Nancy Pelosi is on yo ass, GOP. You on notice.
Under Speaker Pelosi’s leadership, on day 1 in the House, Dems voted for legislation that would end Don John’s baby-tantrum government shutdown over his compensatory wall—legislation the Senate voted on just two weeks ago and PASSED 100-0, but now Mitch McConnell—who, it’s worth noting, actually proposed the bill that originally passed unanimously in the Senate—refuses to bring it to the floor without Donald’s approval. And there you have the imploding GOP system of government—total hypocrisy, and total disregard for the separation and checks and balances of the branches of government. Yet Republicans did see fit to allow $10K annual raises for Mike Pence and hundreds of other Donny appointees while more than 800K federal workers go unpaid. That’s your GOP at work, America.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Incoming Democratic House Judiciary Chairman plans to re-introduce legislation to protect Robert Mueller. The legislation would provide recourse for Mueller and future special counsels to challenge any firings in the court system.
Republicans Reconsidering
Despite Donald’s doubling down on his government shutdown over a childish unwillingness to compromise on border wall funds, stating that he is happy to continue the shutdown for “months, or even years” even if he has to declare a state of national emergency to do it (um, Donny? Who do you think will continue to work and keep the government functional for months or years WHILE YOU ARE NOT PAYING THEM?), rumblings of discontent with his toddler tantrum are cracking the GOP. Thursday, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado became the first Republican in the chamber to publicly call for an end to the shutdown. He was shortly joined by Susan Collins of Maine and Shelly Moore Calito of WV.
In a WaPo op-ed, Tennessee GOP Senator Lamar Alexander said Donny should be “specific and reliable” like Obama in negotiations regarding the government shutdown, praising President Obama for keeping his word and prizing progress enough to find compromises with the Senate: “Government shutdowns should be as off-limits to budget negotiations as chemical weapons are to warfare,” Alexander rebuked the commander of cheese.
GOP Rep Tom Reed of New York, meanwhile, bucked the party line to offer his support for a set of House rule changes drafted by incoming Dems, praising Nancy Pelosi.
Retired army general Stanley A. McChrystal, former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had some strong words against the commander of cheese, calling him “dishonest and immoral,” and adding, “What I would ask every American to do is … stand in front of that mirror and say, ‘What are we about? Am I really willing to throw away or ignore some of the things that people do that are — are pretty unacceptable normally just because they accomplish certain other things that we might like?'”
Mitt Romney piled on in a scathing op-ed that flip-flopped him back to his censure of the Very Stable Genius (which morphed into obsequious brownnosing early in Donny’s tenure), stating that “the president has not risen to the mantle of the office” and “With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”
Former GOP House Rep John LeBoutillier, from Donny’s home state of New York, opined that Individual 1’s presidency will not survive 2019: “His increasingly erratic and angry behavior, his self-imposed isolation, his inability and refusal to listen to smart advisers that he hired, all are leading him to a precipice.”
In the face of Donald’s continued rants, threats, and tantrums against federal reserve chairman Jerome Powell, Alabama Republican senator Richard Shelby spoke up in support of Powell, stating that he’s “doing a good job” and that Don John cannot fire him without cause.
These aren’t coincidences, warriors—more and more we are seeing a GOP willing to break with Donald…and that probably means the first rats are fleeing a ship they know to be sinking.
And so are some of his former supporters. The people of Jackson County, IN, which went for Donny in a huge way in 2016, are now confronting Don John and the GOP administration over its health and environmental regulatory rollbacks after a rash of cancers in the town’s children from a carcinogenic plume in an old industrial site supposed to have been cleaned up by the federal government decades ago.
Republican Corruption
A federal employees union is suing the Banana Republican in Chief over the government shutdown, claiming it’s illegal to force employees to work without pay.
The Justice Department (such as it is) is investigating whether former Interior Secretary and frequent ethics violator Ryan Zinke lied to his department’s inspector general during ethics probes.
Meanwhile the House Ethics Committee says Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Garrett misused official resources and was “trying to run out the clock” on a departmental investigation thereof.
Your Feel-good Stories of the Week
The congressional freshman class of 2019 is the most racially diverse and most female group of representatives ever elected to the House, which includes the first Native American congresswomen, the first Muslim congresswomen, and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Congress is also more female than ever before, thanks to Democrats, rather than Republicans, who are actually losing female representation.
Millions of women in India—between 3.5 million and 5 million—formed a human chain stretching 385 miles to demonstrate for women’s rights, protesting their exclusion from Hindu temples when menstruating (despite India’s supreme court ruling that they be admitted).
In the “laughing/crying emoji” column, there is this headline and real-life story, which is from a legitimate media outlet and not The Onion, but that shows the state of the current GOP administration led by the mentally deranged dotard.