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by WILL FOLKS
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A ceremonial resolution honoring former U.S. vice president Kamala Harris on the occasion of her latest visit to early-voting South Carolina encountered stiff headwinds in the S.C. House of Representatives this week – with conservative lawmakers putting the establishment ‘Republicans’ who are pushing the bill on blast.
Efforts by ‘Republican’ South Carolina House speaker Murrell Smith, ways and means chairman Bruce Bannister and invitations committee chairman Dennis Moss to push this Democrat-sponsored bill through the 124-member chamber began collapsing Wednesday (April 15, 2026). That’s when state representative Stephen Frank indicated he planned on filing nearly fifty amendments to the legislation – which leaders of the so-called GOP ‘supermajority’ had hoped to ram through the chamber prior to Harris’ arrival in the Palmetto State on Thursday evening.
Moss and several other ‘Republicans’ reported the bill favorably out of his committee on Tuesday (April 14, 2025), while Smith and his staff twisted arms behind the scenes on Wednesday to ensure its passage.
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Meanwhile, Bannister – in addition to reportedly helping Smith and Moss advance the bill – was listed as one of the lawmakers who introduced and co-sponsored the legislation.
“This same guy blocked the resolution to suspend the gas tax!” founding S.C. Freedom Caucus chairman Adam Morgan wrote on X. “No time to give citizens relief from skyrocketing fuel prices…but plenty of time to honor Kamala Harris!”
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RELATED | S.C. ‘REPUBLICANS’ STILL REFUSING TO SUSPEND GAS TAX
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Smith and Bannister have repeatedly blocked bipartisan efforts to temporarily suspend the Palmetto State’s gasoline tax amid surging prices tied to U.S. president Donald Trump‘s undeclared war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ironically, Trump campaigned against Harris in 2024 on a platform of ending foreign wars and lowering energy costs.
The House resolution – H. 5155 – praised Harris for her “powerful and timely message about what it will take to move forward, especially for those feeling disheartened and disconnected from the current political process.”
It further lauded Harris for her “significant accomplishments and policy initiatives” including her purportedly “noteworthy contributions to critical issues such as immigration, voting rights, and abortion.”
Wait… immigration?
Last time we checked, Harris’ tenure as America’s “border czar” was an unmitigated disaster – one it will take our nation decades to recover from (assuming we can recover from it at all).
The resolution concluded by claiming Harris would lead a “compelling conversation about how we collectively should chart a blueprint that sets an alternative vision for the country.”
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Curiously, the committee led by Moss – which includes fellow ‘Republican’ lawmakers Tom Hartnett, Brian Lawson and Richie Yow – “duly and carefully considered” this bill and “recommend that (it) pass” the full House.
Frank, a member of the S.C. Freedom Caucus, was having none of it. In fact, one of his amendments directly rebuked Harris’ supposed “noteworthy contributions” on immigration – inserting language that more accurately reflected her record.
“Whereas, former Vice President Harris was tasked with addressing root causes of migration yet oversaw more than ten million U.S. border encounters plus millions of gotaways, imposing direct costs on South Carolina law enforcement, hospitals, and schools in violation of Article X of the South Carolina Constitution limiting taxation and government expansion,” a proposed amendment to the bill sponsored by Frank noted.
Frank also inserted amendments to the legislation highlighting infamous Harris quotes, including being “unburdened by what has been” and suggesting “it is time for us to do what we have been doing – and that time is every day.”
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we track the status of this legislation in the S.C. House…
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UPDATE |
Bannister’s allies insist he was NOT an original sponsor of the legislation, citing an alleged “clerk error” or “scrivener’s error” which was corrected late Wednesday (April 15, 2026). Documents provided to FITSNews suggest another lawmaker may have inadvertently put their initials on a spreadsheet next to Bannister’s name, confusing staffers as to which legislator was sponsoring the bill.
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UPDATE 2 |
I can confirm that it was an initialing error My name is right above his. It was supposed to be Big Bamberg as co-sponsor. Obviously just an initialing error. So everybody pls chill out on him. He innocent. #FreeBannister ?? https://t.co/kAXg8quHMq
— Justin Bamberg, Esq. (@JustinBamberg) April 16, 2026
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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13 comments
Bannister is a liberal trial lawyer, he keeps getting elected by liberal democrats in downtown Greenville.
The response of the “Freedom Caucus” is just an example of mean-spiritedness and political pandering. This lady, whether you agree with her politics or not, was Vice President and a Presidential nominee and will be a guest in our state. What ever happened to the hospitality and good manners that SC is noted for? Perhaps Representative Adam Morgan should concern himself with a subject for which he apparently has more experience: keeping drunk drivers off our roads.
““This same guy blocked the resolution to suspend the gas tax!” founding S.C. Freedom Caucus chairman Adam Morgan wrote on X. “No time to give citizens relief from skyrocketing fuel prices…but plenty of time to honor Kamala Harris!””
Fuck these dumbfucks who elected Donald Jesus Trump who has caused all this singlehandedly. The fish rots from the head, all they are all rotten rancid fish.
You should say what you think and not hold back so much.
TDS is strong in this one.
So disappointed in our Republicans in the SC legislature. Really upset with the leaders and Dennis Moss.
They are not really focused on helping and supporting our people. We deserve better in SC. How did we elect such ill-informed people? These people show us every day that they are only looking out for each other. How can these people be respected as government leaders?
B. Ron Gilmer
Mediocre Democratic candidate with no real ideas or stances to her name getting a mere ceremonial pat on the back for appearances sake and unhinged MAGA nuts froth at the mouth, what a surprise.
I can’t imagine living like that. It has to shorten one’s life to constantly spew vitriol at the slightest nothingburgers, of which right wing media is happy to serve an all-you-can-eat buffet of to wash the propaganda down.
The resolution is pretty dumb and a waste of time, but so are the efforts to name streets after Trump and Kirk.
You should have to be dead 100 years before something can be named in your honor.
I quite agree. And that pertains to Washington particularly.
The state should never show support for any political candidate at all. The legislators do NOT speak for all of the state’s citizens. This was just wrong and ought to be illegal. Period.
One more of my comments too good to keep to just one story and it appeared on Democrat’s “hotness problem”:
First, I do not think there is such a thing as “marxist-lennist-maoist dogma” and I am almost sure none of those self-identified latter-day feminists or otherwise-branded “hard-left” even read anything by Marx, Lenin, or Mao.
Next, PERSONALLY, I think the key to understanding latter-day “culture wars” in the so-called “West” is Charles Dickens’ greatest (in my opinion free from false humility) novel Great Expectations.
Forget for a while the romantic clap trap of Ms. Havisham grooming Estella to “break his heart.” And forget for a while whose, if anyone’s other than Ms. Havisham’s heart got actually broken.
The underlying plot is a convict going to Australia, enriching himself at the expense of the native people, and sending most of his money back to England for PIP to become educated as “a London gentleman.”
What does “a London gentleman” actually know or do? NOTHING other than some ancient philosophy and some partying.
And that is basically the ideal of the American “talking classes”: sitting on their butts and getting paid to merely talk, getting paid, that is, by money traceable back to the colonies.
Incidentally, and also stripping out the clap-trap romance of a dead woman’s daughter who loves one cousin but marries another, is the basic plot of Bronte’s Wuthering Heights: a strange found boy who grows up to disappear in the West Indies and returns with a fortune which he increases by enticing the established British “class” into gambling debts.
Or again, of the other Bronte sister’s Jane Ayre: a man forced to marry the crazed heiress of a fortune made in the West Indies after having squandered his own fortune on some French prostitutes and is rescued in his final destitution and blindness by the working-class Jane, who had herself suddenly come into the inheritance of a fortune made in America.
So, the hard right basically loves the hard left because without the other neither would have a subject to attack and get paid for attacking.
As for the REAL intellectual work of engineering infrastructure and treating patients, easy: just import foreign engineers and foreign doctors and get paid to argue how far to make them miserable.
And for the REAL work of growing food and transporting it to American tables, same answer: just import foreign agricultural workers and truck drivers and get paid to argue how far to make them miserable.
The REAL awakening will not be of the extreme left-talkers against the extreme right-talkers, or vice versa, but of those who do the REAL intellectual and physical work against those who want to continue getting paid for just talking about things.
Or as Tuco, played by Eli Wallach, so succinctly exclaims in the “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly:” “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
GOP better be careful what they wish for. This is exactly how Joe Biden got elected President. He was not going to win the SC Dem. Primary. GOP, with Trump a clear winner in its primary. Told GOP voters to vote in the Dem. primary for Biden. Thought was: Biden had common sense, was beatable and better than the other ridiculous nominees. Wow, did that go wrong. Biden still thinks Clyburn got him elected President by way of the SC DEM. Primary. When it was the GOP in SC that got him the Primary win. Lesson: STAY OUT OF THE DEM. PRIMARY.