House GOP weighs in on abortion
Treasury asked to supply information on Bidens’ finances
WASHINGTON — House Republicans are taking early action on abortion with their new majority, approving two measures Wednesday that make clear they want further restraints after the Supreme Court overruled the federal right to abortion last year.
GOP lawmakers also opened their long-promised investigation into President Joe Biden and his family on Wednesday, wielding the power of their new majority to demand information from the
Treasury Department and former Twitter executives as they laid the groundwork for public hearings.
And in a new revelation sure to intensify Republican attacks on Biden, aides found other classified documents dating from the Obama administration at a second location associated with Biden, according to a person familiar with the situation.
It is not clear where or when the documents were recovered. But Biden’s aides have been scouring various places since November, when his lawyers discovered a handful of classified documents, which included briefing materials on foreign countries, when they were closing a think tank office in Washington.
On Tuesday, Biden told reporters in Mexico City that he was “surprised” to learn in November that his lawyers found classified government documents in his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
He said his staff had fully cooperated with the National Archives and the Justice Department, which is examining the matter.
The documents that Biden’s lawyers voluntarily returned to the archives in November had not been logged as missing. It is not clear if the new material had been flagged by the archives.
Wading into a contentious social issue, the new GOP-led House passed one resolution to condemn attacks on anti-abortion facilities, including pregnancy crisis
centers, and a separate bill that would impose penalties if a doctor refused to care for an infant born alive after an abortion attempt.
For the investigation of Biden and his family, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee sent a series of letters requesting financial information from the Treasury Department about financial transactions by members of the Biden family that were flagged as suspicious activity.
Those reports are routine, with larger financial transactions automatically flagged to the government, and are not evidence on their own of misconduct.
“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and chairman of the committee, said in a statement.
Lawmakers also requested testimony from multiple former Twitter executives who were involved in the company’s handling of an October 2020 story from the New York Post about Hunter Biden, the president’s younger son. Republicans say that story was suppressed for political reasons.
Neither of the abortion-related measures adopted Wednesday is expected to pass the Democratic-led Senate, but Republicans said they were making good on promises to address the issue along with other legislative priorities in the first days in power.
“You don’t have freedom, true liberty, unless government protects your most fundamental right, your right to live,” said new
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who led debate on the measures.
Even so, the two measures are far from a bold statement on abortion, which has proved politically tricky for them since the Supreme Court decision in June that overturned Roe v. Wade after almost 50 years and allowed states to enact near or total bans on abortion.
While some Republicans have pushed to expand on the ruling with a national ban — or a compromise ban that would limit abortions after a certain point — many Republicans have rejected that option. And it has become clear that most Americans would oppose it.
A July AP-NORC poll showed Republicans are largely opposed to allowing abortion “for any reason” and after 15 weeks into a pregnancy. According to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate, a majority of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That includes nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and about 4 in 10 Republicans.
The national sentiment has made some Republicans wary of the party’s traditional full-throated opposition to abortion rights.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who says she is opposed to abortion, believes the early push on the issue is misguided. She said she believes the majority of voters in her swing district opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe.
“This is probably not the way to start off the week,” Mace told MSNBC.
Emboldened by opposition to the Supreme Court decision, Democrats enthusiastically opposed the two measures, predicting that Republicans were only laying the groundwork for a national ban.
Democrats criticized the resolution condemning attacks on pro-life facilities as one-sided because it did not condemn similar — and long-standing — violence against abortion clinics.
The Democrats argued that the legislation imposing new penalties on doctors is unnecessary because it is already illegal to kill an infant.
It would, however, create complicated new standards making it harder for health providers to do their jobs, they said.