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Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today. Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
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- Republicans controlled the Senate during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020. Then- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) allowed a full Senate trial in public view even though he would vote that Trump wasn’t guilty of the House’s charges.
- Today, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) faces a similar choice with the House’s impeachment Feb. 13 of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- Schumer could bury the matter in committee, dismiss the two articles of impeachment by a majority vote, or hold a Senate trial in public as McConnell did with Trump’s first impeachment.
- Republican lawmakers argue that Mayorkas should be removed after presiding over a flood of millions of illegal aliens into the United States.
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and 11 other GOP senators in sending a letter this week to McConnell, now Senate minority leader, urging him to “ensure that the Senate conducts a proper trial.”
- If Schumer does greenlight a Senate trial, it is unlikely that Mayorkas would be convicted and removed in the Democrat-controlled chamber, since removal requires a two-thirds majority vote.
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- Washington is once again facing a potential shutdown with funding for the federal government set to run out in early March.
- At the same time, the city of San Francisco seems to have few problems doling out huge amounts to well-connected activist groups and hard-left ideologues.
- The federal government isn’t the only source of political pork. Many states and localities also play fast and loose with public resources.
- A recent series of stories from San Francisco have highlighted the wealthy city’s severe mismanagement:
- On Feb. 3, the “San Francisco Chronicle” revealed that an elementary school paid $250,000 to a group called Woke Kindergarten.
- On Feb. 8, the city celebrated that they had lowered the cost of a public bathroom from $1.7 million to $725,000, when a more reasonable fee would be a fraction of that amount.
- On Feb. 9, the website Pirate Wires released an expose on San Francisco’s $100 million-per-year web of bureaucrats and left-wing nonprofit groups that focus on political crusades such as gender ideology, “racial equity” and identity-based cash handouts.
- It would be one thing if these were purely paid for by residents of the high-wealth city. However, San Francisco benefits from the more than $1.2 trillion in transfers that the federal government gives to state and local governments every year.
- Freebies from Washington make space for mischief in local budgets.
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- In a landmark decision, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting embryonic human life from wrongful death.
- The harsh reality is that IVF routinely creates several embryos to test and select the “best” embryo, destroying the unwanted children.
- This ruling does not threaten access to IVF, but it does rightly place the well-being of children front and center in how clinics practice in vitro fertilization and embryo cryopreservation.
- This ruling is a win for everyone who believes that the child, not a financially driven fertility industry, should be the top concern in IVF treatments.
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