Carl Gibson, AlterNet

House Republican leadership recently took action to bar one of their own members from international trips, according to a new report.

Punchbowl News reported Wednesday that GOP leaders decided to ban Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) from traveling for three months due to an "alcohol-related episode" in Mexico this summer. In details laid out by Punchbowl reporter Andrew Desiderio, the original incident took place while Crenshaw and other Republicans were on an official Congressional delegation (CODEL) visit to Mexico in August, and Crenshaw was "having drinks with a group of Mexican officials."

"One Mexican official cracked a crude joke that made a woman present uncomfortable. Crenshaw toasted the remarks," Desiderio wrote on his X account....

When President Donald Trump called on the Republican-controlled Texas legislature to redraw new U.S. House of Representatives district maps earlier this year, he expressly hoped GOP lawmakers could find five additional Republican seats by carving up Democratic districts. But after federal judges in Texas ruled those maps illegal, some House Republicans are railing against the entire effort.

Politico reported Tuesday evening that the recent 2-1 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has some Republicans bemoaning the apparent failed effort in the Lone Star State to give Republicans an advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) told reporters that House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) refusal to denounce the redistricting push was a "total failure of leadership." Other Republicans are also speaking out against GOP-led gerrymandering efforts.

"I was never in favor of doing all this redistricting stuff anyway," Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) told Politico. "Should not have opened that box."...

Senate Republicans are expected to vote soon on whether to keep a controversial provision that was included in the legislation that reopened the federal government after the recent 43-day shutdown. But that language is causing significant division among the Senate Republican Conference.

That's according to a Tuesday article by Politico's Hailey Fuchs and Jordain Carney, who reported that senators are planning to discuss that section in a Wednesday lunch meeting. The provision in question would allow Republican senators whose phone records were accessed by former Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith's team as part of their "Operation: Arctic Frost" investigation to sue the government for up to $500,000.

"[C]onfusion, frustration and anger ran rampant about what has quickly become branded as a politically toxic, taxpayer-funded windfall for a select few," Fuchs and Carney wrote....

President Donald Trump appears likely to sign the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act into law this week, which would compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all remaining evidence pertaining to deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein that has yet to be made public.

However, Epstein's brother, Mark, recently said that a "pretty good source" told him the DOJ is "sanitizing" the Epstein files ahead of their likely release in order to downplay implications for Republicans. But one veteran journalist is arguing that even if Attorney General Pam Bondi attempts to release doctored documents, the effort could still backfire and make the administration's Epstein problem even worse.

"I get the concerns that AG Bondi and FBI Director Patel may try to scrub all Trump references and images in the Epstein files before they are released," former CNN, Fox News and NBC journalist David Shuster wrote Tuesday on his official X account. "Well, there are nearly 1,000 FBI/DOJ staff who looked at the files in March with no compartmentalizing, limits, or controls."...

After a panel of federal judges struck down Texas' new gerrymandered Congressional redistricting maps, one Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives is turning his outrage toward House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for giving them his blessing.

Punchbowl News' Laura Weiss reported Tuesday that Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) denounced both Texas' mid-decade redistricting push as well as House Republican leadership for what he viewed as a major strategic blunder. Kiley lobbed criticism at Texas Republicans' praise of the maps as being advantageous for Republicans, and argued that the effort to force new redistricting boundaries ahead of the 2026 midterms for partisan advantage was doomed from the start.

"To the extent there was any point to begin with — which I don't think there was — I don't think even if you've got a partisan advantage on this it in any way shape or form justifies it," Kiley told Weiss. "But that's not even gonna happen it looks like. And with this court decision, it's even more in doubt. So it's just utterly foolish."...