Monthly Archives: January 2021

Congressman August Pfluger and members of the Republican Study Committee has introduced a new piece of legislation to restore the trust in elections.

TEXAS, USA Congressman August Pfluger and members of the Republican Study Committee has introduced a new piece of legislation to restore the trust in elections.

The Save Democracy Act, written by Pfluger and endorsed by the Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks along with other members of the RSC, is being introduced in an effort to build the community's trust that their vote will be counted during elections.

Congressman Pfluger says that it is imperative Congress moves to restore faith in the democratic process.

The people of the 11th District of Texas demand secure and transparent elections. In that effort, I am proud to support the Save Democracy Act to address key failures in our electoral system including voter registration, ballot casting, and ballot counting. It is imperative that Congress moves to restore the faith in our democratic process and bring election certitude to every American.

The introduction of the Save Democracy Act is said to enhance federal election integrity by addressing voter registration, the casting of ballots, and the tabulation of ballots.

The bill would prohibit or reform current practices by:

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Congressman August Pfluger and Republican Study Committee introduces new bill to restore trust in elections - NewsWest9.com

The unbreakable wall of Republican support that encouraged and enabled Donald Trumps norm-shattering presidency cracked on Wednesday.

A group of 10 House Republicans joined Democrats to impeach Trump for inciting a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hasnt ruled out convicting Trump during a trial later this month, giving fellow Republicans cover if they chose that option.

The vast majority of House Republicans stood by Trump during the impeachment vote. But in a sign of the presidents weakening grip on the party, even some of those who opposed impeachment condemned Trumps behavior and blamed him for sparking the insurrection.

The president bears responsibility for Wednesdays attack on Congress by mob rioters, said House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who has been a staunch Trump ally.

Its a dramatic turn of events for a president who has enjoyed virtually unyielding loyalty from his party and was expected to play a key role in shaping the GOPs future. But the impeachment vote demonstrated how challenging the coming months may be for Republicans.

While some are clearly eager to move into a post-Trump era, theres still a large block that will stand with him even after he fueled a riot. Many House Republicans downplayed the significance of the insurrection and Trumps role, drawing false comparisons between the deadly storming of the Capitol by a largely white mob and isolated incidents of looting and violence related to civil rights protests last summer.

The left in America has incited far more violence than the right, said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who was among the 197 who opposed impeachment.

Still, the stunning nature of the mob violence shook many lawmakers. Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, gave rank-and-file conservatives the green light to abandon Trump in a scathing statement on the eve of the vote.

There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution, she said.

More ominously for Trump, McConnell believes Trump committed impeachable offenses and considers Democrats impeachment drive an opportunity to reduce the divisive, chaotic presidents hold on the GOP, a Republican strategist told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In a note to his fellow Republican senators on Wednesday, McConnell confirmed that he had not ruled out voting to convict him in the upcoming Senate trial, which will spill into Bidens presidency.

While the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate, McConnell said.

McConnell also called major Republican donors this weekend to gauge their thinking about Trump and was adamantly told that Trump had clearly crossed a line. McConnell told them he was through with Trump, said the strategist, who demanded anonymity to describe McConnells conversations. The New York Times first reported McConnells views on impeachment on Tuesday.

A growing collection of corporations, many of them reliably Republican donors, have promised to stop sending political donations to any of the 147 Republicans who perpetuated Trumps false claims of election fraud by voting to reject Bidens victory last week.

The presidents remaining allies warn that Republicans who cross him publicly risk a conservative backlash in their next elections.

Public and private polling shows Republican grassroots voters strongly oppose impeachment, said Jason Miller, a Trump senior adviser. Any Republican senator or congressman voting for impeachment will be held accountable in their next primary election.

Its unclear whether the chaos in Washington represents an existential threat to the party, but it almost certainly threatens to undermine the GOPs short-term political goals. History suggests that Republicans, as the minority party in Washington, should regain control of the House or Senate in 2022.

Trump made no public appearances on Wednesday. But since last weeks deadly attack, he has publicly and privately denied any responsibility for the insurrection.

During a brief trip to the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, he offered those who support impeachment an ominous warning: Be careful what you wish for.

Shortly before the Houses final vote, he issued a written statement calling on his supporters not to engage in any more violence in the rounds of new protests planned for the coming days.

I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers, Trump wrote.

At the same time, a collection of ambitious Republicans are trying to position themselves to run for the White House in 2024. They are also contending with Trumps legacy.

One of them, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, reminded reporters on Tuesday that hes condemned the Trump presidency from the very beginning.

Ive been in the same place Ive been for the whole four years. A lot of people have just changed their position, Hogan said, while vowing not to leave the GOP. I dont want to leave the party and let these people who did a hostile takeover four years ago take over.

Despite Hogans confidence, he is far less popular among Trumps loyal base a group likely to hold great sway in the selection of the partys next presidential nominee than the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, two other 2024 prospects who voted to reject Bidens victory last week, even after the uprising.

Republican leaders do not know how to move forward, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said. Everybodys afraid that Donald Trump will tell people to come after them, but they also realize theyre losing the center of America. Theyre trapped.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Alamo, Texas, and Alan Fram and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

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Trump's wall of GOP support breaks during impeachment vote - The Associated Press

Theres a long list of Republicans who ought not part their lips this holiday weekend to praise Martin Luther King Jr., to quote from his most famous speech or suggest in any way that they know anything about content of character.

That list includes the 138 Republicans in the U.S. House and the six Republicans in the U.S. Senate who voted to overturn the results of a free and fair election after a mob demanding that they overturn the electionstormed the U.S. Capitol. The list also includes everybody who at any point after the election was called for Joe Biden suggested President Donald Trumps defeat warranted investigation.

No tweets, no videos, no press releases. Not one word about how much King inspired you. Act like youve never heard of him or like you think of him with scorn.

In other words, do what you do when youre craning for an affectionate pat on the head from Trump. Do what you do when youre courting Trumps Lock Her Up / Build the Wall / Send Her Back / Lock Him Up / Fire Fauci / Stop the Steal fanatics. Your posture toward Trump and his devotees reveals more of what you think about King and his work than a saccharine tweet about Kings greatness ever could.

Let us march on ballot boxesuntil race-baiters disappear from the political arena, King said in 1965 at the end of a long march from Selma to Montgomery. Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.

There was a massive march to the polls Nov. 3 in the election that Biden won. Never before had more than 140,000,000 Americans voted, and in this election,159,633,396did. Georgians marched again on Jan. 5 when they elected two Democrats a Black man and a Jewish man to represent them in the U.S. Senate.

There was also a massive backlash: Trump claiming that hed been robbed (specifically by election officials in majority Black jurisdictions), Republican lawmakers endorsing the lie, Republican-controlled legislatures proposing more limited access to absentee ballots, a mob of bloodthirsty, murderous pro-Trump extremists forcing their way into the Capitol aiming to make Congress do its bidding.

Did our Republican lawmakers overcome their fear of Trump, their fear of Trumps fanatics? Did they find the courage, the decency, to do justly? No. In various ways and at various times, they disrespected American voters, specifically those Americans who may never have been voters without the movement King led.

Retired Tulane University history professor Lawrence Powell told the Illuminator last week that just like the murderous response to Black people getting elected during Reconstruction, last weeks ransacking of the U.S. Capitol followed the promiscuous assumption that Black electoral politics are by definition riddled by fraud and illegal chicanery.

So let us not hear any Let freedom ring platitudes from those who cast suspicion on Black people exercising the franchise.

As ridiculously offensive as it would be for the Republicans whove been standing with Trump to suggest that they would have stood (and still do stand) with King, its no more ridiculous than Trump adviser Stephen Moore telling Wisconsinites upset with COVID-19 restrictions that We need to be the Rosa Parks hereand protest against these government injustices.

Even more than Parks, King has become soft clay in the hands of White conservatives who continue trying to shape him into an anodyne speechmaker sent to forgive White people of racism, join hands with them and sing.

Those conservatives have not only tried to make King colorblind, theyve tried to make him raceless, something other than a Black man who pledged a Black fraternity at a Black college, married a Black woman, pastored Black churches, led marches of mostly Black people and urged the Black audience listening to his very last speech to take their money out of white banks and put it in Black banks and to reject their white insurance companies for Black ones.

None of that means white people and white institutions cant support his cause. It means those whove been holding up an anti-Black President and pushing anti-Black policies dont and should stop pretending that they do.

King expressed disdain for the white moderate who, he said, called a great stumbling block to his cause. What do we think hed make of the white conservative who wrongly labels Black votes fraudulent in support of the biggest fraud the White House has ever seen?

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Republican praise of Martin Luther King will sound even more hollow now - Georgia Recorder

I used to be a Republican. As a teenager, I wondered if Uncle Ken, the only Democrat in the family, was really a Christian.

When in college, I doorbelled for Richard Nixon. Later, I worked two years for a Republican U.S. senator in his Washington, D.C., office, observing bipartisanship first hand.

In the 1990s I attended Republican precinct caucuses and county and state conventions. I instinctively skewered anything a Democrat said; and just the sound of Sen. Harry Reids voice nauseated me.

But in 2007 I asked myself if I could be objective enough to see the holes in things Republicans said. It was easier than I expected, because the Republican Party was beginning to go crazy.

Then in 2016, Republicans made a pact with the devil by lining up behind Donald Trump; and now hell is demanding payment.

It is only a willful minority dominating the Republican Party. But their disregard for traditional Republican values and the constitution has trashed the party. It has become not just anti-Democrat, but anti-democracy.

Republicans have a chance to reboot their party. But it requires a courageous choice between the Party of Lincoln and the Party of Trump. You cant have both. I ask Republicans, what do you want your party to be and to stand for?

The GOP could be the net winner. No doubt some in the Trump base will no longer be energized to vote Republican. But the party can reclaim a larger number in the middle both independents and Republicans who have been voting for Democrats.

Republicans did as well as they did in Novembers U.S. Senate and House elections because a lot of people voted for traditional Republican values such as fiscal conservatism and good government even as they voted against Trump.

But Republicans ultimately lost the Senate because the subsequent Georgia run-offs became more narrowly focused on Trump.

It wont be as simple as repudiating Donald Trump, although that is an important first step. It will require standing up to continuing Trump threats. (Do you want Eric Trump calling the shots in your party?)

And it will take time. The degradation has been years in the making; the unmaking will also take years.

I can vote for the Party of Lincoln, but not the Party of Trump. I hope to see courage win over cowardice.

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Republicans have a chance to reboot their party - Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) said that while some GOP members of Congress "share responsibility" for misleading the supporters of President TrumpDonald TrumpFacebook temporarily bans ads for weapons accessories following Capitol riots Sasse, in fiery op-ed, says QAnon is destroying GOP Section 230 worked after the insurrection, but not before: How to regulate social media MORE who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, othersfeared physical violence if they opposed objections to the 2020 election results.

"They were being lied to. They were being misled," he said of the demonstrators. "Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift."

But other Republicans, he argued in an interview with the libertarian magazine Reason, "had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger."

Those lawmakers, he said, knew in their "heart of hearts that they should've voted to certify" but voted to support objections to the results of election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona due to fears that members of their families could face retaliation.

Meijer, who occupiesthe seat held by former Rep. Justin AmashJustin AmashRepublicans eye primaries in impeachment vote Michigan GOP lawmaker says he's 'strongly considering' impeachment Newly sworn in Republican House member after Capitol riot: 'I regret not bringing my gun to D.C.' MORE (I-Mich.), who left the Republican Party after voting for the president's impeachment,went on to say that Trump's"unwillingness to come to grips with reality"continued to perpetuate the problem and made him "rankly unfit" for office.

Lawmakers have excoriated the president for his remarks praising the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday while seeking answers as to why a violent mob was able to overwhelm Capitol Police and vandalize the building.

Numerous Democrats, including the party's congressional leadership, have called for the president to resign or be removed from office, while some Republicans in both chambers have joined the calls as well.

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GOP representative: Some Republicans voted to challenge election results due to safety concerns | TheHill - The Hill

To the chairman of the Republican Party of Los Alamos:

I am very glad to hear that you condemn the violence that occurred at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6. If this viewpoint is consistent throughout the Republican Party, then our country will be OK. We will get through this, as long as cooler heads prevail.

However, I would like to respond to your arguments in the context of the current state of affairs in the United States of America.

People on all sides are very concerned. People are scared that their democracy is on the verge of failing, either by disenfranchising its own citizens, or by open, armed revolt against congress. There was a deadly attack on the most central institution of our democracy. People call it insurrection. People call it a coup attempt. These are words that have preceded the collapse of many governments of the past. So, this is a time to pick your words and your priorities carefully when speaking publicly. I am absolutely sure that you and I agree that we do not want our democracy to fail, so please lend me your attention for a moment.

In your statement to the people of Los Alamos on Jan. 12 (https://losalamosreporter.com/2021/01/12/republican-party-of-los-alamos-comments-on-events-in-washington-dc-january-6/), you list many frightening things that people have said under oath and in signed affidavits. I will agree that these things, if true, would be more than disturbing, and are worthy of investigation to an appropriate degree. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to decide if these claims are true and these crimes took place. I cannot listen to all the hearings in all the contested states.

Fortunately, our democracy has an entire branch of government that is dedicated to making fully informed and legal decisions about whether or not a crime has taken place: the judicial branch. The sitting president and his allies have filed more than 60 lawsuits in state and federal courts in an attempt to prove that the criminal behavior that you describe actually did take place. These very well-funded lawsuits and the lawyers behind them have failed to convince the judicial branch that widespread fraud and election tampering took place.

In view of this reality, I have to wonder why you are bringing up these allegations of serious crimes once again. These concerns have been brought to our courts, and the courts have found that they are without merit.

So, I ask you this: Are you bringing into question the integrity of the judicial branch, from the state level all the way up to the Supreme Court?

Do you believe that our courts are so corrupt and subject to outside influence that we should no longer listen to them? Do you feel that the people who made allegations of widespread fraud under oath and in signed affidavits are more trustworthy than our entire judicial branch? If this is the case, then it would seem that you believe that one branch of our government has already failed.

You need to understand that this is a dangerous assertion.You need to understand the gravity of such a belief being publicly stated or inferred by a political leader such as yourself. People go to war over such things.Is towing the party line for an outgoing President worth eroding the public trust in our national election process and the entire judicial branch?

I still have faith in the basic integrity of our judicial branch. If you do as well, please do not qualify your condemnation of the attempted coup on Jan. 6 by saying that there were good reasons for attempting it. The people of the United States of America need to hear clear, unqualified condemnation of the attempted coup by leaders such as yourself.

Thank you for your time.

Eric Schaller

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Open Letter To The Chairman Of The Republican Party Of Los Alamos - Los Alamos Reporter

In their statement, the Republicans cited poll results showing most members of their party believe the election was rigged, an assertion that Mr. Trump has made for months, and which has been repeated in the right-wing news media and by many Republican members of Congress.

A fair and credible audit conducted expeditiously and completed well before Jan. 20 would dramatically improve Americans faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president, they wrote. We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.

They also acknowledged that their effort was likely to be unsuccessful, given that any such challenge must be sustained by both the House, where Democrats hold the majority, and the Senate, where top Republicans including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, have tried to shut it down.

We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise, the senators wrote.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee with jurisdiction over federal elections, called the Republican effort a publicity stunt that would ultimately fail, but said it was dangerous nevertheless, amounting to an attempt to subvert the will of the voters. She noted in an interview that hundreds of millions of votes had already been counted, recounted, litigated and state-certified across the country.

These baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trumps own attorney general, dozens of courts and election officials from both parties, said Mike Gwin, a spokesman for Mr. Bidens campaign.

While lawmakers have sought to register their opposition to past presidential election results by challenging Congresss certification, the move has generally been more symbolic than substantive, given that the loser had already conceded and senators rarely joined with members of the House to force a vote. But as Mr. Trump continues to perpetuate the myth of widespread voter fraud, a growing number of Republicans in Congress have been eager to challenge the results, either out of devotion to the president or out of fear of enraging the base of their party that still reveres him even in defeat.

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Pence Welcomes Futile Bid by G.O.P. Lawmakers to Overturn Election - The New York Times

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas helped lead the Senate attempt to object to Joe Bidens victory. My view is Congress should fulfill our responsibility under the Constitution to consider serious claims of voter fraud, he said last Monday. Now, he too wants unity. The attack at the Capitol was a despicable act of terrorism and a shocking assault on our democratic system, he said in the aftermath of the violence, as calls to impeach the president grew louder and louder. We must come together and put this anger and division behind us.

Im reminded, here, of one particular passage from Abraham Lincolns 1860 address at Cooper Union in Manhattan, in which he criticized the political brinkmanship of Southern elites who blamed their Northern opponents for their own threats to break the union over slavery.

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!

There are a handful of Senate Republicans, like Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who are open to impeachment. But much of the Republican response is exactly this kind of threat: If you hold President Trump accountable for his actions, then we wont help you unify the country.

Or, as another Republican, Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, said on Twitter,

Those calling for impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment in response to President Trumps rhetoric this week are themselves engaging in intemperate and inflammatory language and calling for action that is equally irresponsible and could well incite further violence.

These cries of divisiveness arent just the crocodile tears of bad-faith actors. They serve a purpose, which is to pre-emptively blame Democrats for the Republican partisan rancor that will follow after Joe Biden is inaugurated next week. It is another way of saying that they, meaning Democrats, shot first, so we, meaning Republicans, are absolved of any responsibility for our actions. If Democrats want some semblance of normalcy if they want to be able to govern then the price for Republicans is impunity for Trump.

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Opinion | Sure, Now Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy Want Unity - The New York Times