Tag: south dakota
New GOP Senate Leader Is Ex-Lobbyist Who Aims To Slash Social Security

New GOP Senate Leader Is Ex-Lobbyist Who Aims To Slash Social Security

Senate Republicans on Wednesday elected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota—a former corporate lobbyist and close ally of Sen. Mitch McConnell—as the leader of their conference for the upcoming term, when the GOP will have a 53-seat majority.

Republican lawmakers chose Thune over Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who was favored by allies of President-elect Donald Trump.

"Senators have received angry phone calls from constituents demanding to know how their representatives plan to vote, following MAGA world's embrace of Scott," The Washington Post reported. The leadership election was conducted via secret ballot.

In a statement Wednesday, Thune said he is "extremely honored to have earned the support" of the Senate GOP conference and stressed that "this Republican team is united behind President Trump's agenda."

"Our work starts today," Thune added.

Before winning election to the Senate in 2004, Thune worked as a lobbyist for several sectors including the railroad industry. The Lever reported last year that as part of his lobbying work for the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern (DM&E) Railroad, Thune "helped the company procure a $230 million loan from the Federal Railroad Administration."

"In 2015, Thune reprised his advocacy for the rail industry, leading an effort to repeal an Obama administration regulation requiring improved, electronic braking systems on some hazmat trains," the outlet added. "The following year, he received the first-ever 'Railroad Achievement Award' presented by the Association of American Railroads, the industry's main lobbying group."

Thune is also "one of the biggest recipients of oil and gas money in Congress," the youth-led Sunrise Movement noted Wednesday following his election as leader of the incoming GOP Senate.

Over the course of his Senate career, Thune has received more than $1.16 million in campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.

Thune's top contributor between 2019 and 2024 was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the right-wing pro-Israel lobbying group.

"Thune has called for taking the debt limit hostage to force cuts to Social Security."

Thune will take the reins of the Senate GOP conference as the party readies another round of tax cuts for the rich and large corporations—one of Trump's top priorities. Thune is a leading advocate of repealing the estate tax, a move that would benefit a small number of wealthy Americans.

Congress is also barreling toward another potentially damaging fight over the debt ceiling, which is set to be reinstated on January 2, 2025.

Thune has previously expressed support for leveraging the debt limit—and the threat of a catastrophic default—to secure steep cuts to federal spending and possible changes to Social Security such as raising the retirement age, which would slash benefits across the board. Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, voiced alarm over Thune's debt ceiling stance following his election as Senate Republican leader on Wednesday.

"Thune has called for taking the debt limit hostage to force cuts to Social Security," Nancy Altman, the group's president, said in a statement.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kristi Noem

Befuddled Trump Defends 'Terrific' Dog Killer Kristi Noem

Donald Trump came to the aid of embattled Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, whose story about shooting to death her 14-month old German wirehaired pointer named Cricket has been denounced by Americans on the left and right for weeks.

Gov. Noem not only chose to put the story in her memoir, but has repeatedly defended her decision to drag the dog into a gravel pit and shoot her, killing her with one bullet without even warning her child, who asked when they returned home from school, “Where’s Cricket?”

Trump, speaking Tuesday on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio program, did not appear to have a full grasp of the story or the massive outrage and upset Gov. Noem caused.

“I’m sure you’ve seen some of the Kristi Noem story. She might be the only person getting worse press than you on the left right now with the dog shooting story,” Clay Travis told Trump. “Is she still in the mix as a VP? Have you thought maybe she’d make more sense in a cabinet? How do you analyze stories like that as you go about making a choice?”


Noem, until the dog shooting story came out, was widely believed to be on Trump’s short list as a vice presidential running mate.

“Well, until this week, she was doing incredibly well and she got hit hard, and sometimes you do books and you have some guy writing a book and you maybe don’t read it as carefully,” Trump offered as a defense of the governor whose dog-shooting story came out weeks ago. “You know, you have ghost writers, do they help you? And they this case didn’t help too much.”

“Now, she’s terrific,” Trump continued, lavishing praise on Noem. “Look, she’s been a supporter of mine from day one. She did a great job of governor, as governor. And you know, you look at South Dakota numbers. She’s really done a great job.”

Trump did not say what numbers specifically, nor did he say on what Governor Noem did a great job. he also did not answer the question Travis posed about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, nor did he bring up any of the other controversies surrounding the book.

“And in some form, I mean, I think I think she’s terrific. A couple of rough stories. There’s no question about it. And when explained the dog story, you know, people, people hear that and people from different parts of the country probably feel a little bit differently, but that’s a tough story. And, but she’s a terrific person. She said she had a bad, she had a bad week.”

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Pro-Choice protest

Republicans Push Texas-Style Abortion Bans Across Country

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Last week, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a Texas law that is the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. With that green light, other states are lining up to pass similar laws, and at this time, there isn't much way to stop them.

Anti-choice legislators in four states — Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, and South Dakota — have already stated they will follow Texas's lead. They're planning on introducing bills that will mirror both the restrictive nature of Texas's law — a ban on abortion at six weeks — and the unique enforcement mechanism, which allows any citizen to sue someone who aids or abets an abortion. Several other states, including Nebraska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Ohio, will likely be considering similar laws.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis, the anti-abortion GOP governor, said his state would "look more significantly" at the Texas law and that he found it "interesting." In South Carolina, Larry Grooms, a GOP state senator, said the state would "move to pass legislation that would mirror what Texas did."

Jason Rapert, a GOP state senator in Arkansas who is mounting a lieutenant governor bid in that state for 2022, immediately posted a model bill from his organization, the National Organization of Christian Lawmakers. Rapert has stated he will file a Texas-style bill in his state immediately.

Rapert's Twitter feed makes clear that some legislators pushing bills that functionally outlaw abortion no longer feel tethered to whether those bills are good law under existing Supreme Court precedent. Instead, Rapert tweets about how the left has an "unrelenting demand for the innocent sacrifices of unborn children" and repeatedly refers to abortion as a "demonic force."

One day after the Texas law took effect, GOP Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota tweeted her office would "immediately review the new TX law and current South Dakota laws to make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books in SD."

Noem's tweet is emblematic of the approach being taken by many abortion-hostile states. There's no discussion of what the voters might want. There's no belief that the existing restrictive laws might be enough — even in a state like South Dakota with only one clinic that offers abortions only twice per month. Rather, there's a rush toward imitating the Texas law simply because it is the most restrictive that has yet succeeded.

The states that have announced their intentions to replicate the law so swiftly may be taken by the notion that since the Texas law offloads enforcement from the state to private citizens, it insulates the state from lawsuits. States likeSouth Carolina and Arkansas just saw courts block their highly restrictive abortion laws. However, if they took those laws and "piggybacked" the Texas enforcement scheme onto them, a court might have to let the law stand, given that the Supreme Court did so in Texas.

There exists a chance that the Texas law will be overturned once it is completely litigated, as what happened at the Supreme Court was only that the court refused to block the law from taking effect. Indeed, some anti-abortion groups have stated they will continue to focus on the Mississippi 15-week pre-viability ban that the Supreme Court is set to hear this term. However, all that really means is that anti-abortion activists have more than one opportunity to utterly undo Roe v. Wade.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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