Category: The Washington Free Beacon
House Democrats cave, vote for GOP bill to end record-breaking shutdown
House Republicans passed a government funding bill late Wednesday night, bringing Democrats’ record-breaking shutdown closer to a welcome end.
The continuing resolution passed in a 222-209 vote, with 216 Republicans voting in favor and 209 Democrats voting against the funding bill. Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida, voted against the bill.
‘Democrats gained nothing from their shutdown while hardworking families paid the price.’
Several Democrats also crossed the aisle, with a handful voting in favor of reopening the government. Democrat Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who is retiring at the end of this term, bucked his party, alongside Reps. Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas, and Tom Suozzi of New York.
The resolution is now headed to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he is expected to sign the bill into law Wednesday night and reopen the government.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
The House vote took place just days after eight Democrat senators caved over the weekend and voted alongside Republicans to pass the funding bill in the Senate Monday night. These Democrats include Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Angus King (I) of Maine, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.
Although some lawmakers crossed the aisle to reopen the government, Democrats ultimately failed to secure commitments from Republicans to negotiate health care policy.
“For over six weeks, Democrats held our country hostage over demands for health care for illegal aliens and to prove to their base they could ‘stand up’ to President Trump,” Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger (Texas) told Blaze News.
“Let me be clear: Democrats gained nothing from their shutdown while hardworking families paid the price,” Pfluger added. “Now, it is time to get back to governing and delivering on the mandate we were given by the American people last November.”
RELATED: Senate Republicans pass key deal with Democrat defectors as end to record-long shutdown draws near
Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The reason Democrats shut down the government in the first place was to force the GOP to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Democrats fell short, securing only a commitment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to hold a vote on extending the subsidies. Notably, this offer was available to Democrats on day one of the government shutdown.
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Amish Population Surpasses 400,000
This year, the number of Amish people in the United States passed the 400,000 mark, according to the Amish Studies…
Weak: Lions’ Amon-Ra St. Brown Apologizes If Anyone Was Offended By His ‘Trump Dance’
It’s crazy to me that people can be offended by a simple dance
Camelot’s Last Gasp: Jack Schlossberg, ‘Obviously Disturbed’ Scion of Hitler Apologist, Enters the Family Business (Politics, Not Sexual Predation)
Jack Schlossberg, the sentient boat shoe and semi-employed TikTok user, is running for Congress in New York. It was bound to happen. The 32-year-old Democrat belongs to the Kennedy dynasty—that inexplicably beloved menagerie of goon-faced Habsburgian freaks, Nantucket douche bros, chronic alcoholics, and bloated sex pests. Schlossberg, a mentally deranged internet addict who cracks jokes about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz,” has sought to inject the storied Kennedy brand with Gen Z flare.
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Effort to release Epstein files finally advances after newly sworn-in Democrat becomes final signatory
Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s highly anticipated discharge petition to release the Epstein files received its final signatory on Wednesday, allowing lawmakers to force a vote in the House.
Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona became the 218th signatory on the Epstein discharge petition just moments after being sworn into office on Wednesday. Grijalva joined the 213 Democrats who unanimously supported the discharge petition while just four Republicans — Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Massie — signed on.
‘Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.’
With 218 signatures, lawmakers will be able to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files.
Just hours before Grijalva’s swearing in, the White House confirmed that members of President Donald Trump’s administration met with Boebert in the Situation Room to address the discharge petition.
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
This meeting included a phone call from Trump as well as a face-to-face with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel. Despite the apparent pressure campaign, Boebert did not rescind her support for the discharge petition.
Despite the bipartisan uproar over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, Trump maintains that the scandal is a Democrat “hoax” to distract from their disastrous shutdown.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump said in a Truth Social Post. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price.”
RELATED: Supreme Court rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal on first day of session
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”
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Mark Levin: Qatar funds terror, shelter killers — now America’s ‘best friend’?
While Mark Levin is one of President Trump’s most vocal supporters, he is concerned about America’s fraternizing with Qatar — a country pitched as “one of the great leaders of the Middle East and the world.”
“I say no, Qatar is a very dangerous country,” says Levin.
He reminds us that in 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was brutally beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations and the architect of 9/11. It was Qatar who sheltered KSM from the FBI — specifically the father of the country’s current ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Further, these same Qatari family members, Levin says, “are the sugar daddies for Hamas” — funding the terrorist organization for years, hosting its leaders, and acting as its political lifeline.
That hasn’t changed. Even though Qatar has been a key broker alongside the U.S. and Egypt in the tiered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, it’s still on Team Hamas, Levin says.
Just last month, Sheikh Tamim delivered an address at the opening session of the 54th annual Shura Council.
He was clear about where Qatar’s loyalty lies: “Israel has violated all laws and norms governing relations between nations through its aggressive actions against the mediator and its attempt to assassinate members of a negotiating delegation. We consider this aggression to be state terrorism. And the global response was so powerful that it shocked those responsible. What’s happened in the Gaza Strip in the past two years amounts to genocide — a term that encapsulates all atrocities. It is regrettable that they remain incapable of enforcing its respect when it comes to the tragedy of our brotherly Palestinian people.”
This is a load of lies, says Levin. “The Israelis weren’t trying to take out the negotiators. They were trying to take out the Hamas leaders that [Sheikh Tamim] was protecting.”
“[Qatar] is [America’s] new best friend,” he laments.
“They’ve gotten into the West,” into “all parties, every aspect of our culture, our educational system. … They are behind the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, Hamas. They supported the Taliban, and they support the destruction of our universities and colleges.”
For Levin, Qatar’s billions and diplomatic handshakes can’t erase its track record. America’s “new best friend” remains a Trojan horse for terrorism and anti-Western ideology.
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What a Westerner sees in China: What you need to know
The first thing Westerners notice in China’s Pearl River Delta is the friction, the palpable tension of timelines colliding. Walking through a Hong Kong market, one sees this new social phenomenon written in miniature. A street vendor, surrounded by handwritten signs, accepts payment via a printed QR code. This is not a quaint juxtaposition; it is the regional ethos. This cluster of cities — Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou — has been ranked the world’s number-one innovation hub, a designation that speaks to patents and R&D, but fails to capture the lived reality: a place where the old and the new are forced into a daily, unceremonious dialogue.
The story of Shenzhen is the region’s core mythology, a narrative of temporal compression. It is difficult to overstate the speed of this transformation. In 1980, Shenzhen was a small settlement, a footnote. Today, it is a metropolis of over 17 million, a forest of glass and steel dominated by the 599-meter Ping An Finance Center. This 45-year metamorphosis from “fishing village to tech powerhouse” is not just development; it is a deliberate act of will, “Shenzhen Speed” fueled by top-down policy and relentless, bottom-up human energy. Millions poured in, bringing with them an entrepreneurial hunger and a lack of attachment to the past. The resulting culture is one where, as a local observer put it, “nobody’s afraid to experiment.”
Of course, this relentless optimization has a human cost.
This experimental ethos is not confined to boardrooms; it is encoded into the infrastructure of daily life. In this, Hong Kong was the progenitor. Long before the “digital wallet” became a Silicon Valley buzzword, Hong Kong had made the seamless transaction a mundane reality. As early as 1997, its citizens were using the Octopus card not just for transit, but for coffee, groceries, and parking. By the 2000s, there were more Octopus cards in circulation than people.
On the nearby mainland, this convenience has achieved a totality. In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, cash is an anachronism. The QR code is the universal medium, scanned at luxury malls and roadside fruit stalls alike. The city’s nervous system has been externalized, compressed into the super-apps that handle chat, bills, ride-hailing, and food orders. The medium is the smartphone, but the message is speed. This expectation of immediate fulfillment has subtly, irrevocably reshaped social interactions.
Yet the operating thesis here is not displacement, but accommodation. Technology does not simply erase tradition but provides a new container for it. One can visit a Buddhist temple in Hong Kong and see patrons burning incense while making donations with a tap of their Octopus cards. In Guangzhou, the old ritual of yum cha, the gathering for tea and dim sum, persists, even as a diner at the next table uses a translation app. The ancient custom of giving red envelopes at Lunar New Year has not vanished; it has been reborn as a digital transfer on WeChat, and in the process, it has become even more popular among the young. The cultural narrative adapts.
RELATED: Without these minerals, US tech production stops. And China has 90% of them.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Nowhere is this synthesis of technology and identity more visible than in the region’s public spectacles. The city skyline is not a static sight, but a nightly performance. Every evening at 8 p.m., Hong Kong stages its “Symphony of Lights,” a choreographed ritual involving lasers and LED screens on over 40 skyscrapers. The city itself becomes a canvas, reinforcing its identity as a dynamic, luminous hub.
Shenzhen’s reply is a different kind of sublime, one that looks only forward. The city has become renowned for its record-breaking drone shows, sending thousands of illuminated quadcopters into the night sky to perform airborne ballets. These swarms of light, forming giant running figures or blossoming flowers, are a live illustration of algorithmic choreography. It is a 21st-century incarnation of fireworks, a new form of communal awe that declares, “We are the future.”
In the maker hubs, like Hong Kong’s PMQ or Shenzhen’s OCT Loft, new ideas are built on the skeletons of the old economy. In renovated police quarters and factory warehouses, 3D-printing workshops sit next to traditional calligraphy galleries. This is techne in its most expansive form, fusing high-tech engineering with aesthetic design.
Of course, this relentless optimization has a human cost. The “996” work culture, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, is the dark corollary to “Shenzhen Speed.” The “smart city” that optimizes traffic flow also deploys surveillance and facial recognition. There is a palpable tension between the Confucian ideal of a harmonious, orderly society and the individual agency of 17 million people.
The Pearl River Delta, then, is more than a story of economic success. It is a laboratory for the human condition in the 21st century. It is a place grappling day by day with the paradox of technology: its power to connect and to alienate, to liberate and to control. One future is being prototyped here, in the gesture of a street vendor holding out a QR code, a silent negotiation between what was and what is next.
Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Deleted Post Calling Border Patrol ‘White Supremacists’ and Blaming US for Illegal Immigration
Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat in 2026, called border agents “white supremacists” and blamed the United States for illegal immigration from Central America and in a since-deleted post on X.
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