Democrat News

This post was originally published on this site

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee subcommittee on Social Security yesterday announced three new pieces of legislation aimed at protecting our safety net:

John B. Larson, Richard E. Neal, Danny K. Davis, and Steven Horsford unveiled the Keeping Our Field Offices Open Act, the Protecting Americans’ Social Security Data Act, and a Resolution of Inquiry into Trump’s and Musk’s attempts to destroy these programs.

This would be a great idea. Unfortunately, the legislation won’t make it out of committee without a Republican co-sponsor. And the horrendous Jason Smith is the committee chairman, so unless pigs fly?

Maybe Dems should just stop trying to be so well-behaved.

·

This post was originally published on this site

Trump’s legal counsel, Alina Habba, told reporters that recently fired veterans from the government by Trump/Musk may not have been fit to have their job at all.

Wow, just wow.

There are many veterans and Republicans who are now unhappy they voted for Trump after he unceremoniously cut and fired federal government employees with a heavy hand that included many veterans.

Habba was asked in a presser if Trump had any second thoughts about firing our military veterans that served this country and were happy to work in the federal government — if the administration can do something to help them.

How she replied was shocking.

REPORTER: Is the president starting to think about maybe some of those veterans who worked for the federal government and maybe what the administration can do to at least help salvage their lives?

HABBA: Well, as you know, we care about veterans tremendously. I mean, that’s something the president has always cared about. Anybody in blue, anybody that serves this country.

But at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work.

That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans by any means. We are going to care for them in the right way. But perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment or not willing to come to work.

And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, sorry, you know, they’re not going to come to work.

It’s just not acceptable.

There was no rhyme or reason for the mass firings and enforced retirements caused by co-Presidents Trump and Musk.

No job evaluation was done to determine if a veteran was qualified for their job. When Habba says they may be unfit, is she talking about their mental state?

How would a bullshit algorithm know about their mental and physical health?

It’s just like a MAGA cultist to denigrate those they’ve hurt in the worst possible way.

This post was originally published on this site

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Milwaukee area woman named Makayla Starks. Starks had taken her car to a dealership for an oil change but when she got her car back, she found that the mechanic had written the n-word on the oil change sticker and that some safety device controls on her steering console had been damaged. To make matters worse, the dealership did not handle the situation as well as they could have by trying to cover it up.

But then life once again proved that not all heroes wear capes.

The story reached all the way to Family Nissan in Inwood, New York. There, things escalated quickly, but in a good way:

“The team here got kind of fired up to add more support and add more voice to her voice and to her narrative and to push her message forward that this should’ve never happened,” he said.

At a Saturday morning meeting, a manager brought up the story and an idea to gift Starks a car formed, which Rizk said “erupted the whole meeting.”

It wasn’t about processes or sales numbers; he said it was about doing what was right.

“We did it together as a family, you know, Family Nissan,” Rizk said.

The dealership decided to give Starks a brand new Nissan Leaf, an electric car with a $38,000 MSRP, according to Rizk. The idea of an electric car was so Starks didn’t need to get oil changes anymore.

But that’s not all. Someone at the dealership learned that Starks was an author and self-published a book last year. They took it upon themselves to buy several copies of her book, and when Starks arrived to get her car, it turned into a book signing event.

Now, the cynical person might think that the dealership did it just for the PR. I’ll admit that that might have played a role in the course of events.

But, I chose to prefer to believe that sometimes good people can make good things happen for other good people. Especially in these days, most of us need to believe that, and whenever possible, be part of making those good things happen. As a dear friend of mine has taught me, you gotta look for the happy in the crappy.

This post was originally published on this site

Republican House members have been facing a fierce backlash in their districts to Trump’s heavy-handed firings and suspensions of federal programs, but Mike Johnson passed the buck onto the usual right-wing boogeyman.

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson gave them instructions.

House Republicans are being encouraged to avoid in-person town halls in favor of phone and livestreamed versions, advice that comes after constituents and activists rocked recent GOP events by expressing outrage about the Trump administration’s dramatic moves to reshape the federal government.

Instead of facing up to the reality of the situation, Jebus Johnson blamed the left for Republicans’ problems. A reporter asked Johnson if canceling Republican town halls is a solution to quell the dissatisfaction with their voters.

REPORTER: Protestors at Republican town halls, and now they’re pushing back on, I guess, reporting that there’s been discretion that Republicans should hold less town halls.

I mean, do you think that that’s what your members should be doing? Do you think that they should be…

JOHNSON: Well, look, we’ve been encouraging our members to communicate directly with their constituents, and they’re anxious to do that.

There’s lots of different ways and forums to do it.

You could do it in telephone town halls.

Republicans are incredibly thin-skinned chicken shits. Demented Donald Trump’s callous handling of the federal government can never be blamed, so Jebus Johnson tried to give him some cover.

JOHNSON: Because we’ve seen this movie before.

George Soros-funded groups and others literally pay protestors, and, you know, I saw my friend Hakeem Jeffries decrying that I’ve said that, but we know that that is a fact.

Democrat activists who don’t live in the district very often will show up for these town hall events, and they’ll go in an hour early, and they’ll fill all the seats, and so the constituents and the people from the community that are actually represented don’t even get a seat.

Now, I’m not saying everyone in these, all the Democrats in these town halls that you’ve seen on television were not from the local area, but, look, there are people who do this as a profession.

They’re professional protestors, so why would we give them a forum to do that right now?

The best thing that our members can do is communicate directly, frequently, consistently with their constituents and their other avenues to do it than just going in to try to give the other side soundbites.

I mean, they’re doing this for the camera, as we all know it, and I think it’s wise not to play into it right now, so that’s my position.

Lying liars got alive. Jebus Johnson missed that commandment.

For a long time the MAGA cult blamed Antifa and the FBI for the assault on the US Capitol and now they are switching their playbook to Republican town halls.

It’s pathetic

This post was originally published on this site

Jasmine Crockett and Eric Swalwell had choice words for the president after Trump’s March 4 speech. Crockett said she’d tell the president to “stop being Putin’s hoe” when asked what she’d like to say to Trump.

Joe Gallina: If you could tell Donald Trump anything tonight, what would you tell him?

Rep. Jasmine Crockett: Grow a spine and stop being Putin’s hoe. pic.twitter.com/VZu47C4ZAk

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) March 5, 2025

Rep. Crockett is a fierce fighter who doesn’t mince words. A few days ago, Crockett called Trump an “enemy of the United States” and apologized to American allies.

Eric Swalwell Fights Back

Rep. Swalwell is a tough fighter who has no problem hitting back at Trump. The California congressman had choice words for the president after the March 4 speech.

HELL YEAH: Rep. Eric Swalwell takes the gloves off. When asked what he’d tell Donald Trump to his face, Swalwell replied, “Stop FUCKING with people.”

“These cuts are hurting people’s health care, their retirement security, their sense of safety.

You get rid of FBI agents while… pic.twitter.com/b5Jc7nQgjp

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) March 5, 2025

Thanks to Call to Activism and Joe Gallina for these two great videos.

This post was originally published on this site

Tom Llamas will be the next anchor of “NBC Nightly News” after Lester Holt departs the role this summer.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Llamas, 45, will be the first Latino to anchor a weekday English language broadcast network evening newscast, a role that will make him one of the signature personalities of NBC News.

Llamas will remain anchor of the nightly program “Top Story,” which streams on NBC News Now at 7 p.m. Eastern. “Nightly” is fed to NBC stations live at 6:30 p.m.

Holt announced his plans to leave “Nightly” last week after a 10 year run. He will remain with NBC News as anchor of the true crime newsmagazine “Dateline.”

Llamas, a Miami native, was recruited to NBC News from ABC and had been rumored to be the “Nightly” heir apparent since he arrived.

Llamas started his journalism career as a 15-year-old intern at the local Telemundo station in Miami. After graduating from Loyola University New Orleans, he landed a job in 2000 as a production assistant at NBC News. He worked his way up as a correspondent for NBC’s Miami station and a local anchor for WNBC in New York.

Llamas jumped to ABC News in 2014, where he raised his profile covering the 2016 presidential campaign, and the following year was named Saturday anchor of “ABC World News.” He returned to NBC in 2021 and became anchor of “Top Story” in September of that year.

This post was originally published on this site

WASHINGTON — During Trump’s campaign for president, he and his allies repeated misleading or false claims on immigration, including that then-President Biden had secretly flown migrants into the U.S., that FEMA used disaster relief money on migrants, and that many immigrants are violent criminals.

On Tuesday, Trump repeated or alluded to those claims and more during a nearly two-hour address to Congress — his first as the 47th president — that often returned to one of his favorite topics.

“The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president,” Trump said to applause from Republican lawmakers.

In the audience were familiar faces — people Trump has referenced to make points about immigration. Among them were the mother and sister of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed last year in Athens, Ga., by a recently arrived Venezuelan immigrant.

Immigration officials said Jose Ibarra, the man convicted of murdering Riley, had entered the United States illegally and had been allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case. Riley’s family joined Trump on the campaign trail. A bill named after her, which mandates federal detention for immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, became the first signed by Trump in his second term.

Also in attendance was Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed last year in Houston; two other recently arrived immigrants from Venezuela have been charged with murdering her. Alexis Nungaray joined Trump last year during a campaign event at the southern U.S. border.

Some of Trump’s claims Tuesday on immigration have previously been debunked.

Listing off what he viewed as unnecessary federal programs uncovered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump referred to “$59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City.”

Musk said millions of dollars meant for disaster relief were spent illegally by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house migrants in “high-end” hotels. The claim led to the firing of four federal employees and the suspension of payments to New York for migrant housing.

But it wasn’t FEMA money — the money is administered by FEMA on behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Protection for its Shelter and Services Program, which supports local governments and nonprofits that help arriving migrants. In fiscal year 2024, the average daily rate for rooms contracted through an agreement with the Hotel Assn. of New York City was $156, according to a report by the city’s comptroller’s office.

Similarly, Trump falsely accused Biden last year of running out of disaster funding after spending it all on migrants.

Criticizing the record arrivals at the southern border under Biden, Trump said “many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world.”

Researchers have found that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at substantially lower rates than native-born citizens.

“Joe Biden didn’t just open our borders,” Trump said Tuesday. “He flew illegal aliens over them to overwhelm our schools, hospitals and communities throughout the country.”

The claim that Biden secretly flew hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S., elevated by a right-leaning group called the Center for Immigration Studies, actually referred to people vetted and authorized for travel under a program that allowed in people from certain countries who could fund their own plane tickets.

Even Springfield, Ohio, made a flitting comeback in Trump’s speech on Tuesday.

During a debate last year with his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump repeated a false viral rumor that Haitian immigrants in Sprinfield were “eating the pets of the people that live there.” Springfield became inundated with hoax bomb threats that forced lockdowns, evacuations and closures at hospitals, schools and government buildings.

“Entire towns like Aurora, Colo., and Springfield, Ohio, buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said Tuesday. “Beautiful towns destroyed.”

Some misleading statements were new. For example, Trump said February had “by far the lowest ever recorded” numbers of illegal border crossings. News outlets reported that the Border Patrol recorded around 8,300 arrests of migrants who attempted to unlawfully cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry.

Border Patrol’s own data going back to fiscal year 1925 show multiple instances in which the average monthly arrests fell below 8,000 per month, most recently in 1967.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said Trump’s statements on immigration were unsurprising.

“He is obsessed with 0.04% of the population (13 million undocumented) and wants to place in their lap all the ills of this nation,” Salas said in a statement after the speech.

This post was originally published on this site

MEXICO CITY — One day after President Trump’s sweeping tariffs took effect, ending decades of free trade across North America, Mexicans reacted with a mix of fear and defiance.

“There will not be submission,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference Wednesday. “Mexicans are valiant and strong.”

Sheinbaum reiterated her plan to announce punitive counter measures — including taxes on some U.S. imports — at a public event in Mexico City on Sunday.

It was unclear whether Mexico’s response would be tempered by the White House announcement Wednesday that automakers would be exempted from the newly imposed tariffs for one month.

Already on Wednesday, the impact of the tariffs was being felt.

At the border, business leaders reported an immediate drop in the quantity of goods crossing north to the U.S. as companies on both sides sought to avoid the new taxes.

In the streets of the nation’s capital, there was a palpable sense of unease.

While the peso has largely held strong against the dollar, there are real fears about what a trade war would mean for Mexico, whose economy depends heavily on commerce with the United States, sending 80% of its exports there.

Noah Espinosa, a 43-year-old dentist in Mexico City, said he worried about rising prices.

“Whatever Trump does, the dollar immediately goes up and everything in Mexico becomes more expensive,” Espinosa said. “The dollar goes up and so do tortillas, the dollar goes up and so does meat.”

He said many of the products he uses in his dental practice come from the United States, too.

“The worst thing,” he said, “is that it seems that Trump does not care about destroying our economy and the economy of his own country, as long as he feels like the most powerful man in the world.”

For many, the specter of an economic crisis brought back memories of another one, during the mid-1990s, when the sudden devaluation of the peso sparked a severe recession and contributed to some 5 million Mexicans immigrating to the U.S.

“From one day to the next, we lost everything,” said Ricardo Aguilar, 65, who owns a hardware store in the Cuajimalpa neighborhood.

“Now that Trump is making these threats, those memories come back to my mind and make me want to cry,” Aguilar said. “Without economic stability, you lose everything: your health, your peace of mind. There is more violence; everything gets complicated.”

“I hope to God that we don’t have to live through a crisis of that magnitude again,” he said. “But Trump is very emboldened.”

The tariffs took effect Tuesday morning. Overnight, Washington began levying a 25% tax on all products imported from Mexico and Canada, with the exception of Canadian oil and gas, which are subject to a 10% tariff. Trump also imposed a new 10% tax on imports from China.

Canada and China immediately announced retaliatory taxes on U.S. goods — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the tariffs “very dumb” — and Mexico said it would soon announce its own counter-tariffs.

Speaking to the U.S. Congress Tuesday night, Trump echoed a promise he made earlier in the day that he would respond to any retaliatory taxes with another set of tariffs.

President Trump claps as he addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday night.

(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them,” he said. “Whatever they tax us, we tax them.”

Trump has cited several reasons for imposing tariffs: the flow of illegal drugs and migrants across the U.S. border; his desire to bring manufacturing back to America; his anger over the trade imbalance that the U.S. has with most nations.

“We’ve been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth and we will not let that happen any longer,” he said.

In Mexico, there was deep frustration that Trump had not recognized the country’s considerable efforts on security and migration in recent months. Mexico has helped bring illegal border crossings to the lowest levels in years — and has increased seizures of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has caused tens of thousands of U.S. deaths.

“Trump is a liar, he said there would be no tariffs if we put a stop to migration,” said Maria Esther Garcia, 51, a homemaker.

She said she hoped Sheinbaum would stop trying to appease the Americans.

“It’s no use because Trump is not a man of honor,” Garcia said. “President Sheinbaum should not trust him. It’s better for us to look for other countries for our Mexican avocados.”

Jorge Lara, a 37-year-old computer technician, said that while Mexicans would be affected by tariffs, harder hit would be American consumers, who will likely soon start paying higher prices for agricultural goods.

He hoped that they would would pressure Trump to reverse course.

“As soon as the Americans begin to suffer from high prices in their country, they will react against their government, and Trump will have no choice but to eliminate the taxes,” Lara said.

In his address Tuesday to Congress, Trump repeated his charge that Mexico is completely under the sway of organized crime — an assertion that Sheinbaum has repeatedly refuted as a calumny.

“The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture and exercise total control,” Trump told Congress. “They have total control over a whole nation, posing a grave threat to our national security.”

Still, Trump lauded Mexican authorities for their decision last week to hand over 29 alleged cartel operatives, including Rafael Caro Quintero, alleged mastermind of the 1985 slaying in Mexico of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.

The president explicitly linked the hand-off of the 29 suspects — all wanted in the United States — to his tariff policies.

“That has never happened before. They want to make us happy. First time ever,” Trump said of Mexican officials’ decision to turn over the 29 suspects to U.S. law enforcement. “But we need Mexico and Canada to do much more than they’ve done, and they have to stop the fentanyl and drugs pouring into the USA.”

Times special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on this site

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin delivered a blistering rebuttal to Donald Trump’s speech on March 4. Reuters reported The midwestern moderate Democrat hit back at Trump on Ukraine, foreign policy, and Elon Musk’s illegal actions.

Slotkin is a former CIA analyst whose rebuttal was short and smart. The Michigan senator even invoked Ronald Reagan, showing Americans just how extreme the GOP has become under Trump.

Brett Meiselas, cofounder @MeidasTouch praised Slotkin in a tweet:

“These response speeches are usually disasters but Sen. Slotkin is knocking it out of the park. A+++++.”

More Reactions to Slotkin’s Rebuttal

Slotkin’s speech generated positive reviews:

The D’s response comes in eighty minutes shorter, moderate and leans into Reagan, national security, the economy and democracy. Impressive. pic.twitter.com/7QrT5A3LSG

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) March 5, 2025

Sen. SLOTKIN, delivering Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union: Trump loves to say ‘peace through strength.’ That’s a line he stole from Ronald Reagan.

“After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave.” pic.twitter.com/FInc327U2d

— Senate Judiciary Democrats 🇺🇸 (🦋 now on bsky) (@JudiciaryDems) March 5, 2025

Sen. Elissa Slotkin is delivering a brilliant, polished and practiced DEM response to trump’s speech.

I’ve seen a lot of these, this one is practically flawless. It’s a serious, no-nonsense tone.

Well done, Senator. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/D8pxXc2E5D

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) March 5, 2025

This post was originally published on this site

Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary went on Larry Kudlow’s program Wednesday and immediately started backtracking on the tariffs Trump has levied against Canada Mexico and China.

With the stock market crashing you can bet Trump’s big donors were on the phone screaming at at him.
.
Enter Howard Lutnick, who claimed that Trump is imposing these tariffs to make our closest neighbors close the borders and stop letting fentanyl into the country.

Did you know these tariffs were not targeted for the US economy which Trump ran on, but to fight a drug war?

Like all Trump hires, Lutnick is a smooth talking con man trying to lie liars way out of Trump’s intentions all along.

LUTNICK: But the fentanyl deaths are just not declining in the way we expected.

KUDLOW: So what do you think the president’s gonna do?

LUTNICK: He’s gonna come out today angry that Americans are still being killed.

Now, both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they’ll do better, and the president’s listening, because you know he’s very, very fair and very reasonable, so I think he’s gonna work something out with them.

It’s not gonna be a pause, none of that pause stuff, but I think he’s gonna figure out, you do more, and I’ll meet you in the middle some way, and we’re gonna probably be announcing that tomorrow.

So somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome, the president moving with the Canadians and Mexicans, but not all the way.

KUDLOW: Just to clarify, you mentioned an announcement tomorrow, less than 25% or how would you characterize this announcement?

Well, I think he’s gonna think about USMCA.

He’s got people in USMCA, people in who are backing the way he set trade up in his first term, and those people outside of it.

So he’s really looking carefully at that, trying to figure out is there a way in there that he can come in the middle where he’ll give the Canadians and Mexicans something, but they’ve gotta do more, they’ve gotta end fentanyl death.

You can’t just say, it’s okay, people can die. That is just not a thing.

Well, of course not, you’re 100%, and so is he.

So the point here, as I understand, and again, just trying to clarify, if they make additional progress to president’s satisfaction or your satisfaction, the tariffs might not be across the board tariffs, there might be exemptions through the tariffs.

Trump said the United States is been ripped off for generations and his tariffs would pay down the deficit and explode the US economy like never before

He never mentioned fentanyl deaths as the cause for his idiotic tariffs.

When they make the announcement tomorrow, Demented Donald will tell everyone how he won the battle because he’s better than Lincoln and now fentanyl deaths will go away, etc.

There is a MAGA sucker born everyday.