Category: US House

Hallmark PAC asks Hawley, Marshall to return employee donations

The Hill logo

Hallmark Cards asked two GOP senators to return campaign donations on Monday following the violent riot that overtook the U.S. Capitol last week.

The company’s political action committee, HALLPAC, sent notices to Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) requesting the return of $7,000 and $5,000 in donations made to the two senators respectively during their most recent runs for office, according to a Hallmark spokesperson.

“Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind,” Hallmark spokeswoman JiaoJiao Shen told The Kansas City Star. “The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company’s values. As a result, HALLPAC requested Sens. Hawley and Marshall to return all HALLPAC campaign contributions.” Continue reading.

QAnon congresswoman faces calls for arrest after live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi’s location to rioters

AlterNet logo

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a gun-toting supporter of the QAnon movement, is facing backlash after she was accused of live-tweeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) location during the attack on Capitol Hill last week.

Boebert shared the tweet soon after President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol with deadly results.

“The Speaker has been removed from the chambers,” Boebert wrote. Continue reading.

Punish Trump, lawmakers say. But what about Congress?

From expulsion to a good old-fashioned shunning, here’s what could happen to the Electoral College ‘rebels’

Workers are still cleaning up the debris and destruction caused by the deadly assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump marauders, but the political mess has only just begun. 

In the wake of the attacks that threatened lawmakers’ lives and left five others dead, Democrats have focused their punitive efforts on President Donald Trump, seeing him as the lead instigator of Wednesday’s violence. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer both endorsed the idea of impeaching Trump again.

But as calls mount to quickly find and prosecute the rioters and to remove the president with less than two weeks left in his term, Democrats are split on what consequences Trump’s enablers in Congress should face, if any.  Continue reading.

Democrats, GOP face defining moments after Capitol riot

The Hill logo

Both political parties are trying to figure out how to move forward following the cataclysmic events of Jan. 6, when a mob fueled by conspiracies and riled up by a president in his final days in office ransacked the Capitol.

House Democrats are set this week to move to impeach President Trump —short of an unlikely eleventh-hour move by Vice President Pence — but there is some division within the party over the process and politics of what would be the second impeachment effort in Congress in just more than a year.

Few if any Democrats think Trump does not deserve to be impeached. But there are worries impeachment could backfire by hurting President-elect Joe Biden during his first 100 days in office, distracting from the new commander in chief’s focus on tackling the coronavirus pandemic and healing the nation’s divides. Continue reading.

Campaign finance system rocked as firms pause or halt contributions after election results challenged

Washington Post logo

Several major companies on Monday said they planned to cut off political donations to the 147 members of Congress who last week voted against certifying the results of the presidential election, while other major corporations said they are suspending all contributions from their political action committees — a sign of corporate America’s growing unease with the election doubts and violent attacks encouraged by President Trump.

Companies that collectively pour millions of dollars each year into campaigns through employee-funded PACs are registering their worry and anger about last week’s chaos with a reexamination of their role in powering the nation’s fractious politics.

AT&T’s PAC decided Monday to suspend donations to the eight Republican senators and 139 Republican House members who voted against certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win, according to a company spokesman. Continue reading.

Analysis: A GOP reckoning after turning blind eye to Trump

WASHINGTON — At the heart of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a lie, one that was allowed to fester and flourish by many of the same Republicans now condemning President Donald Trump for whipping his supporters into a frenzy with his false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election. 

The response from some of those GOP officials now? We didn’t think it would come to this. 

“People took him literally. I never thought I would see that,” said Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff. Mulvaney resigned his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland last week after the riots. Continue reading.

Watch: Video busts 5 Trump allies for lying about their support of his election overturn and coup attempt

A nearly two-minute super-cut of hypocrisy shows Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Montana Senator Steve Daines, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former White House communications director Alyssa Farah, and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani all lying their faces off, as if they had always opposed Trump’s attempts to steal the election now that a pro-Trump insurrectionist coup attempt occurred at the U.S. Capitol.

Lawmakers mount pressure on Trump to leave office

The Hill logo

Calls grew Sunday for President Trump’s impeachment or resignation as lawmakers accused him of inciting the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he agreed with his colleague, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who became the first Senate Republican to call for Trump’s resignation last week.

“I think the best way for our country, Chuck, is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible,” Toomey told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “It does not look as though there is the will or the consensus to exercise the 25th Amendment option, and I don’t think there’s time to do an impeachment. There’s 10 days left before the president leaves anyway. I think the best thing would be a resignation.” Continue reading.

The Inciter-in-Chief

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the East Portico of the Capitol to deliver his first Inaugural Address. The nation was collapsing, the Southern slave states seceding. Word of an assassination conspiracy forced Lincoln to travel to the event under military guard. The Capitol building itself, sheathed in scaffolding, provided an easy metaphor for an unfinished republic. The immense bronze sculpture known as the Statue of Freedom had not yet been placed on the dome. It was still being cast on the outskirts of Washington.

Lincoln posed a direct question to the riven union. “Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric,” he said, “with all its benefits, its memories and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?” The South, in its drive to preserve chattel slavery, replied the following month, when Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter. Even as the Civil War death toll mounted, Lincoln ordered work to continue on the dome. “If people see the Capitol going on,” he said, “it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.”

That was the first Republican President. The most recent one woke up last Wednesday in a rage, his powers receding, his psyche unravelling. Donald Trump had already lost the White House. Now, despite his best demagogic efforts in Georgia, he had failed to rescue the Senate for the Republican Party. Georgia would be represented by two Democrats: the Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the first African-American and the first Jew, respectively, to be elected to the chamber by that state’s citizens. Continue reading.

Federal leaders have two options if they want to rein in Trump

As the world reacts to the Jan. 6 armed attack on the U.S. Capitol encouraged by President Donald Trump, many Americans are wondering what happens next. Members of Congress, high-level officials and even major corporations and business groups have called for Trump’s removal from office. 

Prominent elected and appointed officials appear to have already sidelined Trump informally. Vice President Mike Pence was reportedly the highest-level official to review the decision to call out the D.C. National Guard to respond to the assault on the Capitol. 

Informal actions like this may continue, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported request that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, restrict Trump’s ability to use the nuclear codes. But political leaders are considering more formal options as well. They have two ways to handle it: impeachment and the 25th Amendment. Continue reading.