Daily Kos

Wandering Trump video spurs renewed interest in 25th Amendment

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 1:21 PM PDT

2017/07/05 · 13:21

TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on January 26, 2017 as he departs to attend a Republican retreat in Philadelphia. / AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

When Donald Trump deplaned from Air Force One Tuesday, he walked down the steps and immediately hung a right, passing up a black SUV with a presidential seal and darkened windows that was flanked by Secret Service officers (video below). Somehow, it just didn't strike him as the immediate next step in his itinerary—that is until he was redirected back to the vehicle that had been staring him in the face moments earlier.

That episode coupled with his bizarre tweets last week targeting Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski and depicting his WWF alter ego pummeling CNN has spurred renewed interest in legislation first introduced in April that would lay the groundwork for removing Trump from office. Some two dozen House Democrats have now signed on to Rep. Jamie Raskin's bill, writes CNN.

The Maryland Democrat wants to create an 11-member commission made up of mostly physicians and psychiatrists -- more formally called the "Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity." The panel would carry out a medical examination and determine whether the President was physically or mentally able to do the job.

Two of the commission's members would also be former high ranking officials, such as presidents, vice presidents, attorneys general or secretaries of state.

It's a provocative and long-shot effort, but Raskin is citing as his legal backup the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which was adopted in 1967 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to establish procedure in the case a president is incapacitated.

Let's be clear: it's a long shot. The commission would have to act in concert with the vice president in order to remove the president if she or he were deemed "unable to discharge the powers and duties of office." The vice president would then assume the presidency.

But Trump's increasingly erratic behavior suggests that his mental capabilities are deteriorating before our very eyes. The Air Force One incident certainly wasn't an isolated case of the wanderer in chief. Trump has repeatedly wandered away from press conferences and bill signings, leaving a string of awkward moments in his wake.

Check them out below.

Trump priorities: Spanish-language White House page missing while ICE tweets en español

By Gabe Ortiz

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 12:40 PM PDT

2017/07/05 · 12:40

Screen_Shot_2017-07-05_at_10.51.05_AM.png

After losing Latinos to popular vote winner Hillary Clinton 79 percent to 18 percent in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s White House appears to have all but given up on any outreach to Spanish-speaking Americans. Not only has the position of director of Hispanic media outreach been eliminated (that alone speaks volumes), but the White House has so far failed to reboot the Spanish-language version of its website, while the little communication the White House does on its Spanish-language Twitter account is full of bad translations:

The account has tweeted just 41 times since Trump’s inauguration; more than one-third of those posts came on the day of his address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. Of the 41 tweets, about half were written in English. The Spanish tweets are sprinkled with typos — 11 in all. While most mistakes are minor flubs such as missing accents, those accents often change the meaning of words significantly. For instance, they turn “medical” into “medicate” or “is” into “this.”

But don’t worry, fellow Latinos, because in a truly asshole move, one federal agency has actually expanded its Spanish-language content during this Trump era: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency charged with sweeping up and deporting undocumented immigrants. “Last month, it announced that it was expanding the Spanish section of its website and started a new Spanish Twitter feed, @ICEespanol.” Trump priorities in action.

As former Obama-era director of Hispanic media outreach Luis Miranda notes, the White House’s Spanish-language website didn’t just offer translations of English-language content, but also information on topics of significance to Latinos, including immigration, health—Latinos have experienced the biggest decline in the uninsured rate among any ethnic group thanks to Obamacare—banking, and veteran affairs:

“For us it was important that all of our constituents across the board were getting as much information as possible about what we were doing,” he said.

In Trump's America, nooses are making a comeback to intimidate and harm black people

By Kelly Macias

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 12:21 PM PDT

2017/07/05 · 12:21

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 10: Protesters march at Columbia University October 10, 2007 in New York City. Black professor Madonna Constantine discovered a hangman's noose on her office door at the prestigious college October 92, sparking anger at the campus. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) — Nooses have been cropping up on campuses across the country as well as workplaces, museums and schools.

Being black in America is to be the product of a rich and incredibly diverse history. Our culture is vast and complex and no two black people have lived the exact same experience. However, certain stories, symbols, and their meaning are quite commonly known amongst us and evoke the same reaction—no matter our age or experience or where we live. A hangman’s noose is one of those things.

Nooses produce a visceral fear of harm in the bodies and hearts of black folk. Now, there are some people out there who continue to promote the fallacy that nooses are not symbolic of anything. After all, they look similar to the kinds of knots used in sailing, fishing, and other activities. But to continue to deny the noose’s history and meaning to blacks, in particular, is ahistorical.

Nooses are a reminder that mobs and vigilantes in this country, along with the state, executed thousands of people by hanging. And while not all of those people were black (Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and the Irish were also victims of lynching), blacks accounted for an astounding three-fourths of the documented 4,700 people killed by hanging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is this painful and gruesome history that black people call to mind when they see nooses. And while nooses have been used to intimidate blacks forever, they seem to be making a comeback in Trump's America.

It was the beginning of the night shift last Wednesday at the United States Mint in Philadelphia, a secure facility that manufactures money, when a white male coin maker strode across the factory floor to the workstation of an African-American colleague. He was carrying a piece of rope.

The rope had an official purpose: to seal coin bags once they were full. But the worker, who operates the machinery used to make coins, instead looped and twisted it into a hangman’s noose, according to Rhonda Sapp, president of the Mint workers’ union.

Upon hearing about this incident, officials conducted a day-long investigation and decided that the white worker needed to be kept off the factory floor to protect him from retaliation. The irony here is that he was the one being protected. What about the rights of his black coworkers, who deserve to be protected from acts of racial hatred and aggression?

Midday open thread: Poverty and brain development; renewables make 35% of Germany's 2017 electricity

By Meteor Blades

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 12:00 PM PDT

2017/07/05 · 12:00

Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Unpresidential:

• Sand sculpture mocks Chris Christie for lounging on state beach he closed to the public:

A giant sand sculpture of Gov. Chris Christie lounging in a chair has appeared on the Jersey Shore after a government shutdown closed state beaches and parks for much of the Fourth of July weekend.

The sculpture was built on a Seaside Heights beach Tuesday, the same day Christie signed his final budget following the bruising three-day state government shutdown that included a viral photo of him lounging on a state beach that was closed to the public because of a budget impasse.

• Germany breaks another record: 35% of its electricity in 2017 has come from renewable sources: That’s encouraging, and a 2 percent increase over last year. To compare, renewables accounted for only 15 percent of total electricity generation in the United States in 2016. But, in spite of their edge, German officials say the transformation of their nation’s energy system isn’t happening fast enough. The German Renewable Energy Federation reports that while electricity generation is doing well, renewables provided just 5.1 percent of energy consumed in the transportation sector and 13.6 percent in heating.

• An Activists’ Calendar of Resistance Events
• Indivisible’s list of Resistance Events & Groups

• Scientists think they see empirical links between poverty and children’s brain development:

The Neurocognition, Early Experience, and Development Lab is home to cutting-edge research on how poverty affects young brains, and I’ve come here to learn how Noble and her colleagues could soon definitively prove that growing up poor can keep a child’s brain from developing. [...]

The policy implications are immense. If the data holds, simply moving a family’s income out of poverty might be enough to get that child much closer to cognitive developmental norms. And while we don’t yet know whether or how much these brain disparities persist into adulthood, this research—combined with past work demonstrating that people raised in poverty end up doing worse financially and suffering greater health problems than their more-affluent contemporaries over the course of their lifetimes—suggests they probably have lifelong effects.

DEA provided this image of a fatal dose of fentanyl — This image of a deadly dose of fentanyl was provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.

• In case you missed it: June’s greatest headline on the opioid crisis: DEA Seizes Enough Fentanyl to Kill Illinois:

The DEA said Monday that it seized nearly 100 pounds of fentanyl in Southern California: enough to kill 14 million people — the entire state of Illinois, or everyone in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The June 2 federal grand jury indictment in San Diego, unsealed Monday, charges three San Diego-area residents with possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute it. All three face up to life in prison and $10 million fines.

• Volvo vows to go all-electric or hybrid on new car models in 2019:

Prof David Bailey, an automotive expert at Aston University, said: “It’s indicative of the speeding up of the shift over to electrics, particularly in the wake of the VW dieselgate scandal, and it’s a sign that the industry is really starting to move and it will become mainstream.

“By the mid-2020s I expect there to be a tipping point where the electric car starts to outcompete the internal combustion engine. It’s the way it’s going.”

• Indiana group sues for Donald Trump’s emails regarding Carrier jobs deal:

An Indiana watchdog group claims in court that the governor’s office is stalling on a public records request for communications between former Gov. Mike Pence and then-President-elect Donald Trump about a deal to keep Carrier Corporation jobs from going to Mexico.

The Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, or CAC, and its staff attorney Jennifer Washburn filed a lawsuitThursday in Marion County accusing Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office of violating the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, or APRA.

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter guide us out of the long weekend. Gop Senators duck July 4th parades. Hold your breath: N. Korea launches ICBM, Trump heads to G20. Declaration of Independence trashed. There’s even more collusion than you thought.

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NPR tweets the Declaration of Independence; Trump supporters think it's an insult to Trump

By Hunter

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 11:35 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 11:35

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 04: Fireworks explode over the National Mall to mark the United States' Independence Day July 4, 2015 in Washington, DC. The pyrotechnic display celebrated the 239th anniversary of the United States' declaration of independence from — Get it? It's orange like his head.

Because yesterday was the Fourth of July, a national holiday celebrating patriotism and America and certain kinds of eagles but not necessarily other kinds, National Public Radio chose to celebrate the occasion by tweeting out the Declaration of Independence, 140 characters at a time.

Because we are living in 2017 and a large chunk of the American population has gone stupid, this was met with multiple Trump supporters losing their minds.

[S]ome Trump supporters were a bit confused yesterday, and saw phrases like “unworthy the Head of a civilized nation” as biased. They assumed that NPR was blasting the current president rather than King George in 1776.

To some extent, we deserve this. What was the saying? Those who forget history are condemned to have fits about it on social media?

there's nothing more american than getting pissed because you think the declaration of independence is shitting on the president pic.twitter.com/gkWSTR8SIY
— Goth Ms. Frizzle (@spookperson) July 4, 2017

We could probably have a long debate over why the same collections of people that wave confederate flags around, prod for secession defenses to be written into their state party platforms, and demand the dissolution of large parts of the government would presume a recitation of the Declaration of Independence is a threat to their, ahem, movement. But we won't, because this is all deeply, deeply funny and we're not going to wreck that by parsing it out.

White House preparing for Putin meeting by giving Trump 'tweet-length sentences' to remember

By Hunter

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 11:11 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 11:11

It says here I'm supposed to ask you if your refrigerator is running.

On Friday, Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conduct their first face-to-face meeting. Around the world, the expectations appear to be that we are all boned.

“I worry a little about this meeting because Putin is going to walk into the room very well prepared, and I’m not certain Trump will come into that room prepared,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and career diplomat who now is a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

There is apparently, according to national security adviser H.R. McMaster, "no specific agenda." And Trump's notorious lack of interest in briefing materials is presenting a challenge to those seeking to prepare him; they can write down all the detail they want, he's not going to care or even remember it. Putin is regarded as a skilled negotiator, and Trump is regarded as, ahem, an idiot with a bank account.

The president often doesn’t read the usual briefing books and relies on in-person briefings, the officials said, so aides also have written a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin. [...]
Advisors including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis are trying to carefully script Trump’s interaction to head off any attempt by Putin to manipulate the encounter to his advantage, the U.S. officials said.

That's where we're at now: Reducing the main points of U.S.-Russian contention to "tweet-length" sentences in a last-ditch effort to get Trump to remember anything he's been told or, at least, get him up to speed on the things his own nation would rather not concede to Putin on the first date. And unless those sentences contain "Trump," even that's not likely to get far. (Peace in Europe may or may not hinge on NATO renaming itself the North Atlantic Trump Organization, thus securing Donald’s full attention and interest.)

It is probable that Trump's team will see the meeting as a success if Trump refrains from blurting out his own PIN number. As for whatever else might happen, we'll have to wait to hear the details from the press. The Russian press, that is; as with the last Trump-Russia meeting, Team Trump isn't likely to let our own team in on the details.

Hey Paul Ryan, where's that Russia sanctions bill the Senate passed 98-2?

By Kerry Eleveld

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 10:46 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 10:46

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 04: U.S. President Donald Trump congratulates House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) (R), after Republicans passed legislation aimed at repealing and replacing ObamaCare, during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House, on May 4, 2017 in Washington, DC. The House bill would still need to be passed by the Sebate before being signed into law. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Immediately after a bill imposing tougher sanctions on Russia and limiting Donald Trump’s ability to lift them passed the Senate with overwhelming support last month, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team buried it over procedural concerns, claiming the legislation should have originated in the House. At the time, Trump officials just happened to be lobbying House lawmakers to weaken the measure.

The Senate subsequently tweaked the bill and resent it to the House. And Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut made a push Wednesday on Morning Joe to revive the bill, saying it had stalled in the House precisely because of Trump’s resistance to it.

"The mystery is, why hasn't the Trump administration taken a forceful stand in supporting this measure, this sanctions bill?" Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal insisted that there is no question the bill has support in the House, and would be passed if the Trump administration would give it the green light.

"I think it has to do possibly with financial and business dealings, as well as the possibility that he is simply resisting the meddling investigation conducted now by the special counsel," Blumenthal said.

The bill has now gained pushback from special interest groups in the energy sector—in particular, a special interest group with connections: Exxon Mobil Corp. Along with other energy companies, Exxon is arguing that it could hurt their bottom line if it affects their joint ventures with certain Russian partners.

Exxon’s advocacy also presents a potential political problem for the Trump administration, which has been trying to avoid conflict-of-interest questions involving Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the oil giant’s former chief executive.

Mr. Tillerson, who has promised to recuse himself from matters involving Exxon, hasn’t explicitly spoken out against the sanctions bill, but last month urged Congress not to take any actions that tie the administration’s hands.

Well, this is a shocker—Tillerson doing the bidding of his Exxon buddies who are lining up with the Russians, while Paul Ryan looks the other way and Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 with “no specific agenda.” Wonder who’s going to come out on top there?

Seems like the "collusion" Trump so vehemently denies took place during the election continues to be on full display and Paul Ryan is totally complicit.

G20 worries: Trump and Putin may get on too well, while rest of world gets on without America

By Mark Sumner

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 10:21 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 10:21

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 28: President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office of the White House, January 28, 2017 in Washington, DC. Also pictured, from left, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. On Saturday, President Trump is making several phone calls with world leaders from Japan, Germany, Russia, France and Australia. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) — I'll bring you a beautiful cake.

The biggest concern the White House staff has about the upcoming G20 summit isn’t what Europe might do, or what China might do, or even what North Korea might do in response to any finger-shaking by world leaders. The White House is more concerned about the actions of Donald Trump. Specifically, they don’t know if Trump will be able to contain himself when he meets his idol.

Even his top aides do not know precisely what Mr. Trump will decide to say or do when he meets President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia face-to-face this week on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit gathering in Hamburg, Germany. And that is what most worries his advisers and officials across his administration as he embarks Wednesday on his second foreign trip, first to Warsaw and then to Hamburg.

It seems almost certain that Trump will avoid the elephant in the room—since he will enter the room riding that elephant—and there will be no discussion with Russia about their interference in the 2016 election, or the threat they pose to 2018 and beyond. Instead, Trump will probably talk about Syria (where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently said Russia gets to decide the future of the nation). And they will certainly talk about the sanctions that stand between Russia and the enormous payday Tillerson arranged before moving from Exxon Corp. to Trump Corp.

Mr. Putin has signaled that he will press Mr. Trump to lift sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea, its interference in Ukraine and its election meddling, and to hand over Russian diplomatic compounds on Long Island and in Maryland that the United States seized last year.

Meanwhile, the focus of other G20 leaders seems to be on working out the shape of a world where American leadership has collapsed.

Indiana Republicans ask for Obamacare horror stories and get ... something different

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 9:56 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 09:56

Protesters against the US Senate Republicans' healthcare bill hold a rally outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, June 28, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

The Indiana Republican Party is learning a valuable lesson about social media and not asking questions you might not like the answers to. The question, on Facebook: “What's your Obamacare horror story? Let us know.” The answers—in 7,500 comments and counting—do include any number of horrors like life-threatening illnesses and accidents. But in many cases, Obamacare was what took the horror out of the story.

“Before ACA my elderly mother couldn't afford healthcare, medicine, and rent,” wrote one woman. “With ACA she has been able to see a doctor, get her medicine, and continue to live indoors. It's really been a horror story for us.”

Then there’s the man who wrote that “My brother lived an extra 2 years because of the cancer treatment he was able to receive under Obamacare.”

Or how’s this for a horror story?

Horror story: before the ACA I was living in Indiana, I was 23 and I didn't have insurance and I had to go in to debt for a simple visit to the emergency room. The most costly part of my ER visit? The lidocaine anesthetic. The next time I had to go to the ER to get stitches, guess what I knew I couldn't afford? That's right, lidocaine! The doctor and the nurses couldn't believe I was telling him to stitch me up without any anesthetic. Now I'm on Medicaid (thanks to the affordable care act) and I don't have to pick and choose my medical treatment. I'm covered. So when I got pneumonia last year, I didn't wait a day to see a doctor and get a chest X-Ray, I went as soon as I could.

A couple of years ago, the Indiana GOP’s question might have worked—fewer people had yet experienced the benefits of Obamacare in their own lives and the right was mobilized against it. Now, Obamacare is getting more popular as people are facing the prospect of losing it, and a lot of people have stories of their own or their loved ones’ lives being saved, or not being stuck in a bad job for the health coverage, or not facing mountains of debt for minor health problems. And, as the Indiana Republicans learned, people are eager to tell those stories in defense of the law that’s helped them.

(Via)

Just three states are happy about Trump voter suppression commission's information grab

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 9:31 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 09:31

FILE - In this Jan . 15, 2015, file photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seen at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Kansas is asking a federal appeals court to keep thousands of people who haven't yet provided the documents to prove they are U.S. citizens from voting in November's election. Judges from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver are set to hear arguments Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016, in the legal fight over how the state enforces its proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters who register at motor vehicle offices. Kobach says it doesn't make sense to hold people registering at motor vehicle offices to a different standard than those registering elsewhere. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File) — Kris Kobach

“Pound sand” is more or less the response that Kris Kobach, Donald Trump’s voter suppression vice chair, has gotten from most states in response to his demand for extensive voter information. But if you want something more specific, CNN has counted it up:

As of Tuesday afternoon, two states -- Florida and Nebraska -- are still reviewing the commission's request. Another two states -- Hawaii and New Jersey -- have not returned CNN's request for comment. And while six states are still awaiting a letter from the commission, four of them -- New Mexico, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia -- have already pledged not to provide voters' private information. The other two of those six states, Arkansas and Illinois, have not released statements ahead of receiving the letter.

Just three states -- Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee -- commended Kobach's attempt to investigate voter fraud in their respective statements. [...]

Other states were more critical. Nineteen openly criticized the commission's request. [...]

Three state leaders also raised doubts about the integrity of the commission itself, and many questioned the existence of widespread voter fraud.

So as many states questioned the commission’s existence or mission as received Kobach’s letter happily. Things got to the point where Kobach had to go out and “clarify” about the commission’s existence and mission, and his own request. He only ever wanted public information, he says. And:

"First of all, the commission is not to prove or disprove what the President speculated about in January," Kobach said. "The purpose of the commission is to find facts and put them on the table. Importantly, it's a bipartisan commission."

That’s all so reassuring to hear from one of the nation’s most notorious enemies of voting. But the “bipartisan” aspect of the commission is just pathetic. And has anyone told Donald Trump that his commission does not exist to do the thing he’s most interested in when it comes to elections or anything else? (That thing being “prove Donald Trump is right.”)

Wednesday, Jul 5, 2017 · 8:03:12 PM +00:00 · Laura Clawson

Gov. Chris Christie presumably does not want his state government saying anything about sand (pounding it or otherwise) in the wake of his little beach problem, but however they’re putting it, New Jersey will join the states provide no information that isn’t publicly available or “that does not follow the appropriate legal procedure for information requests.”

Trumpcare dominates discussion for the handful of Republican senators facing the public on July 4th

By Joan McCarter

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 9:01 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 09:01

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), (L) chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, speaks to the media about amendments to the Energy Bill, while flanked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R), February 2, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Senators discussed the comprehensive energy legislation that is currently before the Senate. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) — Lisa Murkowski is holding out for all she can get out of McConnell

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Very few Republican senators decided it was important they face their constituents this July 4th, as they're considering legislation that could have a direct and horrible impact on millions of them. Like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) who declined to face his voters because they would "heckle and scream at me." Yes, Rubio is a snowflake. And not the only one.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did appear in semi-public, navigating through protests to get to a meeting with Hardin County Republicans, which was closed to the general public. Ted Cruz (TX) appeared at an event sponsored by the Koch group, Concerned Veterans for America, which required people register in advance. Only Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Dean Heller (NV) showed up in actual holiday parades, all in small or remote towns. And all came out of them apparently hearing what they wanted to hear from constituents.

"There was only one issue. That's unusual. It's usually a wide range of issues," Collins said in an interview after the parade. "I heard, over and over again, encouragement for my stand against the current version of the Senate and House health-care bills. People were thanking me, over and over again. 'Thank you, Susan!' 'Stay strong, Susan!' " […]
"Glad I could help them get away from the east coast and to one of the most beautiful parts of NV," Heller tweeted at reporters after the Ely parade. […]

"Most people don't ask 'for or against,' " she said. "They just say, 'Make sure you're taking care of our interests.' In fairness for those that do the 'for or against,' everybody is pretty much [saying] they don't think this is good for us."

All we need is three Republican senators to block Trumpcare. If you have a GOP senator, we need you to call their office at (202) 224-3121. Demand that they put their constituents above their party. After the call, tell us how the call went.

Republican Congressman records political commercial inside Auschwitz gas chamber

By Mark Sumner

Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 8:31 AM PDT

2017/07/05 · 08:31

Clay Higgins at Auschwitz concentration camp — Clay Higgins speaking from crematorium at Auschwitz concentration camp

Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins makes an early bid for the most staggering display of tastelessness … just about ever.

A Republican lawmaker is coming under criticism for recording videos at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, including a segment filmed inside the Nazi gas chambers and crematorium.

That's right. Higgins didn't just stage his promo at Auschwitz, he filmed inside the gas chambers and crematoria where over a million people died. Did Higgins make this huge breech of common decency to shock people into wakefulness about the reemergence of racist, authoritarian elements into western politics? Not exactly.

Higgins, a former police officer who now sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, made headlines last month when he wrote on Facebook that “all of Christendom... is at war with Islamic horror” and called for killing any “radicalized Islamic suspect.”

That’s right. Higgins message from inside Auschwitz is that the world is a “smaller place,” and that the United States needs to be protected from “the evils of the world.” His previous statements have made clear that he feels that protection is best provided by killing all scary Muslims.

"Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down,” he wrote. “Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all.”

Sometimes statements are simply too twisted, too sick, for the word “ironic’” to fit.

There’s one message Higgins doesn’t deliver. Though he talks about “poor souls” and “innocent civilians” and “slave labor prisoners,” Higgins never says the word Jews.

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