Tag: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Warnock Wins Georgia; 51-49 Senate Count

Warnock Defeats Walker – With more than 95% of the vote counted late Tuesday, incumbent Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Trumpian Republican challenger Herschel Walker, as projected by the Associated Press. Warnock had 50.5% of the vote in the midterm runoff to Walker’s 49.5%. That’s 1,710,503 votes for Warnock to 1,675,030 for Walker – a margin of 35,473. 

Remaining votes to be counted are largely from Democratic-leaning Cobb and DeKalb counties surrounding Atlanta. 

A Real Democratic Majority: The 118th Congress’ Senate now consists of 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans, which means that the chamber’s president pro-tem, Vice President Kamala Harris, will not be called in to break ties on party lines, at least in the case of filibuster-proof budget bills. The plus-one Senate Democrat from last November’s midterm election – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania – means that committee membership numbers will not be split evenly, but rather Democrats will have a slight majority, making it a bit easier to move legislation through to the full Senate and to confirm President Biden’s federal judge nominees.

•••

Trump Organization Guilty of Tax Fraud – A jury found ex-President Trump’s business guilty of all 17 counts of tax fraud and other financial crimes Tuesday (per The New York Times). Prosecutors had charged the Trump Organization of providing off-the-book benefits to executives, including Mercedes-Benzes, expensive apartments and private school tuition for their children and relatives. 

Testimony of Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg proved key to the case. The Trump Organization kept Weisselberg as CFO even as the case was being heard in New York’s state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

•••

Officers Defending Capitol on 1/6 Awarded Medals – Law enforcement officers from the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., who responded to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday. Medals will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution, Axios reports. Congress passed legislation last year, signed by President Biden, to award the medals. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Exactly 23 months ago, our nation suffered the most staggering assault on democracy since the Civil War. January 6 was a day of horror and heartbreak. It is also a moment of extraordinary heroism.”

Handshakes Refused: Family of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke after helping defend the Capitol, refused to shake the hands of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

The Speaker McCarthy Question Arises Again

Strong Republican backlash against Donald J. Trump had pundits convinced the former president was finally out as leader of the GOP, two years after he lost his own re-election. Until … Politico reported over the weekend on a backlash to the backlash. 

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) already faces Republican opposition to his bid to become Speaker of the House – and that’s assuming his party picks up the six more seats necessary for him to qualify for the job. 

So what do you think? Should McCarthy be next Speaker of the House? Should Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remain the Senate’s minority leader? Let us know what you think in the Comment box in this column, or in the left column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and list your political leanings in the subject line.

_____

GOP Senate Campaign Goes for Broke

A CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction bill ago, the GOP was tipped to retake the House of Representatives for sure and likely the Senate along with it, thanks to President Biden’s low poll numbers, high inflation rates and conventional wisdom regarding a president’s party’s midterm election prospects. Now the Republican Party’s prospects for retaking the Senate from its 50-50 split (with Vice President Harris breaking ties) are dimming, which also makes a huge gain in the House less likely. 

The Republican Senatorial Committee is looking downright DNC-like, yanking potential defeat from the jaws of victory. On Sunday The New York Times scooped via campaign records how the committee, headed by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, had collected a record $181.5 million in campaign funds by last July and splurged all but $23.2 million of that on a digital fund drive that has many donors cutting off subsequent contributions. The committee reportedly sent millions of text messages with provocative text messages like “Should Biden resign?” followed by “Reply YES to donate,” which if you did and already had card information stored with the party, sucked cash from your account immediately. 

Such party leaders as Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “are fretting aloud that Republicans could squander their shot at retaking the Senate in 2022, with money one factor as some first-time candidates have struggled to gain traction,” according to the NYT.

Have you been frustrated by such modern methods of raising cash, for either party? If so, tell us about it in the Comments box below or in the left column if appropriate -- or email editors@thehustings.news and let us know in the subject line whether you lean right or left.

--TL

_____

The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021. 

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates. 

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

_____
•Address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

The Final Steps to Trump’s Acquittal

By Todd Lassa

Once the votes were counted Saturday afternoon and Donald Trump was acquitted in his second Senate impeachment trial, both sides declared a victory. Because 10 Republicans joined 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with the latter party, lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, could lay claim to the “most bipartisan” trial vote ever (click on Forum to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on the impeachment trial, “The Long Con”). 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, had it both ways, too, having been among the 43 Republicans in the minority who nonetheless snagged an acquittal because the 57-43 vote was 10 “guilties” short of the two-thirds needed to convict. 

“They did this because they followed the wrong words of the most powerful man on earth,” McConnell said on the Senate floor after the vote, in what pundits were describing as the most critical excoriation of Trump made by either side. “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

McConnell, who when he still was Senate majority leader before President Biden’s inauguration, told his caucus they could vote their conscious in the impeachment trial, said he voted “not guilty” Saturday because the trial of a president after leaving office is unconstitutional. Last Tuesday, the Senate voted 56-44 that trying an ex-president is indeed constitutional, in a decision that required only a majority decision. A major point in the House impeachment managers’ argument was that if an ex-president could not be tried thusly, it would risk the nation with a “January surprise,” with carte-blanche to commit high crimes and misdemeanors as a lame-duck. 

But McConnell forced delaying the trial until after the inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, said Saturday afternoon. The House voted for impeachment on January 15, while Trump was still in office.

Prior to the final Senate vote, Raskin moved to call a witness to give a video deposition in the case. Trump attorney Michael van der Veen objected, and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, threatened to call many witnesses for the defense, including House Speaker Pelosi, and draw out the trial to disrupt Biden’s agenda for weeks or even months to come.

In the end, the two sides agreed that the statement of Raskin’s intended witness, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-WA, would be admitted as evidence and that defense would stipulate to its veracity. 

Herrera Beutler’s statement is that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, had called Trump during the siege urging him to call off the violent protesters. Trump had replied that the violent protesters were Antifa and Black Lives Matter, not pro-MAGA. 

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump replied, according to Herrera Beutler. CNN reported her description of the call Friday night, but according to various news reports, Herrera Beutler told about overhearing the conversation to a local Washington state newspaper and to constituents. 

In his closing arguments, van der Veen said the defense was not admitting to the statement’s truthfulness, though the House impeachment managers apparently were satisfied with the outcome.

The trial itself came down to House impeachment managers building a case that then-President Trump called for his supporters to rally on the Capitol January 6 to “Stop the Steal” of his November 3 “landslide victory,” a.k.a., “the Big Lie,” and did nothing to prevent members of Congress and vice president Mike Pence, from the danger of the mob. Trump’s defense attorneys argued that the impeachment was a continuation of Democratic and mainstream Republican “hatred” since before he took office January 20, 2017, and that the trial was unconstitutional.

But the nine House impeachment managers appear satisfied that the trial and its bipartisan verdict achieved their goal overall and are looking forward to investigations in New York for Trump’s business practices, and especially in Fulton County, Georgia, for his phone call with secretary of state Ben Raffensperger. In the meantime, however, Trump continues to maintain control of the GOP, especially on state and local levels. Rep. Herrera Beutler, for example, faces potential censure from Washington state’s GOP and a Trump PAC-funded primary challenger next year for her statement in the impeachment trial.

•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
•Address comments to editors@thehustings.news

Not Carthage, But Important

By Stephen Macaulay

On January 26, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tweeted, "I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function." 

He was talking about the filibuster. The Senate cloture rule calls for a supermajority, or 60 votes, to cut off debate. The Democrats, who hold a simple majority, would prefer that is all that is required to end debate; odds are, with Vice President Harris as president of the Senate, they would end all debate on subjects and get right to the voting, which they would again, as bill passage depends on a simple majority, come away as victors.

While “scorched-earth” may be a bit of an exaggeration — after all, we’re not talking the Third Punic War here and the salting of the ground upon which Carthage once stood — but a point of trying to uphold what the Senate should be about: being a deliberative body (it would be hard to put “greatest” in front of that term). To deliberate means to debate. To debate, when done properly, means to have an exchange of ideas, of opposing viewpoints.

In one regard it is somewhat ironic that I open with a tweet from McConnell in that it seems too many political issues are now being dealt with in 280 characters, rather than with an open, fulsome, spirited debate.

The Senate structure, as you know, is one where each state has equal representation. (The House, of course, has a structure predicated on population.) The point of the way the Senate is put together is to protect, in effect, the minority, meaning that California and New York can’t step on Wyoming and Vermont.

The Senate cloture rule does the same thing by requiring that there be two thirds, not one half, of the body in agreement that debate ends.

Of course, there’s the question of whether this is too high a bar, if getting cloture is some sort of impossibility. Perhaps that was once the case (or Senators just tended to be more loquacious back in the proverbial day) because from 1917 to 1968 cloture was invoked just eight times.

In 2019-2020 it was invoked 270 times (a record).

There is a feeling that we “must get things done.” A bunch of droning Senators doesn’t seem to be the way that can or will happen.

But McConnell does have a point, with the point being that before important things get done there needs to be sufficient support — by both sides — for its execution to have the positive effects anticipated by its existence.

To simply have a situation that says, in effect, “OK. We’ve had enough. Go back to your desk and put your head down,” isn’t going to be particularly beneficial.

This is not to argue that McConnell is an exemplary politician. He has proven himself over the years to be more of a tactician, a man who makes moves to benefit his, and his party’s, interests.

But there is something to be said for the ability of the minority to be heard in a fulsome manner.

And McConnell ought to know that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is far from being Cato.

_____
Click on Forum for new commentary by Stephen Macaulay