Amber Duke

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is attempting to hold up $50 billion in farm aid during negotiations over a coronavirus stimulus bill, a GOP aide tells The Spectator. Schumer is 'holding hostage' aid given to farmers through the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), a USDA-owned entity, according to the aide. The farm aid is just the latest piece of the stimulus package to which Democrats have raised objections. A potential deal to move forward on a bill failed Sunday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer said they disagreed with the GOP's approach to bailouts for big businesses. Both claimed the bailouts did not include enough protection for workers.

Donald Trump is right now facing easily the biggest test of his presidency. That’s a crazy thought considering Trump was impeached just three months ago, spent his first two-plus years in office battling claims his campaign colluded with Russia, and faced allegations of campaign finance violations that included paying hush money to a porn star. But the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus is totally out of Trump’s wheelhouse. He’s not fighting against a political opponent, the media, or the courts; instead, as the president pointed out on Twitter, he is battling an ‘invisible enemy’ — an unpredictable and deadly illness that’s quickly spread across the globe.

Joe Biden is projected to win all three states that voted in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night, advancing his delegate lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden won Florida by a wide margin, garnering nearly 62 percent of the vote compared to Sanders’s 23 percent. Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders by a similar margin in 2016. Florida awards 219 delegates proportionally, putting Biden that much closer to the 1,991 delegates required to secure the nomination in the first round of voting at the Democratic National Convention. Poll workers in Florida noted lower turnout than usual due to fears over the coronavirus, a phenomenon that could have hurt Biden due to his popularity among older voters.

Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday over the spread of COVID-19, promising to dedicate $50 billion in funding for states to fight the virus. The order is the latest in a line of actions taken by the administration to try to stem the spread of the virus: major restrictions on travel from China and the European Union, convincing insurance companies to waive copayments on Coronavirus testing, and loosening FDA restrictions on testing, among others. 'We will overcome the threat of the virus,' President Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has one day remaining in his self-quarantine after learning he came into contact with an individual who had coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland at the end of February. Gaetz spoke to The Spectator over the phone from his condo in Florida about the events leading up to his quarantine and how he's trying to stay productive during his lockdown. 'I’m on calls with my staff, I’m doing a radio interview a little bit later, I think I might be doing a phone interview on television a little bit later, so I’m doing all the things I would normally do, just from my house,' Gaetz said when asked about how his work schedule may have changed because of the quarantine.

Former vice president Joe Biden had an impressive showing on ‘Mini Tuesday’, crushing the delegate count and potentially sticking the fork in Sen. Bernie Sanders’s faltering campaign, but Biden’s sudden primary victories belie major concerns about his ability to translate that success into a general election. Biden pulled in two quick victories in Mississippi and Missouri, which signaled big trouble for Sanders since he lost Missouri by less than half a percentage point against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden continued his sweep by taking Michigan, the biggest prize of the night and a state in which the Democratic socialist pulled off an upset victory in the last election.

Arlington, Virginia A special type of Democratic voter lives in the suburbs of DC that conservatives heavily caricature whose existence I couldn't confirm until now. Overwhelmingly white, young, progressive, desperately out of touch, and they love Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Warren fans are hard to come by nowadays, but I was lucky enough to find one of her last pockets of support at an Arlington Democrats and Arlington Young Democrats election night party. Nearly a hundred of the club's members gathered at William Jeffrey's Tavern, a bar with plenty of craft beers on tap and a projector screen set up to display live Super Tuesday results. Local news crews swarmed the small section of the bar reserved for the group.

President Donald Trump has ruffled yet more feathers in the past two weeks by serving up his opinions on the Justice Department and the Supreme Court. The president’s critics say his actions are an assault on democratic institutions and a tipping of the scales of justice. His allies argue that the president has every right to express his discontent with elements of the judicial system after the farce of the last three years.  Trump kicked off his feud with the DoJ by weighing on federal prosecutors’ recommended seven-to-nine-year sentence for political consultant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

‘Roger Stone is the worst person to ever walk the face of the Earth,’a middle-aged man in a suit said to no one in particular in the green room at WJLA, a local ABC station, in Washington, DC. I, for one, could think of more than a few people who are probably worse than Stone, but opted to keep my mouth shut to avoid ramping up tensions before the show even started. It turns out my efforts were for naught, because I ended up on a panel with a deranged woman who was aghast at the notion that anyone could believe nine years is a terribly long sentence for someone convicted of a non-violent crime. Stone was found guilty in November 2019 on charges of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction of a House investigation.

The media frets constantly that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric will lead to violence against Democrats and even — the horror! — journalists. But the same media is curiously silent when Republicans become the targets of hate. On Saturday, for instance, a Florida man drove his van through a Trump campaign volunteer tent because, as he told police, ‘someone had to take a stand’. The incident started when the man drove his van slowly up to the tent, according to a police report. Two volunteers approached the man’s van to chat with him when ‘the vehicle accelerated towards them and the tent.’ ‘Both victims had to move out of the way quickly in order to prevent themselves from being struck by the vehicle.

President Donald Trump successfully trolled Democrats once again Monday — hosting a packed rally the night before their New Hampshire primary election and successfully directing attention and energy away from Democratic campaigners desperate to interest voters. The near-overflowing arena at Southern New Hampshire University stood in stark contrast to the sparsely attended campaign trail events put on just around the corner by Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and the rest of the Democratic field. Bernie Sanders may have a rabid online fan base, but how many would camp out all night and day in the frigid February snow for a chance to see their political hero? Warren couldn’t even get hungry diners to glance up from their meals long enough to ask for their vote.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh condemned Nancy Pelosi for ripping up a copy of President Trump's State of the Union address at the end of his speech. ‘She might as well rip up any plans for attracting independent voters,’ Murtaugh told The Spectator.‘Pelosi and the Democrats sat on their hands through all of the good news for Americans in that speech. It’s a sad place to be when good news for America is bad news for Democrats.’ https://twitter.