On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) hid in a closet with roughly a dozen other Republican senators while the Capitol attack took place on January 6.
According to the report, during that time many of the lawmakers huddled there questioned whether they would still go through with a plan to object to the counting of electors in closely divided states won by President Joe Biden — which the rioters were attempting to influence. Some did change their minds, but Tuberville, a former college football coach newly elected to the Senate, did not.
"He does remember a few details," reported Ben Terris. "'One thing that was brought up was that people were hurt,' he recalled in one of several interviews with The Washington Post. Plus, Biden was going to end up president, whether they objected or not. 'Do we want to continue this,' Tuberville remembered his colleagues mulling, 'if there's not going to be a result we are looking for anyway?' Some Republican senators changed their minds after the closet huddle, but Tuberville's vote was not in question. Coach stuck with the play and formally objected to certifying the electoral college votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania."
For his part, Tuberville insists he only cast these votes because it was what the voters of Alabama wanted him to do.
Tuberville went on to oppose establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol attack, which ultimately died in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) later set up a select committee to conduct the investigation instead.
We already knew that the deal struck between the president and the House Republicans, to lift the debt ceiling, was going to place new work requirements on childless adults between the ages of 50 and 54 in return for food stamps.
What we didn’t know is that the legislation changes “work requirements under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance to households with children. Under the provisions in the bill, states will likely have to require more parents on TANF to work or be in job training,” according to Kery Murakami, a senior reporter for Route Fifty, a news site.
Murakami has the details. They are granular and patchwork. Some states would be free to do more to help needy families. Other states would be free to do less. Either way, one official said, the new requirements don’t “leave a lot of time to be parents. We want them to be able to be parents. We want them to be able to solve the crisis that has brought them in our doors in the first place.”
According to David Dayen, editor of TheAmerican Prospect, food stamps and TANF “became a Republican red line. Both of these programs already have work requirements; they’re being made stricter. For TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or welfare), they appear to be somewhat optional for the states, which means red states will tighten their eligibility.”
During debt-ceiling talks, TANF did not get the press that food stamps got. This is due to those who get help with groceries being in a much larger group than those who get help at state-poverty levels. Some say the deal avoided the severest outcomes. Work requirements on food stamps affect only childless adults. But TANF changes affect plenty of kids. From a broad point of view, things could have been worse. From a particular point of view, they are worse.
So we should remember what Hakeem Jeffries said. During debt-ceiling talks, when word got out that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was bent on forcing the hungry to work, the House minority leader reportedly told a Democratic Party leadership committee that work requirements were a “nonstarter.”
I understand the need for flexibility during negotiations, especially with illiberals who can’t stop won’t stop hating poor people for the fact of their poverty. But evidently work requirements were not a nonstarter. Under Jeffries’ leadership, more Democrats than Republicans voted for the deal.
The problem, I think, was taking McCarthy’s words at face value. He, like other illiberals, said that forcing the poor to work lifts them out of poverty. Liberals were right to say he was wrong. Denying them aid deepens their misery. But one side saying it “works” and the other saying it doesn’t work as intended is variation of gridlock. Remember that gridlock favors rightwing politics.
Debating whether a particular policy does or doesn’t work is a losing debate in the face of illiberals who can’t stop won’t stop hating poor people for the fact of their poverty. Instead of debating illiberals as if they were prepared to stand by their own arguments (they are not), liberals should be alleging – that denying help to the needy is tantamount to punishing them for suffering.
Poverty is not a crime. Let’s stop acting like it is.
Let’s also stop acting like it’s a problem no one can solve.
It’s only unsolvable when debating for and against an anti-poverty policy takes place in a context in which illiberals can’t stop won’t stop hating poor people for their poverty. To get to the details of any policy idea, and to open a space in which debating its merits is possible, the illiberals must be marginalized, or at least chastened. Debating the merits of a policy won’t do that. Accusing illiberals of wanting to punish those who suffer for their suffering might.
No one chooses to suffer. Illiberals disagree.
They believe with all their hearts in the existence of the mythical Lazy Do-Nothing. They believe he’s out there, somewhere, lazing about, getting something, doing nothing. They believe that work requirements are benevolent and socially constructive. They said they punish laziness and reward work.
But the only way for that proposition to be true – that poor people choose their poverty as well as their suffering – is for you to have an opinion about poor people that’s so monstrous that they are scarcely human beings at all. In other words, for the proposition to be true – that poor people choose their poverty – you must already hate poor people for the fact of their poverty.
The problem isn’t whether this or that anti-poverty policy does or doesn't work. The problem is hating the poor. The problem is punishing them for suffering. They are already suffering. Now they will suffer twice as much.
A long list of polls from 2022 and 2023 have shown the United States' reputation continuing to suffer. Gallup, for example, found that approval of the High Court has sunk to only 40 percent.
In a scathing op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on June 2, Josh Chafetz — a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. — lays out some reasons why the Roberts Court's bad reputation is well-deserved.
"Over roughly the past 15 years," Chafetz argues, "the justices have seized for themselves more and more of the national governing agenda, overriding other decision makers with startling frequency. And they have done so in language that drips with contempt for other governing institutions and in a way that elevates the judicial role above all others. The result has been a judicial power grab."
Chafetz goes to say that the High Court's image has suffered because of rulings on everything from "campaign finance law" to "congressional oversight" to "federal regulation."
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The law professor emphasizes that the Roberts Court's heavy-handedness was evident long before Republican-appointed justices obtained their current 6-3 majority.
"In recent years," Chafetz laments, "the judiciary has shown little but contempt for other governing institutions. It has earned a little contempt in return."
In a post to Truth Social this Friday, former President Donald Trump posted a new conspiracy theory, claiming that the nation's top law enforcement agencies are controlling the Democrats' campaign for the White House in 2024.
"THE DOJ & FBI ARE RUNNING THE DEMOCRATS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN," Trump wrote in his usual all-caps style. "THIS IS ILLEGAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE!"
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s activity in recent weeks has fueled speculation that investigations are winding down and Trump could soon face charges for his role in both Jan. 6 and the mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
His claims also comes as Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee looks into what it calls the Weaponization of the federal government, including the Department of Justice and FBI.
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