All posts tagged "josh hawley"

Josh Hawley getting cold shoulder from GOP colleagues over new abortion proposal

Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-MO) hopes of rallying House Republicans behind his legislation to ban Mifepristone crashed on Thursday — his own party is not-so-quietly abandoning him according to a report from NOTUS.

The Missouri senator acknowledged the uphill battle in comments to NOTUS, framing the silence from fellow Republicans as a strategic problem rather than a moral one.

"Not talking about abortion, they may think that's a feature. I think that's a bug," Hawley said. "I'm pro-life. I want to do what I can to advance the pro-life cause."

The bill has no realistic path forward in a possible Democratic-controlled Senate, so the clock is ticking, but the real problem for Hawley is that even in the Republican-controlled House, his own party is backing away.

Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), whose seat Democrats are actively targeting, openly rejected Hawley's priorities.

"It's my opinion that each and every Republican has to run their own race," Miller told NOTUS. "The state of Missouri is very much different from the state of Ohio."

Miller made clear he's siding with President Donald Trump over Hawley.

"I respect his opinion. I am extremely pro-life and I've never been anything but pro-life. But I'm going to go ahead and stick with President Trump on this one and not the senator," Miller said, adding he remains undecided on the bill. He argued abortion is an issue that "should reside" at the state level.

Rep. David Valadao (R-CA), facing a brutal reelection fight thanks to California redistricting, hasn't even bothered to read the legislation. Instead, he urged Republicans to focus on anything but abortion heading into November.

"I think what we should be focusing on right now is funding the government, get DHS back open, pass the farm bill, getting permitting reform done and working on things that actually make our economy better and make our country stronger," Valadao said.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), running in a competitive district, flatly refused to support the bill. When asked if Republicans should prioritize abortion before November, Lawler simply smiled and said, "No."

The political reality is stark: abortion is toxic for Republicans in 2026. A December AP-NORC poll found that 71% of voters want the government to prioritize economic issues, compared to just 4% who identified abortion as a key concern.

The House version of Hawley's bill, introduced by Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), currently has only five co-sponsors. Harshbarger acknowledged her team hasn't even begun serious lobbying efforts, blaming the crush of other congressional business.

"We have to work on educating the other members," Harshbarger told NOTUS. "It may be a personal thing that they want to sponsor or don't want to sponsor, maybe they don't feel the same way, or they have a district that, you know, if they do sponsor it, they'll say, 'Well, we're not going to vote for you.'"

Hawley's bill would force the FDA to revoke approval of mifepristone — the most widely used abortion pill — and allow patients to sue manufacturers. Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all U.S. abortions, making it a prime target for anti-abortion activists.

But for vulnerable Republicans worried about their seats, the political calculus is clear: supporting Hawley's crusade is a losing proposition.

These Republicans just told on themselves with a familiar Washington magic trick

There is a familiar Washington magic trick, and Missouri’s U.S. senators perform it with unusual confidence: Spend years denouncing the bipartisan cult of stupid wars, then salute smartly when your own president lights the fuse.

Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt have both marketed themselves as realists, skeptics of permanent intervention and the old foreign-policy catechism. Hawley said in 2019 that the point of American foreign policy is “not to remake the world,” and in 2023 said flatly that “regime change didn’t work.” Schmitt built a parallel brand in softer packaging, attacking the “failed Washington way” on foreign policy, repeatedly calling Donald Trump the “peace president” and insisting he did not want “a forever war in the Middle East.”

And then came Iran, the moment when rhetoric had to cash out and both men opposed the effort to reassert congressional authority over war powers.

Hawley — who had earlier said it would be “a whole different matter” for the United States to affirmatively strike Iran and that he would be “real concerned” by that prospect — found a way to make his peace with it once it was Trump making the call. He defended Trump’s actions as lawful so long as no ground troops were involved.

Schmitt, who had spent months selling Trump’s foreign policy in the language of restraint, landed in the same place. Suddenly the old concerns about executive overreach, strategic drift and another Middle East trap looked less like convictions than talking points with expiration dates.

That is the tell. Politicians change their minds all the time. Hawley and Schmitt change in one direction only: toward Trump.

Hawley ran the same play on Medicaid cuts, warning they would hurt Missouri’s rural hospitals and the people who depend on them. The warning was real enough. Then came the vote, and there he was, backing the bill anyway. Later he moved to soften or undo parts of what he had just supported, which is another neat bit of Washington stagecraft: denounce the harm, help cause the harm, then reappear as the man racing in with a bucket of water.

Schmitt’s contradictions are less theatrical than Hawley’s, but no less revealing. Last year he demanded the Epstein files be released — “Hell yeah. Open it up. Release the Epstein files” — then grew markedly more careful once Trump was back in office, saying only that he was “curious” and would support releasing whatever “credible information” might be there.

A self-proclaimed free speech warrior as Missouri’s attorney general, he seemed perfectly comfortable last year when government pressure bore down on late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel after a joke about the late conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk.

That is the through line with Hawley and Schmitt: every principle has an escape hatch. They are against regime change until their president bombs Iran. Against Medicaid cuts until leadership needs the vote. Against censorship until they do not like what is being said.

What Hawley and Schmitt understand, maybe better than most, is that modern political branding rewards the appearance of rebellion almost as much as rebellion itself.

You do not have to resist the machinery. You only have to speak as if you might. You can sneer at the old consensus, campaign against the old order, strike the pose of the insurgent — and then, when the moment comes, vote like a company man.

Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch The Missouri Independent in October 2020. Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

A tragic cop killing revealed something especially chilling about this MAGA mover

Josh Hawley had me going.

When I first saw his tweet last Wednesday after two sheriff’s deputies were murdered near Springfield, Missouri, I thought we were in for another attack on the horrors of the political Left. Here’s what Hawley said:

“Two heroic deputies in my home state of Missouri were senselessly murdered by a thug with a long history of violence toward law enforcement. We need accountability for these soft-on-crime policies destroying our communities.”

Then, a few questions popped to mind.

What soft-on-crime policies?
Whose policies?
And who’s getting held accountable by whom?

In case you haven’t been following Missouri politics, it’s quite the red, pro-MAGA state. Christian County, where this tragedy occurred, voted 76 percent in 2024 for Donald Trump. Hawley had a stint in 2017-18 as the state’s drive-by attorney general as he climbed the political ladder to his current seat in the U.S. Senate.

That begs the question of who owns the soft-on-crime policies alleged, without provocation, by Hawley.

On Friday, the shattered community of Christian County paid a richly deserved tribute to fallen heroes, Gabriel Ramirez and Michael Hislope, who were murdered protecting the people there. Both were murdered by Richard Dean Bird, a decades-long criminal who was killed in a standoff with law enforcement.

You won’t be hearing much about Bird, which is fine: He doesn’t deserve the attention. But if he hadn’t fit the most common profile of murderers in the U.S. — white, poor, male — you better believe that Hawley and others of his ilk would have made him a household name by now.

Can you imagine, in this environment, had Richard Dean Bird been an undocumented immigrant? Or worse yet, from Somalia or Latin America?

Instead, the main interest in Bird is why he was released from custody just the week before he killed two cops, on $50,000 bond after having been arrested on charges of second-degree burglary, unlawful possession of a firearm, and stealing. This is a man who had a miles-long rap sheet of convictions dating back to 2003 and had served seven years in Kansas state prison for battery against a law enforcement officer and fleeing police after firing a rifle at a deputy in 2014 in the Johnson County suburb of Kansas City.

Bird was granted bond by Judge Eric Chavez, a Republican who was elected to the Stone County bench in 2022. From all appearances, Chavez is a veteran of the local legal community who was likely following the bond laws as shaped by statutes passed by the Republican-led General Assembly and interpreted by the Missouri Supreme Court in 2019.

Chavez hasn’t been excoriated personally as “soft on crime” by Hawley or other Republicans. Nor should he be. But what do you suppose the story would have been if Chavez were a Democrat?

In that event, Hawley would have made certain that liberal Democrats owned the deputies’ deaths. And he would have laid the bond rules that allowed for Bird’s release at their doorsteps as well.

Inconveniently, those revised bond procedures were a matter of interest in the period Hawley was attorney general. Months after he left office, the state Supreme Court finalized Rule 33.01, which established release conditions that apparently made the granting of bond to Bird legally defensible.

That’s above my pay grade, but this isn’t: If those rules are now “soft,” Hawley had the loudest law-enforcement microphone in the state while they were being considered. Good luck finding a record of any tough-on-crime position he staked out at the time.

(Then again, Hawley apparently doesn’t have the sharpest recollection of Missouri these days. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Fox Digital reported that Hawley described Christian County as “my home county” in a statement. Christian County is a three-hour drive to Lafayette County, where Hawley grew up in Lexington.)

The murders of Ramirez and Hislope should bridge any partisan divide as a tragedy that turns all stomachs. But Hawley chose the moment to make a cheap political point with his irrational “soft on crime” reference.

It’s of no solace that, in so doing, Hawley executed a remarkable self-own by calling out “policies” from his own watch — and administered by his own political party.

If Hawley wants accountability, he should start with a mirror.

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White House 'livid' after MAGA senator blindsides with push to oust JD Vance: report

The White House was apparently "livid" after a MAGA senator launched a strategic move to potentially push forward a presidential bid to oust Vice President JD Vance.

The Trump administration was apparently blindsided by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who launched a new anti-abortion group called the Love Life Initiative with his wife Erin, The Daily Beast reported.

"Clearly, Senator Hawley and his political team learned nothing from the 2022 elections, when the SCOTUS abortion ruling [overturning Roe v. Wade] resuscitated the Democrats in the midterms," an unnamed, close Trump adviser told Axios.

The Trump administration sees the move as a way for Hawley to plan on challenging Vance for the 2028 presidential run. They apparently did not know about Hawley's scheme until it went public.

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have said abortion rights are not a top concern after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

Hawley, who been a vocal populist and often speaks to concerns among the working class, reportedly launched a dark money group to support the initiative, Axios reported. He and his wife have planned to reinitiate the conversation around abortion and have lined up a series of advertising campaigns, including an anticipated Super Bowl ad.

"We think that there needs to be a ... strong voice advocating for life," Hawley told Axios.

Trump and other Republicans think that focusing on abortion could be divisive, especially among independent voters and suburban women.

Another Trump adviser told Axios that the 2026 midterm election strategy should have "aggressive action focused on positive gains in the economy."

"That alone will be the driving force behind the next election," the adviser told the outlet. "Picking a fight on an issue like abortion in a midterm is the height of asinine stupidity."

MAGA senator’s rampages go far beyond mere defensiveness

Let’s talk about what happens when Josh Hawley gets angry.

Missouri’s senior U.S. senator doesn’t take criticism lightly — whether from the press, his colleagues or anyone he perceives as an enemy. His approach? If you get hit, hit back harder.

It’s not just a defense mechanism. It’s a political strategy. All criticism draws a counterattack, and the conflict itself becomes the story.

Case in point: A few weeks ago, Hawley blasted Ameren Missouri over utility shut-offs and rate hikes, blaming the surge in electricity use from new data centers for “sucking up the electricity off the grid, taking it away from hard-working Missourians.”

That didn’t land well with Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a fellow Republican. In a letter to Hawley’s office, she called his claims “misleading” and warned his rhetoric could “unnecessarily alarm the very people we both serve.”

Instead of a debate on energy policy, Hawley mocked O’Laughlin on social media as a mere “state politician” doing the bidding of her campaign donors.

It’s a familiar pattern that repeats throughout Hawley’s career with almost mathematical precision.

Shortly after Hawley was sworn in as Missouri attorney general in 2017, consultants from his political campaign began working out of his official office, directing government staff and using private email accounts to dodge Missouri’s open-records laws.

When the arrangement was revealed in the run-up to Hawley’s 2018 Senate election, he attacked the media, called the story “absurdly false,” and painted himself in the campaign’s homestretch as the victim of left-wing attacks.

It wasn’t until four years into his first Senate term that a judge eventually determined Hawley’s attorney general’s office had, in fact, “knowingly and purposefully” violated open records laws to protect his campaign from public scrutiny, ordering the state to pay $240,000 in legal fees. A state audit also concluded Hawley may have misused state resources to boost his Senate campaign.

In 2020, the Kansas City Star reported Hawley was registered to vote at his sister’s home in Ozark. At the time, the Hawleys only owned property in the D.C. suburbs, though they were building a house in Missouri.

Facing questions about his ties to Missouri, Hawley called the Star a “dumping ground for Democrat BS” while his allies dug up the reporter’s years-old stories from college to suggest he was biased.

Republican U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner questioned the cost of expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act — a bill Hawley championed to aid St. Louis-area residents harmed by Cold War nuclear testing. Hawley called Wagner’s comments “shameful” and said she was turning her back on her constituents.

Hawley labeled conservative columnist George Will an out-of-touch elitist (“Dont’ you have a country club to go to?”) over a critical newspaper column and demanded Wal-Mart “apologize for using slave labor” over a critical social media post.

In today’s political marketplace, anger is currency. Outrage drives clicks, donations and loyalty.

Hawley thrives in that arena, turning every criticism into proof of persecution that mobilizes his political base and feeds the image he hopes to convey of a warrior fighting the political establishment.

But to Hawley’s detractors, it’s all theater, his outrage little more than a tactic used to distract from tough questions and avoid accountability.

The recent flare-up with O’Laughlin has cooled, but not because of reconciliation. When asked recently by a reporter from Nexstar if he’d reached out to her, Hawley replied simply: “No, I don’t know her.”

For Hawley, the fight isn’t a byproduct of politics — it is politics.

Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch The Missouri Independent in October 2020. Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

This Republican heartland hypocrite can't hide behind his copy of the New York Times

If you didn’t know better, you might believe Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was ushering in a new era of bipartisan compassion with his op-ed this week in the New York Times.

Headlined “No American Should Go to Bed Hungry,” Hawley’s piece struck all the right notes about why the nation must act immediately to preserve SNAP food assistance for 42 million people — now endangered by the government shutdown.

Trouble is, that’s if you didn’t know better.

And the public record knows better.

Less than four months ago, on July 1, Hawley voted to slash SNAP by at least $120 billion over the next decade — the Congressional Budget Office had it at $187 billion. And he can’t even claim party loyalty as a defense: Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, and Rand Paul all voted no.

But the SNAP cuts were just the appetizer. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” —Trump’s sweeping budget package that passed 51-50 with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie — was a banquet of cruelty. Every Democrat voted no. Hawley voted yes.

The bill included:

More than $1 trillion cut from Medicaid — the largest rollback in U.S. history.
Work requirements that mostly punish people already working.
Removal of coverage for lawfully present immigrants.
Restrictions on provider taxes that help keep rural hospitals alive.

On that last point, Hawley warned colleagues about devastating rural hospitals. He negotiated a $25 billion band-aid spread over five years — then voted to gut the programs anyway. The senator always manages to rationalize his hypocrisy by introducing fig leaf bills he knows are going nowhere.

The bill’s SNAP provisions imposed crushing work requirements and bureaucratic hurdles designed to kick people off the rolls. It penalized states with high “error rates,” meaning Missouri — at 10.2 percent— would lose 25 percent more in funding, despite already struggling to administer the program.

The same bill eliminated Affordable Care Act subsidies for 22 million Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 10 million will lose coverage overall — a devastating blow to working families, low-income seniors and lawfully present immigrants who’ve paid into Medicare for years.

The timeline doesn’t quite line up with Hawley’s soaring rhetoric today.

In May 2025 —just two months before the vote — Hawley wrote another Times op-ed titled “Don’t Cut Medicaid.” In it, he warned that slashing health insurance for working people would be “morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

He even asked: Would Republicans be “a majority party of working people, or a permanent minority speaking only for the C-suite?”

Then in July, he voted for the C-suite.

Now, in October, as his party’s shutdown threatens the food security of 42 million Americans, he’s back with another heartfelt op-ed and a narrow bill to preserve only SNAP. The rest of the government — furloughed workers, shuttered services, disrupted lives — can wait. They’re not in this week’s parable.

You wouldn’t know any of this from today’s Times essay. In it, Hawley casts himself as a cross between FDR and the Apostle Paul.

“Love of neighbor is part of who we are,” he writes. “The Scripture’s injunction to ‘remember the poor’ is a principle Americans have lived by.”

Now, I don’t claim to be a Christian. But from what I understand about the words of Jesus, I’m not aware of any indifference to the poor — or even equivocation — that would inspire slashing SNAP payments or blowing up health-care coverage.

For that matter — and again, I’m no expert — is there language in the New Testament telling us to welcome strangers as long as their immigration papers are in order?

Jesus just fed the hungry and reached out to everyone. There wasn’t any ambiguity involved. And definitely not a residency requirement.

As my readers know, I don’t buy the un-American notion that ours is a Christian nation. It is definitively not — and it belongs to all of us of different faiths, or no faith, as much as it does to Hawley and others who worship as he does.

But even on his best behavior, Hawley today offered Christian benevolence with an asterisk. He warned of “fraud” and “illegal aliens” abusing SNAP, as if that were a national crisis. It’s not. Unauthorized immigrants are mostly ineligible, and fraud rates remain minimal.

But this is more about optics than facts. Hawley portrays the worthy poor as native-born and properly documented — not strangers at the gate.

Hawley does stand out from fellow Republicans who dare not go off script about the poor for fear of crossing Donald Trump and his MAGA minions. The text of his op-ed was just splendid.

But talk is cheap. And it’s heinously cheapened when you just voted against your own piety.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Trump's TikTok dealings should've set this GOP toady roaring. His silence speaks volumes

You're not going to believe this, but it appears the cat’s got Josh Hawley’s tongue.

The junior senator from Missouri — known for his unwavering ability to detect Communist infiltration in American tech companies from eight area codes away — has suddenly gone quiet.

Interesting timing, too.

Because on Friday, President Donald Trump announced progress on a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to block any U.S. sale or ban of TikTok in exchange for vague “national security commitments” that sound suspiciously like business as usual.

That would be the same TikTok that Hawley has passionately demanded be banned, or at least completely removed from Chinese involvement.

“TikTok — and its parent company ByteDance — are threats to American national security,” Hawley wrote in 2023, to then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He’s repeated that theme dozens if not hundreds of times as a senator.

So, you can imagine Hawley’s indignation when the Washington Post reported this:

“A ByteDance spokesperson in a statement Friday thanked Trump and Xi and said the company would work 'to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.'”

Shockingly, you could hear a pin drop. Hawley — arguably second to none among U.S. politicians in garnering attention and air time on every subject imaginable — has gone dark. No tweets, no press releases, no rushing to Fox News, no nothing.

So in the spirit of filling the void, let’s revisit what Josh Hawley has been screaming from the mountaintops for several years about TikTok — before it became a Trump-friendly enterprise. Here are just a few of his greatest hits:

“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting our kids and stealing their data!”
— Hawley, 2023
“TikTok is a surveillance tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”
— Hawley, 2022
“Every time you use TikTok, you're giving your information to Beijing.”
— Hawley, 2021
“We are literally subsidizing the destruction of our children’s mental health.”
— Hawley, 2023
“This is mind control by a foreign adversary — and Democrats won’t act.”
— Hawley, 2024

But now that Trump has personally intervened to compromise on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, Hawley apparently no longer thinks it’s all that big a deal, after all.

Just because he authored the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was successfully signed into law, and a broader No TikTok on United States Devices Act, doesn’t mean Hawley cannot mind “some TikTok.”

This is the same senator who once told Fox News that Democrats were “kneeling before Chairman Xi” for not banning the app. So what is that Trump’s doing?

Let’s put it this way. If President Joe Biden had done this, Hawley would have demanded a vote by this afternoon on Articles of Impeachment. He would have hosted a special tonight on Fox News.

Now, maybe not so much.

It turns out, according to the Post, sources are saying the deal Trump is working on with Xi would be hugely beneficial to Trump BFF Larry Ellison, “the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, a tech giant that will own a stake in the U.S. spin-off and provide it cloud-computing and technical services.”

Just can’t get wait to see Hawley teeing off in the Senate about this one.

In 2020, an Esquire writer aptly said, “The most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”

That was before we had a dictator.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

MAGA senator lights up 'Zuckerberg and his friends' after hearing snub

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called out Big Tech, including Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and other social platform leaders who refuse to show up and discuss the companies' alleged use of AI chatbots exploiting children, pushing some to self-harm and suicide.

"Zuckerberg and his friends at Meta rejected my invitation to appear before the Senate and answer for the harms caused by their AI chatbots. So I gave the floor to the brave parents of chatbot victims. Thank you for revealing the ugly truth about profit-loving Big Tech," Hawley said during a Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Hawley launched a probe into Meta in August, seeking more information about its use of AI chatbots and children. He accused the companies of dodging responsibility.

"They're not at the table," he said. "They don't want any part of this conversation because they don't want any accountability. They want to keep on doing exactly what they have been doing which is designing products that engage users in every imaginable way, including the grooming of children, the sexualization of children, the exploitation of children — anything to lure the children in, to hold their attention, to get as much data from them as possible, to treat them as products to be strip mined and then to be discarded when they're finished with them."

"The testimony that you're going to hear is not pleasant, but it is the truth," he said. "And it's time that the country heard the truth about what these companies are doing, about what these chatbots are engaged in, about the harms that are being inflicted on our children and for one reason only, I can state it in one word: profit. Profit is what motivates these companies to do what they're doing. Don't be fooled, they know exactly what is going on."

Two whistleblowers from Meta testified last week "that Meta knows absolutely that its platforms harm children," Hawley said.

He argued that Meta was suppressing studies that show its platforms harm children in favor of its financial stake in the technology.

"What's the goal across all these platforms?... It is engagement that leads to profit," he said.

The FBI is investigating AI child sex abuse material online, Director Kash Patel said Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Hawley said some children were led to suicide by the products made by these companies and their parents would testify to their experiences.

"And what are the companies doing about it? Nothing. Not a thing," he said.

Social media companies have mainly remained silent in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing last week, the New York Times reports. The suspected shooter was accused by President Donald Trump, who has his own social media network, as "radicalized on the internet." Elon Musk, who owns X, is the only one to respond, posting divisive information in the wake of the assassination.

Zuckerberg & his friends at Meta rejected my invitation to appear before the Senate and answer for the harms caused by their AI chatbots.

So I gave the floor to the brave parents of chatbot victims.

Thank you for revealing the ugly truth about profit-loving Big Tech pic.twitter.com/zd0wTFBIsp
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 16, 2025

'Never seen that happen': GOP clashes over senator's rogue move on Trump bill

Senate Republicans are bashing Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for going rogue as they hash out changes to the House version of President Donald Trump's megabill, Politico reported.

Paul serves as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which should give him "jurisdiction" over the section of the bill dealing with border security, according to Politico's Hailey Fuchs. But Paul's defiance over increased spending has led committee members to shut him out of negotiations.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has a long history of opposing Paul's more conservative approach to spending, is seeking to override Paul’s jurisdiction in the budget negotiations.

"Paul has made clear repeatedly he isn’t planning to vote for the party-line tax and spending bill...giving leadership few reasons to try and play nice," Fuchs wrote, adding that "the decision by senior Senate Republicans to undermine a committee chair in such a way marks a dramatic departure from standard Senate procedure."

This week, Paul drafted his own spending proposal, which is drastically different to Graham's. Senators viewed the move as "another break with precedent," Fuchs wrote.

She added that "few of Paul’s own members on the Homeland Security panel, if any, appeared supportive of the chair’s approach or willing to back him up against leadership’s attempts to undermine him. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said it was concerning that Paul would draft his own proposal 'without any consultation of the committee.'"

Hawley said he had “never seen that happen before," Fuchs wrote.

Paul's proposal "would allocate just $6.5 billion for immigration enforcement efforts at the border. His proposal also would free up $2.5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and checkpoints instead of the House’s $5 billion offering," Politico reported.

Read the Politico article here.

'Who is funding?' MAGA senator vows to root out shadowy figures behind protests

President Donald Trump has claimed that the Los Angeles protesters are "paid insurrectionists," and MAGA Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) vowed Wednesday to find out who's behind the "funding."

Hawley posted to X, "Who is funding the LA riots? This violence isn’t spontaneous. As chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime & Terrorism, I’m launching an investigation to find out."

The Missouri senator also posted a letter addressed to Angelica Salas with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

"Credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions," the letter read. "Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct."

Hawley did not tip his hand as to who produced the "credible reporting," but demanded that Salas "preserve" the group's records.

Salas appeared on CNN over the weekend, where she accused Trump of dehumanizing immigrants.

"I want the entire country and entire world to see that this president, President Donald Trump, is chaotic. He is cruel," Salas said. "He is unwilling to see us as human beings, and we all need to stand up against this kind of absolutely authoritarian attitude action....This president cannot see us as human beings."

On Bluesky, CHIRLA has posted "Know Your Rights Resources" for immigrants and advised the Los Angeles community, "If you see ICE in LA, don’t stay silent. Report it to the LA Rapid Response Network."

Another post featured an event photo with the caption, "CHIRLA along with our faith leaders gather in prayer as we hold each other in love and offer support to the families who have had loved ones ripped apart from them because of these vile ICE raids."

Salas has not yet publicly responded to Hawley's letter or assertions.