Exclusive with Sen. Ron Johnson, Sen. Joni Ernst, and Grover Norquist – 11/01/24 Edition

What we’re hearing from people we trust on and around the Hill – please send us more tips!

• Party with us! If you are a Republican in the D.C. area, and you’re a patriot, we are delighted to invite you to our inaugural election night party that we are co-hosting with the great Americans for Tax Reform. There will be drinks and fellow Washington Reporter fans. Here is an invite to RSVP. 
• Barrasso is barnstorming: Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), who is running unopposed to be the Senate GOP’s Whip next year, campaigned in 11 states for Senate GOP candidates, his team told us. Barrasso’s events have included post-debate spin rooms, bus tours, rallies, small business visits, and roundtables. Click HERE to read our full story about Barrasso’s campaign trail moves.
• Claudia Tenney’s money moves: Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) has donated almost $500,000 to Republican House candidates across the country, helping colleagues get through tough primaries and helping challengers expand the House GOP majority. Click HERE to read our full article about her moves.
• Team player: Mike Haridopolos has not even been elected to Congress yet, but he is already doling out over $325,000 to elect Republicans across the country. Click HERE to read our full write-up of Haridopolos’s contributions; shortly after we spoke with him, he donated several thousand more dollars to House candidates! 
• To BEAD or not to BEAD: April McClain Delaney, a Democratic House candidate, is under fire in a closer-than-expected race in Maryland, in part due to her ties to the Biden administration’s controversial Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which FCC Commission Brendan Carr told us has failed to connect a single person to broadband. Delaney is facing Republican Neil Parrott in a race that continues to trend in the Republican’s direction.

Dan Osborn, the self-described independent running for Senate in Nebraska, has faced fire in recent weeks for his close ties to the Democratic Party. The latest tie, covered for the first time by the Washington Reporter, is a publicly-posted Google Doc linked to a self-proclaimed “leftist” and supporter of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).

The public document is titled “Conservatives for Dan – Creative Treatments,” and it includes video content, transcripts, and suggestions for how to put it together as a fake, Fox News-style video. Osborn is making a last-minute play for Republican-leaning voters in his uphill battle to oust Sen. Deb Fischer (R., Neb.), who recently spoke with the Reporter about her race. 

Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) has been referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution by the COVID Select Committee, the committee announced said this week. 

The disgraced former governor “knowingly and willfully made materially false statements about New York’s COVID-19 nursing home disaster and the ensuing cover-up,” the select committee said, regarding his testimony under oath about his administration’s policies the committee noted “forced New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19 positive patients.” Now, the committee said, “the Department of Justice must immediately charge Andrew Cuomo with making false statements to Congress.”

“Disgraced Governor Cuomo lied to Congress about his knowledge and cover-up of the deadly COVID-19 nursing home directive that led to the tragic deaths of 15,000 New Yorkers,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) told the Washington Reporter. “His false statements were a calculated attempt to deflect accountability and shift blame onto others. Making false statements to Congress is a crime, and Cuomo’s deceit only reinforces his pattern of deception and evasion. It is long overdue for him to face the full consequences of his crimes and put him behind bars.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign made “tak[ing] on corporate landlords and cap[ping] unfair rent increases” a top policy priority, putting her at odds with her top donors and one of her longtime aides, who all oppose rent control in Harris’s home state of California. 

Jonathan Gray, the billionaire president of Blackstone, has donated approximately $500,000 to elect Harris as president. His company is one of the largest owners of single-family homes in America, and has spent millions of dollars via offshoots to oppose rent control measures in California. 

One of the operatives that Blackstone-affiliated groups works closely with is Ace Smith, a Democratic Party operative, who worked in senior roles on Harris’s winning campaigns for attorney general and for U.S. Senate, to oppose California ballot measures that would limit rent increases. Smith has “been working closely with corporate landlords and their front group, the California Apartment Association, to ensure that the real estate industry can keep charging wildly inflated, unfair rents,” according to the Los Angeles Progressive.

Voters across America are getting bombarded with deceptive mailers, some of which urge them to waste their votes for third-party spoiler candidates, others of which photoshop Special Forces logos off of Republicans, and others yet which fail to include any disclaimer about who paid for them — which campaign experts tell the Washington Reporter could be illegal.

One producer of deceptive mailers is a newly-formed organization, Save Western Culture. The Reporter was the first to cover Save Western Culture’s activities last week.

Similar organizations, such as Fight Big Pharma, Stop China, and Stop Political Corruption, are sending mailers, texts, and videos to voters in the waning hours of the 2024 elections. “They think voters are stupid,” a GOP strategist told the Reporter. 

Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and a board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), is facing criticism for his “prejudgment” and allegedly biased treatment of financial services firms.

The FDIC is in process of finalizing a rule that would restrict investment firms’ ability to own stock in banks. Conservatives have warned against the rule’s “micromanagement.”

Supporters of the proposal — mainly the nonprofit “Better Markets,” which is funded by a far-left socialist — argue that the proposal is necessary because greater regulation and bureaucratic control will lead to a safer banker system. Conservatives say that the proposal would raise costs on borrowers and put the banking system’s security in jeopardy.

A nationwide poll conducted for a bipartisan coalition of tech companies confirms that the inflation, health care, and the economy are top issues on voters’ minds — and that while tech policy isn’t a front-burner issue, voters are generally against regulating America-based tech companies in ways that would stifle innovation.

The poll, first obtained by the Washington Reporter, found that on a scale of one to 100, voters gave regulating U.S. tech companies a 58 in the poll, conducted by Mercury Analytics on behalf of the American Edge Project; the score pales in comparison to issues like Medicare and Social Security, which scored a 91, and national security, which scored a 90.

Protecting Americans Action Fund (PAAF), the GOP’s largest group dedicated to combatting George Soros-backed prosecutors, has spent more money against liberal district attorneys this year than ever before, it confirmed exclusively to the Washington Reporter. 

PAAF, an organization led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, has spent $2.5 million this cycle to date, in key races across the country, from Hillsborough County, Florida, to Hamilton County, Ohio, to El Paso County, Texas, Maricopa County, Arizona, and beyond. PAAF spent its millions on targeted television, radio, mail, and digital campaigns across 13 jurisdictions. 

The group’s largest investment this cycle was in Hamilton County, where it spent $400,000 on a television ad buy supporting the incumbent, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Powers; Hamilton County is the largest county in Ohio with a conservative prosecutor in office. PAAF’s ad campaign there highlights how Powers’s opponent, Connie Pillich, has “never prosecuted a single criminal. Not one.”

Throughout my coaching career, I always instructed my players to finish strong. Play until you hear the whistle. Don’t quit until the play is dead. In the final countdown of this election season, patriotic Americans should think of this election in the exact same terms. 

We are at the two-minute warning of the most important election in many of our lifetimes. It is perhaps the most consequential election in the history of our country. 

It goes without saying: make sure you vote, and as early as possible. But your job doesn’t end there. Make sure your family and friends vote. If they live in battleground states, give them a call. There’s too much on the line to let up now. 

Recently, Gov. Tim Walz said the quiet part out loud, declaring that “we can’t afford four more years of this.” As voters head to the polls and face a choice between the Harris-Walz ticket and the Trump-Vance ticket, this is one thing we can all agree on.

As we grapple with skyrocketing inflation, depleting savings accounts, soaring interest rates, and wages unable to keep pace with the financial ruins the Harris-Biden agenda has left us, Tim Walz is right — we cannot afford four more years of the Democrats’ failed policies. We’ve heard time and time again that Kamala Harris is from a middle-class family. However, she continues to be oblivious to the consequences of her failed economic policies that impact our middle-class families shopping at the grocery store, filling up the gas tank, or trying to buy a home. It seems she’s the only self-identified “middle-class” person who is immune to the inflation crisis.

Every day as Americans, we are empowered to use our freedoms to express ourselves through rights enshrined in the First Amendment. Practicing religion, communication from the press, and speaking freely are three of the five protected principles — many of which have become so second nature that we may even overlook how valuable they are to our lives. Therefore, when someone’s First Amendment rights are violated, it should be alarming to all Americans. 

Recently, the California Coastal Commission decided to restrict additional launches from SpaceX at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The plan was submitted by the Air Force in which the number of launches was going to increase from 36 to 50. One may ask why the California Coastal Commission would vote to deny this plan. In the words of one commissioner, Gretchen Newsom, “right now, Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA…”

For far too long, Washington has been run by career politicians who have become corrupt. Instead of addressing the myriad issues affecting the American people, politicians today care only about getting re-elected, about enriching themselves, and about raising money from special interest groups that they are beholden to.

From day one, I made the promise that I will not take corporate special interest money, which I have not. I can’t be bought and will only put the people of Wisconsin first.

The contrast between myself and my 38-year career politician opponent, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, could not be more clear. Sen. Baldwin rails against Wall Street, Big Pharma, and Big Tech, while simultaneously raking in cash from each sector.

This past week, we saw the stock market take a devastating downturn. The squeeze we have felt over the last four years is crushing everyone from Main Street to Wall Street, and I am not sure we can take much more. Our country is grappling with skyrocketing inflation, rising unemployment, and the looming threat of an economic recession. 

American families, who have worked hard and saved for retirement, are now watching their 401(k)s plummet. The market decline isn’t just numbers on a screen — this is the hard-earned security of our retirees and the financial stability of every family across the country.

I understand the fear and frustration that so many of you are feeling. As a truck driver and small business owner, I’ve seen firsthand the struggles that working and middle-class Americans have endured. For years, you have diligently contributed to your retirement savings, trusting that your hard work would pay off in a secure future. 

A dangerous world needs leaders. Leadership isn’t mud-slinging. It isn’t falsifying one’s record of performance. It’s about demonstrated success in the face of adversity. It’s hard to think of any candidate for office who has faced more adversity and stared it down than Larry Hogan, the current Republican candidate for Senate in Maryland. 

In the world of governance, there is a fundamental truth that too many people ignore at their peril: personnel is policy. A president’s administration is not just a collection of names; it’s the reflection of their values, priorities, and approach to leadership. This distinction is no clearer than when comparing the bold and results-driven Trump administration to the confused, weak-kneed Biden team.

Let’s start with the Trump era, where every appointment was an extension of America First principles. Richard Grenell, Trump’s Ambassador to Germany and later Acting Director of National Intelligence, embodied that approach. Grenell stood up to Germany’s freeloading on NATO, fiercely defended American interests, and wasn’t afraid to challenge the European Union’s leftist orthodoxy. His brief tenure at the top of the intelligence community injected a needed jolt of accountability and national security focus that rattled the D.C. establishment.

Then, look at David Friedman, Trump’s Ambassador to Israel. Friedman helped orchestrate one of the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in modern history — the Abraham Accords — solidifying Israel’s security in the Middle East by brokering peace with several Arab nations. For years, politicians on both sides of the aisle had promised to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem but never delivered. Friedman and Trump did it swiftly, cutting through decades of timid diplomacy. These weren’t just symbolic victories — they reshaped the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East.