#Rosa DeLauro

[madamspeaker]

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (25th May, 2023)

[textilesimp]

it’s giving congresswoman rosa delauro

btw i think it's so awesome and fun when older people dye their white hair purple or pink or blue or whatever colour they fancy and 'overdress' in bright eye catching ostentatious outfits and have quirky interests and styles. you don't have to be young to have fun and be confident! you can still enjoy life when you're old! who cares what anyone else thinks, you've lived longer than they have and know better than to waste it being miserable just to fit in.

[govtshutdown]

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, made these remarks on the House floor about H.R. 9747

[plitnick]

Smotrich receives a cold American welcome

While fringe American Jewish elements like the Orthodox Union, the far-right Zionit Organization of America and Israel Bonds are welcoming the racist Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, most of the American Jewish community is shunning him. Some of those publicly denouncing him are people who have heretofore hewn to the mantra of never criticizing Israel no matter how horrible its…

[filosofablogger]

Finally!!!

Last night, the House of Representatives finally, after much game-playing and many shenanigans by the likes of Margie Greene and her cohorts, passed the aid bills to fund aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.  The vote for the Ukraine package was 311 to 112, with all those objecting coming from the most conservative wing of the Republican Party.  The Senate is expected to pass the measures early…

[autisticadvocacy]

ASAN welcomes the removal of Section 722 from the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. In June, some members of Congress introduced a rider to the act that would stop the FDA from banning electric shock devices for behavior modification, such as the devices used at the Judge Rotenberg Center. Section 722 said the FDA cannot ban a device that is used by court order. All of the electric shock devices used at the Judge Rotenberg Center are used because of a court order.

If this rider had passed, it would have taken away the FDA’s power to move forward with the proposed rule that ASAN and many grassroots advocates commented to support. Because of your powerful activism, this rider failed to make it into the final bill, and the FDA still has the power to #StopTheShock.

This was only possible thanks to the hard work of our grassroots. You called, emailed, and shared across social media to make your voices heard. Members of our community have fought to end the use of shock devices at the JRC for over a decade, and we will not be ignored. Your calls, along with the hundreds of public comments sent in support of the FDA’s proposed rule, have gotten us that much closer to ending this tortuous practice once and for all. 

We also thank the many members of the House Appropriations Committee who supported removing Section 722. At last night’s markup of the bill, Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz all used their opening remarks to point out the harm this rider would have caused, and the urgent need to remove it. Subcommittee Ranking Member Sanford Bishop spoke in his remarks about our community’s work to educate the Committee members on this issue. We are thrilled that the House Appropriations Committee listened to our community on this urgent issue and acted to protect disabled people from torture.

We are grateful that this rider did not make it into the current version of the bill, but the fight isn’t over yet. The full House of Representatives, and the Senate, still need to vote on this bill. Thanks to your efforts, we have built strong bipartisan opposition to Section 722. We will continue to work with Congress to make sure this rider stays out of the final bill. Meanwhile, the FDA still needs to do their part with the power our community fought for them to keep. ASAN calls upon the FDA to swiftly release the final version of their proposed rule “Banned Devices; Proposal to Ban Electrical Stimulation Devices for Self-Injurious or Aggressive Behavior.”

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy should be a world in which autistic people enjoy equal access, rights, and opportunities. We work to empower autistic people across the world to take control of our own lives and the future of our common community, and seek to organize the autistic community to ensure our voices are heard in the national conversation about us. Nothing About Us, Without Us!

[odinsblog]

False Equivalence

Why does the mainstream media keep depicting lunatic-right Republicans and normal Democrats as equidistant from the center?

With the final passage of the debt ceiling deal, Democrats got off easier than one might have expected, given that it was a deal between a mainstream Democratic president and a Republican House in thrall to the lunatic far right. In drastic contrast to the scorched-earth budget bill initially passed by the Republican-controlled House, the cuts were about par for the course in a divided government; and they spare the country a repeat of this debt-hostage ordeal for two years.

However, much of the media played the agreement as a compromise between two equal extremes. The New York Times story about the House passage of the deal included this astonishing sentence: "With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks."

Think about that for a moment. There is no doubt that Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar et al. are far-right by any definition, as white supremacists, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and nihilists on fiscal policy.

But no Democrats in the House can fairly be described as hard left. Those who voted against the deal included moderate liberals such as Joaquin Castro, mainstream progressives like Rosa DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky, as well as self-described democratic socialists including Cori Bush and AOC. But none of them are "hard left," which suggests anti-democratic, any more than Franklin Roosevelt was hard left.

The Times coverage reinforces a narrative of false equivalence that the media keeps repeating, with lazy catchphrases like "partisan bickering." It also plays into the hands of corrupt No Labels and Third Way types, who promote the idea that the best course for the republic is to split the difference between neofascists and a normal mainstream Democratic Party and president.

Big media, obsessed as it is with the appearance of fair and balanced coverage, took years to give itself permission to accurately describe Donald Trump with the impolite word "liar." But its treatment of the two parties as in any sense symmetrical is far more insidious than using euphemisms to characterize Trump’s lies.

Our friend Peter Dreier, whose observations inspired this post, points out that by any reasonable definition, "even the most left-oriented Democrats (AOC, Bush, Bowman, Raskin, Jayapal) are not extremists. They are shades of social democrats. They are pro-union, pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-LGBT equality, pro-Green New Deal, pro-progressive taxation. But the most right-wing Republicans are extremists and reactionaries."

(continue reading)

[meandmybigmouth]

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY FROM ALL THE CORPORATIONS, FAMILY AND FRIENDS VOTING REPUBLICAN TO CUT YOUR BENEFITS!

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Six U.S. House of Representatives Democrats returned from an Israel trip accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “utter disregard for Palestinian lives” and fearing that he is moving toward Gaza’s “total destruction.”

The Democrats — including the most senior Democrat on the House  appropriations committee, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut — made the comments in a statement issued Friday. They represent the breadth of the party’s ideologies and include several with pro-Israel records.

The statement came as President Joe Biden said he would airdrop assistance into the Gaza Strip after more than 100 Gaza Palestinians died during a chaotic aid delivery under disputed circumstances on Thursday.

Speaking briefly Friday with reporters in the Oval Office, Biden called the event “tragic and  alarming.”

“We need to do more, and the United States will do more,” he said. “In the coming days, we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others who have provided air drops of additional food and supplies.”

The recommendations in the joint statement signed by DeLauro, Sean Casten of Illinois, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Becca Balint of Vermont, and Salud Carvajal and Mark Takano of California were in line with President Joe Biden’s policies, including a call for a six-week ceasefire to facilitate the release of all hostages held by Hamas and the entry of direly needed humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.

But the tone was extraordinary, and could only be seen as a warning that Democrats in the House would continue to veer sharply away from Israel as long as Netanyahu is prime minister.

The six Democrats squarely blamed Netanyahu for the failure to get relief to the Palestinians.

“We are deeply worried that Prime Minister Netanyahu is moving toward the total destruction of Gaza and has demonstrated an utter disregard for Palestinian lives,” the statement said. “Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed – with almost 70,000 more injured and thousands missing. He has shamefully been unwilling to allow humanitarian services in at the scale needed.”

Biden, too, seemed more ready than he has in the past to squarely place responsibility for aid delivery on Israel.

“We’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to give more and more people the help they need,” he said. “No excuses. Because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough.”

Biden has been at pains to defend Israel from charges that it is committing genocide in Gaza, and has until now accepted, to a degree, Israel’s claims that it is not alone to blame for the failure of assistance to enter the strip. Israel says Hamas steals the aid and that it must also contend with a chaotic reality as the war drags on.

Biden’s envoys to the United Nations on Thursday blocked a Security Council resolution that would have blamed Israel for the deadly humanitarian aid debacle. Israel contends that the vast majority of deaths were caused by a stampede, while Hamas says Israeli gunfire was mostly to blame.

On Friday, the number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched counterstrikes topped 30,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel says that more than a third of the dead are combatants.

Israel launched the counterstrikes after Hamas terrorists raided Israel on Oct. 7, massacring 1,200 people and abducting more than 250. The statement from the six Congress members condemns the massacres at the outset and called for the immediate release of the more than 130 hostages remaining captive, of whom about 100 are thought to remain alive.

Hamas said Friday that seven hostages, including three elderly men who appeared in a video it distributed some time ago, had been killed. The group has previously announced the death of a hostage who was later released alive.

The six lawmakers traveled to Israel as part of a delegation organized by J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group that has affiliated political action committees.

DeLauro, who led the delegation, stands out: In addition to being the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, she is a member of the House Democratic leadership and has in the past been close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the preeminent mainstream pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC’s affiliated political action committee has endorsed her. She is married to pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has been active in pro-Israel advocacy.

But the others are also significant: Casten in 2022 unseated Marie Newman in a primary, a victory propelled in part by pro-Israel anger at her policies. Carbajal is a member of Problem Solvers Caucus, which unites moderates of both parties. Balint is Jewish and a member of the Progressive Congressional Caucus. Dean’s Philadelphia-area district has a substantial Jewish population.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the J Street president who accompanied the delegation, said the lawmakers were moved by how officials across the spectrum — in Netanyahu’s government, in the opposition and in the Palestinian Authority — saw the U.S. role as “indispensable.”

“If the United States doesn’t lead some kind of a very large initiative to come out of this in a better place, nothing is going to happen,” Ben-Ami said.

He said the six saw up close the devastation wrought by the Oct. 7 attacks and their aftermath, staying in a hotel housing evacuees from Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah is firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas.

“The children are playing on the couches next to the members in the lobby as we’re getting ready to go on a tour,” he said. “It’s in the breakfast hall in the morning. The families are getting ready for school and the members are there, getting food right next to them.”

[darkmaga-returns]

A Democratic lawmaker in the House of Representatives is proposing the creation of a so-called "shadow government" to challenge the administration and policies of President-elect Donald Trump.

U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) has suggested setting up a "shadow cabinet" to oppose the Trump administration. Nickel claimed that this idea, adopted from the British parliamentary system where the leading opposition party creates a shadow cabinet to hold the government accountable, could serve as an essential check against what he described as "extreme MAGA attacks on our government."

"As Democrats, we simply failed to convince the American people we have better ideas to solve their problems, but we do," said Nickel. "Now we need to dust ourselves off and get ready to fight."

Nickel clarified that the shadow cabinet would question Trump's policies and give alternative solutions to tackle urgent national issues. He proposed that U.S. Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) should serve as the shadow U.S. attorney general (AG) to oppose Trump's nominee, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). However, Gaetz withdrew his name as a potential nominee and was replaced by former Florida AG Pam Bondi.

"If Trump attempts to weaponize the justice system against his political opponents, we need leaders like Schiff to stand up for independent justice," Nickel declared.

He also suggested U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) as shadow education secretary to protect public education, and U.S. Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY) as shadow state secretary to handle foreign policy concerns and defend the United States' international allies and commitments. He also recommended that U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) could serve as shadow health and human services secretary to protect so-called "reproductive rights."

Finally, Nickel nominated Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) as shadow head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to oppose Trump's pick, former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), who Nickel claims might undermine environmental protections and policies. 

[grayheartart]

Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro Posts Weird Video of her Having Stroke

[bighermie]

Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro Comes Unglued During Committee Hearing, Says Republicans Are "Terrorists" For Disagreeing with Her (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

[govtshutdown]

Not a good sign when there are contradictions in the already agreed to sections

[madamspeaker]

How does Nancy feel about her friend Anna Eshoo not running again? It’s too bad, I like Anna and will miss her, but she earned her retirement.

No idea, but I would imagine she'll miss her a lot. That generation of women in Congress, and in particular Nancy's closest friends, have been slowly but surely been exiting since Barbara Boxer retired in 2016. Nita Lowey left at the end of 2020, now Anna. Rosa DeLauro is one of the few left now that Nancy was making trouble with when she just a rank and file member the first time.

[progressivepower]

Democrats Fear GOP Plans For Deeper Spending Cuts Could Lead To Government Shutdown. “It is a prelude to a shutdown — what they are engineering,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) following an announcement from GOP leadership. http://ow.ly/MGKA104KVwa