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‘All Tools Necessary’: GOP Hardliners Press Trump on Insurrection Act

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The most hardline conservative bloc of House Republicans is calling on President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota if he deems it necessary, days after federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in a matter of weeks — and just hours after the president, referring to protesters, declared, “you can’t have guns.”

In an unsigned letter to Trump, the House Freedom Caucus said it was encouraging the president to use “all tools necessary — including the Insurrection Act,” to “maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of laws by the United States.”

The Minneapolis protests have been largely peaceful.

The Freedom Caucus also urged the president to maintain “necessary law enforcement including ICE in Minneapolis.” Some have suggested that Trump may have been looking for an off-ramp, or a means to wind down “Operation Metro Surge.”

READ MORE: GOP Exodus Continues as Another Prominent Congressman Retires

The group also called on Trump to end funding for sanctuary cities, and to ensure that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is “funded fully along with all remaining appropriation bills.”

Democrats in the Senate are demanding that the DHS funding bill be separated from other legislative funding vehicles, which would require unlikely House approval.

The Freedom Caucus, led by hard-core conservative Republican Andy Harris, threatened to take extreme action should Democrats, they said, shut down the federal government. A partial government shutdown is possible after Friday.

On Monday, far-right political commentator and strategist Steve Bannon, along with Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren, called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

READ MORE: Trump: ‘We’re Bringing Back God’

 

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‘Absolutely Has Juice’: CNN Analyst Warns Trump’s Hold on GOP Voters Is as Strong as Ever

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CNN analyst Harry Enten says that President Donald Trump is as popular and powerful as ever among Republican voters.

Enten looked at this week’s results in the Indiana primaries, where a majority of Republican state lawmakers who opposed the president’s push for redistricting were voted out of office.

“As Indiana goes, so goes the nation when it comes to Republican voters and Donald John Trump,” Enten said. “He absolutely still has the juice, and when you’re a Republican and you go against Trump, you get voted off the island.”

Enten extrapolated that result to the rest of the country, saying that Indiana “is emblematic of what we see nationwide with Republicans.”

“I think there’s this myth that’s going on right now that, oh, ‘Trump is really losing support among Republicans.’ But compared to other midterm cycles, he’s just as popular with Republicans as he has ever been at this point in midterm cycles,” he said.

Enten found that at this point in his first term, in 2018, Trump’s approval rating among his GOP base was 85 percent. Now, it’s 84 percent.

READ MORE: Senate Republicans Just Dealt Trump a Major Blow

“That 85 looks a whole heck of a lot like this 84 percent right here,” Enten said. “The bottom line is this: Donald Trump still absolutely has juice with Republican voters.”

“You saw it in Indiana, and I think that you’ll see it down the line, as well, if any Republicans try and go against the President of the United States, who is still very much beloved by Republican voters nationwide.”

Enten says that the core Republican base “really loves Donald Trump.”

“The people who really love him, they’re the ones who are absolutely juiced up to go out and vote.”

“They would go over hot coals to vote in those primaries,” Enten observed, “and you saw that in Indiana, where the clear majority of those representatives who went against Trump on redistricting, well, they’re no longer gonna have a job come the next session.”

Enten continued, saying that “support among Republicans is just as strong as it was going into the 2018 midterm cycle.”

“So it’s not just that Republicans really like Donald Trump — it’s they want their leaders to follow Donald Trump, and when they don’t, as I said at the beginning, you get voted off the island.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Economic Agenda Is Collapsing — and He’s Running Out of Time

 

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Senate Republicans Just Dealt Trump a Major Blow

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President Donald Trump for months has been pushing the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act — what critics call a voter suppression bill — and for months Senate Republicans have been unable to.

Although non-citizen voting is rare, NBC News has reported, the SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, something many Americans do not have easy access to.

In March, Trump threatened he would sign no other legislation until the SAVE Act came to his desk.

“It must be done immediately,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!”

Why has the president been so adamant in pushing the controversial legislation?

In April, he told Republicans that enacting the SAVE Act will “guarantee the midterms” — while claiming that was not the reason he was pushing the bill. “I don’t think you can politically exist if you’re not going to do voter ID and these things.”

READ MORE: Top Republican Warns Against Turning Supreme Court Justices’ Testimony Into a ‘Circus’

“We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race,” if the SAVE Act passes, Trump said in February. Also that month, he said, “The Republicans should say — we should take over the voting in at least 15 places,” urging Republicans to “nationalize the voting.”

Despite the president’s persistence, the Republican-controlled Senate, under Majority Leader John Thune, just shelved the SAVE America Act.

“Senate Republican leaders are unlikely to hold additional votes on the SAVE America Act, the voter ID and proof of citizenship bill many Republicans say has done more harm to the party than good,” Punchbowl News reports, noting that some Republicans see another vote as “futile.”

Punchbowl adds that shelving the bill “will only anger the party’s base and intensify the long-shot push to scrap the filibuster.”

Majority Leader Thune and most Senate Republicans refuse to end the filibuster, while some Republicans warn that if they don’t end the filibuster, Democrats will do so when they take control of the Senate.

“I completely understand my colleagues who want to maintain the filibuster. We all want to maintain the filibuster, honestly,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Punchbowl. “But I know the Democrats won’t. That’s the only division here.”

In April, Senate Republicans couldn’t even scrounge up 50 votes for Trump’s top-priority bill.

“To Senate GOP leaders,” Punchbowl observed, “that alone is a good enough reason to move on.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Economic Agenda Is Collapsing — and He’s Running Out of Time

 

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Trump’s Economic Agenda Is Collapsing — and He’s Running Out of Time

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Late last year, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would kick off 2026 by touring the nation to promote his economic agenda, with a focus on affordability. Instead, he launched a war attacking Iran — driving gas prices higher and pushing overall inflation up even further.

Now, with major campaign promises unfulfilled, and six months to go before the midterms, Trump’s economic agenda is collapsing.

He never lowered prices “on day one,” and Americans’ electric bills were not cut in half within his first six months. Six in ten Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy.

The price of gas has increased roughly 45 percent from when Trump was sworn in as president last year, but the White House is trying to spin that as a positive. The national average hit $4.55 per gallon on Thursday, per AAA, up from $3.13 the week he was inaugurated.

On Wednesday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, declared that rising consumer spending — including on gasoline — proves the economy is thriving, even as Americans put those costs on their credit cards. Despite Hassett’s claims that Americans “have so much more money in their pockets,” late last month, Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans say their finances are getting worse.

Trump’s in-office economic proposals have not fared any better.

READ MORE: Top Republican Warns Against Turning Supreme Court Justices’ Testimony Into a ‘Circus’

“The biggest piece of housing legislation in a generation has languished on Capitol Hill because of lawmakers’ objections to a provision negotiated by the White House,” Bloomberg News reports. Trump has also abandoned a proposed 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates, following backlash from banks and skepticism from economists.

Bloomberg notes that “two executive orders, one aimed at easing access to mortgage credit and another that seeks to streamline regulations for builders, are not yet fully implemented and experts say they would only help marginally.”

A White House official told Bloomberg there are plans to try to bring down the price of some grocery store items, and said that the administration is negotiating with drug manufacturers to lower prices.

The administration also touted a “major housing announcement” related to new credit-score models for housing, but, Bloomberg notes, “those changes won’t translate to significant savings for consumers, according to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum.”

“The cost of credit scores as a part of the purchase price of the house is nothing,” he said.

The cost of buying a home has increased. By buying $200 million in mortgage bonds, the administration briefly brought mortgage rates down to below 6 percent, but Trump’s Iran war escalated those costs, and today the interest on a 30-year mortgage is 6.3%.

Trump last year floated 50-year mortgages as a means to lower interest rates, but that proposal also went nowhere.

With six months until Election Day, the Iran war still in focus and gas prices still rising, voters say Trump has yet to deliver.

READ MORE: ‘Outrageous’: DOJ’s Push in $83 Million Carroll Case Fuels Cries of Corruption

 

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