Tag: GOP sleaze

DFL Statement on Senate GOP Concealing a COVID-19 Outbreak

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin issued the following statement on Minnesota Senate Republicans’ decision to conceal a COVID-19 outbreak from their DFL colleagues and the non-partisan staff at the Minnesota capitol:

“Minnesota Senate Republicans’ decision to cover up a COVID-19 outbreak within their ranks immediately before a special legislative session is a genuinely stunning failure of basic human decency that could land people in the hospital or worse. Paul Gazelka and Senate Republicans owe their DFL colleagues and the non-partisan staff at the Minnesota capitol an immediate explanation for why they decided to needlessly put people in harm’s way.

“If Paul Gazelka had a shred of decency left in him, he would apologize for allowing his caucus to potentially expose their colleagues to a lethal pandemic and take action to ensure something like this never happens again.”

State lawmakers acknowledge lobbyists helped craft their op-eds attacking Medicare-for-all

Washington Post logoEmails show opponents are mobilizing at local level to try to turn Americans away from big health-care changes

Lobbyists either helped draft or made extensive revisions to opinion columns published by three state lawmakers in a way that suggested Medicare-for-all and other government involvement in health care posed dangers, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Montana state Rep. Kathy Kelker (D) and Sen. Jen Gross (D) acknowledged in interviews that editorials they published separately about the single-payer health proposal included language provided by John MacDonald, a lobbyist and consultant in the state who disclosed in private emails that he worked for an unnamed client.

Gross said MacDonald contacted her on behalf of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a multimillion-dollar industry group founded in 2018 and funded by hospitals, private insurers, drug companies and other private health-care firms.

Continue reading here.

Why Republicans Will Sidestep Their Garland Rule for the Court in 2020

New York Times logoJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health scare raised the question of how the Senate would handle a Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year.

WASHINGTON — When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital last weekend after another in a string of health scares, blue America breathed a sigh of relief. Only one more month, many whispered, until the start of a presidential election year when filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court would be off limits in the Senate.

But would it?

That was the case in 2016 when Senate Republicans stonewalledPresident Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to fill an opening that occurred with 11 months left in Mr. Obama’s tenure. “Let the people decide,” was the Republican mantra at the time, as they argued that it was improper to consider Mr. Obama’s nominee when voters were only months away from electing a new president who should get the opportunity to make his or her own choice on a Supreme Court justice.

View the complete November 29 article by Carl Hulse on The New York Times website here.