Black and Hispanic voters in Wisconsin’s largest city say a Republican election commissioner publicly applauding GOP strategies he credits with depressing minority turnout are a public admission of a conservative strategy in place for years.

‘He’s proudly telling Hispanic and Latino voters, ‘I’m your enemy, and I’m actively using my position of power to undermine your voting rights,’’ said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, an advocacy group for immigrants.

Robert Spindell, the election commissioner who also served as a fake Republican elector for former President Donald Trump, did not back down. He rejected calls from liberals and a fellow Democratic commissioner to resign, and said he does not support suppressing turnout.

Spindell said he was merely touting efforts by the GOP to counter liberal messaging in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee. High turnout there is key to Democrats winning statewide.

Spindell, a former Milwaukee election official, said in an email newsletter that Republicans ‘can be especially proud’ of lowered turnout in Milwaukee during the 2022 election, ‘with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.’

Spindell, who is white, cited midterm results by precinct that showed lower overall turnout in predominantly Black and Hispanic Milwaukee neighborhoods compared with the last midterm election in 2018.

It’s not clear what effect Republican efforts in Milwaukee had on the behaviors of Black and Hispanic voters, even as Spindell’s email detailed a number of those strategies targeting those communities. Among them: ‘Negative Black Radio Commercials.’

Two of the ads paid for by the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and obtained by The Associated Press, hit Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who ran for U.S. Senate.

In one ad, a stern-sounding narrator alleges that Evers and Barnes ‘failed miserably’ in protecting families from ‘violence, mayhem and death.’ In another spot, the same narrator says Evers did not help students of color do better in school or support allowing public school students to use a taxpayer-funded voucher to attend private schools.

Wisconsin has long faced the nation’s largest achievement gap between white and Black students, the vast majority of whom live in Milwaukee.

Evers won reelection but Barnes narrowly lost to Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. Spindell said in his email that turnout in Milwaukee was down by 37,000 voters compared to 2018. Barnes lost his Senate race by just under 27,000 votes.

Barnes, who is Black and from Milwaukee, declined to comment on Spindell’s remarks.

Wisconsin does not record the race or ethnicity of voters, and John Johnson, a researcher at Marquette University Law School, cautioned against drawing conclusions about racial voting patterns from such limited information. Johnson’s own analysis of election results also indicated a decline in voter turnout in majority-Black and majority-Hispanic wards in 2022, but the most recently available demographic data comes from the 2020 census, which the city of Milwaukee has contested amid claims that it gives outdated information on the voting-age population.

Regardless of the actual turnout levels, Neumann-Ortiz said she has seen a lack of enthusiasm among Hispanic voters, who say they don’t feel represented. She attributed the problem to Wisconsin’s state legislative maps, which give Republican lawmakers a strong majority in both chambers in a state where voters elected Democrats as governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

‘Disenchantment has produced lower levels of participation,’ Neumann-Ortiz said. ‘If they genuinely wanted to make inroads, they would stop trying to undermine the ability of Latinos to vote.’

Organizers in Milwaukee’s Black community echoed that sentiment on the campaign trail in 2022, describing young Black voters as disaffected and tough to mobilize while working to elect Barnes as the state’s first Black U.S. senator.

Polling also shows there was a national increase in Black support for Republicans in the midterm.

Still, advocates in Milwaukee say years of Republican-led efforts to make it more difficult to vote were really thinly veiled attempts to silence voters in Democrat-heavy Milwaukee, where Black and Hispanic residents account for about 60% of the population.

Under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Republicans in Wisconsin flexed their muscle to implement a voter ID proposal and limit the days and hours of early voting. The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court last year enacted other GOP priorities when it outlawed ballot drop boxes and said voters cannot have someone else return a ballot on their behalf. Courts also have limited clerks’ abilities to fill in missing ballot information, such as incomplete addresses.

Neumann-Ortiz called the efforts ‘death by 1,000 cuts to create barriers.’

‘Election after election, we are left as a Black organization to have to explain why Black turnout decreases in some areas,’ Kyle Johnson, political director of the Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, said in a statement. ‘Many of us have been sounding the alarm about how sinister voter suppression tactics have become, and Spindell’s comments reinforce what we already knew.’

The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia – the primary headquarters for the Department of Defense – was originally constructed in 1941 after War Department officials complained of too little office space in their old headquarters. Two years and 6.5 million square feet later, the Pentagon was born. Standing seven stories tall and overlooking the nation’s capital,the building houses about 27,000 personnel and three branches of the U.S. military.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday announced a new, expedited process aimed at encouraging ‘noncitizen workers’ to report labor rights violations in the U.S. by allowing them to avoid deportation.

DHS said the policy of insulating noncitizen workers from the threat of being deported – known as ‘deferred action’ – will make it easier for authorities to investigate cases of shoddy labor law standards put in place by ‘exploitive employers.’ The department said it has streamlined the process of granting deferred action when these cases arise.

‘Unscrupulous employers who prey on the vulnerability of noncitizen workers harm all workers and disadvantage businesses who play by the rules,’ said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. ‘We will hold these predatory actors accountable by encouraging all workers to assert their rights, report violations they have suffered or observed, and cooperate in labor standards investigations.’

‘Through these efforts, and with our labor agency partners, we will effectively protect the American labor market, the conditions of the American worksite, and the dignity of the workers who power our economy,’ Mayorkas added.

Noncitizen workers are ‘often afraid’ to report labor violations because they fear it will lead to their detainment or removal from the country, DHS said. That makes it harder for federal agencies to enforce labor laws and makes it easier for employers to commit ‘unlawful and inhumane acts’ against these workers.

DHS said that offering protection from deportation to noncitizen workers ‘facilitates the ability of labor and employment agencies to more fully investigate worksite violations’ and allows them to hold abusive employers accountable.

The DHS announcement said that officials are streamlining this process by creating one central point that workers can use to request deferred action at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That central point deals specifically with supporting labor agency investigation and enforcement efforts.

Under the new process, noncitizen workers must explain why they are seeking deferred action, including a letter from a labor or employment agency that supports the request and other documents that will help officials decide whether to offer these workers a protected status.

Noncitizens who receive deferred action status typically keep this status for two years and may be eligible for employment authorization in the U.S., depending in part on whether they can show an economic necessity for employment. They may also be eligible for extended deferred action status.

DHS said that the effort to streamline the process of protecting noncitizen workers is in line with a 2021 memo from Mayorkas that directed DHS to make sure it ‘fulfills its critical role supporting the important work of labor agencies to enforce wage protections, workplace safety, labor rights, and other laws and standards.’

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature are headed toward big fights over spending on special education programs, pay raises for government workers and how much the cash-flush state should sock away for worse economic times.

Kelly released budget proposals Thursday that include depositing $500 million into the state’s rainy day fund, giving state workers a 5% pay increase across the board and phasing in a 61% increase in spending on programs in K-12 public schools for children with special needs.

Top Republican lawmakers want Kansas to set aside at least $1 billion of its current surplus as a hedge against future budget shortfalls. The GOP chairs of the House and Senate budget committees had strong misgivings Thursday about giving an across-the-board pay raise to state workers, and the chair of a House committee on education spending questioned whether the extra money for special education is necessary.

The governor’s budget director, Adam Proffitt, told the House and Senate budget committees that Kelly is ‘looking across the horizon’ to ensure that both tax cuts and government programs can be sustained into the future. Kansas endured persistent budget shortfalls during a 2012-2017 Republican experiment in slashing income taxes.

‘We’re building a better Kansas for working families and retirees — all while maintaining a balanced budget,’ Kelly said in a statement.

Kelly, who won a second term in November, already was headed toward a clash with Republican legislators over how best to cut taxes. The state is projecting $3.2 billion in surplus cash in its treasury at the end of June 2024 and nearly $1 billion more already in the rainy day fund. The Legislature is set to remain in session until early May.

Kelly’s biggest tax proposal is eliminating the state’s 4% sales tax on groceries, while GOP leaders want to create a ‘flat’ income tax, rather than having multiple tax brackets for filers.

Putting a larger amount of the current projected surplus into the rainy day fund for future use limits lawmakers’ options for tax cuts or new spending.

Kelly proposed a $24.1 billion spending blueprint for state government for the 2024 budget year, which begins July 1. That’s $1.2 billion, or 5.3%, more than the current $22.9 billion budget approved by lawmakers last year.

Proffitt expressed confidence that the state’s revenue projections will hold up through June 2024. Inflation has eased over the past six months from decades-high levels, but the head of the Legislature’s research staff, J.G. Scott, told the budget committees Thursday that eventually, it and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s increases in interest rates to contain it will cause ‘a lot of cooling in the economy.’

‘We keep hearing the word ‘uncertainty,’’ said Democratic state Sen. Jeff Pittman, of Leavenworth.

Proffitt argued that setting aside another $500 million — to build the rainy day fund up to a total of $1.5 billion — would be enough to cover even the worst year’s decline in revenues.

But several Republicans said they want the state to have $2 billion on hand, enough to plug $1 billion a year into the budget for two years. Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, told reporters this week that he wants Kansas ready for economic problems as bad as or worse than those of the Great Recession of 2007-08.

‘I don’t want us to take that hit like we did last time,’ Masterson said.

Kelly’s proposed pay increases for government workers would help short-staffed agencies recruit and retain employees, Proffitt said. But Republicans said they want to concentrate first on boosting the pay of workers whose salaries are at least 5% below those of people holding similar jobs with private companies.

Meanwhile, educators are focusing on boosting spending on special education programs after years of increases in the state’s general aid to local school districts. Kansas law sets a target of having the state cover 92% of the additional costs tied to special education, but the current spending of $546 million covers only 76%.

With special education costs typically rising each year, Kelly’s plan would boost the state’s spending by $336 million over five years, bringing it to $882 million for the 2028 budget year.

But state Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican who chairs the House’s committee on K-12 spending, has repeatedly questioned how the state calculates excess special education costs and the dollars available to cover them.

And she said Thursday, ‘Money’s not always the answer to every problem.’

Republicans have rolled back a ban against smoking tobacco on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers and staff will once again be allowed to smoke carefree after Republicans ended the prohibition against tobacco upon taking the majority of the House of Representatives.

The ban was originally instituted in 2007 under then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Under that prohibition, members were still permitted to smoke inside their own offices.

Smoking indoors is outlawed in Washington, D.C. 

However, the Capitol is governed under federal jurisdiction, leaving the specifics of many regulations up to House and Senate leaders.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner famously smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day while in office.

By the time he left the position, the carpets and walls of his office reportedly needed to be refurbished, and the air purified.

Florida will seek to provide consumers more flexibility in buying prescription drugs and more information about their costs under a legislative proposal that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he will ask lawmakers to approve.

The proposal would further regulate prescription benefit managers, the go-betweens for health plans and consumers. The goal is to drive down prescription costs, DeSantis said.

Among other things, the proposal would bar prescription benefit managers from forcing consumers to use mail programs for prescription drugs.

‘What we’re going to say is, ‘You’re free to use the mail-in pharmacy that they’re telling you to use, but you do not have to use that,’ DeSantis said. ‘You have the ability to make your own decision if it’s best for you.”

Prescription benefit managers will also have to provide more information when registering with the state, including any pharmacies they’re affiliated with and any other companies under their umbrella, DeSantis said.

The proposal would also require drug manufacturers to issue a report each year justifying price increases.

The state’s Legislature begins its annual 60-day session in March.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he will ‘look at’ the possibility of expunging impeachments against former President Donald Trump, should a resolution be brought forward.

McCarthy’s remarks came on Thursday during his weekly press conference when he was asked about ‘interest among some rank-and-file Republicans’ to introduce a resolution that could ‘expunge’ one or both impeachments against Trump.

McCarthy, noting that House Republicans have a more centralized focus on issues related to the economy and national security, said he is open to the idea of looking further into the matter surrounding Trump and insisted that he understand how some members feel about the issue.

‘When you watch what he went through, I would understand why members would want to bring that forward. Our first priority is to get our economy back on track, secure our borders, make our streets safe again, give parents the opportunity to have a say in their education, and actually hold government accountable. But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,’ McCarthy said.

Calling it ‘an unimaginable abuse of our Constitution,’ Oklahoma GOP Rep. Markwayne Mullin introduced a resolution last year to ‘expunge’ Trump’s second impeachment — drawing support from more than two dozen Republicans, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

Should a resolution expunging one or both of Trump’s impeachments pass in the House, it stands almost no chance of advancing in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

During his four years as president, Trump was impeached on two separate occasions. The first impeachment came in 2019 when Trump allegedly withheld military aid from Ukraine in exchange for political favors. The second impeachment, which came in 2021, surrounded Trump’s alleged role in the events of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol. Trump was acquitted of both impeachments in the Senate.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this article.

A New Jersey congressman is demanding an investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing whales off the coast of the Garden State and the state of New York.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., announced on Friday that he would be calling for an investigation into the increasing number of dead whales that have washed up off the coast of New Jersey over the last month once committee assignments for the 118th Congress are finalized. 

In less than two months, seven dead whales have washed up along the New Jersey-New York coastline, local media have reported.

Van Drew, who sits on a House maritime transportation subcommittee, called for the cessation of ‘all offshore wind activity’ until an investigation is conducted to determine whether such projects could be to blame for the excess whale deaths. 

‘Since offshore wind projects were being proposed by Governor Murphy to be built off the coast of New Jersey, I have been adamantly opposed to any activity moving forward until research disclosed the impacts these projects would have on our environment and the impacts on the fishing industry,’ Van Drew said in a press release Friday.

‘Ocean life is being put at risk as our Governor and President force through their Green New Deal policies, without giving full consideration to their real-world impacts,’ the Republican lawmaker continued. ‘We have seen a complete lack of transparency from New Jersey’s leaders, as well as D.C. politicians who are ramming through these projects in order to push their climate agenda.’

‘Once committees for the 118th Congress are finalized, I will be calling for congressional investigations into the matter,’ he added. ‘I demand that all offshore wind activity be halted until it is properly determined what the effects of these activities are having on our marine life.’

Van Drew’s call for an investigation came after the most recent dead whale sighting occurred on a Jersey Shore beach. The humpback whale was the seventh dead whale discovered on a New Jersey beach in less than two months. Another humpback whale was discovered on a beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last month.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the state’s government would look into the cause of the uptick in beached whales.

But the Biden administration, New Jersey, led by Murphy, and New York continue to push for clean energy development including offshore wind projects as part of their climate agenda. In July, President Biden argued that offshore wind would create jobs and power millions of homes in the future. And the Department of Interior has expanded plans for offshore lease sales for wind development along the nation’s eastern and western coastlines and in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are currently three offshore wind projects being constructed off the coast of New York in federal waters and another four projects in federal waters off the coast of New Jersey, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Last year, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland joined Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to announce a shared vision for increasing offshore wind output.

‘We are at an inflection point for domestic offshore wind energy development,’ Haaland said during the event with Murphy and Hochul. ‘We must seize this moment – and we must do it together.’

Murphy added that offshore wind development held ‘tremendous promise for our future in terms of climate change, economic growth, strengthening our work force, and job creation.’ 

However, like Van Drew, environmentalists and maritime experts have warned that offshore wind activity may play a major role in ecological destruction.

For example, in August 2021, a group of ‘environmentally-concerned citizens’ filed a lawsuit opposing wind development off the coast of New England over concerns it would reduce endangered whale species.

‘Offshore wind is by far the most expensive way to get zero-emission electricity and is probably the most environmentally damaging way to do so,’ Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the Caesar Rodney Institute, previously told Fox News Digital. ‘It just is the worst option we could come up with.’

Stevenson filed comments with the Department of the Interior last month in opposition of an offshore Maryland wind project proposal.

Some eco groups have also expressed concerns that noise and sonar produced from pre-construction work for wind projects may interfere with marine life.

Biden spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Friday that the White House has been transparent with the Obama-era classified documents found in President Biden’s possession, but she would not say whether the recovered documents will be shared with the American people. 

The president is now under investigation by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland following the discovery of classified documents in a Washington, D.C., office at the Penn Biden Center and additional classified materials found in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware. 

During a press briefing Friday, Jean-Pierre emphasized to reporters that Biden has been ‘fully cooperating’ with the Justice Department in turning over the documents and said he will continue to do so with the special counsel.

‘The president’s team is going to continue to fully cooperate with the Department of Justice, and we respect that process, and that’s what we’re going to do,’ Jean-Pierre said. 

Pressed on whether the discovered materials should be shared with the American people, Jean-Pierre said there is an ‘ongoing process’ and that the White House has been transparent, speaking ‘when it is appropriate.’ 

Asked if Biden has undercut his campaign promise to restore confidence in the Justice Department and the presidency after the various allegations of wrongdoing surrounding former President Donald Trump, Jean-Pierre indicated the appointment of a special counsel shows the department is acting independently of Biden.

‘This has been done in a transparent way when it relates to how this was dealt with, with the Department of Justice and the [National] Archives,’ she asserted. ‘The president takes this very, very seriously.’ 

Biden has been caught up in controversy after a stash of Obama-era classified documents was found at the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center, a think tank of the University of Pennsylvania named for the president. Attorneys for the president discovered the documents on Nov. 2, days before the midterm elections, but the revelation was not made public until Monday. 

White House lawyers revealed Thursday that a second stash of documents with classified markings was uncovered in storage in Biden’s garage in Wilmington, Delaware, and said all the documents were immediately turned over to the Justice Department. 

Republicans have piled on the president, comparing the situation to revelations last year that Trump had kept nearly 300 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, which were seized in an FBI raid. They have accused Biden of holding a ‘double standard’ and vowed to use their new House majority to subpoena records and thoroughly investigate Biden for any hint of misconduct. 

Gov. Mike Dunleavy outlined proposed legislation Thursday for Alaska to capitalize on carbon markets, seeking to diversify state revenues long heavily reliant on proceeds from oil.

Dunleavy plans to introduce his so-called a carbon management bill package during the legislative session that begins next week.

The Republican governor and members of his administration outlined the proposal at a news conference in Anchorage. Dunleavy said in a statement that he wants lawmakers to seriously consider it as a ‘cornerstone of a long-term fiscal solution’ that would complement revenue from oil and gas and Alaska’s nest-egg investment fund, the Alaska Permanent Fund. The state has relied heavily on oil revenue and earnings from the permanent fund to help pay for state government.

Dunleavy has suggested a range of rough estimates for what carbon projects might yield. Last month, in raising the carbon concept while releasing his budget plan, he said the ‘amount of money you can derive from this carbon process, that’s difficult to put a finger on, but I would say this, we haven’t even begun to calculate the sequestration concept in terms of monetization.’ He said experts would help with that process.

The Congressional Research Service said in a report on carbon capture and sequestration in October that congressional interest in addressing climate change has increased interest in carbon capture and sequestration. But it added, that ‘debate continues as to what role, if any, CCS should play in greenhouse gas emissions reductions.’

While some policymakers and other interested parties see carbon capture and sequestration as an option to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, others worry it ‘may encourage continued fossil fuel use’ or that carbon dioxide could leak from underground reservoirs, the report stated.

Dunleavy’s office said the new legislation would set out rules for potential storage of carbon dioxide in underground geologic formations and for a carbon offsets program.

Dunleavy said he sees a carbon initiative as standing alongside existing industries such as oil and gas, mining and timber.

‘This is not a displacer of industry,’ he said Thursday. ‘This is just a brand-new opportunity that will enhance and work hand-in-glove with the industries that we currently have.’