#Thom Tillis (R-NC)

[simply-ivanka]

Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Cornyn (R-TX), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Kennedy (R-LA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Thune (R-SD), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Todd Young (R-IN)

VOTE THESE PIECES OF SHIT OUT OF CONGRESS.

#Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) #Bill Cassidy (R-LA) #Susan Collins (R-ME) #John Cornyn (R-TX) #Joni Ernst (R-IA) #Chuck Grassley (R-IA) #John Thune (R-SD) #Thom Tillis (R-NC) #Roger Wicker (R-MS) #and Todd Young (R-IN)

[1americanconservative]

These 28 GOP Senators voted for continued funding to Ukraine, even though we are $33 Trillion in debt, and face a Gov shutdown. Some real shockers in this group!

1. John Barrasso (WY)

2. John Boozman (AR)

3. Shelly Capito (WV)

4. Bill Cassidy (LA)

5. Susan Collins (ME)

6. John Cornyn (TX)

7. Tom Cotton (AR)

8. Kevin Cramer (ND)

9. Mike Crapo (ID)

10. Joni Ernst (IA)

11. Lindsey Graham (SC)

12. Chuck Grassley (IA)

13. John Hoeven (ND)

14. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R)

15. John Kennedy (LA)

16. James Lankford (OK)

17. Mitch McConnell (KY)

18. Jerry Moran (KS)

19. Markwayne Mullin (OK)

20. Lisa Murkowski (AK)

21. Mitt Romney (UT)

22. Mike Rounds (SD)

23. Marco Rubio (FL)

24. Dan Sullivan (AK)

25. John Thune (SD)

26. Thom Tillis (NC)

27. Roger Wicker (MS)

28. Todd Young (IN)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Daniel Boris, Vladimir Putin's Nesting Dolls

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 09, 2024

On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.” 

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”

Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected. 

Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.” 

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.  

Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.” 

The Trump loyalists echoing Russia who have taken control of the Republican Party appear to be hardening into a phalanx around the former president, but even as they do so, Trump himself appears to be crumbling. 

In the week since Trump posted a $175 million appeals bond, halting the seizure of his properties to satisfy the $454 million judgment against him and the Trump Organization, multiple problems with that bond have come to light. It is possible the bond isn’t worth anything at all, and New York attorney general Letitia James has filed papers to require Trump’s lawyers or the bond underwriter to show that it’s good within ten days. A hearing is set for April 22.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trial for election interference in 2016, when he paid people with damaging information to keep quiet before the election and falsified business records to hide those payments, is set to begin on April 15. Evidently very worried about this trial, Trump has already tried eight times to delay it until after November’s election, and today his lawyers tried yet again by requesting a delay so he could fight to get the trial moved to a different venue, but an appeals judge rejected the attempt.

Aside from Trump’s personal problems as a presidential candidate, the Republicans face strong headwinds because of their deeply unpopular opposition to abortion rights. Trump has openly bragged about being the instrument for ending the rights recognized in the United States since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Since then, abortion bans are galvanizing opposition, and the Republicans are trying to find a message that can bring back angry voters without antagonizing the antiabortion white evangelicals who make up their base. 

After months of waffling on the issue, Trump today released a video trying to thread that needle by echoing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump said in the video that states will decide the issue for themselves, a statement that simply reflects the Dobbs decision. 

This was a dodge. In the video, Trump appealed to the antiabortion loyalists by telling the ghoulish lie that women are “executing” their babies even after birth. He also ignored that Republicans are already calling for a national ban, extremist antiabortion Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has tried to take the common abortion drug mifepristone off the national market by challenging its FDA approval, and legislatures in many Republican-dominated states are refusing to implement the will of the people to protect abortion rights even after they have voted for such protections. 

Still, antiabortion leaders, including Mike Pence, immediately slammed Trump’s statement.

The video did, though, make an enormously interesting and unintended point: Trump is communicating with voters outside his carefully curated bubble almost exclusively through videos, even on a topic as important as abortion. At rallies, his speeches have become erratic and wandering, with occasional slurred words, and observers have wondered how he would present to more general audiences. It appears that his team has concluded that he will not present well and that general audiences must see him in carefully curated settings, like this apparently heavily edited video.

The Trump takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC) also appears to be in trouble. This weekend, Trump claimed to have raised $50 million in a single night from billionaires, but that number is conveniently a little more than double the new record of what President Joe Biden raised at an event last week with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and it is long past time for everyone to stop believing anything Trump says about money. 

More to the point, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported today that the RNC’s aggressive purge of the staff to guarantee that positions are held only by Trump loyalists means that “the RNC has been left without people with deep knowledge of election operations at the Republican party’s central committee.” Lowell notes this lack is especially apparent on the RNC’s data team, which is being moved from Washington, D.C., to Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago.

And yet Trump loyalists continue to block aid to Ukraine, threatening the existence of the rules-based international order that has helped to prevent war since World War II. Last week, even Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Speaker Johnson against “abandoning our Allies at this time of great need, when they are staring down enemies of the free world.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political cartoons #Daniel Boris #nesting dolls #Putin #russia #collusion #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Ukraine #war in Ukraine #House Republicans #Russian Propaganda #election 2024 #election interference #funding for Ukraine

[maswartz]

[muddypolitics]

(via GOP Senators Say The Real Problem With Trump Is His Bad Staff)

Seven years into the Trump era, and we’re still getting this kind of nonsense from sitting U.S. senators: Whose fault was it that Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West? Certainly not Trump’s! It was poor staffing!

Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “That’s just a bad idea on every level. I don’t know who was advising him on his staff but I hope that whoever that person was got fired.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC): “If the reports are true and the president didn’t know who he was, whoever let him in the room should be fired.”

A guy whose political career was launched by the catchphrase “You’re fired!” is the victim of his own failure to fire bad staff. Amazing.

For the most credulous audience, this dance lets the senator sidestep any direct criticism of Trump while still handwringing and looking serious.

For the rest of us, the senators look like duplicitous boobs.

the party of taking responsibility takes NO responsibility

#politics #GOP blames everything #but maga-king

[infinitemonkeytheory]

On Thursday, Congress sent The Respect for Marriage Act to President Joe Biden's desk. It enshrines protections for same-sex and interracial marriage.

[…]

The legislation protects the right to same-sex and interracial marriage by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”

It passed Congress with a 258-169 vote, according to the AP. Thirty-nine Republicans, including Susan Collins (R-ME) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), voted alongside Democrats to pass the bill.

The bill is a major relief for the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who’ve been married since the 2015 Obergefell decision. Concerns over whether the Supreme Court could overturn the right-to-marriage decision have been rampant since the court reversed Roe v. Wade.

#marriage equality #good news

[cultml]

#thom tillis

[thethinkingman]

I emailed Sen Thom Tillis (R-NC) over the “TikTok “ ban bill. His response shows his willing ignorance, or outright lie, about ownership of TikTok. This bill is an albatross and nothing but a power grab. Once the executive branch has power to censor whatever platform it wishes over accusations we will be no better than China or Canada.

#senate #congress #socialmedia #tiktok #politics #government #freedom

[minions-of-belial]

[bllsbailey]

GOP Senators Introduce Bill That Would Punish States Who Disqualify Trump From 2024 Ballot

Republican senators are planning revenge against states that attempt to disqualify former President Trump from the 2024 ballot. 

After Maine became the second state to boot Trump off the state’s ballot, a group of lawmakers have introduced legislation that would punish states who opt to take similar action.

“New law… If any state in our Union blocks the official nominee of a major political party from the Presidential ballot, their electoral slate will not be counted by Congress on the following January 6th,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote in an X. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Maine Senator Susan Collins also echoed Higgins's efforts to hold states accountable if they violate constitutional rights.

“The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned,” Collins tweeted. “Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature.”

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) December 29, 2023

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced he has drafted legislation that would restrict federal funds for states that remove candidates from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. Tillis said he plans to introduce the bill as soon as Congress returns from recess.

Recommended

“This is an egregious abuse of power and why I will be introducing the Constitutional Election Integrity Act as soon as Congress returns to session to stop these partisan officials and ensure any constitutional challenge is only decided by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Tillis wrote in an X post.

Maine’s Democrat Secretary of State just removed Trump from the ballot. This is an egregious abuse of power and why I will be introducing the Constitutional Election Integrity Act as soon as Congress returns to session to stop these partisan officials and ensure any… https://t.co/evVu6bSv0H— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) December 29, 2023

Meanwhile, CNN's top legal analyst harshly criticized Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’s decision to kick Trump off the state's ballot. 

CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig pointed out how flawed Bellow's move was, highlighting that she got her information from "YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court."

"She’s not a lawyer, by the way. It’s a smartly written decision, clearly consulted with lawyers, but this is an unelected – she’s chosen by the state legislature. She’s elected by the state legislature. Chosen by the legislature, but not democratically elected, not enough,” Honig said. 

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig in Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows removing Trump from the ballot: “She based her ruling on a lot of documents, but also YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court. She’s not a lawyer, by the way” pic.twitter.com/aQeMzKeAtY— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 29, 2023

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Darrin Bell, Los Angeles Times

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 18, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Republican leaders are recognizing that the sight of Republican lawmakers heckling the president of the United States didn’t do their party any favors. It not only called attention to their behavior, it prompted many news outlets to fact-check President Biden’s claim that Republicans had called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare or even called to get rid of them. Those outlets noted that while Republicans have repeatedly said they have no intention of cutting those programs, what Biden said was true: Republican leaders have repeatedly suggested such cuts, or even the elimination of those programs, in speeches, news interviews, and written proposals. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Alexander Bolton of The Hill that Republicans should stick to “reasonable and enduring policy” proposals. “I think we’re missing an opportunity to differentiate,” he said. “Focus on policy. If you get that done, it will age well.” But therein lies the Republican Party’s problem. What ARE its reasonable and enduring policies? One of the reasons Biden keeps pressuring the party to release its budget is that it’s not at all clear what the party stands for. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to issue any plans before the 2022 midterm election, and in 2020, for the first time in its history, the party refused to write a party platform. The Republican National Committee simply resolved that if its party platform committee had met, it “would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party's strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration.” So, it resolved that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President's America-first agenda.” Cutting Social Security is a centerpiece of the ideology the party adopted in the 1980s: that the government in place since 1933 was stunting the economy and should be privatized as much as possible. In place of using the federal government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure, Reagan Republicans promised that cutting taxes and regulation would free up capital, which investors would then plow into new businesses, creating new jobs and moving everybody upward. Americans could have low taxes and services both, they promised, for “supply-side economics” would create such economic growth that lower tax rates would still produce high enough revenues to keep the debt low and maintain services. But constructing an economy that favored the “supply side” rather than the “demand side”—those ordinary Americans who would spend more money in their daily lives—did not, in fact, produce great economic growth or produce tax revenues high enough to keep paying expenses. In January 1981, President Ronald Reagan called the federal deficit, then almost $74 billion, “out of control.” Within two years, he had increased it to $208 billion. The debt, too, nearly tripled during Reagan’s term, from $930 billion to $2.6 trillion. The Republican solution was to cut taxes and slash the government even further. As early as his 1978 congressional race, George W. Bush called for fixing Social Security’s finances by permitting people to invest their payroll tax themselves. In his second term as president in 2005, he called for it again. When Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida proposed an 11-point (which he later changed to a 12 points) “Plan to Rescue America” last year, vowing to “sunset” all laws automatically after five years, the idea reflected that Republican vision. It permitted the cutting of Social Security without attaching those cuts to any one person or party. But American voters like Social Security and Medicare and, just as they refused Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security, recoiled from Scott’s plan. Yesterday, under pressure from voters and from other Republicans who recognized the political damage being done, Scott wrote an op-ed saying his plan was “obviously not intended to include entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security—programs that hard-working people have paid into their entire lives—or the funds dedicated to our national security.” (The online version of the plan remains unchanged as of Saturday morning.) Scott attacked Biden for suggesting otherwise, but he also attacked Mitch McConnell, who also condemned Scott’s plan, accusing them of engaging in “shallow gotcha politics, which is what Washington does.” He also accused “Washington politicians” for “lying to you every chance they get.” Scott’s venom illustrated the growing rift in the Republican Party. Since the 1990s, Republicans have had an ideological problem: voters don’t actually like their economic vision, which has cut services and neglected infrastructure even as it has dramatically moved wealth upward. So to keep voters behind them, Republicans hammered on social and cultural issues, portraying those who liked the active government as godless socialists who were catering to minorities and women. “There is a religious war going on in this country,” Republican Pat Buchanan told the Republican National Convention in 1992. “It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.” A generation later, that culture war has joined with the economic vision of the older party to create a new ideology. More than half of Republicans now reject the idea of a democracy based in the rule of law and instead support Christian nationalism, insisting that the United States is a Christian nation and that our society and our laws should be based in evangelical Christian values. Forty percent of the strongest adherents of Christian nationalism think “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while 22% of sympathizers agree with that position. Scott released his 11-point plan because, he said, “Americans deserve to know what we will do when given the chance,” and his plan reflected the new Republicans. Sunsetting laws and tax cuts were only part of the plan. He promised to cut government jobs by 25% over the next five years, “sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings and land, and use the proceeds to pay down our national debt,” get rid of all federal programs that local governments can take over, cut taxes, “grow America’s economy,” and “stop Socialism.” But it also reflected the turn toward Christian nationalism, centering Christianity and “Judeo-Christian values” by investing in religious schools, adoption agencies, and social services and calling for an end to abortion, gender-affirming care, and diversity training. It explicitly puts religion above the law, saying “Americans will not be required to go against their core values and beliefs in order to conform to culture or government.” The document warned that “[a]n infestation of old, corrupt Washington insiders and immature radical socialists is tearing America apart. Their bizarre policies are intentionally destroying our values, our culture, and the beliefs that hold us together as a nation.” “Is this the beginning of the end of America?” it asks. “Only if we allow it to be.” That new worldview overlaps with the extremist wing that is trying to take over the Republican Party. It was at the heart of the far-right challenge to House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). It informs Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s abandonment of small-government Republicanism in favor of using the power of the state government to enforce a “Christian” vision, including on businesses. It was also behind Scott’s challenge to McConnell for the position of Senate majority leader. McConnell kept his position and then removed Scott and another extremist who backed Scott, Mike Lee (R-UT), from the Senate Commerce Committee. Scott, anyway, is apparently not backing down. The struggle between those two factions is showing up at the Munich Security Conference on global security this week. In the U.S. the extremists have called for cutting our support for the Ukrainians as they try to fight off Russia’s 2022 invasion. Their hatred of the liberal democracy that demands equality for all people has put those extremists on the side of authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both of whom have made attacking LGBTQ people a key feature of their championing of their “traditional values,” a cause the extremists like. But the United States has traditionally backed democracies against autocracies. Today in Munich, Vice President Kamala Harris talked of the war crimes and atrocities the Russians have committed in Ukraine and said: “We have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity.” Mitch McConnell, who does not usually travel to foreign meetings, went to Munich this year along with more than 50 other lawmakers, the largest delegation the U.S. has ever sent, designed to demonstrate U.S. commitment to global affairs. At a private breakfast on Friday, McConnell promised that the Republicans would not abandon Ukraine. One person there told Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer of Foreign Policy, “To me, the subtext was clear: We’re not the crazies like the small handful of House Republicans you see in the headlines so often.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[from comments]

Hope Lindsay

It amazes me how some folks drum up their own morality while toting their ill-gotten gains to the bank. Looking at you, Rick Scott, TFG, the flying monkeys of the House of Representatives, et al. As an acquaintance once said, "When someone tells me they are a Christian businessman, I hold onto my wallet and run." From Rupert Murdoch to Putin to the Christian Nationalists, when will they see that, despite calling us socialists and worse, they delude themselves most of all.

#political cartoon #Darrin Bell #LATimes #GOP #Corrupt GOP #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #war in Ukraine #democracy #Social Security #foreign policy #policy #liberal democracy #Munich Security Conference #democracy based in rule of law #Christian Nationalism

[mongowheelie]

I found this on NewsBreak: ‘Total And Unmitigated Bullsh*t’: Senate Republican Shreds JD Vance Claim That Some Lawmakers Want to Cut Social Security to Fund Ukraine

I found this on NewsBreak: ‘Total And Unmitigated Bullsh*t’: Senate Republican Shreds JD Vance Claim That Some Lawmakers Want to Cut Social Security to Fund Ukraine

[maryturck]

Immigration News: November 30, 2023

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) says that a virtual end to humanitarian parole must be included in any supplemental funding deal and that no provisions for DACA recipients or others with temporary protection will even be considered. Humanitarian parole is the temporary status used to admit Afghans after the Taliban takeover and Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. The Biden administration also…

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[technsavi]

Senators’ Patent Reform Bills Offer a Strong Way Forward for the U.S. Patent System

“The boldness of the new bills is stunning, especially after years of futile efforts by patent owners to get more modest reforms adopted by USPTO leaders.” Last week, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) launched the long-awaited legislative campaign to revive the faltering U.S. innovation system, jointly introducing one bill to restore patent eligibility and another to boost…

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[thepeopleempowered]

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Cheap labor to make Americans suffer. Ready to loose your job ? ? ?