#the US House of Representatives

[thefirsthogokage]

(link to post) (link they put in bio)

This is the article they put in the comments:

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bitch please!

+

JUST NOW: Marjorie Taylor Greene made a derogatory comment about Rep. Jasmine Crockett and "false eyelashes" during a House committee hearing. Personal attacks against other members isn't allowed, so AOC requested a motion and asked for an apology which was blocked.

Rep. Crockett responded with: “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling: If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”

[instantbee]

On the one hand, not having a Speaker of the House is indicative of very serious issues in the American populace. It shows a divisive political dialogue and a country in crisis. The last two times this happened both preceded horrible periods of disruption in our country by about 10 years, the Great Depression and the Civil War. So it's not a great look and does make one nervous about what is coming down the pipe On the other hand it is genuinely so fucking funny

[mapsontheweb]

United States House of Representatives Apportioned based on alligator population

[dazeddoodles]

I love the human Raeda pic from The Owl House gallery show. Because you have Raine dressed all properly in their uniform. Tie, dress shoes, and everything.

And then there's EDA with her shirt unbuttoned, one sock pulled up and the other scrunched up, red shorts underneath, complete contrast with her yellow undershirt, bandaged knees, sneakers with BOTH shoelaces untied, and sitting like THAT (Bi ADHD queen)

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Love C-Span’s “due to the fact that we are ruled by the Lord of Chaos here in the House of Representatives and there are NO RULES our cameras are allowed to ROAM FREE and provide you HOT GOSSIP of who is talking to who and how many ugly-ass ties are present on the floor” 

[thatgirlinthesweater]

introduced in August??? Why hasn't it moved through yet??

[cavalierzee]

Guilty Of Genocide

I will never back down in speaking truth to power.

The apartheid government of Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.

Palestinians will not be erased.

Solidarity with all those outside of these walls in the streets protesting and exercising their right to dissent.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib

During Netanyahu’s address to the U.S. Congress and Senate, 7/24/24

[welcometoqueer]

U.S. programs and services in danger of being diminished or fully cut:

Social Security

Department of Education

Department of Labor

Department of Transportation

Medicaid

Medicare

Obamacare

FDA

CDC

USDA

FAFSA

FEMA

ACA

SNAP

EPA

FTC

FEC

HUD

HHS

NOAA

SCHIP

FAA

National Weather Service

Hurricane and other disaster warnings

Unemployment services

Student loans

Pell grants

Libraries

Fluoride treatment in our water

Meat and food inspections

National Parks

Other concerns:

(International relations)

Loss of U.S. membership in NATO

Potential UN ramifications

Tariffs

Support of Israel winning the war

Putin and Russian relations

(Loss of Rights)

Voting rights

Miranda rights

LGBTQ+, POC, and other minority rights

Reproductive rights

Protection against pre-existing conditions

Protection against assault and harassment

Child labor protections

(Daily living)

Prescription prices skyrocketing

No rent control

Little to no reproductive or health care access

Legalized police brutality

Diminished or cut protections and rights for minority groups

Restrictions on gender affirming care or legal services

Increased taxes and cost of living for the non-wealthy

No more $35 insulin

No labor laws - 40+ hour work weeks, no mandatory breaks, no paid sick or vacation leave

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

Republicans ground the House to a halt Wednesday afternoon after U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) objected to remarks made by Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA), during which he delivered a short overview of the 88 criminal charges Donald Trump is facing, and civil court findings including one deeming him an adjudicated rapist. “Take down his words,” Congresswoman Houchin declared, interrupting Rep. McGovern. “I demand that his words be taken down.” For more than one hour, according to Fox News’ Chad Pergram, the people’s business stopped as Republicans, angered by the Democrat’s factual remarks, had them investigated by the House Parliamentarian. “Donald Trump might want to be a king, but he is not a king,” Congressman McGovern observed. “He is not a presumptive king. he’s not even the president – he’s a presumptive nominee.”

“At some point,” McGovern told his congressional colleagues, “it’s time for this body to recognize that there is no precedent for this situation. We have a presumptive nominee for President facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it. These are not alternative facts. These are real facts. A candidate for President of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. He’s also charged with stealing classified information and a jury has already found him liable for rape and a civil court. And yet, in this Republican controlled House, it’s okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham.” The decision to strike McGovern’s “offensive” remarks appears to have come from U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL), who was presiding over the chamber. He cited House Rule XVII, which Pergram reported “says House members are prohibited from impugning the motives of fellow House members, senators or the President. And in this case, the former President.”

Earlier, before Rep. Houchin demanded his remarks be stricken, McGovern also blasted Republicans for traveling to New York in their “cult uniforms,” to show support for Donald Trump at his criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. The Massachusetts Democrat told his colleagues, “my friends over the other side of the aisle have pandered to their most extreme members over and over and over again. They let the extremists kick out their own Speaker. They let the extremists dictate the agenda on the House floor. They let the extremists take down seven rule votes since January 2023 – a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done. And speaking of indictments, Republicans are skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to New York to try to undermine Donald Trump’s criminal trial. No time to work with Democrats, but plenty of time to put on weird matching cult uniforms and stand behind President Trump with their bright red ties like pathetic props.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)’s speech on the House floor calling out criminal defendant Donald Trump was delivering truth bombs left and right, and it made Republicans upset, especially the part in which he said that Trump “might want to be a king, but he is not a king” and the fact that he was calling out his criminality.

Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) was the Republican who ordered a frivolous halt to McGovern’s speech by demanding “that his words be taken down.” Floor Presider Jerry Carl (R-AL) granted Houchin’s request, and McGovern was barred from speaking on the Floor for the rest of the day.

See Also:

NBC News: Democrat McGovern ruled 'out of order' after listing off Trump's legal woes on the House floor

Daily Kos: GOP brings House to a halt to debate whether facts are allowed

[xcizion]

Joke’s on you, America—Kevin McCarthy has a humiliation kink and he’s been rock hard for four days.

[thefirsthogokage]

Absolutely. Fucking. Disgusting.

(link to post) (link to Clerk House vote results)

(link to Business Insider's article confirming this)

From that article, Thomas Massive (R-Kentucky)'s comment on his no vote:

"Antisemitism is deplorable, but expanding it to include criticism of Israel is not helpful," Massie wrote on X.

I hope everyone of those islamophobic, arabphobic, Palestinianphobic, antisemitic 412 members of house lose their elections to people who actually give a damn about Palestine.

ALL of them put their seats in jeopardy with this shit.

Anti-zionism isn't antisemitic, Palestinians are native to the region AND EXIST and NONE of them are listening to anyone about that. Fuck all of them.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Matt Davies Newsday]

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 6, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

In a Washington Post op-ed today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered House Republicans a “path to a better place” than the “dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House.” Democrats have repeatedly offered both in public and in private to enter into a bipartisan governing coalition, he wrote, but under former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republicans have “categorically rejected making changes to the rules [in order] to…encourage bipartisan governance and undermine the ability of extremists to hold Congress hostage.”  

Jeffries offered to work with willing Republicans “to reform the rules of the House in a manner that permits us to govern in a pragmatic fashion.” Stating up front his willingness to negotiate, Jeffries wrote that the House “should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support.” This would stop a few extremist Republicans from preventing “common-sense legislation from ever seeing the light of day.” 

Jeffries called for “traditional Republicans” to “break with the MAGA extremism that has poisoned the House of Representatives since the violent insurrection on Jan[uary] 6, 2021, and its aftermath.”

“House Democrats remain committed to a bipartisan path forward,” he wrote, but “we simply need Republican partners willing to break with MAGA extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common good for the people.” 

Jeffries is reaching out at a delicate moment for Republicans. While the minority leader’s appeal to what is best for the country is an important reminder of what is at stake here, there are also political currents running under the surface of the speaker crisis. The speaker vote will force Republicans to go on the record either for or against former president Trump, a declaration most have so far been able to avoid. 

There is enormous pressure from pro-Trump MAGA Republicans to stick with the former president and elect his chosen candidate, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), as House speaker. But Jordan is a very close ally of Trump’s and can be expected to demand an end to investigations into the former president in exchange for doing even the most basic business—Trump, after all, demanded a government shutdown until the cases against him were abandoned. Throwing the speakership to him will mean facing the 2024 election with a fully committed Trump party and government dysfunction as the Republicans’ main argument for why voters should back them.  

That might play well in the gerrymandered districts of the extremists, but there are 18 Republicans who won election in districts President Biden won in 2020, and they will not want to run on a ticket dominated by Trump and Jordan. But a vote for the other declared candidate, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), means being on record against Trump and for a man who once described himself as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage.” 

The other calculation those wavering Republican members of Congress must make is what they expect for the future. A number of the state maps that gave Republicans their slim House majority have been found unconstitutional and are now being redrawn in ways that suggest the Democrats might well retake the House in 2024. If that happens, having forged a working relationship with the Democrats would be far more useful than standing with the hard right. 

It would take as few as five Republican votes to elect Jeffries speaker, which is an unlikely outcome, but it would also take just a few Democrats to vote present and lower the number needed to enable the Republicans to elect someone more moderate than their current option. Jeffries might well be signaling that the Democrats are willing to enable that outcome, but only for a Republican who is not a bomb thrower. 

Republicans who are not committed to Trump may also be paying attention to what increasingly feels like a shift in the country’s popular tide. Today’s news provided more evidence that Biden’s approach to the economy—using the government to invest in ordinary Americans—is working far better than the Republicans’ approach of slashing the government to enable capitalists to organize the economy ever did. 

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released yet another very strong jobs report showing that the U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, almost twice what economists had predicted. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%. The biggest gains were in leisure and hospitality and in government. Average hourly wages went up 4.2% over the past 12 months; more than the inflation rate of 3.4%. The bureau also revised its employment statistics for July and August upward, showing that the employment in those months was up 199,000 more than the gains already reported.  

The country’s shift away from concentrating wealth upward also showed today in positive movement toward a historic settlement between the United Auto Workers and automakers. UAW president Shawn Fain announced that General Motors has agreed to include workers at plants making batteries for electric vehicles in the UAW’s national labor agreement. 

While the UAW wanted—and appears to be obtaining—higher wages, its leaders were especially concerned about what the transition to EVs would do to workers. Fain said that automakers had been planning to phase out the engine and transmission plants worked by union laborers and replace those jobs with lower-wage jobs in non-union battery plants. Until now, automakers had said it would be “impossible” to permit the battery plants to be covered by the union umbrella.

Fain called the agreement a “transformative win” and, in light of that agreement, announced that the UAW will not expand its strike into GM’s most profitable plant in Arlington, Texas. Fain said he expects that Ford and Stellantis, which includes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, will agree to the same deal, and labor scholars agree.

Trump visited a non-union plant in this dispute, where he attacked the transition to EVs as job killers for autoworkers. This new agreement makes it unlikely that autoworkers will back Trump over this issue. 

Biden, on the other hand, weighed in on the fight by joining the UAW picket line.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[charlesoberonn]

So just today there were two different physical altercations in the US congress (both by Republicans because of course)

You doing okay, America? (rhetorical)

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

There are people out there who genuinely think that the Starks aren’t thematically linked to ice in a way that is meaningful and central to the story? What?? I mean, never mind that they’re characterized as exclusively living in a frozen land, it is said that a Stark who goes south of the Neck melts. It’s not like their ancestral sword is called Ice. It’s not like they rule a castle called Winterfell. It’s not like their house words are “Winter is coming”. It’s not like their banner is a direwolf (a creature that is now synonymous with the snowy north) running on what is described as either snow or an ice-white background. It’s not like they are consistently characterized with having icy or cold demeanors to the point of it being a house trait (e.g., Benjen, Ned, Jon). It’s not like they ruled thousands of years as Kings of Winter. It’s not like the Starks, the wolves, are said to be uniquely suited to surviving winter. It’s not like a big part of their house legacy and how they even came to be is the construction of a giant ice Wall. It’s not like a key historical event in the last couple centuries is the Pact of Ice (Stark) and Fire (Targaryen). Apparently none of that matters 🙄 It’s so disingenuous to claim that any house with First Men blood would take on the role of ice. No, that’s a special characteristic given to the STARKS, and their connection with ice and winter and snow has thematic relevance.

[notes-app-psychologist]

Hey

not only is the president up for election this year,

so is every member of the US House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.

If you don't know who your congresspeople are, find out on the US congress website:

the congress we vote in is vitally important. If Harris wins the presidency, having a democratic congress will allow her to make the moves we want to see. If trump wins the presidency, a democratic congress will be all that can protect citizens against him. vote. vote blue. protect yourself and protect your community.

edit: 1/3 of the senate not 1/2