In a column about Iran’s potential nuclear capability, Ann Coulter also criticized Keith Olbermann, Richard Wolffe and Rachel Maddow.
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Feb. 18, 2010.
In a column about Iran’s potential nuclear capability, Ann Coulter also criticized Keith Olbermann, Richard Wolffe and Rachel Maddow.
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Feb. 18, 2010.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) announced Tuesday his support for a formal impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) has been probing Hunter Biden's foreign business activities, and his critics have responded that so far, he has failed to prove bribery claims against President Biden.
In a September 24, 2019 tweet, McCarthy attacked then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) in response to House Democrats' investigation of then-President Donald Trump's efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping him dig up dirt on the Bidens.
McCarthy wrote, "Speaker Pelosi can't decide on impeachment unilaterally. It requires a full vote of the House of Representatives."
Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett finds that 2019 tweet ironic in light of McCarthy's push for an impeachment inquiry against Biden.
Hackett wrote, "Speaker Kevin McCarthy just launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden WITHOUT a vote in the House," adding that McCarthy's 2019 tweet "is still up on his account."
NBC News' Garrett Haake wrote, "Announcing an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote to authorize it is the Congressional equivalent of Michael Scott 'declaring' bankruptcy. Committees don't get extra investigatory powers because the speaker says so. 2019 McCarthy thought so too."
Software developer Mimi Muteshi sarcastically posted, "News. Politicians are hypocrites."
Author Eric Segall accused McCarthy of "in your face hypocrisy."
Activist Richelle Woodley commented, "This stuff just writes itself.... literally."
Author Alan Lagwag wrote, "It's always hypocrisy with MAGA/GOP. They truly think rules don't apply to them. Have reporters ask him about this?"
The media has failed to accurately report Donald Trump's most "crazed" reactions to the criminal cases filed against him, according to a journalist and author.
That has emboldened the former president to step up his attacks on prosecutors using menacing tones, and writer Steven Bechloss joined other experts in examining the threat Trump poses to the justice system and democracy itself in interviews with Salon.
"We have seen over and over the reluctance of the courts to hold Donald Trump accountable for his virulently violent attacks on judges and prosecutors, fueling this dangerous climate of stochastic terrorism and intimidating witnesses and tampering with potential jurors," Bechloss said.
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"Is it any wonder that he is escalating his attacks by promising retribution against Joe Biden if he retakes power and redoubling his hostility toward Special Counsel Jack Smith in recent days (calling him 'deranged' and engaged in 'unchecked and insane aggression')?"
Most of those attacks come in campaign rallies or posts on Truth Social, which the media has largely stopped covering to avoid amplifying his statements, Bechloss said.
But that leaves many Americans ignorant of the threat he poses.
"The media's general reluctance to report on and amplify the crazed posts further empowers him to keep pushing the limits, especially as the legal vise tightens and his fear rises. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has made clear that criminal defendant Trump's right to free speech is 'not absolute — and she insisted that she would accelerate the trial date in the election interference case if he continues to obstruct justice with his dangerous comments," Bechloss said.
"But despite her encouraging words, she has yet to take action. Once again, this only intensifies the malignant Trump belief that the law does not apply to him. And more, with the release of his mugshot and his heightened criminal 'status,' he's discovered a new way to convince his cult to give him their money. With anyone else, a gag order or taking him into custody would be the obvious direction this is heading."
But so far no one, including Chutkan, has been willing to reign Trump in.
"That should change, no matter how loud the cries of political persecution from the criminal defendant or his followers (or the worries from Democrats that this will only strengthen him as a presidential candidate)," Bechloss wrote. "Either there is rule of law or there isn't."
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and congressional Republicans faced fresh backlash on Tuesday after the U.S. Census Bureau released new data showing that the nation's child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year, thanks in large part to the expiration of the boosted Child Tax Credit.
The expanded CTC, an American Rescue Plan (ARP) policy that sent eligible families up to $300 per month for each child and eliminated the original CTC's regressive phase-in, helped push the U.S. child poverty rate to a record low of 5.2% in 2021.
But the program expired at the end of that year after Manchin (D-W.Va.), who supported the ARP, opposed an extension, baselessly claiming that some parents would use the money on drugs instead of their children. (Survey data showed that most families, including those in West Virginia, used the money to buy food and help with rent, along with other essentials.)
"Joe Manchin's legacy includes artificially manufacturing child poverty for no reason other than his callous disregard for human beings," the Debt Collective wrote on social media.
Congressional Republicans, who unanimously opposed the ARP, also rejected calls to support an extension of the boosted CTC, part of a broader pandemic-era safety net that is now collapsing.
The result of the program's expiration, as predicted, was a devastating surge in child poverty. According to the new Census Bureau data, the child poverty rate rose to 12.4% in 2022—the largest single-year increase on record.
The overall U.S. poverty rate also increased, rising from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% last year. More than 37 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2022, the Census Bureau said.
"Today's stunning rise in poverty is the direct result of policy choices—including Congress' decision to allow the successful Child Tax Credit expansion to expire," said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Policymakers should expand the Child Tax Credit this year and reverse this troubling trend."
If Congress had kept the expanded CTC in place last year, Parrott noted, 3 million additional kids would have been kept out of poverty, "preventing more than half of the 5.2 million increase in the number of children in poverty last year."
"The child poverty rate would have been about 8.4% rather than 12.4%," Parrott said.
Elise Gould and Ismael Cid-Martinez of the Economic Policy Institute echoed Parrott's assessment, saying in a statement that "if policymakers were willing to maintain the pandemic-era CTC expansions, a much smaller share of children would be living in poverty."
"More ambitious—but economically sustainable—expansions of our generally stingy welfare state could essentially eliminate poverty completely," they added. "We know this vision isn't politically realistic in the short run, but the policy lessons of 2020 and 2021 should not be lost with today's report."
In his response to the new data, President Joe Biden placed the blame for the child poverty increase entirely on Republican lawmakers, not mentioning that Manchin's opposition was ultimately decisive in the evenly divided Senate in 2021.
"Today's Census report shows the dire consequences of congressional Republicans' refusal to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit, even as they advance costly corporate tax cuts," Biden said. "We cut child poverty by nearly half to record lows for all children in this nation largely by expanding the Child Tax Credit. Last year, Congressional Republicans insisted on raising taxes on families with children. The rise reported today in child poverty is no accident—it is the result of a deliberate policy choice congressional Republicans made to block help for families with children while advancing massive tax cuts for the wealthiest and largest corporations."
Shortly after the Census Bureau published its data, Semafor reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig asked Manchin whether he's had second thoughts about opposing an extension of the CTC boost now that its expiration has produced a record increase in child poverty.
"It's deeper than that, we all have to do our part," Manchin replied. "The federal government can't run everything."
The West Virginia senator said he had yet to see the new poverty figures.
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