Latest news with #Republican-majority
Time Magazine
6 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Lawmakers Seek to Limit Trump From Dragging U.S. Into Israel-Iran War
As the war between Israel and Iran rages on for a fifth day, it is unclear whether the Trump Administration is preparing to intervene militarily. On Monday, U.S. forces were sent to the Middle East, ostensibly for 'defensive' purposes, as Donald Trump left the G7 summit early and warned Tehran to evacuate. But whether the U.S. gets more involved than it already is, some members of Congress from both parties argue, is not a decision that should be up to the President. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced plans to introduce a resolution on Tuesday that asserts the requirement of Congress' approval if Trump wants to commit armed forces to military action in the region. 'This is not our war. But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution,' Massie posted on X. The resolution has already gained the support of progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who replied 'Signing on' to Massie's post. It's also not the first proposal by a lawmaker seeking to limit U.S. military engagement in the conflict. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a war powers resolution in the upper chamber on Monday that would terminate the unauthorized use of U.S. armed forces against Iran, given that there has not been a declaration of war, which only Congress can issue. War powers resolutions are 'privileged,' meaning that the Senate is required to promptly debate and vote on the resolution. 'I am deeply concerned that the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran could quickly pull the United States into another endless conflict,' Kaine said in a statement. 'This resolution will ensure that if we decide to place our nation's men and women in uniform into harm's way, we will have a debate and vote on it in Congress.' Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also introduced a separate bill, cosponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), on Monday that would prohibit the use of federal funds for 'any use of military force in or against Iran' without congressional approval, with the exception of self-defense. 'Another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives, waste trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, and more displacement,' Sanders said in a statement. 'I will do everything that I can as a Senator to defend the Constitution and prevent the US from being drawn into another war.' While the measures seeking to constrain Trump are unlikely to pass in the Republican-majority House or Senate, proponents have said that they want to force lawmakers to show where they stand on an issue where the public has been very clear. According to a University of Maryland poll in May, before Israel launched its strikes against Iran last Friday, only 14% of U.S. respondents across political parties supported 'Military action in attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear program.' 'It's time for every member to go on record,' Khanna posted. 'Are you with the neocons who led us into Iraq or do you stand with the American people?' What the Constitution says War powers are divided between Congress and the President, according to the Constitution. While the President is named the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, only Congress has the authority to decide whether the U.S. should go to war—either a total war or more limited uses of force. The President retains inherent defensive powers to use military force without congressional authorization if the U.S. is attacked, but congressional approval is still needed for a prolonged war. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 provided further guidance on the President's war powers, including that the President must have congressional approval for the use of force abroad except for certain circumstances like safely removing troops or rescuing Americans overseas. Nevertheless, the executive branch has expanded its view of the President's defensive war powers, most notably with its interpretations of the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations of Use of Military Force (AUMF). Congress passed the 2001 AUMF after the September 11 attacks to allow the use of force against entities that 'planned, authorized, committed, or aided' in the attacks or 'harbored such organizations or persons.' The 2002 AUMF authorized military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq government 'to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq' and was used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the authorizations have been criticized for effectively giving Presidents a ' blank check ' to direct military actions without congressional approval far beyond their original intended scope. There have been multiple unsuccessful efforts by both parties to repeal the authorizations, including by Kaine in 2023 with the support of then-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who said at the time: 'I think the fact that you have a lot of Republicans who are very skeptical of continuing to provide a blank check here I think is a good sign.' When Trump in his first term authorized the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Defense Department general counsel explained at the time that it distilled the President's constitutional and statutory authority to direct military action into a broad two-part test: first, 'whether the President could reasonably determine that the action serves important national interests,' and second, whether the military action does not necessarily 'bring the nation into the kind of protracted conflict that would rise to the level of a 'war.'' Party splits Conflict with Iran has divided Democrats and Republicans —not along party lines but within them. While some 'America First' voices have rallied against direct U.S. involvement, Trump's MAGA camp also includes war hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has said on X that, if negotiations fail, the U.S. should 'go all-in to help Israel finish the job.' 'If diplomacy is not successful, and we are left with the option of force, I would urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that, when this operation is over, there's nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program,' Graham said on CBS on Sunday. 'If that means providing bombs, provide bombs. … If it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.' Nine lawmakers led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a pro-Israel Democrat, signed onto a letter imploring Trump to apply 'crushing diplomatic pressure in addition to Israel's military pressure' on Iran towards zero nuclear enrichment. Trump, who also faces pressure from Israel to join the war, has continued to urge finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but he's also expressed the possibility of U.S. involvement if Iran retaliates against U.S. targets. 'If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran,' Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday night, 'the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.'
Axios
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Public media funding cuts hit Chicago: WBEZ, WTTW brace for impact
President Trump and the Republican-majority U.S. House moved one step closer to cutting funding for public media, putting local organizations in limbo. The latest: The House passed a bill Thursday afternoon to cancel over $1 billion in funding for PBS and NPR, via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This funding was included in the 2025 fiscal year budget, but this action removes it. Why it matters: Federal funding for public media could vanish — and Chicago stations like WBEZ and WTTW are bracing for the fallout. The big picture: The move breaks decades of bipartisan tradition treating CPB funding as apolitical and throws public media companies into budgetary chaos. What they're saying: "If approved, this cancellation of funding would eliminate critical investments, stripping resources that we use to power independent journalism, educational programming, emergency alerts and the infrastructure that supports the entire network of newsrooms nationwide," Chicago Public Media CEO Melissa Bell wrote to station members. "This could threaten the ability of PBS, and member stations like WTTW, to operate autonomously," a WTTW spokesperson said in a statement. By the numbers: The cuts would amount to about 6 percent of Chicago Public Media's budget, which the organization estimates to be about $3 million annually. That's not factoring in possible syndication costs handed down by National Public Radio, which is also losing funding from this bill. For WTTW, 10% of its 2024 budget came from federal funding. Zoom in: Chicago Public Media and WTTW (which also includes WFMT-FM) are among the largest public media organizations. Chicago Public Media (WBEZ/Sun-Times) reported revenue of $70 million for 2024, while WTTW had a total operating budget of $32.7 million. Both organizations receive significant revenue from member donations. Yes, but: Smaller Illinois radio stations, such as WILL-FM in Urbana, WUIS-FM in Springfield, and WNIJ-FM in DeKalb, have significantly higher federal funding, in some cases accounting for half of their budgets. Those stations are attached to local universities. Zoom out: It's unclear if the organizations will supercharge fundraising to attract more private donors or cut back on programming and staff. Chicago Public Media recently cut staff at both the Sun-Times and WBEZ. The intrigue: The rescission package aims to claw back funding that Congress previously approved for fiscal year 2025. It primarily consists of cuts identified by DOGE, which include funding for foreign aid programs such as USAID. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's funding is usually allocated every two years, so this cuts the second year of funding and puts future allocations in serious doubt. The rescission bill is rare in government. Trump attempted to use it during his first term, but was defeated in the Senate. Between the lines: Republicans have increasingly painted public media as left-leaning and biased, citing PBS programs like "Sesame Street" as "woke propaganda." The other side: Public media offers a variety of independent programming from news, culture, food and children's programs, funded to avoid programming influenced by corporations and commercials.
Los Angeles Times
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit the Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600-million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.' Raza writes for the Associated Press.
08-06-2025
- Politics
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'
Hamilton Spectator
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach , even if that leads to more inmates. The South Dakota State Penitentiary For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's laws mean more people are in prison South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
