Tag: Sen. Tammy Baldwin

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Jeffries Elected House Democratic Leader – House Democrats have elected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (above) their leader, replacing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who announced she would step down after two decades (but remains in Congress for at least two more years). Jeffries, 52, covers New York’s 8th District which includes large parts of Brooklyn and a section of Queens, and becomes the first Black congressional leader from any party, replacing Pelosi, 82, who was the first female congressional leader from any party. Younger Democrats in Congress have been clamoring for more youthful leadership for the last few years. 

Other Leaders: Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-MA), 59, replaces Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), 83, in the House Democrat number-two spot while Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), 43, replaces Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), 82, for the number-three leadership position. Until the 118th Congress takes over in January, the outgoing top-three Democratic House positions are held by representatives older than President Biden, who just turned 80.

Meanwhile: Current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) faces some inner-party opposition as he tries to skate the line between condemning ex-President Trump’s dinner with an antisemite and a white supremacist (see right column) and actually condemning Trump himself. McCarthy cannot afford to lose five Republicans from the incoming House of Representatives to take the speaker’s gavel he long has coveted – which gives Democrats an outside chance of voting Jeffries into the speakership. 

Nobody, but nobody, really expects the GOP majority to let that happen, but it will make for an interesting January on Capitol Hill. 

--TL

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Oath Keepers Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy – Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Florida chief Kelly Meggs were found guilty in federal court of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Tuesday (The Hill). The Justice Department victory marks the first such conviction for seditious conspiracy since 1995, according to CNN.

All five Oath Keepers defendants were found guilty in the trial of obstruction of an official proceeding. Four Oath Keepers were found guilty of tampering with evidence – the fifth member of the far-right organization was not charged in this count. 

Rhodes and Meggs face potential prison sentences of up to 20 years for each.

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Senate Votes to Codify Same-Sex Marriage – The Senate voted, 61-39, to codify federal recognition of same-sex marriage, with religious liberty protections securing the bipartisan support, Roll Call reports. Lead sponsor Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told reporters the bill would ease concerns that the Supreme Court could revisit precedents that protected same-sex and interracial marriage. SCOTUS in 2013 found the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act largely unconstitutional.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the House could take up the bill as early as next week.

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Good Economic News – Various signs are appearing that the Federal Reserve is succeeding in capping inflation without triggering a recession. It’s early yet, but here’s a big piece of such evidence: the national average price of a gallon of gasoline was $3.521 as of Tuesday morning, AAA reports. That’s lower than the average price before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

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(WED 11/16/22)

It’s Official: GOP Wins House – Republican Mike Garcia defeated Democratic challenger Christy Smith to win California’s 27th District House seat Wednesday, the AP reports, to finally give the GOP the majority in the lower chamber it had expected to come much more easily a week earlier. Garcia’s victory puts the House count at 218 Republicans and 211 Democrats, per The New York Times, with six more seats to call. 

Reddish Trickle: The GOP House margin, which will be anywhere from one to 14 seats -- though more likely between five and seven -- is good enough for the party’s first declared 2024 presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. The jury was still out 24 hours after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago announcement on whether his fall from party leadership finally is over. Rupert Murdoch’s news empire is sticking to its guns so far – Sean Hannity even broke away from the drone of Trump’s “low energy” speech, and ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reported that Mar-a-Lago security had to keep several in the gaga-for-MAGA crowd from leaving his speech early. 

Why would GOP leadership break up with Donald J. Trump this time, and not after three election losses – the House in 2018, the presidency and Senate in 2020 and essentially both chambers this year (and his only win was by electoral count, not popular vote) – as well as two impeachments, one insurrection, and an FBI seizure of top secret documents? 

Consider that when Mitt Romney lost, miserably, in his bid to unseat President Obama in 2012, the GOP conducted an “autopsy” on the party’s apparent lack of popularity.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in Florida’s winds, where Gov. Ron DeSantis offers the party sanctuary, and he won’t fly you on a chartered airplane to get there.

Meanwhile, McConnell Holds: SCOTUS- and federal court-crusher Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) won over his party’s caucus to remain minority leader, with 37 votes to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) 10 votes. One Republican voted “present” in the secret ballot held in the Old Senate Chamber according to Politico, which adds that Scott sent out a memo during the vote accusing the outgoing National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Indiana’s Todd Young, for distributing “hundreds of thousands of dollars of unauthorized and improper bonuses to staff.”

McConnell has been GOP leader for nearly 16 years, and when asked whether he might soon consider stepping down, he told reporters “I’m not going anywhere” (Politico again). 

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Senate Moves to Codify Same-Sex Marriage – The Senate Wednesday passed a procedural provision, 62-37, to advance a same-sex marriage bill that could reach its final vote this week, per Roll Call. The bill would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which was ruled largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a 2013 decision. The bill “will not take away or alter any religious liberty,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), chief negotiator and the first openly gay U.S. senator. 

Among the 12 Republican senators voting to advance the bill was its primary GOP sponsor, Susan Collins, of Maine. It is the first among several bills the lame duck Congress will take up in a rush to beat the end of its 117th session.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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Trump Trumps, Again

(WED 11/16/22)

It’s 2015 again, with the fabulosity of Mar-a-Lago – where FBI agents seized top secret government documents just three months ago -- substituting for Trump Tower’s Golden Elevator. Some 20 minutes after beginning his speech – which came off sounding like a low-key MAGA-hat rally in which he described the magnificent success of his administration and the dismal failures of his successor -- Donald J. Trump announced his third bid for president of the United States. 

“In order to make America great and glorious again tonight I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.” Though Trump did not conjure up his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, he did suggest China had somehow meddled in the 2022 midterms. And the GOP did win the midterms thanks to Trump’s involvement, he suggested, but Republican leaders had overblown expectations they would win 40 House seats. 

Trump threw in this statement, devoid of any irony or self-awareness: “This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign.”

Biden on Strike on Poland: Before Trump in his very big announcement could blame on the current president a missile that struck Poland – he perversely suggested that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he still been in office – Biden spoke at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, telling reporters “there is preliminary information that contests that … it’s unlikely given the trajectory that it was launched from Russia.“ It has been identified as a Russian missile, however, and it killed two people in rural Poland. In discussions with Polish President Andrej Duda and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Biden says the U.S. has offered support to Poland’s investigation “and we need to determine exactly what happened.”

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news