House of Representatives
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The House of Representatives’ ethics report on Matt Gaetz was leaked, showing numerous illegal acts committed by the former congressman during his tenure.
On Monday (December 23), CBS political correspondent Scott Macfarlane obtained a report on Matt Gaetz from the House of Representatives Ethics Committee. The 40-page report found evidence that the former Republican congressman from Florida paid thousands for sex with women or drugs on at least 20 different occasions, including an instance in 2017 where he allegedly committed statutory rape with a 17-year-old girl. “The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the nearly 40-page report reads.
https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1871188819082629479
The report comprised evidence, including text message conversations, witness testimony, and receipt of Venmo and PayPal payments to various women. “Nearly every young woman that the Committee interviewed confirmed that she was paid for sex by, or on behalf of, Representative Gaetz,” the report said. All of the instances occurred as Gaetz was a sitting congressman, including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018 which “violated the House rule” where he indulged in sex with multiple women, with one testifying that the trip “was payment” for her. The report also details that between 2017 and 2019, Gaetz “used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.”
Concerning the 17-year-old girl, the allegation comes from her direct testimony to the committee. “Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex,” the committee wrote. “Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age.” Gaetz defended himself last week, saying that “in my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated — even some I never dated but who asked.”
Gaetz, who is currently set to be a commentator at the conservative One America News Network next month, had filed a complaint on Monday morning to prevent the report’s release but was unsuccessful. The former congressman had been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to be his attorney general in late November, resigning in what some saw was an attempt to stifle the report’s release. Observers also noted how other House Republicans including Speaker Mike Johnson sought to prevent the report’s release.
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Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett delivered a fiery rebuttal and lesson on privilege to another congressman that went viral.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett stands by her forceful speech in which she dressed down a Republican colleague about his use of the word “oppression.” The moment took place during a House of Representatives Committee meeting on a proposed bill presented by a Republican congressman from her state of Texas, Michael Cloud. The bill, nicknamed “Dismantle DEI,” was mentioned constantly by Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins who called DEI initiatives “oppressive.” Crockett would have none of it. “It seems you don’t understand the definition of oppression,” she stated before.
“There has been no oppression for the white man in this country,” Crockett began. “You tell me which white men were dragged out of their homes. You tell me which one of them got dragged all the way across an ocean and told that you were gonna go and work.” Referring to the enslavement of Africans in the country from the 1600s, she continued: “We are gonna steal your wives. We are gonna rape your wives. That didn’t happen, that is oppression. We didn’t ask to be here. We [are] not the same migrants that y’all constantly come up against. We didn’t run away from home; we were stolen. So yeah, we are gonna sit here and be offended when you wanna sit here and act like, and don’t let it escape you, that it is white men on this side of the aisle telling us, people of color on this side of the aisle, that y’all are the ones being oppressed, that y’all are the ones that are being harmed.”
The bill would pass the committee by a vote of 23-17. “They waste taxpayer dollars and undermine the merit-based principles that have made America strong,” Cloud said of the policies the bill would target and eliminate. “The Dismantle DEI Act takes aim at this harmful ideology and will root it out of our government, ensuring our institutions focus on the mission of serving the American people efficiently and effectively.”
Crockett defended her words in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday (Nov. 21), writing: “I didn’t bring race into anything… THEY DID & always do & then they twist history & dilute the definition of words.”
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A congressman called out the media for not reporting Donald Trump’s repeated presence in new documents related to a Jeffrey Epstein case in Florida.
Democrats in the House of Representatives held a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. on Tuesday (July 9), to talk about President Joe Biden’s candidacy for reelection. But one lawmaker voiced his frustration with the media’s constant focus on the situation and its avoidance of discussing new information concerning former President Donald Trump’s name being repeatedly featured in a new batch of documents related to a Florida case against Jeffrey Epstein.
“We hear a lot from our constituents on different issues,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) said to those reporters gathered at the press conference. “But something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be being covered are the Epstein files.”
“Donald Trump’s all over this,” the vice president of the House Democrat Caucus continued. “There are pictures of him with Jeffrey Epstein, he’s taken multiple plane flights with Jeffrey Epstein with young girls onboard. He’s on call logs with Epstein. One of the most trending hashtags on Twitter right now is about Trump and Epstein, I’m not going to repeat the hashtag because we’re in a dignified setting.”
The hashtag that the California congressman referred to is known as the #TrumpPedoFiles. “And by the way, he was convicted in a civil court for sexual assault and convicted in a state court for 34 felonies. Donald Trump should drop out of the race,” Lieu concluded.
Donald Trump’s name does appear on the call logs between 2004 and 2006 in the recent batch of documents ordered to be released last week. “Former Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta, who later became Donald Trump’s labor secretary, approved a secret agreement in which Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges rather than face federal prosecution,” said a report from the Washington Post.
His words were part of a tense back-and-forth that has sprung up as President Biden is facing the brunt of numerous calls for him to drop out of the running to be the Democratic candidate for the November presidential elections. The demand comes after his lackluster performance in the debate held by CNN on June 27. But Biden has been defiant since then, declaring that he was staying in the race. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was noticeably absent from the public eye until a campaign rally on Tuesday night in Doral, Fla.
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Expelled Republican congressman George Santos sat down for an outlandish interview with Ziwe that had social media in shambles.The controversial former Republican George Santos sat down for a highly anticipated interview with the comedian and celebrity interviewer Ziwe, who released it in full on Monday morning (December 18) on her YouTube channel. The “ZNN” (for Ziwe News Network) interview ran for twenty minutes. It contained several moments that left viewers with a mixture of emotions ranging from stunned to appalled at Santos’ shamelessness.
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Santos didn’t hold back in response to one of Ziwe’s questions. “What can we do to get you to go away?”, she asked. “Stop inviting me to your gigs,” he retorted. “The lesson is to stop inviting you places,” Ziwe said in response. “But you can’t,” Santos replied. “Because people want the content.” Other highlights from the interview included an exchange where Ziwe asked Santos his opinions on LGBTQ icons such as Marsha P. Johnson (as he compared himself to civil rights icon Rosa Parks in the past) – which took a turn as Santos was asked about the late author James Baldwin. “Who the hell is James Baldwin?”, he replied.
Many who watched the interview noted that Santos was careful to answer anything related to his current status of negotiating a plea deal with the Department of Justice over charges that he defrauded campaign donors. He was the sixth congressperson ever expelled in November after the House Ethics Committee alleged that he spent donations on items from Hermès, Ferragamo, and also on cosmetic procedures and OnlyFans. At one point before the interview took place, Santos was overheard asking the comedian to “be mindful with the DOJ stuff.”
Others felt that Ziwe did wrong in giving Santos more coverage with the interview. Santos had been approached by Ziwe on X, formerly known as Twitter the day after his expulsion from the House of Representatives. She asked if he’d be interested in a “pay-per-view” interview. He accepted, and though he wasn’t paid for the interview it was noted on the video that he asked to be paid three times. Currently, Santos is a top draw on Cameo, the website that offers people customized celebrity videos for a price.
We’ve assembled some of the more notable reactions from social media, primarily X for you to check out below.
1. Balkanka
This X user utilized a video of Azealia Banks and a unique display of smudging with their post.
2. Spencer Althouse
The deputy editor at Buzzfeed applauded Ziwe’s skillful baiting of Santos in one segment of the interview.
3. Whitley
This X user named Whitley had a succinct remedy to get people to ignore Santos.
4. Joey Hannum
The comm strategist wrote, “What excites you most about going to prison… Do you like the color orange?” give Ziwe a Pulitzer I’m so serious.”
5. Sana Saeed
The media critic took a different perspective on “that’ moment of the interview.
6. Gemini’s Groove
7. Ola Ojewumi
The writer raised a valid point about Ziwe not asking Santos key questions about previous lies he has told in the past, especially one where he claimed to be Black.
8. Armand Domalewski
9. Tami Sawyer
The Democratic politician expressed her dismay at Santos getting such a platform in light of his criminal misdeeds.
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Charlamagne Tha God cracked jokes on the new House of Representatives Speaker over an X-rated claim as he was hosting The Daily Show.
Charlamagne Tha God kicked off his guest stint as host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central on Monday (Oct. 30), by zeroing in on the new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives during his opening monologue. “Last week, Republicans decided that the new Speaker of the House would be Mike Johnson, Louisiana congressman. I don’t know who the f*ck he is either,” he began.
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The Breakfast Club host then played a clip from the Sean Hannity show on Fox News, where the congressman was interviewed. Hannity asked Johnson about his religious fundamentalist stance, particularly about an anti-LGBTQ legal document in which he wrote that “there is no clear right to sodomy in the Constitution.” Charlamagne showed his obvious confusion over Johnson’s comments.
“I mean, yeah, it would’ve been weird if they put sodomy in the Constitution, right?” he said, before detailing his vision on how the Founding Fathers would’ve gone about discussing it: “So we’re all agreed: There’s gonna be no king, there will be three branches of government and we’re all cool with butt stuff.”
“The Constitution never would’ve been finished if they spent all that time specifying what was and what wasn’t allowed, OK?” he continued. “And just to be clear there’s no right to sodomy in the Constitution but there is a clause: you can get it on your birthday.” Charlamagne Tha God ended off with this note: “The point is, the Speaker of The House is a hardcore Christian whose worldview is just the Bible…Imagine if Ilhan Omar was like my views are basically everything in the Quran. Even Muslims would be like “As-salama hell no,” OK?!”
Check out the entire monologue from Charlamagne Tha God on The Daily Show above.
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Rep. Kevin McCarthy found himself on the wrong side of history after he was voted out of his Speaker of the House position, the first time that has ever happened in congressional history. While Kevin McCarthy says he will not seek reelection, a mad scramble is underway by the Republic Party to vote for his replacement.
The Washington Post and its political reporting team have been following the ordeal of Kevin McCarthy and the motion to vacate launched by Rep. Matt Gaetz, which adds to a growing instance of infighting between the GOP.
Gaetz filed the motion on October 2 to force a vote on McCarthy’s removal from the Speaker post. McCarthy may have saved the role had he worked with House Democrats to secure their support but he was unwilling to do so for political concessions. After an hour of debate between Gaetz and Rep. Tom Cole, voting commenced with the motion leading to oust the speaker at a vote count of 216-210.
In McCarthy’s stead, Rep. Patrick McHenry, reportedly an ally of McCarthy, was named as speaker pro tempore in an interim role.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy has maintained that Rep. Gaetz launched the motion to take attention away from the ethics probe against him and that the action was “personal.”
“It had nothing to do about spending,” McCarthy said. “It all was about getting attention. I mean, we’re getting email fundraisers from him.”
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Lawmakers in New York have introduced a new bill that will prohibit the use of rap lyrics in criminal trials as evidence by prosecutors – an issue recently highlighted across the nation.
In January of this year, New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz brought forth S1738, known as the “Rap Music on Trial” bill. The goal of the bill is to prevent prosecutors in criminal trials from using lyrics from songs by the defendant in those trials as proof of guilt for the crimes they’re charged with. “Protecting artistic freedom and expression is paramount for our country, but in particular New York City, where we are the cultural capital of the world,” Hoylman-Sigal said to the press. “Rap music has been targeted by prosecutors, mainly because it would seem that there’s racial bias.”
The bill wouldn’t be isolated to only rap music, but the music genre has been the most targeted by prosecutors in cases across the country as social media has made sharing rap videos easier with a farther reach. An essay in the New York Times last year detailed the timeline for the increase of rap lyrics being used since 2005. The RICO case brought against Young Thug in Georgia is currently the most prominent example as lyrics from nine of his songs were cited in the indictment.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act into law last September. Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York and Hank Johnson of Georgia re-introduced the Restoring Artistic Protection, or RAP Act to the House of Representatives in April. That bill has not gone beyond a referral to the House Judiciary Committee.
An earlier version of New York’s state bill was introduced in 2021 with heavy support from artists including Jay-Z, Big Sean, and Meek Mill among others. But it didn’t advance to being passed in the Assembly. The hope is that the current bill will pass this current session, which ends on Thursday (June 8th). The state Senate did approve S1738 on May 15th, which Hoylman-Sigal said gives a “boost of confidence and momentum” that it will make it to Governor Kathy Hochul to be signed into law.
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Representative Jamaal Bowman has publicly blasted fellow Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene over her racist tropes & behavior after a verbal confrontation.
The Democratic Representative from the Bronx, New York got into it with the Republican Representative from Georgia on Wednesday afternoon (May 17th) on the steps of the U.S. Capitol after a vote. “Do something about guns!” he said to her. “Invest in education.” Greene shot back, “Impeach Biden,” before rattling off queries about Democrats and their inability to seal off the border. Both were smiling, but reporters noted that she did shake her fist. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came up to Bowman, gently tugging at his arm while saying, “She ain’t worth it, bro.”
The next day, Greene claimed that Bowman had called her a white supremacist, stating that the term was “equal” to “calling a person of color the N-word.” She continued, saying she felt threatened by him and that his “physical mannerisms were aggressive.” “I’m very concerned about Jamaal Bowman,” Ms. Greene stated, “and he’s someone that people should watch.”
She claimed that she had video footage of the confrontation.
Bowman was outraged over the far-right politician’s comments, but unsurprised. He released a statement through his office. “There’s a history of this, from Mike Brown to Emmett Till to any Black man who is passionate, outspoken, intelligent trying to stand their ground being confronted with violence,” Mr. Bowman responded. “Marjorie’s attack is beyond a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn. And it’s reckless and dangerous. She has put a target on my back.”
Bowman’s Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives have risen to his defense. Representative Madeleine Dean of Delaware appeared on MSNBC’s The ReidOut and called out Greene’s rhetoric. “This kind of outward racism, bigotry, dog whistles, as he said, ‘bullhorn,’ when you call a Black man threatening–this is a former school principal,” she said. So far, Greene has not responded again.
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A former Twitter employee revealed that Donald Trump and his administration had requested the company remove tweets from Chrissy Teigen bashing him, among others.
On Wednesday (Feb. 8th), a House Oversight Committee was convened by the Republican majority to investigate their allegations of censorship by the social media company against the GOP. But when questioned by Democratic members of the committee, the former Twitter employees appearing before the committee confirmed that former President Donald Trump and his White House staff routinely requested tweets to be removed – with one from media personality Chrissy Teigen being highlighted.
Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee-turned-whistleblower, confirmed that in 2019, the Trump White House contacted Twitter about Teigen’s tweet where she called Trump a “p—-y a— b——h” in response to remarks he made about her and John Legend, her husband. When questioned by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), she went on to say that they “reached out to ask that this tweet be removed” and that her team had to review if it violated Twitter’s “insults policy”. They ultimately determined it wasn’t a violation, so it remained up.
When questioned again about the Tiegen tweets and Trump’s demands by Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL), who quoted the tweet, Navaroli elaborated. “This fell under the policy for abusive behaviors, and we evaluated it under our ‘insults’ policy,” she said. “At that time, up to three insults were allowed. It was our job to determine how many insults were included within that phrase.”
Navaroli had also testified earlier that Twitter actually worked to change its policies on more than one occasion to not take action on tweets from Trump – showing that the company had actually worked to be more favorable to him and other right-wingers. This greatly differed from the GOP’s attempts at claiming they were being “censored” by the platform, and a Rolling Stone article published during the hearing showed that Twitter kept a ‘database’ of GOP requests to censor posts bashing them.
She provided an example under questioning by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in reference to a tweet he made about her and fellow congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Rashida Tlaib to “go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came”. Navaroli testified that her assessment that the tweet violated company policies was overruled by former trust and safety head Del Harvey. “So much for bias against right-wing on Twitter,” Ocasio-Cortez replied.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned her Republican colleagues in a fiery speech on the House of Representatives floor over their hypocrisy and racism.
On Thursday (February 2nd), the Republican majority prepared to vote to remove Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee. Their reasoning was tied to claims that Ms. Omar was over comments that she made in the past that they deemed antisemitic.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor to call out the GOP members’ hypocrisy as she defended her Democratic colleague. “Now as also as a fellow New Yorker, I think one of the things we should talk about here is also one of the disgusting legacies of 9/11 has been the targeting and racism against Muslim Americans throughout the United States of America. And this is an extension of that legacy,” she began.
Her voice rising, Ocasio-Cortez referenced her treatment by far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who had previously attacked her with an offensive tweet. “I had a member of the Republican caucus threaten my life,” she said. “And the Republican caucus rewarded him with one of the most prestigious committee assignments. Don’t tell me this is about consistency.”
She would go on to attack Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her racism & conspiracy theories including “Jewish space lasers”, remarking that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has already rewarded her with plum committee assignments for her support of his speakership. Ocasio-Cortez finished her speech, punctuating it by slapping her book on the podium: “This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America. Don’t tell me, because I didn’t get a single apology when my life was threatened. Thank you.”
Rep. Omar, who is one of two women Muslim representatives elected to the House along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in 2018, has been a constant target of right-wingers. Before the 218-211 vote to remove her, she spoke on the floor, saying: “I am Muslim. I am an immigrant. And interestingly, from Africa,” Ms. Omar said. “Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted?” She concluded amid the applause of her Democratic colleagues: “Take your vote or not — I am here to stay.”