"The IRS opened an examination of journalist Matt Taibbi's 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve of last year -- three weeks after he exposed sensitive documents about government officials pressuring Twitter to censor content.

"The House Judiciary Committee said Wednesday it obtained that detail and other information about the case from the IRS following the outcry over a tax agent visiting Taibbi's home on March 9, 2022 -- the same day he testified to Congress about the 'Twitter Files.'

"Documents provided to the committee 'raise more questions than they answer,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in a letter requesting that he make further disclosures."

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"President Joe Biden has another headache emerging as he continues navigating the debt ceiling.

"His $400 billion-plus student debt transfer is under attack on three different fronts, threatening to undo a campaign promise and nix a policy strongly favored by progressives and younger Democratic voters.

"'President Biden's student loan transfer scheme shifts hundreds of billions of dollars of payments from student loan borrowers onto the backs of Americans who did not agree to take out the loans,' Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) told the Washington Examiner on Monday. 'I am proud to lead the fight against President Biden's reckless, unilateral, and unauthorized action that would unfairly penalize those who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never took them out in the first place.'

"Good and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced House Joint Resolution 45 in March, which would use the Congressional Review Act to repeal Biden's program. Republicans have had success at passing resolutions under the Congressional Review Act through the House and Senate to Biden's desk and fought against the debt transfer from the day it was announced.

"The House is scheduled to vote on the resolution today."

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"The prevailing account says Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is walking a tightrope over a shark tank in the debt ceiling talks, sidling precariously between a federal default on one side and the loss of his Speakership on the other.

"The prevailing account might have it all wrong.

"As McCarthy and President Biden race to find common ground on extending the government's borrowing authority, the Speaker has defied the doubts that came with his arduous path to the gavel, building up trust among his conservative naysayers and creating what appears to be a comfortable space to battle Biden over the terms of the debt ceiling hike.

"McCarthy has dragged Biden to the negotiating table, which the president resisted for months. He's taken any tax cuts -- which Democrats have demanded in past debt limit fights -- off the table. And the Speaker's success last month in shepherding a Republican debt-ceiling package through the House -- despite a tiny GOP majority -- has buoyed even some of his fiercest conservative detractors."

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"When Sen. Tim Scott announces his candidacy for president, the South Carolina Republican will try something slightly unusual: He will sell voters on a vision of hope and national reconciliation, rather than the populist grievance currently fueling his competition at the top of the polls.

"No one in Washington doubts the messenger. The party looked to Scott, an eloquent orator and the only Black Republican in the Senate, to offer their rebuttal to President Biden's first address to Congress. The question is whether a primary electorate wants the message. ...

"Scott is expected to kick off his campaign Monday during a rally in Charleston, where campaign staff have already set up headquarters. It is a decision with natural and strategic significance. The state hosts the third-in-the-nation primary, and sources familiar with the plan say that gives the Palmetto State's chosen son a built-in advantage: The Republican electorate there has already voted for him three times. He won his race last year by 25 points, carrying six of seven congressional districts."

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"Top Democrats are scrambling for ways to avoid a catastrophe in New Hampshire in which Joe Biden may not appear on the primary ballot, ceding the first unofficial contest of 2024 to a fringe candidate.

"The bizarre predicament is one of the president's own making, after he pushed for changes to the party's presidential nominating calendar that stripped the Granite State of its first-in-the-nation primary. The move was designed to reward South Carolina, which catapulted Biden to the nomination in 2020.

"But there's a state law requiring New Hampshire's contest be held a week before any others, and Republicans in charge of the governor's office and state legislature are refusing to touch it. If they don't, a primary may well be held without the sitting president putting his name on the ballot."

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"Democrats and commentators reacted dismissively to the conclusion this week of a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion inquiry, with some critics of special counsel John Durham citing a 2019 inquiry to claim the matter had already been settled.

The Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, did indeed examine FBI conduct in the Russia investigation during the Trump administration. Horowitz's findings were highly critical of the FBI and came with a list of recommendations for sweeping changes to the bureau, many of which its leaders adopted.

But the media, and even people involved in the Russia investigation itself, have recast the 2019 inspector general report as an exoneration of the FBI in light of the far more aggressive allegations leveled at the bureau by Durham."

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"New migrants pouring into the U.S. after the Biden administration let a COVID-19 restriction called Title 42 expire last week will not break the nation's stretched court system. The system is already shattered, according to several former judges, immigration experts, and Department of Homeland Security data.

"The average wait time for a 'Notice to Appear' before a judge at one of the nation's 66 immigration courts is now four and a half years. In some cities it is much longer. In New York City, new migrants do not have to appear in court until 2032. This growing backlog creates an incentive for more people to cross the border and request asylum as each new case pushes assigned court dates further into the future. In the meantime, many migrants are permitted to live and work in the United States.

"'It's well past broken,' said Art Arthur, a former immigration court judge and now a resident fellow at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. 'The courts weren't set up for this. When you don't do anything at the front end, the back end just collapses. Everybody who shows up now knows the chances are 90 percent or better you're going to be here indefinitely or forever.'"

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"The FBI was instrumental in perpetrating the Russia hoax. The bureau never had any plausible evidence or verified intelligence when it wrongfully launched a dilating and damaging investigation of Donald Trump. Nothing was ever vetted or corroborated. Indeed, the FBI knew it was a pernicious lie from the outset. That is the conclusion to be drawn from Special Counsel John Durham's final report released to the public on Monday. ...

"The FBI discovered almost immediately in the summer of 2016 that the claims of Trump-Russia collusion had been manufactured by Hillary Clinton and her confederates. The damning fiction constituted what is surely the dirtiest trick in American politics, and it triggered the greatest mass delusion in history."

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"In the run up to the gas stove ban, and subsequent to it, the Biden administration has unleased the biggest, most comprehensive, strictest regulatory onslaught ever on home appliances. As the Washington Times documents, 'President Biden's green energy goals have resulted in an array of new efficiency rules for a slew of household appliances,' including microwaves, air purifiers, and even toothbrush chargers. Also among the appliances soon to be regulated out of existence or fundamentally altered are, gas furnaces, air conditioners, lightbulbs, refrigerators, clothes washers, and gasoline- and diesel-powered cars.

"How bad will the impact on consumer choice be? Only about 4% of stoves currently on the market would remain for sale under Biden's new rules. And, the new washing machine regulations would remove 98% of existing top loading machines from the market. Do you like your microwave to have an internal light and a clock? Too bad, because those features use too much energy according to Biden's 'ban 'em-all' cronies at the U.S. Department of Energy. Pick your favorite appliance and watch it disappear from the market under Biden's new rules."

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"The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee -- a system, GOP lawmakers say, that was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals.

"Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden's tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended."

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