Contributing Writers

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has built a reputation as one of the “meanest” members of Congress to work for, but has also become one of its most recognizable faces, having represented the same district in the House of Representatives for more than 28 years.  She announced this week, however, that she would be running for mayor of Houston in the off-year election, potentially bringing her tumultuous time in Congress to an end should she prevail.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is leading an effort to amend the controversial Respect for Marriage Act, a law aimed at protecting same-sex marriages that was passed with bipartisan support last summer, in order to include new protections for religious observers that weren’t included.

A civil liberties group is urging students at George Mason University to respect differing viewpoints following their calls to remove Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin from the institution’s commencement ceremony. George Mason University announced last week that Youngkin would deliver the commencement speech in May in front of the university’s 2023 graduating class, which led to students demanding the governor be prohibited from speaking or attending the ceremony.

FIRST ON FOX: Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett called for the manifesto by the transgender shooter at the private Presbyterian school in Nashville to be made public. “Our trans youth are troubled,” Burchett told Fox News Digital in a late Monday statement. “If they don’t get the help they need they can grow up to have some serious issues, but I obviously don’t believe they’ll all grow up to be shooters like this.

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was excoriated by his Republican challengers over the weekend for choosing to veto a bill that would ban gender transition surgeries for minors, prohibit school discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity, and prevent teachers from being forced to use a student’s preferred pronouns. The bill, SB 150, was passed by state lawmakers along party lines earlier this month before heading to Beshear’s desk last week.

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. – Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie predicts that in a 2024 Republican presidential nomination race that’s shaping up to be combustible, “it’s not going to end nicely” for former President Donald Trump.

George Mason University announced that Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin will be the commencement speaker at the institution’s 2023 graduation ceremony in May, and some students are pushing to cancel his speech. Students at the university started a petition on Thursday, the same day Youngkin was announced as the speaker, demanding Younkgin not be permitted to speak or even attend the commencement ceremony on May 18.

Former President Donald Trump blasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a Saturday night rally in Texas and accused him of prosecutorial misconduct.

Former President Donald Trump announced his campaign’s Texas leadership team on Saturday night which included several high level state officials but noticeably did not include Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. In a statement released before thousands of people packed into the Waco Regional Airport for Trump’s first rally since announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump revealed the list of Texans who will make up his leadership team in the state.

Former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his focus on potentially prosecuting former President Donald Trump and suggested the move is politically motivated. “I don’t understand why Bragg is putting such emphasis on this case,” the former governor told WABC Radio on Friday night.  “A person breaks the law I get it, but on the state side this is a misdemeanor case.

Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is blackballing anyone who works for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a new report. Justin Caporale, who helps lead the advance team for the former president, has put out the word that anyone who staffed a recent DeSantis book tour will be considered “persona non grata,” RealClearPolitics reported Friday.

A Florida former mayor resigned abruptly earlier this week because he disagreed with the “reckless” way the city council wanted to spend tax dollars, he told Fox News. “We’ve had very little debt, but the spreadsheets that we were looking at this past Monday showed a number of projects and the funding shortfall was a quarter of a billion dollars,” former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard said.

President Biden announced this week that he is committed to working with lawmakers who have backed tearing down four hydropower dams in Washington to protect salmon species. Biden remarked during a conservation event Tuesday that he would work with tribes, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to “bring healthy and abundant salmon runs back” to the Columbia River system.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., is expected back to work “soon,” his office said Thursday, though a return is still more than a week away. Fetterman, 53, was only weeks into his service when he checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Feb. 15. During his campaign in Pennsylvania, Fetterman’s health was repeatedly targeted by his critics.

Americans saw a number of viral moments during Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing focused on security concerns surrounding the use of TikTok in the U.S.  During the hearing, lawmakers questioned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over allegations the platform may be being used by China to spy on Americans, its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the inappropriate content contained within it. In one viral moment, Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla.

Wisconsin’s newly appointed secretary of state said Thursday that she had no idea Gov. Tony Evers was going to offer her the job, defusing Republican allegations that her appointment was part of a long-planned scheme tied to her dropping out of a U.S. Senate race last year. Evers announced Friday that longtime Secretary of State Doug La Follette, a Democrat who narrowly hung on to the position in November, had abruptly resigned.

Arkansas joined several states on Tuesday by enacting a bill into law prohibiting transgender people at public schools from using the restroom that uses their gender identity. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed her name on the piece of legislation, which applies to multi-person restrooms and locker rooms at public schools and charter schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.

EXCLUSIVE: Republican senators are readying to make the case that the Pentagon’s progressive military policies under the Biden administration are to blame for the Armed Forces’ dire recruitment crisis.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cast himself as a pragmatic leader whose no-nonsense style could propel him to the White House, dismissing former President Trump’s recent criticisms as nothing more than “background noise” that isn’t worth engaging.  The comments came during a wide-ranging interview with Piers Morgan, another frequent target of Trump’s derision, that will air on Fox Nation this Thursday.

Former President Donald Trump lashed out at ABC News on Tuesday over what he said was a “fake” report that he “deliberately misled” his attorneys about his handling of the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home last year. “Shame on Fake News ABC for broadcasting ILLEGALLY LEAKED false allegations from a Never Trump, now former chief judge, against the Trump legal team.

Georgia Republican state senators approved a bill on Tuesday that restricts minors from getting gender transition treatments and threatens doctors who perform such actions with civil and criminal penalties. In a vote of 31-21, SB 140 was passed and is now heading to Gov. Brian Kemp, who is expected to sign the bill into law.

EXCLUSIVE – Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan wants to bring the GOP back to the future. The former FBI agent, who later served 14 years in Congress and grabbed plenty of attention in the nation’s capital as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says his latest mission to come up with “real solutions” to get the country back on track could lead to a campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The American people might finally get a chance to see what the government knew about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — which killed more than 1.1 million in the U.S. and millions more worldwide — after President Biden signed legislation into law that directs the federal government to declassify pertinent intelligence reports. What comes next, according to Sen. Josh Hawley, is to hold federal bureaucrats accountable.

President Biden on Monday signed a bill directing the federal government to declassify intelligence about the origins of COVID-19.  The bipartisan legislation allows the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. The cites potential inks to research at the facility and the outbreak.

Two Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee are making a push stop the Biden administration from banning gas stoves with legislation that has support from the committee chairman and could get a vote on the House floor this year. The bills from Reps. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., and Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., are a response to the two-pronged effort seen by the Biden administration to ban gas stoves this year.

Law enforcement officials met behind closed doors Monday to discuss the logistics of arraigning former President Trump following his possible indictment over hush-money payments made on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Communities in rural Michigan are revolting against a decision to allow a Chinese-owned firm to build a battery plant in the area, according to footage of a recent Green Charter Township board meeting obtained by conservative outlet The Midwesterner.

The Kansas Court of Appeals on Friday reinstated a lawsuit that challenged provisions of a voting law enacted in 2021 that opponents argue is unconstitutional and limits voting rights. The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by Loud Light, the League of Women Voters of Kansas, the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and the Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.

A pilot program in Massachusetts offering universal school meals would be extended through the end of the 2023-2024 school year as part of a supplemental budget proposal filed Friday by Gov. Maura Healey. The $734 million proposed spending plan includes $171 million for the state-funded school meals program.

The Vermont Senate on Friday passed a bill that aims to protect health care workers from disciplinary action for providing abortions and gender-affirming health care, and change insurance premium charges related to such care. The legislation defines reproductive and gender-affirming health care as legally protected “health care activities.