FEMA needs help—now. Mike Johnson said no.
FEMA needs help—now. Mike Johnson said no.
Speaker Mike Johnson won't let Congress fund hurricane recovery efforts until after the election.
With the Federal Emergency Management Agency reeling from major staffing and funding shortages amid the impact of Hurricane Helene, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refused on Sunday to commit to reconvening the House before Election Day to aid recovery efforts. In response to a letter from President Biden urging congressional leaders back to replenish federal disaster loan funding, Johnson said during a Fox News Sunday interview that he’d only do so after the election—all but ensuring the funds will run out.
...
This is insane. They already got hit by a hurricane and an even bigger one, the biggest we have seen until now, is about to hit the same area. Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to send help. Even when Kamala wants to ask Desantis if they need more help, he refuses to speak to her.
People will die over this political bs. I really hope they will realize how the republicans don't give two shits about them and their well being.
I think Desantis and the phone call thing is mostly political theatre. She wants to look presidential. It's understandable she wants to pursue this "opportunity," but she's just VP. Not a key role in this kind of thing.
But Johnson refusing to fund disaster response is intended to prevent the Biden-Harris admin from doing it's job and helping people in desperate situations. That's fucked.
Having direct continuity with the next President is useful. There's some plausible arguments (though by no means a slam dunk) that the delay in transition after the 2000 election left the Bush Admin unprepared and led to 9/11.
The GOP will kill as many people as is necessary to retain power. They've been doing this for many years now.
wish kamala's campaign would run some attack ads about how the Republican speaker is refusing to provide hurricane relief to Republican states
And how DeShitStain is too busy violating people’s first amendment rights to pick up the phone and coordinate for Milton.
Which.
Most of middle-Florida is going to go away. If we’re lucky, only for a few days or weeks.Most of middle-Florida is going to go away. If we’re lucky, only for a few days or weeks.
The tinfoil hat in me is telling me this is a play to give them reason to not certify the election
They need to target the Republic house members down the ballot who voted against the funding when they had the chance.
A REPUBLICAN HOUSE AND SENATE WILL KEEP STRANGLEING PROGRESS AND SUPPORTING RUSSIA.
VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE AND THE RIGHTS OF THE WOMEN YOU LOVE DEPEND ON IT.
Thanks, sometimes I get a little bit excited.
That would be in poor taste…. To democrats. Much like inflation, I’m sure there will be tons of republican attacks ads blaming democrats for the thing caused by republicans.
"Joe Biden isn't giving people in Florida proper help because Donald Trump lives there!" Mike Johnson in a week probably.
Why the fuck doesn't Biden just use his absolute presidential immunity for official acts to bypass Congress and allocate the funds? Then, once the election is over have anyone who says anything about stolen elections or massive voter fraud and the corrupt members of the Supreme Court arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Official presidential acts!
He doesn't need that. The constitution already gives the president the permission to summon Congress for emergencies.
he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them
“Happy 2am FEMA discussion!”
"But guess what? And by the way... Dew it Jack!"
Moral high ground. "They go low, we go high".
The biggest issue with liberals are them taking their opponents in good faith, while their opponents exploit this fact.
Except on the republican side it goes like "We go low, you go high", and the republicans are not the only ones using it. In fact, the nazis used it to get into power, and so is Putin, Orbán, etc.
Really, this is win win for the GOP. If Biden finds a way to fund disaster recovery they can claim all this was posturing. If he doesn’t they can say the government is ineffective and hates the gop. Either way they will say the money ran out because of refugees or hunter bidens laptop or Kamala’s addiction to thin mints or some insane shit.
The President can call a special session of Congress. Now, they can gavel straight out if they like, but when shit hits the fan, that's going to put the media narrative against them.
I'd like to step back for a moment and remember something: people are going to be hurt by this in just the next couple of days. I detest the fact that we have to play these games with media narrative. I also don't really like making fun of GOP politicians who are actively working against helping their own constituents. But apparently, that's what we have to do to get people in charge who aren't goddamn fucking children.
But you’re playing a game they are not playing. The GOP no longer believes in consensus based governance. They don’t believe that convincing people through argument is important. Engaging them on those terms will fail because they don’t care and their constituents don’t either.
Of course we should try to help people regardless but no matter what we do the GOP will oppose it, usually by lying.
who aren't [...] fucking children.
This works on two levels. One is embarrassing, the other horrifying.
little christian pervert believes hes following his religion
I mean, if you ignore the parts about giving away your wealth, being a good samaritan, looking for fault in yourself before criticising others, more stuff about collecting treasures in heaven instead of on earth, humility and patience in the face of adversity, honesty, forgiveness, even more stuff about throwing out moneylenders and people making money from religion...
Basically, take away the entire gospel and a solid chunk of the epistles, focus on the "If I regularly ask for forgiveness of whatever unspecified sins I might have committed, Im a good person and won't burn in hell like all these bad people", squint a little, account for a margin of human error, and he does look a bit like a Christian!
Voter suppression helps Republicans win elections. Asheville, NC slightly swung towards Biden last presidential election.
I've never visited Asheville, but I know it by reputation as the Austin of NC—a liberal enclave. Is that inaccurate? If not, that doesn't seem to signify anything.
The city of Asheville itself is left leaning but the county it is in is full of blue collar republican families that are culturally similar to the rest of Appalachia.
I'm disgusted that every time those fucking dimwits flip the bird to a dying populace, nobody makes a big stink about it. These fucking assholes are out for blood, yet a third of the nation is offering them selves up to the sacrifice altar, and the rest is doing fuck all!
And it's all about the upcoming election. They can't allow Biden Admin to appear to have any kind of "win" prior to November.
If people actually gave a shit...
Lol they aren't offering themselves to the altar, because they don't think they're the ones being sacrificed.
They just want to be seated in the splash zone.
And the media reinforces their narratives as well. I watched a portion of the 60 minutes interview and Harris might as well have been interviewed by Mike Johnson or Ted Cruz or something.
They do all of this posturing and pandering to the audience to try to pretend that they're asking the tough questions, and Trump picks the easy route and faces zero scrutiny his entire campaign by practically hand picking every interviewer and interview question and they give him a complete pass.
What's the solution here? Other than voting of course.
Them getting called out for starters. People need to start using language like "that's unacceptable", "MAGA blocking funds to save our own people AGAIN" or "yet again, MAGA is letting thousands of Americans die!" as apposed to barely fucking mentioning it. MAGA's whole thing is shitting on others, but nobody shits back at em. Why? We don't even need to make anything up, they are literal fascists! Calling them weird worked wonders, why did we stop? Was calling those murder cult psychos weird really the most outrageous thing we're willing to do?
If people keep treating it as if it's normal, it will become normal. Before Trump, all this was unthinkable, but then he came and proclaimed something outrageous and nobody said SHIT! Everyone just accepted it, making it the new normal. We are allowing this senile shitface to define what America is. This is abusive relationships 101. He has zero opposition and no backlash and thus all the power.
We should also make it illegal for foreign diplomats, officials and leaders to visit private citizens and broadcast it. Trump isn't even elected yet, and dictators have already crowned him the rightful king, and again nobody says shit!
Can't do anything that might make the current administration appear competent. Regardless of what the consequences may be for the American people.
Republicans want everyone to die in misery, including other republicans. If you voted republican, you deserve this cruelty, it's what you voted for. The rest of us normal Humans will carry on without you.
Problem is that all of the states run by the kakistocracy of the American Fascist Party also contain good people who absolutely LOATHE them but are powerless to get rid of them due to gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression and also can't just move to somewhere with competent non-villains in charge.
Sends another billions dollar military aid package to Israel
"Hey, let's hold the victims of Helene hostage until after the election. People will push conspiracies that Biden and the Dems don't want to help even though us Republicans constantly vote against funding for natural disasters. Our supporters are dumb as shit, just the way we like it."
Haven't we not heard this pattern before ? Something with supreme court and picking a judge before elections ? Pepperridge farm remembers.
How does a speaker have any decision power?
The Speaker leads the House. The House is in charge of the budget. This is it's main function, the House is supposed to be the voice of the majority but of course it's been broken due to gerrymandering.
the House is supposed to be the voice of the majority but of course it’s been broken due to gerrymandering.
And also the Reapportionment Act of 1929, which capped the size of the House at 435. If we went with the original model of one representative for every 30,000 people the House would have 11,000 members.
I mean even that isn't quite right, it's not meant to be about the dictatorship of the majority, it's meant to be representatives of the population debating and cooperating in good faith to pass legislation that takes all viewpoints into consideration.
Dictatorship of the minority is quite far removed from functioning government.
The speaker of the house is second in line to assume the presidency if both the president and vice president die, and they run the house of representatives. It's a rather powerful position.
On funding issues, a lot. Especially when the funding runs out.
Biden should do it, anyway. Do it and declare it an official act, force a Constitutional crisis when SCOTUS tells him its not an official act. The Judicial Branch, by design, has no enforcement arm to make POTUS do anything. They cannot send a brute squad into the White House to apprehend him and Harris. They can say it's not official, but they can't actually make him stop. Now, Congress does have armed goons they can send in, but they would immediately be confronted by Secret Service agents with itchy trigger fingers.
"he also attacked the Biden administration for supposedly “gleefully” reimbursing NGOs for transporting undocumented immigrants across the country."
Of course he's a piece of shit that would say this.
Little piss baby Abbot can do that all he likes and it's all gravy right?
The US government does a great job at illustrating the riddle of The Two Barbers. You have one party that dynamites legislation when they aren't in power of the executive branch to make the ruling one look bad, and you have another one that would never pull shit like this because they are genuinely interested in the welfare of its constituents.
