Amber Duke

Shortly after reports surfaced that President Joe Biden's team had found classified documents at his office at the Penn Biden Center this past November, the mainstream media rushed to "contextualize" the story. "Contextualize," in this case, means they justified Biden's mishandling of classified materials and drilled into readers that he was much more responsible in regard to the matter than former president Donald Trump. Biden, they said, had possession of far fewer documents overall and was much more cooperative with the Department of Justice in turning them over to the proper authorities once his team found them. Needless to say, these media attempts to downplay Biden's mishandling of classified materials relative to Trump's have not aged well.

After years of neglect, it seems federal and city officials are finally removing the homeless encampments littered across Washington, DC. Earlier this year, homeless people were cleared from areas outside of Union Station ahead of President Joe Biden's address to the nation from the historic train hall and bus depot. Within the past month, the National Park Service also cleared encampments from Scott Circle. The removals are part of a longer-term plan by the National Park Service. The NPS will be enforcing its "no-camping regulation" across the nation's capital, with the goal of having all encampments on national park land cleared by the end of 2023.

The GOP will take control of the House of Representatives in January. Beyond the current debate over who will lead the party's new majority — will Representative Kevin McCarthy become speaker? — Republicans have to determine which wars to wage with the Democrat-controlled Senate. Chief among these will be budgetary battles. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that it's likely Congress will pass a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government until January, rather than the larger ominous bill floated by Democrats that would last until the end of the fiscal year. This means the newly GOP-controlled House will be thrust into a debate over the federal budget immediately after taking office. Luckily, they don't have to start from scratch.

The GOP absolutely blew a historic opportunity in the 2022 midterms and, sadly, it seems nothing in the party will change. For all the talk of accountability and blame last week, many in the GOP now seem content to just… move on. All eyes have turned to the 2024 presidential nomination with former president Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday night that he would be running for a third time. Trump’s rally handed the establishment a welcome distraction from their own failures in the midterms; now, the debate is over how badly Trump hurt the party with his endorsements and whether or not he and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will officially go to war. The party — and more importantly the voters! —  should decide if they still want Trump to be their leader.

Less than a week out from the 2022 midterm elections, the White House announced that President Joe Biden would be delivering a speech warning of alleged "threats" to democracy. The backdrop for the address tonight that will almost assuredly accuse his fellow countrymen of being extremists and traitors? Washington, DC's Union Station. In many ways, Union Station is the ideal backdrop for a speech by the leader of the Democrat Party. It is the perfect embodiment of what the left's foolish and deranged policies have done to our nation: reduced a once thriving and majestic place into a crime-infested trash heap. Just seven years ago, I interned down the street from Union Station.