#Representative Mikie Sherrill

[minnesotafollower]

Introduction of New Proposed Afghan Adjustment Act

On July 13, 2023, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (Dem, MN) with five co-sponsoring Democrat Senators and six co-sponsoring Republican Senators introduced a new proposed Afghan Adjustment Act (S.2327). The Democrat co-sponsors are Senators Coon (DE), Blumenthal (CT), Shaheen (NH), Durban (IL) and Menendez (NJ), and the Republican co-sponsors are Senators Graham  (SC), Moran (KS), Mullin (OK),…

[mariacallous]

Under a clear blue sky, on a warm spring day, several dozen Virginians gathered in a suburban backyard near Richmond to plot the future of the Democratic Party. Not that this was what they said they were doing. This was a meeting of the Henrico County Democratic Committee, “dedicated to electing Democrats in Henrico County, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and nationwide,” and they had come to rally neighborhood support for Abigail Spanberger, a local girl made good.

Spanberger, a member of Congress and now a candidate for governor, lives in Henrico County—about 10 minutes away from that suburban backyard, she told me. Although she currently represents a more rural Virginia district, this is her home base, and the home team wants to help her current campaign. A local official introducing Spanberger thanked everyone present for spending “a lot of hours in offices and knocking on doors and writing postcards and delivering signs.” Another spoke about “getting the band back together,” reuniting the people who helped Spanberger during her improbable first run for Congress, in 2017, when she came from nowhere to beat a Tea Party Republican, Dave Brat.

The audience cheered when Spanberger talked, as she often does, about her notable career trajectory. Famously she served in the CIA, from 2006 to 2014 (and has always been circumspect about what, exactly, she was doing). When she returned home, she told me, “I thought I was done with public service”—until she was galvanized by the election of Donald Trump. Now, after three hard-fought wins in purple-district congressional races, her aspirations stretch beyond the Virginia governor’s mansion: She wants to change the way Americans talk about politics. “We want to turn the page past the divisiveness, the angriness, and just focus on brass tacks, good policy, and governance,” she says.

In today’s Congress, those goals are wildly idealistic. On both sides of the aisle, “divisiveness and angriness” attract headlines. Outrage, not brass tacks, produces attention. Marjorie Taylor Greene is repeatedly interviewed and profiled, even though she has never been associated with a serious piece of legislation. Matt Gaetz, known for nothing except being Matt Gaetz, is more famous than many important congressional committee chairs. Even among the Democrats, the ranking members of many important committees have a lower profile than the members of “the Squad,” a group who come from very blue House districts and have defined themselves to the left of the party.

Spanberger is part of a different, less splashy friend group, one that also includes House members Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, among others. Most are in their 40s or early 50s; many come from purple districts and swing states. They are sometimes called the “NatSec Democrats,” a phrase that explains their origins but doesn’t quite encompass who they are or what they do. Most, it is true, are veterans of the military or the intelligence agencies. Most entered Congress in 2018. Most hadn’t been in politics before that. Some of them were helped or encouraged by Moulton, a former Marine who was first elected to Congress in Massachusetts in 2014, made a quixotic run for president in 2020 and created the Serve America PAC, which backed 15 of the 28 Democrats who flipped the House in 2018. Moulton told me that Trump inspired a lot of veterans to consider political careers for the first time—and to run as Democrats. “He’s so uniquely unpatriotic and anti-American. I mean, this is a guy who didn’t try to hide the fact that he was a draft dodger. He said, The people who signed up were suckers. The people who got killed are losers.”

In retrospect, the members of this cohort turned out to be precursors of an important change, one that may end up redefining American politics. For half a century, the Republicans were the party that embraced patriotism most intensely, talked about loving America most loudly, and seemingly took a harder line on national security. But now the Republican candidate calls America “a nation in decline” and refers to the U.S. economy as an “unparalleled tragedy and failure.” That language has inspired a geographically diverse, pro-Constitution, no-nonsense backlash in the Democratic Party, a movement in favor of patriotism, concerned about national security, and convinced that only a democracy that delivers practical results can stay safe. The effect was clearly visible at the Democratic National Convention when Kamala Harris promised “to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American,” and when delegates responded by waving American flags and chanting “USA, USA.”

The Democrats who were in the vanguard of that backlash have been working together for some time. Spanberger, Moulton, Slotkin and others wrote a joint letter to President Joe Biden in December, for example, warning against Israel’s strategy in Gaza, on the grounds that “we know from personal and often painful experience that you can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone.” But national-security experience isn’t the only thing that links them. Tom Malinowski, a former State Department official who was also part of the group—he was elected to Congress from a previously a red New Jersey district in 2018, then lost in a close race in 2022—points out that although most of his cohort had never held elected office before, all of them had taken oaths to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution. They came to Congress in that spirit. “We were very idealistic in our belief that our job was to protect democratic values and institutions in this country,” Malinowski explains, “and very pragmatic on the day-to-day work of Congress on issues like the economy, the budget, immigration and crime.” In other words, he explains, “we all believe the country would be fine if we had to compromise on issues like that. What was essential was not to compromise on democracy.”

Malinowski, who suggests calling the group Service Democrats, agrees that they are defined by attitude as much as issues. Although motivated to enter politics by their disdain for Trump, all of them say they are happy to work with individual Republicans. Sherrill told me that she thinks “getting as broad a coalition as possible on the legislation I want to see passed” is a sign of success. This outlook is very different from the obsessive hatred of compromise that has prevented the current Republican House majority from passing almost any legislation at all. “Anytime a Democrat supports a Republican piece of legislation, then it’s not good enough. It’s obviously not extreme enough, because then it’s a RINO bill or something,” Sherrill says.

The group’s attitude also redefines what it means to be a moderate in the Democratic Party. By an older standard, Spanberger, Slotkin, Moulton, Sherrill, and Crow might have been called progressives. They believe in abortion rights, for example��a cause once avoided by what used to be called conservative Democrats—and have joined pro-abortion-rights caucuses. But if, again, a moderate nowadays is someone willing to talk with the other side in order to find solutions, then this group is a bunch of moderates. Sherrill said she could see the appeal of what she described as a “progressive model” of politics: “deciding what you want and accepting nothing else until you get it.” But there is also a risk to that model, because you might not get anything at all. Had the Democrats in Congress been more willing to bargain with the Trump administration over the border, she thinks, they might have secured concessions for Dreamers, the children who arrived in the U.S. with their undocumented parents and have no citizenship status.

Still, the NatSec Democrats’ deeper objection is not to any particular ideological faction, but rather to politicians who, as Spanberger says, “don't actually want to fix anything,” because “performance is all there is.” As an example, she cited the border-control bill that was written and shepherded through the Senate by senior conservative Republicans but was then blocked—to the surprise of the bill’s authors—by Trump, who thought that fixing the border might help Biden. Her friends, by contrast, want to fix things: the border, the health-care system, even democracy itself. Having served in places that have collapsed into chaos, they know what it’s like to live in places that don’t have governance of any kind.

They also learned how to operate in that sort of chaos, which is useful now too. Elissa Slotkin, a Middle East analyst who was elected to the House from Michigan in 2018 and is now running for the Senate, says she still thinks the same way about solving problems as she did when she worked for the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Defense Department, among other previous employers: “My job is to identify real threats and go after threats. The No. 1 killer of children is gun violence. Mental-health issues, suicide, opioid addiction—those are real threats. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on things that I believe are exaggerated threats, like books or teaching Black history in our schools.” Spanberger, also used to being challenged, makes a point of traveling in the redder parts of her district and talking in detail about the agricultural bills she’s introduced in Congress: “You can’t both think I’m some crazy deep-state whatever, or some radical leftist,” and at the same time be chatting politely about meat-processing regulation.

Given members’ experience, the group’s special interest in foreign policy is unsurprising, but it doesn’t come cloaked in bluster. When speaking at the DNC, Jason Crow—an Army Ranger and paratrooper who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before winning a House seat in Colorado—contrasted “tough talk” and “chest thumping” with the “real strength and security” that comes from alliances, competence, and continuity. “I refuse to let Trump’s golf buddies decide when and how our friends are sent to war,” he said. Over coffee a few months earlier, Crow told me that isolationism’s appeal is overrated. An outward-looking America appeals to voters, especially those concerned about security. He reminds people, he said, that “America can be a great force for good, that we are at our best when America is engaged and American leadership matters,” and he thinks they listen and care.

Slotkin, who met me in a tiny Senate campaign office she keeps near the Capitol, also told me that voters respond to that kind of expansive message about America’s role in the world. She said she talks about her national-security background on the campaign trail as a way of explaining her other policies: “I really believe that in a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy, it’s essential that anyone from anywhere can get into the middle class. And if we don’t have that, it’s literally a security problem. If we become a country of the very rich and the very poor, it’s a stability risk.” She thinks her training helps her in a different sense too. Like Spanberger and Crow, Slotkin has also taken oaths to uphold the Constitution, and she, too, has been part of teams dealing with life-threatening situations. “You cut your teeth professionally, in jobs where mission is more important than self,” she said. “And in fact, if you put yourself ahead of the mission, you would have been fired for most of the jobs that we did.”

A few months after Spanberger’s rally, on a rather hotter summer day, I watched Mikie Sherrill deliver an equally pragmatic message. Speaking at an event held at the Ukrainian cultural center in Whippany, the congresswoman, an Annapolis graduate and ex-Navy helicopter pilot, was introduced by Thomas “Ace” Gallagher, mayor of Hanover Township. Gallagher is a Republican, but Hanover suffers from flooding, and Sherrill, he said, had helped his district get money and attention from the Army Corps of Engineers.

“She’s on the Democratic side of the aisle,” he told the room. “But for me, there are not two sides: There’s people that serve and work together and are focused on the common good. As for everybody else, they can do whatever they want to do, as long as they don’t get in the way of our good work.” Soon, he predicted, “you are going to see many people that are more moderate working together … on true solutions to our problems.”

Sherrill, who is expected to launch a run for New Jersey governor herself, seemed as surprised by this optimistic outburst of bipartisan goodwill as I was. “I look around this room, and I’m feeling a little emotional,” she said, and paid tribute back to Gallagher. “Again and again and again, we have come together here in the Eleventh District of New Jersey, to try to problem solve, to try to address the things that are scaring people, to try to make your life a little bit better, to try to just bring some rationality and sanity to a world that right now isn’t making a lot of sense.”

While she was talking—this was on Sunday, July 21—people in the audience started looking at their phones, whispering to one another. At the end of the event, the speakers asked the audience to contribute to Ukrainian charities, stepped off the podium, and learned that President Biden was no longer running for reelection. Two weeks earlier, Sherrill had joined what was still then a very small number of elected politicians openly calling for him to step down. Over lunch, she told me that she had been moved to do so because “we’ve all been saying Trump is an existential threat. But we’ve been acting like we don’t really believe it.” At that point, only two senators had publicly called for Biden not to run: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Not coincidentally, both came from red states. In places outside safe blue states and blue districts, Sherrill told me, Democrats had been looking hard at the polling data and couldn’t see a path to victory.

Earlier, Sherrill had done a small event for Sue Altman, a Democrat who is running for Malinowski’s old seat, attracting the same kind of fired-up-to-do-something-positive crowd as Spanberger, a team of people who seem genuinely excited to knock on doors for a pragmatist who is offering to get things done. Young people in particular, Altman told me, “are sick of the negativity. They’re sick of politics as usual, and they want the government to work properly.” But it’s not a mass movement—nobody gets tens of millions of Instagram followers by finding long-term solutions to flooding in New Jersey.

On the contrary, in a world where social-media algorithms promote anger and emotion, where cable-news teams have an economic interest in promoting the fame-seeking and the flamboyant, charting a different course carries serious risks. The dull work of passing meat-packing bills in Congress, or fixing flooding in New Jersey—none of that will ever go viral on TikTok. Only people who still see politics through the lens of real life, and not through an online filter, will care. In a bitter Senate fight in Michigan, or a close governor’s race in Virginia, the contest could feature candidates who differ radically, but in style as much as substance.

But then, the same can be said about the candidates at the top of the ticket. In a sense, the presidential race is the biggest swing-state race of all. Like the other Service Democrats, Harris also took an oath, early in her career as an attorney, to uphold the Constitution. And like any Democrat running in a purple district, Harris also needs to appeal to a wide range of people who are “sick of politics as usual,” to get them to focus on real-world concerns—economics, health care, inflation—instead of culture wars, and to convince them that she is in politics to solve problems and not just to perform. If she looks down her party’s ballots, she’ll find plenty of allies who have been fighting that same battle for years.

[living400lbs]

"Congressional salaries are $174,000. That pay has not increased since 2009; in real dollars, salaries are the lowest they’ve been since 1955. Our health insurance is purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchange. We pay 30% of the premium; the House of Representatives pays 70%, similar to most workplace insurance plans. ... Mandatory pensions take up 4.4% of the salary.... two residences are required; votes keep House members in Washington, D.C., about a hundred days each year. No housing allowance or per diem is paid, and no tax deduction for business housing is permitted. ...

Juxtapose these facts against the misconception that people become rich by serving in Congress. ... Congress is full of multimillionaires for the same reason that the NBA is full of tall people. It’s easier to get recruited and win with such advantages. Serving in Congress does not pad your bank account any more than playing basketball adds inches to your height. While we might accept physical attributes in athletes as natural or desirable, wealth does not give a better perspective for politics. It undercuts the purpose of representative democracy.

Americans rightfully fume that congressmembers trade stocks, convinced that insider information is misused, but we refuse to squarely address the harm that comes from representatives having such wealth in the first place. From 2019 to 2022, over 130 members of the House of Representatives each traded over $100,000 of stock. To trade that dollar volume in a year, these folks are either addicted day traders who cannot manage their money (much less our economy), or—and this is the reality—they own stocks worth many multiples of what they traded.

Representatives who are my peers in age and years of political service—like Cindy Axne, Mike Garcia, Ashley Hinson, Ro Khanna, Tom Malinowski, Blake Moore, Kim Schrier, and Mikie Sherrill—have each traded over $1 million while in office. In my life before Congress, I knew that people with net worths in the tens of millions were not my peers. Pretending they are in Congress is an indignity."

From I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan by US Rep Katie Porter

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 14, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 15, 2023

Traditionally, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the annual budget and appropriations of the Department of Defense, passes Congress on a bipartisan basis. Since 1961 it has been considered must-pass legislation, as it provides the funding for our national security. For all that there is grumbling on both sides over one thing or another in the measure, it is generally kept outside partisanship. 

Late last night, House Republicans broke that tradition by loading the bill with a wish list from the far right. Republicans added amendments that eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the Defense Department; end the Defense Department program that reimburses military personnel who must travel for abortion services; bar healthcare for gender transition; prevent the military academies from using affirmative action in admissions (an exception the recent Supreme Court decision allowed); block the Pentagon from putting in place President Biden’s executive orders on climate change; prevent schools associated with the Defense Department from teaching that the United States of America is racist; and block military schools from having “pornographic and radical gender ideology books” in their libraries.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted: “We don’t want Disneyland to train our military. House Republicans just passed a bill that ENDS the wokism in the military and gives our troops their biggest pay raise in decades.” 

In fact, the events of last night were a victory for right-wing extremists, demonstrating that they hold the upper hand in the House. Representatives Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), both military veterans, expressed shock that so many Republicans voted to strip abortion protections from military personnel. “[T]hey will say, ‘this is a really bad idea,’ ‘this is not where the party should be going,’ ‘this is a mistake,’” Sherill said. “[W]ell then why did everyone but two people in the Republican conference vote for this really bad amendment?”

The bill passed by a vote of 219 to 210, largely along partisan lines. This year’s budget is $886 billion as the U.S. modernizes the military to compete with new threats such as the rise of China, and it provides a 5.2% increase in pay for military personnel. 

But Senate Democrats will not vote for it with the new partisan amendments and are working on their own measure. While there will be a conference committee to hammer out the differences between the two versions, McCarthy has offered a position on that committee to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), one of the extremists. This is an unusual offer, as she is not on the House Armed Services Committee. 

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: “Extreme MAGA Republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security and taken it over and weaponized it in order to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people.”

“We are not going to relent, we are not going to back down, we’re not going to give up on the cause that is righteous,” Representative Scott Perry (R-PA) said.

Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) summed up the vote today on Twitter. “The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the bill that funds all of our military operations. It is typically bipartisan and is about as serious as Congress gets. What weapons of war we fund, which allies we share them with, how we recruit. National security is a BFD. We can have our political debates about any number of issues but it is generally understood that when Americans are willing to sacrifice their lives to defend us, it’s time to check the crazies at the door. But today, the crazies won.

“They won first because [McCarthy] put the crazies in positions of power. But second because none of the “moderate” Republicans had the courage to stay the hell out of KrazyTown…. Is every member of the [House Republican Conference] a homophobic, racist, science denying lunatic? No. But the lesson of today is that the ones who aren’t are massive cowards completely unfit for any position of leadership. 

“There is space—and demand—for reasonable differences of opinion in our democracy. This isn’t about whether we agree. It’s about whether we can trust that—differences aside—we trust that we’ve got each other’s back if we ever find ourselves in a foxhole together. That’s usually a metaphor, conflating the horrors of war with the much lower-stakes lives that most of us are fortunate enough to lead. But today, the entire [House Republican Conference] told us—both literally and metaphorically—that they don’t give a damn about the rest of the unit.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[antonjesus]

July 4 Celebrations Should Be Nonpartisan: Representative Mikie Sherrill...

[letsjanukhan]

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill announces bid for New Jersey governor, faces crowded field

Rep. Mikie Sherrill became the second Democratic member of Congress to jump into the increasingly crowded 2025 race for New Jersey governor Monday. Sherrill, who represents parts of Morris, Essex and Passaic counties in the House, is a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor who hopes to keep Drumthwacket in Democratic hands with current Gov. Phil Murphy ineligible to seek a third term. “Let’s…

[floorcharts]

Who: Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-New Jersey)

Twitter: @RepSherrill

When: September 2019

What: Honoring Bruce Springsteen's 70th Birthday

Watch on C-SPAN

Read Congressional Record

[dragoni]

They’re known as the “Badasses” 💪 Women who served. Now they’re sisters working together to implement change!

The reason they made their announcement and explained their reasoning as a group, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, is because they had already formed a bond over their national security background -- especially the five women:

Elissa Slotkin of Michigan --  ex-CIA officer 

Abigail Spanberger of Virginia  -- ex-CIA officer

Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania -- ex-Air Force

Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey  -- Naval officer

Elaine Luria of Virginia were -- Naval officer

Military service is something #CadetBoneSpurs Trump and Pence will never understand -- which might explain their treasonous crimes; #RussiaGate and #UkraineGate  -- even against #MilitaryFamilies #Vets and #GoldStarFamilies

“I think there's something about having done prior service that connects you to the consequences of the decisions that are being made here and at the White House.”

Not 'the squad'

"None of us is ever going to get in a Twitter war with anyone else," Slotkin said flatly. "If we have a concern with someone, we're going to go right up and talk to them about it and we're not going to add unhelpful rhetoric to an already bad tone coming out of Washington."

"I don't care who has the headlines," Spanberger responded. "I care about the legislation that we prioritize and I don't think any of us want to be the loudest voice in the room. I just want to be one of the most effective."

They also realize that despite needing GOP votes to win these moderate districts, they also need to keep their left flank happy, and excited.

Bonding over job as well as family

They picked offices near one another, which they say makes it easier to work together -- in rarer moments than they anticipated -- decompress with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer.They bond not just over their jobs, but their families. They all have children -- some, very young.

Slotkin said. "Or there is a strong woman who's running, we've had strong women who have run and won, but their husband is nowhere to be seen. So when they saw a strong woman and a strong man together, that was new for them."

Breaking the chain of command

"None of us, none of us came to Congress from a district that wants us to just sit here and be quiet and learn the ropes and figure it out," Sherrill said. "They want us to engage and they want change and they want it now."

#VoteVets #VetAgainstTrump  #VetsAgainstGOP  #NatSec

[somethingnerdythiswaycomes]

the democrat running in my house district in NJ is super liberal, a veteran, and currently winning in polls. i’m glad that even though we made a misstep with christie, NJ is predominantly blue and we have great options like her for elections

[stlhandyman]

Supreme Court, U.S FILED In The OCT 2 2022 Supreme Court ofthe United States  RALAND J BRUNSON, Petitioner,

Named persons in their capacities as United States House Representatives: ALMA S. ADAMS; PETE AGUILAR; COLIN Z. ALLRED; MARK E. AMODEI; KELLY ARMSTRONG; JAKE AUCHINCLOSS; CYNTHIA AXNE; DON BACON; TROY BALDERSON; ANDY BARR; NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN; KAREN BASS; JOYCE BEATTY; AMI BERA; DONALD S. BEYER JR.; GUS M. ILIRAKIS; SANFORD D. BISHOP JR.; EARL BLUMENAUER; LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER; SUZANNE BONAMICI; CAROLYN BOURDEAUX; JAMAAL BOWMAN; BRENDAN F. BOYLE; KEVIN BRADY; ANTHONY G. BROWN; JULIA BROWNLEY; VERN BUCHANAN; KEN BUCK; LARRY BUCSHON; CORI BUSH; CHERI BUSTOS; G. K. BUTTERFIELD; SALUD 0. CARBAJAL; TONY CARDENAS; ANDRE CARSON; MATT CARTWRIGHT; ED CASE; SEAN CASTEN; KATHY CASTOR; JOAQUIN CASTRO; LIZ CHENEY; JUDY CHU; DAVID N. CICILLINE; KATHERINE M. CLARK; YVETTE D. CLARKE; EMANUEL CLEAVER; JAMES E. CLYBURN; STEVE COHEN; JAMES COMER; GERALD E. CONNOLLY; JIM COOPER; J. LUIS CORREA; JIM COSTA; JOE COURTNEY; ANGIE CRAIG; DAN CRENSHAW; CHARLIE CRIST; JASON CROW; HENRY CUELLAR; JOHN R. CURTIS; SHARICE DAVIDS; DANNY K. DAVIS; RODNEY DAVIS; MADELEINE DEAN; PETER A. DEFAZIO; DIANA DEGETTE; ROSAL DELAURO; SUZAN K. DELBENE; Ill ANTONIO DELGADO; VAL BUTLER DEMINGS; MARK DESAULNIER; THEODORE E. DEUTCH; DEBBIE DINGELL; LLOYD DOGGETT; MICHAEL F. DOYLE; TOM EMMER; VERONICA ESCOBAR; ANNA G. ESHOO; ADRIANO ESPAILLAT; DWIGHT EVANS; RANDY FEENSTRA; A. DREW FERGUSON IV; BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK; LIZZIE LETCHER; JEFF FORTENBERRY; BILL FOSTER; LOIS FRANKEL; MARCIA L. FUDGE; MIKE GALLAGHER; RUBEN GALLEGO; JOHN GARAMENDI; ANDREW R. GARBARINO; SYLVIA R. GARCIA; JESUS G. GARCIA; JARED F. GOLDEN; JIMMY GOMEZ; TONY GONZALES; ANTHONY GONZALEZ; VICENTE GONZALEZ; JOSH GOTTHEIMER; KAY GRANGER; AL GREEN; RAUL M. GRIJALVA; GLENN GROTHMAN; BRETT GUTHRIE; DEBRA A. HAALAND; JOSH HARDER; ALCEE L. HASTINGS; JAHANA HAYES; JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER; BRIAN HIGGINS; J. FRENCH HILL; JAMES A. HIMES; ASHLEY HINSON; TREY HOLLINGSWORTH; STEVEN HORSFORD; CHRISSY HOULAHAN; STENY H. HOYER; JARED HUFFMAN; BILL HUIZENGA; SHEILA JACKSON LEE; SARA JACOBS; PRAMILA JAYAPAL; HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES; DUSTY JOHNSON; EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON; HENRY C. JOHNSON JR.; MONDAIRE JONES; DAVID P. JOYCE; KAIALPI KAHELE; MARCY KAPTUR; JOHN KATKO; WILLIAM R. KEATING; RO KHANNA; DANIEL T. KILDEE; DEREK KILMER; ANDY KIM; YOUNG KIM; RON KIND; ADAM KINZINGER; ANN KIRKPATRICK; RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI; ANN M. KUSTER; DARIN LAHOOD; CONOR LAMB; JAMES R. LANGEVIN; RICK LARSEN; JOHN B. LARSON; ROBERT E. LATTA; JAKE LATURNER; BRENDA L. LAWRENCE; AL LAWSON JR.; BARBARA LEE; SUSIE LEE; TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ; ANDY LEVIN; MIKE LEVIN; TED LIEU; IV ZOE LOFGREN; ALAN S.LOWENTHAL; ELAINE G. LURIA; STEPHEN F. LYNCH; NANCY MACE; TOM MALINOWSKI; CAROLYN B. MALONEY; SEAN PATRICK MALONEY; KATHY E. MANNING; THOMAS MASSIE; DORIS 0. MATSUI; LUCY MCBATH; MICHAEL T. MCCAUL; TOM MCCLINTOCK; BETTY MCCOLLUM; A. ADONALD MCEACHIN; JAMES P. MCGOVERN; PATRICK T. MCHENRY; DAVID B. MCKINLEY; JERRY MCNERNEY; GREGORY W. MEEKS; PETER MEIJER; GRACE MENG; KWEISI MFUME; MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS; JOHN R. MOOLENAAR; BLAKE D. MOORE; GWEN MOORE; JOSEPH D. MORELLE; SETH MOULTON; FRANK J. MRVAN; STEPHANIE N. MURPHY; JERROLD NADLER; GRACE F. NAPOLITANO; RICHARD E. NEAL; JOE NEGUSE; DAN NEWHOUSE; MARIE NEWMAN; DONALD NORCROSS; ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ; TOM O'HALLERAN; ILHAN OMAR; FRANK PALLONE JR.; JIMMY PANETTA; CHRIS PAPPAS; BILL PASCRELL JR.; DONALD M. PAYNE JR.; NANCY PELOSI; ED PERLMUTTER; SCOTT H. PETERS; DEAN PHILLIPS; CHELLIE PINGREE; MARK POCAN; KATIE PORTER; AYANNA PRESSLEY; DAVID E. PRICE; MIKE QUIGLEY; JAMIE RASKIN; TOM REED; KATHLEEN M. RICE; CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS; DEBORAH K. ROSS; CHIP ROY; LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD; RAUL RUIZ; C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER; BOBBY L. RUSH; TIM RYAN; LINDA T. SANCHEZ; JOHN P. SARBANES; MARY GAY SCANLON; JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY; ADAM B. SCHIFF; BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER; KURT SCHRADER; KIM SCHRIER; AUSTIN SCOTT; DAVID SCOTT; ROBERT C. SCOTT; TERRI A. SEWELL; BRAD SHERMAN; MIKIE SHERRILL; MICHAEL K. SIMPSON; ALBIO SIRES; ELISSA SLOTKIN; ADAM SMITH; CHRISTOPHER H. V SMITH; DARREN SOTO; ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER; VICTORIA SPARTZ; JACKIE SPEIER; GREG STANTON; PETE STAUBER; MICHELLE STEEL; BRYAN STEIL; HALEY M. STEVENS; STEVE STIVERS; MARILYN STRICKLAND; THOMAS R. SUOZZI; ERIC SWALWELL; MARK TAKANO; VAN TAYLOR; BENNIE G. THOMPSON; MIKE THOMPSON; DINA TITUS; RASHIDA TLAIB; PAUL TONKO; NORMA J. TORRES; RITCHIE TORRES; LORI TRAHAN; DAVID J. TRONE; MICHAEL R. TURNER; LAUREN UNDERWOOD; FRED UPTON; JUAN VARGAS; MARC A. VEASEY; FILEMON VELA; NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ; ANN WAGNER; MICHAEL WALTZ; DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ; MAXINE WATERS; BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN; PETER WELCH; BRAD R. WENSTRUP; BRUCE WESTERMAN; JENNIFER WEXTON; SUSAN WILD; NIKEMA WILLIAMS; FREDERICA S. WILSON; STEVE WOMACK; JOHN A. YARMUTH; DON YOUNG; the following persons named are for their capacities as U.S. Senators; TAMMY BALDWIN; JOHN BARRASSO; MICHAEL F. BENNET; MARSHA BLACKBURN; RICHARD BLUMENTHAL; ROY BLUNT; CORY A. BOOKER; JOHN BOOZMAN; MIKE BRAUN; SHERROD BROWN; RICHARD BURR; MARIA CANTWELL; SHELLEY CAPITO; BENJAMIN L. CARDIN; THOMAS R. CARPER; ROBERT P. CASEY JR.; BILL CASSIDY; SUSAN M. COLLINS; CHRISTOPHER A. COONS; JOHN CORNYN; CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO; TOM COTTON; KEVIN CRAMER; MIKE CRAPO; STEVE DAINES; TAMMY DUCKWORTH; RICHARD J. DURBIN; JONI ERNST; DIANNE FEINSTEIN; DEB FISCHER; KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND; LINDSEY GRAHAM; CHUCK GRASSLEY; BILL HAGERTY; MAGGIE HASSAN; MARTIN HEINRICH; JOHN HICKENLOOPER; MAZIE HIRONO; JOHN HOEVEN; JAMES INHOFE; RON VI JOHNSON; TIM KAINE; MARK KELLY; ANGUS S. KING, JR.; AMY KLOBUCHAR; JAMES LANKFORD; PATRICK LEAHY; MIKE LEE; BEN LUJAN; CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS; JOE MANCHIN III; EDWARD J. MARKEY; MITCH MCCONNELL; ROBERT MENENDEZ; JEFF MERKLEY; JERRY MORAN; LISA MURKOWSKI; CHRISTOPHER MURPHY; PATTY MURRAY; JON OSSOFF; ALEX PADILLA; RAND PAUL; GARY C. PETERS; ROB PORTMAN; JACK REED; JAMES E. RISCH; MITT ROMNEY; JACKY ROSEN; MIKE ROUNDS; MARCO RUBIO; BERNARD SANDERS; BEN SASSE; BRIAN SCHATZ; CHARLES E. SCHUMER; RICK SCOTT; TIM SCOTT; JEANNE SHAHEEN; RICHARD C. SHELBY; KYRSTEN SINEMA; TINA SMITH; DEBBIE STABENOW; DAN SULLIVAN; JON TESTER; JOHN THUNE; THOM TILLIS; PATRICK J. TOOMEY; HOLLEN VAN; MARK R. WARNER; RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK; ELIZABETH WARREN; SHELDON WHITEHOUSE; ROGER F. WICKER; RON WYDEN; TODD YOUNG; JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR in his capacity of President of the United States; MICHAEL RICHARD PENCE in his capacity as former Vice President of the United States, and KAMALA HARRIS in her capacity as Vice President of the United States and JOHN and JANE DOES 1-100.  

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-380/243739/20221027152243533_20221027-152110-95757954-00007015.pdf

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

June 15, 2022 (Wednesday)In a letter to Georgia Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) this morning, the chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Bennie Thompson (D-MS), dropped information, images, and video showing that Loudermilk had led individuals through the U.S. Capitol complex on January 5, 2021, in what sure looks like a reconnaissance tour. 

Thompson wrote that the committee had reviewed surveillance video, social media activity, and witness accounts and understood that Loudermilk led approximately 10 people “to areas in the Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon House Office Buildings, as well as the entrances to tunnels leading to the U.S. Capitol,” on January 5, “despite the complex being closed to the public on that day.” The group “stayed for several hours.” “Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints…. Their behavior…raises concerns about their activity and intent while inside the Capitol complex.” 

The letter went on to note that some of the people Loudermilk showed around the complex attended the January 6 rally at the Ellipse and that some of them joined the unpermitted march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. It quotes a video one of them made of the march, saying: “There’s no escape, Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler. We’re coming for you…. They got it surrounded. It’s all the way up there on the hill, and it’s all the way around, and they’re coming in, coming in like white on rice for Pelosi, Nadler, even you, AOC. We’re coming to take you out and pull you out….”

The letter noted—somewhat dryly, I have to say—that the information it has “raises questions the Select Committee must answer.” There have been accounts of surveillance tours since immediately after January 6, when Democratic members of Congress claimed to have seen them, and 34 Democrats led by Representative Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) wrote to Capitol Police asking them to investigate. Republicans, though, insisted that was inaccurate, saying that “There were no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on. There’s nothing in there remotely fitting the depiction in Mikie Sherrill’s letter.”

  Now there is video and photographic evidence of just such a tour—even including someone in a MAGA hat—as well as a report that the committee has talked to the man to whom Thompson referred in his letter. This opens up a whole new can of congressional worms.

On May 19 the committee had asked Loudermilk to come in and review the evidence it had. He refused. On Monday, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote a letter to Representative Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, a committee on which Loudermilk sits. Manger wrote that surveillance video showed Loudermilk with a group of approximately 12 people that later grew to 15, but that “[t]here is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” nor did the group with Loudermilk "appear in any tunnels that would lead them to the US Capitol." “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance,” Manger wrote, “and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious."

Yesterday, Loudermilk chimed in: “The truth will always prevail. As I’ve said since the Jan. 6 Committee made their baseless accusation about me to the media, I never gave a tour of the Capitol on Jan 5, 2021… and a small group visiting their congressman is in no way a suspicious activity. Now the Capitol Police have confirmed this fact.”Now that we have the video evidence, the statements by Manger and Loudermilk illustrate exactly how someone can misdirect an observer without directly lying.

In fact, Thompson’s letter supports Manger’s claim that neither the group nor Loudermilk were in the tunnels themselves. They were photographing the entrances, checkpoints, and staircases used by members of Congress. But the misdirection worked: The AP News headline covering Manger’s letter read: “Police: Republican’s tour of Capitol complex not suspicious.” And Loudermilk has parsed the term “U.S. Capitol” to mean just that one building, not the entire complex, although we know that there was a plan afoot to take over many of the buildings in the complex, not just the one where Congress meets in session.

Ironically, the conspirators appeared to see their plan to overturn the election and install Republican Donald Trump in the presidency as some sort of a replay of the events of 1776. In a court filing today by a Proud Boy, Zachary Rehl, an exhibit included the “1776 Returns” document that showed up in a conversation between Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and an unknown person. After sending Tarrio the document, the individual apparently said “The revolution is more important than anything,” and Tarrio responded: “That’s what every waking moment consists of…. I’m not playing games.”

Now public, the document lays out a plan “[t]o maintain control over a select few, but crucial buildings in the DC area for a set period of time, presenting our demands in unity…. We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.” Those buildings included the Russell Senate Office Building, the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Supreme Court, the Hart Senate Office Building, the Cannon House Office Building, the Longworth House Office Building, the Rayburn House Office Building, and “CNN—at least egg doorway.”

Their demands were stated as “a free and fair election” to be held on January 20, 2021, Inauguration Day, with paper ballots, no electronic voting, no mail-in ballots, no absentee ballots, IDs required for all, and monitored by the National Guard. “You are the revolution,” the document said. “Be a part of history & fight for this country so our children don’t have to. It’s all or nothing Patriots, boldness and bravery is necessary.” “Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence & Bill Gates, We the people are watching you,” it said. “Rand Paul & Ron DeSantis, We the people love you.”

  Although we have now heard evidence from Trump’s attorney general William Barr, campaign manager Bill Stepien, White House lawyers, and even his own daughter, testifying under oath, that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen—and that such claims were at least in part a way to cheat small donors out of $250 million—insisting on the Big Lie has become a requirement for Republican candidates. Yesterday, Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post laid out how more than 100 of the Republicans who have won primaries have signed on to the Big Lie, including eight candidates for the U.S. Senate, eighty-six House candidates, five candidates for governor, four for state attorney general, and one for secretary of state.

When the forcible attempt to overthrow our government failed, the Republicans turned instead to taking over the machinery of elections, arranging election boards and reporting in such a way that Republicans could simply refuse to recognize that Democrats had been elected.

This scenario played out last night in New Mexico, when the three-person Otero County commission refused to certify the results of the June 7 primary because they claimed not to trust the voting machines, which are made by the same company Trump and his cronies falsely accused of switching votes, an accusation thoroughly debunked now, under oath, by Trump’s own inner circle. 

One of the commissioners, Couy Griffin, is a co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, said in 2020 that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” and continues to believe that Trump won in 2020. He was at the Capitol on January 6 and will be sentenced this Friday for trespassing there. Another blamed the machines for her unwillingness to sign off on the results of the election: “[I]n my heart I don’t know if it is right,” she said. New Mexico’s secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, asked the court to order the board to certify the election results, and today, New Mexico’s supreme court did so.For all that the insurrectionists fancy themselves acting like American Revolutionaries, they have the meaning of our nation’s founding exactly backwards. 

They tried to overturn the will of the American people to put Democrat Joe Biden in the office of the presidency, a will demonstrated by giving Biden a majority of more than 7 million votes and a majority of 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. In 1776, the Founders of what would later become the United States of America issued a declaration explicitly rejecting the idea that a government could be imposed on a majority by a minority and still be legitimate. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” the Declaration said. And it went on with another self-evident truth: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

[latestnewsworldwide]

‘The Daily’ Transcript: Interview With Representative Mikie Sherrill SHERRILL: O.K. “We are now faced with accusations from numerous sources that our president attempted to pressure a foreign government to investigate one of his rivals in the next presidential election.

[banji-effect]

Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday accused unnamed Republicans of giving tours of the Capitol to insurrectionists ahead of last week’s deadly siege of the Capitol, as federal agencies opened two new investigations into the extent to which Capitol Police and far-right lawmakers were complicit in the mob attack.

...The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog agency, has also signaled it will open an investigation that will include the roles that members of Congress may have played in inciting the mob seeking to overturn the results of the election, according to the congressman who requested the inquiry, Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado.

...“To the extent there were members of the House that were complicit, and I believe there were, we will pursue appropriate remedies including expulsion and a prohibitions from holding elective office for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Crow said in an interview. “They will of course be subject to criminal investigation and prosecution if that’s what the facts of the investigation show.”

...The tours on the eve of the riot came to light after Representative Mikie Sherrill, Democrat of New Jersey and a former Navy pilot, said Tuesday evening on Facebook without offering evidence that she knew of members of Congress who gave “reconnaissance” tours to rioters ahead of the attack.

“Those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5, a reconnaissance for the next day, those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd,” Ms. Sherrill said, “those members who attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going to see that they’re held accountable.”

[foreverlogical]

It still hurts to swallow or drink. Water tastes off. She can’t sleep. She buried herself under blankets all weekend, but she couldn’t stay warm. Then came the pounding headache, the blocked sinuses. So far, she’s spent more than a week in self-isolation, toggling between British TV dramas and news reports about the rioters who wanted to assassinate her colleagues in Congress. Her husband’s symptoms are the same, but he is older than her and in a high-risk group. It’s been five days since they tested positive, nine days since the insurrection. Pramila Jayapal, the 55-year-old representative from Washington, told me that her anger is “next-level.”

Jayapal received her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine on January 4, and she tested negative for the coronavirus on January 5, the night before she entered the Capitol. She believes that she contracted it last Wednesday when she huddled inside a room with about 100 of her congressional colleagues, including multiple Republicans who refused to wear masks.

Jayapal wasn’t on the House floor the day of the attack; she was up in the gallery. Five weeks prior, she had undergone knee-replacement surgery. When the mob advanced and Capitol Police officers instructed those in the gallery to move toward the exit, she had to use a cane for balance and ducked under railings, while the lawmakers and journalists around her crawled on their hands and knees toward the door.

[Read: It was supposed to be so much worse.]

Once they got to the exit, she sat on the floor of the gallery and pushed her legs out straight into the aisle between seats; it was the only way she could sit. She heard glass breaking, then a single gunshot. Beside her, Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester began praying with her hands in the air: Peace. Peace in the land. Peace in this country. Peace in this world. Jayapal felt her knee beginning to swell. She heard pounding on the gallery doors. “We were afraid that nobody was going to come and get us,” Jayapal said.

A single officer opened the gallery door, shouting at people to leave. Outside, Jayapal and the rest of the evacuees passed five or six rioters lying spread-eagle on the floor, surrounded by more officers with their guns drawn. Representative Mikie Sherrill offered Jayapal her arm for stability as the group descended three flights of stairs to the Capitol basement.

Oh my god, this is a disaster, Jayapal thought when she arrived in the safe room. More than 100 lawmakers had packed into the blue-carpeted space, with, by her estimate, no more than three feet of distance between everyone, let alone six. They chatted quietly in groups loosely segregated by party, and half a dozen Republicans were not wearing masks. Jayapal sat down on a chair to rest her knee, and a helpful staffer brought her an ice pack. Looking around the room, it hit her: “I just knew that several of us would get COVID.”

Across the room, near a row of folding tables, Rochester, a 58-year-old member of the Congressional Black Caucus, approached a passel of maskless Republicans, including the QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Rochester offered them blue surgical masks, but they refused. “I’m not trying to get political here,” Mullin said, before waving Rochester away. Greene crossed her arms, smiling, while the others, all men, stared at their phones or laughed at some out-of-earshot joke.

“I wasn’t mad or frustrated. I was just thinking about how many people I could get to put on a mask,” Rochester told my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere this week. Jayapal, however, was livid. “Thirty-two hundred people are dying every day from COVID, and we have these people taking it like a joke,” she told me. She’d been trying hard to stay healthy, to take every precaution, not least to protect her husband, Steve. “And here we are in a lockdown after a white-nationalist, insurgent attack on the Capitol, and we’re forced into this room with them,” she said. “They’re refusing to wear masks and mocking us for it.”

[Read: I asked my colleagues to wear masks. They laughed.]

Just after 4 a.m. that Thursday, Jayapal left the Capitol and went home to quarantine in a guest bedroom of her Washington, D.C., apartment. On Monday, she and her husband both tested positive for the virus. So far, a total of six lawmakers have tested positive after last week’s attack, including the 75-year-old cancer survivor Bonnie Watson Coleman. In refusing to wear masks, Republicans created “a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack,” Jayapal said in a statement announcing her diagnosis. She and other members of Congress called for fines to be levied against any lawmaker who refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol going forward—a rule that the House took up and passed on Tuesday night.

The next few days will be very important for gauging the course of Jayapal’s illness, her doctor told her. She will have to record her blood-oxygen levels three times a day. She will stay in isolation for another week, and even then, she will be able to leave the apartment only if she hasn’t experienced any symptoms for 24 hours.

Immediately after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Congress will need to pass legislation to address the COVID-19 crisis and the corresponding economic devastation, she said. But lawmakers must also find a way to address the growing threat from extremist groups, stop the spread of misinformation, and reckon with the willful ignorance and cruelty of their colleagues. “All of us are grappling with how we deal with Republican colleagues who now belong to a caucus that really is unhinged,” she said. “It’s not like these are reasonable people who are willing to look at science or be convinced of anything.” So what does that mean for America? I asked. She paused to consider her answer. “We as a country are in a really precarious position.”

VISIT WEBSITE

[billmaher]

HBO Real Time Guests: Friday Jan. 31, 2020

The Interviews:

 Pete Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He is the author of  “Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future.”

Twitter: @PeteButtigieg

 Michael Eric Dyson is a Professor at Georgetown University and author of the New York Times bestselling book “Jay-Z: Made in America.”

 Twitter: @MichaelEDyson

  The Panel:

 Mitch Landrieu is the Former Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and founder of the “E Pluribus Unum” initiative, which aims to bring people together across the American South around the issues of race, equity, economic opportunity and violence.

 Twitter: @MitchLandrieu

  Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) is a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who is the newly elected U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 11th Congressional district. She recently co-sponsored the Solutions not Stigmas Act (H.R. 5631), which would provide resources for medical schools and health professionals to address the opioid epidemic.

 Twitter: @MikieSherrill

  Rick Wilson is a Republican strategist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump - And Democrats From Themselves.”

 Twitter: @TheRickWilson

 Submit a question for this week’s guests using #RTOvertime and watch them answer LIVE after the show on the Real Time YouTube channel.