Latest news with #JimMcGovern
Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
'Junk Nukes': Democrat McGovern Tells Trump To Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Talk To Putin
In a speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts issued a powerful warning about the mounting dangers of nuclear conflict. As the world marks 80 years since the Trinity Test and prepares to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, McGovern calls for moral courage and global leadership to reverse course. With 13,400 nuclear weapons still in existence—most held by the U.S. and Russia—he urges President Trump and global powers to return to arms control negotiations, warning that military action alone cannot eliminate the threat. He called on Congress to pass HRES 317—a resolution to recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons. Watch. Read More
Reuters
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US House Republicans efforts to pass Trump spending cuts delayed by infighting
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was struggling on Thursday to advance President Donald Trump's proposed $9 billion funding cut to public media and to foreign aid, amid infighting among the Republican majority over issues including questions related to Jeffrey Epstein. House Republicans were poised to vote as soon as Thursday on the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400 million in funds for an HIV/AIDS prevention program. A late-developing complication with this bill was some Republicans' demands to add an amendment calling for more transparency into the investigation of the deceased financier and convicted sex offender Epstein. For the last week, conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein and his associates have surrounded Trump's White House after some high-profile supporters of the president - including congressional leaders - called for more information on Epstein from the Justice Department than was previously released. "The way the Republican leadership is running this place is astonishingly bad, the incompetence is stunning," said Representative Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. "I look forward to an honest - not a political debate - on the issue of the Epstein file," Representative Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican on the rules panel said in response, adding that Republicans feel a "responsibility" to protect the Epstein victims. It is unclear if an Epstein-related amendment will make its way into the procedural rule to consider the funding cut. House Republicans are feeling extra pressure now, as Trump's administration would be forced to spend the money if Congress does not approve the cuts by Friday, due the law's 45-day consideration window closing. If the chamber is able to advance the funding cut package - barring other delays from Republicans or Democrats - the final tally could be close. In June, four Republicans joined Democrats to vote against the package, which passed 214-212. "Democrats are going to continue to fight hard and do everything we can to make sure that we are pushing back aggressively on this rescissions package that is going to hurt the American people," Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters. He said he might take up floor time with a longer-than-normal speech, which is allowed. The $9 billion at stake amounts to roughly one-tenth of one percent of the $6.8 trillion federal budget. Republicans say the foreign aid funds previously went to programs they deem wasteful, and they say the $1 billion in public media funding supports radio stations and PBS television that are biased against conservative viewpoints. In the 51-48 Senate vote, only two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, voted against the funding cut. Both questioned why the legislative body - constitutionally responsible for the power of the purse - was taking direction from the executive branch to slash funding through the so-called rescissions package. "There's a good reason I think that we haven't seen a successful rescissions package before the Senate in almost 33 years," Murkowski said in a Senate floor speech this week, "It's because we've recognized that, 'hey, that's our role here.'" Funding cuts are regularly approved with bipartisan support in Congress through the appropriations process. But Democratic leaders this week warned this one-party cut could damage the necessary bipartisanship to pass funding bills. This week's potential funding clawback represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts. Democratic lawmakers also accuse the administration of blocking more than $425 billion so far this year. After the measure cleared the Senate, the White House's Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said more such spending-cut requests are "likely" to be made by the Trump administration. Murkowski, Collins, and some Democratic appropriators also condemned a Thursday comment Vought made to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, where he said the "appropriations process has to be less bipartisan." "The best way for us to counter what has been said by the OMB director is to continue to work in a bipartisan way," Collins, chair of the Senate appropriations committee, said as her committee debated government funding for next the fiscal year. These funding bills require bipartisan support to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold for government funding legislation, unlike the funding cut package that only requires a simple majority support in both congressional chambers.
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Tensions over Epstein files complicate Republican plan to vote on cuts bill
Tensions over the release of documents related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein have complicated House Republicans' plans to hold a vote on Thursday on legislation demanded by Donald Trump to cancel $9bn in government spending. The House of Representatives faces a Friday deadline to pass the rescissions package demanded by Trump and approved by the Senate in the wee hours of Thursday morning, otherwise the administration will be obligated to spend about $8bn meant for foreign assistance programs, and $1.1bn budgeted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. But before the House can vote on the package, it must be approved by the rules committee, where the Democratic minority has sought to capitalize on a growing furor among Republicans and their supporters over the Trump administration's handling of documents related to the Epstein case by forcing the majority to take politically tricky votes. After several hours of delay, the committee announced it would hold a hearing into the package on Thursday evening, setting the stage for House Republicans to pass the legislation later in the night. Ranking member Jim McGovern accused the GOP of 'stalling' the rules committee hearing, and said Democrats would propose an amendment to the rescissions package meant to win release of any files related to Epstein. 'They're afraid to meet again to have another vote. Well, we're going to keep the heat on and you need to keep the pressure on members of Congress,' McGovern said. 'Release the files. Full transparency.' On Monday, rules committee Democrats made two attempts to add language to a cryptocurrency bill that would have required the release of documents dealing with the financier, who was accused of running a sex-trafficking ring catering to global elites. Republicans voted both down. The Epstein case has grown into a crisis for Trump and the GOP ever since the justice department announced last week that, after a review of US government files, it had determined the financier's 2019 death in federal custody was a suicide, and that no list of his clients existed to be made public. Trump's Maga coalition includes believers in a conspiracy theory that the 'deep state' is covering up a global pedophile ring in which Epstein was a major figure, and that files exist to prove it. The president has strenuously denied that his administration is hiding anything, and insulted those who call for the documents' release as 'weaklings' who fell for a 'radical left' hoax intended to discredit him. Democrats, relegated to the minority in both chamber of Congress, have seized on that tension with an array of legislative maneuvers intended to make public any Epstein-related documents. On Tuesday, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, told a conservative podcaster who asked about the case: 'It's a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.' Meanwhile, Thomas Massie, an iconoclastic Republican congressman who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, and the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna are trying to get a majority of the House to sign on to a petition that will force a vote on releasing the files, and has already received signatures from nine GOP lawmakers. The rescissions passage passed the House in June, but the chamber must vote on it again after the Senate declined to cut funding for Pepfar, a program credited with saving millions of people from infection or death from HIV that was created in 2003 under the Republican president George W Bush.
The Independent
15-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Republicans block effort to force release of Epstein files in Congress
House Republicans have blocked a Democratic lawmaker's push to force the Trump administration to release the 'FULL' Jeffrey Epstein files. Seizing on growing MAGA infighting, California Representative Ro Khanna introduced an amendment to the GENIUS Act on Monday, calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to compile and release all Epstein records within 30 days. Late Monday evening, the House Rules Committee voted 7–5 to block the proposal from reaching the lower chamber. South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman, who previously remarked that 'the Epstein files are bound to come out,' broke with his party and was the only one of nine Republicans on the committee to vote in favor of the amendment. Texas Representative Chip Roy, another committee member who sometimes defies party lines, opted not to vote. 'Rules voted 5-7 to block the full House from voting on my amendment to have a FULL release of the Epstein file,' Khanna wrote on X just before midnight. 'People are fed up. They are fed up. Thanks @RepRalphNorman. Need to put the American people before party!' In another post, Khanna said that he will 'keep fighting for transparency,' adding that the 'public will not be gaslit.' While largely expected, the decision outraged Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. 'I want to know what the hell is in these files,' he told Axios, accusing the Republicans of 'backtracking' after Donald Trump pledged on the 2024 presidential campaign trail that he would make the unredacted Epstein files public. Conspiracy theories have swirled around the Epstein case for years, after the sex offender took his own life in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. The Trump administration faced furor last week after the DOJ and FBI's memo concluded that there was no evidence of the disgraced financier's so-called 'client list.' It was compounded by the release of an 11-hour video of Epstein's final hours before he died by suicide in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center almost six years ago, with one minute of the footage missing and forensic experts concluding that the clip had been 'modified.' The memo is at odds with the conspiracy theories promoted by the president himself and some of his most senior staff members, sparking unprecedented division within his own support base. As scrutiny over the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein investigation intensified Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump and Bondi are 'MAGA extremists' who have been 'fanning the flames' around the Epstein case for years. 'The American people deserve to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as it relates to this whole sordid Jeffrey Epstein matter,' he said. 'Now the chickens are coming home to if anything, is the Trump administration and the Department of Justice hiding? What are you hiding?' FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, have privately expressed frustration with the DOJ's handling of the case, sources told CNN. According to people familiar with the matter, Bongino is reportedly weighing whether to resign. At the same time, Patel posted on X that the 'conspiracy theories' around Epstein's death are untrue and 'never have been.' It's not the first time Trump and Bondi have faced MAGA backlash over the sex offender's case. After promising to release the 'first phase' of declassified Epstein files on February 27, the attorney general was sharply criticized when the documents turned out to contain information already publicly available.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lawrence O'Donnell Gleefully Mocks House Republicans Over Big, Beautiful Bill Vote: ‘It Has a Mistake In It'
Lawrence O'Donnell mocked House Republicans for putting forward President Donald Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill vote with a mistake in it, an error that shot themselves in the foot. 'It has a mistake in it,' O'Donnell said on Wednesday night's episode of 'The Last Word.' 'They all know that the real leading expert on House rules is Democrat Jim McGovern, the Democratic leader of the House Rules Committee. They know that the Republican chair of the House Rules Committee, Virginia Foxx, is completely and permanently incompetent—always has been, always will be—along with her staff.' More from TheWrap CBS' John Dickerson Says Trump Settlement Jeopardizes Network Holding 'Power to Account After Paying It Millions' | Video Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino Mainstay Known for 'Kill Bill' and 'Reservoir Dogs,' Dies at 67 Where to Watch '40 Acres': Is the Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Streaming? UK Government Rejects Proposal for 5% Levy on Streamers' Local Revenue The MSNBC host went on to explain the difference between how legislation is voted on between the Senate and the House. For example in the Senate, rules do not change but in the House, the Rules Committee—controlled by the party in power—writes the rule for every bill. It is standard for the rule to say that no amendments will be allowed once the bill reaches the floor. 'The incompetent Republicans did such a bad job of writing that very simple, one-paragraph rule that Jim McGovern was able to stop everything in the House of Representatives today by announcing: 'It has a mistake in it,'' O'Donnell said in disbelief. 'We've never seen anything like that in the House—not something that stupid,' he continued. 'For the next 11 hours, the Republican-controlled House was paralyzed by that mistake. Usually in the House, no one in the Republican Party listens to anything said by Democrats on the floor. But this time, everyone heard what Congressman Jim McGovern said when he started a drama like we've never seen before.' The host explained in layman's terms that Republicans pushed forward the bill and didn't include an out for themselves. So if they began debating, and the GOP realized they didn't have the votes, they would still have to take the vote. O'Donnell chastised Speaker Mike Johnson for not knowing anything about governmental procedure and that it quickly became clear they didn't have the votes. 'Panic set in among House Republicans and within the Trump White House,' O'Donnell said. 'While Republicans may now try to fix the error with an amendment, McGovern posed a critical question: 'If this Republican leadership cannot get a one-paragraph rule right, can we really trust them to get an 870-page bill right?'' The mistake allowed Democrats to go to the mic and request amendments to cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, a main pushback on the bill from both sides of the aisle. Despite the Democrats' attempts, Republicans blocked every single amendment request on the House floor. O'Donnell also took a moment to blast some of the GOP members who have capitulated to Trump's demands including Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin who said, 'we're not a bunch of little bitches' for giving up all his prior objections to the bill. 'OK. No one said you were,' O'Donnell said as he called Van Orden's defense 'breathtakingly pathetic.' 'I mean, we've said negative things about what you're voting for and what you're willing to do, and many of us have said negative things about the cruelty that you're willing to inflict on people here and around the world. But 'little bitches' is your term, Congressman Derrick Van Orden—not mine.' You can watch the full 'The Last Word' segment in the video above. The post Lawrence O'Donnell Gleefully Mocks House Republicans Over Big, Beautiful Bill Vote: 'It Has a Mistake In It' | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
