Rep. Matt Gaetz joined Sean Hannity on Monday night to discuss the ongoing developments in the the Obama spygate scandal.
Gaetz told Sean the “most compelling” evidence in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation will be revealed within days or weeks.
The Florida representative also revealed that the unreleased Papadopoulos transcripts will show the Trump campaign adviser denied there was any illegal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
This evidence was withheld from the FISA Court so they could spy on Trump.
FOX News legal expert Gregg Jarrett jumped in and accused the Obama officials of committing fraud on the FISA Court.
Florida congressman Matt Gaetz revealed Monday night that “most compelling” evidence in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation is days, if not weeks away.
According to Gaetz, R-Fla., secret unreleased transcripts involving former Trump aide George Papadopoulos reveal that he denied there was an illegal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia and that intelligence officials did not present that information to the FISA court.
“I believe we are days if not weeks aways for the most in compelling evidence in the biggest political scandal in American history,” Gaetz said on “Hannity” Monday.
“There was western intelligence sent to spy on Papadopoulos and there’s a recording and transcript of the conversation. And there, Papadopoulos denies any illegal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. So, they had evidence presumably that was against Papadopoulos and for him. What they will wont be able to defend is that they never presented that evidence to the FISA court.”
Somebody’s lying. Via Daily Caller: Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees that she never instructed former FBI Director James Comey to call the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server a “matter” instead of an “investigation.” Georgia Republican Rep. Doug Collins released a transcript of […]
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti apologize for agreeing with the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem on a recent trip to Israel.
Garcetti, the first Jewish mayor in the history of L.A., said last week, according to the Los Angeles Times: “I support the embassy being here. Israel shouldn’t be the only country in the world that can’t determine where its capital will be.” He added that he disagreed with the way that President Donald Trump had moved the embassy in 2017-2018, saying “there is usually a process to these things rather than what seems like an overnight, one-sided, partisan move.”
In response, CAIR sent a letter to Garcetti on Sunday demanding that he retract his statement and that he apologize.
CAIR also said in a statement in the name of its Los Angeles director, Hussam Ayloush:
It is ironic and embarrassing that Mayor Garcetti is scheduled to host a Ramadan iftar on Monday evening with members of the Muslim community. The mayor spent the last week in Israel cozying up to a right-wing apartheid government and whitewashing its brutal and illegal occupation and gross human rights violations against Palestinians to explore business opportunities and then wants to entertain members of the Muslim community, as if nothing happened.
As mayor of Los Angeles, Mayor Garcetti must represent all Angelenos, not just those who support Israel’s illegal occupation. We call on him to retract his statement of support and to stand against Trump’s reckless decision and hold a meeting with the interfaith community to discuss his statements.
In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).
Hussam Ayloush has a history of radical statements himself. Earlier this month, he compared Israel to Nazi Germany. In 2015, he said U.S. foreign policy was partially to blame for an Islamic terror attack in San Bernardino. CAIR provided assistance to the family of the terrorists after that attack.
CAIR was joined in its condemnation by other left-wing “faith” groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a radical left-wing group that recently gave a platform at s conference to convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
Congress approved the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in both houses. Presidents and presidential candidates from both major political parties have committed to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Trump finally did so last May, though no elected Democrats attended the opening or a celebratory party thrown by the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.
Garcetti is not backing down — at least not yet — but the Los Angeles Timesreported Monday that he reiterated his support for a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, as well as an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Democrats continue to toy with the idea of impeaching Donald Trump. On the one hand, it seems easier than trying to defeat him in an election. But on the other hand, there could be a lot of paper work involved plus they’d have to find a place to park near the Capitol building.
Congressman Jerry Nadler was interviewed while hiding under a bridge in hopes of devouring one of the three billy goats Gruff and he said, “We have fallen into a terrible imaginary crisis while voters just stand around apathetically admiring their new jobs or their new cars or the fact that they can now feed their families. We need to make these people understand how hysterical I am or else we can’t even begin to tear this country apart over nothing.”
Congressman Adam Schiff stood on the Capitol steps waving a sealed envelope and telling reporters, “I have in this envelope absolute proof that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, and if he didn’t collude with the Russians he obstructed justice and if he didn’t obstruct justice he said racists were fine people and if he didn’t say racists were fine people then why I am standing here waving this envelope?”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains uncertain on the matter of impeachment, and in a statement made to the statue of Sacagawea in the Capital rotunda, said, “The questions we have to answer as a nation are ‘Where am I?’ and ‘Why is there a lipstick stain on my forehead?’ Because before we can move forward with a matter as important as impeaching George W. Bush, I need to know why I locked myself in the broom closet last week, and if not then, when?”
President Trump meanwhile has introduced a proposal to revamp the current immigration system, but Democrats say that’s just a cynical ploy to try to distract voters from the matter of impeachment by solving the nation’s problems.
The House of Representatives unanimously passed a bipartisan bill Monday afternoon aimed at helping streamline the international adoption process for prospective parents.
The “Intercountry Adoption Information Act of 2019” aims to help American families keep abreast of other countries’ adoption laws and any changes that could delay or halt the process.
“The world today is full of orphaned children, but it’s also full of loving families who are ready and eager to adopt them,” Rep. Ron Wright, R-Texas, said on the House floor. “All too often American families encounter policy obstacles that delay or prevent those adoptions.”
A press release from Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins, R-Ga., who is the bill’s original Republican sponsor, explained that the often-confusing international adoption process and the ever-changing nature of other countries’ laws and policies can make things incredibly difficult for prospective parents, even leading them to dead ends.
Democratic cosponsor Jim Langevin, R.I., said in a statement after the bill’s passage: “Whether adopting at home or abroad, every family should have the information they need to navigate the process successfully.”
One family that could have benefited from the transparency the bill seeks to provide was the Romano family of Georgia. In 2012, Mark and Pam Romano began the adoption process for two boys from Russia before the country banned all adoptions to the United States, indefinitely halting the adoption process. They have since asked the U.S. State Department to work to get the ban lifted but have had no such luck.
“Willing, loving families in the United States and elsewhere long to have the chance to make the sacrifices necessary to extend their tender care to a child, or children, they themselves did not give birth to,” Pam Romano said earlier this year. “I think I speak for every family in the process of adopting, or even considering adoption: Change is long overdue. Transparency and accountability are vital to any program that seeks to benefit the welfare of children.”
The legislation is a proposed update on the Interagency Adoption Act of 2000, which requires the State Department to provide Congress with annual statistics on international adoptions that involve immigration to the United States. The bill will also require State to include public reporting requirements about countries that have changed their laws or policies on adoption to the U.S., thereby creating an informational resource for prospective adoptive parents.
“Loving families in Northeast Georgia and across the United States are eager to provide children with the care and support they deserve, yet they remain separated from their adoptive children due to shifting international policies and information gaps,” Collins said in a statement after passage. “The Intercountry Adoption Information Act will help bring families together by ensuring parents pursuing overseas adoption, like Mark and Pam Romano, have access to the information needed to navigate the international adoption landscape.”
The bill also has bipartisan support in the Senate, where it is sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and cosponsored by the Senate co-chairs of the Congressional Adoption Caucus, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Who would have guessed? Oh look, the Federal Judge who just ruled that President Trump must turn over his financial records to Congressional Dems, also just so happens to be an Obama-Biden donor. I’m sure one has nothing to do with the other though. Nothing to see here folks!https://t.co/LYncbOD45I pic.twitter.com/2EGAe5r0oc — Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) May […]
According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, most Americans wildly underestimate the number of illegal aliens entering the United States each month, and one reason could be the news media’s reluctance to disclose the real statistics.
The perpetual war on history now has the father of our country in its sights as the San Francisco Board of Education considers removing a mural of Washington from a local school.
If the board succeeds in politicizing Washington, whose legacy was once so secured and uniting thathis home at Mount Vernon was considered neutral ground during the Civil War, then we have clearly crossed the Rubicon of social division.
Critics of the mural point out that, in addition to Washington, it also depicts slaves and Native Americans—and one of the Native Americans appears to be dead.
They have called the artwork offensive, and the school board says it “traumatizes students” and “glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc.,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
But the original intent of the mural was actually the exact opposite.
It was painted in 1936 by artist Victor Arnautoff, a man of the left in his own time who, according to historian Fergus M. Bordewich, wanted to depict Washington in a less glamorized way by including images of disturbing realities. Bordewich explained:
[Arnautoff] included those images not to glorify Washington, but rather to provoke a nuanced evaluation of his legacy. The scene with the dead Native American, for instance, calls attention to the price of ‘manifest destiny.’ Arnautoff’s murals also portray the slaves with humanity and the several live Indians as vigorous and manly.
Those who condemn the murals have misunderstood it, seeing only what they sought to find. They’ve also got their history seriously wrong. Washington did own slaves—124 men, women and children—and oversaw many more who belonged to his wife’s family. But by his later years he had evolved into a proto-abolitionist, a remarkable ethical journey for a man of his time, place, and class.
No matter to the modern iconoclasts. It’s too much to expect one to think about what one is rushing to destroy. Obliterate now and ask questions, well, never.
This is just the latest example of attempts to purge American history of its historical figures. Not only is this trend wildly misguided—how destroying statues and paintings bring an end to racism and prejudice is never fully explained—but it also cheapens the debate over America’s past by ignoring nuance.
From the beginning, it was clear that this movement had far less to do with genuinely criticizing past historical figures, but instead reflected the need of modern radicals to feel good about themselves and think they are “doing something” to stop oppression, be it real or imaginary.
Reflection and thoughtfulness are uncomfortable impediments to those who never dare question whether they are on the “right side of history.”
It makes sense that the same people who seek to de-platform individuals for wrongthink on social media and shut down controversial speakers at universities are the same people who want to erase artwork and monuments. The common thread is for their views to be constantly reinforced and never challenged from without.
The unthinking maxims of intersectionality and identity politics must be recited over and over again from all sectors of society. No alternate views can be tolerated. Such teachings soothe the minds of radicals who can easily ignore the moral complications of life from the safe comforts of their college campuses and public buildings. (Those, of course, are made possible by the wicked people they seek to extinguish.)
Doubt, skepticism, and the use of reason are uncomfortable and problematic.
It didn’t take long for the iconoclasts to move from Jefferson Davis to Thomas Jefferson, and then from Jefferson to the most revered of our Founding Fathers, George Washington.
What’s truly revealing about the empty, surface-level nature of these efforts is how little cost is involved for those doing the erasing.
Criticizing slavery and racism in 2019 can get one tenure, public office, and a six-figure salary as a corporate consultant. So brave.
It’s easy to cover up or take down a painting, not so easy to sacrifice the immense benefits of living in the prosperous constitutional republic that problematic men like Washington created.
As David Marcus wrote for The Federalist, it was easy to get rid of Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” recording at Yankee games due to her singing what are now considered offensive songs in the 1930s—but are Yankee fans willing to abolish the Yankees themselves because of their team’s historical role in segregation?
For that matter, are Harvard University administrators and professors willing to give up their jobs at an institution founded in part by a man who owned slaves because its origin was problematic?
Not likely.
It’s far more satisfying to take the less costly step of tearing down a painting or a statue. And it’s much easier to avoid the complicated fact that so many of these supposedly ignorant and prejudiced people built the very institutions they enjoy today.
In their simplistic thinking, surely those who founded a free republic based on consent, and truly “broke the wheel” of tyranny that had been the norm for virtually all of human history, couldn’t be great if slavery was still a part of their heritage.
They failed to live up to their own ideals, so they best be erased.
But to follow this logic forward, we can’t stop with the Founders.
The over half-million Americans who lost their lives and countless others who risked them to end slavery, the “original sin” of this country, also weren’t so great, you see.
Their skin was generally too fair, their motivations insufficiently pure, and most were undoubtedly homophobes who couldn’t have conceived of modern concepts like gay marriage or a man literally becoming a woman.
How can men like President William McKinley, who could simply be attacked for other reasons, be celebrated?
They can’t. They too must be obliterated.
Greatness, according to the history erasers, truly belongs to the wokescolds who wage hashtag campaigns to raise awareness about offensive art and ensure society conforms to their ever-evolving whims.
But the truth is, those who wage war on America’s history are tacitly acknowledging the benefits of living in America, a free country that allows them to pursue their radical activism, even though it is antithetical to the founding ideals that enable free speech.
These movements are forcing politics to infect every corner of our existence, and that weakens this country. It makes us more hateful toward one another and trains us in the un-American notion that to win arguments, we must quash, liquidate, and erase from all memory those we disagree with.
The Washington mural may come down in San Francisco, but the real damage is not being done to the art. It’s being done to the legacy of Washington, to ourselves.
The past is an easy target for iconoclast bullies, but if Americans don’t want them to keep winning, they will have to begin standing up and speaking out against them.
If not, the destruction of our statues and artwork will merely be symbolic of the destruction done to our country at large.
Sometime around A.D. 60, in the age of Emperor Nero, a Roman
court insider named Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical Latin novel, “The
Satyricon,” about moral corruption in Imperial Rome. The novel’s general
landscape was Rome’s transition from an agrarian republic to a globalized
multicultural superpower.
The novel survives only in a series of extended fragments.
But there are enough chapters for critics to agree that the high-living
Petronius, nicknamed the “Judge of Elegance,” was a brilliant cynic.
He often mocked the cultural consequences of the sudden and disruptive influx
of money and strangers from elsewhere in the Mediterranean region into a
once-traditional Roman society.
The novel plots the wandering odyssey of three lazy, overeducated, and mostly underemployed single young Greeks: Encolpius, Ascyltos, and Giton. They aimlessly mosey around southern Italy. They panhandle and mooch off the nouveau riche. They mock traditional Roman customs. The three and their friends live it up amid the culinary, cultural, and sexual excesses in the age of Nero.
Certain themes in “The Satyricon” are timeless and
still resonate today.
The abrupt transition from a society of rural homesteaders into metropolitan coastal hubs had created two Romes. One world was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan network of traders, schemers, investors, academics, and deep-state imperial cronies. Their seaside corridors were not so much Roman as Mediterranean. And they saw themselves more as “citizens of the world” than as mere Roman citizens.
In the novel, vast, unprecedented wealth had produced
license. On-the-make urbanites suck up and flatter the childless rich in hopes
of being given estates rather than earning their own money.
The rich in turn exploit the young sexually and emotionally
by offering them false hopes of landing an inheritance.
Petronius seems to mock the very world in which he indulged.
His novel’s accepted norms are pornography, gratuitous
violence, sexual promiscuity, transgenderism, delayed marriage, childlessness,
fear of aging, homelessness, social climbing, ostentatious materialism,
prolonged adolescence, and scamming and conning in lieu of working.
The characters are fixated on expensive fashion, exotic foods, and pretentious name-dropping. They are the lucky inheritors of a dynamic Roman infrastructure that had globalized three continents. Rome had incorporated the shores of the Mediterranean under uniform law, science, institutions—all kept in check by Roman bureaucracy and the overwhelming power of the legions, many of them populated by non-Romans.
Never in the history of civilization had a generation become so wealthy and leisured, so eager to gratify every conceivable appetite—and yet so bored and unhappy.
But there was also a second Rome in the shadows. Occasionally the hipster antiheroes of the novel bump into old-fashioned rustics, shopkeepers, and legionaries. They are what we might now call the ridiculed “deplorables” and “clingers.”
Even Petronius suggests that these rougher sorts built and
maintained the vast Roman Empire. They are caricatured as bumpkins and yet
admired as simple, sturdy folk without the pretensions and decadence of the
novel’s urban drones.
Petronius is too skilled a satirist to paint a
black-and-white picture of good old traditional Romans versus their corrupt
urban successors. His point is subtler.
Globalization had enriched and united non-Romans into a world culture. That was an admirable feat. But such homogenization also attenuated the very customs, traditions, and values that had led to such astounding Roman success in the first place.
The multiculturalism, urbanism, and cosmopolitanism of “The Satyricon” reflected an exciting Roman mishmash of diverse languages, habits, and lifestyles drawn from northern and Western Europe, Asia, and Africa.
But the new empire also diluted a noble and unique Roman agrarianism. It eroded nationalism and patriotism. The empire’s wealth, size, and lack of cohesion ultimately diminished Roman unity, as well as traditional marriage, child-bearing, and autonomy.
Education likewise was seen as ambiguous. In the novel, wide
reading ensures erudition and sophistication, and helps science supplant
superstition. But sometimes education is also ambiguous. Students become idle,
pretentious loafers. Professors are no different from loud pedants. Writers are
trite and boring. Elite pundits sound like gasbags.
Petronius seems to imply that whatever the Rome of his time was, it was likely not sustainable—but would at least be quite exciting in its splendid decline.
Petronius also argues that with too much rapid material
progress comes moral regress. His final warning might be especially troubling
for the current generation of Western Europeans and Americans. Even as we brag
of globalizing the world and enriching the West materially and culturally, we
are losing our soul in the process.
Getting married, raising families, staying in one place, still working with our hands, and postponing gratification may be seen as boring and out of date. But nearly 2,000 years later, all of that is what still keeps civilization alive.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., is taking a leading role Tuesday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s passage in the U.S. House on May 21, 1919. The Daily Signal recently spoke to her about a range of issues affecting her constituents, including the disconnect between the people in Washington state and Washington, D.C. Plus, she speaks about her efforts to reach out to the next generation, why she values every human life, and how the booming economy is helping small businesses in her state. The interview is available on our podcast, video, and the a lightly edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: You recently spent time back home in the district talking to a lot of your constituents. Tell us what is on their minds. It’s so interesting for those of us in Washington to hear what’s going on in the rest of the country.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers: Sure. Well, it’s always good to get around to the countries of eastern Washington and hold town halls, invite people to come and ask questions.
I’m also visiting all the high schools. I’ve been to several high schools over the last couple of weeks. I represent several colleges and universities, and going on campus.
At the town halls, what I like to talk about and where I always lead is just that this is representative government, and just how much I cherish representative government, and what an honor it is to serve in the House, the peoples’ House. The battle of ideas that takes place.
I always like to highlight the economy. And in eastern Washington our economy is good, just like it is all over the country. If anything, we have a shortage of skilled workers and affordable housing. We need more plumbers and pipe fitters, and welders.
But the questions that I’ve been asked more just the last few days, I usually get asked about the cost of health care. That continues to be a big challenge, especially for families, small businesses, those that are in the individual market. Rising premiums, copays, the deductibles. That continues to be a question that they ask.
Those on the left, there seems to be quite an organized effort to show up and ask about the Green New Deal. There’s usually one or two, or maybe even more, that will ask, “What about the Green New Deal?”
Which, when you explain at least what we’ve seen to date, we’re talking $93 trillion in cost on this country, it quickly changes that conversation.
Bluey: I bet there are issues that you’re not hearing about as well that are really different from what it seems some in Washington want to focus on. The Mueller report and impeachment and everything else that comes along with that.
McMorris Rodgers: I’ve not been asked about that once.
Bluey: Wow.
McMorris Rodgers: As I have been in these town meetings, at the schools, I have not been asked about it once. Yet that dominates the news, obviously.
Bluey: It certainly does. When you’re meeting with high school students, what’s on their minds and do they think about this move by some in Congress to give 16-year-olds the opportunity to vote?
McMorris Rodgers: It’s been fun to ask them directly that question. I’ve been to several high schools and I remember the first time I asked that question I wasn’t sure how would they respond.
The teacher had said, “Well, Cathy, can you ask them a question maybe on something that’s going on right now in Congress?”
It was days after we had taken that vote in the House whether or not to allow 16-year-olds to vote.
I asked them the question and not one in that class raised their hand. Then I said, “Well, over 100 representatives in the House voted yes. Over 300 voted no, so it failed.”
But I’ve continued to ask that question and I might get one or two, but the large, large majority of them say, “No, probably not the best idea.”
Bluey: You mentioned the economy earlier. I know that that’s important for people young, people who are working and really everybody, whether it’s in eastern Washington or all across this country.
… What’s fueling this economic growth? We continue to see it whether it’s the S&P and Nasdaq hitting new records or the GDP surpassing expectations. What does that mean for your constituents in eastern Washington?
McMorris Rodgers: What that means is that the people that I represent in eastern Washington have more opportunities because the job is the opportunity.
We celebrate America as this land of opportunity. It starts with the job, right? You get that first job and then you get a better paying job.
So when we’re celebrating a record economic growth and record jobs, the fact that we have more job openings than people seeking jobs, we’re celebrating people that are coming off the sidelines.
Those that had given up on finding a job are now getting back into the workforce. That means people have more opportunities. People in eastern Washington, for the longest time we would talk about how we would lose our young people. …
I live in a great corner of the world. We have a great quality of life, and yet so often after high school young people would feel like they have to leave. Or even if they stayed to go to one of our colleges or universities, they would leave after that to find a good paying job.
… We had 9,000 new jobs in Spokane County in the last year. That is great news and that means that they can stay. They can stay in Spokane, stay in eastern Washington, live this great quality of life, raise their family, start a business. You know what also it means? It means that people have freedom to take those ideas and do something with it. That is what freedom and free markets has meant.
America has led the world in innovation and breakthroughs, and I’m always inspired by those stories of the individual that started in their basement or their kitchen with an idea and then built a company. Manufacturing or a new service, a new product. When we have a good economy, it means that there’s more opportunities for that.
Bluey: It certainly is and I appreciate your passion for it. I know you come from a family that had a small business. So that is certainly an area where whether it’s passing tax cuts or working on regulatory issues, certainly Republicans in Congress made a significant impact in the first two years of the Trump administration.
McMorris Rodgers: That was our priority.
Bluey: That’s absolutely true.
McMorris Rodgers: It was to get our economy going. You remember President Barack Obama, he was talking about the new normal. That this record-low economic growth and … coming out of the Great Recession, he said this is just a new normal.
As the Republican majority, along with our president, Donald Trump, have taken on eliminating those regulations and lifting the regulatory stranglehold and the tax burden.
We’ve seen just an amazing response within our economy. Small businesses are the engine of our economy, and I’m grateful to have been raised on an orchard where we had a fruit stand.
It was very family owned and operated. Grateful for that foundation, but we want to keep that going. So that economic growth means that the engine of our economy, and especially small businesses, can do better.
Bluey: You are also known as somebody who has a care and compassion for children. You yourself are a mother of three, and somebody who’s spoken out very directly about the impact that they’ve had on your life in such a positive way.
I want to ask you about some of the debates that we’re seeing play out in other states around the country, whether it be New York passing a law that allows abortion right up until birth or the Virginia governor stating publicly his belief in infanticide, and things of that nature.
What does that say about our culture and how can we go about changing that and bringing more value to the sanctity of life?
McMorris Rodgers: Right. I so want a culture that values life, that celebrates life, celebrates every life and that potential, the dignity, and the value of every life.
Boy, when I heard what New York had done, the law that they had passed and the governor of Virginia and his [comments] … I was shocked first and foremost at the idea that a baby who had survived an abortion outside the womb would not be given health care.
So we have immediately gone to work on the born-alive legislation. It has been more difficult than it should be. In my mind, this should be a no-brainer, and especially today with the life-saving treatments and technology that we have.
Our health care system is one that is about saving lives. … We do a lot. We lead the world in saving lives, and yet this idea that somehow a baby that’s born alive would not be given health care, it’s really a shocking commentary on our culture and the devaluing of life.
In our Declaration of Independence it says it so well. You just go back to our foundation … This is a country where we’re based upon a pursuit. It’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Bluey: Right.
McMorris Rodgers: Life is pretty fundamental and we need to make sure that we’re celebrating that life either before the life is born or after it’s born. And certainly the born-alive legislation should be something that we can pass.
Bluey: Absolutely. It’s currently a discharged petition, which means Republicans have signed it and you’ve had a few Democrats who have also put their names on it, but you need more Democrats in order for it to get to that number, 218, to have a vote on the House floor.
I want to ask you about what you’ve experienced in terms of the difference now that the Democrats are in control of the House. Republicans seem to have thrown a few curve balls at them with motions to recommit and forcing votes that they might not have wanted to take.
What is it like, in your own experience, having gone from Republicans being in the majority to now Democrats controlling Congress?
McMorris Rodgers: It’s night and day. It’s very different. We were just talking about the born-alive legislation.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to bring that up for a vote in the House of Representatives. That means that our only recourse to force that vote is the discharge petition, and it means that we have to file it, we have to get 218 signatures in order to get it released from Speaker Pelosi. Then you have to wait for a certain amount of time before you can have the vote.
When you’re in the majority, you are setting the agenda. You are setting the calendar.
For the last eight years the Republicans had been in the majority in the House. We had been setting the agenda, which meant we led on tax reform. We led on a whole series of bills that were lifting the regulatory burden.
And now that’s all being done by Speaker Pelosi, it’s just a very different agenda. Unfortunately, it appears that she’s more interested in the presidential race and votes of … It’s just basically show votes.
We’ve done more resolutions this year. They’re not putting forward legislative solutions, they’re just putting forward resolutions. It’s more they just want to be able to grandstand and talk about an issue rather than really sit down and do the tough work of legislating.
Bluey: Yeah, getting things done. No, absolutely.
You have a couple of political celebrities in this new class—I’m talking about the congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar—who made a lot of news themselves.
Have you had much interaction with them or, as somebody who’s served in Congress, how do you get back to avoiding these headlines and actually getting things done on behalf of the American people?
McMorris Rodgers: Right. It seems that they’re more interested in headlines. I term them celebrity politicians, right? They’re not about actually building relationships or doing the hard work of legislating.
What is most frightening is that they are openly promoting a socialist agenda for Americans. This is the first time that I’ve ever seen it quite at this level.
I’m reminding the high school students that I visit and colleges that socialism and human rights do not coexist.
You look at the history: Socialism doesn’t celebrate every person, individual rights and human rights, and make sure that their potential is being reached. Socialism is a few people that get to make the decisions for the rest of the country.
Bluey: We’re talking about the growing economy. If you look at Heritage’s own Index of Economic Freedom, you see the socialism countries don’t provide that freedom for the people who live in places like Venezuela or North Korea. The countries that do are those who are the most economically free.
McMorris Rodgers: Yes, yes.
Bluey: Glad to hear you’re telling the high school students about that.
McMorris Rodgers: Well, yes. It’s free markets, capitalism, free markets that allows you to take that idea that you have.
We’re creative people, right? We have ideas. We’re always in search of that more perfect union, and we’re always coming up with new ideas to improve our lives. It’s in a free-market society that you can actually do something with that idea. You don’t have to ask permission of the government. And yet socialism is all controlled by a few.
That’s where … America has led the world in. … You think about health care and all the breakthroughs and new innovations. We have led the world and … we’ve lifted more people out of poverty. We’ve raised the standard of living higher than any other country in the world, and it’s because we are a free people.
Bluey: One of the other things that comes with economic freedom often is trade, and I have heard you talk about the importance of trade, particularly to Washington state, and how reliant Washington state is on having a free trade.
McMorris Rodgers: Yes.
Bluey: We have an opportunity here coming up, perhaps, with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which the president has negotiated.
What can you tell us about that or what prospects there might be in this Congress to take some action on trade and really help the economy grow even more?
McMorris Rodgers: Ninety-five percent of the consumers live outside of the United States of America. My vision is that America is a country that grows, that manufactures, that produces, innovates, and then sells it to the rest of the world.
In Washington state, we are. We are the most trade dependent state in the country. It’s estimated one out of every three jobs is dependent upon trade, and that is the fact that we export so much of our agriculture.
Apples, potatoes, and wheat. We export Boeing airplanes. We export Microsoft and Amazon products, and we sell it to people all over the world.
The USMCA is really important. I’m on the whip team. This is a modernization of NAFTA that the Trump administration has led. Getting USMCA approved is going to be very important.
was just down at the White House a few weeks ago, we were strategizing on how to get it done.
Part of USMCA is calling for some labor reforms in Mexico. We hope that Mexico will do that by the end of April. The clock is ticking there. Then ITC has issued its recommendations.
Once that’s in place, then the administration plans to send USMCA up to Congress and the clock will start ticking. We’ll have 60 days to get it done. My hope is that we’ll get that done by August and then we can move onto other important trade agreements with Japan and others.
I also want to just express appreciation to our president for what he’s doing with China, and being tough on China. No other administration has been willing to do that.
China has not been a good actor. China has not been honoring intellectual property rights or playing by the rules of the road.
This administration is holding China accountable. That’s very important so that China isn’t the one that’s setting the trade agenda, but it will be an agenda that’s driven by freedom-loving countries.
Bluey: We appreciate your interest in that issue, and I’m glad to learn a little bit about Washington state myself. I did not realize some of that information you shared.
Finally, I want to ask you a question about some people that you’ve tried to hold accountable. That is the big tech companies.
You have been an outspoken advocate on behalf of conservatives to make sure that their content isn’t suppressed, there’s not censorship. Why is that issue so important to you?
McMorris Rodgers: It’s pretty fundamental. It’s the First Amendment. It’s freedom of speech.
The public square today, a lot of the debate takes place on these platforms, these giant platforms. It’s so important that we are protecting that freedom of speech, and that conservative voices are not being stifled, and that we have a real freedom of that debate within the public square on the tech platforms.
… I’m also looking at privacy, how we make sure that we have transparency around what’s actually being collected, how it’s being used. There’s been too many surprises recently about information that’s being used in ways that no one was aware of.
Bluey: Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, thanks so much for spending time with The Daily Signal.
McMorris Rodgers: Great to be with you. Thank you.
