Category: US Senate

Pelosi to offer even split on 9/11-style commission to probe Capitol riot

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has offered a plan for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to review the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, backtracking from an earlier proposal that would have allowed Democrats to appoint the majority of the commission’s members.

A source familiar with the discussions told The Hill Pelosi briefed members of her leadership team on the proposal Monday night after efforts to create the commission stalled in the months following the attack.

Pelosi’s plans were first reported by CNN.   Continue reading.

Senate GOP crafts outlines for infrastructure counter proposal

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Senate Republicans on Tuesday discussed the outlines of a scaled-down infrastructure bill they say could pass the Democratic-led Congress with strong bipartisan support. 

The entire Senate GOP conference during its weekly lunch meeting discussed the emerging proposal after getting a briefing from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. 

Capito is leading negotiations among a smaller group of GOP moderates who met with President Biden earlier this year. The group held a meeting late afternoon Monday to narrow Biden’s proposed $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan into something in the range of $600 billion to $800 billion. Continue reading.

Military commanders disavow notion of extremists in their ranks

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Assertions seem to run counter to what is publicly known about the proliferation of white supremacism within the military

Two top military officers on Tuesday told senators there are “zero” white supremacists under their command, despite evidence of a long-simmering problem within the ranks that came to the forefront following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol involving some currently serving military personnel and veterans.

“I am very confident that the number of extremists in my forces is zero,” said Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, which includes some 150,000 military and civilian personnel overseeing the nation’s nuclear arsenal. “Every person in my organization has to have a security clearance, for starters, right? And when you fill that form out, and I’ve been filling it out for 40 years, there is an extensive battery of questions designed to get after that very point.”

Investigators look into the background of every applicant, and check their references as well as social media accounts, he said. At Strategic Command, there are a personnel reliability program and peer monitoring, added Richard, who has been in the post since November 2019. Continue reading.

MAGA rioter who vowed ‘no remorse or shame’ for his actions arrested by feds

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A Trump-loving rioter who vowed to have “no remorse” for his decision to storm the United States Capitol building was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday morning.

According to the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee, 56-year-old Tennessee resident Michael Timbrook was arrested on charges related to the infamous January 6th Trump-incited riots that left five people dead.

The Department of Justice’s website states Timbrook has so far been charged with “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without  Continue reading.

Post-riot effort to tackle extremism in the military largely overlooks veterans

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The Defense Department is focusing on how to weed out possible extremists from the active-duty ranks in the wake of the Capitol riot, with a recent, military-wide “stand down” for troops to discuss the issue ahead of policy decisions on the matter by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

But the arrest data from the riot shows that allegedly criminal participation in the insurrection on Jan. 6 was far more prevalent among veterans than active-duty forces, a more difficult problem for the U.S. government to address.

Of the nearly 380 individuals federally charged in connection with the riot, at least 44 are current or former members of the U.S. armed forces, according to service records and data compiled by The Washington Post. At least three other veterans are among more than two dozen people charged in D.C. Superior Court for crimes like trespassing and curfew violations. Continue reading.

Republicans race for distance from ‘America First Caucus’

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Republicans from various factions in the GOP are racing to distance themselves — and the party at large — from a band of hard-line House conservatives whose flirtation with forming a caucus espousing white nationalist views has ignited a firestorm of controversy on Capitol Hill.

GOP leaders, anti-Trump centrists and vulnerable Republicans in battleground districts wasted little time in recent days denouncing the “America First Caucus,” whose stated purpose in a platform document included the defense of America as a nation “strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

While the Republicans reportedly behind the group — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) — appear to have abandoned the project in the face of bipartisan criticism, their very interest has created an enormous headache for Republican leaders seeking to steer the party away from an image of racial insensitivity and appeal to a broader swath of voters, including women and minorities, in the post-Trump era. Continue reading.

GOP struggles to rein in nativism

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House GOP leaders are struggling to rein in the increasingly open nativism within their conference and attempting to deflect from the controversy by training their ire against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted over the weekend that the GOP is not the party of “nativist dog whistles” without directly referencing the draft policy platform for a proposed caucus that called for promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that reflects “European architecture.”

Days later, McCarthy is backing an effort to take action against Waters, the House Financial Services Committee chairwoman, for saying that “we’ve got to get more confrontational” and “we’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active” about addressing police brutality against Black people.  Continue reading.

‘Pot calling the kettle violent’: CNN host throws Cruz’s own words in his face after GOP senator feigns outrage over Maxine Waters

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With the defense having rested in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, Rep. Maxine Waters of California was asked how “justice for George Floyd” activists will response if Chauvin is found not guilty. And the congresswoman called for a vocal response if that happens, saying, “We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to let them know that we mean business.” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was among the far-right Republicans who claimed that Waters was advocating violence — and CNN’s John Berman called Cruz out and reminded viewers of the ways in which the Texas senator’s false claims of widespread voter fraud encouraged the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.

On CNN’s “New Day,” host Berman explained, “She didn’t say what type of confrontation. Still, this is not the language that business owners in Minneapolis want to hear or that people calling for calm, including the president or the family of George Floyd (want to hear).”

But he went on to explain why Cruz is the last person who should be accusing a congresswoman of overly incendiary rhetoric. Continue reading.

Josh Hawley Loves To Accuse Others Of Doing What He Actually Did

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The Missouri Republican says it’s Democrats who use mobs and tell big lies and try to overturn elections. Weird!

A Democratic proposal to add seats to the Supreme Court is nothing more than an attempt to “overturn the results of past elections,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told HuffPost on Thursday.

That’s a weirdly provocative way to describe increasing the number of Supreme Court justices, but it’s just the latest example of Hawley, who helped former President Donald Trump try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, accusing someone else of doing something that Hawley himself actually did.

Trump used the same sort of rhetorical appropriation to twist the term “fake news” from a description of wholly made-up viral articles into a derisive catchall for any story that reflected poorly on him. Hawley seems to be trying to pull this trick with anything anyone says about him. Continue reading.

The GOP’s fallout with big business is already mending

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Opposition to Democrats’ priority bills reunites longtime allies

ANALYSIS — Some of America’s most prominent corporations infuriated Republicans in Congress earlier this month when they protested a Georgia law setting state voting rules. The longtime alliance between the GOP and business seemed on the verge of cracking up. But when it comes to Democrats’ priority bills in Congress, the old allies are still on the same side.

Indeed, corporate America is joining Republicans in opposing both the House-passed voting rights measure, or HR 1, that is Democrats’ answer to the Georgia law, as well as President Joe Biden’s pending infrastructure bill.

While the spat over the Georgia law embarrassed Republicans, business has not joined Democrats in their proposed solution to that law’s election strictures — the voting rights, campaign finance and ethics bill, known as S 1 in the Senate, that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer called a “must do” on April 13.  Continue reading.