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Trump Can’t Derail Social Security, But Harris’ Filibuster Plans Can

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In her campaign’s “New Way Forward” policy document, Kamala Harris claimed she “will not let [Donald] Trump and his allies take away the Social Security and Medicare benefits that seniors have earned.” But Harris’ claims suffer from multiple inconvenient truths. 

For starters, under current law and Senate rules, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans cannot change Social Security on a party-line basis. However, Harris’ proposals undermining the Senate filibuster would give them an opening to do so.

Senate’s ‘Byrd Rule’

Policy analysts not steeped in Senate procedure might presume that Congress could enact changes to Social Security via budget reconciliation. That process allows lawmakers to pass fiscal changes via expedited procedures circumventing the Senate’s 60-vote supermajority requirement for most legislation.

But the Senate’s “Byrd rule,” which was codified into law in 1985, includes an explicit prohibition on changing Social Security via budget reconciliation. Section 313(b)(1) of the Congressional Budget Act, informally known as the “Byrd rule,” contains six tests determining whether legislative provisions are “extraneous” to reconciliation. The sixth test references language stating that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any reconciliation bill … that contains recommendations with respect to the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance program established under Title II of the Social Security Act.”

Lawmakers can and do use reconciliation to make budgetary changes to other Social Security Act programs. For instance, lawmakers in 1996 used reconciliation to reform federal welfare laws, and they have regularly amended Medicare and

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Kamala Harris’ Favorability Plummets Two Weeks Before Election Day

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With Election Day less than two weeks away, Americans are souring on Vice President Kamala Harris in the final stretch of the race for the White House.

According to an aggregate of favorability ratings maintained by RealClearPolitics, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has remained underwater for more than a week with unfavourability scores rising to their highest levels since the party’s August convention. Harris is now entering the last few days of the election with a net-negative favorability rating of more than 2.5 percent as of Friday afternoon.

MSNBC Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki broke down some additional numbers that spell out bad news for Harris as she leads the Democrats’ efforts to maintain her administration. According to the network’s polling, Kornacki said, former President Donald Trump has a negative 6-point “feeling” gap among registered voters. Harris, however, is facing an even wider gap with a 10-point deficit among voters, 49 percent of whom have negative feelings toward the incumbent vice president.

“The significance here is the trajectory of the Harris campaign on this sort of feelings thermometer,” Kornacki said. “When she first entered, she was basically in the same ballpark as Trump on positive/negative. After about six weeks as a candidate, she had actually in our poll moved above water on this question.”

The latest cascade of presidential surveys, however, reveals a tidal shift against Harris, who had already consistently polled behind where President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were against Trump throughout their respective races.

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Tim Walz’s Education Initiatives Show His Goal For America Is To Destroy It

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Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz “says” he wants to destroy America — not expressly; nonetheless with perfect clarity.

Walz’s mouthpiece and education guru, Brian Lozenski, actually did say it expressly. In the embedded video, Lozenski, whom Walz appointed to craft an “ethnic studies” curriculum for Minnesota children, calls for the overthrow of the United States. (Ethnic studies, despite its harmless-sounding name, is founded on critical race theory and, like CRT, is aimed at overthrowing America.)

This is a direct quote from Tim Walz’s education appointee in Minnesota:

“You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro-US…CRT is an anti-state theory that says the U.S. needs to be deconstructed.”

Now ask yourself who’s the threat to our democracy & vote accordingly. pic.twitter.com/0XFQkJMSzT

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 19, 2024

In the video (edited for clarity), Lozenski explains that:

The first tenet of critical race theory is that the United States as constructed is irreversibly racist. So if the nation-state as constructed is irreversibly racist, then it must be done with. It must be overthrown. And so we [proponents of critical race theory] can’t be like, “Oh no, critical race theory is just about telling our stories, and diversity. It’s not about that. It’s about overthrow. It’s insurgent. And we need to be, I think, more honest with that.

It’s funny that [critics] don’t understand critical race theory, but they actually tell some truth when they’re like, “Yeah, it is anti-state.” You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro-U.S. It

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Biden Judge Orders Virginia To Put More Than 1,500 ‘Self-Identified’ Noncitizens Back On The Voter Rolls

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On Friday, a Democrat-appointed federal judge ordered Virginia to put more than 1,500 allegedly “self-identified” noncitizens back on the state’s voter rolls ahead of the November contest.

“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals — who self-identified themselves as noncitizens — back onto the voter rolls,” Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement.

The order came in response to a request from the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ), which sued the commonwealth last week to prevent its elections department from removing noncitizens and other ineligible registrants from the voter rolls before Nov. 5.

The highly politicized agency alleged such actions constitute violations of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. That law requires states to complete “not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”

According to Fox News, Judge Patricia Giles, a Biden appointee, “issued a preliminary injunction … to reinstate all [individuals] that had been removed from state voter rolls in the state in the last 90 days, finding that the removals had been in fact ‘systematic,’ not individualized.” Using this logic, she reportedly argued the state violated federal law.

Youngkin contended that nearly all the 1,500-plus “self-identified” foreign nationals removed from the rolls “had previously presented

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