Tag: GOP congress

Republicans embrace strategy of trying to gaslight the nation instead of legislating

AlterNet logoRepublicans are trying out the old idea that if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes conventional wisdom. From Donald Trump down to Moscow Mitch McConnell, the story they’re running with is the “do nothing” House.

As The Washington Post notes, Trump has used the phrase six times on Twitter since Monday. McConnell has played along, complaining that in her “rushed & partisan impeachment process,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said “Not one word on the outstanding legislation the American people actually need. Nothing on the USMCA, or the NDAA, or funding for our armed forces.” That’s blatantly not true, as Pelosi has been involved in negotiations with the White House for weeks on the USMCA trade proposal. And the House appropriators—who have already completed 10 of 12 appropriations bills—have been working for weeks with Senate appropriators to complete the spending bills that will keep government running past the next deadline of Dec. 20.

Not to mention the literally hundreds of bills the House has passed that McConnell has refused to bring to the Senate floor. That includes gun safety legislation. It includes legislation to protect the next election from malign foreign interference. It includes legislation to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions. It includes legislation to try to stem the acceleration of climate change. The House has been passing literally life-and-death issue bills. The Post counted up: The House has passed 542 total measures, 389 of which are bills as opposed to resolutions (such as naming post offices). The Senate in total has only passed 384 measures—bills and resolutions—and just 91 bills.

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Thousands of Minnesotans caught up in federal push to tighten work requirements for food aid

Advocates for those who rely on the SNAP program say the change will push more people to food shelves.

Thousands of Minnesotans could lose access to food stamps when a federal rule change goes into effect next year tightening work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Federal officials say about 7% of those on SNAP are able-bodied adults without dependents and that the rule change will save the government $5.5 billion over five years. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said the change is about “restoring the original intent of food stamps … moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency.”

But advocates who serve Minnesotans who rely on SNAP argue that the change will make it difficult for those who need help to get it and put even more pressure on food shelves and other community programs.

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A Mysterious ‘-1’ and Other Call Records Show How Giuliani Pressured Ukraine

New York Times logoHouse Democrats’ impeachment report showed the president’s personal lawyer executing an irregular foreign policy.

WASHINGTON — In the two days before President Trump forced out the American ambassador to Ukraine in April, his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was on the phone with the White House more than a dozen times.

Phone records cited in the impeachment report released Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee illustrate the sprawling reach of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign first to remove the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, then to force Ukraine’s new government to announce criminal investigations for Mr. Trump’s political gain.

That effort accelerated through the spring and summer into a full-court press to force Ukraine’s new president to accede to Mr. Trump’s wishes or risk losing $391 million in military assistance desperately needed to hold off Russian-led forces waging a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.

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Republicans are now living in a Trump fantasy world that was cooked up by the Kremlin

AlterNet logoThe following is from page iii of the House Intelligence Committee’s Minority Report on the Ukraine investigation, written by Republican staffers.

The thing that stands out for me is the bit about a “difference of world views.” For example, the Republicans exist in this world:

Aaron Rupar

✔@atrupar

REP. RANDY WEBER (R): Is CrowdStrike in part owned by a Ukrainian?

CHRIS CUOMO: No!

WEBER: … … really?

CUOMO: Yes!

WEBER: That’s not the information that we have.

CUOMO: You have bad information!

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Trump’s border wall hangs over spending talks

The Hill logoPresident Trump‘s proposed border wall is looming as a central obstacle to passing spending bills by a December deadline.

The top appropriators in the House and Senate have already struck an agreement ahead of Thanksgiving on how to divide $1.37 trillion in annual spending among 12 bills. But lawmakers still need to agree on how to deal with the border wall — a top issue for Trump that precipitated a government shutdown last year.

With just 15 legislative days between the Thanksgiving recess and a deadline of Dec. 20 to pass the spending bills, appropriators will face long odds to avoid another shutdown unless they punt on the issue with a continuing resolution (CR).

View the complete November 30 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

Legal experts: Impeachment inquiry proves GOP’s ‘governing philosophy’ is shameless narcissism

AlterNet logoIt isn’t hard to predict the eventual outcome of the impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump is facing: Trump will likely be indicted on articles of impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives — where Democrats have a majority — but acquitted in a trial in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate. Legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic don’t disagree with that scenario, which they discuss in a November 25 article for The Atlantic. And impeachment, they stress, is exposing the narcissism and shamelessness of the modern Republican Party.

Wittes and Jurecic, in addition to their work with The Atlantic, are key figures at the Lawfare Blog: Wittes is editor in chief, while Jurecic is managing editor. Both have covered Trump’s legal woes extensively. And the wealth of testimony offered during this month’s impeachment hearings, they assert, makes a strong case for impeaching the president and removing him from office.

“The public proceedings largely dramatized the story that we already knew about Trump’s coercive efforts with respect to Ukraine,” Wittes and Jurecic explain. “Witness after witness made it obvious: the president was attempting to force Ukraine to announce sham investigations that would benefit Trump politically, in exchange for a White House visit and hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid. There were a lot of witnesses. They were credible. And they were, individually and collectively, damning.”

View the complete November 26 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Trump, GOP skeptical Pelosi will go through with impeachment

The Hill logoNew polling showing public opposition to impeachment has some Republicans along with officials in the White House voicing skepticism that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will go through with a vote on articles of impeachment.

Even President Trump, while insisting he wanted an impeachment trial, predicted Friday that Pelosi would not go through with impeachment.

“No, I don’t expect it,” he said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”

View the complete November 23 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Republicans, Democrats brace for first public testimony in impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s congressional allies and critics on Sunday doubled down on their respective positions on the impeachment inquiry as the House prepares to move into the public phase of the process.

Which witnesses should appear was a key topic after House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) requested that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden be called to testify. Republicans also plan to call the whistleblower whose complaint helped spark the inquiry, among others.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that while some of the suggested Republican witnesses would likely be called, he saw no reason to have Hunter Biden as a witness.

View the complete November 10 article by Zack Budryk on The Hill website here.

Republicans push for whistleblower’s identity, but not naming names — yet

President and his son encourage media to out the whistleblower, while lawyers caution liability

President Donald Trump and his congressional allies have created an uneasy tension on Capitol Hill around a push to out the whistleblower whose report launched the House impeachment inquiry, in the days since a right-wing outlet reported a name and work history without direct confirmation.

Trump, at the White House on Sunday, discussed the details of the report but didn’t mention the name and twice added: “I don’t know if that’s true or not.” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, mentioned a resume item at a Republican press conference Friday and on Fox News on Tuesday but didn’t say the name.

And Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., after he called on the media at a Trump rally to name the whistleblower, told CQ Roll Call on Tuesday that he “probably will” publicly name the person mentioned in the article, but declined to say if he knew for sure if it was correct.

View the complete November 6 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Transcripts show Republicans’ scattershot strategy in early days of impeachment inquiry

Washington Post logoRepublicans have complained for weeks about the secret House impeachment inquiry, accusing Democrats of rigging the process and interviewing witnesses behind closed doors — at one point storming the hearing room and chanting, “Let us in!”

But inside the secure room in the Capitol basement where the proceedings are taking place, Republicans have used their time to complain that testimony has become public, going after their colleagues who were quoted in media reports commenting on witness appearances, and quizzing witnesses themselves on how their statements had been released.

The efforts by GOP lawmakers to shape the Democrats’ inquiry emerged in full view for the first time Monday with the release of hundreds of pages of transcripts from two early witnesses: Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

View the complete November 4 article by Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian on The Washington Post website here.