Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos said former President Donald Trump called this month and pushed him to try to overturn the results of the 20-month-old 2020 presidential election. "He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin," Vos, a Republican, told Milwaukee's WISN in an interview that aired Tuesday. Vos said Trump reached out to him "last week," after the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a decision this month restricting the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in future elections. 

Eighteen months after a pair of former school board members in Florida founded Moms for Liberty, the group’s first national gathering drew 500 people, including major Republican figures, to a waterfront hotel in Tampa, demonstrating the growing political influence of these local conservative activists. 

The organization’s rapid ascension has been driven by the appeal of its core issues among conservatives, including battling mask mandates in schools, banning library books that address sexuality and gender identity, and curtailing lessons on racial inequity and discrimination, its founders say.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Extreme temperatures haunted two continents on Wednesday, with more than 100 million people in the United States facing excessive heat conditions and a heat wave that had scorched Western Europe taking aim at Central Europe.

As 100-degree temperatures became uncomfortably routine on both sides of the Atlantic, President Biden said climate change presented a “clear and present danger” to the world. But days after suffering a major setback in Congress on his climate policies, he limited his announcements to a measure expanding offshore wind energy projects, while promising other, unspecified actions down the road.

“Let me be clear: Climate change is an emergency,” Biden said in a visit to Somerset, Mass. “In the coming weeks I’m going to use my power to turn these words into formal, official government actions. When it comes to fighting climate change, I will not take no for an answer.”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican conference chair, said this weekend that the GOP will investigate the Biden family if they clinch a majority in Congress during the midterms.

Stefanik accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter of having "illegal ties to crime" and "relationships with other foreign adversaries, and entities that he should not be involved with," but didn't provide substantiation.

"And Joe Biden profited from that," Stefanik claimed. "So, we intend to investigate."

"We've already made those document requests and we're not going to hesitate when it comes to utilizing our subpoena power," she added. "Because again, the American people deserve accountability and deserve an investigation into what I believe is the Biden crime family."

Stefanik also claimed that the "entire Joe Biden family" had been "profiting" off Biden's position of power, particularly when he was vice president during the Obama administration.

"That is unacceptable in America. And imagine if the Republicans ever did that," Stefanik said. "Democrats would be investigating absolutely every aspect of that."

Are you concerned about global warming?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Secret Service informed the House Jan. 6 committee that it was still attempting a forensic search for the phone records on Tuesday morning, when it delivered not the missing text messages the panel was seeking but “thousands of pages of documents” and other records related to decisions made on Jan. 6, according to the agency’s spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi. Later, in an interview, Mr. Guglielmi said the phone records were probably not recoverable.

The committee had subpoenaed the missing text messages and other material from the Secret Service after it was told by the inspector general for the service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that the agency was unable to produce some text messages from its agents’ phones from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eight months ago, we left COP26 [twenty-sixth conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] with 1.5°C on life support. Since then, its pulse has weakened further. Greenhouse‑gas concentrations, sea‑level rise and ocean heat have broken new records. Half of humanity is in the danger zone from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires.

No nation is immune. Yet, we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction. What troubles me most is that, in facing this global crisis, we are failing to work together as a multilateral community. Nations continue to play the blame game instead of taking responsibility for our collective future.

We cannot continue this way. We must rebuild trust and come together — to keep 1.5°C alive and to build climate-resilient communities. Promises made must be promises kept. We need to move forward together on all fronts — mitigation, adaptation, finance, [and] loss and damage.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The House today passed a bill that would recognize same-sex marriages at the federal level, as 47 Republicans joined Democrats in support of a measure responding to growing concern that a conservative Supreme Court could nullify marriage equality.

The Respect for Marriage Act would codify the federal protections for same-sex couples that were put in place in 2015, when the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges established same-sex marriage as a right under the 14th Amendment. The legislation would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defined a marriage as the union between a man and a woman, a law that was struck down by Obergefell but has remained on the books.

The legislation, which passed in a vote of 267 to 157, faces an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate, where most Republicans have opposed gay rights measures. But Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, declined on Tuesday to state a position on the measure.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meteorologists have warned of a “heat apocalypse” in western France as more than 8,500 further people fled their homes to escape a large wildfire sparked by a searing southern European heatwave that has already caused hundreds of deaths.

Nearly 25,000 people have been forced to abandon homes, holiday rentals and campsites for emergency shelters in the Gironde department west of Bordeaux, while blazes in Spain, Portugal and Greece have forced thousands more to flee.

Temperatures across southern Europe showed some sign of abating on Monday as the heatwave, during which temperatures have surpassed 40C (104F) across much of the region, moved north, including towards Britain, which was set for its hottest day on record.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

San Francisco will try out six new models after spending 3½ years working on designs and $550,000 on a pilot program that seeks to fix the problems with the city’s current bins, which critics say are one culprit behind the city’s notoriously dirty streets. The green Renaissance models often overflow and are easily broken into, sometimes causing a bigger mess.

Critics slammed the Public Works department over the lengthy and expensive program while agreeing that San Francisco’s streets are unacceptably filthy. The department has defended its decisions.

As a possible replacement to the current bins, Public Works is sending three custom-designed prototypes made by local companies and three off-the shelf models to locations around San Francisco..

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s contempt-of-Congress trial will stretch into a second day after lawyers labored through a long Monday session trying to select a jury without preconceived opinions. Bannon is facing criminal charges after refusing for months to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Bannon, an unofficial adviser to President Donald Trump at the time of the Capitol attack is charged in federal court with defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee that sought his records and testimony. 

A Texas congressman challenged President Biden to “come and get” his assault rifles — just hours after the state released an extensive report on the shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers.

“I have a message for the Biden Administration. If you’re thinking about taking our ARs, you can start here in Texas,” Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was elected in District 13, said in a video posted to Twitter on Sunday.

“On behalf of all the law-abiding gun owners in Texas, come and get it,” continued the congressman, who represents a stretch of Texas from Lubbock to Wichita Falls.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stanley state lawmaker will chair Idaho Republican Party

Republican delegates elected Rep. Dorothy Moon to the party’s top position at the Idaho GOP State Convention on Saturday. Moon said Idaho was once a “bastion of freedom” but has since been surpassed by other states.

“We have to make sure, with the Democrats coming at us in full force, that we have our barriers up,” Moon said. “Our guns are loaded and ready to keep this state free.”

Moon, a Missouri native, is a three-term House member. She’s a former teacher who co-owns a gold mining company.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.