Category: US Senate

‘We’re Hosting You’: WaPo Reporter Knocks Down Hawley Whining About Being Silenced During Interview

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“Don’t try to censor, cancel, and silence me here!” Hawley loudly complained during a Washington Post live stream promoting his latest book.

Josh Hawley is a United States senator, published author, and frequent guest on Fox News, the most-watched U.S. cable-news network. Despite this, he has complained for months now that he is one of the biggest victims of so-called “cancel culture” and has been “silenced” by the “woke” mob.

And, of course, most of the time he has delivered these complaints on large public platforms with large audiences, something one reporter threw back in his face on Tuesday after he accused her of trying to “censor” and “cancel” him during a chat.

The Missouri senator was invited onto The Washington Post’s live stream on Tuesday to discuss his latest book, The Tyranny of Big Tech. (The Republican lawmaker had already been mocked recently for urging his supporters to buy the anti-“Big Tech” book on Amazon via promotions on Twitter.) Continue reading.

‘Out of touch’ Mitch McConnell is ‘stunned’ that CEOs are ignoring the GOP on culture war issues

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During an MSNBC discussion on corporations taking stances on hot button political issues that don’t align with Republican Party beliefs, contributor Eugene Robinson told “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is having difficulty dealing with a changing world.

In yet another discussion on the Republican Party’s war on “woke’ corporations — which is costing the GOP financial support — host Scarborough said GOP leaders are failing to remember that company’s CEOs first concern is profits and they will take whichever side in a topic that adds to the bottom line.

Using Nike’s backing of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem — and the fact that the sporting goods giant saw no slowdown in their sales afterward — as a jumping-off point, columnist Robinson said the Republicans are doing a poor job of reading the room. Continue reading.

Trump muddles Republican messaging on Afghanistan

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Donald Trump’s hearty endorsement of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by September has undercut efforts by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other key Republicans to question President Biden’s strategy. 

More broadly, the former president has focused the nation’s attention on China as the United States’s premier national security concern, putting pressure on Senate Republicans to support legislation Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to move to respond to Beijing’s growing influence and power. 

McConnell is the most powerful Republican leader in Washington, but he doesn’t have the same unrivaled platform that he did when he was in the same position — head of the minority opposition in Washington — at the start of former President Obama’s tenure.  Continue reading.

Opinion: Elected Republicans are lying with open eyes. Their excuses are disgraceful.

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“Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!”

— “Henry IV,” Part 1, Act 5

For the activist base of the Republican Party, affirming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential contest has become a qualification for membership in good standing. For the party’s elected leaders, accepting the clear result of a fair election is to be a rogue Republican like the indomitable Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.)— a target for Trump’s anger, public censure and primary threats.

Nothing about this is normal. The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood is so obviously and laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders who embrace it fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie — an act of immorality — is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.

This kind of determined mendacity requires rolling out the big guns. Said the prophet Isaiah: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” Continue reading.

McConnell: No Senate Republicans will back Biden on $4T

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday that he expected no Republicans would support President Biden‘s sweeping infrastructure package, indicating GOP lawmakers are open to a roughly $600 billion bill.

“I think it’s worth talking about but I don’t think there will be any Republican support — none, zero — for the $4.1 trillion grab bag which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff,” McConnell said in a press conference in Kentucky.

Biden has proposed a sweeping roughly $4 trillion infrastructure package broken up into two pieces: A $2.3 trillion jobs package and a $1.8 trillion families package. While the package includes money for roads, bridges and broadband, it also expands into manufacturing, in-home care, housing, clean energy, public schools and manufacturing. Continue reading.

New poll confirms the GOP’s fears on voting rights

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Zero GOP lawmakers have backed the For the People Act, congressional Democrats’ comprehensive plan to strengthen U.S. democracy by making it easier to vote, curbing partisan gerrymandering, and limiting the influence of money in politics.

Republican voters, however, support many of the proposals in the 800-page bill, according to a new poll released Monday.

The survey (pdf) of 1,138 likely voters across the country—conducted from April 16 to April 19 by Data for Progress on behalf of Vox—found that, when presented without partisan cues, the voting rights and election reform bill is popular with voters across party lines. Overall, 69% of the electorate supports the For the People Act, including 52% of Republicans, 70% of Independents, and 85% of Democrats. Continue reading.

Vaccine hesitancy among lawmakers slows return to normalcy on Capitol Hill

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Lawmakers, like the rest of the country, are all eligible for the coronavirus vaccine. But President Biden‘s speech to Congress last week looked like he was addressing a group that hadn’t gotten a single shot.

With a crowd a fraction of its usual size — and those present all socially distancing and wearing masks — the speech underscored how life on Capitol Hill has been slow to return to normal and how difficult it is to persuade holdouts to get immunized.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) estimated a day after the address that about 75 percent of House members have been vaccinated, a figure unchanged since March. Continue reading.

Susan Collins confronted on CNN with her Trump ‘learned his lesson’ comments before the Capitol riot

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CNN “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper put Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on the spot over her comments after former president Donald Trump was impeached the first time — which she voted against — when she said she felt the president had “learned his lesson.”

In light of Donald Trump’s incitement of the Jan 6th Capitol riot that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives, and his subsequent second impeachment trial, the CNN host asked her if she misjudged the former president.

“After President Trump was impeached for the first time for urging Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, I know you hoped that the president learned his lesson — and you said that was aspirational. But after Biden won, the president tried to overturn the election results that culminated in the Capitol attack. Did you think he learned a lesson, but the lesson he learned is that he can get away with anything?” Tapper asked. Continue reading.

For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test

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Debra Ell, a Republican organizer in Michigan and fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump, said she has good reason to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified,” she said, referring to Trump’s baseless claims that widespread electoral fraud caused his loss to President Biden in November.

In fact, there is no evidence to support Trump’s false assertions, which culminated in a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But Ell, a Republican precinct delegate in her state, said the 2020 election is one of the reasons she’s working to censure and remove Jason Cabel Roe from his role as the Michigan Republican Party’s executive director — specifically that Roe accepted the 2020 results, telling Politico that “the election wasn’t stolen” and that “there is no one to blame but Trump.” Continue reading.

GOP ramps up attacks on Biden’s border wall freeze

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Republicans in Congress are increasingly lashing out at President Biden’s decision to freeze funding for the wall along the southern border.

GOP lawmakers are zeroing in on Biden’s proclamation from January, immediately upon taking office, in which he followed through on a campaign promise to halt construction of the wall, which had become the centerpiece of former President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.

The White House on Jan. 20 said it would take 60 days to review the use of border wall funds. Continue reading.