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Tag Archives: Democratic Party
Crockett: Dems ‘Actually Care and We Love,’ GOP Lacks Compassion
Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said Democrats “actually care,” while Republicans like Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) lacked compassion.
Crockett said, “So now that there’s like the family infighting, we see, you know, even Elon Musk coming, he can’t get out of the Twitter. Right? Like he is talking about the bill and trying to tank the bill and telling people call your senators and make sure you take this bill down. And listen, I never thought there would be a day that I would agree with Elon on anything, but that’s where we are. People are finally starting to say, you know what? This is actually impacting me a little too much. I’m going to have to speak up and speak out against this. But my issue is this, all of y’all voted for this so that it would hurt somebody else. The problem was you got upset when you found out that, ‘Oh, shoot, it can hurt me too?’ Honestly, it is like it’s ingrained in who Democrats are is that we actually care and we love and we want to take care of everybody and that’s why we got this big tent party and we all over the place.”
She added, “But I will tell you that compassion is something that we are missing in Congress. Like caring is something that we are missing in politics in general. And that’s the only way you can justify a Senator going out there and saying, well, everybody going to die, and then decide that you’re going to do your apology, not so much an apology, in what looked like a graveyard. I’m like, listen, ain’t nobody elect you to be anybody’s grave digger. They elected you to do everything that you can to make sure that their lives are flourishing and getting better, and that they were living as long as they could. That’s part of the job.”
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Crockett: We Will Investigate Trump, Family When Dems Take House Back
Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Alex Witt Reports” that the Democratic Party will take the majority in the 2026 midterms and investigate President Donald Trump and his family.
Witt said, “I’m curious if the Democrats take over after the midterms next year, the House and or Senate, do you think they’re going to push for investigations into Trump’s family and the whole crypto acquisitions that he has getting?”
Crockett said, “Well, Alex, I’m glad you asked. Listen, so long as we end up taking the House, which I fully anticipate that we will do, and we are going to work hard to obviously help our senate colleagues as well, then as someone who serves on the Oversight Committee and hopes to lead the Oversight Committee, I can guarantee you that we will do what we are supposed to do as constitutionally sworn members of the House, which means that we will conduct oversight.”
She continued, “That means that we will investigate. We will look at whether or not this president himself has violated the Emoluments Clause as it relates to say such things as getting a $400 million plane from the Qataris. We also will make sure that we’re looking into all these business deals that they have going on. I mean, think about it this way, Alex. they were going after Hunter because he sat on a board. Think about how much money they are raking, raking in, whether we’re talking about the next golf resort that they’re setting up in Qatar or whether we’re talking about them leveling Gaza, as they’ve talked about and talked about how it would be great beachfront property, whether we’re talking about this crypto scam, the scam that people didn’t even want to walk into and show their faces.”
Crockett added, “Let me tell you, there is no shortage of things for us to dig into and determine whether or not there have been not only violations of the law, but definitely violations of our Constitution as a whole. ”
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Republicans plan attack ads on Democrats in Trump districts who opposed GOP agenda bill
The House Republicans’ campaign arm is focusing a new advertising campaign on Democrats from politically risky seats who voted against the GOP’s sweeping effort to cut taxes and pass Medicaid work requirements, setting the stage for what may prove to be one of the biggest political messaging clashes of next year’s midterms.
Republicans in Washington are attempting to use their control of Congress and the White House to put in place major conservative agenda items sought by President Donald Trump and his allies through one massive piece of legislation, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The House GOP’s narrow passage of Trump’s agenda earlier this week has set off a struggle between Republicans and Democrats to sway voters about the impact of the bill that is widely expected to play a large role in the 2026 midterm elections, where control of the House will be decided.
In a statement about the advertising campaign, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said the campaign arm “will make sure voters don’t forget how [House Democrats] betrayed working families.”
The round of digital advertisements places a particular emphasis on the tax portion of the Trump agenda bill, which continues key parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was the centerpiece of his first term in office. Plans show the ads will target 25 House Democrats and make the argument that by opposing this week’s bill, the Democrats voted “for the largest U.S. tax hike in generations.” Of those 25 districts, 13 are seats where a Democrat won the House contest while Trump carried the district in the presidential race.
Republicans’ best chance at padding their narrow majority next year could come in places that had some of the closest Congressional races in the entire country during the 2024 presidential election, including a California seat where the Democratic candidate ousted a Republican incumbent by less than 200 votes. Other areas closely watched by the GOP that are also the subject of the latest ad campaign include two Democrat-held seats in the red state of Ohio, districts Trump won in the battleground states of North Carolina and Michigan, as well as seats that could prove to be competitive in New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.
Yet while many House Republicans in Washington are cheering the legislation, Democrats see ample political liabilities for their opponents. Democratic leaders view the House as the party’s best chance at quickly winning back power in Washington during Trump’s presidency, given the perils an incumbent president’s party routinely faces in a midterm election and the small number of seats it would likely take to flip control of the chamber.
The GOP’s targeting of Medicaid in particular has quickly been seized on by the left as a major campaign issue, as Democrats charge the Republican agenda’s changes imperil healthcare for millions of people.
“America cannot afford the Republican tax scam. Now that vulnerable Republicans are on the record voting for it, this betrayal of the American people will cost them their jobs in the midterms and Republicans the House Majority come 2026,” Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm, said in a statement earlier this week.
It remains to be seen however what kind of bill can eventually make it to Mr. Trump’s desk, given the changes the GOP-led Senate may make once it gets its hands on the legislation.
Chris Murphy: We Have a ‘Madman’ in the Oval Office Because Dems Failed to Oust Biden
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that America was stuck with a “madman” in the Oval Office because Democrats did not force then-President Joe Biden to step down.
Murphy said, “The president should have gotten out of the race earlier, there’s no doubt the Democratic Party would have been better served by having the ability to have a primary, Kamala Harris probably would have done very well in the process but in retrospect, we lost so we can’t defend the way in which our politics played out.”
Host Kristen Welker said, “The new book, Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, goes even further and details what they called a cover-up, from the White House, from top aides around the president. Here’s a little bit of what they have written, ‘One senior White House aide, who left because they didn’t think Biden should run again, confessed to us that we attempted to shield him from his own staff, so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023.’ Do you think some top official in the Biden White House covered up the state of his mental health at the time?”
Murphy said, “I haven’t read the book and I don’t know what to say about the allegations they made, but i know that i worked with him throughout 20 and 22 on the gun bill which has saved by the way, thousands of lives, he was intimately involved in those negotiations.”
He added, “Ultimately, in retrospect, you can’t defend what the Democratic Party did because we are stuck with a madman, with a corrupt president in the Oval Office, and we should have given ourselves a better chance to win.”
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20 states sue Trump administration over conditions on federal transportation, disaster-relief funds
A coalition of 20 state Democratic attorneys general filed two federal lawsuits on Tuesday, claiming that the Trump administration is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in transportation and disaster-relief funds unless states agree to certain immigration enforcement actions.
According to the complaints, both Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have threatened to cut off funding to states that refuse to comply with President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
While no federal funding is currently being withheld, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said during a press conference on Tuesday that the threat was “imminent.”
“President Donald Trump can’t use these funds as a bargaining chip as his way of ensuring states abide by his preferred policies,” Bonta added.
Email messages seeking comment were sent Tuesday to the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security.
Both lawsuits say that the Trump administration is violating the U.S. Constitution by trying to dictate federal spending when Congress has that power — not the executive branch.
On April 24, states received letters from the Department of Transportation stating that they must cooperate on immigration efforts and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs or risk losing funds.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin criticized the timing of Duffy’s letter when Newark’s airport struggles with radar outages and other issues.
“I wish the administration would stop playing politics with people’s lives,” Platkin said. “I wish Secretary Duffy would do his damn job, which is to make sure planes land on time, not to direct immigration enforcement.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul also criticized the administration, calling those funds, “quite literally, lifesaving.”
“This critical funding has nothing to do with immigration, and the administration’s attempts to hold it hostage unless states agree to do the federal government’s job of civil immigration enforcement is unconstitutional and outrageous,” Raoul said. “I am proud of the continued collaboration between state attorneys general and am committed to using all tools at our disposal to fight the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to play politics with Americans’ lives.”
Meanwhile, on Feb. 24, states received letters from the Department of Homeland Security declaring that states that “refuse to cooperate with, refuse to share information with, or even actively obstruct federal immigration enforcement reject these ideals and the history we share in common as Americans.”
“If any government entity chooses to thumb its nose at the Department of Homeland Security’s national security and public safety mission, it should not receive a single dollar of the Department’s money unless Congress has specifically required it,” Noem wrote in her letter.
Attorneys general behind the lawsuits include the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin and Vermont.
“Law enforcement agents across Minnesota work hard to protect and serve their communities, and we are truly grateful for all they do. Decisions about how police resources should be allocated to maintain public safety are made at the local level because every community has different safety needs,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said. “It is both wrong and unlawful for the Trump Administration to demand Minnesota law enforcement step away from their patrols, investigations, and community-engagement work to instead enforce federal immigration law.”
“These funds are meant to repair aging roads and bridges, strengthen public safety, and ensure law enforcement has the tools they need to act quickly in emergency situations. By clawing back this already-allocated funding, Donald Trump’s White House is prioritizing political posturing over the safety and well-being of Americans,” added Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
The cases are being spearheaded by California but were filed in federal court in Rhode Island, a detail that the attorneys general defended by saying they filed an “any court that is going to be fair and objective and consider our factual presentation and legal analysis.”
The lawsuits are the latest legal actions that Democratic-led states have taken against Trump since he took office earlier this year. Bonta noted that California has filed more than 20 lawsuits against the administration, while Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said his state has launched more than a dozen.
While the lawsuits have challenged policies on tariffs, federal employee firings to health care research, Trump’s focus on immigration enforcement and the mass deportation of immigrants in the United States illegally have received the most attention.
This has included the president’s promise to mass deport people to the start of a registry required for all those who are in the country illegally.
“What we’re seeing is a creeping authoritarianism,” Neronha said.
DNC Starts Process of Removing David Hogg as Vice Chair
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has taken steps towards removing gun control activist and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor David Hogg as vice chairman.
On Monday, the credentials committee of the DNC voted 13-2 to void the election results from February in which Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) were elected to serve as co-vice chairmen of the DNC, according to the New York Times. The vote comes as Hogg is reportedly planning to “spend up to $20 million” to fund “primary campaigns against incumbent Democrats.”
Per the outlet, the decision from the credentials committee came after “three hours of internal debate and one tie vote,” and will move the decision to oust Hogg and Kenyatta as vice chairmen of the DNC before the “full body”:
The decision — which came after roughly three hours of internal debate and one tie vote — will put the issue before the full body of the Democratic National Committee. It must decide whether to force Mr. Hogg and a second vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, to run again in another election later this year.
Mr. Hogg, 25, an outspoken survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., has prompted a fierce backlash over his plans to spend up to $20 million through another organization he heads, Leaders We Deserve, on primary campaigns against incumbent Democrats. Ken Martin, the party chairman, has said it is inappropriate for Mr. Hogg to intervene in primaries while serving as a party official, and has recommended changing the party’s bylaws to force him to sign a neutrality pledge.
Hogg issued a statement acknowledging that the DNC had taken “its first steps” to remove him from his position, noting that it was “impossible to ignore the broader context” of his work to “reform the party,” which played into the vote.
“Today, the DNC took its first steps to remove me from my position as Vice Chair At-Large,” Hogg said in his statement. “While this vote was based on how the DNC conducted its officers’ elections, which I had nothing to do with, it is also impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote.”
The decision from the DNC’s credentials committee comes in response to a complaint issued by Kalyn Free, who was one of the candidates running to be vice chair of the DNC, according to the outlet.
Per the outlet, Hogg’s “intention to engage in primaries was not the subject of the discussion”:
Mr. Hogg’s intention to engage in primaries was not the subject of the discussion on Monday, which turned on arcane parliamentary procedures and the decision of party officials to combine votes for the last two vice chair slots into a single vote.
“This is about fairness and making sure that three women and the voting members of the D.N.C. are not disenfranchised,” Free said in a statement.
“Our country is in crisis, and too many leaders in the Democratic Party are asleep at the wheel,” Hogg continued in his statement. “Trump is on a mission to crash our economy, disappear people without due process, and participate in flagrant public corruption – and voters still trust him more than Democrats. That is a massive indictment of our party.”
On Saturday, DNC Chairman Ken Martin issued a statement calling for Hogg to either remain neutral in politics or step down from his position as co-vice chairman of the DNC, Politico reported.
“Party officers have one job: to be fair stewards of a process that invites every Democrat to the table — regardless of personal views or allegiances,” Martin said in a statement.
Breitbart News’s AWR Hawkins reported in December 2024 that Hogg revealed his intention to run for vice chairman of the DNC, stating the “role is a great way” to bring in “newer voices into the Democratic Party.”
“I just want to be one of the several of those voices to help represent young people and also, more than anything, make sure that we’re standing up to the consulting class that increasingly the Democratic Party is representing instead of the working class,” Hogg said in a statement to ABC News.
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego says Democrats
Levittown, Pennsylvania — At a town hall Saturday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona encouraged the Democratic party to return to its roots as the “big tent” party.
“What happened the last election is that we got so pure, and we kept so pure that we started kicking people out of the tent,” Gallego said. “It ends up there aren’t enough people in the tent to win elections.”
Gallego cited podcast host Joe Rogan as an example of someone “kicked out” of the tent because his message did not completely align with the party’s.
“I’m sure you guys heard like, ‘Oh, well, the Democrats need to have their own Joe Rogan,'” Gallego said. “We had Joe Rogan. We canceled Joe Rogan years ago. Democrats don’t want to admit this. We did, and then it was, became questionable whether we should go on Joe Rogan or not. We did this to ourselves.”
The first-term Democratic senator from Arizona touted his own success in a battleground state as an example of how Democratic candidates can win moving forward. Gallego defeated Republican Kari Lake in the Arizona Senate race last year by two points.
“I represent a state that has 330,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats,” Gallego said. “You have to get a lot of votes, and that means we’re going to have to have alliances with people that we may not agree with 100% of the time, right?”
This success has fueled speculation that Gallego is considering running for president in 2028. He’s one of a handful of Democrats making stops across the country, talking to voters, similar to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“Of course, I’ve thought of it, but I’m also, you know, about to… have my third kid coming June 12, and I don’t want to get divorced, and I just became a US senator,” Gallego told CBS News. “I love my job, and I need to make sure I do both jobs well. That’s not what I’m thinking about right now.
When asked if he thinks it will take a moderate like him to win Pennsylvania in 2028, Gallego said it will take someone who is able to empathize with voters on issues impacting them.
“I think it’s going to take someone that really understands what’s going on. People were hurting in the last election. I think the Democrats messed up by not really focusing on that,” Gallego said. “This person is gonna be able to communicate that like, yeah, things are bad. The economy hurts. You’re hurting, and I’m here to help you out.”
Gallego spoke in Bucks County, a key battleground area north of Philadelphia that President Trump flipped by a few hundred votes in 2024.
Distrust and anger toward the Democratic party were palpable at the town hall when one participant asked Gallego how Democrats should change their messaging moving forward.
“People don’t vote for a party, right? It’s us that run as Democrats. We need to be the face of the party, and we need to be out there,” Gallego said. “The problem is that we are too effing safe all the time.”