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ancianita

ancianita's Journal
ancianita's Journal
October 14, 2020

The Sheldon Whitehouse Juggernaut Day 3

A full transcript will be added when available.
But today's questions are too important to not know about.

One more thing.
After this is all over, if there are enough Democrats in the Senate to keep a majority,
I seriously, passionately, want Sheldon Whitehouse nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court.

October 14, 2020

The Sheldon Whitehouse Juggernaut Day 2 -- Full Transcript

One for the books.




Thank you, Chairman, Judge Barrett. You can take a bit of a breather on your return to the committee, because what I want to do is go through with the people who are watching this now the conversation that you and I had when we spoke on the telephone. You were kind enough to hear out a presentation that I made, and I intend to ask some questions in that area, but it doesn’t make sense to ask questions if I haven’t laid the predicate, particularly for viewers who are watching this.

So, I guess the reason that I want to do this is because people who are watching this need to understand that this small hearing room and the little TV box that you are looking at, the little screen that you are looking at, are a little bit like the frame of a puppet theater, and if you only look at what’s going on in the puppet theater you’re not going to understand the whole story. You are not going to understand the real dynamic what is going on here, and you are certainly not going to understand forces outside of this room who are pulling strings and pushing sticks and causing the puppet theater to react.

So first, let me say, why do I think outside forces are here pulling strings? Well, part of it is behavior. We have colleagues here who supported you, this nominee, before there was a nominee. That’s a little unusual.

We have the political ram job that we have already complained of driving this process through at breakneck speed in the middle of a pandemic while the Senate is closed for safety reasons and while we are doing nothing about the COVID epidemic around us. We have some very awkward 180s from colleagues. Mr. Chairman, you figure in this. Our leader said back when it was Garland versus Gorsuch, that of course, of course, the American people should have a say in the Court’s direction. Of course, of course, said Mitch McConnell. That’s long gone.

Senator Grassley said the American people shouldn’t be denied a voice. That’s long gone. Senator Cruz said you don’t do this in an election year. That’s long gone. And our chairman made his famous hold-the-tape promise if an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term we’ll wait until the next election. That’s gone too.

So there is a lot of hard-to-explain hypocrisy and rush taking place right now, and my experience around politics is that when you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows. Now people say well, what does all this matter? This is a political parlor game; it’s no big deal. Well, there are some pretty high stakes here that we have been talking about here on our side, and I will tell you three of them right here.

Roe v. Wade, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases. Here’s the GOP platform, the Republican platform, the platform of my colleagues on the other side of this aisle say that a Republican president will appoint judges who will reverse Roe, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases. So if you have a family member with an interest in some autonomy over their body under Roe v. Wade, the ability to have a marriage, have friends marry, have a niece or a daughter or a son marry someone of their same-sex they have – you’ve got a stake, and if you are one of the millions and millions of Americans who depend on the affordable care act you’ve got a stake.

It’s not just the platform. Over and over again, let’s start by talking about the Affordable Care Act. Here is the president talking about this litigation that we are gearing up this nominee for for November 10. In this litigation, he said we want to terminate healthcare under Obamacare.

That is the president’s statement, so when we react to that, don’t act as if we are making this stuff up. This is what President Trump said. This is what your party platform says: reverse the Obamacare cases. Senator after senator, including many in this committee, filed briefs saying that the Affordable Care Act should be thrown out by courts. Why is it surprising for us to be concerned that you want this nominee to do what you want nominees to do?

One quick stop on NFIB v. Sebelius, because a lot of this has to do with money. This is an interesting comparison. National Federation of Independent Businesses, until it filed the NFIB v. Sebelius case, had its biggest donation ever of $21,000. In the year that it went to work on the Affordable Care Act, ten wealthy donors gave $10 million. Somebody deserves a thank you.

So let’s go on to Roe v. Wade.
Same thing. Same thing. The president has said that reversing Roe v. Wade will happen automatically because he is putting pro-life justices on the Court. Why would we not take him at his word? The Republican Party platform says it will reverse Roe. Why would we not comment on that and take you at your word?

Senators here, including Senator Hawley, have said I will vote only for nominees who acknowledge that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided, and their pledge to vote for this nominee. Do the math. That’s a really simple equation to run.

The Republican brief in June Medical said Roe should be overruled, so don’t act surprised when we ask questions about whether that’s what you are up to here. And finally, out in the ad world that you have spared yourself wisely Judge Barrett, the Susan B Anthony Foundation is running advertisements right now saying that you are set, you are set to give our pro-life country a Court that it deserves.

Here is the ad with the voiceover. She said – she said. And then Roe, Obamacare cases and Obergefell, gay marriages. National Organization for Marriage, the big group that opposes same-sex marriage, says in this proceeding, all our issues are at stake. The Republican platform says it wants to reverse Obergefell. And the Republican brief filed in the case said same-sex relationships don’t fall within any constitutional protection, so when we say the stakes are high on this, it’s because you have said the stakes are high on this. You have said that is what you want to do. So how are people going about doing it? What is the scheme here?

Let me start with this one. In all cases, there’s big anonymous money behind various lanes of activity. One lane of activity is through the conduit of the Federalist Society. It is managed by a guy – was managed by – a guy named Leonard Leo, and it has taken over the selection of judicial nominees. How do we know that to be the case? Because Trump has said so over and over again. His White House counsel said so. So we have an anonymously funded group controlling judicial selection run by this guy Leonard Leo.

Then in another lane, we have again anonymous funders running through something called the Judicial Crisis Network, which is run by Carrie Severino, and it is doing PR and campaign ads for Republican judicial nominees. It got $17 million – a single $17 million donation in the Garland-Gorsuch contest. It got another single $17 million donation to support Kavanaugh. Somebody, perhaps the same person, spent $35 million to influence the United States Supreme Court. Tell me that’s good.

And then over here you have a whole array of legal groups, also funded by dark money, which have a different role. They bring cases to the Court. They don’t wind their way to the Court, your Honor, they get shoved to the Court to by these legal groups, many of which ask to lose below so they can get quickly to the Court to get their business done there. And then they turn up in a chorus, an orchestrated chorus of amici.

Now I’ve had a chance to have a look at this. And I was in a case, actually, as an amicus myself, the Consumer Financial Protection Board case. And in that case there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 amicus briefs filed, and every single one of them was a group funded by something called DonorsTrust.

DonorsTrust is a gigantic identity-scrubbing device for the right wing so that it says DonorsTrust is the donor without whoever the real donor is. It doesn’t have a business. It doesn’t have a business plan. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just an identity scrubber.

And this group here, the Bradley Foundation, funded eight out of the 11 briefs. That seems weird to me when you have amicus briefs coming in little flotillas that are funded by the same groups but nominally separate in the court.

So I actually attached this to my brief as an appendix. Center for Media and Democracy saw it, and they did better work. They went on to say which foundations funded the brief writers in that CFPB case. Here is the Bradley Foundation for $5.6 million to those groups. Here’s DonorsTrust, $23 million to those brief writing groups. The grand total across all the donor groups was $68 million to the groups that were filing amicus briefs, pretending that they were different groups.

And it’s not just in the Consumer Financial Protection Board case. You might say well that was just a one-off. Here’s Janus, the anti-labor case that had a long trail through the Court, through Friedrichs, and through Knox, and through other decisions.

And SourceWatch and ProPublica did some work about this. Here’s DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. And here’s the Bradley Foundation. And they totaled giving $45 million to the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 groups that filed amicus briefs, pretending to be different groups, and both of the lawyer groups in the case, funded by DonorsTrust, funded by Bradley Foundation in Janus.

This is happening over and over and over again, and it goes beyond just the briefs. It goes beyond just the amicus presentations. The Federalist Society – remember this group that is acting as the conduit and that Donald Trump has said is doing his judicial selection? They’re getting money from the same foundations, from DonorsTrust, $16.7 million and the Bradley Foundation, $1.37 million. From the same group of foundations total, $33 million.

So you can start to look at these, and you can start to tie them together. The legal groups, all the same funders over and over again, bringing the cases and providing us orchestrated, orchestrated chorus of amici. Then the same group also funds the Federalist Society over here. The Washington Post wrote a big expose about this, and that made Leonard Leo a little hot, a little bit like a burned agent. So he had to jump out. And he went off to go do anonymously-funded voter suppression work. Guess who jumped in to take over the selection process in this case for Judge Barrett? Carrie Severino made the hop. So once again, ties right in together.

So, Center for Media and Democracy did a little bit more research. Here’s a Bradley Foundation memo that they’ve published. The Bradley Foundation is reviewing a grant application asking for money for this orchestrated amicus process, and what do they say in the staff recommendation? It is important to orchestrate – their word, not mine – important to orchestrate high-caliber amicus efforts before the Court.

They also note that Bradley has done previous philanthropic investments in the actual underlying legal actions. So Bradley is funding – what do they call – philanthropically investing in, the underlying legal action and then giving money to groups to show up in the orchestrated chorus of amici. That can’t be good.

And it goes on, because they also found this email. This email comes from an individual at the Bradley Foundation, and it asks our friend, Leonard Leo, who used to run the selection process, is there a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to which Bradley could direct any support of the two Supreme Court amicus projects other than DonorsTrust? I don’t know why they wanted to avoid the reliable identity-scrubber DonorsTrust, but for some reason they did.

So Leonard Leo writes back on Federalist Society address – so don’t tell me that it isn’t Federal Society business – on Federalist Society, on his address, he writes back, yes, send it to the Judicial Education Project, which could take and allocate the money. And guess who works for the Judicial Education Project? Carrie Severino, who also helped select this nominee, running the Trump Federalist Society selection process.

So the connections abound. In the Washington Post article, they point out that the Judicial Crisis Network’s office is on the same hallway in the same building as the Federalist Society, and when they sent their reporter to talk to somebody at the Judicial Crisis Network, somebody from the Federalist Society came down to let them up.

This more and more looks like it’s not three schemes, but it’s one scheme with the same funders selecting judges, funding campaigns for the judges, and then showing up in court in these orchestrated amicus flotillas to tell the judges what to do.

On the Judicial Crisis Network, you’ve got the Leonard Leo connection, obviously. She hopped in to take over for him with the Federalist Society. You’ve got the campaigns that I’ve talked about, where they take $17 million contributions. That’s a big check to write, $17 million, to campaign for Supreme Court nominees. No idea who that is or what they got for it. You’ve got briefs that she wrote. The Republican senators filed briefs in that NFIB case signed by Ms. Severino.

The woman who helped choose this nominee has written briefs for Republican senators attacking the ACA. Don’t say the ACA is not an issue here. And by the way, the Judicial Crisis Network funds the Republican attorneys general. It funds RAGA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and it funds individual Republican attorneys general. And guess who the plaintiffs are in the Affordable Care Act case? Republican attorneys general.

Trump joined them because he didn’t want to defend, so he’s in with the Republican attorneys general. But here’s the Judicial Crisis Network campaigning for Supreme Court nominees, writing briefs for senators against the Affordable Care Act, supporting the Republicans who are bringing this case, and leading the selection process for this nominee.

Here is the page off the brief. Here is where they are. Mitch McConnell, and on through the list, Senator Collins, Senator Cornyn, Senator Hoeven, Senator — who’s still here? Marco Rubio. It’s a huge assortment of Republican senators who Carrie Severino wrote a brief for against the Affordable Care Act. So this is a, to me, pretty big deal. I’ve never seen this around any court that I’ve ever been involved with, where there’s this much dark money and this much influence being used.

Here’s how the Washington Post summed it up. This is “a conservative activist behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation’s courts,” and it’s a $250 million dark money operation. $250 million is a lot of money to spend if you’re not getting anything for it. So that raises the question, what are they getting for it?

Well, I showed the slide earlier on the Affordable Care Act. And on Obergefell and on Roe v. Wade, that’s where they lost. But with another judge, that could change. That’s where the contest is. That’s where The Republican Party platform tells us to look at how they want judges to rule, to reverse Roe, to reverse the Obamacare cases, and to reverse Obergefell and take away gay marriage. That is their stated objective and plan. Why not take them at their word?

But there is another piece of it, and that is not what’s ahead of us, but what’s behind us. What’s behind us is now 80 cases, Mr. Chairman, 80 cases under Chief Justice Roberts that have these characteristics. One, they were decided five to four by a bare majority. Two, the five-to-four majority was partisan in the sense that not one Democratic appointee joined the five. I refer to that group as the “Roberts Five.”

It changes a little bit as–with Justice Scalia’s death, for instance – but there’s been a steady “Roberts Five” that has delivered now 80 of these decisions. And the last characteristic of them is that there is an identifiable Republican donor interest in those cases, and in every single case, that donor interest won. It was an 80 to zero, 5 to 4 partisan rout, ransacking.

And it’s important to look at where those cases went, because they’re not about big, public issues like getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, undoing Roe v. Wade, and undoing same sex marriage. They’re about power. And if you look at those 80 decisions, they fall into four categories over and over and over again. One, unlimited and dark money and politics. Citizens United is the famous one, but it’s continued since with McCutcheon and we’ve got one coming up now. Always the five for unlimited money in politics. Never protecting against money dark money in politics, despite the fact that they said it was going to be transparent.

And who wins when you allow unlimited dark money in politics? A very small group. The ones who have unlimited money to spend and a motive to spend it in politics. They win. Everybody else loses. And if you’re looking at who might be behind this, let’s talk about people with unlimited money to spend and a motive to do it. We’ll see how that goes.

Next, knock the civil jury down. Whittle it down to a nub. The civil jury was in the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, in our darn Declaration of Independence, but it’s annoying to big corporate powers because you can swagger your way as a big corporate power through Congress. You can go and tell the president you put money into to elect what to do. He will put your stooges at the EPA. It’s all great until you get to the civil jury, because they have an obligation, as you know, Judge Barrett, they have an obligation under the law to be fair to both parties irrespective of their size.

You can’t bribe them. You’re not allowed to. It’s a crime to tamper with the jury. It’s standard practice to tamper with Congress. And they make decisions based on the law. If you’re used to being the boss and swaggering your way around the political side, you don’t want to be answerable before a jury. And so one after another, these 80 5-to-4 decisions have knocked down, whittled away at, the civil jury, a great American institution.

Third – first was unlimited dark money, second was demean and diminish the civil jury – third is weaken regulatory agencies. A lot of this money, I’m convinced, is polluter money. The Koch Industries is a polluter, the fossil fuel industry is a polluter. Who else would be putting buckets of money into this and wanting to hide who they are behind DonorsTrust or other schemes?

And what are – if you’re a big polluter – what do you want? You want weak regulatory agencies. You want ones that you can box up and run over to Congress and get your friends to fix things for you in Congress. Over and over and over again, these decisions are targeted at regulatory agencies to weaken their independence and weaken their strength. And if you’re a big polluter, a weak regulatory agency is your idea of a good day.

And the last thing is in politics. In voting. Why on earth the Court made the decision, a factual decision – not something appellate courts are ordinarily supposed to make, as I understand it Judge Barrett – the factual decision that nobody needed to worry about minority voters in preclearance states being discriminated against, or that legislators would try to knock back their ability to vote. These five made that finding in Shelby County against bipartisan legislation from both houses of Congress, hugely passed, on no factual record.

They just decided that that was a problem that was over, on no record with no basis, because it got them to the result that we then saw. What followed? State after state after state passed voter suppression laws. One so badly targeting African Americans that two courts said it was surgically, surgically tailored to get after minority voters.

And gerrymandering, the other great control. Bulk gerrymandering where you go into a state, like the Red Map project did in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and you pack Democrats so tightly into a few districts that all the others become Republican majority districts. And in those states, you send a delegation to Congress that has a huge majority of Republican members, like 13 to 5, as I recall, in a state where the five, the party of the five actually won the popular vote.

You’ve sent a delegation to Congress that is out of step with the popular vote of that state and court after court figured out how to solve that, and the Supreme Court said nope. 5 to 4 again. Nope. We’re not going to take an interest in that question. In all these areas where it’s about political power for big special interests, and people who want to fund campaigns, and people who want to get their way through politics without actually showing up, doing it behind DonorsTrust and other groups, doing it through these schemes over and over and over again, you see the same thing.

80 decisions, Judge Barrett. 80 decisions. An 80-to-0 sweep. I don’t think you’ve tried cases, but some cases, the issue is bias and discrimination. And if you’re making a bias case as a trial lawyer – Lindsey Graham is a hell of a good trial lawyer. If he wanted to make a bias case – Dick Durbin is a hell of a good trial lawyer. If they wanted to make a bias case and they could show an 80-to-0 pattern, A, that’s admissible, and B, I’d love to make that argument to the jury. I’d be really hard pressed to be the lawyer saying no, 80-to-0 is just a bunch of flukes.

All five-four. all partisan, all this way. So something is not right around the Court. And dark money has a lot to do with it. Special interests have a lot to do with it. DonorsTrust and whoever is hiding behind DonorsTrust has a lot to do with it, and the Bradley Foundation orchestrating its amici over at the Court has a lot to do with it.

So I thank you, Judge Barrett, for listening to me now a second time and I think this gives you a chance for you and I to tee up an interesting conversation tomorrow. And I thank my colleagues for hearing me out




October 14, 2020

Speaker Pelosi's Statement on Supreme Court Ruling Ending Census Early

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/101320-1?fbclid=IwAR0hvG2bOoh5Y276h_-yhPeh03kedxT9PKd1jixEuX57Nn3EWFHu25Xvrwg

The Supreme Court’s decision to enable the President’s shameful campaign to curtail the Census is regrettable and disappointing. The President’s attack on the Census count and his refusal to provide time beyond December 31 for submission of the Census report clearly violate the Constitutional mandate enshrined by our Founders for a fair and accurate Census. Further, the President’s actions threaten to politically and financially exclude many in America’s most vulnerable communities from our democracy.

“The Trump effort to end the Census early has been resoundingly rejected by experts, including in the Government Accountability Office, Commerce Department Inspector General and Census Scientific Advisory Committee, who all warn that the accelerated schedule will result in an inaccurate Census that will deny vulnerable communities the representation and funds they are entitled to. Specifically, the Census Bureau officials have stated that curtailing the Census is ‘ludicrous’ and will result in ‘fatal data flaws that are unacceptable for a constitutionally mandated national activity.’

“The House of Representatives will continue to fight in the Courts and in the Congress to ensure that every person has a say in our American Democracy, and to ensure a fair and accurate Census as the Constitution and our American ideals demand.


October 13, 2020

The Sheldon Whitehouse Juggernaut Day 1 -- Transcript

Start 0:40




Chairman, Judge Barrett....

America’s worried about one thing above all else right now, and it’s our health. This hearing itself is a microcosm of Trump’s dangerous ineptitude in dealing with the COVID pandemic. Trump can’t even keep the White House safe. Here, it’s the Chairman’s job to see to the committee’s safety. And though his words were reassuring, I don’t know who has been tested, who should be tested, who was a danger, what contact tracing has been done on infected and exposed senators and staff. Nothing. The whole thing, just like Trump, is an irresponsible botch.

The irony is that this slapdash hearing targets the Affordable Care Act. This Supreme Court nominee has signaled in the judicial equivalent of all caps that she believes the Affordable Care Act must go and that the precedent protecting the ACA doesn’t matter. The big secretive influences behind this unseemly rush see this nominee as a judicial torpedo they are firing at the ACA.

So I hope Republicans consider what’s at stake for the many people who depend right now in this pandemic on ACA health coverage. Rhode Islanders are calling, writing, emailing, tweeting me by the thousands asking me to say no to this nominee, mostly because they too see her as a judicial torpedo aimed at their essential protections. And my constituents want you, my colleagues, members of the Republican party, to stand up for once to Mitch McConnell and to the big donors who are driving this process, and for the sake of regular people say stop.

Here’s one person to consider, Laura, from North Smithfield, Rhode Island. Laura’s brother saved her life when he donated one of his kidneys to her. The hereditary nephritis Laura battled was a pre-existing condition protected under the ACA, just like COVID is now a preexisting condition for nearly 8 million Americans. Laura tells me without the ACA and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions, “Insurance premiums, if I’m able to get insurance at all, will be financially out of reach for me and I will no longer be able to afford the health monitoring, labs, specialists appointments and treatment that are essential for my kidney to function. My immuno suppressive medications alone would cost about $48,000 annually. Before the ACA patients like me experienced times when they would come up against a life-threatening wall, not in treatment, but in the annual or lifetime caps on coverage insurers were allowed to impose. I can’t imagine what this would have meant for me, bankruptcy or worse.”

Laura’s not alone. We’re in the midst of a relentless deadly health crisis that Trump has botched, which touches nearly everyone in this country, Americans are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Our economy is down 10 million jobs. Despite all the warnings and all the desperate pleas for help, people on the frontline, healthcare workers, teachers, first responders, police officers, countless others still struggle for the resources they need. More and more small businesses are closing for good. Many hospitals teeter at the edge of insolvency, Rhode Island, like so many other states, faces cruel fiscal challenges brought on by this pandemic.

Since May, the House has passed two major COVID relief bills to tackle unemployment insurance, aid to the front lines, help to small business, support for hospitals, support for states and localities, and plenty more. Mitch McConnell’s Senate Republicans won’t budge. ” No urgency,” he said, but 80 minutes after we learned of Justice Ginsburg’s death, Mitch McConnell signaled he would fill this vacancy. The White House chose a replacement three days later. Justice Ginsburg hadn’t been buried when the President and Senate Republicans celebrated Judge Barrett’s nomination at the White House super spreader event.

This was a hypocritical tire squealing 180 for many Republican colleagues. When they blocked Merrick Garland, we heard nonstop about the importance before an election of the American people weighing in at the ballot box, nonstop that you shouldn’t have a nominee appointed to the court after the primary season had begun. Well now, with Americans voting right now in the general election, we get this mad slap dash rush. Why?

Look at the Supreme Court calendar. Exactly one week after the election on November 10th, the Supreme Court is going to hear California v. Texas, a constitutional challenge to the ACA. It survived its last challenge by one vote. If the new challenge succeeds with a new justice, the case will tear out the ACA. The law on which over 20 million Americans rely for health insurance, through which 17 million Americans access Medicaid coverage, under which 129 million Americans get preexisting conditions covered, under which millions of seniors enjoy lower drug costs, gone.

And make no mistake, this nominee signals on the ACA and on respect for the ACA precedent are clear, clear enough to move her to the top of the big donors list. Just three years ago, she wrote that Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute. In 2013, she wrote that stare decisis is not a hard and fast rule in the court’s constitutional cases, the ACA being a constitutional case, clear signals that are likely to why she’s before this committee now.

So back to Laura. With stories like Laura’s coming in from around the country, why would we rush forward? Well, the answer isn’t pretty. There’s a promise to big donors that must be kept. When David Koch ran for vice president, he campaigned on getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid. Imagine his fury when Obamacare passed? His groups are spending millions right now on this nomination.

Republicans in Congress tried and failed to repeal the ACA more than 70 times. It’s in the Republican party platform for justices to reverse the ACA decision. Trump has over and over said this is his reason. And now, we’re in this mad rush to meet the November 10th argument deadline, and colleagues pretend this isn’t about the ACA. Right.

The travel of the ACA case leads to one senator’s doorstep. In a Politico article yesterday, the senior senator from Texas tried to say that this rush process isn’t targeting the ACA. But look at the record. The district judge in Texas who struck down the ACA in the case now headed for the court is a former aide to this senator, who’s become what the Texas Tribune calls the favorite for Texas Republicans seeking big judicial wins like torpedo in the ACA. The senior senator from Texas introduced in committee the circuit court judge who wrote the decision on appeal striking down the ACA.

Senator Cornyn has filed brief after brief arguing for striking down the ACA. He led the failed Senate charge to repeal the ACA in 2017. He said, “I’ve introduced and co-sponsored 27 bills to repeal or defund Obamacare and voted to do so at every opportunity.” And now, talking about socialized medicine, the old Republican battle cry against Medicare, Senator Cornyn and all of our colleagues on this committee are pushing to get this nominee on by November 10th, the time needed to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Please don’t tell us this isn’t about the Affordable Care Act. From Cornyn judge to Cornyn judge to this nominee, hop hop hop. When Texans lose their ACA healthcare protections, hop, hop, hop to see who’s doorstep that sits on.

Lost in this hypocritical rush is the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Let me close by remembering her for a minute in this unseemly charade. She fought for equality, equity and dignity. She forged a path for women in the law, to Harvard Law school, to the pinnacle of legal academia, to the apex of legal advocacy and onto the Supreme Court where she defended women’s reproductive rights, Gonzales v. Carhart, the rights of workers, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber, voting rights, Shelby County v. Holder, the rights of immigrants, Homeland Security v. Regions, and countless other freedoms in her work.

She bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice for all Americans. How fitting that she should be the first woman to lie in state in our United States’ capital.

As to this charade, big donors may love it, but Americans see what’s going on. They see this ugly hasty hypocritical power grab and they know what it means for their healthcare in the midst of a pandemic. For Republicans, there is no washing your hands of responsibility for the results that your President has told us will ensue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

October 12, 2020

We Are Coming For You

October 11, 2020

Show Them The Way




October 10, 2020

Real Time with Bill Maher October 9 2020 Full Episode

His best thinking self with Schiff, panel, Brennan, Covid and his New Rule bring his historical best back.





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