Tag: Mitch McConnell

McConnell tightlipped as impeachment furor grows

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is keeping a low profile amid the growing impeachment battle surrounding the White House over President Trump’s political dealings with foreign governments.

McConnell made news in the first days of the two-week congressional recess, when he said he would have “no choice” but to move impeachment if the House sends over articles.

Since then, however, he’s largely gone quiet, turning his attention to issues like opioid funding, getting money for Fort Campbell and judicial nominations.

View the complete October 12 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

A historian sets the record straight on Mitch McConnell’s new ‘McCarthyism’

AlterNet logoI suppose we should all be happy that “McCarthyism” has become such a widely used accusation that it appears in almost every news cycle, and that there is now a consensus that it is a “bad thing.”

Unfortunately, the term has become almost entirely evacuated of its historical and political meaning. Exhibit A: Republican Senator Mitch McConnell accused critics of “McCarthyism” for pointing out that McConnell blocking investigations into Russian election meddling benefited President Vladimir Putin. Even worse, President Trump accused actress Debra Messing of McCarthyism and in the same tweet called for Messing, an outspoken liberal whom he considers a political enemy, to be “thrown off television.”

Historians need to set the record straight. Let’s start by defining the term on the basis of the actual history. Historians and non-historians alike use the term “McCarthyism” to refer to a broadly applied mid-twentieth century red scare, named after the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy, who stole the anticommunist limelight at its later stages in February 1950. The anticommunist repression McCarthy fronted had been going on since at least 1947, and some historians argue, myself included, it began in the late 1930s.

View the complete October 8 article by Andrew Feffer from the History News Network on the AlterNet website here.

Local newspapers wait anxiously for pension funding relief

Crucial retirement savings package appears stuck in the Senate

Local newspapers serving communities from Tampa, Florida, to Walla Walla, Washington, say they’re under the gun from a pension funding “cliff” they face next year that will make them have to rapidly catch up on required contributions, exacerbating their well-documented financial decline.

When relief for some 20 publishers passed the House in May on a 417-3 vote as part of sweeping retirement savings legislation, it seemed like a slam dunk that lawmakers would ride to the rescue in time.

But they haven’t, and advocates say the clock is running out.

View the complete October 7 article by Doug Sword on The Roll Call website here.

Republicans deliver rare rebuke of Trump, slamming his Syria withdrawal decision

Washington Post logoPresident Trump faced a swift torrent of Republican criticism Monday as lawmakers rebuked his plan to withdraw troops from northeast Syria, a move Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said would undermine U.S. national security and potentially bolster Islamic State terrorists.

McConnell (R-Ky.), in a rare public split with Trump, said that a supermajority in the Senate disagreed with the president’s abrupt withdrawal announcement, raising the specter of veto-proof action to oppose the decision.

“A precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria would only benefit Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime,” McConnell said in a statement Monday. “And it would increase the risk that ISIS and other terrorist groups regroup.”

View the complete October 7 article by Toluse Olorunnipa and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

McConnell says he can’t completely prevent an impeachment trial

Duration, however, is ‘a whole different matter’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated on Monday that he is bound by Senate rules to take up articles of impeachment if they are presented by the House.

“Under the Senate rules, we’re required to take it up if the House does go down that path, and we’ll follow the Senate rules,” McConnell said. “It’s a Senate rule related to impeachment that would take 67 votes to change.”

That makes clear that he does not expect to have a path to use the “nuclear option” to set a new precedent to stop a trial with just a simple majority, effectively bypassing the rules.

View the complete September 30 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.

As Trump Complains Democrats ‘Do Nothing,’ McConnell Holds Up 400 Bills

Donald Trump, lashing out over the continued revelations about his attempts to solicit foreign election help, slammed the Democrats on Friday as a “do nothing” party for their decision to move forward on impeachment.

“The Democrats are now to be known as the DO NOTHING PARTY!” he wrote.

At almost the precise moment Trump made those comments, Democrats were holding a press conference to highlight some of their legislative accomplishments so far this year.

View the complete September 28 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

A Senate hearing for an extremist judicial nominee doesn’t go well

AlterNet logoThe day after Trump nominated Steven Menashi to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Rachel Maddow did an entire segment on an article he wrote in 2010 that raised questions about whether Trump had nominated a white nationalist to a lifetime appointment on the circuit court. Maddow was taken to task by conservative media, but then a week later, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck dug a bit deeper into Menashi’s past.

Steven Menashi, a Stanford-trained lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, wrote dozens of editorials and blog posts in the late 1990s and early 2000s for a number of college and professional publications decrying “leftist multiculturalism” and “PC orthodoxy.” He complained about “gynocentrists,” wrote that the Human Rights Campaign “incessantly exploited the slaying of Matthew Shepard for both financial and political benefit” and argued that a Dartmouth fraternity that held a “ghetto party” wasn’t being racist.

He attacked academic multiculturalism as “thoroughly bankrupt” and, in 2002, defended then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi amid a worldwide controversy over comments asserting the superiority of Western civilization over Islamic culture — for which Berlusconi himself ultimately apologized.

View the complete September 20 article by Nancy LeTourneau from Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website her.

Federal agency ordered to investigate Homeland Security nominee

What happens next may rest with McConnell

The Department of Energy has been told to investigate allegations of corruption by William N. Bryan, the White House’s nominee for a senior post at the Department of Homeland Security, CQ Roll Call has learned.

Bryan joins a long line of Trump administration nominees who’ve faced controversy. Just this week, the White House withdrew the nomination of Jeffrey Byard to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel told the Energy Department in a letter last month to investigate a whistleblower’s allegations that Bryan used his former position at DOE to funnel business to a private energy company.

View the complete September 19 article by Joshua Eaton on The Roll Call website here.

‘The man who sold America’: McConnell’s mountain of political sins catalogued in devastating new profile

AlterNet logoMitch McConnell finally has the power he’s longed for since he was a 22-year-old intern for Sen. John Sherman, but his ruthless march to become Senate majority leader has seen him abandon almost all of his stated principles — and earned him a lot of enemies.

The Kentucky Republican has been unpopular in his home state for years, but this summer has seen his approval rating plunge to 18 percent after MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tarred and feathered him with the nickname “Moscow Mitch,” and he’s increasingly seen as “the man who sold America,” reported Rolling Stone.

“For so many years, McConnell has seemed maddeningly invincible,” wrote Bob Moser in a lengthy magazine profile. “But now, just a few years after achieving his lifelong goal of becoming Senate majority leader, it appears that every political sin the man has committed on his relentless march to power is coming back to haunt him at once.”

View the complete September 17 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump rallies to Kavanaugh’s defense after new sexual misconduct allegation surfaces

WASHINGTON — President Trump vigorously defended Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday following a new allegation of sexual misconduct during the Supreme Court justice’s college years, as some leading Democratic presidential contenders raised fresh suspicions that Kavanaugh was untruthful during last year’s Senate hearings leading to his confirmation to the high court.

In an early-morning tweet, Trump called on the Justice Department to “come to [Kavanaugh’s] rescue,” and accused critics of trying to deter the justice from rulings favorable to the administration. The president’s angry ripostes came a day after the New York Times reportedthat a male former classmate at Yale had told the FBI about witnessing an episode similar to, but separate from, an already publicized account by a female classmate, Deborah Ramirez, who said an inebriated Kavanaugh had thrust his penis in her face during a Yale party in the 1980s.

The authors of the New York Times story said Kavanaugh did not speak to them about the newly reported allegation.

View the complete September 15 article by Laura King on The Los Angeles Times website here.