Wisconsin Right Now

(The Center Square) - Following the Wisconsin Election Commission's dismissal of a complaint from a Democratic National Committee staffer, who seeks to remove Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the ballot, the plaintiff has doubled down and filed an expedited appeal with the state’s Supreme Court.

Court documents reveal it accepted the case Thursday and is requesting that the plaintiff provide additional information, actions that have caused two Supreme Court justices to dissent.

“The majority issues an unprecedented order directing the petitioner – within two hours – to give the court contact information for the respondents, which is currently absent from the record because no one has entered an appearance on behalf of any of those parties. How is the petitioner – an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – supposed to know the name or physical address of an ‘attorney or other representative of each respondent who is authorized to accept service of orders issued by this court’?” Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote in dissent of the Supreme Court's majority ruling. “To my knowledge, at no time in history has the court issued orders before parties had made their appearances. Petitioner filed this original action on Monday, served the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Tuesday, and served the Wisconsin Green Party just yesterday. The majority steps beyond its neutral role to lawyer the case on behalf of the DNC, seemingly facilitating an expedited review of this original action. Other parties presenting original action petitions have not received such preferential treatment by this court.”

Chief Justice Annette Kinsgland Ziegler joined the dissent.

Deputy Operations Director of Wisconsin’s Democratic National Committee David Strange submitted the challenge to Stein’s candidacy last week, The Center Square previously reported.

The complaint argued that because the Green Party did not nominate candidates for the Wisconsin Senate or Assembly by the Aug. 13 primaries, the party has no qualified presidential electors.

WEC Attorney Angela O'Brien Sharpe dismissed Strange's complaint on Friday, saying the commissioners named as respondents in the complaint can't decide on a matter brought against them without a conflict of interest. Strange immediately appealed to the state’s highest court.

Stein won more than 31,000 Wisconsin votes in 2016 – more than Donald Trump's winning margin in the state. The state's Supreme Court banned Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins from the ballot in 2020 after the WEC deadlocked on whether he had submitted enough proper signatures.

Recent swing state polls show many Democratic voters say they would be more likely to vote for a nominee who will pledge to withhold weapons from Israel. They also reported being more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if Biden were to secure a ceasefire.

Stein, who has called the Israel-Hamas war a “genocide,” has criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s policies toward Israel, a weak spot in Harris’ campaign.

“The DNC appears to believe that if they knock Jill Stein off the ballot, her voters will have no choice but to vote for the Democratic ticket,” Co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party Dr. Michael White said. “But Green Party members have expressed the intent to vote against the Democrats in down-ballot races. This won’t win voters to the Democratic Party. It will further fragment the progressive vote. The solution to the Democrats’ dilemma is not voter suppression, like the Republicans. The solution is Ranked-choice voting. The Democrats want to make certain Green votes won’t be counted. The Green Party wants to ensure every vote will be counted.”

Some of the messaging throughout the Democratic National Convention in Chicago seems to focus on characterizing former President Donald Trump as a racist and misogynist. A Black Republican from Chicago says those are lies.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has long used terms like “racist” and “misogynist” in verbal attacks against the Republican presidential candidate. Throughout the week in Chicago, from the main convention stage to the Illinois delegation breakfast, speakers have echoed similar characterizations.

Asked if it’s fair to characterize a person who half the country supports in such terms over policy differences, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said party leaders aren’t saying that Trump supporters are racists and misogynist.

“I am characterizing their candidate Donald Trump as a misogynist and a racist,” Raould said Wednesday after the Illinois Democrats’ breakfast. “I’m speaking for myself, I’m characterizing him as a misogynist and a racist based on the words that have come directly out of his mouth.”

Frederick Walls, a Black Republican running for a statehouse seat in Chicago, told The Center Square he is regularly in conversations with community members.

“They may say ‘well, he’s racist,’ and I say ‘just prove it’ and then they can’t prove this,” Walls said while wearing a Trump 2024 hat. “So then I educate them on Donald Trump and say, ‘well do you personally know him and what has he personally done to you?’ And they can’t say anything. And so I say, ‘so all you know about him is what the media have showed you.’”

Walls said the media is lying. He then provides background about Trump’s support for Black leaders like Jesse Jackson.

“The Republican Party was founded to abolish slavery,” Walls said. “Everything about the Republican Party was helping Black people getting back.”

Early voting for the Nov. 5 election begins Sept. 16.

(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Elections Commission says there won't be a recall against any Milwaukee Public School board members. Now, Milwaukee's teachers’ union wants answers.

The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association celebrated the Elections Commission declared MPS recall organizers failed to gather enough signatures to force a recall election against four Milwaukee School Board members.

“The people of Milwaukee have emphatically rejected this dishonest effort to remove good public servants from our democratically elected school board,” MTEA President Ingrid Walker-Henry said in a statement.

The MPS School Board Recall Collaborative wanted to force a new election against Board President Marva Herndon, Vice President Jilly Gokalgandhi, member Erika Siemsen and at-large board member Missy Zombor because of MPS’s financial problems and the secrecy surrounding them.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission found the xollaborative was short by thousands of valid signatures.

MTEA said voters now need to know just who was behind the collaborative and why.

“The public faces of the recall effort were a private voucher school teacher and the founder of a now-shuttered private charter school. They claimed to represent a broad grassroots movement. It became clear in late July, however, there were indications that anonymous forces were working behind the scenes, including resigned former school board member Aisha Carr, according to campaign literature distributed by canvassers,” the union alleged in a statement.

Carr resigned from MPS’ board in May, just ahead of charges that she lied about where she lived in order to keep her board seat.

“Despite their embarrassing failure to submit adequate signatures, the people of Milwaukee should remember that this campaign was fueled by individuals and groups whose sole vision of education in Milwaukee is its complete privatization,” Walker-Henry added.

Walker-Henry didn’t provide any proof that school choice supporters drove the recall effort.

“Taxpayers also deserve answers. This dishonest campaign, which was ironically supposed to be about accountability and resource management, was a total waste of taxpayer dollars and staff resources,” she said.

Milwaukee Public Schools asked taxpayers for a $252 million tax increase in April. Voters approved it. But weeks later news broke that MPS’ finances were worse than first indicated, and that the district was in line to lose millions of dollars in both state and federal funding because of incomplete financial reports.

Those reports have not yet been turned in. So far, MPS has lost $17 million in federal Head Start dollars. Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction said Milwaukee Schools could lose as much as $50 million by the time the accounting is all done.

(The Center Square) – It’s not that Republican lawmakers don’t want to give the University of Wisconsin any more money, one legislator says the problem is the university is reluctant to tell the legislature where the money it currently gets is being spent.

Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, was on News Talk 1130 WISN Wednesday, and said the UW System is likely not getting more money until school leaders improve their relationship with the legislature.

“It's hard to be confident in institutions that are seeming so reluctant to share simple information with the legislature,” Nedweski said. “I mean, the lack of transparency and accountability shown by the system in the last two decades has resulted in so much distrust between the legislature, the system and the taxpayer.”

University President Jay Rothman earlier this week announced plans to ask the legislature for $914 million in the next state budget.

Rothman said the UW needs the money to cover the costs of pay raises, to provide wrap-around support for students and to avoid a tuition increase.

Nedweski said it’s a hard sell to say that every taxpayer in Wisconsin should subsidize all of the university’s programs.

“The taxpayer doesn’t want to bear the burden for the cost of everyone's education after K12,” Nedweski added. “We want to say things like ‘If you can't figure out why you're losing students, why would we give you more money?’.”

University regents are set to vote on Rothman’s funding increase Thursday, and the plan would then go to Gov. Tony Evers, and eventually to lawmakers during next year’s budget hearings.

Nedweski said there is plenty of support among lawmakers for the University of Wisconsin, particularly research projects at UW-Madison.

But she said Republican lawmakers want to see some reforms, and a new plan for the UW’s future before simply writing bigger taxpayer checks.

“I see an absolute need for increased transparency and increased accountability to the taxpayer,” Nedweski said. “Until we see that, there's going to be a lot of push back.”

New federal economic data shows that previous data significantly overestimated the health of the U.S. economy.

The Department of Labor released revised jobs data that showed they overestimated the number of jobs created in the U.S. economy by 818,000, a whopping revision that set off alarm bells Wednesday.

Economic data is often revised in this way, but the size of this change is large enough to raise eyebrows.

“Even this number is shocking, job growth is still positive,” Jamie Cox, Managing Partner for Harris Financial Group in Richmond, Va., said in a statement. “If you are in the rate cut in September camp, these data all but seal the deal on what Fed needed to cut rates.”

The new job creation numbers are nearly a third lower than the previous figure. The numbers come amid scrutiny of the economic record of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential pick, whose administration oversaw a massive spike in inflation while in office.

To address inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve Hikes interest rates, and those rates have increased significantly in recent years. However the FED relies on federal jobs data to make those decisions.

Economists are concerned that the data could be so far off for even as that data is used for elections and for federal decision making.

“THE DATA DEPENDENT FED IS FLYING BLIND — UNRELIABLE DATA,” Johns Hopkins Professor of Applied Economics Steve Hanke wrote on X.

The revision drew widespread outrage. What the Washington Post called a “big fix” to the jobs data, and The Wall Street Journal reported that the job market was weaker than previously reported.

“It’s troubling to see the Dept. of Labor issue an unusually large correction to last year’s jobs report,” Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “As unemployment rises, American workers need pro-growth action, not the stale policies of the Biden-Harris admin.”

Former President Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration, calling it a “massive scandal.”

“The Harris-Biden Administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America,” Trump said in a statement. “New Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the Administration PADDED THE NUMBERS with an extra 818,000 Jobs that DO NOT EXIST, AND NEVER DID. The real Numbers are much worse than that and, if Comrade Kamala gets another four years, millions more Jobs will VANISH overnight, and Inflation will completely destroy our Country.“

A newly released report from the House Ways and Committee alleges that President Joe Biden committed impeachable offenses in his role in his family’s alleged overseas business dealings.

“As described in this report, the Committees have accumulated evidence demonstrating that President Biden has engaged in impeachable conduct,” the report said.

The 291-page report lays out in detail what have at times been murky allegations against the president.

House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has helped spearhead the investigation, uncovering and laying out evidence. He and Republicans on the impeachment committee argue that the Biden family, with the help and knowledge of the president, used the Biden family name around the world to rake in nearly $30 million from overseas entities in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere in secretive influence deals.

“In order to obscure the source of these funds, the Biden family and their associates set up shell companies to conceal these payments from scrutiny,” the report said. “The Biden family used proceeds from these business activities to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to Joe Biden—including thousands of dollars that are directly traceable to China.”

Biden has brushed off questions about his involvement in a scheme being highlighted in the Republicans' report. The administration has yet to release a formal response in reaction to the report.

A key question in the investigation has been, even if Hunter Biden and others monetized the “Biden brand,” how much did the president really know or participate?

“Witnesses acknowledged that Hunter Biden involved Vice President Biden in many of his business dealings with Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, and Ukrainian individuals and companies,” the report said. “Then-Vice President Biden met or spoke with nearly every one of the Biden family’s foreign business associates, including those from Ukraine, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. As a result, the Biden family has received millions of dollars from these foreign entities.”

The president has repeatedly brushed off these allegations, and so far Republicans have not gotten the needed votes to make impeachment a serious threat.

From the report:

First and foremost, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family. Among other aspects of this conspiracy, the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden. As Vice President, President Biden actively participated in this conspiracy by, among other things, attending dinners with his family’s foreign business partners and speaking to them by phone, often when being placed on speakerphone by Hunter Biden. For example, in 2014, Vice President Biden attended a dinner for Hunter Biden with Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina.4 Following the dinner, Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a firm associated with Hunter Biden. Then, months later, as Hunter Biden and his business associates continued to solicit more money from Baturina, Vice President Biden participated in a phone call with Baturina and Hunter Biden where Vice President Biden told Baturina, “you be good to my boy.” Moreover, President Biden knowingly participated in this conspiracy. Based on the totality of the evidence, it is inconceivable that President Biden did not understand that he was taking part in an effort to enrich his family by abusing his office of public trust.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has lied to the American people time and again to cover up and obstruct the investigation into tax crimes committed by a Biden family business enterprise that capitalized on political power,” Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “The American people have been shocked to learn the magnitude of the scheme going back to the President’s time as Vice President, when Biden family members were allowed to use Air Force Two as their own private business jet.

“None of this would have come to light had it not been for the two IRS whistleblowers who were tired of watching their investigation into the President’s son become obstructed, delayed, and denied the ability to move forward as the pursuit of truth demanded,” he added.

The whistleblowers in question are Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler, two IRS employees with nearly three decades of combined federal experience.

Those whistleblowers came forward and testified before Congress about Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes, saying that this case was unlike any other. One whistleblower testified that the Biden administration interfered in the investigation to protect Hunter and prevent a raid at the president’s Delaware home.

Earlier this year, Hunter, who still faces tax charges Biden was found guilty on federal gun charges.

President Biden has said he will not pardon his son.

Whether Biden falling out of favor with his own party in the presidential election will change that trajectory remains to be seen.

“Americans now know Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ the Bidens sold around the world to enrich the Biden family, and Joe Biden knew of, benefitted from, and participated in his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said in a statement. “The entire Biden influence peddling model relied on Joe Biden’s presence—at meetings, on the phone, or at dinners—to demonstrate his family members’ influence over him, and he repeatedly provided it.”

Requests by the federal government to vacate injunctions over the Biden administration's controversial Title IX rule have been blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Friday 5-4 ruling means the injunctions preventing implementation of the new rule in 26 states will be allowed to remain in force until the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals takes up the case in October.

The opinion said the court couldn't unhitch the majority of the new rule from the challenged provisions that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to Title IX. Proponents of keeping Title IX as originally intended in 1972 celebrated the win, and reminded the fight continues until a final ruling.

In the unsigned decision, the majority said, "On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the Government has not provided this Court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her partial dissent that "every Member of the Court agrees" that the states are entitled to an injunction until the case is decided.

Attorneys general from Louisiana and West Virginia praised the ruling.

"The Supreme Court sees that the Title IX revisions being pushed by the Biden administration would have ended sex-based protections for biological women in locker rooms, bathrooms, sports and elsewhere, plain and simple," West Virginia Attorney General Morrisey said in a release. "This radical agenda from this administration is a retreat from the progress women have made."

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who brought one of several lawsuits against the new rule, also celebrated the decision.

"I'm grateful that the Supreme Court agreed not to block our injunction against this radical rewrite of Title IX," Murrill said. "Other than the 19th Amendment guaranteeing our right to vote, Title IX has been the most successful law in history at ensuring equal opportunity for women in education at all levels and in collegiate athletics.

"This fight isn’t over, but I’ll keep fighting to block this radical agenda that eviscerates Title IX."

(The Center Square) – Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are tied in a new poll of Wisconsin voters.

In a head-to-head matchup between the Republican and Democratic nominees for president, the American Greatness/TIPP poll of likely and registered voters shows both Trump and Harris at 47% support.

When independent and third party candidates are added, Harris garners 46% support to Trump's 45%, within the poll's +/- 3.4% margin of error. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulls in 6% support, with 2% undecided.

"The presidential race is very tight like 2020, within the margin of error," pollster Raghavan Mayur with TIPP told The Center Square. "It is probably the tightest among the battleground states."

Mayur said that the economy, immigration, and national debt/government spending are the key issues that could sway independent and undecided voters in the state, with 52% listing the economy as among their top three issues and 36% citing immigration and border security.

Within the economy, the price of food and inflation overall are the top concerns of voters, Mayur said.

"Independents are more closer to Republicans than Democrats in terms of issues," he said. "Further, 61% feel they are worse off than four years ago" while just 33% said they are better off and the remaining are unsure.

"Harris' relief rally/honeymoon advantage is nearly non-existent in Wisconsin," Mayur said.

Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race July 21 under heavy pressure from top Democratic leaders. Democrats are set to make the nomination official at their national convention that begins Monday in Chicago.

The TIPP poll surveyed 1,015 registered voters in Wisconsin, of which 976 were likely voters. The poll was conducted August 12-14 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.4%.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released monthly border apprehension data on Friday, saying, “statistics show lowest southwest border encounters in nearly four years.” CBP also claimed illegal border crossings were down by 34% from June to July and the drop is due to a presidential proclamation issued in June.

Troy Miller, a senior official performing the duties of the CBP Commissioner, said recent Biden-Harris policies led “to the lowest number of encounters along the southwest border in more than three years.”

Despite these claims, the total number of apprehended illegal border crossers surpassed 10.5 million in July with two months left in the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

That number excludes 2 million gotaways, those who illegally entered and evaded capture, bringing the total number to more than 12.5 million.

That is greater than the individual populations of 45 states. If illegal border crossers were a state, they’d be the sixth most populous state ahead of Illinois.

That’s up from illegal border crossers totaling more than the individual populations of 43 states in March, up from 23 states in June 2022, when The Center Square first began making the comparison to state, county and country populations.

No other presidential administration in U.S. history has ever reported even a fraction of 12.5 million in one term let alone multiple terms combined.

The total number of apprehended illegal border crossers since fiscal 2021 was 10,522,029, excluding the two million gotaways. Illinois’ population is an estimated 12,516,863.

As The Center Square has reported every month since early 2021, after President Joe Biden took office, the number of illegal border crossers increased. The publicly reported CBP apprehension data excludes gotaways, the tens of thousands identified as “inadmissible” released into the country through a CBP One phone app every month, and the tens of thousands released through parole programs created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. More than a dozen of the programs were identified as illegal by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and used as evidence to impeach Mayorkas in February.

The CBP apprehension data total also excludes the hundreds of thousands brought in through parole programs from eight specific countries, including after the administration opened processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala to facilitate entry to the U.S.

“Despite the false narrative they’re attempting to project, the unprecedented border crisis the president and his ‘border czar’ have created continues to rage on,” U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said. “This administration is orchestrating a massive shell game, encouraging otherwise-inadmissible aliens to cross at ports of entry instead of between them – thereby creating a façade of improved optics for the administration, but in reality imposing a growing burden on our communities.”

“Total encounters at our ports – land, sea, and air – are up exponentially this fiscal year compared to the Biden-Harris administration’s first year in office, and are on track to surpass last year’s total," Green added. "Since January 2023, more than 1.28 million inadmissible aliens have been granted entry to our country at official ports of entry through just the CBP One and CHNV mass-parole programs Biden and Harris created.”

Green said Biden-Harris border policies "have done damage that will take decades to remedy. And for the families of Americans like Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray, that damage will never be undone,” referring to two women and a 12-year-old girl who were murdered by criminal foreign nationals released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Nationwide encounters show that 2,597,784 illegal foreign nationals have been apprehended this fiscal year, after 3.2 million were in fiscal 2023, the highest number on record. In fiscal 2022, over 2.7 million were apprehended, breaking records at the time, after nearly 2 million were apprehended in fiscal 2021, the first historic record.

The majority apprehended every year are single adults.

Southwest border encounters show 1,925,773 illegal border crossers were apprehended this fiscal year through July, after a record nearly 2.5 million were in fiscal 2023. That is after nearly 2.4 million were apprehended in fiscal 2022 and over 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, both records.

The benchmark for records is the unprecedented number apprehended at the northern border – the highest by far under this administration than any other in recorded history.

This fiscal year, 162,865 illegal border crossers were apprehended at the northern border. That’s after a record nearly 190,000 were apprehended in fiscal 2023, and nearly 110,000 in fiscal 2022. Both were record setters and a massive increase from 27,000 in fiscal 2021.

The “whitewashing” of stolen valor claims leveled against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz insult servicemembers, who know better than any how to spot a “coward” among them.

So says Pat Harrigan, the Army Green Beret vying for North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District seat in Washington, D.C., during a visit to the VFW Post 92 in Lower Burrell, Pa., just outside of Pittsburgh, on Thursday.

Appearing alongside Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket, Harrigan said media claims that Walz misspoke when he said he deployed to war defy reason and logic.

During more than seven minutes of remarks, Harrigan implied that it was no accident that Walz printed the wrong rank on coins that he himself distributed. Nor did it seem likely that he never received final paperwork committing his unit to a deployment in Iraq, just before he quit.

“We believe it is unforgivable to do what Tim Walz did," he said. "When among others the command sergeant major who replaced him, the mother of one of his unit's fallen soldiers and the unit's chaplain are calling him a coward, how dare Tim Walz call it simply partisan attacks?

“And quite frankly, how dare you, the media, dismiss the men and women who actually know Walz’ character?”

Vice President Kamala Harris chose Walz as her running mate on Aug. 6, concluding a two-week search that considered other Democratic party favorites like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly.

Harris ascended to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race on July 21 and promoted her as his successor. The party officially nominated her on Aug. 2 via a virtual roll call.

Since then, the duo has struggled by most accounts sans polling. Harris is criticized for dodging interviews and open question press conferences. Meanwhile, Walz faces scrutiny over his record during COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd.

His military claims, however, have arguably resonated the most.

Video shows Walz claiming he retired as a command sergeant major from the National Guard and that he had carried “a weapon of war” in war.

Harrigan said he understands if people, particularly those who have not served in the armed forces, think it is “nitpicking” when “our veterans community reads his words and scream, ‘stolen valor.’”

“Without serving and deploying, I might not get it either,” he said as Vance, the first post-9/11 veteran on a major party ticket, stood behind him. “But I’m hoping that at the very least, by the time I sit down here today, you’ll understand why we are so passionate in our united voice that Tim Walz is a coward, who betrayed his men at their greatest time of need and is not fit to serve the United States of America as vice president.”

Harrigan said Walz' actions show he "does not care about the men who will pay for his mistakes,” noting that even his unit’s chaplain called him a coward.

He described Walz as an exaggerator and bad leader who abandoned the men and women under his care to further his political career.

“So, to the media listening, I appreciate that you can simply write off a remark from Tim that included, ‘When I deployed to war’ as a misspeak,” he said. “To those of us standing in this room, that cannot be a misspeak. It’s impossible for it to be a misspeak.”

Harrigan first deployed to Afghanistan at age 23, leading 350 Americans at an air-access-only combat outpost. He returned after volunteering for Special Forces and becoming a Green Beret.

On Super Tuesday, Harrigan emerged from a close primary defeating state Rep. Grey Mills, R-Iredell. He faces Democrat Ralph Scott Jr. and Libertarian Steven Feldman on Nov. 5.

Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is taking fire for her new "price-gouging" ban that critics say is little more than communism-style "price controls" where government heavily regulates industries.

Harris’ effort to address elevated consumer prices hits at a key pain point for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to go about fixing that problem will be the subject of close scrutiny when she lays out the plan at a North Carolina rally Friday. Harris is expected to unveil a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on specifically how she will address inflation. Prices have risen more than 20% overall since she and President Joe Biden took office.

Harris’ campaign this week touted the “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” to help Americans with high grocery prices and prevent "excessive" profits. Harris' campaign said she would also order the Department of Justice to take a look at mergers between grocers and food producers.

Critics of the plan immediately blasted it as “price controls,” anti-capitalism and noted similar ideas failed in other countries. They also argue Harris is blaming corporations for high prices when inflation fueled by government spending is really to blame.

“Price controls might sound good to some, but they do not work,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They lead to supply shortages and in the end, higher prices. Looks like Kamala Harris is a communist at heart.”

Price gouging is currently already illegal, but the Biden-Harris administration has argued that corporations have taken advantage of elevated inflation to raise prices even higher.

“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris, a person who has never built a business, doesn’t understand profit and loss, has never met payrolls, and who has never competed in a consumer market, is going to propose federal price controls,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a statement. “That should terrify every American. She claims that Congress needs to ban ‘price gouging,’ which is already widely illegal and not the cause of high prices. The skyrocketing prices created by the Biden-Harris administration aren’t price-gouging, it’s inflation.”

Price controls are a feature of communistic “command and control” economies, the reason Harris will likely seek to avoid the term, if her plan will truly include price controls at all, and why such a strong reaction broke out against the plan this week.

“[Harris’] solution to the Harris Price Hikes she caused is big government on steroids – where Washington bureaucrats stick their hands into American businesses and say what they can and can’t sell a product for,” Scott said. “It never works because it causes companies to make much less of something – destroying supply and causing a mass shortage of goods.”

Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary and is considered a potential cabinet appointee if former President Donald Trump is elected, called out Republicans on the issue, asking whether they would have “the spine” to critique Harris’ plan.

“The GOP has a wide-open opportunity to embrace capitalism again,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “No, that doesn’t mean blindly reciting neoliberal shibboleths about spreading ‘democracy through capitalism’ abroad (that doesn’t work: see China). But it *does* mean embracing exceptionalism & merit over protectionism & patronage here at home. That’s the fork in the road ahead for our own movement.”

Polling shows that inflation remains a top concern for voters and small business owners. Inflation has slowed from its breakneck pace earlier in the Biden-Harris term, but some goods and services have continued to rise.

As The Center Square previously reported, roasted coffee prices rose 9.1% and dairy product prices increased 9.4% in the past two months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pork and “processed young chickens” prices saw slightly higher increases.

So far, Harris’ policy agenda has been sparse, and what record she does have on the border and her time as a prosecutor she has tried to distance herself from, making this new policy agenda crucial for her campaign.