Chaos At The U.S. Capitol - Democrats BARGE Into Speaker Mike Johnson's Office as Two Democrats Raise Concerns Abo...
Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) unexpectedly stormed into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, challenging him over Elon Musk’s team’s access to a Treasury Department payment system.
Their intrusion occurred soon after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived at the speaker’s office to discuss how to carry out President Donald Trump’s tax agenda, amid a growing Democratic backlash against Musk’s takeover of the federal government. Moore, however, claimed that when she and Chu confronted Johnson, Bessent was not present.
“Gwen Moore forced her way in there, and then I got to go in right behind her,” Chu told reporters. “And she was already confronting Speaker Johnson about Treasury Secretary Bessent and the stealing of Americans’ private information, tax information that should never be stolen and given to this billionaire Elon Musk.”
Last weekend, Bessent provided access to the payments system to members of Musk’s alleged Department of Government Efficiency while in Johnson’s office meeting with House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.). Trillions of dollars in tax refunds, Social Security payments, and numerous other government operations are managed by the system.
Musk’s team currently has “read-only” access to the system, the Treasury Department informed lawmakers on Tuesday, and their review “is not resulting” in any delays or suspensions of federal agency-approved disbursements.
Chu’s and Moore’s actions were condemned by a witness to the incident at Johnson’s office.
“In the face of incredibly rude, extremely aggressive and frankly unhinged behavior, the Speaker was more than gracious and allowed the members into his personal office to hear their concerns,” said the person, who asked not to be named to freely discuss the matter.
A spokesperson for Chu tried to claim that was not an accurate portrayal.
“She never barged, or shoved her way, into anything. She politely joined the meeting already occurring and the Speaker invited her in for a brief, civil discussion. The Secretary was not present, and she left immediately afterwards,” said Chu’s communication director, Graeme Crews, in a statement.
Johnson made headlines earlier this month when he formed a new panel to investigate the Democrat-led January 6 Committee amid allegations that members hid or destroyed evidence exonerating President Donald Trump.
The original committee was led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). It was essentially hand-picked by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). At the time, she resorted to an unprecedented measure of refusing to allow the GOP minority to choose their own members for the panel, so then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) refused to participate at all.
Eventually, now-former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who had also turned against Trump, joined Cheney on the committee.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, will chair the upcoming select subcommittee, which will be part of the House Judiciary Committee.
Loudermilk conducted his investigation into January 6 within the House Administration Committee and had long requested Johnson to separate the probe into its entity.
Since the new panel will be a “select” subcommittee, that means the Speaker will have sole authority to decide which members of the House will sit on it.
It comes as several Republicans, including Johnson, have brushed off questions about President Trump’s decision to pardon nearly all of those who were convicted of participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Most of those who were pardoned were convicted of low-level misdemeanors, though a few others were charged and convicted of assaulting police officers.
“House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117th Congress, but there is still more work to be done,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are establishing this Select Subcommittee to continue our efforts to uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people.”
American College Students Paid Out-of-State Rates While Illegal Aliens Got Discounts — AG Todd Blanche Just Said Enough
The Department of Justice filed suit Monday against New York, Connecticut, and Vermont — three blue states that have been quietly handing illegal aliens a benefit that out-of-state American citizens don’t receive: in-state tuition and financial aid at their public universities.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate put it plainly: “This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens. This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”
The legal principle at stake is not complicated. Federal immigration law has long prohibited states from giving illegal aliens benefits that aren’t equally available to American citizens. States can’t simply declare someone a “resident” because they have a local address and use that declaration to unlock subsidized tuition — especially when an American student from a neighboring state would pay full out-of-state rates at those same institutions.
Monday’s lawsuits are the 17th the DOJ has filed challenging in-state tuition for illegal aliens. The administration has now sued every state in the Second Circuit that has tried to preserve these preferences. This is a coordinated, systematic effort to enforce a law that blue states have spent years actively defying.
The economic reality of these policies deserves to be stated plainly. When an illegal alien receives in-state tuition at a New York, Connecticut, or Vermont public university, that subsidy comes from somewhere. It comes from state taxpayers and from the higher rates charged to everyone else — including American citizens from other states whose tax dollars help fund the same institutions. Illegal aliens are receiving a government benefit that American citizens are literally paying for and can’t access.
That’s not a technicality. That’s an inversion of the entire purpose of in-state tuition — which exists to reward state residents who have paid taxes and contributed to the institutions they’re using. The moment you extend in-state rates to people who are in the country illegally, you’ve transformed a benefit for contributing members of the community into an incentive for illegal border crossing.
These policies are also, as the DOJ correctly argues, a draw. When word spreads — and it does — that you can cross into the United States illegally, establish a local address, and access subsidized higher education at the expense of American taxpayers, that’s an advertisement. It’s one more entry in the long list of benefits that made the Biden open-border era so attractive to people with no legal right to be here.
The DOJ’s statement noted that Congress made clear long ago: states cannot put illegal aliens over the nation’s own citizens.
Seventeen lawsuits. The effort, as the DOJ’s statement promised, will not cease. American students first. Not second. Not equal. First.
JUST IN: Iran’s ‘Proof Of Life’ Footage Of Mojtaba Khamenei Brutally Backfires
Iran’s latest attempt to prove Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and well may have done the exact opposite.
State-linked media released a rare video Sunday showing the 56-year-old leader sitting with a group of men and appearing healthy, but the footage came with no clear date, location or explanation of when it was recorded.
That omission immediately raised fresh doubts.
Khamenei has not been seen publicly in nearly six months and was reportedly badly injured during a Feb. 28 strike on his father’s compound.
Washington and Tehran have both acknowledged that Khamenei suffered serious leg and facial injuries in the attack, which killed his father.
Sources close to the Iranian leader later told Reuters that his face had been disfigured and that he had remained out of public view while dealing with ongoing health complications.
Yet in the newly released video, Khamenei appeared free of any obvious injuries.
That has fueled speculation that the clip may have been recorded before the war began, undercutting Tehran’s apparent effort to calm questions about his condition.
Iranian officials have repeatedly denied reports that Khamenei’s health is deteriorating and have pushed back on claims that he is little more than a figurehead for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Qasem Qoraishi, deputy of Iran’s Basij Organization, suggested Sunday that the new footage was only the beginning of a broader campaign to show Khamenei is healthy and still actively running the country.
Qoraishi said additional videos would be released showing Khamenei in public and meeting with members of Iran’s armed forces.
The videos will “once again bring disgrace upon the enemies and detractors of the Iranian people,” he said.
But the latest release may have created more problems than it solved.
If the footage is old, it does little to prove Khamenei’s current condition.
If it is recent, Iran has offered no obvious explanation for why he appears untouched by the severe injuries previously reported.
The confusion deepened further over reports of a supposed July meeting between Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Pezeshkian said last week that he was taken to a secret location in Tehran, placed in the back seat of a dark vehicle with blacked-out windows and briefly spoke with someone believed to be Khamenei.
The president later acknowledged that he could not actually see the man he was speaking with.
That left open the extraordinary possibility that even Iran’s own president could not verify whether the supreme leader was physically present.
Khamenei also failed to appear in person at his father’s funeral last month, another absence that has kept rumors about his health alive.
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Tehran has tried to combat those rumors before.
Iran previously released AI-generated images of Khamenei after early reports suggested he may have been killed in the Feb. 28 strike.
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