Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
Reprinted with permission from American Independent
Sixty-six House Republicans voted to uphold Donald Trump's veto of a must-pass annual defense authorization bill on Monday, despite 25 of them previously voting for the exact same legislation weeks ago.
Despite the defections, more than the required two-thirds of the House voted to override Trump, 322-87.
The annual legislation passed in the House and Senate earlier this month with a bipartisan supermajority in each chamber. Then, 140 House Republicans and 42 GOP senators backed the $731.6 billion legislation to set funding levels and policies for the nation's defense and authorize pay increases for America's armed service members.
Trump ultimately vetoed the bill on Wednesday — at the last possible moment — objecting to provisions that required the renaming of military bases named for Confederate figures and to the fact that Congress did not insert unrelated provisions to punish social media companies he believes unfairly are biased against conservatives.
"My Administration respects the legacy of the millions of American servicemen and women who have served with honor at these military bases, and who, from these locations, have fought, bled, and died for their country," Trump wrote in his veto message. "I have been clear in my opposition to politically motivated attempts like this to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles."
Under the Constitution, if the president vetoes a bill, Congress can override it if both two-thirds of the members of the House and two-thirds of the Senate vote to do so.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy voted for the original bill, but later made clear that he would put loyalty to Trump over support for the military.
"I don't believe Republicans, in our work with the president always, that you vote to override a veto," the California Republican told reporters before the original vote, though he predicted that he and the rest of his caucus "would stand with the president," and sustain a veto if Trump killed the legislation.
McCarthy skipped Monday's vote.
Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS) also voted for the bill initially, but voted with Trump on Monday. In a press statement, he explained that he was doing so because members of the military "bravely defend the rights and freedoms of Americans every day," claiming that "our freedom of speech is also under attack here at home from big tech companies. This has been especially evident in acknowledging voter fraud on social media that is then flagged or censored."
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) said he flipped entirely because Trump said to. "I had some reservations with certain provisions in the NDAA; but, as a veteran, I felt responsible to ensure our national defense and military were properly funded, which is why I voted for the NDAA earlier this month," he wrote in a statement. "However, no one has a better pulse on the security of this nation and our military than the President of the United States, and I believe his objections to the bill are reasonable and intended to protect all Americans."
Among the other prominent Republicans who voted for the bill before Trump's veto but later defected were Republican Policy Committee chair Gary Palmer of Alabama, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Emmer of Minnesota, recent party-switcher Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, and Rep. Devin Nunes of California.
Now, the bill goes to the Senate, where an override vote attempt was planned for Tuesday, although Sen. Bernie Sanders has vowed to slow the veto override unless the Republicans permit a floor vote on a $2000 pandemic relief payment. If at least two-thirds of the senators follow the House's lead, it will mark the first veto override of Trump's presidency — days before he leaves office.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
The Senate rejected an effort by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) just before the July 4 holiday to preserve the names of U.S. military facilities named after leaders of the Confederacy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed a cloture motion to end debate on the bill without a vote on Hawley's amendment.
The amendment would have eliminated a requirement — agreed to on June 11 by the Senate Armed Services Committee — that the Defense Department remove the names of Confederate generals from 10 major military bases within three years.
The bipartisan provision was included as part of the larger annual defense package, the National Defense Authorization Act.
Hawley sought unanimous consent to get a vote on removing it, but a colleague objected.
"I've been told that we can't even have a vote," Hawley lamented afterward, in a floor speech. "No vote! We can't even call the roll on this. No, we've just got to swallow it and move on as the woke cancel culture moves on, steamrolling our history and our traditions, and yes, our best traditions as Americans."
The move comes as the nation reckons with its racist history and present.
Protesters around the world have marched to demand an end systemic racism and, in the United States, have pushed to remove statues of those who led and fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who proposed the name-change rule, said previously that it was "long past time to end the tribute to white supremacy on our military installations."
Hawley objected to the requirement at the time, calling it a "left-wing assault on history."
"This latest effort to unilaterally rename bases and remove war memorials, all behind closed doors, smacks of the cancel culture the Left wants to impose on the nation," the first-term senator said. "Any discussion about renaming bases should be had in the light of day, out in the open, and it should involve military families, veterans, and state and local stakeholders."
He added that "the mob will keep marching through all our cultural institutions until every American whom the woke crowd deems unjust is cancelled."
Hawley's proposal would have removed the renaming requirement and replaced it with a commission to "gather input from military families and veterans" and suggest specific name changes to Congress.
Donald Trump has similarly defended keeping the names of Confederate figures on U.S. bases, tweeting in early June that "these Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom."
He vowed that his administration would "not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations."
If the House and Senate pass the annual Defense authorization — which is generally regarded as "must-pass" legislation — with the renaming language in it, Trump will have to decide whether to veto the whole bill or accept the new requirement.
He claimed Tuesday that he would veto if the name-change requirement were included.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
WASHINGTON — Eleven Confederate statues still stand tall in the Capitol. Let the ghost of the "Lost Cause" be gone for good as the nation undergoes a wrenching racial awakening.
Oh, no, says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. He refuses to "airbrush the Capitol."
Call me a Yankee, but I have no love for men who praise men who took up arms against the United States and shed the blood of 750,000 on both sides of the Civil War. If they were dashing rebels — "rebby boys" — the Confederacy itself was a crime against humanity.
Statues take up public space and also cross into our psychic space. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., understands this point perfectly. "This is a perfect time for us to move those statues," she declared.
However, senators say today, she can't make that decision.
Don't they know the past can oppress us with whispered, weighted and coded messages when utterly wrong figures are honored for throngs of visitors to see?
Gen. Robert E. Lee gives a history girl flashbacks to Gettysburg. The Confederacy's president and vice president, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, also haunt the halls of American democracy's house. These openly racist men — and traitors — tried to tear this nation in two. They almost succeeded but for President Abraham Lincoln, who never lost a fight in this life.
Days ago, I asked Pelosi if the Senate was willing to work with her to remove the statues. "Public sentiment is everything," she said, "because other times, people may think, I never go there anyway." The first female Speaker makes no secret of her desire to breathe Confederate-free Capitol air.
But the chairman who oversees statues, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told me Tuesday he has not even responded to the Speaker's letter urging removal. That's the lull where the Confederate statues live another day.
They call the Senate the "plantation," and not for nothing. Verandas and fine rich food abound, served with fresh lemonade in summer and sugary ice tea all year round.
At times, it feels like the Civil War never ended in surrender, with South Carolina's John Calhoun, who invented states' rights as a way to save slavery, glaring from the wall.
McConnell speaks in a Kentucky drawl. Blunt, keeper of the statues, represents a former slave state. During this crisis on racial police violence, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., held up passage of an anti-lynching law.
For a white male Southerner to block such a historic step was not a good look. The scene made one Northern senator feel raw. But the Senate is in no hurry to change. In fact, it's split into red and blue states, along the lines of the Civil War.
Fancy that, 155 years later, we're still in a "house divided" under the Capitol dome.
Stephens of Georgia put it plainly in a speech on the Confederacy: "Its cornerstone rests upon the truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." Slavery is a "natural condition."
White supremacy and slavery caused untold misery among people of color, in cotton fields under the lash and often separated from families forever. Young Frederick Douglass, born in bondage, never saw his mother again — a scar that never healed.
Slavery ruined the character and work ethic of rich, white Southerners who developed a taste for the caste system.
I ran into Lee in marble, the Virginian in riding boots. So, I stayed a while to talk across time. A black maintenance worker walked by. I asked, "Did you know he was the slave master of Arlington?" A well-kept secret.
Lincoln seized Lee's grand plantation and started burying soldiers in the front garden to literally water it in Union blood. A career Army officer trained at West Point, Lee betrayed his nation and military when he turned down Lincoln's offer to take a command. Lee's rolling acres are now Arlington National Cemetery.
Lee was the dark antebellum past; Lincoln, who freed 4 million enslaved people, was the man of the future. Let's not live in a divided house anymore.
Jamie Stiehm can be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To read her weekly column and find out more about Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.
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