Category: National Issues

Kinzinger is first GOP lawmaker to call on Gaetz to resign

The Hill logo

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) on Thursday night called for Rep. Matt Gaetz(R-Fla.) to resign amid allegations that Gaetz had sex with a minor and violated sex trafficking laws. 

In a short tweet, the Illinois Republican wrote, “Matt Gaetz needs to resign.”

The tweet included a link to an article from The Daily Beast reporting that Gaetz used Venmo to pay an accused sex trafficker $900 in May of 2018. The Beast reports that the man, Joel Greenberg, then sent the same amount of money to teenaged girls. Continue reading.

Video shows Texas GOP official seeking ‘army’ of volunteers to monitor polls in mostly Black and Hispanic Houston precincts

A leaked presentation from the Harris County Republican Party shows an official citing widespread voter fraud in a call for 10,000 poll watchers in Texas. (Common Cause Texas)

Biden-GOP infrastructure talks off to rocky start

The Hill logo

President Biden’s bid to secure bipartisan support for his $2.25 infrastructure package is off to a rocky start.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, says there will be only one month set aside to hammer out a deal with Republicans and right now it’s nowhere near to happening.

Biden is already sniping with key moderates such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Continue reading.

How non-religious voters became a key part of Trump’s downfall

AlterNet Logo

For all the predictions and talk of a slump in support among evangelicals, it appears Donald Trump’s election loss was not at the hands of religious voters.

2020 U.S. presidential election results by faith. And by and large there was very little notable change in the vote choice of religious groups between 2016 and 2020 – in fact, for most faiths, support for Trump ticked up slightly. Instead, it was among those who do not identify with any religion that Trump saw a noticeable drop.

Despite exit poll data initially pointing toward a drop in white evangelical support for Trump in 2020, the latest data shows this not to be the case. The data is based on the Cooperative Election Study, which has become the gold standard for assessing vote choice because of its sample size and its ability to accurately represent the voting population of the United States. Continue reading.

‘This is a political prosecution’: After its members were charged in the Capitol riot, one group says it is more popular than ever

Washington Post logo

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. — In federal court, Mark Sahady and Suzanne Ianni are facing charges of illegal entry and disorderly conduct for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. But at a rally against coronavirus restrictions held last month in a field outside Boston, the pair were hailed as “patriots.”

“Yeah, we are definitely not terrorists,” Sahady, 46, told the crowd. “Make no mistake about it: This is a political prosecution.”

In the weeks since the Capitol riot, many participants have tearfully apologized for their actions, often after paying a price legally, socially or professionally. But for some, Jan. 6 has emerged as a source of pride and inspiration — a reflection of how robustly many in the Republican Party have embraced former president Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost the White House because of fraud. Continue reading.

Economist Paul Krugman: Republicans have no meaningful objections to Biden’s infrastructure plan — they simply ‘want him to fail’

AlterNet Logo

Having recently signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 — a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief/economic stimulus package — President Joe Biden is now promoting an ambitious infrastructure plan. Many Republicans, not surprisingly, are railing against the plan. Liberal economist Paul Krugman discusses their opposition this week in his Times column, stressing that Republicans have no meaningful objections to it — they simply want to see Biden fail as president.

“Republicans have been having a hard time explaining why they oppose President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan,” Krugman explains. “Their real motives aren’t a mystery. They want Biden to fail, just as they wanted President Barack Obama to fail, and will once again offer scorched-earth opposition to anything a Democratic president proposes. And they’re especially opposed to public programs that might prove popular, and thereby help legitimize activist government in voters’ minds.”

Because “laying out those true motives” would not “play well with the electorate, Krugman writes, Republicans are “looking for alternative attack lines”—for example, arguing that “most of the proposed spending isn’t really infrastructure.” Continue reading.

CDC director says racism is ‘serious public health threat’

The Hill logo

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday declared racism a “serious public health threat,” becoming the largest federal agency to do so.

“A growing body of research shows that centuries of racism in this country has had a profound and negative impact on communities of color,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement published on the agency’s website.

Walensky noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt most severely in communities of color, which have experienced disproportionate case counts and deaths. Continue reading.

Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Many countries may not hit that target this year.

Washington Post logo

In the United States, the good vaccine news keeps coming. For much of the world, things look bleak.

As of Thursday, just short of 20 percent of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated, giving some 66 million people a strong measure of protection against a disease that has already killed more than 500,000 Americans.

By contrast, Covax — a World Health Organization-backed push for equitable distribution — aims to secure enough doses to cover up to 20 percent of the people in participating countries by the end of 2021, but it may not meet that relatively modest goal, experts warn. Continue reading.

The Holocaust Began Not With Concentration Camps, But With Hateful Rhetoric. That Part of the Story Cannot Be Forgotten

As people around the world pause this Thursday to observe the solemn occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is worth asking what exactly is being remembered. In recent years, surveys released by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany with the participation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have found some alarming gaps in public knowledge about the Holocaust. In 2018, for example, 45% of adult U.S. respondents couldn’t name a single camp or ghetto.

There is no question that the world needs better and more Holocaust education. As we think about how best to do this in the 21st century, we need to ensure that future generations learn not only what happened during the Holocaust but also how and why.

Nazism did not emerge from nowhere. The Holocaust did not begin with concentration camps, ghettos or deportations. People didn’t wake up one day and decide to participate in mass murder. In fact, the Nazis had been in power in Germany for eight long years before the systematic murder of the Jews began. Continue reading.

Hunter Biden Takes a Hit at Donald Trump’s Kids For Only Ever Working For Their Dad in New Memoir

She Knows Logo

For a time, Hunter Biden was the frequent target of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, often called out by sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump who slammed him for using father President Joe Biden’s name to personally enrich himself (a claim that Vanity Fair reminds us no one in the Trump family has any business making). As recently as March 2020, Donald Jr. invited Hunter Biden to personally debate him to see who benefited more from their father’s time in public office — and Hunter, who long held his tongue on these attacks, has finally snuck in a response to Trump’s offspring in his new memoir Beautiful Things. Going after Donald Jr.’s claims that he used the Biden name to get lucrative jobs at private companies, Hunter Biden fired back that his last name being an asset in the world of business was an inevitability — as they themselves might know if they ever sought jobs outside of their father’s organizations.

In the memoir that takes us all the way through his experience of President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Hunter Biden writes of his lucrative position with Ukraine oil and gas company Burisma that raised so many questions from Trump supporters and family alike. Biden knew that a Ukrainian company that was hoping to gain Western allies in resisting Russia’s influence would find his last name to be a plus.

“There’s no question my last name was a coveted credential. That has always been the case,” he wrote. “Do you think if any of the Trump children ever tried to get a job outside of their father’s business that his name wouldn’t figure into the calculation? My response has always been to work harder so that my accomplishments stand on their own.” Continue reading.