3CD DFL

McConnell rushes to cameras to say the ‘era of bipartisanship is over’ after infrastructure talks break down

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wasted no time in rushing to find TV cameras to brag “the era of bipartisanship is over,” after talks between the Biden White House and McConnell’s hand-picked surrogate, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) broke down Tuesday afternoon.

“As you look to what the Majority Leader has in mind for June, it’s pretty clear the era of bipartisanship is over,” McConnell said, referring to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s intention to bring legislation on paycheck fairness, LGBTQ equality, and gun control to the floor for votes.

It took McConnell less than one hour from the time news broke about the talks, which had been going on for about two weeks, and when he spoke to reporters. Continue reading.

8 Months After Election, MN GOP Refuses To Say It Wasn’t Stolen

GOP continues to give credence to conspiracy theory that led to assault on U.S. Capitol

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, in an interview with the Rochester Post Bulletin, Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan refused to affirm the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Per the Post Bulletin:

Asked whether the election was “stolen” from Trump, Carnahan declined to say one way or the other, but said the “concerns that people have should not be overlooked.”
“If there’s ever any question or doubt, or people don’t feel that they have the full transparency on enough things, what is wrong with just looking into things and answering those things?” she said.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement in response:

“It is both disgraceful and dangerous that the Minnesota Republican Party is giving credence to a conspiracy theory that fueled an insurrection against the United States. Refusing to condemn the Big Lie will only serve to further radicalize a segment of the Republican base against American democracy.

“The reason the Republican base has questions about the election is because they have been lied to by cowardly politicians who care more about their careers than our democracy. If Republicans make questioning the legitimacy of free and fair elections a regular feature of American politics, it will lead to another attack on our government.

“Minnesota Republican leaders at all levels must denounce this inflammatory and radicalizing rhetoric from Jennifer Carnahan. This has to stop.”

Stephen Colbert Breaks Down Latest Bonkers Election Conspiracy To Emerge From GOP

“Now this is obviously insane,” the “Late Show” host said of the wild “Italygate” theory.

Stephen Colbert took on the latest wild conspiracy to emerge from the GOP — the so-called “Italygate.”

The baseless theory suggests that people in Italy used military satellites to flip votes in the 2020 presidential election from then-President Donald Trump to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

The theory was even pushed by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat, according to The New York Times. Meadows reportedly pressured the Justice Department to investigate. Continue reading.

DFL Legislators, Housing Advocates emphasize the need for an Eviction Moratorium Off-Ramp

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, DFL Legislators were joined by local officials and housing advocates to emphasize the dire need for a suitable off-ramp for the current eviction moratorium. As budget negotiations continue, DFL legislators are proposing an orderly transition away from the eviction moratorium that would prevent a wave of evictions while ensuring landlords are made whole for rent that is owed to them.

“Governor Walz’s eviction moratorium has saved lives by reducing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the most vulnerable Minnesotans from the threat of losing their homes, and we cannot afford to replace this pandemic with an untenable wave of evictions,” said Rep. Alice Hausman (DFL – Saint Paul), chair of the House Housing Finance and Policy Committee. “The DFL is standing with both renters and landlords to ensure they have the opportunity to take advantage of federal assistance, and it’s our responsibility to provide that pathway without putting their financial or physical health in jeopardy.”

Policy makers and advocates emphasized the need for a roadmap to transition off the current residential eviction moratorium which would ensure renters have enough time to access federal funding for rental assistance when the COVID-19 related peacetime emergency ends and provide clarity to the process. Renters and landlords can access rental assistance at renthelpmn.org.

Watch: Testimony from an anti-vaxxer goes ‘off the rails’

Ohio lawmakers debating a bill Tuesday that would allow anyone to refuse any vaccine for any reason and would give them the “right” to not be “discriminated” against or even asked about their vaccination status, heard from Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, recognized as one of the world’s top spreaders of vaccine disinformation.

After falsely claiming that 5000 Americans have died from the coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Tenpenny told lawmakers that the injections, which have saved countless lives around the world, make people magnetic.

“Right now we’re all kind of hypothesizing,” a fast-talking Tenpenny said, after being asked about the “EMF frequencies,” also known as electromagnetic frequencies, she “hypothesizes” are associated with the COVID-19 vaccine. Continue reading.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: I Don’t Believe In Evolution, That Type Of So-Called ‘Science’

The conspiracy theory-endorsing Georgia Republican put air quotes around the word “science.”

Conspiracy theory-endorsing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) probably shocked no one with her latest anti-evolution declaration about science.

“I don’t believe in evolution,” the QAnon adherent told former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon on his “Real America’s Voice” podcast this week.

“I don’t believe in that type of so-called science. I don’t believe in evolution. I believe in God,” Greene continued, gesturing with air quotes during a discussion about the potential origin of the coronavirus. An estimated 40% of Americans believe God created humans as described in the Bible, according to a 2019 poll. Continue reading.

Mitch McConnell’s big bluff: Here’s the real reason he wants to keep the filibuster so badly

Last week, United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema expressed ongoing support for the filibuster, arguing that “it is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation” and prevents our country from “[ricocheting] wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies.” Then, over the weekend, Joe Manchin echoed a similar sentiment, writing that Democrats have “attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.”

Sinema and Manchin have been rhapsodizing over the filibuster and the virtues of bipartisanship for months, so these arguments are far from surprising. One obvious problem is they fly in the face of overwhelming evidence that bipartisanship is (mostly) dead. However, there’s another, more troubling problem that warrants our attention.

Sinema and Manchin maintain that the filibuster protects not only our democracy, but also the Democratic Party. If we rely on a mere majority for legislation, the thinking goes, any leftward movement will be met with an equal rightward shift when the GOP inevitably returns to power. Thus, we are to believe that the filibuster not only ensures stability, but, in the long run, actually protects Democratic Party’s legislative interests. Continue reading.

Trump For House Speaker Is A Bannon Brainstorm

Following former President Donald Trump’s June 4 remark that the idea of becoming speaker of the House after the 2022 midterm election is “very interesting” to him, political media has been abuzz with speculation. The idea has been making rounds in right-wing spheres in various iterations since January, when it was first championed by former White House chief strategist, election conspiracy-theorist-in-chief, and enchanted pile of dirty laundry Steve Bannon.

On January 21, conservative influencer Rogan O’Handley, who goes by “DC Draino” online, appeared on Bannon’s show War Room: Pandemic to discuss his tweet, in which he had proposed that “Trump run for Congress in Florida in ’22” and become speaker of the House, after which he can “impeach Kamala” — a remark that suggests Biden would not be president in 2023.

During the show, Bannon effusively praised O’Handley’s idea. He said the possibility of Trump, the only former president to incite an insurrection, becoming speaker in 2023 means “we don’t have to wait until 2024 to have a presidential election. This nationalizes the midterm elections” and “gives a unifying message” for Trump’s base to rally around. Continue reading.

Brooks’s claim that counting the votes of ‘eligible American citizens’ would have reelected Trump

Donald Trump won the presidential race “if only lawful votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted … Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900,000 to 1.7 million noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.”

— Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), in an interview with the Washington Examiner, published June 7

Brooks, who is running for the Senate, is echoing Trump’s false claim that President Biden actually lost the election. He, like Trump, claims there was all sorts of election fraud behind Biden’s victory. But he also has argued that Biden’s victory was greased by the votes of noncitizens.

The Examiner said that Brooks “did not provide evidence to support the claim” but instead pointed to a speech he made on Jan. 7 that laid out his calculations. In the address on the House floor, he declared: “Noncitizens overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in exchange for the promised amnesty and citizenship and, in so doing, helped steal the election from Donald Trump, Republican candidates, and American citizens all across America.”

The speech is actually rather detailed in showing Brooks’s math. But it relies on dubious assertions, some of which we have fact-checked before, to come up with these numbers. Continue reading.

A new study reveals the disturbing truth about the base of Trump’s support

How do we know anything at all about the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020? Are they mostly racist? Sexist, homophobic, xenophobic? Are they white working-class males who suffer from status anxiety as the U.S. population grows more diverse? Are Trump supporters wealthier voters or poorer? Are they anti-elites, or elites themselves? Are working people becoming the core of the Republican Party, as Senator Josh Hawley proclaimed on election night? Or did Joe Biden bring them back into the Democratic fold?

Answers to these questions traditionally come from exit polls supplemented by what we hear from political commentators, labor union officials, and community leaders. An NBC poll (February 21, 2021) reported that the news is not good for labor progressives:

The GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party.
In the last decade, the percentage of blue-collar voters who call themselves Republicans has grown by 12 points. At the same time, the number in that group identifying as Democrats has declined by 8 points.

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