THis Week in Congress

n videos uploaded to Twitter, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) received a chorus of boos and shouts from a town hall crowd after she tried to blame mass shootings on mental health issues, with one person shouting, “Do something!”

According to a report from Iowa Starting Line, the embattled Iowa Senator whose approval numbers have dropped, due in part to President Donald Trump, was pressed by one local teacher about changing gun laws so she can get back to the job she was hired for.

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JackLuis said:

Pelosi: No UK trade deal if Brexit undermines Good Friday accord



Kind'a blows a hole in old Boris' plans!

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JackLuis said:

GOPer Joni Ernst booed and peppered with questions about guns at tense Iowa town hall



How much blow back can Rethug's expect this season?

Lots!

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Several House Democrats, led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, descended on an empty Capitol on Tuesday to demand Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately return to Washington and take action to curb gun violence.

“I’ve been in politics for a long time. It takes no courage to put on the Senate floor a bill that is supported by 90 percent of America,” Hoyer, flanked by people who lost loved ones in mass shootings, told reporters. “What takes courage is to look a special interest group in the eye and say enough is enough, it’s time to act.”

But Democrats’ latest attempt to pressure Republicans into quickly passing their universal background checks legislation is likely to fall short.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is recovering from surgery after fracturing his shoulder earlier this month.

David Popp, McConnell’s communications director, said in a statement that the Kentucky Republican had surgery Thursday in Louisville, Ky.

“The surgery was performed without incident, and the Leader is grateful to the surgical team for their skill,” Popp said.

McConnell fractured his shoulder after tripping on his patio at his home in Louisville. McConnell, 77, is up for reelection in 2020.

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Democrats had downplayed the issue for years. If they’re serious about changing things, that needs to stop now.

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The House Judiciary Committee will return to Capitol Hill early next month to advance three gun control bills, the first concrete action by lawmakers to confront rising alarm about gun violence in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

On Sept. 4, the panel intends to approve measures to ban high-capacity magazines, to incentivize states to establish a process to prevent people deemed "a risk to themselves or others" from obtaining a firearm, and to prohibit people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from possessing guns.

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JackLuis said:

Pelosi: No UK trade deal if Brexit undermines Good Friday accord

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KeithD said:

Kick them all out, even if replaced by Republicans untainted ... .

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Several House Democrats, led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, descended on an empty Capitol on Tuesday to demand Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately return to Washington and take action to curb gun violence.

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JackLuis said:

GOPer Joni Ernst booed and peppered with questions about guns at tense Iowa town hall



How much blow back can Rethug's expect this season?

Lots!

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One person attends Rep. Steve King townhall to defend latest comments.

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Iowa Republican Steve King is facing losing his seat representing his district in the U.S. House of Representatives as his campaign finds itself broke and the Republican Party has turned its back on him after his latest round of controversial comments.

“Those comments have made King a pariah in the party—with House Republican leaders stripping him of his committee assignments—King has refused to leave office,” the report states. “Now, as he faces the toughest campaign since he was first elected in 2002, he is doing so with a potentially catastrophic lack of resources. The $18,365 that King’s campaign had in the bank at the end of June was the least cash on hand he’s ever reported after the first six months of a cycle.”

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West Virginia Republican state Sen. Mike Maroney was charged this week with soliciting a prostitute.

According to criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, Maroney’s cell phone was used to solicit a prostitute in May.

In a text message conversation on May 16, the suspected prostitute demanded to see a photograph of Maroney before she would meet with him. Officers said that the photograph matched pictures of Maroney on file.

Maroney also allegedly took advantage of the woman’s services on June 19.

“It’s 120 or I can do a car date,” she wrote.

“No problem with 120,” Maroney allegedly wrote back. “I can be there in 10 min.”

On June 13, Maroney received a message from the woman saying, “Come f*ck me.”

Maroney, a radiologist, was arraigned on charges of soliciting a prostitute. He was released on $4,500 bond.

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Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins has long enjoyed her reputation as America's Reasonable Republican. The kind of Republican that Democratic moderates like to look to and say "See, that is how most actual Republicans are in America! They're not stupid and evil like how everyone they elect is stupid and evil, they are just moderate evil. Just a little 'don't want to pay taxes' evil." The kind of Republican they could have a nice cup of tea with, have "reasonable disagreements with," after which they can say, "We both have the same goals, just different ways of getting there" and feel very satisfied that they are nothing like all those polarized radicals out there.

As a result of this reputation, Democrats have never really mounted a very serious challenge to her Senate seat in Maine. After all, she's pro-choice! There are many more terrible and not-pro-choice Republicans that have been more worth our time!

But then Susan Collins decided being moderate in temperament only is fine, and that she could reasonably get away with voting exactly like all of those wackier Republicans, so long as she was polite about it. She decided that it would probably be a good idea for her to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, even as we all begged her not to do us like that. And now the motherfucking knives are out. And also the money. So, so much money.

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Months after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee formally announced it would blacklist consultants who work with primary challengers against incumbent Democrats, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — is reportedly taking the policy of its House counterpart “one step further” by undermining progressive candidates attempting to flip Republican-held seats.

The Intercept reported Thursday that Andrew Romanoff, a Medicare for All and Green New Deal supporter running for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s Colorado seat, has had “multiple consultants” turn down offers to work on his campaign due to “pressure from the DSCC.”

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phrodeau said:

Mitch says that he will bring up any gun legislation that Trump supports.

But first Trump has to spell it correctly.

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough is credited with coining “Moscow Mitch,” and he explained why the Senate majority leader won’t be able to escape the nickname he so clearly hates.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) complained Tuesday the sobriquet was “over the top” and “modern-day McCarthyism,” but the “Morning Joe” host told the GOP leader to get used to it — because it would end up being his legacy.

“You look at this guy’s legacy, and it’s going to be two things, I think right now,” Scarborough said. “He’s going to have a legacy of basically doing the work of Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB agent, and Mitch McConnell has been told by the CIA, director of national intelligence, the United States military, he has been told by everybody that Russia is trying to interfere and disrupt our democratic process, that we are under attack, so Mitch McConnell is killing Republican bills like Marco Rubio’s, and Democratic bills that would protect the homeland from this attack from Russia.”

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Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennet, a U.S. senator, explained on Sunday why he believes that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) must be defeated for government to function normally.

“We need to reconnect with that spirit of what government and a democratic republic looks like,” Bennet told a crowd at a Colorado coffee shop. “Washington doesn’t work. It’s completely broken.”

Bennet argued that Washington, D.C. was broken “before Donald Trump got there.”

“I know Washington will never fix itself,” he continued. “Mitch McConnell will never fix himself. The Freedom Caucus won’t fix themselves. They are tyrants. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t believe in this exercise in self government.”

“They think they have a monopoly on wisdom that they are trying to inflict on the rest of America,” the candidate said. “And we have been tyrannized, immobilized by them for the last 10 years.”

Pointing to former Vice President Joe Biden, Bennet said he disagrees with people who believe things will go back to “normal” if Trump is defeated.

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Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on Monday that Democrats must measure President Donald Trump’s behavior against the Constitution instead of relying on public sentiment to jumpstart the impeachment process.

“What we can’t do and this is what I ask my colleagues who do not come to a conclusion on this,” he continued, “what we can’t do is measure the president’s behavior against the public exhaustion with his behavior. We have to measure his behavior against the Constitution. If impeachment is in the Constitution, what is it there for?”

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According to a report from Wall Street Journal, Republican lawmakers are working behind the scenes to rein in Donald Trump’s penchant for declaring tariffs willy-nilly depending on how he feels about other countries and their leaders at any given time.

As the president trade war rages on — impacting manufacturers, farmers and consumers alike — Republicans looking at the 2020 election are desperate to turn around a U.S. economy that looks headed for a recession.

According to the Journal, Kansas Senator Jerry Moran (R) is deeply disturbed by the ongoing devastation due to the president’s trade moves, saying, “This has gone on longer than I think people expected it. And so the financial consequences are increasing.”

Moran along with Republican Sen, Chuck Grassley (IA), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, are meeting with other members of their party and making plans to reach out to Democrats.

The reports states they are looking to assert “congressional authority over the levying of tariffs,” with the aim of curbing the “type of tariff-by-tweet policy-making that has whipsawed markets and stressed U.S. businesses in recent months.”

According to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who is pushing legislation requiring Trump to seek congressional approval before imposing tariffs, the law is on the legislator’s side.

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Senate government funding talks are off to a rough start with 10 working days to go until the shutdown deadline.

The impasse is throwing into question if senators will be able to get any of the fiscal 2020 bills through the chamber this month, a setback for Republicans who wanted to clear a major package before October.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said he still wants to bring bills to the Senate floor for a vote but warned that lawmakers need to “negotiate the terrain.”

“We’ve been down that road before,” he said, asked how the funding talks get unstuck. “There’s got to be a resolution to it — it could be sooner. It could be later.”

The partisan breakdown has left lawmakers visibly flummoxed about how to resolve the impasse.

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