3/6/23 - Newsletter
GOP News
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will meet Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California sometime in April, the Financial Times reported today. Tasi persuaded McCarthy (after showing his team “some intelligence”) that meeting in the U.S. was best suitable "to avoid an aggressive Chinese military response, as tensions run high between Beijing and Washington." Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan last August, defying threats from China of retaliation and refusing to take the guidance of the White House, citing concerns about tensions in the Indo-Pacific. McCarthy’s office said a visit to Taiwan in the future is possible.
More on Semafor. During a private pre-CPAC speech last week, former President Donald Trump took aim at Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL):
“Somebody's running, let them run. If they're not going to announce what they're doing, I assume they're running, right? We assume they're running. And I said there's no way we will allow them ... to attack Social Security. There’s no way we will allow them — because a certain person wanted to attack Social Security and Medicare, and wanted to raise the minimum age to 70 … we're going to take care of our Social Security, people have earned that.”
Here is Donald Trump calling out the Republicans (not his first time) who want to gut the social safety net, which President Biden and Democrats have been warning voters about:
Per CNN's Kaitlan Collins: Former VP Mike Pence asked a judge to block the subpoena for his testimony related to January 6 by filing a motion last Friday. Pence calls it "unconstitutional" and believes he's protected under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former 2016 presidential campaign chairman has agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a case filed by the Department of Justice last year.
Dem News
The Democratic controlled Senate will bring H.J. Res. 26 to the floor for a vote on Wednesday. The GOP-led disapproval resolution will block D.C.'s Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022. More than 70 Senators are expected to vote in favor of the resolution, according to Senate aides.
This morning D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate withdrawing the modified criminal code to stop the Senate from acting. The resolution will move forward for a vote regardless.
The following Democratic Senators will vote for H.J. Res. 26:
Joe Manchin (WV)
Bob Casey (PA)
Ben Ray Luján (NM)
Tim Kaine (VA)
Patty Murray (WA)
Mark Kelly (AZ)
Jon Tester (MT)
Tammy Baldwin (WI)
House Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) today sent a letter to Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, calling on Republican members of the committee to join Democrats "in denouncing white nationalism and white supremacy, and the use of related conspiracy theories, including the "Great Replacement" theory, during Committee hearings and in all our work together." The Great Placement Theory is the conspiracy that the Biden administration is purposely flooding the country with migrants to replace White people. It also motivated Payton Gendron to kill ten Black people in the Tops supermarket massacre in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022.
Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) will introduce a bill allowing the U.S. government to regulate apps similar to TikTok. The GOP-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to advance the DATA Act to the House floor, a bill that "would grant the president new authorities to ban foreign-owned applications, and would require the imposition of sanctions on companies with ties to TikTok or other Chinese-owned apps."