Congress Also Rejected Moscow Marge's Latest Attempt To Aid Putin
It isn’t exactly a secret that deranged gunstore owner-turned-congressman Andrew Clyde, first elected in 2020, is a virulent racist. He was, for example, one of the 19 members of Congress who voted against establishing June 19th as the Juneteenth federal holiday, to commemorate the ending of slavery. The following year he was one of just 3 members of Congress to vote against the Emmitt Til Anti-Lynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime. Even Marjorie Traitor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert voted for that! In April 2022, he led a Republican effort to block the naming of a federal building in Florida after Joseph Hatchett, the first Black State Supreme Court judge in Florida and south of the Mason Dixon Line. Last year, he teamed up with George Santos to make the AR-15 “the national gun of the United States.”
Most people outside of his rural northeast Georgia district first heard of him when he famously described the J-6 insurrection as a “normal tourist visit [with the rioters behaving] in an orderly fashion, staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures,” despite photos of him circulating that showed him barricading the House chamber “from,” as he described the orderly tourists, “the mob who tried to enter.” Many say his extreme reactionary mindset isn’t his fault, pointing to the fact that instead of going to college, he went to a Buy-Bull “college” to learn how to be an accountant.
When he first ran for Congress, his backward red district included one blue spot— part of his hometown, Athens-Clarke County. He won every single county in the district— by a landslide— and lost Athens-Clarke… by a landslide. The following year, Athens-Clarke was gerrymandered out of his district. (In 2016 Trump had carried GA-09 with 78%, his 4th best showing in America.)
On Thursday, the House voted down 192-230 his amendment to H.R.8070— “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025.” His amendment would have put a Confederate slavery memorial back in Arlington National Cemetery. Thanks to every single Democrat plus 24 Republicans, Clyde’s most recent racist initiative was stopped. Most of the 24 Republicans who voted against Clyde’s amendment represent swing districts and are vulnerable to defeat in November, like Mike Lawler (NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR), Tom Kean (NJ), Don Bacon (NE), Nick LaLota (NY), David Valadao (CA), John Duarte (CA), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Bryan Steil (WI)…
No doubt, one day, Clyde or someone just like him, will be proposing a national monument to the J-6 insurrectionists to commemorate Trump's violent and failed coup attempt.
But not all vulnerable Republicans voted against it. Some just couldn’t help themselves and stuck with the MAGA-racists— like David Schweikert (AZ), Troy Balderson (OR), Derrick Van Orden (WI), Rob Wittman (VA) and Brian Mast (FL).
Eric Wilson is running for Congress in the western Wisconsin swing district, where alcoholic and abusive loud-mouth Derrick Van Orden happily voted with Clyde and the rest of the Confederates. Wilson wouldn’t have voted the same way. “We can now add white supremacist to the laundry list of words that describe Derrick Van Orden. He is also homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, misogynist, unhinged, bully, coward, insurrectionist, and somebody that sexually assaults people.”
Now, I don’t want to give anyone the impression that Clyde was the only unhinged MAGAt who took advantage of the amendment process to put forward a pet project. His was racism. But Moscow Marge was back with a Putin amendment. Her amendment would have prohibited any funds from the bill going to help Ukraine fight for its freedom against Russian aggression. It was crushed when it came to a vote— this time every single Democrat being joined by 138 Republicans. Only the 74 MAGA Republicans who want Putin to win voted with Traitor Greene, anti-American extremists like Luna (FL), Roy (TX), Mast (FL), Gosar (AZ), Good (VA), Perry (PA), Jordan (OH), Biggs (AZ), Mace (SC), Gaetz (FL), Boebert (CO), Clyde (GA), Van Drew (NJ), Ogles (TN), Higgins (LA), Nehls (TX)…
Let me just close with a little reminder Jamie Raskin sent to his supporters: “The times have found us, as Tom Paine said, and I promise to remain in the center of the fight in the people’s House and in the country to protect strong democracy and freedom from the forces of despotism and authoritarianism let loose across our land… As you know, nothing matters more in 2024 than winning a blowout victory in Congress for the party of democracy and freedom. So while the twice-impeached and four-times indicted Donald Trump tightens his stranglehold over the vote-suppressing, freedom-trampling GOP, our campaign is mobilizing thousands of young Democratic leaders and organizers across America in our national Democracy Summer program to beat them.” If you want to help Jamie with that project, you can contribute right here.
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