#rep. Carolyn B. Maloney

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former President Donald J. Trump and his family, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, forcing a federal agency to pay well above government rates.

The Committee released Secret Service records showing more than $1.4 million in payments by the Department to Trump properties since Mr. Trump took office in 2017. The Committee said that the accounting was incomplete, however, because it did not include payments to Mr. Trump’s foreign properties — where agents accompanied his family repeatedly — and because the records stopped in September 2021.

The records the panel obtained provided new details about an arrangement in which Mr. Trump and his family effectively turned the Secret Service into a captive customer of their business — by visiting their properties hundreds of times, and then charging the government rates far above its usual spending limits.

The records also make clear that Mr. Trump’s son Eric — who ran the family business while his father was in office — provided a misleading account of what his company was charging.

In 2019, Eric Trump said the Trump Organization charged the government only “like $50” for hotel rooms during presidential visits.

Instead, records obtained by the Committee showed, the Trump International Hotel in Washington repeatedly charged the Secret Service rates more than $600 per night. In one case, the hotel charged the Secret Service $1,160 a night for a room used while protecting Eric Trump in 2017. That was more than four times higher than the government’s usual spending limit for Washington hotels — but Secret Service officials approved the expense, according to the records.

The same year, the documents showed, Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington charged the service $1,185 for a room used while guarding Donald Trump Jr.

“Per diem rates could not be obtained,” a Secret Service record said, referring to the government’s official maximum rate. By law, the department is allowed to exceed those maximum payments when its protective mission requires the additional cost.

Previously, the highest rate that the Trump Organization was known to have charged the government for a hotel room was $650 per night, for rooms at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

“What gets me is, over and over again, how they just lie about this stuff,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the Chairwoman of the Oversight Committee. “Documents don’t lie.”

On Monday, Eric Trump issued a statement saying that the Trump Organization “would have been substantially better off if hospitality services were sold to full-paying guests.” He did not address the discrepancy between the rates he claimed the company had charged and the rates shown in the record.

In an interview, Ms. Maloney said the documents made clear that Mr. Trump was taking advantage of taxpayers by effectively requiring Secret Service agents to stay at properties he owned, and then billing the government exorbitant charges.

“This raises concerns that the Trump Organization was profiting off the presidency,” Ms. Maloney said. “It’s excessive.”

She said the Committee would continue to investigate how Mr. Trump’s businesses leveraged the presidency to his financial advantage, particularly regarding connections to foreign governments.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Ms. Maloney said.

While Mr. Trump was in office, his hotels were visited repeatedly by people seeking to influence his administration, including foreign leaders, embassies and telecom executives who needed the Justice Department’s approval for a pending merger. Since Mr. Trump still owned his businesses, he could benefit directly from their patronage.

In the past, Trump Organization representatives have said that the company billed the government “at cost” and could have made more money renting rooms to other guests. The company continued to charge the Secret Service since Mr. Trump left office and began living at his properties full-time.

In 2020, The Washington Post reported that the government had spent more than $2.5 million at Trump properties during his presidency. The payments came from multiple agencies and were largely prompted by Mr. Trump’s travel.

The State Department, for instance, paid the Mar-a-Lago club thousands of dollars for expenses related to Mr. Trump’s summits with foreign leaders there — including charges for flowers, food and even glasses of water.

The White House paid Mar-a-Lago more than $1,000 to cover 54 alcoholic drinks consumed by Trump aides in a private bar, as first reported by ProPublica.

And the Secret Service paid Mr. Trump’s company to follow his family to properties around the country and the world. Many of those charges were related to the former president’s visits to Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. — where the Secret Service paid the Trump Organization $17,000 per month, an unusually high rent for that area, to use a “cottage” on the grounds of the golf club.

The Secret Service also paid the Trump Organization for rooms it used while protecting top administration officials — including Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin — during their stays at Trump properties.

The records obtained by the Oversight Committee show that the Secret Service has made at least 669 payments to Mr. Trump’s company, Ms. Maloney said on Monday in a public letter to Kimberly A. Cheatle, the agency’s director.

The Secret Service issued a written statement saying only that it would respond to the Committee’s requests for more information but did not provide any additional details.

Mr. Trump continued to own his businesses throughout his presidency, though he said he had given day-to-day management to his adult sons. The Trump Organization’s charges did not violate the law, ethics experts said, since presidents are largely exempt from conflict-of-interest laws that apply to other federal officials.

#us politics #news #donald trump #trump administration #trump organization #eric trump #Secret Service #house oversight committee #rep. Carolyn B. Maloney #trump international hotel #The Washington Post #department of state #ProPublica #Trump National Golf Club #mike pence #steve mnuchin #Kimberly A. Cheatle #2022

[posttexasstressdisorder]

A pair of key congressional Democrats called on Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside from his office’s investigation into the Secret Service on Tuesday, saying the Trump appointee knew earlier than has been reported that the agency deleted text messages from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who heads the House committee that oversees inspectors general, and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Jan. 6 committee and the Homeland Security Committee, said the inspector general’s office admitted in congressional briefings that it became aware that agents’ text messages were erased in December 2021 — two months earlier than reported. But Cuffari did not report that to Congress until this month. The lawmakers said these and other omissions have broken their faith in Cuffari’s ability to lead the investigation, and they urged the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent entity in the executive branch, to appoint another inspector general to handle the Secret Service probe.

“Due to the nature and importance of this investigation, there must be no doubt that the Inspector General leading this investigation can conduct it thoroughly and with integrity, objectivity, and independence,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “We do not have confidence that Inspector General Cuffari can achieve those standards.” Cuffari and the council did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter, which was sent to Cuffari and to Allison Lerner, the council’s chair. The lawmakers asked for a response by Aug. 9. Watchdog launches criminal probe over missing Secret Service messages The letter comes days after Cuffari opened a criminal investigation into the Secret Service’s allegedly missing texts, halting the agency’s efforts to retrieve the records itself in response to a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.

Cuffari sent a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees this month accusing the agency of erasing text messages from the time around the assault on the Capitol and after he had asked for them for his own investigation.

The Secret Service said that any “insinuation” that they maliciously deleted text messages is false and that the deletions were part of a preplanned “system migration” of its phones. They said none of the texts Cuffari’s office was seeking had disappeared. In their letter, Thompson and Maloney also faulted the Secret Service for deleting messages that could offer eyewitness accounts of the Capitol attack and the actions of President Donald Trump, whose supporters raided the building in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying election results.

The lawmakers said several House committees investigating the attack had sought records from DHS and other agencies 10 days later. Since they protect the president and vice president and other top officials, the Secret Service records could offer a close accounting of their actions that day.

“Despite the legal obligation to preserve these records, the Secret Service reportedly undertook a system migration process on January 27, 2021, that caused the erasure of text messages related to January 6,” the lawmakers wrote. Cuffari’s office also requested records from the Secret Service on Feb. 26, 2021, for its own investigation into the Capitol attack. But the lawmakers said in the letter that he did not tell them that he had trouble getting the Secret Service’s text messages in his semiannual reports to Congress and considered issuing an alert that would have warned them and the public about the missing information, but decided that “this warning was unnecessary.”

Cuffari also did not alert the agency head, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, of the problem, as required under the Inspector General Act of 1978, which triggers a requirement that the agency head notify congressional committees.

“The DHS IG’s failure to promptly report and escalate the Secret Service’s stonewalling calls into question whether Inspector General Cuffari has the professional judgment and capacity to effectively fulfill his duties in this investigation,” the lawmakers wrote. They said their call for Cuffari to step aside follows a string of concerns about the pace and content of his past investigations and said inspectors general have stepped aside before when concerns have surfaced about their independence.

In January 2021, the council identified another inspector general to investigate the unauthorized disclosure of information from a draft Justice Department OIG report on the Trump administration’s child separation policy. And in 2020, the State Department’s acting inspector general recused himself from investigations into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, and others raised concerns about the acting inspector general.

Watchdog launches criminal probe over missing Secret Service messages Secret Service agents, who protect the president, the vice president and other top officials and their families, would have had a “front-row seat” to Trump’s actions as his supporters sacked the Capitol, said Donald K. Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog.

The watchdog organization called on the Justice Department and the FBI to open a criminal investigation into the missing text messages on July 18. “The Federal Records Act requires that agencies like the Secret Service preserve records so that there is a complete and accurate history of the government’s actions and decisions,” Sherman said in a statement, and anyone who willfully destroys them could face prison time and fines. Sherman said the Secret Service’s text messages could offer a window into the critical hours involving the attack, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the Jan. 6 committee that she was told that Trump lunged at his lead Secret Service agent after being told he could not join his supporters at the Capitol.

The messages could also document the frantic moments as the Secret Service swept Pence to safety and he then refused to let them drive him away so that he could finish certifying the election results. The National Archives and Records Administration asked the Secret Service to respond to reports about the missing text messages. Officials said Monday that “as a general rule,” NARA puts its inquiries on hold until an agency’s internal probes are complete.

[roosevelthouseppi]

Ms. Magazine Brings its Fight for the ERA to Roosevelt House

Below is the full story “Ms. Magazine Has Been Fighting for the ERA Since Its Inception” by Max Fallon-Goodwin published in Ms. Magazine on September 22, 2023. Ms. Magazine Has Been Fighting for the ERA Since Its Inception Hunter students Gretchen Wulfmeyer and Tabia Ahmed; Rep. Gloria Johnson; Sign4ERA petition leader Bella Ramirez; Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney; Feminist Majority president Eleanor…

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[abcnewspr]

HIGHLIGHTS FOR ABC NEWS’ ‘GMA3: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW,’ JULY 25-29

The following report highlights the programming of ABC’s “GMA3: What You Need to Know” during the week of July 25-29. “GMA3: What You Need to Know” is a one-hour program co-anchored by Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, with Dr. Jennifer Ashton as chief medical correspondent. The news program airs weekdays at 1:00 p.m. EDT | 12:00 p.m. CDT on ABC, and 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. EDT on ABC News Live.

Highlights of the week include the following:

Monday, July 25 — Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, New York; “GMA3”’s Eat Like a Local series kicks off in Atlanta with chef David Rose, TV personality Kandi Burrus and rapper Jermaine Dupri; actor Corbin Bleu (“High School Musical”); Disney cruise surprise

Tuesday, July 26 — Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY); “GMA3”’s Eat Like a Local series continues in Houston with chef Dawn Burrell, rapper Bun B and KTRK's Chauncy Glover; actress Sofia Carson (“Purple Hearts”); La Fête du Rosé founder Donae Burston

Wednesday, July 27 —Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA); “GMA3”’s Eat Like a Local series continues from Miami with chef Lorena Garcia, NBA player Udonis Haslem and singer Gloria Estefan; actress Sarah Drew (“Amber Brown”); Deals and Steals with ABC e-commerce editor Tory Johnson

Thursday, July 28 — Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steven Dettelbach; Podcast of the Month series with Malcom Gladwell (“Revisionist History”); “GMA3”’s Eat Like a Local series continues in Philadelphia with chef Mike Solomonov and former NFL player Torrey Smith; actress Tisha Campbell (“Uncoupled”)

Friday, July 29 — Former Mayor Adam Graham of The Village, Oklahoma; San Jose Sharks manager Mike Grier on being the first Black general manager in NHL history; Faith Friday with Pastor Joel Osteen; “GMA3”’s Eat Like a Local series finale from New York with former NFL player Tiki Barber and chef Gina Neely; Broadway star Nkeki Obi-Melekwe (“Tina”)

ABC Media Relations Denise Horn [email protected]

-- ABC --

[trumpdispatch]

Pro-Abortionists Speak at the Oversight and Reform Committee

Pro-Abortionists Speak at the Oversight and Reform Committee

Contains Opinion of the Writer Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Representative for New York’s 12th district. Press release by Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, held a hearing on September 30 regarding pro-life actions from states such as Texas. See the Texas Senate Bill 8 (S.B. 8)  If the Supreme Court votes in favor of the…

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#abortion #Ayanna Pressley #Carolyn B. Maloney #Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi #Hearings #Mississippi #Oversight and Reform #pro-abortions #pro-life #Rep. Andy Biggs #Roe vs. Wade #Texas #Trigger Laws #unborn children

[redgoldsparks]

THE USPS IS UNDER ATTACK compiled by Maia Kobabe

full text and sources under the cut

On Thursday 8/13/2020 Trump said he opposes funding for the U.S. Postal Service and election security grants in an effort to stymie mail-in voting for the upcoming presidential election.  (source) 

Trump's appointee for Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, began on June 15 2020. DeJoy has donated more than $2 million to the Trump campaign or Republican causes since 2016, and chaired the finance committee for the 2020 GOP convention.  (source)

DeJoy and his wife Aldona Wos reported between at least $30 million to just over $75 million in assets from USPS competitors, including UPS, XPO Logistics, and the freight shipping company J.B. Hunt. (source)

DeJoy's reorganization of USPS leadership included firing and reassigning somewhere between 20-30 agency veterans in key operational roles. Since his start, the USPS has implemented a hiring freeze and asked for voluntary early retirements. He has drastically reduced overtime and banned extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery, leading to slowdowns in mail delivery.  (source) 

Under DeJoy, the USPS plans to decommission 10% of its mail sorting machines, which workers say could hinder processing of election mail. These 671 machines, most from high-population areas, have the capacity to sort 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. (source)

DeJoy justified these changes by claiming they will cut costs. But the major reason for the USPS's debt is a bill passed by a GOP controlled Congress in 2006 which forces it to set aside $5 billion annually to prepay healthcare and retirement funds 75 YEARS into the future, a burden placed on no other federal agency.  (source)

The National Association of Letter Carriers union has filed a national grievance, an unusual move, against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, saying he did not consult the relevant unions and members of Congress before implementing these changes.  (source) 

H.R.2382 – the USPS Fairness Act, which would repeal the 2006 prefund mandate, passed the House on 2/5/2020. H.R.6800 - The Heroes Act, which included money for the USPS and general Covid relief, passed on 5/15/2020. Both bills have stalled in the Republican controlled Senate. PLEASE CALL your Senators in support of both of these bills!  

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) introduced the Delivering For America Act to the House on 8/11/2020. This bill would prohibit the USPS from implementing any changes to the operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020, until the COVID-19 pandemic has ended. This is a very small-scale spot-gap measure, but please call your House Representatives about it anyway. 

"Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus." -President Obama in a tweet on 8/14/2020

#USPS #save the USPS #save the united states postal service #us politics #please make calls

[progressivefriends]

“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee who took office in June, has detailed changes to the service that include eliminating overtime, even if it means that mail delivery is delayed.

“While these changes in a normal year would be drastic, in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner — an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election,” wrote Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chair of a government operations subcommittee; Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, chair of a national security subcommittee; as well as Representatives Stephen Lynch and Brenda Lawrence.”  

#us #usa #postoffice #general news #americas

[reading-writing-revolution]

#BREAKING 🚨: @OversightDems Chair @RepMaloney has released new documents showing President #Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.

It's critical to the survival of American democracy that we continue to root out every instance and every culprit. We owe it to ourselves and our future and our past to protect the idea that is America.

[partisan-by-default]

“Over the last decade, McKinsey & Company—one of the largest consulting companies in the world and a major U.S. government contractor—has engaged in a pattern of conduct that raises serious concerns about its business practices, conflicts of interest, and management standards,” wrote Chairwoman Maloney. “The company’s support for drug companies pushing addictive opioid painkillers and raising prices for life-saving medications, even as McKinsey also advised the federal agency regulating their conduct, may have had a significant negative impact on Americans’ health. McKinsey’s investments through an internal hedge fund—including in companies benefiting from opioid sales—also raise significant concerns about conflicts of interest.”

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Leading gunmakers made more than $1 billion from selling AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons in the last decade, a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform says.

These companies use "aggressive marketing tactics" to target young men by emphasizing masculinity, making veiled references to white supremacist groups, and touting military-grade weaponry, the Committee report said.

"The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless," Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, committee chairwoman, said in a statement.

Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive who is now a senior policy adviser to gun-safety advocacy group Giffords Law Center, told Insider that it is crucial to examine the ways that gun companies market their weapons.

Busse noted the change in how guns had been pitched over the years – from an emphasis on hunting and self-defense to selling military-grade weapons and tactical culture.

"The [gun] industry is both creating these customers and marketing to them. And therefore, it's propagating more of this radicalization," Ryan Busse said.

Busse, who testified before the House Committee last week, said that the revenue size is not surprising but what is important is "the dangerous ways that AR-15s are intertwined with political radicalization."

The House Committee began its investigation into the top five firearm makers in the country in May following the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, that left 31 victims dead. Both gunmen used legally purchased semiautomatic rifles.

The primary target of gunmakers' advertising, according to Busse, is "this angry, young male, politically active, conservative, aggrieved, dreams of using the AR-15 to 'make things right in the world'."

"In other words– people who also fall right into domestic terror groups and radicalization and everything else."

AN EMPHASIS ON TACTICAL CULTURE, MASCULINITY, AND REFERENCES TO EXTREMIST GROUPS

The Committee report said that in their sales materials, gun manufacturers prey on masculinity by claiming their weapons will put people "at the top of the testosterone food chain."

An example of this is the "Man Card" campaign that AR-15 maker Bushmaster launched in 2010, which marketed its guns to a "Man's Man" in a "world of rapidly depleting testosterone."

Although the campaign ceased after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 where the 20-year-old gunmanwho killed 26, including 20 children aged six and seven, was aremd with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, its successes set an example for other gunmakers to follow, Busse wrote in The Atlantic.

Last year, one gunmaker generated controversy by advertising a miniature AR-15 rifle for kids, called the "JR-15."

Some gunmakers have also appeared to make references to far-right groups.

One example of this political targeting is an AK-47-style pistol, produced by Palmetto State Armory, which is adorned with a pattern resembling the signature Hawaiian shirts worn by the Boogaloo Bois far-right extremist group.

There are approximately 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles in circulation in the US and while the vast majority of gun-owners never use their weapons to harm others, Busse said it's important to recognize the ways that gun marketing plays a role in contributing to radicalization.

Since 2010, gunmakers have increasingly marketed guns as the civilian equivalents of military-grade weapons and emphasized a tactical culture, Busse said.

This emphasis on tactical culture, previously reserved for the military, alludes to "specifically targeting humans, sort of as a life or death situation."

"I'd say maybe even a majority of the guns sold in the United States now are sold and marketed with the idea that the user, the owner, will use them in some sort of tactical operation," Busse said.

GUNMAKERS DEFLECT RESPONSIBILITY

While Democrats have called for greater gun control and to remove protections that make it harder to sue gun companies, Republicans have resisted further regulation.

Republicans on the committee have accused Democrats of blaming the gun industry instead of looking at the causes of violent crime.

"Republicans want to target criminals. Democrats want to target lawful gun owners and take away their guns," Rep. James Comer, the committee's top Republican, said.

Several gun company executives testified before the committee last week and denied responsibility for recent massacres by arguing that firearms are "inanimate."

"These acts are committed by murderers. The murderers are responsible," Marty Daniel, the founder and chief executive of Daniel Defense, told the Committee.

The CEO of Smith & Wesson, the country's second-largest rifle manufacturer, refused to testify. The Committee has subpoenaed the company after it failed to provide requested information on its profits, sales figures, and marketing materials.

"It's no secret why gun CEOs are so desperate to avoid taking responsibility for the deaths caused by their product," Rep. Maloney said, per NBC News.

"It seems to me that if a company really cared that its products were being used to kill scores of Americans, it would stop selling them," Maloney said. "But of course, the gun industry won't do that because they're making lots and lots of money from these weapons."

#us politics #news #business insider #2022 #ar 15 rifle #ar 15s #House Committee on Oversight and Reform #Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney #Ryan Busse #Giffords Law Center #mass shootings #mass shooters #gun violence #Bushmaster #the atlantic #Palmetto State Armory #boogaloo boys #Rep. James Comer #democrats #Republicans #Daniel Defense #Marty Daniel #Smith & Wesson #Instagram #alt right #white supremacists

[posttexasstressdisorder]

[creepingsharia]

Congresswoman Dingell (D-MI) urges Facebook to pro-actively eradicate ‘100% of anti-Muslim content before it is even seen'

In other words, the pro-active enforcement of Islamic sharia law.

Facebook already bans the majority of content that exposes jihad and sharia and FB recently hired a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to its oversight board.

Congresswoman Dingell to Facebook: Eradicate Anti-Muslim Content On Your Platform

WASHINGTON, D.C. December 15, 2020 – Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) today urged immediate action from Facebook to eradicate anti-Muslim bigotry from the platform and demanded Mark Zuckerberg implement six measures to combat bigoted content. In a letter signed by 29 colleagues, Dingell cited instances of anti-Muslim content on Facebook and recent reports showing the role of the platform in inciting violence against the Muslim community.

In her letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Dingell asked for Facebook to implement the following measures:

Form a working group comprised of senior staff focused on anti-Muslim bigotry issues and responsible for coordinating work within the company to address hate groups, tropes, bigoted content, and anti-discrimination training.

Enforce your hate content and hate group policies in a way that ensures militias and white supremacists cannot use your event and group pages to terrorize targeted communities.

Committing to an independent third-party review of the company’s role in enabling anti-Muslim violence, genocide and internment.

Strive towards and commit to a 100 percent proactive detection and removal of anti-Muslim content and all other forms of hate before it is even seen.

Commit to regular anti-discrimination training for your entire staff world-wide

Training key staff on civil rights issues and common words, phrases, tropes or visuals used by hate actors to dehumanize and demonize Muslims.

“We thank Congresswoman Dingell and her colleagues for holding Facebook accountable for the harm it has inflicted on American Muslims here and Muslims abroad,” said Scott Simpson, Public Advocacy Director of Muslim Advocates. “Just last week, we learned that not only did the Christchurch shooter use Facebook to livestream his slaughter, he also was a member of multiple anti-Muslim hate groups on the platform. Anti-Muslim hate has consequences and Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg must finally take action to stop it from proliferating on their platform.”

Dingell’s letter was signed by Debbie Dingell, Rashida Tlaib, André Carson. Carolyn B. Maloney, Ilhan Omar, Jahana Hayes, Max Rose, Barbara Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Bobby L. Rush, Daniel T. Kildee, Jared Huffman, Kathy Castor, Gwen S. Moore, Lauren Underwood, Jan Schakowsky, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, Grace Meng, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Darren Soto, Donald S. Beyer Jr., James P. McGovern, Peter Welch, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Yvette D. Clarke, Raúl M. Grijalva, Earl Blumenauer, and Nydia M. Velázquez. Additionally, her letter has received the support of the following organizations: CODEPINK, Common Defense, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Networks Group, Jetpac, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Justice for Muslims Collective, MomsRising, National Iranian American Council, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project South, ReThinking Foreign Policy, and National Network for Arab American Communities.

To read the full letter, please click here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel Greenfield provides some context:   

30 House Democrats go to war against the First Amendment

   Considering the letter’s call for, "100 percent proactive detection and removal of anti-Muslim content", the safe assumption would be that they want to ban everything critical of Islam.

   That's a disturbing attack on the First Amendment coming from 30 House members.

   Democrats have repeatedly pressured Facebook and other social media companies to remove speech they politically disapprove of, whether by President Trump or other conservatives, eroding the thin line between private companies acting on their own initiative and government officials conspiring to violate the First Amendment by banning certain kinds of political speech.

   After multiple hearings, legal proposals, and legislative threats, it’s no longer possible to view Facebook’s censorship of political speech as anything other than government censorship. When enough pressure by government officials has been applied to a company to censor certain kinds of speech, the company’s decision to censor speech becomes government censorship.

   30 House members would now like Facebook to censor criticism of Islam and political protests against Islamic terrorism. One of the few examples of anti-Muslim content in the House letter was a political protest against the Islamic Society of North America’s 2019 conference.

   That was the conference which included an appearance by two Democrat presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro, whose forum was moderated by Salam Al-Marayati, the head of MPAC, who had defended Hamas and Hezbollah. Also participating in a round table at the conference was Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing, who has defended the Islamic mandate to kill gay people.

   This is the sort of information that AOC, Omar, and 28 other House Democrats, want banned.

   House Democrats trying to shut down protests targeting their own candidates is a blatant violation of the First Amendment which was meant to prevent exactly that kind of thing.

   And the party of social justice wants to stop Americans from protesting against an Imam who says things like, ”Brothers and sisters, you know what the punishment is, if a man is found with another man? The Prophet Mohammad said the one who does it and the one to whom it is done to, kill them both.” What happens when ‘anti-Muslim content’ meets anti-gay content?

   The 30 House Democrats don’t want to talk about any of this which is why their letter doesn’t.

...

   And if that's not enough, there's an independent third-party review of Facebook’s compliance.

   CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood groups would be brought in to define what “anti-Muslim content” is and then senior staff, approved of by CAIR and its allies, would set moderation policies to suppress “tropes” used by “hate actors” like Jihad, Sharia, Taqiyya, and terrorism.

...

The more Democrat officials lay out the kind of censorship they would like internet platforms to perform, the more the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech becomes a dead letter. And this letter, signed by 30 House Democrats, is a new threat to our freedom of speech.

America does not have blasphemy laws. And politicians are not allowed to ban speech they don’t like. The letter to Facebook makes it more urgent than ever that our elected officials find ways to protect the marketplace of ideas from political censorship by Democrats and Facebook.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Spencer concludes:

Rep. Debbie Dingell Demands Facebook Remove Criticism of Islam

...Dingell and her henchmen are demanding that Facebook implement policies that will institutionalize and universalize such fascist hysteria. Even worse, the political climate is so rancid today that

Dingell will pay no political price either for her association with Hamas-linked CAIR or for her open opposition to the freedom of speech

. If she doesn’t know that Hamas-linked CAIR and its allies have for years been demonizing and stigmatizing honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism as “anti-Muslim,” and that her demands will also likely result in the silencing of such discussion, she should know it.

Dingell is actively aiding an endeavor to silence all criticism of Islam, which is all smeared in the same way, and enabling the tacit acceptance of Sharia blasphemy law, which forbids such criticism. She is, in short, the very definition of a useful idiot.

------------------------

Or a traitor failing to uphold her oath to the U.S. Constitution.

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Legal #Law #News #Media #Terror #1A #FreeSpeech #Politics #Religion #Immigration #Life

[deadbilly]

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) were joined by members of the New York City Delegation in requesting that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy include $4 billion in federal assistance for the nonprofit museum industry in the next coronavirus recovery package. New York City is home to more than 100 nonprofit museums.   

Why do New Yorkers think the world revolves around them?

#covid-19

[bigdadskypilot]

Fuck you, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-FL.

Ok. This one is going to take some explanation, but you are educated, so bear with me.

By now everyone knows about The Guardian report on the dismal knowledge of American school children regarding the Holocaust. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study. But why does Vern deserve the fuck you when he voted in favor of the Never Again Education Act to promote Holocaust education? Because he is a pandering shit bag, that’s why,

My wife is Jewish, as are my children according to Jewish law and tradition. I am an atheist born and raised Roman Catholic (which is pretty much why I am an atheist). My wife’s Jewish parents live in Rep. Buchanan’s district in Florida. It is filled with wealthy non-Floridians who moved there to bask in the warm sun and beneficial tax environment, including old Vern.

Now some backstory. In addition to growing up Catholic, I have known and worked with many Christians of other denominations over the past 40 years. Like white people who claim to not be racist, Christians of all denominations hold a special hatred of Jewish people in their hearts. Growing up, all of the Catholics around me spoke derisively about Jews, from hateful jokes to overt anti-Semitism. In college, my first real exposure to non-catholic Christian denominations revealed that this anti-Semitism was not peculiar to my upbringing. This is a one paragraph oversimplification of decades of exposure to anti-Semitism, but in my case, that hatred of Jews was nearly universal among Christians – even those who claimed otherwise. “I have Jewish friends” was as common a phrase as “I have black friends.”

Over 20 years ago when George Bush was running for president, I tried to have a serious conversation with my wife’s family, not so much about Bush himself, but about the ever growing trove of Christians in the Republican Party and in the inner workings of the Bush campaign. Since then, we have seen this Christian influence explode in American politics, but my Jewish family has ignored this because a) they are wealthy and they equate that wealth with being republican; b) they live in a community with a large Jewish population that because of their wealth have been somewhat insulated from overt anti-Semitism; and c) like most people they do not see problems until they are directly affected by them.

As the Guardian article points out, Millennials and Gen-Z have the worst knowledge about the Holocaust. These are the kids who came of age in the time of Bush and the influence of Christians in national education policy. Of course they have not been taught about the Holocaust. This has been by design. It was and is no accident.

So what did Vern do to get me riled up? Well, it’s an election year and the republicans are vulnerable. One of my Jewish family members received an email from Rep. Buchanan linking the Guardian article. Buchanan then claimed it to be a travesty and pointed out that HE voted for the Never Again Education Act to promote Holocaust education, making it look like he is sooooo concerned about this issue. But look deeper.

Everyone voted yes on that bill. To vote no would have been political suicide. The real hero is Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY. She wrote the bill and made it happen. https://maloney.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/senate-unanimously-passes-maloney-holocaust-education-bill. Buchanan, who has a spotty ethics record (at best), has voted in the past to restart a failed religious (Christian) voucher program that was opposed by the ACLU because it infused curriculum with specific Christian religious content. He also voted in favor of legislation (vetoed by president Bush) that overspent what the president requested by $10.2 billion. Those extra billions would have funded a no-strings attached block grant amendment that would have eliminated oversight transparency and permitted failing religious charter schools to conceal substandard educational performance.

Vern Buchanan is a career political hack who has a verifiable record hostile to liberal education that would guarantee curriculum that includes Holocaust history. Vern Buchanan is a Baptist Christian. Vern Buchanan is PANDERING to his wealthy Jewish constituents and making it appear that he cares about Holocaust education and had something to do with the passage of the Never Against Education Act. Vern Buchanan does not care about Jews, the Holocaust, of education. He cares about getting re-elected and will do anything to make that happen, including lying to his Jewish constituents. If that’s not anti-Semitic, I don’t know what is.

#anti trump #make donald drumpf again #separation of church and state #atheist #anti religion #fuck you vern buchanan #fuck republicans #fuck you #anti semitic

[seymour-butz-stuff]

The lawmakers write, in part:

“[A]larm bells have spanned several years and we are concerned that DOJ and the FBI have not taken sufficient actions to prevent white supremacists from entering the ranks of law enforcement…Given the urgency of this moment, we cannot accept a lack of action on the part of the federal government to tackle white supremacy in our police departments.”

Released with heavy redactions in 2006, the intelligence assessment raised alarms about white supremacy in police:

“White supremacist leaders and groups have historically showed interest in infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” Such infiltration, the memo states, could “lead to investigative breaches and can jeopardize the safety of law enforcement sources or personnel.”

Congresswoman Torres released the following statement:

“As we work to end systemic racism in law enforcement, we need to know how pervasive white supremacist ideology is among our officers,” Rep. Torres said. “The FBI raised an alarm about this fourteen years ago – the public has yet to hear exactly what they found, and what, if anything, was done about it. We must ensure appropriate action was taken for any threats this report identified, and revisit the inquiry to bring its findings up to date immediately.”

The letter is co-signed by: Representatives Alma Adams (NC-12), Donald Beyer, Jr. (VA-08), Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), Tony Cárdenas (CA-29), André Carson (IN-07), Judy Chu (CA-27), Ted Deutch (FL-22) Adriano Espillat (NY-13), Ruben Gallego (AZ-07), Jesús G. “Chuy” Garcia (IL-04), Sylvia R. Garcia (TX-29), Al Green (TX-09), Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-03), Deb Haaland (NM-01), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. (GA-04), Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), William Keating (MA-09), Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12), Grace Meng (NY-06), Grace Napolitano (CA-32), Bill Pascrell, Jr. (NJ-09), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-40), Jackie Speier (CA-14), Juan Vargas (CA-51), Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-07), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23).

The full text of Rep. Torres’ letter is available here.

#2

[lukemeintheeye]

The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday asked the Secret Service to provide a full accounting of its payments to President Trump’s private company — after The Washington Post revealed that the Secret Service had been charged up to $650 per night for rooms at Trump clubs.

In a letter to the Secret Service, signed by chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and member Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the committee asks for any records of payments to Trump properties, and copies of any contracts between the Secret Service and Trump clubs.

Last week, The Post reported that the Secret Service had been charged up to $650 per night for rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, and charged $17,000 a month for a cottage that agents used at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, N.J. President Trump still owns his companies. These payments show he has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government.

#Secret Service #Mar-a-Lago #Trump National Golf Club #House Oversight Committee #corruption