► House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to bring up a short-term government funding bill on Wednesday, one week after his previous plan fell through amid a lack of support from Republicans. As POLITICO reports, House Republicans are (rightly) concerned that a government shutdown would not be good for their re-election efforts:
The GOP leader previously pulled the stopgap funding coupled with the SAVE Act — GOP legislation that requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections — after it became clear Republican opposition could tank the vote. Democrats are largely opposed to the plan, which would fund the government through March 28.Johnson announced the planned vote in a statement Tuesday, saying, “Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government and ensure the security of our elections.”
Last week, the speaker said he and his leadership team would continue to work with the Republicans who opposed the plan over the weekend and “build consensus.” At least 10 Republican members publicly stated their opposition, and even more said they were undecided. The pushback comes from different corners of the conference, including conservatives who oppose short-term spending bills generally and defense hawks who have concerns about the 6-month timeline of the continuing resolution, or CR.
Johnson’s decision to push forward with his plan also comes after he met with former President Donald Trump over the weekend. Trump, on his social media platform Truth Social, previously said, “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION.”
Johnson has already heard concerns from vulnerable Republicans that a government shutdown would threaten their reelection prospects. The broader leadership implications: A loss of a House GOP majority if the battleground Republicans don’t pull through in November, which could have major consequences for Johnson’s own survival as party leader. [Pols emphasis]
► Nick Coltrain of The Denver Post looks at the more than $15 million that has already been spent in Colorado promoting or opposing various ballot initiatives:
Campaign finance records filed through Aug. 28 show the avalanche of cash some proponents are willing to dump on the electorate — especially to argue in favor of election reform and abortion rights.
The early numbers are just a prelude as campaigns gear up to stuff mailboxes with campaign literature and flood airwaves with ads, as some are already doing. Two years ago, state issue committees reported more than $47 million raised; in 2020, the last presidential election year, they reported more than $64 million in fundraising.
►The New York Times examines the many disparate causes that interested the man suspected of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
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► Elaine Tassy of Colorado Public Radio looks at the results of a program providing homeless Coloradans with three different types of financial payments via the Denver Basic Income Project run out of the University of Denver:
The goal of the $9 million study – funded by private philanthropies and the city of Denver – was to find out what would happen if people experiencing homelessness got a lump sum of money, no strings attached. Would it provide an immediate boost to their circumstances and launch them into housing? Or would it be spent in ways that left them no better off, housing-wise, than before?…
…Hunter Ambrose was part of the study led by a nine-person research team, which began in October 2022. It included 820 adults experiencing homelessness who were given varying amounts of money with no questions asked about how they’d use it, in December 2022, January 2023, and February 2024. The study has recently been extended and researchers are currently raising funds to continue it for another six months.
The team set up the study with three tiers. One group got $50 a month – that was the control group, of which Ambrose was a part. Another group got $1,000 a month, and the third got a lump sum of over $5,000 at the start of the study and $500 a month thereafter for the first year, $1,000 for the second. Participants also received a cell phone – paid for by the study – so researchers could check in with them more easily.
The results surprised the researchers: the group getting $50 per month did as well as the group getting the most money. [Pols emphasis]
► The Colorado Ethics Institute is calling on Republican Gabe-ishEvans, who is running for Congress in CO-08, to clarify his position on whether or not the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. From a press release:
After firing his political director over social media posts that were antisemitic, violent, and mired in election conspiracies, the Colorado Ethics Institute (CEI) today called on state Rep. Gabe Evans to clearly outline his views on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential Election and address how his stated concerns have not been addressed by courts of law that have all rejected such claims.
“Given numerous opportunities in recent months to state unequivocally that Joe Biden is the duly elected President of the United States, Evans has instead demurred and deflected,” said CEI President Curtis Hubbard. “Voters deserve answers on whether Evans knew of his political director’s numerous election conspiracy posts, whether that factored in his decision to terminate her, and most importantly, whether he believes that Biden was legitimately elected.”
Evans, who has served as a state Representative for the past two years and is a candidate for Colorado’s Eighth Congressional District seat, has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump – who last week continued to deny the results of the 2020 election.
Based on CEI’s research, Evans has not provided a straight answer to the question of whether the election was stolen from Trump.
► Elsewhere in CO-08, the League of Conservation Voters is including this ad in support of Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo as part of a $14 million campaign supporting 16 candidates for the House of Representatives:
► Also on the television ad topic in CO-08, Marshall Zelinger of 9News runs his signature “Truth Test” for two competing ads in the district. Zelinger is particularly critical of a spot running against Caraveo from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which accuses the Democratic incumbent of being personally responsible for crime resulting from illegal immigration.
► Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic examines how spineless Republican politicians once again fell in line behind Donald Trump:
In the summer of 2015, back when he was still talking to traitorous reporters like me, I spent extended stretches with Donald Trump. He was in the early phase of his first campaign for president, though he had quickly made himself the inescapable figure of that race—as he would in pretty much every Republican contest since. We would hop around his various clubs, buildings, holding rooms, limos, planes, golf carts, and mob scenes, Trump disgorging his usual bluster, slander, flattery, and obvious lies. The diatribes were exhausting and disjointed.
But I was struck by one theme that Trump kept pounding on over and over: that he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers”—by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings.
“I will roll over them,” he boasted, referring to the flaccid field of Republican challengers he was about to debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that September. They were “puppets,” “not strong people.” He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating.
Even Trump couldn’t have known just how easy it was to convince Republican elected officials to get on board with his divisive rhetoric.
► The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder is calling for help in anticipation of massive voter turnout in Colorado. From 9News and the Denver Gazette:
The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office has called in the help of the Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management to coordinate the November election, ahead of safety concerns presented by a presidential election forecasting record turnout.
2024 will be the first year El Paso County has utilized the PPROEM in an election. Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker said the decision was based on past incidents of poll worker intimidation and ballot vandalism. ..
…The PPROEM will help coordinate a law enforcement presence at each of the 38 voter service polling centers and many ballot boxes around the county. Schleiker said that the intent will be to monitor without law enforcement being visible to voters.
► Aurora Mayor Mike Coffmandoesn’t end up looking very good after a New York Times explanation of how a story about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora turned into campaign fodder for Donald Trump.
► As Joe Rubino reports for The Denver Post, a Venezuelan asylum program in Denver will not continue in 2025:
The Denver Asylum Seeker Program — designed to house, feed and provide job training to mainly Venezuelan migrants while they file federal asylum applications and await authorization to legally work in the U.S. — will not continue in its current form in 2025, city officials say.
Future iterations of the program with potentially different levels of services and support based on migrants’ needs are being considered, according to Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Human Services.“We will still be offering services, we will still be offering support. But it won’t look like what you’ve seen in 2024,” Ewing said in an interview Monday night.
The future of the program came up Monday when the City Council approved a $6 million contract with local nonprofit Haven of Hope to provide food, clothing, laundry and other services to migrants in the city.
The contract — which runs through the end of July 2025 — includes a requirement that the organization handles future enrollment of the Denver Asylum Seeker Program.
The program, known by the abbreviation DASP, is Mayor Mike Johnston’s signature initiative to support a small fraction of the nearly 43,000 migrants who have arrived in the city since December of 2022, many of them fleeing economic strife and political violence in Venezuela. Launched in April, it provides enrollees with six months of subsidized housing, money for food and clothing and English language and job training support while they await federal work authorization.
► Colorado’s new “quantum campus” breaks ground in Arvada, as Tamara Chuang reports for The Colorado Sun:
The business park, dubbed the Quantum COmmons, is the next phase of the state’s Tech Hub effort, which became official in October after Elevate Quantum beat out hundreds of other applicants. The U.S. Department of Commerce program stemmed from the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to bring tech manufacturing back to the U.S. and spread tech expertise around the country.
But the real plan in the Denver-Boulder corridor is to take all the super brain power spawned during the decadeslong existence of federal labs and schools like the University of Colorado — four Nobel Prize laureates for physics hail from CU — and connect it to the dozens of startups and private companies working to commercialize quantum right now. Another goal is to create tens of thousands of jobs, not all of them requiring an advanced degree.
You may make your own Schroedinger’s cat jokes at your leisure.
► Utilities want to keep their political spending secret in Colorado, as Colorado Public Radio reports.
► The Washington Post reports on increased efforts from Arizona Republicans to make it harder to vote in November:
A key election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County plans to ask the state’s highest court as early as Tuesday to prohibit nearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local races this fall after discovering the state has no record of asking them for documents proving their U.S. citizenship.Like other states, Arizona requires voters to swear that they are citizens when they register to vote.
But for 20 years, Arizona law has gone further and required residents to show birth certificates, naturalization papers or other documents proving citizenship to vote in state and local elections.
At issue is a pool of voters whom county and state officials have no record of having submitted those documents. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said the vast majority probably are longtime citizens who are eligible to vote in all races. He said more are registered as Republicans than as Democrats.
► Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantiswants his state to charge a man suspected of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump with attempted murder.
Congressperson Lauren Boebert is morphing into Donald Trump:
Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
► Former (in some places, still on the ballot) Democratic Independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. completed the sale of his soul to Donald Trumpwith this absurd video of him talking to the camera about all the great things he can do with Trump.
► Right-wing gasbag Alex Jones believes that South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham should be investigated for the latest “assassantion” attempt on Donald Trump. We’d explain further, but that would require watching this video, which we’re not going to do.
ICYMI
►Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vanceopenly admits to just making things up about illegal immigrants as he continues to tell nonsense stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio stealing and eating people’s pets.
► Tired of reading? Then listen instead to the latest episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast, featuring an entertaining interview with Senator Michael Bennet (D-Denver):
One thought on “Get More Smarter on Tuesday (Sept. 17)”
Schroedinger's cat joke? We had a cat for a few years that had no tail. We named him Schroedinger because we figured he was only present to a probability of about 80%.
September 17, 2024 11:14 AM UTC
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Schroedinger's cat joke? We had a cat for a few years that had no tail. We named him Schroedinger because we figured he was only present to a probability of about 80%.