Tag: ritchie torres
Democrats Pursue 'Tight And Narrow Path' To Controlling House

Democrats Pursue 'Tight And Narrow Path' To Controlling House

Following Donald Trump's win, Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday expressed concern around "their path to retaking the House," according to Semafor.

"The path is there," a Democratic aide told the news outlet." But it's "tight and narrow."

Speaking with Semafor, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) lamented, "We swung the pendulum too far to the left. We are increasingly becoming the party of the college educated rather than the working class. And as a result, we are paying an electoral price for it. I hope we have a serious reckoning with the results of the election."

However, the new outlet notes, "Regardless of which party takes the House, people on both sides acknowledge whoever is speaker will inherit a slim majority — setting up two more years of frantic struggles to get legislation passed, as Republicans have experienced this year."

One Republican operative told Semafor, "Buckle up," warning "that another two years of narrow control by either party will embolden individual members to take legislative hostages: "Every House member is about to be Joe Manchin.'"

Although Democrats could still declare wins in uncalled races, Semafor reports, "Republicans are still projecting confidence when it comes to holding the House."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Bowman's Defeat By Moderate Democrat Exposed Flaws In 'The Squad'

Bowman's Defeat By Moderate Democrat Exposed Flaws In 'The Squad'

Jamaal Bowman's loss was the Democrats' gain. A member of the left-fringe Squad, his primary defeat removes at least one irritant to the Democrats' quest to take control of the House. And if his replacement with a moderate marks the beginning of the end for the Squad, well, bravo for the victor, Westchester County executive George Latimer.

New York's 16th Congressional District includes some New York suburbs plus a slice of the Bronx. Squad founder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the old socialist Bernie Sanders thought it a good idea to hold a rally for Bowman in the South Bronx.

Never mind that the South Bronx wasn't part of Bowman's district. Ritchie Torres represents that area. Perhaps Bowman figured his working-class audience would relate to his obscenity-filled rants. Torres thought otherwise.

"There is nothing in Jamaal Bowman's unhinged tirade," Torres posted on X, "that remotely resembles the decency of the people I know and represent in the South Bronx."

Bowman insisted that as a Black, he has an "ethnic benefit." Well, Torres is half-Black, half-Latino, and former New York Rep. Mondaire Jones is Black. Both Torres and Jones endorsed Latimer, a 70-year-old white guy who happens to have experience in governing.

Bowman seems to have forgotten that a congressman is supposed to do a thing called constituent service, that is, providing help to the people in the district. The people rarely saw him.

"He doesn't really study government," Latimer said at a recent event for seniors. "He doesn't really understand it. He's out there on a soap box, talking what he feels."

AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, spent a lot of money trying to get Bowman defeated. Headlines say they're the reason he lost. But it took more than AIPAC to produce an incumbent's 17-point loss.

No doubt their barrage of ads played a part, but Bowman's views on Israel were worse than incendiary; they were ignorant. It's one thing to criticize Israel's conduct in the Gaza war. It's another to question the claim that Hamas committed sexual violence in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, as Bowman did.

Bowman clearly has some screws loose. He gave voice to a looney conspiracy theory related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on New York City. The Daily Beast unearthed Bowman's blog post passing on the paranoid belief that the collapse of Building 7, a skyscraper in the World Trade Center complex, was a controlled demolition.

As a congressman, he famously set off a fire alarm in a House office building, juvenile-delinquent style. This was done, it is believed, to delay a scheduled vote on a government funding bill. Of course, the building had to be evacuated.

Bowman first lied about setting off the alarm. Then when security cameras caught him in the act, he lied about not knowing what it was. You'd think that a former middle school principal would know what a fire alarm looked like.

Bowman had joined AOC in voting against Joe Biden's infrastructure bill — a tantrum over one of their priorities being left out. To this day, unions have not forgiven either of them for that.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Bowman is that his challenger is a man of substance. As a county executive, Latimer makes budgets, manages essential services, including public safety, and sees that the laws are enforced.

AOC, Bernie, and Bowman apparently chose the South Bronx for its symbolic value. And it all fits. Their posturing was for the cameras, not the 16th district's constituents who happened to live elsewhere.

The Squad suffers a serious lack of quality control, and Bowman isn't its only flawed product. May moderate Democrats continue to replace them.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

George Santos

McCarthy Still Protecting Santos As Democrats Prepare Censure Resolution

A group of Democratic House members announced on Monday that they plan to introduce a resolution to formally censure Rep. George Santos, the indicted New York Republican who has been caught in a wide array of lies about his upbringing, resume, and family and faces multiple charges of money laundering and fraud.

The censure resolution, the strictest punishment Congress can hand down aside from expulsion, is being led by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY).

“For too long, House Republicans, under the leadership of Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy, have been shielding and protecting Rep. Santos from any shred of accountability,” Torres said in the announcement.

Torres said he is filing the resolution because the House Ethics Committee has yet to release its report on Santos, after House Republicans referred an expulsion resolution against Santos to the the committee in May. Rep. Nick LaLota, one of the New York Republicans who wants Santos to resign, said at the time they expected the House Ethics Committee to issue a report a couple of months later.

“We expect a result within 60 days and for the terrible liar to be gone, by resignation or expulsion, before August recess,” said LaLota, who has said he thinks Santos should resign but voted against expelling him from Congress.

The Ethics Committee has not issued a report.

“It has now been 60 days and Rep. Santos continues to defraud the people of his district and disgrace our institution. I invite all those who have condemned his repeated lies and deception or called on Rep. Santos to resign to join House Democrats in voting to support my resolution to formally censure him and to stop treating him as untouchable,” Torres said.

McCarthy said in May that he hoped the Ethics Committee would move quickly. He said on Monday in response to the censure resolution that Democrats should allow the Ethics Committee to carry out its process.

“They have brought this up numerous times. This is their entire agenda,” McCarthy told reporters on Monday, according to CBS News. “We don’t get involved within the Ethics Committee. These are individuals who will do their job and get their work done and follow through on whatever they need to find.”

Despite his criticism of efforts to censure and expel an indicted member of Congress, he blessed Republicans’ censure of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for investigating former President Donald Trump.

McCarthy said Schiff deserved to be censured because, he claimed, Schiff had lied to the American public during Congress’ investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia about whether he knew the whistleblower whose alleged evidence led to the first Trump impeachment inquiry. The Washington Post Fact Checker did not find any evidence of a lie, but that hasn’t stopped accusations from Republicans.

“Adam Schiff abused his position as Chair of Intel to lie and lead America through a national nightmare with the fake Russia collusion narrative,” McCarthy tweeted ahead of Republicans’ successful censure vote against Schiff. “As Speaker, I removed him from the Intel Committee, and now the full House will vote to censure him and open an ethics investigation.”

Santos, however, has been caught lying.

The censure resolution Torres filed along with fellow Democratic New York Rep. Daniel Goldman and Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu lists 11 of those lies, including that Santos “deliberately misrepresented that his grandparents survived the Holocaust”; “falsely claimed that his mother died during the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 “; “deliberately misrepresented that 4 of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting”; and “falsely claimed that he helped produce the Broadway musical ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.'”.

Because Democrats are in the minority in the House, they do not control what legislation makes it to the floor. However, any member can force a vote on a censure resolution over the House majority’s objections.

“Republican leadership and the six New York Republicans who profess to want George Santos out of Congress continue to embrace an admitted liar and an indicted fraudster in the halls of Congress,” Goldman said in a news release announcing his co-sponsorship of the censure resolution.

Goldman continued: “Their refusal to hold George Santos accountable is an insult not only to this institution but to the people of NY-03. Speaker McCarthy said we would get a report from the Ethics Committee today — yet another false promise designed to protect Santos. I am proud to stand with my Democratic colleagues in doing what Republican leadership refuses to do – fight for George Santos’ constituents and censure him for his repeated lies and deception.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

GOP Calls Santos Lies An 'Internal' Issue But Democrats File Ethics Complaint

GOP Calls Santos Lies An 'Internal' Issue But Democrats File Ethics Complaint

Two Democratic Members of Congress on Tuesday walked over to the House office of Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to notify their fellow New Yorker they have filed an official complaint against him with the House Ethics Committee, alleging violations of the Ethics in Government Act.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) in a letter to the bipartisan Ethics Committee say Santos violated federal law “by failing to file timely, accurate, and complete financial disclosure reports as required by law. The Act was designed to ‘preserve and promote the integrity of public officials and institutions.'”

“Over the past several weeks, extensive public reporting – as well as Santos’s own admissions – have shown that Mr. Santos misled voters in his District about his ethnicity, his religion, his education, and his employment and professional history, among other things,” they add.

Alleging Santos’ financial disclosures are “sparse and perplexing,” the two Democrats say, “it is apparent that he did not file timely disclosure reports for his most recent campaign.”

“Moreover,” they add, “his own public statements have contradicted some information included in the 2022 financial disclosure and confirmed that the 2022 financial disclosure failed to disclose other required information.”

The ethics complaint comes just hours after House Republican Majority Leaders refused to state if they would take any official action against Santos, who some hoped would not be seated given his massive alleged lies.

Monday night, when asked how he planned to handle the Santos disaster, Speaker McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju, “You know how I handle internal stuff, I handle it internally. I’m sure, at times, I’ll come tell you.”

CBS News’ Kathryn Watson reports that “Scalise says the Santos matter is being handled ‘internally’ and they’re going to sit down and talk to him.”

“Well you saw him seated last week,” Scalise told Watson, she tweeted. “There were no challenges to that. This is something that’s being handled internally. Obviously there were concerns about what we had heard. & so we’re gonna have to sit down and talk to him about it. & that’s something we’re gonna deal with…”

The allegations against Santos are wide and some may be criminal.

When asked why they were filing the complaint, Congressman Torres replied, “When you violate House Ethics you should be held accountable.”

Rep. Goldman, who before being elected served as lead majority counsel during the first impeachment of then-president Donald Trump, blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

They “adopted him as one of their own and in fact, George Santos cast the deciding vote for Kevin McCarthy so that he can become Speaker of the House, so they have wrapped their arms around him,” he said.

“We’ve seen no indication that they have done anything to rebuke him or handle it internally,” Goldman added, surprised after reports noted leadership had said it was an internal matter. “This is the first time you’ve been hearing that. So we, Congressman Torres and I, feel it’s incredibly important to make sure that the integrity of the House and the integrity of its members are put front first and foremost.”

Read a portion of the complaint against Santos and videos of Reps. Goldman and Torres delivering the complaint, below or at this link.



Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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