Friday Talking Points -- Some Bipartisanship Appears, For Better Or Worse

[ChrisWeigant]

Apparently, there was a big murder trial down South that culminated this week, but we have to admit that since it wasn't an overtly political case, we just didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, as always, we had our nose to the grindstone of sifting through the week's political news so that you don't have to. In other words: Welcome to another installment of Friday Talking Points!

We're going to start this week with some good news. Not great news, mind you, but pretty good nonetheless. A spate of actual bipartisanship broke out in the Senate this week and with amazing speed (for Congress in general and for the Senate in particular) they came up with proposed legislation that might actually have a chance of passing. Well, passing the Senate at least, since nobody has any clue of what the GOP House will do these days.

The issue is rail safety. The disastrous derailment of a freight train in Ohio sparked off a political frenzy, with both sides trying to make as much political hay over the matter as humanly possible. Recovery and cleanup efforts continue, and the Biden administration is now reportedly exploring ways to get some economic relief to the town long before the company at fault would likely provide it. This is an interesting idea -- perhaps the government could make direct payments to people and businesses in the town and then recoup the money from the company later, when all the lawsuits and penalties are considered.

But another interesting development is how both Republicans and Democrats -- almost by accident (ok, pun intended, sorry...) -- found themselves on the same side of an issue. "Freight trains are unsafe" was the obvious takeaway from the disaster, or at the very least: "Freight trains could be a lot safer." Populists on both the right and left pointed fingers at not only the company involved but also at how the government regulates the freight rail industry in the first place. And, miracle of miracles, they actually decided to do something about it together. Here's the story:

A group of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate has proposed legislation to mandate that the Transportation Department tighten safety rules for freight rail, the first glimmer of bipartisan activity on the issue since a train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month.

The measure by Senators Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, both of Ohio, would strengthen notification and inspection requirements for trains carrying hazardous materials, increase fines for safety violations by rail carriers and authorize $27 million for research on safety improvements. But it would stop short of dictating major regulatory changes, leaving the matter to the Transportation Department.

The bipartisan nature of the bill -- which is co-sponsored by Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans -- indicates that it may be able to gain traction in the Senate, where most major legislation needs 60 votes to advance. But it is not clear whether the measure can draw support in the Republican-led House.

"It shouldn't take a massive railroad disaster for elected officials to put partisanship aside and work together for the people we serve -- not corporations like Norfolk Southern," Mr. Brown said in a statement, referring to the derailed train's operator. "Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine and Steubenville and Sandusky."

That is all good news. As we said, it's not great news, because Democrats would have really preferred going a lot further, as the article also points out:

The legislation emerged a day after two House Democrats introduced a more restrictive bill that would impose more stringent rules -- including a slower speed limit and requirements for more sophisticated equipment -- on trains carrying a wide variety of hazardous substances.

The bipartisan Senate measure would strengthen rail car and railway detector inspection requirements such as mandating that a hotbox detector scan trains carrying hazardous materials every 10 miles.

Federal inspectors in Ohio found that the crew was not alerted of an overheating wheel bearing until the train passed a sensor not far from where it derailed.

The Senate proposal would also require rail carriers to provide advance notice to state emergency response officials about what they are transporting. The bill would also authorize $22 million for the Federal Railroad Administration and $5 million for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to research and develop stronger tank car safety features.

The House Democrats' bill would certainly have been better, but House Democrats can propose bills until they are blue in the face and Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn't going to bring any of them to the floor for a vote any time soon. We have to focus on what could actually be possible here. And with three Senate Republicans already on board with it (train pun also intended), the bipartisan measure looks like it'll have a chance of actually passing. And a bipartisan Senate bill will carry a lot more weight (see, we just can't help ourselves once we go down this track... as it were...) with McCarthy than anything Democrats propose on their own. So we have to commend both Ohio senators for putting their differences aside and actually trying to get something productive accomplished. True bipartisan efforts like this are rare as hen's teeth these days, so such developments are almost always worth celebrating.

There were two bits of other news that could be called "bipartisan" this week, but fewer Democrats are cheering either one of them on. There has been a bit of infighting in the District of Columbia's government over the concept of reforming their criminal code -- which hasn't been updated since 1901, apparently. The city council came up with a reform plan, but it was vetoed by the mayor. Her veto was overturned by the council, in a 12-1 vote. But since Washington D.C. is not a state, Congress always has the power to weigh in and make whatever changes they feel like to D.C.'s laws. Which they are in the process of doing, to overturn the new reform effort.

The issue is a contentious one, as are all police reform proposals these days. Republicans have successfully made lots of political hay over: "Crime rates are going up!" and have painted Democrats as somehow being pro-criminal and anti-police. The measure in question has been attacked as "lightening penalties for carjacking," for instance. So some Democrats -- including the mayor of D.C. -- balked at supporting the effort. When the bill in Congress to overturn it passed the House, more than two dozen Democrats voted for it. And now President Joe Biden has weighed in (while trying to carefully square the circle of also supporting the D.C. statehood effort):

"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule -- but I don't support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor's objections -- such as lowering penalties for carjackings," Biden said in a statement posted to Twitter, hours after telling Senate Democrats in a closed-door meeting that he would not veto the resolution. "If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did -- I'll sign it."

This is going to give cover to Senate Democrats to vote for the bill, so that it won't be used against them later out on the campaign trail. It might even be seen, to use a phrase from Bill Clinton's time, as Biden's "Sister Souljah moment." While Republicans routinely use the power of Congress to tinker with D.C.'s government whenever they get the chance, this time the effort has to be seen as bipartisan.

The other development that can (much more marginally) be called bipartisan is not going to end with a presidential signature, however, but with Biden's first presidential veto. Using a loophole in the filibuster rules, the Senate voted to overturn a Biden administration rule that would allow retirement plan managers to consider "environmental, social, and corporate governance considerations" (which is shortened to just "E.S.G." ). The new Labor Department rule was meant to undo an earlier Trump rule that limited the practice. It's a complicated issue but it stems from Republicans: (1) hating anything they convince themselves to call "woke" these days, and (2) hating anything that would interfere with lots of money being invested in oil and coal companies.

Two Democrats voted with the Republicans to pass the bill in the Senate: Joe Manchin and John Tester of Montana. Both will face tough re-election races next year in red states (if Manchin even runs, that is -- he is being coy about that for the moment). But none of it will matter since Biden has sworn to veto the bill, and there is no way the Republicans are going to overturn his veto in either chamber of Congress.

So it's a mixed bag this week when it comes to "bipartisanship," although the new train safety measures are certainly the best of the lot.

In other big political news of the week, President Biden's plan to forgive either $10,000 or $20,000 of student loan debt went before the Supreme Court this week. Expert court-watchers all agreed that the only way Biden will win this fight is if the court decides to deny standing to the people and states suing. So far 16 million students who have applied for such debt relief have been approved, so this is obviously going to be an impactful decision later in the year.

House Republicans, as usual, had all kinds of idiocy on display this week, including:

A committee chair sending a letter to Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of the Department of Transportation, demanding documents from "DOT's National Transportation Safety Board." Buttigieg responded: "I am alarmed to learn that the Chair of the House Oversight Committee thinks that the NTSB is part of our Department. NTSB is independent (and with good reason)."

Matt Gaetz, in a committee hearing, asked a Pentagon official about a story Gaetz had read in some Chinese Communist Party propaganda, which he dutifully entered into the record. Here's the back-and-forth between the two:

The Florida Republican then attempted to create a gotcha moment, entering into the record what he said was an investigative report by the Global Times, an English-language daily tabloid that's a subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper The People's Daily.

Gaetz, who appeared unaware of the tabloid's propaganda links, cited the report in claiming that the U.S. had supplied weapons to the [Ukrainian] Azov Battalion as early as 2018. Asked if he disagreed with the report, Kahl calmly responded: "I'm sorry, is this the Global Times from China?"

"No, this is..." Gaetz said before looking at the report in front of him and conceding. "Yeah, it might be. Yeah."

"As a general matter, I don't take Beijing's propaganda at face value," Kahl said, his right pointer finger pressed against his temple.

However, some Republicans do, obviously.

Marjorie "Three-Names" Taylor Greene was a fount of idiocy this week as well, but that's not really saying anything new, is it? She tried to blame Joe Biden and his administration for two people's fentanyl overdose deaths -- even though the deaths happened while Donald Trump was president, in July of 2020. When a fact-checker from CNN called up her office to see whether she'd retract her statement (or at least delete her tweet about it), a spokesman answered back with: "Do you think they give a fuck about your bullshit fact-checking?" Charming.

One commenter on MSNBC noted that this was a recurring problem for the GOP:

"Republicans keep forgetting who was president in 2020," [MSNBC political contributor Steve Benen] wrote, calling them "calendar challenged."

Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, recently said Biden was responsible for "paying people to stay home" in 2020 -- a law that was actually signed by Trump.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., also blamed Biden for Covid-related school closures in 2020, which likewise happened during Trump's presidency.

Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also accused Biden for not doing enough to prevent crime, pointing to data from 2020 when her former boss was president -- and she was still in the White House.

Marjorie "Three-Names" also got some pushback from her own side of the aisle this week, after she tried to explain her seditious call for a "national divorce" between red states and blue by explaining: "We want our own safe space and we deserve it."

Problem was, "safe space" is a thing Republicans are supposed to mock Democrats for wanting. Ooops! While Democrats had the usual fun openly ridiculing her, some Republicans were (we can't help using another term they love to throw at Democrats) obviously triggered by her words. What snowflakes!

The House Tinfoil Hat Committee continues to beclown itself, along with a few other Republican-led committees, in conducting their hearings into all kinds of conspiracy theories. Which includes testimony from rampant conspiracy theorists, naturally. Representative Jamie Raskin this week had a good summary of this effort that deserves a mention for its succinct nature: "Weaponization of the government is not their target -- weaponization of the government is their purpose." Couldn't have said it any better ourselves!

And we'll end with the weekly roundup of Trumpian follies. The Department of Justice issued a long-awaited legal opinion that clearly stated that Donald Trump could indeed be sued by cops and members of Congress for inciting the insurrectionist mob on January 6th, writing:

"Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the Presidency, and the outer perimeter of the President's Office includes a vast realm of such speech," attorneys for the Justice Department's Civil Division wrote. "But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence."

. . .

"Presidents may at times use strong rhetoric. And some who hear that rhetoric may overreact, or even respond with violence," the Justice Department attorneys said, referencing a concern raised at oral argument. They suggested looking to another [Ku Klux] Klan-inspired court case -- the 1969 ruling that speech "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" or "likely to incite or produce such action" is not protected by the First Amendment.

"Just as denying First Amendment protection to incitement does not unduly chill speech in general, denying absolute immunity to incitement of imminent private violence should not unduly chill the President in the performance of his traditional function of speaking to the public on matters of public concern," the attorneys wrote.

It was also revealed this week just how thin Donald Trump's skin truly is:

President Donald Trump was reportedly so livid over Jimmy Kimmel's TV jokes that he ordered White House officials to get the late night host muzzled.

Rolling Stone reported on Sunday that there were at least two phone calls to a top Disney executive to demand action against Kimmel in 2018. Disney is the parent company of ABC, which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live.

One unnamed former senior Trump administration official told the magazine that Trump felt Kimmel was being "very dishonest and doing things that [Trump] would have once sued over."

Another unnamed former official told Rolling Stone: "Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something.... It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], 'Hey, we did this.'"

Kimmel, of course, wasted no time in firing back in one of his show's monologues.

And an amusing Trumpian note to close on. Those around him have apparently convinced Trump that this time around he's got to actually have some policy proposals to run for president on, and that effort is going about as well as you'd expect. They've been slowly rolling these out in videos where Trump explains his new agenda, and this week it seems that Trump was inspired by watching old re-runs of The Jetsons. He wants 10 brand-new futuristic "Freedom Cities" to be built from the ground up on federal land, and he also thinks the people who will live there should get around via their flying cars. There has been no word yet on whether a second Trump administration will invest heavily in robot maids, as of this writing at any rate.





We know the bill could have been better. But if it was, it likely wouldn't even have a chance in the Senate. So we're going to cheerfully award Senator Sherrod Brown this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week for doing what his newly-minted GOP counterpart would allow and actually getting something done in the short window after a disaster when productive legislation is even possible. Waiting would have killed the opportunity for doing anything, and the law can always be revisited and strengthened later, if necessary.

For joining with a Republican and exhibiting more concern for his own citizens than for partisan politics, Sherrod Brown is easily the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. In a divided Congress, it becomes essential to not let the perfect stand in the way of the good.

[Congratulate Senator Sherrod Brown on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





The head of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, is being further exposed for his virulent anti-Union misdeeds with his coffee company, but we decided that since he took a pass on running for president we will also take a pass on classifying him as a Democratic politician, and thus ineligible for these awards.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot disappointed some folks this week as she became the first Chicago mayor in a long time who will be limited to a single term by the voters. The election will go to a runoff, but Lightfoot didn't make the cut.

Some Democrats were seriously disappointed with Joe Biden's stance on the D.C. criminal code reform, but as we already said the fact that the city's mayor is also on the side of going back to the drawing board certainly gives him political cover.

Instead, we have an obvious choice for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. Here's the story:

At an interfaith breakfast on Tuesday, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) shocked many in the audience when he suggested guns came into schools when "we took prayers out of schools." (One has to wonder whether any public official should really proselytize at such affairs.) It got dicier from there. Adams declared:

"Don't tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies. I can't separate my belief because I'm an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God. When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them. That's who I am. And I was that when I was that third-grader, and I'm going to be that when I leave government. I am still a child of God and will always be a child of God and I won't apologize about being a child of God. It is not going to happen."

Mind you, this was not a Republican presidential candidate straining to win the approval of evangelical Christians. This was the mayor of New York, one of the most religiously diverse and secular spots on the planet, echoing a viewpoint held by Christian nationalists who seek to make politics the agent of Christianity and Christianity the handmaiden of politics.

Adams was not going off-script. His remarks seem to represent his deeply held views. "The mayor's closest aide, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, took the stage to declare that the Adams administration 'doesn't believe' in the separation of church and state, characterizing the mayor of New York City as 'definitely one of the chosen' as she introduced him," the New York Times reported.

Seriously? He "doesn't believe" in the separation of church and state? That is just stunning, from a Democrat. To be clear, we don't care what religious beliefs any politician has (or doesn't have), but we want all of them to have a strong commitment and respect for the idea that they shouldn't impose them on their own constituents in any way.

Which is why the MDDOTW award is such an easy call, this week. We'd suggest Adams go read what Thomas Jefferson thought about such matters, because he obviously missed that part in school.

[Contact New York City Mayor Eric Adams on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 697 (3/3/23)

We have to begin here by wishing Senator Dianne Feinstein a speedy recovery, after it was announced she is in the hospital with a case of shingles. We sincerely hope she gets well soon, since while we have not personally experienced this horror, we have talked to others who have had it and heard it described as "the worst pain I ever felt." In other words, something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. And no, while we do politically disagree with DiFi on occasion here, we certainly wouldn't classify her as that, just to be crystal-clear.

The first segment of this week's talking points have a theme to them. Because Joe Biden is apparently itching for a political fight. At least, that's what it sounds like these days. He spoke at a gathering of congressional Democrats this week and urged them all to go out and run on what he and Congress managed to get done already, and he is already going on the offensive over the budget and debt ceiling showdown.

These are both important things for both Biden and the rest of the Democrats to start doing, as much as possible. The budget is a particularly rich field of political opportunities for Democrats, since Republicans (so far) cannot even agree among themselves what particular hostage they're going to take, when they threaten to allow the federal government to default later this year. Oh, sure, it's easy for GOP politicians to posture on the debt ceiling and decry deficits and all of that, but when the rubber meets the road they're going to have to let the American people know precisely what this is going to mean. And Biden is already exploiting their division and lack of specifics.

Biden is on the brink of releasing his budget plan to Congress. This is an annual event where the White House sends over its proposal, and then Congress does whatever they feel like doing (presidential budget plans are never just passed intact, it bears mentioning, even when the president's party fully controls Congress). But since the Republicans have indicated that they're spoiling for a big showdown over the budget with the debt ceiling fight, Biden can then challenge them (as he already did this week) to release their own budget plan, so the American people can compare the two proposals. Biden's calling on Kevin McCarthy to release the GOP budget proposal on the same day the White House does.

This, to be blunt, is just not going to happen. Republicans are nowhere near ready to do so. In the first place, they can't agree on what spending to slash -- although Biden's masterful trolling of them in his State Of The Union now seems to have at least put Medicare and Social Security off the table. With that victory already in place, it becomes a whole lot tougher to find cuts elsewhere in the federal budget, which is precisely the problem Republicans are now struggling with.

What this all means is that Biden can define the GOP budget before it appears. Since they won't admit what they're planning on doing, it's certainly fair game to point out the things that they have stood for in the past and assuming they'll be attempting to do the same things again this time around. Biden will attempt to beat the GOP's "nothing" with his own "something."

It's a good political strategy, which is why Biden is urging other Democrats to adopt it. So we're going to devote our first four talking points this week to offering up how we'd go about crafting such a strategy.



Define your opponents early

Biden did so well on this front with the State Of The Union speech that it's an obvious place to start.

"Democrats have been working hard for decades to improve the healthcare system for as many Americans as possible. Republicans are more interested in playing politics with people's lives. Joe Biden's budget expands healthcare access. Republicans are going to cut healthcare for as many people as they think they can get away with. Biden already got Republicans to loudly agree to keep Medicare funding intact, so Republicans are now eyeing Medicaid for crippling cuts. Biden has expanded access to Affordable Care Act policies, but Republicans want to make sure everyone on one pays more for it -- a lot more. As Biden just said in Virginia Beach, 'MAGA Republicans are trying to take away people's healthcare.' Because that's what they've always tried to do."



Rural hospitals will close

Take the fight right to their voting base!

"Republicans in some states still refuse to expand Medicaid to cover more of their poorest citizens. They still hate 'Obamacare' so much that they refuse to admit that things are working out much better in the states that have adopted the Medicaid expansion. And it's becoming more and more of a crisis in the areas that are actually heavily Republican. Rural hospitals in the states without Medicaid expansion -- lots and lots of them -- have either closed their doors or will be forced to soon. And a whopping three-fourths of such closures have happened in states which have refused to expand Medicaid. If a hospital in a big city shuts down, it's an inconvenience to the people who live there -- but it doesn't mean they still won't have another hospital to go to in an emergency. But in rural areas that's just not true. When the local hospital shuts its doors there is no other option for the people who live there. The only other option is to drive -- sometimes for hours to get to the next-nearest hospital. Republicans are forcing their own base voters into dangerous 'healthcare deserts' by their stubborn refusal to join a program that is working in four-fifths of the states already. Because they just don't care, they'd rather be ideologically pure than keep rural hospitals open."



$35 a month for insulin

Since this is the poster child item, use it!

"Joe Biden tried to make insulin available to every patient who needs it without forcing them to break the bank to buy this life-saving medicine. He proposed a $35-a-month cap on out-of-pocket insulin prices, but so far has only achieved this goal for seniors. But now one of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations -- Eli Lilly -- has announced that it will now be dropping its prices on insulin by a whopping 70 percent. This is the power of the federal government to rein in out-of-control drug companies, folks. Eli Lilly could see the writing on the wall and knew that its days of extortionate prices that just ripped American consumers off was coming to an end one way or another. So they decided to get out in front of it. Democrats have also managed to allow Medicare to -- for the first time! -- negotiate with the drug companies to get other outrageously-priced prescription drugs down to Earth. This saves the government lots of money but the Republicans want to overturn it anyway. Don't believe them when they say how concerned about the budget they are because when it comes to lowering the deficit versus allowing Big Pharma to keep ripping people off, they've already shown which side they're really on."



Show me yours!

This should be the overall challenge to the Republicans, to point out their inability to agree on much of anything.

"Joe Biden will soon be releasing his budget proposal. When will House Republicans -- or any Republicans for that matter -- be releasing theirs? What will they be fighting hard to do? What federal services are they going to slash to the bone or even try to eliminate? The American people deserve a real debate, but they're not going to get one while Republicans keep refusing to put their own cards on the table. It's time to put up or shut up, folks. Joe Biden will make his spending priorities clear. Until the Republicans do the same, no one should listen to any of their complaints at all. Because the general rule of thumb when it comes to budgets is when politicians don't want to talk about their proposals, it's going to wind up being really, really bad for a whole lot of people out there."



96 percent of extremist murders

This needs pointing out in a big way.

"Most Americans have no clear picture of political extremism in America, and that probably includes most law enforcement professionals as well. There's a reason, to put this another way, that the police and the F.B.I. refused to take the threat of right-wing violence on January 6th as seriously as was necessary. A lot of people seem to think that both sides of the political divide are somehow equally guilty of deadly political violence, but this is far from being true. Over the past decade, here is the true divide: of the incidents where political extremists killed someone, a whopping 96 percent of them were committed by violent right-wing extremists. Of the murders committed by right- and left-wing extremists, a similar 95 percent of them came from the right. In the past five years, there have been precisely three deaths linked to left-wing extremists. During the same period there were 176 murders caused by right-wing extremists. The scope of the problem is clear, and it is nowhere near 'both sides do it equally.' The real threat is coming almost exclusively from one direction. More people should be aware of this."



Not necessary? Really?

More rights Republicans think need to be taken away.

"Remember when the Respect For Marriage Act passed to codify gay marriage into federal law? Remember how there were a whole bunch of Republicans who swore up and down that it just simply was not necessary -- because no state would ever even consider outlawing gay marriages anymore? Well, it turns out it was actually necessary because, yeah, Republicans are still trying to strip rights from people in a big way. Iowa Republicans are now trying to change their state constitution to ban gay people from getting married. Here's their proposed text, which is pretty plain: 'In accordance with the laws of nature and nature's God, the state of Iowa recognizes the definition of marriage to be the solemnized union between one human biological male and one human biological female.' So it looks like abortion's not the only human right that Republicans have their sights set on, folks. And please take with a large grain of salt any Republican who tells you otherwise when Democrats try to protect such rights for all Americans everywhere."



What a drag

Of course, most Republicans have moved on, even the total hypocrites among them.

"The big Republican boogeyman now, however, is not gay marriage but rather drag shows. Look for a whole bunch of fearmongering over the issue in the next few years, as Republicans run exactly the same playbook that used to work so well for them in scaremongering the voters over gay people. But this week, interestingly enough, two Republicans were exposed for being gigantic hypocrites over the issue. Tennessee's governor just got a bill to sign from his state's legislature which would make it illegal for any minor to see any public performance in drag. Funny thing, though, Bill Lee was photographed for his high school yearbook in drag -- wearing a short skirt and sweater. Which, being in the yearbook and all, was seen by all the minors at his high school. Which didn't seem to be any sort of problem for him back then. And he's not the only blatant hypocrite either -- a Texas state lawmaker who authored a similar bill appeared in a school video playfully running around outside in a dress as well. So it was OK for them to appear in drag in front of children back then, but suddenly now it's the biggest boogeyman imaginable? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

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1. K&R nt

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2. K&R for visibility.