In our latest edition, we have an interview with Rep. Mike Waltz, a story about a new shady organization trying to siphon votes from Republicans, our endorsement of President Donald J. Trump, op-eds from Reps. Stephanie Bice, Bryan Steil, and Dan Newhouse, and much more!
By: Matthew Foldi
Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) couldn’t predict his role in Congress, but he did “always want to join the military.” In 2018, he became the first Green Beret to serve in Congress, and he’s used his platform to advance a host of pro-military policies and to encourage other veterans to run for office.
Waltz released his third book, Hard Truths, in October, and he spoke with the Washington Reporter about “the most dangerous coalescing of America’s enemies with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea that we’ve seen since World War One or World War Two, except now they all have nukes” and the importance of “making kicking ass great again.”
There was no “grand strategy here, it was just when I got it done and when the publisher wanted to do it,” Waltz said of the book. “Really what drove me to write it was that I have continuously been asked ‘what is the difference between a Green Beret and a SEAL and a Ranger?’… And then the other question that I would often get asked is ‘how does being a veteran make a difference for you in Congress? How do you apply that to your business, to politics?’” In terms of literary inspiration, Waltz compares his latest book to “Jocko Willink and how he did Extreme Ownership.”
Waltz is locked in a friendly battle royale of sorts with Rep. and recent author Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas), over who can sell more books. “Well, I already pretty much beat Dan in all things, including looks,” he said. “It’s a healthy competition with the SEALs, and he’s been a great voice for veterans.”All of Waltz’s proceeds from Hard Truths “will go to both the Green Beret Foundation and the Matthew Pucino Memorial Foundation,” he said. “Matt Pucino was one of my Green Berets who I lost. I talk about his story in the book; he volunteered to go on point, literally, on every single mission….He volunteered to go ahead on a motorcycle or a four wheeler ahead of our armored convoys, so that he could be closest to the ground to see the trip wires.”
Click HERE to read more from our interview with Rep. Mike Waltz about his new book, Hard Truths, and about his work in Congress to make “kicking ass great again.”
What do you see as the difference in visions and policies that would demarcate a second Trump term and a first Harris term?
Matthew Foldi
Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Reporter
One of the huge issues that is on the table is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that is up next year, and if they double the capital gains tax rate, it will destroy small businesses, entrepreneurship, and innovation in this country. It will chase capital overseas that could be invested in the next great invention, the next iPhone, the next SpaceX, the next fusion powered vehicle. If the government is going to take half of what you make for an investor, and if you finally build up a small business and actually decide you want to sell it, after all of that risk and all of that hard work and blood, sweat, and tears and the government’s just going to take half of it, what’s the point? So I think that is one, the unrealized income tax is a move towards socialism. You should take Kamala at her word in terms of price controls, where they see businesses and corporations as the enemy. I think that’s on the domestic front, crime will continue to spike and out of control, because the criminal is the victim, rather than the victim. And then internationally, we are seeing the most dangerous coalescing of America’s enemies with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea that we’ve seen since World War One or World War Two, except now they all have nukes. It is an incredibly, incredibly dangerous time. And not only do they have nukes, one of those adversaries, China, has the ability to crash our entire economy and way of life. So we’ve got to have strength back in our White House, someone who understands negotiations, who understands leverage, and that our adversaries respect and fear.
Rep. Mike Waltz
(R., Fla.)
What we’re hearing from people we trust on and around the Hill – please send us more tips!
A newly-registered group that Republican strategists call a “dirty tricks operation” is spending upwards of $500,000 in four key House and Senate elections to attack Republican nominees and encourage voters to support Libertarian nominees.
Save Western Culture says on its website that “America is the last great protector of global freedom and the fortunes of western culture. We must save America.” Its homepage includes exhortations to “eliminate foreign threats to our nation” and “protect children from the LGBTQ gender mafia.”
The group is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to tank Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Larry Hogan in Maryland, along with Tom Barrett in Michigan and Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina. When the Reporter tried to contact Save Western Culture using the contact form on its website, the form was unable to be submitted.
Rep. August Pfluger (R., Texas) is hoping to prevent career bureaucrats within the administration from undermining the next presidential administration, with new legislation he rolled out this week, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.
The Stop Resistance Activities by Federal Employees Act (STRAFE) Act would “require the Director of the Office of Personnel Management to develop and implement mandatory training for covered Federal employees regarding compliance with directives from the President, Vice President, and other political appointees, and for other purposes,” according to the bill.
Pfluger’s bill would require trainings for covered employees which explain prohibited activities that obstruct the administration’s policies; it also inflicts penalties that could include fines or “removal, reduction in grade, debarment from Federal employment for a period not to exceed 5 years, suspension, or reprimand.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) is traveling America and working to flip the Senate as he runs to chair the Senate Republican Conference, the number three position in the upper chamber.
Cotton has quietly campaigned in virtually every consequential Senate race of this cycle. In Montana he worked with the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to boost now-nominee Tim Sheehy in the primary, and to cajole “Maryland Matt Rosendale” to the sidelines.
Cotton traveled to Montana last month to rally for Sheehy, but it’s far from his only stint on the campaign tour this year.
After 57 Democratic Representatives and Senators sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) urging the agency to expand the controversial “direct file” program to include Americans overseas, Republicans pushed back, slamming both the IRS for its power grab and Democrats for enabling the agency to create a single-choice filing system run by the government.
“The IRS wants to be the tax collector, auditor, enforcer, and now tax preparer — a judge, jury, and Lord High Executioner,” Sen. John Barrasso (W., Wyo.) said in an interview with the Washington Reporter. “The private sector has provided taxpayers with free file options for years…The IRS is recklessly spending money on an unnecessary program that puts Americans and their private data at risk. It gives the government full control over the tax filing system. Republicans will continue to push policies that shrink the size of this supersized IRS.”
Barrasso led a push over the summer that “blast[ed] the IRS for wasting taxpayer dollars on an illegitimate and unnecessary direct file tax preparation program,” his office said.
The IRS’s latest move was met with condemnation from tax policy experts. “The IRS should prioritize answering the 74 of 76 taxpayer service calls it failed to answer in the Treasury Inspector General’s report,” Mike Palicz, the Director of Tax Policy at Americans for Tax Reform, told the Washington Reporter. “Instead, the IRS is focused on becoming its own version of software companies that already exist.”
Democrat Curtis Hertel, Jr. is under fire in the closing days of the 2024 election for telling Michiganders “I don’t have an interest in deporting anybody.” His opponent, Republican Tom Barrett, is seizing on the remarks.
In a new ad, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, Barrett closes his campaign out with a contrast between himself and with Hertel on the issue. “Your congressman should fight for you, not illegal immigrants,” he says.
The prosecutorial record of Democrat Carl Marlinga, a failed House candidate, former prosecutor and judge, is under scrutiny in the final days of the 2024 election, with a specific focus on his opposition to deporting a teenager who impregnated his 12-year-old sister in 1998.
Following the high-profile crime, Marlinga, who was then serving as a Macomb County Prosecutor, opposed the deportation of the teenager; he further called the incident a “youthful sexual experimentation.” His remarks were condemned immediately by health care advocates.
“When you’re having sexual intercourse with your sister, that is not youthful experimentation,” Patricia Fresard, the head of the prosecutor office’s sex crimes unit, said at the time. “There is something terribly wrong there.”
As we approach Veterans Day, it is important that we honor America’s servicemembers for their dedication, sacrifice and patriotism. Without their steadfast commitment to defending our county, we would not enjoy the freedoms that we hold dear. This day gives us an annual opportunity to pay tribute to these brave men and women, but their allegiance to America deserves year-round attention.
As Members of Congress, we have the privilege of meeting with veterans who travel from across the country to visit our nation’s Capitol and share their experiences and views. We consider these meetings invaluable. They inform the way we think about and work to address veterans’ issues in Congress.
However, for many veterans a trip to Capitol Hill is much harder than it should be.
Since day one of the Biden-Harris administration, the American West has been under attack. Between stringent regulations, land withdrawals intentionally designed to lock up resource-rich swathes of land in the West, and a relentless assault on American energy production, the Biden-Harris administration has implemented policies that make it tougher for Western America to achieve prosperity.
Luckily, the region has many allies in Congress. The Congressional Western Caucus, of which I serve as Chairman, has consistently pushed back against an administration determined to make life more difficult for the families, small businesses, and industries that help drive our nation’s economy. The Western Caucus is comprised of members of Congress who believe in local control and private property rights, while ensuring that public lands remain open and accessible.
If the administration truly cared about Western Americans, then they would prioritize policies that unleash energy production on federal lands, streamline permitting for all industries, and get government out of the way of those who want to provide for themselves. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite. Time and time again, the Biden-Harris administration has ignored local perspectives while implementing a top-down environmental agenda that will only do more harm than good.
It’s such a cliché to say that this election is “the most important election of our lifetimes,” but in 2024, it’s true. Republicans know it and Democrats know it. You can see it in the desperate, ad hominem attacks on President Donald Trump and down ballot GOP candidates. You can hear it in the mainstream media’s breathlessly positive coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris’s rare public appearances, and in their silence about the serious problems in this country that the Harris-Biden administration has caused, intensified, and ignored.
That sense of urgency about the 2024 election is real — and visceral, especially for American Jews. Our country’s security – and our community’s safety — are truly hanging in the balance. That is why the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has engaged in the largest ever effort to identify, persuade, and turn out Jewish voters in the key battleground states, where a small shift in votes can have an historic impact.
