A bill that would prohibit the spouses of South Dakota state lawmakers from serving as lobbyists was defeated Monday in the state House.

Backers described the bill as a much-needed ethics measure, while opponents said it targeted Republican Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller, of Rapid City, and went too far.

Just a month ago, Frye-Mueller was suspended and censured over harassing a legislative aide in a discussion on vaccines and breastfeeding. The exchange occurred in the presence of Frye-Mueller’s husband, Mike Mueller, who is a private lobbyist with the conservative group South Dakota Citizens for Liberty.

He also testified this session in support of a resolution expressing sympathy for those facing charges for the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. That resolution failed to win passage.

Democratic Rep. Linda Duba, who championed the lobbyist measure in the House, said the bill was meant to address ‘a situation in state government that we need to clean up.’

‘This is not targeted at one individual as you might think,’ Duba said. ‘This can happen ongoing if we do not take this action today.’

The measure previously passed the Senate with the backing of Republican Sen. Mike Rohl. He argued legislators are currently not allowed to lobby until several years after leaving office and described the restriction as a common-sense guardrail.

‘It would be extremely easy to be able to hire a spouse to lobby on behalf of something for you, and that money be easily transferred to a legislator,’ Rohl said in an earlier hearing.

Critics, however, said it would have blocked bills that would be good for all citizens, and caused legal action because the bill didn’t distinguish between not-for-profit, volunteer lobbyists with paid, registered lobbyists, as the court has.

‘This bill is like a shotgun blast where a rifle shot might be appropriate,’ Republican Rep. Jon Hansen said.

Similar bills have been proposed in the past and lawmakers are considering taking it up again.

Residents of Vermont’s largest city will vote Tuesday on whether to create a community police oversight board that would have the authority to discipline Burlington police officers, including the chief.

Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, vetoed a similar measure in 2020 following protests over several use-of-force incidents by Burlington officers and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

This time advocates gathered enough signatures to get the latest proposal on Tuesday’s Town Meeting Day ballot. If the charter change passes, it would need to be approved by the Legislature and governor.

‘This proposal codifies the principle that police should not oversee themselves. They are accountable to the communities that they serve,’ said Burlington City Councilor Gene Bergman, a progressive, at a recent event promoting the measure.

A number of cities have community oversight boards, but not many have discipline authority. Advocates say the Burlington proposal is based on models in Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. But Weinberger, who along with the acting police chief opposes it, wrote to the City Council that police oversight systems in those cities are ‘dramatically different from what is proposed for Burlington in numerous ways, including their disciplinary authority, structure, accountability, and more.’

Similar to the City Council’s 2020 resolution to reduce the size of the police department by 30%, ‘this initiative is a risky experiment with Burlington’s public safety with little to no precedent or planning,’ Weinberger wrote. He also said it will undermine efforts to rebuild the police department. The city already has a volunteer Burlington Police Commission that reviews all complaints and police uses of force, he said.

Berman pushed back against critics, saying it’s not an experiment, is not biased against police and does not remove the chief from disciplinary decisions. The board must find just cause for discipline, and officers have rights to appeal, he said.

‘Clearly community trust in police has eroded. We know trust is critical for public safety. And to restore and maintain trust we need greater community oversight,’ Bergman said.

The co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s, who got their ice cream start in Burlington and have been pushing for police accountability around the country, also had their say.

‘Burlington has long been home to bold ideas about how to build a better world,’ said Jerry Greenfield. ‘Over the last three decades we’ve seen the city thrive when it leans in and lives up to the values of its residents. That’s what ballot item seven is about. It’s about creating independent civilian oversight of the Burlington police department in order to improve our public safety right here.’

The House Oversight Committee is stepping up oversight of the Biden administration with eight expected hearings being held over the next three days. 

‘We have eight hearings this week!’ tweeted the committee’s official account Monday. ‘Accountability is coming!’

The first hearings kick off Wednesday on COVID origins, advances in artificial intelligence, the border crisis and the depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The border hearing will feature testimony from chief border patrol agents and the COVID origins investigation will showcase the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director and health and science experts.

Thursday, the committee will examine the role of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s largest employer, and also ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in pandemic spending. OPM’s Director Kiran Ahuja and officials from the Treasury Department, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Labor are set to testify.

Finally, on Friday, the committee is set to investigate the Biden family after allegations that the Treasury Department is ‘stonewalling’ the GOP probe into the president’s son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

The Treasury Department’s chief of legislative affairs Jonathan Davidson is set to testify as the sole witness Friday. Davidson previously worked on the Biden-Harris transition team as the Economic Nominations Confirmation team lead and previously worked as chief of staff for Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. for a decade.

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., previously told Fox News Digital that the investigation into how the Biden family ‘peddled influence and access around the world for profit’ is the ‘top priority’ for the new GOP House majority.

There will also be a separate hearing on government spending amid nationwide inflation Friday.

West Virginia’s governor has signed a bill splitting the ailing Department of Health and Human Resources into three new departments.

Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill Saturday that separates the massive agency into the departments of Health, Health Facilities and Human Services starting next January. Each department will be headed by a secretary appointed by the governor.

The agency has faced repeated allegations of abuse and mistreatment of the state’s most vulnerable residents in its care. The department, the state’s largest, runs West Virginia’s foster care system, state-run psychiatric facilities and a host of other offices and programs.

Lawmakers have said the department’s current setup is too large to manage in a crisis and that separating the department will increase transparency in the budget process. The DHHR’s $7.6 billion budget currently accounts for about 40% of annual state spending.

The three departments will still maintain an office of shared services containing more than 400 employees responsible for compiling quarterly reports on the efficiency of the new agencies.

The office of a state advocate for foster kids and families will be allowed to independently investigate the state and provide recommended changes to the Legislature. Previously, the office could not interact with the Legislature, according to lawmakers.

According to a dashboard that debuted last year, there are more than 6,100 children in the care of the state. One-third of the in-state placements are children living with relatives acting as certified foster parents.

Last year, Justice vetoed a bill that would have split the DHHR in two parts, saying he first wanted a review of its ‘issues, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies.’

A consulting firm hired by Justice concluded in November that the DHHR should not be split as lawmakers wanted. The McChrystal Group of Alexandria, Virginia, said the current configuration ‘is not an option’ but that splitting the agency would ‘divert time, funding, and leadership’s focus away from serving West Virginians.’

Kansas legislators are considering a proposal that many disability rights advocates say would encourage employers to keep paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage, bucking a national trend.

A Kansas House bill would expand a state income tax credit for goods and services purchased from vendors employing disabled workers, doubling the total allowed to $10 million annually. A committee approved it Monday, sending it to the full House for debate, possibly later this week.

Vendors qualify now by paying all of their disabled workers at least the minimum wage, but the measure would allow vendors to pay some workers less if those workers aren’t involved in purchases of goods and services to earn the tax credit. Supporters argue the bill would enable more vendors to participate, boosting job and vocational training opportunities for disabled people.

The Kansas debate comes as employers nationally have moved toward paying at least the federal hourly minimum wage of $7.25. About 122,000 disabled workers received less in 2019, compared to about 295,000 in 2010, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report to Congress in January.

Critics argue that below-minimum-wage jobs exploit workers such as Trey Lockwood, a 30-year-old Kansas City-area resident with autism, who holds down three part-time jobs paying more than the minimum wage. At one of them, The Golden Scoop ice cream shop, he greets customers and makes ice cream with a ‘spinner,’ a machine he said is like a washing machine. He has money to buy clothes and other things.

‘I feel good about that,’ he said.

His mother, Michele Lockwood, said employers who pay less than the minimum wage aren’t fostering independence.

Neil Romano, a member of the National Council on Disability, agreed, adding, ‘It is very much against the flow of history.’

But other advocates and operators of programs questioned about their wages said the severity of some physical, intellectual and mental disabilities mean such programs can’t be eliminated without depriving people of valuable opportunities.

Cottonwood Inc., in Lawrence in northeastern Kansas, handles packaging for some companies. Its wages are based on the prevailing industry standard in the area of more than $15 an hour, adjusted for a worker’s productivity. As workers get more productive, they earn higher pay.

CEO Colleen Himmelberg said Cottonwood helps workers who need one-on-one support that other employers won’t provide.

‘They’re likely not going to help someone toilet or clean up an accident. There’s the reality,’ Himmelberg said. ‘But that person can work here and still earn a paycheck.’

Pat Jonas, president and CEO of the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation in Wichita, Kansas, said the goal is a more ‘user friendly’ tax credit program shorn of a big burden for some vendors. If employers currently want to participate, while also maintaining below-minimum-wage jobs as vocational training, they must set up a new, separate company or nonprofit paying workers at or above the minimum wage.

‘It’s just sad that everyone can’t be pulling in the same direction,’ Jonas said, adding that the foundation has always paid at or above the minimum wage.

Thirteen states bar below-minimum-wage jobs for disabled workers, including California, Colorado and Tennessee, according to the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which promotes inclusive job policies. Virginia lawmakers sent a bill last month to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and there’s a bipartisan proposal for a national ban in Congress.

Andy Traub, a Kansas City-area human resources consultant who works with The Golden Scoop and much larger businesses, said there might be a limited place for sheltered workshops, but ‘not as a default setting.’ Groups serving the disabled ought to be required to help them try ‘competitive’ jobs first, he said.

The federal law allowing an exemption from paying the minimum wage dates to the 1930s. It is based on the premise that a lower wage offsets an assumed lower productivity among disabled workers and exempted employers must regularly study how quickly employees do their work. The January report to Congress said 51% of exempted employers’ disabled workers make less than $3.50 per hour and close to 2% earn less than 25 cents hourly.

Some advocates argue they’re still battling traces of attitudes from decades ago, when many disabled people were put in institutions and not educated.

They cite the mid-February meeting of a Kansas legislative committee that highlighted the tax credit proposal’s provisions. The chair of the committee handling the bill, state Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, defended programs paying below the minimum wage.

‘They are people that really can’t do anything,’ Tarwater told his committee. ‘If you do away with programs like that, they will rot at home.’

Days later, Tarwater said he was referring to severely disabled people. But his comments appalled national and state disability rights groups.

Connecticut state Rep. Jane Garibay, a Hartford-area Democrat, said being paid fairly is ‘part of being valued as a human being.’ She lives with an adult niece with Down syndrome and is sponsoring a bill that would require Connecticut employers to pay workers with intellectual disabilities the state minimum wage, $15 an hour, if they can do a job.

‘It’s as if, as a woman, I would get paid less than a man for doing the same job. We’ve been there, right?’ Garibay said. ‘If you’re doing the same job, it should be the same wage.’

In the Kansas City area, the nonprofit Golden Scoop ice cream shop opened in April 2021 paying its workers $8, plus tips — higher than the state’s $7.25 minimum wage. Amber Schreiber, its president and CEO, praises disabled workers as loyal and enthusiastic. Golden Scoop hopes to open another shop and a plant making ice cream to sell wholesale.

In the Washington D.C. area, a nonprofit, Melwood, phased out below-minimum-wage jobs starting in 2016. President and CEO Larysa Kautz said Melwood had to shut down a print shop with disabled workers doing menial tasks, but it started a recycling sorting service. The organization does government landscaping jobs across the area, and between 900 and 1,000 of its 1,300 workers have significant disabilities, she said.

The report to Congress in January said the number of employers with exemptions allowing them to pay below the minimum wage dropped to fewer than 1,600 in 2019 from more than 3,100 in 2010. Romano said it should fall to 1,300 this year.

‘It requires innovative thinking,’ Kautz said. ‘But there are so many of us that have done it.’

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Janet Protasiewicz and Dan Kelly have agreed to meet in at least one debate ahead of the April 4 election.

The candidates’ campaigns announced Monday that they will meet in a televised debate sponsored by the State Bar of Wisconsin, WISC-TV and WisPolitics.com on March 21st.

The winner of the election will determine the court’s ideological leaning for the next two years. Right now conservative-leaning justices hold a 4-3 majority but conservative Justice Patience Roggensack is stepping down, creating the open spot Kelly and Protasiewicz want. The race is officially nonpartisan but conservatives back Kelly and liberals support Protasiewicz.

President Biden appeared to stumble once again while attempting to board Air Force One this week, marking the second time the 80-year-old president has been caught on camera having trouble climbing the stairs to his plane in less than two weeks.

Biden’s latest stumble came Sunday as he was leaving the airport in Montgomery, Alabama, after a trip to Selma to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, a significant event in the Civil Right Movement.

In the video, Biden stumbles as he nears the top of the stairs, but is able to regain his balance before completely falling forward. This comes following the viral video of Biden falling while boarding Air Force One in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 22.

That incident occurred shortly after the Biden wrapped up his trip to Eastern Europe to visit Ukraine and Poland, and involved Biden falling near the top of the staircase on the airport tarmac before catching himself, turning to wave and entering the aircraft. 

It remains unclear on both occasions what might have caused Biden to trip on the steps.

Biden’s apparent stumble on the steps leading to Air Force One comes nearly two years after he similarly fell on the same steps at Joint Base Andrews. 

Following the March 2019 fall in which Biden was filmed tripping on multiple steps, the White House said he was ‘doing 100% fine’ and blamed the stumble on the gusty conditions.

Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed Nina Jankowicz—the former chief of the Biden administration’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board’—to appear for deposition before the panel.

Separately, Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday, also subpoenaed Chip Slaven—the former interim executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association (NSBA)—and Viola Garcia—the former president of the NSBA—to testify before the committee.

The House Judiciary Committee is conducting oversight of the now-disbanded ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ that operated under the Department of Homeland Security. The panel is investigating its creation, activities and related matters.

Jordan, in notifying Jankowicz of her subpoena, said that the committee has ‘repeatedly sought information’ from her concerning her ‘official duties as a DHS employee and former Executive Director of the Board, including how the Board intended to define disinformation, how it planned to collect information and from what sources, how it anticipated countering disinformation, and how it proposed to protect First Amendment rights.’ 

Jordan reminded Jankowicz that Republicans on the panel first wrote to her in May 2022 requesting her ‘voluntary cooperation’ with their oversight of the board, and again in December 2022. Jordan said the committee reiterated its requests for documents and a voluntary interview in January, February, and March 1 of this year.

‘You have declined to comply voluntarily with our request for a transcribed interview,’ Jordan wrote, notifying her of the subpoena to compel her to appear for a deposition.

Upon her appointment to the board, critics questioned Jankowicz’s ability to be impartial, pointing to her past positions on social media posts, including casting doubt on the legitimacy of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.

Jankowicz ultimately resigned from the post and DHS put the board on pause.

Meanwhile, as for the NSBA officials, Slaven and Garcia co-signed the September 2021 letter to President Biden requesting federal law enforcement assistance to target parents voicing concerns at local school board meetings.

Their letter led to an Oct. 4, 2021 memo, which directed the FBI to partner with local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to identify parental threats at school board meetings against faculty and ‘prosecute them when appropriate.’

Slaven and Garcia’s testimony will come as part of the committee’s investigation into how the FBI allegedly misused ‘federal criminal and counterterrorism resources’ to target parents at school board meetings.

Jordan has also subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to turn over documents related to the matter.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism over the violence that broke out in Atlanta on Sunday in relation to protests of a planned training facility for police officers in the city, the SPLC has confirmed. 

‘An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting — and identifying — as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters,’ the SPLC said in a statement on Monday. 

Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the list of 23 suspected domestic terrorists released by the Atlanta Police Department on Monday. Violence broke out in Atlanta on Sunday after protesters of a planned police training facility hurled bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and set cars on fire. 

The Atlanta Police Department revealed all the suspects are from out of state or from another country except for two, including Jurgens. 

Fox News Digital previously reviewed a LinkedIn account for one Tom Jurgens, earlier on Monday which stated he is a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. That LinkedIn account has now apparently been removed.

Fox News Digital also examined The Florida Bar’s profile of Jurgens, which shows he graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 2019 and currently works for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Decatur, Georgia. Both the Florida Bar website and State Bar of Georgia website also include Jurgens’ middle name, Webb, which matches the name of the man arrested on Sunday. 

‘This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility. The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people,’ the SPLC continued in its statement on Monday. 

Jurgens’ listed office number went straight to voicemail when Fox News Digital attempted to reach him. Fox News Digital also attempted to reach Jurgens’ family members, including one man who appears to be his father and who promptly hung up after stating the reason for the call. 

‘On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers,’ the Atlanta PD said in a statement when it released the booking photos for the 23 people charged. 

Dubbed ‘Cop City’ by its detractors, the planned $90 million training complex for law enforcement officers has been the ire of environmentalists and anti-police activists since 2021 when the Atlanta City Council approved the complex in June of that year.

Protesters say the complex will promote the militarization of the police department and destroy the South River Forest. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the arrest. 

GEORGIA GOV. KEMP DEALS BLOW TO BUCKHEAD SUBURB TRYING TO SECEDE FROM ATLANTA OVER VIOLENT CRIME 

The SPLC describes itself as a ‘catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.’

The group has come under fire for designating mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as ‘hate groups,’ putting them on a list alongside organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Back in 2019, a former staffer for the SPLC argued the organization uses its ‘hate group’ accusations to ‘bilk’ donors.

In 2012, the Family Research Council, a Christian nonprofit that was labeled a hate group by the SPLC, was targeted by a man who fired a gun in the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. A security guard managed to subdue him before he could kill anyone. 

The man told investigators he was motivated to carry out the attack after seeing FRC listed as an anti-gay group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. 

Republicans are sounding the alarm about the growing threat Mexican cartels face to the U.S. after four Americans were kidnapped in the country after crossing the border from Texas, the FBI said Sunday.

The FBI is trying to locate four Americans who were last seen Friday in the northern Mexico border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an area that is notorious for warring factions of the Gulf drug cartel.

On Friday, ‘four Americans crossed into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico driving a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle. All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men,’ the FBI said in a statement.

The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the victims’ return and the arrest of the kidnappers.

Tamaulipas state police said a number of people were also killed or suffered injuries on Friday but did not provide details on how many were affected or whether the incidents were connected. The violence that day was so bad that the U.S. Consulate issued an alert.

Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital pointed to President Biden’s immigration policies as sharing the blame for the kidnappings, arguing that his lack of enforcement at the border has emboldened Mexico’s cartels.

‘The cartels couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime than Joe Biden—his weakness allows them to operate unchecked,’ Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said. ‘President Biden needs to secure the border and declare war against the cartels to protect Americans from drugs and this bold-faced violence.’

‘Mexico has become a captive narco state with compromised leaders,’ Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said. ‘But even corrupt Mexican officials don’t enrich the cartels as much as President Biden does. We will continue to see the cartels and thugs emboldened as Biden projects weakness.’

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the cartels have been ‘running wild’ since Biden entered office.

‘On his first day in office, Joe Biden threw open America’s southern border,’ he said. ‘What immediately followed was open season on frontline border patrol officers and open access to deadly fentanyl and human trafficking. Biden has also completely failed to strategically engage Mexico and target the cartels that have run wild since he entered the White House.’

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said, ‘Dictators, cartels and bad guys around the world know that Biden is a weak appeaser with open border policies, and they’re absolutely taking advantage. His botched border policies prioritize criminals and cartels over legal immigration and Americans’ safety. Instead of sending the DOJ to harass parents at school board meetings and do his political bidding, Biden should direct those resources to ending America’s deadly fentanyl crisis and decimating the cartels that caused it.’

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said, ‘President Biden encouraged mass illegal immigration into America and now every single state is dealing with the burden. We cannot allow it to continue. Just last month, I introduced legislation that will ensure individuals who pay cartels, smugglers, and coyotes face criminal charges for enriching criminals’ pockets. Congress needs to do everything in its power to stop this administration’s incentivizing illegal mass immigration.’

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.