Category: US Senate

Schumer: ‘The big lie is spreading like a cancer’ among GOP

The Hill logo

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered fiery criticism of Republicans on Tuesday for efforts around the country to tighten voter laws amid unproven claims made by former President Trump that the 2020 election was stolen.

Schumer, speaking at a Senate Rules Committee meeting on a sweeping elections overhaul bill, accused Republicans of trying to act upon the “big lie that the election was stolen” to “placate” and “please” Trump.

“Unfortunately, the big lie is spreading like a cancer among Republicans. It’s enveloping and consuming the Republican Party, in both houses of Congress,” Schumer said. Continue reading.

Grievance, rebellion and burnt bridges: Tracing Josh Hawley’s path to the insurrection

Washington Post logo

From his teenage writings to his incendiary support for false 2020 election claims, the Missouri senator is staking out a place in today’s far-right Republican Party

LEXINGTON, Mo. — Joshua Hawley was 13 years old, living comfortably as the son of a bank president, when his parents gave him a book about political conservatism for Christmas.

Hawley became enamored with the ideology. He began writing columns for the local newspaper that seethed with resentment against the political power structure. Even domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building, killing 168 people, sparked him to speak up for groups that express anger toward the government.

“Many of the people who populate these movements are not radical right-wing pro-assault weapons freaks as they were stereotyped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote.

Republican Complaint: Workers Don’t Flock To Poverty-Wage Jobs

National Memo logo

Republican lawmakers are blaming disappointing jobs numbers on unemployment benefits they claim incentivize employees to avoid returning to work — all while ignoring pleas for a higher minimum wage that might solve the supposed problem.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated on Friday that employers added 266,000 jobs in April — significantly less growth than the previous month — with the unemployment rate remaining almost unchanged at 6.1 percent.

Though administration officials say there is no evidence of a connection, Republicanlawmakers were quick to blame this slowdown on the emergency unemployment benefitsthat were passed as part of President Joe Biden’s COVID relief package, the American Rescue Plan. Because the federal government is giving jobless Americans an extra $300 a week, they argued, it must mean people are finding unemployment more lucrative than the jobs available to them. Continue reading.

Lindsey Graham says the quiet part out loud on Trump — again

Washington Post logo

Say what you will about Lindsey Graham; he has a knack for saying enlightening — and subtly honest — things about why the official Republican Party remains in Donald Trump’s grip.

It’s because it has no idea how to do anything else.

The most recent episode came when the Republican senator from South Carolina weighed in on Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) impending excommunication from House GOP leadership. Continue reading.

Trump Guilty Of ‘Egging On’ Capitol Riot, Says Facebook Oversight Panel Co-Chair

National Memo logo

Washington (AFP) – Donald Trump encouraged the Capitol rioters and so earned his Facebook ban, but the social media giant’s rules are in “shambles” and need fixing, the co-chair of the network’s oversight panel said Sunday.

The panel agreed just days ago that Facebook was right to oust the ex-president for his comments regarding the deadly January 6 rampage, though it sidestepped an overall decision on whether he will ever be allowed back.

“He issued these statements which were just egging on — with perfunctory asking for peace — but mostly he was just egging them on to continue,” oversight body co-chair Michael McConnell told Fox News Sunday. Continue reading.

Failure to communicate: The Capitol Police leadership gap on Jan. 6

Roll Call Logo

Lack of direction, preparation, according to rank-and-file officers

On the morning of Jan. 6, as a group of Capitol Police officers was being briefed on what to expect before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, a captain told them to be on the lookout for a handful of people wanted for crimes from previous Make America Great Again protests.

The captain also discussed the Proud Boys, an extremist group that would play a substantial role in the violent insurrection, and advised that many people in the crowd could be armed. 

But when asked what the response should be if the officers did encounter armed protesters, the captain’s reply was useless, according to one officer on duty that day. Continue reading.

Watch: A fake Trump supporter tricks Ted Cruz into bragging about his role in pushing the big lie

Raw Story Logo

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was caught on camera bragging that he “led the objections” on January 6 to try to overturn a free and fair election. Cruz has been highlighted, along with U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), as the top leaders who “amplified claims of election fraud” that “resulted in threats of violence against state and local officials around the country,” according to an ethics complaint filed by seven Democratic Senators.

Lauren Windsor, who describes herself as an undercover reporter for The Undercurrent and runs a site dedicated to helping victims of Project Veritas, pretended to be a far right wing voter and asked Senator Cruz why he “didn’t do more to fight for President Trump on January 6.”

Cruz on camera brags that he “led the objections but the Senate voted it down.” Continue reading.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s big test: Shepherding election reform

Star Tribune logo

The Minnesota Democrat faces the mammoth task of leading the push for the sweeping legislation in the Senate. 

WASHINGTON – The massive election reform measure that Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is trying to shepherd through a crucial test in the Senate has all the makings of a moonshot: hard to achieve and fraught with complications.

For “anyone who is serious about trying to get something done to make it easier for people to vote … we’re ready to go,” Minnesota’s senior senator said in an interview.

Dubbed the For the People Act, the bill affects topics from voter registration to absentee ballots to campaign finance to ethics laws. Republicans charge that it’s an unconstitutional attempt by the federal government to wrest control of elections from states. Continue reading.

Republicans promote pandemic relief they voted against

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said it pained her to vote against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

But in the weeks that followed, the first-term Republican issued a news release celebrating more than $3.7 million from the package that went to community health centers in her district as one of her “achievements.” She said she prided herself on “bringing federal funding to the district and back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Malliotakis is far from alone.

Every Republican in Congress voted against the sweeping pandemic relief bill that President Joe Biden signed into lawthree months ago. But since the early spring votes, Republicans from New York and Indiana to Texas and Washington state have promoted elements of the legislation they fought to defeat. Continue reading.

Biden sparked outrage calling Jan. 6 ‘the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War’ — he was right

AlterNet Logo

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden called the January 6 insurrection “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” This is an apt comparison. The insurrection was the worst attack on our democracy since the shelling of Fort Sumter, because the president of the United States schemed to overturn a free and fair election and remain in power against the will of the people, a high crime for which he was impeached. It was pure luck that the insurgents didn’t assassinate the vice president for refusing the president’s order to steal the election.

Revisionists are already trying to memory-hole the full significance of the attack and cast it as a mere riot rather than as a coordinated assault on American democracy orchestrated by a sitting president. While the out-and-out hacks allege January 6 was a false-flag operation masterminded by BLM, the more intellectually respectable apologists are trying to muddy the waters with spurious historical objections. 

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Eli Lake tweeted: “The Capitol Hill riot was terrible. All of this is true. At the same time, what happened on January 6 is not the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Some perspective would be nice here.” Continue reading.