Category: US Senate

Senators press Fudge to rebuild HUD’s depleted staff

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One-fifth of staff left since 2012

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge faced questions from both parties about how she plans to replace departed staff, a personnel gap that she said has undermined the implementation of department programs.

President Joe Biden’s budget request for the agency includes $182 million to increase personnel and recover some of the 20 percent of staff the department lost from 2012 to 2019. Fudge on Thursday appeared before the Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss the budget request. 

“What I found at my entrance into the agency is an agency that had great employees. But they were overworked and were understaffed,” Fudge said. “Until we can start to build back up our staff and build back up our capacity, we are at risk of not doing some things that we should do to make sure that our mission is completed.” Continue reading.

Murdoch empire pushes Republicans to back tech antitrust bills

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Lobbyists for Rupert Murdoch’s media companies are appealing to House Republicans to support antitrust bills meant to restrain Big Tech companies, sources tell Axios.

The big picture: Murdoch’s media businesses have aggressively positioned themselves in opposition to the power of tech companies like Facebook and Google.

Between the lines: The antitrust bills, at least five of which are expected to be formally introduced soon, have been spearheaded by Democratic leadership on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. Continue reading.

The dangerous American fascist: Why Fox News claims ‘they’ are destroying ‘white culture’

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Why Fox News Claims ‘They’ Are Destroying ‘White Culture’

I’m struggling to explain why a Fox News host would say to the American people, “they’re trying to take down the white culture!”

Democracies don’t turn into fascist oligarchies by being invaded or losing wars. It always happens from within, and is always driven by an alliance between demagogic, populist politicians and some of the very wealthiest people in society. 

Step one for these right-wing politicians and the morbidly rich who support them is to pit one group of people within the nation against others: Marginalize and demonize minorities, deny them access to the levers of democratic power while openly attacking them for trying to usurp the privileges and prerequisites of the majority. Continue reading.

GOP’s Tom Cotton repeatedly cuts off America’s first Black defense secretary as he fumes over diversity training

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During a hearing this Thursday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) rattled off a list of examples of what he says is law enforcement and the military introducing “woke” ideology into their training systems that “rewrites America’s history” and paints America as a systemically racist country.

He then turned to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — who happens to be America’s first Black Defense Secretary — and asked him, “Do you believe that our military is a fundamentally racist organization? Yes or no, please.” 

“Well, I won’t give you a yes or no answer on that, sir, because it deserves more than a yes or no,” Austin replied. “The military, like any organization, will have its challenges. I do not believe it is a fundamentally racist organization.” Continue reading.

Capitol rioter had plans to bomb Amazon’s servers and take down the Internet: report

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According to a report from the Washington Post, a man taken into custody for attacking the U.S. Capitol as part of the Jan. 6th insurrection has admitted he later planned to wreak havoc on the internet by using bombs to take out Amazon’s servers.

The report notes that 28-year-old Seth Aaron Pendley, who is accused of taking a sawed-off rifle to the Capitol assault, hoped to cripple government operations with his bomb attack

According to WaPo, Pendley was arrested when he met with a seller of C4 explosive devices who was actually an FBI agent. Continue reading.

Saying the era of bipartisanship is over is a bit like saying that MySpace is over

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“Bipartisanship” is a weird, malleable word in the context of Senate legislation. Does it mean a bill that earned votes from a number of senators from each party? At least one vote from each? A bill that most Americans support? A bill that was drafted with input from members of each party? Everyone seems to agree that bipartisanship is ideal but, because of that, everyone also seems to reorient it in a way that’s particularly useful at a particular moment.

So we have Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) firmly proclaiming on Tuesday that “the era of bipartisanship is over.” The occasion was apparently another collapse in conversations between the White House and Republicans over an infrastructure package, legislation that both President Biden and Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) hoped would be in some form bipartisan. Again, what standard needed to be met was never clear. It’s like the old “know it when you see it” standard about porn, except for the polar opposite of porn, which is a congressional funding bill for highways.

As soon as McConnell made those comments, you could hear eyes rolling from the offices of Democratic senators. In part because of Biden’s repeated declarations that he wanted legislation to be bipartisan, McConnell has made few overtures to actually meet the Democratic mini-majority on legislation. In fact, he said last month that “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” which isn’t particularly “bipartisan” as an outcome. Continue reading.

The right wing’s ‘culture war’ is built on a mountain of lies

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“The culture war” is so familiar I don’t need to explainwhat it is. It has been part of the Republican Party’s rhetorical repertoire since at least Robert Taft’s time. What most people do not understand, however, is nearly every moment in which “the culture war” flares up—over abortion, guns, sexuality, etc.—is rooted in a lie. If more people understood the centrality of lying to “the culture war,” more might understand the goal of the GOP’s “cultural war” repertoire is making some Americans seem illegitimate.

Consider the case of Mara Gay, a member of the Times‘ editorial board.1 She was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday. The subject of table discussion was Max Boot’s new op-ed in the Post on how too many people in this country are still underestimating the dire threat posed by the Republican Party to democracy and the American union.

Joe Scarborough, the co-host, said there’s a need to stop being surprised by the GOP’s anti-democratic posturing. Gay agreed. “We need to start taking it seriously,” she said. When it comes to creating an independent bipartisan body to investigate the sacking and looting of the United States Capitol on January 6, she said the Democrats in the United States Congress should stop asking for the GOP’s permission and act alone. Continue reading.

New report reignites push for wealth tax

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A blockbuster ProPublica report on the taxes paid by the richest Americans is reigniting a push from progressives for a wealth tax.

The report, based on tax-return data ProPublica received from an anonymous source, details how prominent billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have paid little to no taxes in some recent years, particularly when compared to their wealth gains.

The article comes as President Biden has proposed raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for his major spending proposals. Democrats have increasingly made raising taxes on the rich a top priority in recent years, and some progressives have called for going even further than Biden’s proposals by establishing a wealth tax that would impose taxes on net worth rather than income. Continue reading.

McConnell rushes to cameras to say the ‘era of bipartisanship is over’ after infrastructure talks break down

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U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wasted no time in rushing to find TV cameras to brag “the era of bipartisanship is over,” after talks between the Biden White House and McConnell’s hand-picked surrogate, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) broke down Tuesday afternoon.

“As you look to what the Majority Leader has in mind for June, it’s pretty clear the era of bipartisanship is over,” McConnell said, referring to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s intention to bring legislation on paycheck fairness, LGBTQ equality, and gun control to the floor for votes.

It took McConnell less than one hour from the time news broke about the talks, which had been going on for about two weeks, and when he spoke to reporters. Continue reading.

Mitch McConnell’s big bluff: Here’s the real reason he wants to keep the filibuster so badly

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Last week, United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema expressed ongoing support for the filibuster, arguing that “it is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation” and prevents our country from “[ricocheting] wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies.” Then, over the weekend, Joe Manchin echoed a similar sentiment, writing that Democrats have “attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.”

Sinema and Manchin have been rhapsodizing over the filibuster and the virtues of bipartisanship for months, so these arguments are far from surprising. One obvious problem is they fly in the face of overwhelming evidence that bipartisanship is (mostly) dead. However, there’s another, more troubling problem that warrants our attention.

Sinema and Manchin maintain that the filibuster protects not only our democracy, but also the Democratic Party. If we rely on a mere majority for legislation, the thinking goes, any leftward movement will be met with an equal rightward shift when the GOP inevitably returns to power. Thus, we are to believe that the filibuster not only ensures stability, but, in the long run, actually protects Democratic Party’s legislative interests.  Continue reading.