Texas lawmakers have introduced two bills to the state Senate that would allow Texans to vote on whether to keep or eliminate Daylight Saving Time.

Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, filed both Senate Bill 2329 and Senate Joint Resolution 86 on March 10.

The bill reads that, if approved, ‘this state shall observe daylight saving time year-round. This subsection applies to both the portion of this state using Central Standard Time as the official standard time and the portion of this state using mountain standard time as the official standard time.’

If the act is approved by the state Senate, the decision to abolish Daylight Saving Time would be put into the hands of Texas voters on Nov. 7, 2023.

Companion bills authored by state Rep. Mike Schofield were also introduced.

Neither Schofield nor Bettencourt could be reached for comment on Sunday.

FOX 26 in Houston reported that Bettencourt spoke on the importance and timeliness of the bill.

‘When you think of hot-button public policy issues, what usually comes to mind are things such as property tax relief and school finance and pension reform. However, the issue of Daylight Saving Time has roused passions on both sides of the debate for over 100 years,’ Bettencourt said. ‘Texans like me want to be on one time, and the federal government doesn’t give us the option to vote to remain on standard time. SJR 86 gives Texans the opportunity to vote on the issue and settle the debate once and for all in the Lone Star State.’

In March 2022, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which was introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. The act would have ended the practice of springing the clocks forward in the spring and falling back an hour in the fall.

Although the bill passed the Senate, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., never put the legislation up for a vote.

Earlier this month, Rubio reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act.

‘This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid,’ he said in a press release. ‘Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done.’

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer said the Biden administration stonewalled Republicans investigating the Biden family’s business ties – and ‘unintentionally helped’ the probe.

‘In a way, I’m kind of glad that the Biden attorney, Abbe Lowell, and [the] Biden administration has been stonewalling us,’ Comer told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’

‘Because when I requested that information two weeks ago versus today, because of what we have in hand now, we have a lot stronger case in court for why we need these documents that the Biden family’s withholding and the government’s withholding,’ he said.

‘So, they have unintentionally helped our case in our quest to get these documents, to where we can give the American people the proof and the transparency that they deserve,’ Comer added. 

The Kentucky congressman serves as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the Biden family’s domestic and international business ties.

Comer said that Republicans were stonewalled by various government leaders in their efforts to obtain the documents, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Biden administration.

‘But fortunately, since we’ve last spoken, we actually have bank records in hand. We have individuals who are working with our committee. In the last two weeks, we’ve met with either these individuals personally or with their attorneys,’ Comer said.

‘Now, we have in hand documents that show just exactly how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party, and I will tell you, it’s as bad as we thought, Maria, it’s very concerning,’ he added.

Comer told Bartiromo that the committee has bank records of people tied to various businesses the Biden family was involved with and found ‘a lot of transfers from account to account to account.’ Comer said he believes there were frequent transfers of cash to help conceal the origin of the funds.

‘The banks would look at this like they must be laundering money or something. I don’t necessarily think they were laundering money, Maria. It looks to me like they were trying to hide the source of that money and the source was the Chinese Communist Party,’ Comer said.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection loss should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ for other mayors – or those considering a run for office – who are also failing to address the issue of crime in their communities, according to some political insiders.

Lightfoot’s tenure in the Windy City office – which will end later this year after she failed to make it into the city-wide runoff election – has been marked with immense criticism from individuals in her own party and from those across the political aisle.

Crime was seen as the central theme of the race and the city’s soaring crime rate served as the backdrop to Lightfoot’s dismal approval rating, according to one poll. 

‘Mayor Lightfoot was an astoundingly incompetent, left-wing mayor of a big city. Her incompetence was breathtaking to the point where she had become a meme-darling for conservatives all across social media,’ Kristin Tate, a GOP strategist and columnist for The Hill, told Fox News Digital. ‘But other left-wing mayors across the country are likely going to see their political futures at risk as well. We saw this happen in the ’80s when one of the most liberal cities in America, New York City, elected Rudy Giuliani.’

During Lightfoot’s time in office, homicides in Chicago rose to their highest number in 25 years in 2021, according to police department records, outpacing New York City and Los Angeles. She also faced sharp criticism for her less-than-cordial relationship with law enforcement throughout her tenure, which saw a drastic reduction in police officer headcount to coincide with the rise in crime.

‘Liberals love to vote for other liberals, but once the safety and quality of life of their own environment and neighborhoods starts to fall apart, they start to hire other less radical Democrats or even Republicans to clean up the mess,’ Tate said. ‘The mayors of other big cities like Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and possibly even Austin, Texas, have definitely been watching Mayor Lightfoot’s demise and are surely contemplating their own political survival as well.’

Similarly, Colin Reed, a founding member of South & Hill Strategies who served as campaign manager for former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown, said Lightfoot’s loss, which largely hinged on her policies and priorities, should serve as a warning to others who may be considering running for mayoral positions around the country.

‘The sense of lawlessness and decay in America’s major metropolitan areas threaten any entrenched incumbent trying to justify their term in office,’ Reed told Fox. ‘Soft-on-crime policies are coming home to roost and creating widespread unease about public safety. It should be a wake-up call to anyone preparing to put their name on a ballot.’

But not everyone agrees on the reasoning behind Lightfoot’s reelection loss, and some Democrats believe her handling of issues are not to be compared to that of other mayoral hopefuls who may be left of center.

‘Every city, campaign and candidate is different, so I hesitate to try and compare Mayor Lightfoot’s primary election defeat to any other Democrat – especially to her big-city mayoral colleagues,’ Kevin Walling, a Democratic campaign strategist, told Fox. ‘Clearly, crime was a hugely important issue, and the mayor’s inability to stem the tide of violence over the past four years sealed her fate last week.’

Admittedly, Walling suggested he believes Democrats could be more effective and have better election odds if they were to focus more on public safety.

‘At the basic level, we all want to feel safe in our communities — rural, suburban and urban,’ Walling said. ‘I think Democrats often focus so much on statistics when we need to do a better job meeting people where they’re at, making them not only feel safer but also improving public safety.’

Lightfoot – who frequently touted Chicago as a ‘safe’ city and defended her record handling the issue, touting a ‘multi-tiered strategy’ to curb gang and gun crimes last August – became Chicago’s first mayor in 40 years to serve just one term and was beaten out of a runoff election by former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson.

Sarah Norman, a Democratic strategist, rejected the premise that Lightfoot’s election loss could be a trend among other left-wing mayors who hold office around the country, telling Fox that Lightfoot ‘managed to alienate effectively every constituency in Chicago.’

‘If the left pole of the Chicago establishment are the teachers union and right pole is the police unions, the fact both groups ran candidates against her in the primary suggests she had lost nearly everyone,’ Norman said. ‘And, in fact, what happened was that both her challengers to the right and to the left beat her; Chicago didn’t reject progressive governance, it just rejected Lori Lightfoot.’

Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Lightfoot’s election defeat should serve as a ‘warning sign for the country,’ rejecting criticism that he is feeding into the Republican narrative on crime in addressing public safety concerns in the Big Apple.

‘Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity – same as Chicago, like New York, and many of our big cities across America,’ Adams said during an appearance on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ 

‘That is why we zero focus double-digit decrease in shootings, double-digit decrease in homicides, which we have witnessed this year, particularly the month of February,’ he added. ‘All of our index crimes are low, low for the entire year. We are focused on public safety because people want to be safe. They don’t feel safe. And they actually say then you’re going to lose control of your city.’

Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie, Danielle Wallace, and Timothy H.J. Nerozzi contributed to this story.

The Biden administration announced Sunday evening that it is indefinitely blocking 16 million acres of federal land and water in Alaska from future fossil fuel drilling.

The Department of Interior (DOI) said it had initiated a rulemaking process to ‘establish maximum protection’ for 13 million acres of land across the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), an area in North Slope Borough, Alaska, set aside by Congress for resource development. In addition, President Biden ordered an additional 2.8 million of acres to be withdrawn from oil and gas leasing in the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska.

‘With these actions, President Biden continues to deliver on the most aggressive climate agenda in American history,’ the DOI said in a statement. ‘He has made the United States a magnet for clean energy manufacturing and jobs. He secured record investments in climate resilience and environmental justice.’

‘And his economic agenda has put the United States back on track to reach its climate goals for 2030 and 2050, all while reducing America’s reliance on oil and protecting American families from the impact of Putin’s war on global energy markets,’ the statement added.

The announcement means that the entire section of the Arctic Ocean owned by the federal government is blocked from any fossil fuel production in the foreseeable future. However, an offshore lease sale hasn’t been held in the region since 2007 and the administration had already ruled out future auctions through at least 2028.

Additionally, the DOI said Biden intends to limit future fossil fuel production in the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay ‘special areas’ known for their rich wildlife populations. Biden’s sweeping actions also prevent the development of certain fossil fuel pipeline infrastructure in the northern Alaska region.

‘It’s a totally political decision, it’s not based on science, it’s not based on climate change, it’s not based on biological resources,’ a former senior Bureau of Land Management official said in an interview with Fox News Digital on Sunday evening.

‘They’re pandering solely for political purposes and not paying attention to the science.’

The DOI announcement, meanwhile, is an apparent attempt for the administration to soften the blow for climate activists ahead of an expected decision on a massive 30-year oil drilling project in the NPR. 

The Biden administration is expected to announce Monday that is approving three of the five drilling sites for the Willow Project, an oil project proposed years ago by energy company ConocoPhillips, a congressional aide with knowledge of the situation told Fox News Digital.

ConocoPhillips has projected that Willow would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day, create more than 2,500 construction jobs and 300 long-term jobs, and deliver as much as $17 billion in revenue for the federal government, Alaska and local communities, many of which are Indigenous. Overall, it could have a total output of 600 million barrels of oil over its three-decade lifespan.

While the DOI will publish the final decision on the project, Biden and senior White House officials have been actively involved in overseeing the approval process.

‘We cannot allow the Willow Project to move forward. We must build a clean energy future — not return to a dark, fossil-fueled past,’ Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote in a tweet. ‘It doesn’t matter which way this oil flows, it’s the wrong direction.’

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., added that the administration’s expected approval of the project was a ‘complete betrayal.’

Alaska’s congressional delegation — Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola — have supported Willow alongside the state’s entire legislature, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Alaska Native communities, labor unions, leaders of the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Federation of Natives.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., on Friday introduced legislation that would allow congressional employees to carry legally possessed weapons in self-defense to and from Capitol Hill and safely store them while at work.

The Safe Storage Lockers for House Office Buildings Act would require Capitol Police to install and operate lockers at the entrances of House office buildings where workers could store their weapons.

In Washington, D.C., individuals are allowed by law to carry and use certain weapons for self-defense, including self-defense sprays, stun guns and concealed firearms. However, both D.C. and federal law prohibit individuals from carrying these weapons inside a federal building.

As a practical matter, therefore, people who work in federal buildings generally can’t carry concealed weapons with them on the way to and from work.

Steube’s bill would solve this dilemma. The real impetus for the legislation, however, is rising crime in D.C., which he blames on Democratic governance.

‘Violent crime has skyrocketed across the country, enabled by disastrous soft-on-crime Democrat policies,’ Steube said in a statement. ‘Sadly, our nation’s capital is regressing to total lawlessness and violent chaos. Today, I’m introducing legislation to ensure congressional employees have the right to defend themselves in crime-ridden D.C.’

‘My bill is simple,’ Steube said. ‘Any employee who is lawfully permitted to carry a firearm, stun gun, or self-defense spray will be able to bring those weapons on their commute to a House Office Building and safely store the weapon until they are ready to depart the building.’

Steube introduced his bill two days after the Senate voted overwhelmingly, in bipartisan fashion, to block the Washington, D.C., city council’s dramatic overhaul of its criminal code. Republicans and many Democrats complained that the proposal would ease criminal penalties in a city that is already suffering from rising crime rates. The House had previously voted to nullify the D.C. law.

Once the resolution is signed by President Biden, as is expected, it will mark the first time Congress has acted to roll back D.C.’s own self-imposed regulations in more than three decades, exercising a power that Congress has under the Constitution.

The proposed D.C. law would have lowered the maximum penalties for crimes such as carjackings, robberies and burglaries, while raising them for murders. Nearly all misdemeanor cases would also have included the right to a jury trial, and minimum sentences for most crimes would have been abolished.

Last year, D.C. hit 200 murders in consecutive years for the first time since 2003, and the nation’s capital is currently on pace for a third straight year of 200 or more killings.

The press release from Steube’s office noted that many employees who work in the House office buildings in D.C. commute to and from their offices by walking.

A federal judge shouted down by protesters at Stanford Law School ripped the behavior of the student body and administrators, saying they were treating their peers like ‘dogs**t.’ 

Judge Kyle Duncan, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, was invited to speak at Stanford University Thursday by the school’s Federalist Society chapter. However, he was heckled by hundreds of students, who made it impossible for him to deliver his speech.

‘If enough of these kids get into the legal profession, the rule of law will descend into barbarism,’ Duncan told the Washington Free Beacon.

Video footage widely shared on social media shows that the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), Tirien Steinbach, did nothing to quell the disruption as protesters hurled verbal abuse at the judge, which appeared to violate Stanford’s free speech policies.

Instead, Steinbach gave a minutes-long and emotional speech at the event, accusing Duncan of causing ‘harm’ through his work on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The students were particularly angry at Duncan for a 2020 opinion in which he refused to use a transgender sex offender’s preferred pronouns. In comments to the Free Beacon, the judge described the incident as a ‘bizarre therapy session from hell.’ 

Steinbach repeatedly said she was ‘uncomfortable’ by the anger caused by Duncan’s presence, though she sided with the students, telling Duncan while she ‘wholeheartedly’ welcomed him because she believes in free speech, his speech was ‘abhorrent’ and ‘harmful’ and ‘literally denies the humanity of people.’ 

She went on to question whether the University’s stated commitment to free speech was worth ‘the pain that this causes and the division that this causes.’ 

‘You have something so incredibly important to say about Twitter and guns and COVID, then that is worth this impact and the division.  . . . When I say is the juice worth the squeeze, that’s what I’m asking. Is this worth it?’ she challenged Duncan. 

Duncan was never given the chance to read his prepared remarks. After a hostile Q&A session, he was escorted out the back door by federal marshals, who were there to ‘protect’ him, the Free Beacon reported. 

‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ he told the outlet. ‘I’m a life-tenured federal judge. What outrages me is that these kids are being treated like dogs**t by fellow students and administrators.’

Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

Two of the United States’ top health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, accusing him of misleading the public on COVID-19 vaccine side effects. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the joint letter to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Friday.

‘Focusing on adverse events in the absence of causal association and without the perspective of countervailing benefits is a great disservice to both individuals and public health,’ the agencies wrote. 

The letter continued, ‘Like every other medical intervention, there are adverse effects from vaccination. Serious adverse events from COVID-19 vaccines are rare and are far outweighed by the benefits of these vaccines for every age group.’

In March 2022, Ladapo recommended that certain segments of the population forgo the COVID-19 vaccine due to possible side effects that he believed could outweigh health benefits.

Analysis conducted by the Department of Health in Florida showed an ‘84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males, 18 to 39 years old within 28 days following the mRNA vaccination.’

READ THE CDC/FDA LETTER – APP USERS, CLICK HERE:

In their Friday letter, the CDC and FDA rejected this assertion.

‘The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading and could be harmful to the American public,’ the letter read.

The health agencies insisted that Ladapo was conflating unrelated health issues with negative effects of the vaccine, muddying the data.

They wrote, ‘Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination do not mean that a vaccine caused the event. Since December 2020, almost 270 million people have received more than 670 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., with over 50 million people having received the updated bivalent vaccine.’

The CDC and FDA went on to claim that studies had found a lower rate of strokes and heart attack among vaccinated individuals.

‘Despite increased reports of these events, when the concern was examined in detail by cardiovascular experts, the risk of stroke and heart attack was actually lower in people who had been vaccinated, not higher,’ the letter asserted.