Tag: GOP

Not a single Republican will support bill to combat rise in hate crimes

Credit: Nikos Frazier | MLive.com

With hate crimes surging nationwide, not a single Republican will sign on as a co-sponsor to a bill to address the problem.

Hate crimes are on the rise in Trump’s America, a trend that has been attributed in large part to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, tacit endorsement of violence, and embrace of far-right extremism.

According to new FBI statistics released this week, documented hate crimes rose by 17 percent in 2017, with particularly notable increases in anti-Hispanic and anti-Semitic crimes. During the same time period, white supremacist murders doubled, making 2017 the fifth deadliest year on record for extremist violence.

Clearly, there’s a need to do something to address the surge in hate crimes.

Will the Republican Party keep dancing with autocracy?

When a national leader urges that votes be ignored, or that an election result he doesn’t like might best be set aside, we label him an autocrat or an authoritarian.

When it’s President Trump, we shrug. Worse, many in his party go right along with his baseless charges of fraud.

We are in for a difficult two years. Surviving them will require that Republican senators take seriously the pledge they made in their oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” What we have seen so far is not encouraging.

View the complete opinion column by E.J. Dionne, Jr., on The Washington Post website here.

FBI: Hate crimes have skyrocketed under Trump

Violent right-wing extremists are more emboldened than ever by hateful rhetoric from Trump and Republicans.

Hate crimes are sharply on the rise in the Trump era, according to new data from the FBI. That makes it all the more worrisome that Trump and the Republican Party embraced an openly anti-Semitic message in a desperate last-minute bid to win midterm elections.

Trump’s hateful influence on America started with his high-profile, virulently racist 2015 campaign for president. Between 2015 and 2016, the FBI found a 6 percent increase in hate crimes reported to law enforcement agencies around the country.

But it’s gotten a lot worse since Trump took office. According to the FBI’s latest data, the number of hate crimes reported increased by another 17 percent from 2016 to 2017, rising from 6,093 to 8,437.

View the complete November 13 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Republicans Are Full of It About Their Health Care Agenda

The White House and the Republican National Committee are blatantly lying to voters about health care. The truth is that Republicans continue their health care sabotage and have tried to gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions — and they’re suing right now to allow insurers to deny those people coverage.  Read more Republicans who are full of it:

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel repeatedly denied that Republicans want to take away protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

McDaniel: “Now, they are using health care as a fear tactic, and they’re going across these states and saying Republicans are going to take away pre-existing conditions. It is just false. The president has said that is not true, and we’re combating that, that lie of Democrats.”

McDaniel: “Well, the Democrats have really tried to fearmonger on health care and tried to tell people that Republicans are going to take pre-existing conditions. It is flat-out false. The president has been on the stump refuting that. We have candidates sharing stories of their family members, of their kids, of their mothers who have pre-existing conditions. Of course we would never take away that right.”

New York Times: “It is Democrats, by passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, who introduced meaningful protections for Americans with prior illnesses. And Republican officeholders have taken numerous actions that would tend to weaken those protections — in Congress, in states and in courts. The Trump administration introduced a sweeping new policy just last week that would allow states to sidestep Obamacare’s requirement to cover pre-existing conditions.”

Continue reading “Republicans Are Full of It About Their Health Care Agenda”

Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan

‘If we can’t trust Paulsen, Lewis, and their Republican accomplices to tell us the truth about what they’re voting on, how can we possibly trust them to put us first?’

Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen like to claim that their votes for the American Health Care Act didn’t gut protections for pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately for the embattled Republicans, the facts tell a different story. As Lewis and Paulsen double down on their disastrous plan, Republicans like Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber are joining them in enthusiastically endorsing the bill their party forced through the House last year.

Responding to Republicans’ health care lies, the DFL released the following statement:

“Erik Paulsen, Jason Lewis, and their Congressional Republican allies have completely undermined our health care system by voting to raise costs and strip care from millions of Americans. Instead of owning up to their heartless health care plan, Republicans have resorted to lying to their constituents about the most basic facts.” Continue reading “Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan”

Trump and Republicans settle on fear — and falsehoods — as a midterm strategy

When asked what evidence President Trump had that “unknown Middle Easterners” were in the migrant caravan, he told reporters to “search” with their cameras. Credit: The Washington Post

President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters with two weeks left until the Nov. 6 elections.

Trump’s messaging — on display in his regular campaign rallies, tweets and press statements — largely avoids much talk of his achievements and instead offers an apocalyptic vision of the country, which he warns will only get worse if Democrats retake control of Congress.

The president has been especially focused in recent days on a caravan of about 5,000 migrants traveling north to cross the U.S. border, a group he has darkly characterized as gang members, violent criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” — a claim for which his administration has so far provided no concrete evidence.

View the complete October 22 article by Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey on the Washington Post website here.

Republicans Run On Fear, Democrats Run On Protecting Health Care, Medicare & Social Security

Democrats have a clear message for Election Day: they are running to protect health care, Social Security and Medicare from Republican attempts to gut these vital programs. Republicans, on the other hand, have turned to a campaign strategy of fear and outright lies in order to get votes. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

Democrats are running on protecting health care, Medicare, and Social Security from Republican attacks.

Yahoo News: “Democrats 2018: It’s the health care, stupid”

NBC News: “Democrats find new ways to talk about entitlement cuts in campaign’s closing days”

Washington Post: “As midterms near, Democrats accuse GOP of plotting to cut Medicare, Social Security”

Washington Examiner: “Democrats warn voters: The GOP is coming for your Social Security, healthcare”

Vox: “Half of 2018’s Democratic campaign ads are about health care”

Trump and Republicans are using fearmongering and lies to get votes.

CNN: “Trump’s midterm campaign of fear”

Washington Post: “Trump and Republicans settle on fear — and falsehoods — as a midterm strategy”

New York Times: “Trump and G.O.P. Candidates Escalate Race and Fear as Election Ploys”

MSNBC: “Trump, GOP look to stoke fear in base to goose election turnout”

Toronto Star: “Donald Trump’s strategy as midterms approach: lies and fear-mongering”

Suburban Women Are Fed Up With The Republican Party And Could Drive A Blue Wave

If there’s a Democratic sweep in November, politically moderate suburban women will be a big reason why. “Now I’m Democratic,” said one Michigan woman. “I’ve never been before.”


Senate candidate Maria Collett canvassing in Ambler, PA, Campaign Manager Kristiansen and Field Director Borwegen. Credit: Ryan Collerd, Buzzfeed News

The popular face of this year’s elections on the American left may well be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young democratic socialist who shocked the Democratic establishment in New York City. But if there is a blue wave this year, the real driving force will be the country’s politically moderate suburban women.

Since the election of Donald Trump, many have turned their backs on the Republican Party, and many others have become politically engaged for the first time in their lives. Suburban women are rallying to take control of Congress away from Trump — and potentially to take over the Democratic Party.

Once reliably Republican-voting, college-educated white women — who make up a large portion of women voters in the suburbs — flipped from Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a narrow 6-point margin. That gap is now a chasm. In a poll of 59 battleground House races nationwide, college-educated white women now favor Democrats over Republicans by nearly 30 points.

View the complete October 16 article by Molly Hensley-Clancy on the BuzzFeedNews.com website here.

Study finds no link between transgender rights law and bathroom crimes

Credit: John Tlumacki, Globe Staff, file

A first-of-its-kind study being released Wednesday refutes the premise that the state’s transgender antidiscrimination law threatens public safety, finding no relation between public transgender bathroom access and crimes that occur in bathrooms.

Researchers at the Williams Institute, a think tank focused on gender identity at the UCLA School of Law, examined restroom crime reports in Massachusetts cities of similar size and comparable demographics and found no increase in crime and no difference between cities that had adopted transgender policies and those that had not. The data were collected for a minimum of two years before a statewide antidiscrimination law took effect in 2016.

Activists who want to undo that state law through a ballot question in the Nov. 6 election have focused their campaign message on bathroom safety concerns. They suggest that a new right for transgender people infringes on everyone else’s privacy rights, and could be abused by men who want to prey upon women and children in ladies’ rooms. The vote is being closely watched nationwide because it offers the nation’s first public referendum on transgender rights in the state that first introduced gay marriage.

More on the Boston Globe website here.

How the tea party paved the way for Donald Trump

The following article by Bryan T. Gervais and Irwin L. Morris was posted on the Washington Post website September 7, 2018:

President Trump greets the crowd at a rally in Billings, Mont., on Thursday. Credit: Kevin Lamarque, Reuters

In August, after former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlentylost his state’s Republican primary for governor, he wistfully concluded, “The Republican Party has shifted. It is the era of Trump, and I’m just not a Trump-like politician.” Indeed, despite the protests of “Never Trump” Republicans over the last three years, President Trump is clearly at the center of the party and no longer an “outsider” or interloper.

But Trump did not make this happen singlehandedly. In our new book “Reactionary Republicanism: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victory,” we argue that one important group blazed the path Trump followed: the tea party movement. In substance and style, Trump has realized the agenda that tea party Republicans forged in the Obama years.

Our research focuses on tea party Republicans in the House — where the tea party’s congressional base was most powerful. We assessed each House member’s association with the tea party based on support from tea party activists and groups and whether the member explicitly identified with the tea party movement.

View the complete article here.