Category: The Hill
Trump officials weigh direct payments to Greenlanders in takeover push: Report
White House officials have weighed possibly giving lump sum payments to Greenlanders in an attempt to sway them into seceding from Denmark, as the Trump administration brings back its calls to have Greenland join the U.S., Reuters reported. Government officials, including White House aides, have discussed different figures, from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, sources…
Senate wins symbolic victory to block Trump from using military in Venezuela
Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & NatSec newsletter {beacon} Defense &National Security Defense &National Security The Big Story Senate wins symbolic victory to block Trump from using military in Venezuela Five Senate Republicans voted Thursday to advance a bipartisan resolution on the War Powers Act to block President Trump from using military force against…
Georgetown Taps Hamas Apologist Mehdi Hasan as Visiting Fellow
Georgetown University has enlisted former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan as a visiting fellow to lead a discussion series that “will explore the role of debate, media, and persuasion in our deeply polarized society.”
The post Georgetown Taps Hamas Apologist Mehdi Hasan as Visiting Fellow appeared first on .
Iran Kills Dozens of Anti-Regime Protesters, Defying Trump’s Warnings
The Iranian regime has killed at least 38 people, including 8 children, since a wave of popular protests erupted across the country, defying President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings that the United States will use military force if the Islamic Republic murders civilians.
The post Iran Kills Dozens of Anti-Regime Protesters, Defying Trump’s Warnings appeared first on .
‘Reckoning day’ for Newsom: Trump DOT yanks $160 million over illegal trucker licenses
As the Trump administration continues to meet resistance from blue-state governors across the nation, California is now reaping what it sowed by illegally issuing trucker licenses to foreigners.
On Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced that it was “reckoning day” for the state of California and its Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom.
‘Gavin refused. So now I am pulling nearly $160 MILLION from California.’
In a social media post, Duffy explained the Trump administration’s “demands”: “Follow the rules. Revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers. Fix the system so this never happens again.”
Duffy’s post comes after months of demanding that California revoke commercial driver’s licenses illegally issued to foreigners. Duffy provided a short video showing that Newsom had many opportunities to comply with federal law.
RELATED: Illegal alien truckers with California licenses accused of hauling $7M in cocaine across state lines
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
However, “Gavin refused,” Duffy said. “So now I am pulling nearly $160 MILLION from California. Under @POTUS, federal dollars won’t fund this CHARADE.”
The funding will be withheld from California beginning in fiscal year 2027.
California agreed in November to revoke every illegally issued license within 60 days. As of the January 5, 2026, deadline, California has failed to follow through on this agreement, leading to the major withholding of federal funding.
At least 17,000 licenses were expected to be revoked on Monday, per the original agreement.
According to a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration audit reviewed by Fox News, more than 20,000 active non-domiciled CDLs were issued in violation of federal rules. The FMCSA reportedly described the situation in California as a “systemic collapse” of the commercial licensing program.
“Federal regulations are clear: states must correct safety deficiencies on a schedule mutually agreed upon by the agency, and California failed to meet its commitment to rescind these unlawfully issued licenses by January 5,” FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs said, according to Fox News.
“We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations,” Barrs added.
California DMV spokesperson Eva Spiegel responded to the loss of federal funding in a statement: “We strongly disagree with the federal government’s decision to withhold vital transportation funding from California — their action jeopardizes public safety because these funds are critical for maintaining and improving the roadways we all rely on every day.”
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Nuke the filibuster or brace for the next impeachment campaign
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) recently sent me a seven-page memo outlining the House Freedom Caucus’ priorities for 2026. It is outstanding.
Nothing in it calls for knock-down, drag-out ideological fights. These are 60%-70% issues with the American public, not just conservatives: secure the border, secure elections, expand health care freedom, cut government waste, and eliminate fraudulent programs.
We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word. But so is fear.
Depending on what happens with the economy over the next six or seven months, this agenda may represent the GOP’s last realistic chance to hold the House and avoid what betting markets currently put at a 53% likelihood: President Trump facing yet another impeachment next year.
And it will not stop with him.
Democrats will come after War Secretary Pete Hegseth for killing “innocent” drug traffickers. They will target Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for disrupting the childhood vaccine schedule. They will pursue Secretary of State Marco Rubio for alleged “war crimes” in Venezuela.
They will do all of this for one reason: In the end, they are coming after you.
The House alone cannot stop that onslaught. As sensible and popular as the Freedom Caucus’ agenda is — and as eager as Trump would be to sign it — the Senate must also act. And I see no path to real victory unless the Republican Senate finds the clarity and courage to nuke the filibuster.
The alternative is grim. If Republicans refuse to act, Democrats will almost certainly scrap the filibuster themselves within a year to impose their agenda. If that happens, I am not sure the Republican Party — or the country — recovers.
Our side already suffers from a deep demoralization problem. What do you think happens to morale when voters watch their leaders voluntarily surrender leverage to the enemy during what increasingly resembles a cold civil war? The black pill will become a black hole of civic abandonment.
Or we could try something radical: empower a Republican Congress to deliver tangible results — $1.90 gas as we are currently enjoying, lower inflation, and health care costs driven back toward pre-COVID levels. Then watch as figures like Candace Owens and the Groyper gang lose their ability to manipulate a depressed and disoriented base with conspiratorial nonsense about the Jooooooooos.
Money in people’s pockets or more gaslighting?
That should be one of the easiest political choices the GOP has ever faced — especially in an environment where turnout collapses when Trump is not on the ballot. Republicans either go big by eliminating the filibuster, or they go home. And if they fail, some of us may end up facing prosecution while the likes of Tim Walz skate free.
RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The year 2025 was about pushing back the darkness inflicted by the Biden administration. The year 2026 must be about what we unapologetically replace that worldview with. Standing in the way is the filibuster.
So what are we prepared to do?
No matter how dire things feel, I have seen proof that action still matters. Children’s Health Defense recently exposed a quiet attempt to shield pesticide companies from liability. Within days, that language was pulled from the bill in question.
I also watched Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) abruptly abandon his re-election bid after a single determined individual exposed the massive Somali fraud scandal bleeding taxpayers dry to benefit people who openly despise this country.
That tells me something important.
We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word.
But so is fear.
And 2026 will force us to choose between them.
A red-state lawfare shakedown heads to the Supreme Court
The Republican Party claims to stand against lawfare — especially the obscene, rent-seeking variety that disguises itself as environmental justice. Yet that principle is about to be tested in a highly public and deeply embarrassing way.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on January 12 in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana officials will face off against the Trump Justice Department and American energy producers in a landmark case over an attempted shakedown of oil companies for alleged responsibility for coastal erosion dating back to World War II.
Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state.
The basic claim is simple enough. Louisiana and several local governments have filed dozens of lawsuits alleging that oil and gas production over the last 80 years caused the erosion of the state’s coastline. But the structure and substance of these cases reveal something far more troubling.
Although the lawsuits were filed in the name of the state and its municipalities, control has effectively been handed over to politically connected plaintiffs’ lawyers — major donors who stand to reap enormous contingency fees. Through a so-called common interest agreement, the Louisiana attorney general’s office surrendered its obligation to independently assess the merits of the claims. In practice, the state abdicated its role to the trial-lawyer donor class.
That alone should raise alarms. The rest only makes it worse.
The lawsuits seek to impose liability for conduct that was lawful at the time and occurred as far back as eight decades ago. Ex post facto liability is fundamentally un-American, which is why almost no one attempts to defend it on the merits.
Even more awkward for Louisiana’s theory, virtually everyone outside the plaintiffs’ bar agrees on the primary cause of coastal erosion: decades of federal intervention by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which radically altered water flow in the Mississippi Delta. Louisiana once sued the federal government on exactly this basis. Now the same damage is somehow blamed on oil companies instead.
Because these claims reach back to the 1940s, they sweep in oil production carried out at the direction of the U.S. government to support the war effort — specifically the refining of aviation fuel for the military. It is a strange irony that after years of Democrat-led lawfare under the Biden administration, a red state has now delivered environmental litigation over World War II to the Supreme Court.
The hypocrisy is hard to miss.
The venue fight exposes the real game. Plaintiffs’ lawyers insist these cases remain in Louisiana state courts. The reason is obvious. Those courts are heavily influenced by the trial bar and have a record of staggering verdicts. Chevron was recently hit with a $745 million judgment in one such case.
Energy producers want the cases moved to federal court — not because victory is guaranteed but because federal courts are more likely to function as neutral arbiters. There is also a compelling jurisdictional reason: Much of the challenged activity involved federally directed wartime production. If any court belongs here, it is a federal one.
RELATED: America First energy policy is paying off at the pump
Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This kind of forum shopping should look familiar. It mirrors the Democrats’ strategy during the Biden years — carefully selecting friendly state courts to pursue political outcomes they could not secure through legislation. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) and Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) appear to have absorbed all the wrong lessons from all the wrong actors.
This is the same playbook used by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) when she charged President Trump in state court for conduct governed by federal law. It is the same model California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) embraced when he partnered with trial lawyers to sue energy companies for billions over alleged climate harms.
Step back from the legal details and a larger problem comes into focus.
President Trump’s agenda prioritizes American energy dominance. His actions abroad reinforce that priority. Yet Republicans in Louisiana are not merely opposing that objective — they are using the very lawfare tactics they claim to despise to undermine it.
For voters trying to apply a consistent ideological framework, the whiplash is real. When red states start behaving like California, it is fair to ask whether America First has drifted from a governing philosophy into a monetization strategy.
Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state. If the right intends to oppose lawfare, it needs to oppose it everywhere — especially when its own allies are the ones doing the shaking down.
Tim Walz Suggests Prosecutor Who Indicted Somali Fraudsters Should Be Fired: ‘We Are Under Assault’
Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) suggested the federal prosecutor behind the Somali fraud convictions in the state should be fired, accusing him of “defamation” for providing an estimate of the total amount defrauded from Medicaid programs.
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