WASHINGTON — With the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack coming this Monday, steel fencing is now once again wrapping the Capitol, which has had some Democrats in tears and many Capitol Police officers reliving the horror they endured that day.
But the GOP now controls both sides of the Capitol, and the party’s hoping to change the debate.
Some Republican lawmakers are vowing to investigate members of the bipartisan, select January 6 committee, even as President-elect Donald Trump is promising pardons for many — and, potentially, all — those convicted of violently interrupting official government proceedings.
But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who’s been the GOP’s fiercest advocate for those imprisoned for storming the Capitol four years ago — floated to Raw Story going a step further — and memorializing the day as a national holiday.
“Curious if you have any thoughts, with Jan. 6 on Monday,” Raw Story asked as Greene and a small group made their way to the House floor Friday. “I know your party wants to change the conversation on that in this new Congress.”
“To what?” Greene asked.
“On Jan. 6, what happened in 2021,” Raw Story replied.
“You mean, make it a national holiday?” Greene replied through a broad grin.
“Your Democratic counterparts say that you guys are trying to rewrite history,” Raw Story pressed.
“How's that?” Greene asked.
“Pardoning the J6 folks,” Raw Story said.
“Oh, you mean, like after Joe Bidenpardoned sex criminals and some of the worst criminals, just letting them out of jail. We're the ones changing history?” Greene said. “They're the ones that objected to three Republican presidents, so you can't change history. Unless we make it a national holiday.”
“Yeah?” Raw Story asked. “Do you want that?”
“Yes,” Greene said through a broad smile ahead of Friday’s speaker vote.
As Greene walked onto the House floor, Raw Story turned to her boyfriend and communications director for clarity.
“Was she joking?” Raw Story asked.
“Well, she smiled,” her boyfriend replied with a laugh. “But…”
“Shut up about Jan. 6,” Greene’s communications director told Raw Story through laughter.
In June, Biden issued a proclamation granting full and unconditional pardons to military service members and veterans who were court-martialed and convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for consensual sexual acts with adults. That pardon aimed at addressing discrimination against LGBT service members during the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era.
Last month, Biden pardoned 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes, and commuted the sentences of about 1,500 people, most of whom were non-violent offenders. These pardons and commutations primarily involved drug-related offenses and people who had demonstrated successful rehabilitation.
Among Biden's pardons was his son Hunter, who was convicted of gun charges in June and who later pleaded guilty to three felonies and six misdemeanors related to tax evasion.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump indicated that he has major goals for his first day in office — but one of his top allies is pumping the brakes on one major agenda item.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told Raw Story on Friday that he expects most of Trump's plans to quickly pass, including "delivering on border immediately, addressing the economy, tax policy, energy policy, and of course, yes, we're going to have to deal with the debt ceiling."
He went on to say that "this town," which means Washington, D.C., must "get used to" hearing about spending cuts he vowed are coming.
But he cautioned that his mass deportation plans would not be able to be rushed through — and that Trump would likely have to come to Congress to win backing..
Donalds said that sending immigrants back to their home countries will likely be part of a congressional bill because he expects it will cost a hefty sum.
"There's gonna be some dollars they'll need from us to make that happen," he said. "On tariff policy, the president can largely do it."
While Donalds is right that spending for mass deportations will be necessary — and such spending needs to pass through Congress — a Trump executive order on tariff policy is also questionable. Trade policy is generally a congressional matter.
In November, the Economist questioned whether Trump's promise of hefty tariffs was possible. It noted that over the years, "Congress has ceded more and more authority to the executive branch, and the courts, the third coequal branch of government, have happily blessed the arrangement. Nowhere is this clearer than in trade policy."
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the powers “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports and excises” and “to regulate commerce with foreign nations."
The only "out" is that the president can claim it's a national security problem. That will also likely end up in court, experts say.
A fascinating article in The New York Timesthis week by Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gives us the beginnings of an understanding of how and why social media is so destructive to society.
Gray points out that most people assume humans have historically been predators, the metaphorical big cats of the jungle. In fact, Gray says, we’ve historically been prey, the victims of predators:
“This picture of fearfulness is consistent with our understanding of human psychology. We’re hard-wired to detect threats quickly and to stay fixated on places where threats once appeared, even after they have vanished. We fear that ‘child predators’ will abduct our kids even when they are safer than ever. “Modern humans, ensconced in towns and cities, are now mostly safe from animal predators, but we are still easily frightened. Whether we’re scrolling social media or voting for a presidential candidate, we all still carry the legacy of our ancestors, who worried about big cats lurking in the darkness.”
Thus, if you could invent a drug that would cause people to be fearful — and thus stimulate the rage that comes from fear — you could have incredible control over a population if you could simply tell them where and against whom to direct that fear-induced rage.
We all have opiate receptors in our brains that modulate our response to pain. Compounds that bind to these receptors are produced naturally by our body in response to extreme pain and shock, and numerous plants—most famously, opium poppies—naturally produce chemicals that bind to and activate our opiate receptors.
When we lived in Germany back in the late 1980s, I loved to visit a nearby castle in Kulmbach and order mohnkuchen, a piecrust filled with poppy seeds ground into a paste with sugar and a few spices. I always felt so good after eating a slice or two of the pie; when we had a glass of a fresh German Riesling with it, my smile went from ear to ear for hours.
The mohnkuchen seemed to constipate me a bit, and when I noticed one afternoon that my pupils were pinned so small as to nearly vanish, the same as I’d noticed whenever I’d taken narcotic painkillers after injuries and surgery, the penny dropped. Turns out I was enjoying opium in that little German café in a way that people around the world have for millennia.
Similarly, I once shared a few days with a shaman from Peru; he had a bag of coca leaves, and we each chewed a few along with a tiny piece of alkalized ash to release its active ingredient as an afternoon pick-me-up. The buzz I experienced was considerably less strong than what two or three cups of coffee provide.
Mountain-dwelling Andean tribes have been doing this for as long as there have been people in the region; they consume coca the way people in India and parts of China consume local tea leaves. We consumed coca leaf extract here in the US, too, from 1886 to 1929, in a drink called Coca-Cola.
Somewhere on the spectrum from these drugs’ original state to their becoming increasingly concentrated and purified, a toxic/addictive threshold or tipping point is reached. I never experienced withdrawal symptoms from mohnkucken, but I did from the highly concentrated opiate painkiller (Oxycontin) I took for a few weeks for severe sciatica prior to spinal surgery and for a week after. It wasn’t terrible; a few nights of trouble sleeping and sensitivity to pain and touch, but there it was.
Heroin is concentrated opium poppy. Cocaine is concentrated coca leaf. Substances that are otherwise benign become both potent and deadly when they’re super-concentrated.
Which is exactly what the algorithms deployed in secret by social media do: they purify and concentrate hate and spread fear across the broader social media site, distilling the most potent memes and messages to the top and shoving them into people’s brains.
But that’s just the beginning of the damage these top-secret algorithms are doing to our societies and politics. By increasing our individual levels of fear and rage, they create a broader social sense of fear and rage, making these emotions far more easy to exploit.
Enter stage right “populist” politicians and media sites who push people’s now-sensitized fear and rage buttons for political gain. (Not to mention the billions earned by social media billionaires pushing this psychological heroin while absolutely refusing to publish their algorithms.)
Numerous studies show that when people believe crime is a serious problem in their own communities and lives, they measurably shift toward the political right of the spectrum. Law-and-order campaigns and promises of severe punishment acquire a sudden appeal, as Joe Biden and Bill Clinton discovered in the early 1990s and politicians everywhere since the pandemic have seen.
Fear of crime — and fear more generally (of your kids being victims of trans people or renegade surgeons in public schools, for example, or of immigrants raping your wife or taking your job) — push people toward an embrace of conservative and then authoritarian politics and governance.
When media promote narratives about crime being out of control — whether true or not — they measurably drive acceptance of more reactionary crime control legislation along with rejection of efforts at rehabilitation and reform.
There may be an even wider impact of social media’s promotion of fear and rage.
The Transcendental Meditation group reported in the Journal of Mind and Behavior on several 1970s and 1980s studies showing that when a certain relatively small threshold number of people in a particular community meditated daily, crime and violence went down.
Another report in Social Indicators Research found that when a group of meditators moved to Washington, DC between 1988 and 1993 over those following years crime went down by an impressive 23.3%.
A comprehensive study was run during the 1883 Lebanon war, when a group of meditators took up residence in Jerusalem and meditated daily for two years. The results, almost certainly exceeding any possibility of coincidence, was:
— A 76% reduction in war deaths in Lebanon on days when there was high participation in the meditating group, — A 71% decrease in war-related fatalities, — A 68% reduction in war-related injuries, — A 48% drop in the level of conflict, and — A 66% increase in cooperation among antagonists.
If a certain threshold of people being intentionally peaceful for a year or two can lower crime rates, what happens when a certain threshold of people are daily enraged by the injection of fear and hate into their psychological bloodstreams?
Could it be that social media is directly (or indirectly) responsible for much of the swing we’re seeing around the world toward bigotry, hate, and violence? That right-wing movements are emerging as a result of the impact of social media, rather than social media merely and passively reflecting the trend as the social media companies argue?
The meditation studies are controversial, but it’s hard to dispute the assertion that, as more and more individuals in a given society are racked with fear and rage, the result, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Big Brother, will be more hate and violence.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley has been thinking along the same lines. In his book The Tyranny of Big Tech, he wrote:
“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction. Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.”
The past two years have shown America and the world what happens when a social media company is captured by an unaccountable billionaire with a specific political goal. The site that was once Twitter is now a veritable sewer, filled with hate and Nazi-level extremists.
Is it possible this is making the world less stable, less peaceful, and more violent through a reverse “Maharishi Effect”? Are wars around the world and the recent assassination of a healthcare CEO demonstrations of the power social media has over society? School shootings? The rise of Nazi-adjacent militia groups here and in Europe?
The simple reality is that we won’t know until government steps in and requires these companies to both publish and moderate their algorithms and monitor/control the naked hate on their platforms. And that day can’t come too soon.
CHICAGO — The Aid for Women pregnancy clinic in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood might be one of the nicest offices I’ve visited for medical advice.
The clinic is located in the storefront of a newly constructed modern apartment building. Its windows are adorned with images of beautiful, diverse women, advertising free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. With tasteful neutral tones throughout, the lobby has a cascading wall fountain with the nonprofit’s logo and a woman’s silhouette image, creating a peaceful atmosphere.
Yet, the clinic is not a medical office even though medical procedures and tests are offered there. Aid for Women is one of as many as 4,000 crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, operating throughout the country that present as healthcare clinics but are typically nonprofits with an agenda to stop women from getting abortions.
Aid for Women pregnancy center in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood in December 2024 (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
A new study from the University of California San Diego published on Dec. 2 analyzed the websites of 1,825 crisis pregnancy clinics, including Aid for Women, and created a database, choicewatch.org, to provide unbiased data about the services provided by these groups.
“We just want to start a policy debate around these issues,” John W. Ayers, leader of the study, told Raw Story. “With the new administration, there's a chance CPCs could be federally funded, and if those federally funded dollars are going to CPCs, under what conditions can they be given to maximize society benefits and reduce the harms?”
Ultimately, the paper’s authors are calling for greater scrutiny of these clinics, particularly around the services offered, provider qualifications and conformity with regulations and medical best practices. Generally, such pregnancy centers are exempt from the licensing, regulations and credentialing requirements of healthcare facilities.
“When it comes to crisis pregnancy centers, there's a lot of unknown unknowns,” said Ayers, who is an adjunct associate professor of medicine and epidemiologist at the University of California San Diego. “Our study is independent of your position on abortion, and so, we just want to give data and solve this problem of there being no data.”
Doctors like Kristyn Brandi, an OB-GYN in New Jersey, often find crisis pregnancy centers to be “angering” and “annoying," requiring reeducation of patients after visiting a clinic, she said.
The clinics can also be dangerous to women’s health if unsafe and unproven procedures like “abortion pill reversals” are offered (Aid for Women advertises such a procedure on its website). Ayers and Brandi both pointed out that abortion pill reversals are not recommended by medical professionals and put patients at risk for hemorrhaging and sepsis as they involve pumping the body with progesterone after a first abortion pill is taken, even though the process of ending the pregnancy is likely already underway and no longer likely to be viable.
A screen shot from the Aid for Women website about abortion pill reversals
“At crisis pregnancy centers, they are not healthcare centers, and so they aren’t under the same regulations and rules that doctors and other healthcare providers have to abide by, which is really concerning as a healthcare provider knowing that I have many patients that go there first and then come to me for healthcare,” Brandi told Raw Story. “Hearing the stories about what these patients encounter when they go to these centers is really disturbing.”
Susan Barrett, executive director of Aid for Women, did not respond to Raw Story’s requests for comment.
‘Very weird and off’
When I first visited an Aid for Women clinic, I was just shy of five weeks pregnant. Several at-home early detection pregnancy tests came up positive, but I figured it didn’t hurt to have professionals confirm for me as I waited for my regular OB-GYN appointment at 10 weeks pregnant.
But rather than having a doctor or nurse confirm the pregnancy for me, I conducted the test myself at Aid for Women.
Instead of leaving a urine sample behind a mini door in the bathroom for technicians to grab as I was used to at doctor’s offices, I brought my sample back to a meeting room with an advocate and was told that I would be administering my own pregnancy test since there wasn’t a nurse on site at the time to do so.
I used a dropper to apply a sample to my test and had to write down that, yes, I understood my test was positive.
Brandi said typically patients at a medical practice are “not running their own samples” due to regulations requiring that collection and testing is accurate and a “real result” is being reported.
“It's weird for going to a healthcare center and having to do the stuff you would just do at home,” she said when told about my experience.
At the appointment, I spoke with an advocate about my “pregnancy intention,” a question also asked on an intake form where clients indicate whether they’re planning on parenting, abortion, adoption or are undecided.
The advocate made it clear that the center does not offer abortions but did not explicitly express disapproval for those seeking abortions.
However, the 20-plus-page informational booklet provided to me featured several pages on the risks and drawbacks of abortions, alongside photos of depressed-looking women.
Scan of pages in Aid for Women brochure about abortion
Raw Story shared the pamphlet with Brandi, an abortion provider, who said she was “struck” by the language in the brochure and found it to be “very focused on misleading information” and “very graphic depictions” of procedures like a dilation and evacuation surgical abortion, also known as a D&E.
“It was very much leading with all the risks, which I will not say that there are no risks to abortion care, but the risks are incredibly low and much lower than things like live births and C-sections,” Brandi said. “I make sure that when I counsel patients, I do absolutely tell them the risks, but I make sure to balance that information with all the benefits if they seek abortion, what are the health benefits to them versus continuing the pregnancy … there wouldn't be a field of OB-GYN, if pregnancy was always safe.”
Brandi also took issue with other components of the Aid for Women brochure, calling some parts “just very weird and off.”
For instance, the brochure’s timeline of the pregnancy does not reflect the “medically accurate” dating method, she said, and milestones noted such as the beginning development of a baby’s brain, spinal cord and heart at four weeks is misleading, she said.
“Usually at that time we have maybe three or four cells that are cardiac cells that eventually will turn into a heart in some time,” Brandi said. “It's not inaccurate, but it's misleading to say that those things are developed yet when they're definitely not developed in a significant way.”
Scan of pages in Aid for Women brochure about fetal development
Brandi noted that as an abortion provider, she looks at fetal tissue after a procedure, which typically isn’t seen until about 10 weeks pregnant, and it’s not visible to the naked eye at that point. The brochure said “a little face, fingers and toes” appear as early as six weeks and included images.
A first ultrasound experience
After my first visit, I decided to return to the clinic for another free service offered: an ultrasound. I didn’t have to pay hundreds of dollars or use insurance, so I decided to get an early sneak peek before my regular 10-week appointment.
I brought my husband with me to the clinic when I was just shy of eight weeks pregnant, and we heard our baby’s heartbeat for the first time, which was an exciting, emotional moment. I can imagine hearing a heartbeat that early for an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy might evoke upsetting emotions instead.
A sonographer conducted the ultrasound to check for basic criteria of a viable pregnancy such as noting if a heartbeat was present and that the pregnancy was located in the uterus. She produced two ultrasound images that didn’t look like much yet — I’d say the image resembled a small shrimp-shaped blob.
At barely eight weeks, I had a long way to go until the baby had any chance at surviving outside of the uterus. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology reports that premature births at 23 weeks have a 23 percent to 27 percent survival rate, which grows to 67 percent to 76 percent by 25 weeks of gestation and continues to go up from there.
I showed my ultrasound to one of my regular OB-GYN doctors, who accurately predicted the sonographer wanted to show me the heartbeat. Brandi reviewed the ultrasound and corresponding report, calling it “similar” to a typical report.
My report was signed off for review by an OB-GYN, Robert Lawler — something Brandi said is rare to find at crisis pregnancy centers.
Lawler was featured in a 2013 article by the Chicago Catholic, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago, about a new OB-GYN practice he opened in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, Ill., to conform to the teachings of the church.
“I had visions of meeting the Lord at Judgment Day and him saying to me, 'OK, Robert, what part of 'intrinsically evil' did you not understand about contraception?'" Lawler said in the article.
The practice seems to have since closed as it has both an inactive phone number and web domain. A handful of negative Yelp reviews for the practice complain about lack of transparency about Lawler’s religious influence on his practice.
“He lets his personal religious beliefs undermine the health and well-being of the victims he lures into his office,” wrote one reviewer in March 2018.
Lawler appeared on an episode of the “Family Talk” show by Evangelical Christian author and psychologist James Dobson, where he discussed his opposition to a 2017 Illinois abortion bill that “forces pro-life doctors and nurses to violate their consciences and advocate for the murder of babies in the womb,” according to the video description.
As of January 2024, Lawler is now the medical director for labor and delivery at OSF Little Company of Mary Medical Center, a healthcare system in Illinois founded by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis.
Lawler could not be reached at his OSF office in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn, Ill. He did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment through Aid for Women.
‘Lying to women in vulnerable positions? Let's cut that out.’
For comparison I also visited a Planned Parenthood clinic a mile away from Aid for Women to confirm my pregnancy there as well.
The Planned Parenthood clinic was certainly not as stylish and welcoming as the Aid for Women office. It was located in a small strip mall next to a Dollar General. The waiting room was dark, and front office staff were seated behind plexiglass.
But the experience reflected that of a typical doctor’s office visit, where I entered a room with an exam chair (I was brought to a room that resembled a personal office with a desk, chair, side tables and sink at Aid for Women).
I answered some medical questions at Planned Parenthood and got my test result through a MyChart portal. I was given some informational materials that included statistics and risks of different procedures, and I was told that if I proceeded with the pregnancy to start taking a prenatal vitamin.
Scan from "Abortion Options" brochure from Planned Parenthood
I chose not to go through the ultrasound experience at Planned Parenthood because I didn’t want to prematurely use my insurance benefits before visiting my regular doctor.
Planned Parenthood clinics are regulated as healthcare facilities and must abide by regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to protect patient privacy.
When I went to Aid for Women, I asked about HIPAA and was told my information would be protected. I was given a "care and competence" commitment agreement that promised to hold client information in "strict and absolute confidence;" however, there was no mention of HIPAA on the form, and the Aid for Women privacy policy does not mention HIPAA.
"One thing that really worries me, especially in this Dobbs moment, is privacy," Brandi said, referencing Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to abortion protected by Roe v. Wade. "I think many people when they go to a healthcare center, they expect that the healthcare providers are not going to like share their information and talk about them to other people because we abide by rules like HIPAA that protect patients’ privacy. Because these centers aren't health care centers — they look like health care centers — but they have no reason to protect your privacy."
Spokespeople for Planned Parenthood did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
A Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
The intake form I filled out during my visits at Aid for Women had me initial that I understood all questions on the form were optional, but when I didn’t fill in some information, such as my address, I got pushback from staff to include those details.
“I think when people are pretending to be doctors and have no legal liability if something bad happens, that's really concerning and scary to think about, that patients are trusting these centers when they don't necessarily get the health care that they deserve in these moments,” Brandi told Raw Story.
I returned to the Aid for Women Clinic months later at 37 weeks pregnant to learn about what support services the center offered. When I requested my medical records, I was required to give my address and was given a two-page report from my ultrasound, nothing else from the first visit or any other paperwork.
At this visit, like all my previous visits, the advocate asked me about my housing situation and made sure I had support and wasn’t experiencing any abuse. The nonprofit runs maternity homes and offers referrals for healthcare and community support resources.
I signed up to watch videos from the clinic’s "Earn While Your Learn" program to prepare for my impending labor and delivery experience. Clients who complete various tasks such as watching lessons and doing homework, participating in the nonprofit's newsletters and reviewing the center online can earn points to enter a monthly raffle to win essential baby supplies like a stroller or a crib set. The videos were produced by a group called True to Life Productions, who did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Aid for Women’s nonprofit tax filing is transparent that it’s a pro-life organization, describing itself as an operator of “pregnancy help centers, pregnancy medical clinics and residential programs to assist women in difficult and unexpected pregnancy situations so that they might choose life.” The nonprofit reported more than $2.5 million in contributions in 2023 and paid Barrett a salary of $101,519.
According to the data provided on choicewatch.org, Aid for Women is affiliated with Heartbeat International, an international pro-life group that supports the largest network of crisis pregnancy centers.
A screen shot about Aid for Women from choicewatch.org
While I visited Aid for Women knowing what type of facility it was, clients in crisis might not be aware of its pro-life mission and could be susceptible to misinformation.
“I think what our study does is it shows some of these crisis centers are bad actors, and CPCs can get behind getting rid of them," Ayers said. "Pro-life, pro-choice, lying to women in vulnerable positions? Let's cut that out."
WASHINGTON — As Congress careened toward a Saturday midnight deadline to pass a government funding bill, legislators exclusively told Raw Story Friday that party leaders were negotiating through the “chaos” created by President-elect Donald Trump and his allies who sunk a deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spent weeks brokering — making his future as House leader unknown.
A last-ditch effort funding bill indeed passed Friday night with a 366-34 vote in the House and 85-11 vote in the Senate, providing $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers and averting a government shutdown.
House Republicans tried to pass an 11th-hour spending bill on Thursday, which included a Trump demand to raise the debt ceiling, but it failed to pass Thursday night as 38 Republicans joined with Democrats to thwart the bill.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told Raw Story Friday that Republicans "clearly" needed Democrats on board to get a bill passed before funding expired at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, which wouldn't happen with the debt ceiling language. Democrats got what they wanted in the bill, as the deal did not include raising the debt ceiling.
“Communications have been opened, number one,” Nadler said. “Number two, we will not discuss raising the debt ceiling until next year … because their motive for it is transparent. If we raise the debt ceiling now, they can lower taxes next year on the rich, as they did last time.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) took issue with Thursday's removal of language agreed upon by Republicans and Democrats to reign in pharmacy benefit managers after incoming Department of Government Efficiency leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy voiced opposition.
“The Trump people, they're causing the chaos right now, today, in the House, and as a result, some bad guys, middlemen, are getting in a position to rip off taxpayers and seniors,” Wyden said.
Wyden said he couldn’t believe that Trump was allowing “rip-off artists” to cheat on taxpayers and seniors after Trump called to “knock out the middlemen” at a press conference on Monday.
When asked by Raw Story if Johnson was doing a good job as a leader while trying to negotiate a deal that would prevent a government shutdown, Nadler said, “I don’t know.”
“I'm not a psychologist, but I can see with my own eyes what's going on,” Wyden said when asked if Johnson could be trusted.
After former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted last year, Johnson took over the role in October 2023 after a three-week leader-less period brought the House to a halt. Now, his future as Speaker of the House is in question as he struggled to broker a deal to avoid a shutdown.
“I think he’s done,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told Raw Story.
Republicans expressed mixed feelings about Johnson's future after exiting an hours-long Friday meeting with Johnson held in the basement of the Capitol.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the only Republican to say he plans to oppose Johnson's reelection to the leadership role.
"I don't plan to enter it as a negotiation. I plan to just not vote for him. I have no asks. There's nothing I want in exchange for my vote," Massie told Raw Story.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said he was unsure about voting for Johnson as it would be "more of the same" and "more can-kicking."
"I don't know. It's too early yet," Burchett told Raw Story. "Trump's gonna make a big play on that. He'll probably be the one to decide who the speaker will be."
When asked if Johnson's speakership is secure, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said he supports him as of now, as Johnson worked on handling a new deal.
"Look, an hour is a lifetime in politics. We'll see," Norman told Raw Story. "Different day. Different time."
Other Republicans said they felt that Johnson's speakership was safe.
"I feel very comfortable," said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL).
Darrell Issa told Raw Story Johnson has his "full support."
"If you say someone's on a tightrope wire, has it been a difficult job? The answer is 'yes,' but everyone else would be on that same wire," Issa said.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) exclusively told Raw Story that she isn't at all concerned about tech billionaire Elon Musk's interference with the legislative process that caused a government shutdown threat and days of chaos as Republicans scuttled a bipartisan continuing resolution.
And more broadly, she isn't concerned about Democrats' efforts to needle Trump's ego over the matter.
"What we're seeing right now is this, really, time in politics where people can get direct feedback from their constituency, and I think you guys saw that during the Adam Schiff vote, and now having President Trump back, not being banned from certain platforms, you're seeing that directly play out and that's actually really important to the process," Luna told Raw Story.
"And so now what we're finding is that Republicans have a chance during first reconciliation to do something about the debt and not have to deal with, not have to deal with Democrats on it ... I hope that people can do the right thing, swallow their pride, and do this on behalf of the American people and the incoming administration," she continued.
Asked if she was worried about the impact of that instantaneous feedback on the process, she said she wasn't.
"It can help provide perspective, understanding what the American people want, and ultimately that's what should be," and that everything worked out even if “it got a little dark and swampy for a little bit."
When Luna was asked what she makes of Democrats and liberal-leaning pundits in the media mocking Trump for letting Musk control the whole process, by calling him "President Musk" — hoping to trigger Trump's well-established anger about not being the center of attention — she gave a blunt message.
"I think they're trying to start s--- and they're not going to start s---," she said.
A California Democrat gave Republicans a piece of his mind following a vote Friday night on a temporary spending bill, echoing a profane sentiment felt by millions of Americans: "Get your s--- together."
The House voted at the 11th hour to temporarily fund the government with a new bill following the collapse of their own revised bill, which became necessary when President-elect Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk torpedoed their first effort. The latest funding bill passed in the House by a vote of 366-34. A two-thirds vote was needed in the House to avert a shutdown. The legislation now heads to the Senate, which has until midnight to pass the bill.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told Raw Story following a much-anticipated House vote to fund the government through March that the brouhaha this week shows Republicans have a lot of work to do.
"These guys gotta get their s--- together for next year because the margins are tighter. The stakes are higher. And people aren't going to go for this," he said.
When asked if Trump and Musk missed that memo, Swalwell responded that the duo won't succeed if they continue this "nonsense."
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) predicted Friday that Speaker Mike Johnson would hold on to his job when the next Congress convenes in January – but he still has a tall order to win over a majority of member votes.
Johnson faced a chaotic week in Washington but managed to wrangle enough congressional support to push through a temporary spending bill and avert a government shutdown during the midst of the holiday season.
Tensions rose on Capitol Hill after Wednesday’s collapse of the spending bill prompted suggestions that Johnson should be replaced as speaker – with tech billionaire Elon Musk even floated as a possible replacement by some Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Notably, the House speaker does not have to be elected.
But Scalise, a close ally of Donald Trump, threw cold water on that idea Friday, telling Raw Story he believes Johnson will retain the speaker’s gavel come January.
“Speaker Johnson showed tremendous leadership this week in very difficult times,” the MAGA Republican said. “Look, both through a narrow majority that we have, but also just the difficulties of keeping the government running – you have a lot of different factions on our side, and you still have to deal with a Democrat Senate, a Democrat White House.”
“Luckily those times are changing,” he added.
Still, Johnson could have a difficult path winning over a majority of votes from House members.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), who this week escalated her feud with her own party when she said she would refuse committee assignments and not caucus with Republicans when the House convenes next month, told Raw Story she was still undecided on whether she would vote to keep Johnson as speaker.
“We’ll see,” Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) said when asked if he would vote for Johnson.
He added: “Maybe I’ll throw my own hat in the ring.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin took a moment to cheer Friday night on the steps of the Capitol following a much-anticipated vote in the House on what turned out to be a contentious back-and-forth on a spending bill to avert a holiday shutdown.
The House's last-ditch effort to temporarily fund the government led to a sigh of release for millions of federal workers whose paychecks were thrust into uncertainty. The funding bill passed by a vote of 366-34. A two-thirds vote was needed in the House to avert a shutdown. The legislation now heads to the Senate, which has until midnight to pass the bill.
Raskin jabbed his GOP colleagues, telling reporters he wanted to take a moment to "appreciate the fact that we've been able to stop another Republican shutdown of the government."
Not to mention, he added, "We managed to stop them from blowing up the debt ceiling in order to just pass a massive tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans."
Raskin didn't let off the gas though, and said the GOP hasn't given up its "cannibalistic nature" — and has pitchforks out for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
"I don't know who they would replace him with. Some of them were talking about Elon Musk which is not an actual member of Congress, that doesn't sound very realistic to me," he said. "I don't think Elon Musk understands the first thing about the American government, much less American Congress."
A MAGA Republican who joined more than 30 of his fellow party members in voting against a GOP spending bill to fund the government — and avert a holiday shutdown — said that while he feels for the people affected by the vote, "collapsing the government" and "acting like a bunch of spoiled kids" wouldn't do anyone any good.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) spoke to reporters on the steps of the Capitol on Thursday night after his party's 11th-hour spending bill failed to pass a House vote just a day before the current funding bill is set to expire.
The GOP needed 290 "yes" votes to pass the bill but secured just 174, despite receiving President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk's blessing. Thirty-eight Republicans voted against the deal, including Burchett, who lamented the people likely to be impacted by the shutdown.
Burchett lamented that many people will acutely feel the impacts of the vote.
"I don't want people to hurt. It's Christmas time. I'm a Christian. I try to be a good one. I'm not. I'm forgiven, at the forgiven end of the scale," he said. "I hurt for people that this is going to hurt."
Even so, he defended casting a no vote on the bill, which could lead to a government shutdown and impact millions of federal workers across the United States. About 2.2 million civilian federal employees stand to be impacted during the holiday season, either forced to work without pay or facing furlough. Another 2 million military personnel could see delayed paychecks.
"I tell you what: Collapsing our government under our lack of physical restraint and acting like a bunch of spoiled kids is not doing people any service. And we can do a whole heck of a lot better," he said.
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk’s dumb for a smart guy — at least according to Republicans questioning why the man promising to save the government trillions is on the glide path to costing it billions.
“You can't shut government down. It costs money to shut the government down,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Raw Story while hopping a Senate elevator Wednesday evening.
“It even costs money this week to study what you’re gonna do if you shut the government down,” Grassley. 91, said. “And then it costs money to open up the government.”
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill fear Trump’s now following Musk’s lead — a move that has many, from party leaders to the rank-and-file, flustered.
Tweeting is a lot different than legislating
After earning the infamous title of least productive Congress in the modern era, this session seems to be closing on the legislative rails as the nation careens towards an economy-contracting, tweet-induced government shutdown.
Frustration with Speaker Mike Johnson has been building in the GOP ranks, and Musk is accused of now providing cover for a mini-revolt. Freedom Caucus members were up in arms over days-long delays in publishing the 1,500+ page bill, which only came out late Tuesday — though that’s normal end-of-year antics.
But this holiday season, Congress has suddenly found itself grounded after Musk tweeted his support for shutting down the government, which would scrap disaster aid — $100 billion spread from Asheville to Alaska — and canceling billions in aid and props for farmers.
Musk labeled the measure — one that’s almost an annual routine this time of year in contemporary, gridlocked Washington — “criminal.” Trump agreed.
With a few flicks of their thumbs, the duo derailed the carefully negotiated, broadly supported government funding measure. That’s left Johnson and leaders across the Capitol scrambling.
But Musk wants to go even further.
“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan 20,” Musk tweeted.
Besides being an unconstitutional demand, many Republicans are now starting to see the billionaire CEO as an impediment to the very MAGA agenda they signed up for.
“Do you feel like Elon Musk — and the twittersphere — is maybe going to portend bad things for the next four years?” Raw Story asked outside the Capitol Wednesday evening.
“Particularly when you have a couple hundred million followers, [Tweeting] is different than legislating,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story. “A government shutdown right before Christmas, a spending bill that doesn't include relief for the victims of massive hurricanes where entire cities are wiped out, that's pretty hard to explain to your neighbors.”
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are promising to upend business as usual in Washington, including their hopes of firing or pushing out tens of thousands of federal workers.
Their new Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — may be a part of Trump’s transition back into the White House, but DOGE isn’t a government agency.
Don’t tell that to federal workers — most of whom would be furloughed starting at midnight Friday if the shutdown happens — let alone the millions of veterans, seniors, students and everyone in between who will be impacted by the budget slashing they’re promising.
“Government's a service to the people. You can't serve the people [shut down],” Grassley said. “So I just don't want the government to shut down.”
Grassley may be the president pro tempore of the United States Senate — the third in line for the presidency — but he’s no Musk.
“Tons of misinformation”
But Elon Musk stacks the deck daily on his own social media platform, according to critics. And, like Trump, he’s almost able to transform rhetoric into reality.
Take the 3.8% salary increase the government funding bill includes for lawmakers themselves.
The official DOGE X account and Musk himself falsely inflate that pay raise to 40%.
Democrats question Musk’s increasingly incendiary rhetoric, even as they question their Republican counterparts for breaking under the digital peer pressure.
“Tons of misinformation, in terms of how they've been portraying it,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told Raw Story while entering the Capitol. “It just kind of shows what happens, like, when things get litigated online so quickly, right?”
Disinformation aside, Trump followed Musk’s lead. The dominos fell and Johnson backpedaled on a bipartisan measure just two days before government funding runs out.
Today’s Republicans — at least those left standing — don’t dare cross the newly empowered former and incoming president.
But Wednesday’s quixotic social media policymaking has many in the GOP worried about what’s to come, especially if Musk maintains his role as the unofficial tweeter-in-chief.
“Whose fault is it?” Raw Story asked. “Does this one come from Mar-a-Lago?”
“Well, the most recent stunt did, of course,” Cramer replied shortly after Musk killed the bipartisan government funding bill. “But what led to that? I don't know if you call it bad negotiating.”
While sympathetic to his plight, Cramer says Johnson is stuck between a rock aa lot of rock-wielding House Republicans.
“I don't want to dump on him, because the House is full of people who put a gun to his head and threatened to not support him for speaker, and they have the ability to make that determination. He's in a tough spot,” Cramer said. “But at some point, even if it's going to cost you your leadership position, people do look to leaders to lead.”
“So, the Art of the Deal, you want to do the opposite of this?” Raw Story asked.
“It's the opposite of the Art of the Deal, for sure,” Cramer said.
Cramer has his own complaints with the misinformation flowing out of Mar-a-Lago, especially Trump’s last-minute demand that this end of year spending bill include a hike of the nation’s debt ceiling, which is months away from needing to be raised.
“There's a complete misunderstanding about the debt ceiling. I know Donald Trump's frustrated by it, I am as well, and if we could do something more permanent, I'd be all for it,” Cramer said. “This moment is not a good time, because we don't have the time to negotiate possible outcomes, possible offsets, possible new systems or processes that actually get to the root of the problem. We can't do it on the spur of the moment right before Christmas.”
Musk and the digital army at his algorithmic disposal are threatening to primary any Republicans who don’t get in line. This is about more than Johnson, at least to old-school lawmakers who argue Congress itself is being tested.
“They have to be able to function”
Retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), paused as he was getting in his car Wednesday night.
“They gotta decide whether they're a legislature or whether they’re a part of the Trump team. Last time I checked we’re an independent branch,” the 81-year-old told Raw Story. “It will be a real test as to the strength of the legislative branch of government.”
“They've outsourced their negotiating to Elon Musk without a plan,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) complained to Raw Story. “They have to be able to function.”
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump doesn’t reclaim the White House until the new year, but he’s already leaving his mark on the nation’s Capitol — and that has Republicans freaking out.
After the former — and incoming — president derailed the government funding measure House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) negotiated with his Democratic counterparts at the very last minute, Republican senators threw up their hands in self-imposed defeat, as the Capitol devolved into rumors, accusations and bewilderment.
“Mr. Leader, do you know what's up?” Raw Story asked the incoming Senate majority leader Wednesday evening.
“I don’t know,” Sen. John Thune (R-SD) replied after cracking up as he and his entourage made their way from his black, government-issued SUV into the Capitol.
Thune’s far from alone. In exclusive interviews with 11 GOP senators — along with four Democrats — Raw Story found a common theme: Republicans are miffed and confused.
“I'll ask you what's going on. Maybe you know more than the rest of us,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) — who’s credited with helping the GOP win back control of the Senate from his perch as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee this election cycle — told Raw Story on his way into the Capitol.
“I know nothing, sir,” Raw Story quipped.
“Well, that makes two of us,” Daines said.
Even senators who won their seats after serving as lowly Senate aides — the senators who know Capitol Hill’s arcane ways; inside, out — are clueless.
“You know what’s going on?” Raw Story asked.
“I would love to know what’s going on,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) exclaimed as she made her way to an early evening vote Wednesday. “You all have better information than me, so tell me!”
One of Britt’s colleagues weighed in.
“Well, it looks like we’re on track to shut down,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) told Raw Story.
Even as Democrats still control the Senate until the new year, it’s Republicans in the driver’s seat. Just the Republicans on the other side of the Capitol where the GOP’s already in the majority.
But being in the majority is only half the battle. As former Speaker Kevin McCarthy(R-CA) learned, crossing the aisle to, say, fund the federal government with the support of Democrats can cost the coveted gavel.
A lesson Johnson is re-learning.
“He’s on thin ice?” Raw Story asked.
“Very thin,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told Raw Story. “Nobody can do a better job. It is just impossible — it is just impossible with such a small majority. So he'll figure it out, and he'll do the best he can.”
With Elon Musk and company now, seemingly, controlling the direction Trump’s GOP goes, it’s unclear if Johnson will be able to ‘figure it out’ — especially by Friday night’s midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown.
“It’s an embarrassment,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) exclusively told Raw Story. “And he better fix it fast, because the government’s shutting down.”
That’s left Johnson’s future in doubt.
“Those guys over there need to figure it out. This is Mike Johnson's fault,” Hawley said. “It's 100 percent his fault.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump turned heads when he demanded a hike to the nation’s debt ceiling as a part of a completely separate government funding bill — a surprising last-minute move that Hawley and other rank-and-file Republicans also blame Johnson for not addressing earlier.
“What do you think about the debt ceiling being thrown in?” Raw Story pressed.
“What that tells me is, he clearly didn't talk to Trump before he started doing this, which is stupid,” Hawley said. “We’ll see.”
One thing was clear Wednesday evening on the Senate side of the Capitol: Senators weren’t sticking around to solve a House of Representatives problem.
“Do you know what's going on?” Raw Story asked.
“Pretty much,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — the former number two most powerful Senate Republican — told Raw Story as he was pulling his door closed. “I'm getting in my car.”
WASHINGTON — As at least three Democratic-appointed judges changed their plans to move to senior status following President-elect Donald Trump’s reelection last month, four senators exclusively shared with Raw Story their theories — from financial to political — for the last-minute retirement changes.
“It implicitly conveys concern on the part of judges who concluded that there's a real risk that their successor on the circuit might be someone who would be more of an activist or be more of a disrupter to the balance of the circuit than they anticipated,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story.
U.S. Circuit Judge James Wynn, appointed by former President Barack Obama, announced on Friday his decision to revoke his plans to retire from active service on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., prompting a judicial misconduct complaint from Trump-allied Article III Project.
After Senate Republicans blocked President Joe Biden’s nomination to replace him, Wynn said he decided to “continue in regular active service,” rather than senior status, a form of semi-retirement that allows a new judge to be appointed and lets judges over age 65 with at least 15 years of federal bench service take on reduced caseloads.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) echoed the concerns of North Carolina’s other Republican senator, Thom Tillis, who called Wynn’s decision “a slap in the face to the U.S. Senate.”
“It's ridden in political activity, unretiring for political purposes. That's the ethical charge that's at the root of it, and it's concerning,” Budd told Raw Story.
Another Obama-appointee, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, sent the White House a letter in late November rescinding his plans to move to senior status, announced in 2022.
Former President Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley, in Columbus, Ohio, withdrew his plans to take senior status shortly after Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory.
“Individual justices decide when they want to retire. It’s their right,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Raw Story. “I’m not familiar with their individual stories or their details. For all I know is they decided that their personal finances needed a few more years of work. I have no idea.”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said he hadn’t seen the news of judges rescinding their retirement plans, and Coons said he was “not familiar with the details of specific judges.
“I'll tell you that is something that has happened previously. A judge has a lifetime appointment, and it's their decision when to take senior status,” Coons said.
Aid for Women pregnancy center in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood in December 2024 (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
A screen shot from the Aid for Women website about abortion pill reversals
Scan of pages in Aid for Women brochure about abortion
Scan of pages in Aid for Women brochure about fetal development
Scan from "Abortion Options" brochure from Planned Parenthood
A Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
A screen shot about Aid for Women from choicewatch.org