blacklisting means the companies will no longer be able to conduct business or make transactions with American companies, significantly reducing their ability to access commodities, software, and technology that they could use to develop surveillance tools that could be misused, or conduct activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States....
A top Biden administration official behind the Department of Energy’s (DOE) proposed regulatory crackdown on gas stoves while encouraging the adoption of their electric counterparts admitted in Congressional testimony Tuesday that she doesn’t know basic facts about installing electric stoves in homes.
Geraldine Richmond, the Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science and Innovation, on Tuesday testified before the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs during a hearing called “Cancelling Consumer Choice: Examining the Biden Administration’s Regulatory Assault on Americans’ Home Appliances.”
During the hearing, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) addressed Ms. Richmond in the context of a DOE notice of proposed federal rulemaking unveiled in February that would allow the agency to set new efficiency and conservation standards for home appliances, including gas stoves....
Rolling back the regulatory restraints and costs imposed on industry and agriculture by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been among conservative objectives since the 1990s.
With the ESA in 2023 marking the 50th year since it was adopted under President Richard Nixon and a GOP-led Congress, a House Republican working group is developing proposed revisions to the landmark environmental regulation that it plans to introduce late this year or in 2024.
The House Natural Resources Committee’s assorted sub-panels have been staging hearings since March on the problems fostered by the ESA, so it was no surprise when its Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee scheduled a July 18 hearing entitled, “ESA at 50: The Destructive Cost of the ESA.”...
