Tag: elise stefanik
Elise Stefanik

'Serial Liar' Stefanik Grabs Credit For Infrastructure Funds She Voted To Kill

House Republican Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) recently patted herself on the back for a $1.8 million federal grant a community within her district received. However, that money came from a bill she and every other Republican opposed.

Local publication North Country This Week — based in Stefanik's 21st House District in upstate New York — reported that the US Department of Agriculture grant went toward the South Raquette Water District in Massena, NY. Stefanik took credit for the funding, telling the outlet that she helped fast-track the grant application through the House Appropriations Committee to quickly get the funds approved.

"Infrastructure has been a top priority for some time and I am able to offer assistance in a very targeted way, whether it be for water projects, sewer projects or supporting our first responders," she said.

"I am proud to announce that I secured $1,857,000 for a Water District Development Project for the Town of Massena in this year’s appropriations process," Stefanik wrote in a Tuesday tweet. "This funding will go toward providing public water service to the residents of Massena."

Stefanik didn't actually vote for those funds, which were part of the Inflation Reduction Act that passed the House of Representatives in 2022. In a now-deleted statement posted to her House.gov website, she called the legislation a "radical spending bill that will raise taxes and crush hardworking families and small businesses."

"[Democrats] have made their priorities clear, and they are not for the American people. I will continue to stand up against reckless government spending and any tax increases," Stefanik said at the time, adding that the bill "also wastes $350 billion on 'Green New Deal' provisions that prioritize large cities over rural communities."

Others on X/Twitter took issue with Stefanik boasting about her district receiving the funds she voted against. In addition to a community note (a public fact-checking feature on the platform) specifying that Stefanik "voted Nay along party lines with every other Republican" against the bill, she was also slammed by various journalists, public figures and commentators for her tweet.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

How Unscrupulous Stefanik Punked Those Elite University Presidents

How Unscrupulous Stefanik Punked Those Elite University Presidents

Watching coverage of The Three Equivocating Presidents on TV, I found myself marveling that such a trio of seeming nonentities had been put in charge of prestige universities in the first place. Never mind the Ivy League, I told a friend. The athletic director at the University of Arkansas would have explained himself far better. Of course, that fellow faces hostile public inquisitions all the time.

Despite the chronic ugliness of campus politics, academic administrators are less familiar with televised interrogations. By trying to please everybody, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT ended up satisfying nobody.

Never mind that the gist of what they said was entirely correct. Whether or not students or faculty should be punished for expressing anti-Semitic tropes on campus depends completely upon context. Are they expressing an unpopular opinion about the Israeli-Palestine conflict or actively threatening violence? The first is permissible, the second is a crime.

Particularly in Republican hands, a congressional hearing is anything but a search for understanding. Basically, the three academics allowed themselves to be sandbagged by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), previously famous for embracing the White Supremacist “replacement” theory alleging that American Jews are conspiring with elitist Democrats to grant citizenship to illegal immigrants for the purpose of out-voting white Christians.

That’s what those torch-bearing geeks who marched across the University of Virginia campus a few years back chanting “Jews will not replace us” were talking about. It’s also the reason a crazed gunman murdered ten black people in a Buffalo supermarket in Stefanik’s own state.

But American Jews, who mainly vote Democratic, are one thing; Israeli Jews quite another. As a self-described “Ultra MAGA warrior,” Stefanik has no problem using QAnon rhetoric to describe political opponents as “pedo grifters.” It will be recalled that then-President Trump also had no problem with the Charlottesville marchers, which as somebody who spent four of the best years of my life on the University of Virginia campus, I confess to taking personally.

How Stefanik trapped the three college presidents in their own rhetoric was outlined in a brave column by the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg, a proud Jew. First, Stefanik got Harvard’s Claudine Gay to agree “that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews.”

But a call for armed resistance during a war isn’t the same thing as a call for genocide, and Gay was foolish to play along. Having declared that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” she found herself intellectually disarmed when Stefanik came back later in the hearing demanding to know why Harvard students weren’t being expelled for using it.

But “intifada” means rebellion, not genocide. Also, it’s entirely possible to express sympathy for the Palestinian cause without supporting Hamas. “After all,” Goldberg wrote, “even if you’re disgusted by slogans like ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ their meaning is contested in a way that, say, ‘Gas the Jews’ is not.” Although it’s also true that Harvard probably leads the Ivy League, and probably the USA, in “cancelling” speech deemed offensive by protected categories of people.

In that sense, the three presidents can be said to have been hoist by their own petard. No less an authority than former Harvard president Lawrence Summers has written that “it seems to be that there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses.” A veteran controversialist, Summers wouldn’t have been so easily buffaloed by the likes of Elise Stefanik.

Meanwhile, I’ll tell you who should resign: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose incompetent scheming set this whole appalling disaster in motion. But that would require a sense of shame, and there’s no sign he’s got any. He’s the Vladimir Putin of the Middle East.

Over years, Netanyahu’s government funneled hundreds of millions in cash to the extremist, murdering lunatics of Hamas, whose monstrous terrorist attack on October 7 began the slaughter of innocents it was meant to provoke.

Netanyahu’s Likud faction did that even as it encouraged extremist Jewish “settlers” to seize Palestinian property in the West Bank by violence on the (pardon me) mad premise that God had promised “Judea and Samaria” to the Jews and that Palestinians who’d lived there for centuries had no valid rights.

By encouraging Hamas fanaticism, Netanyahu openly intended to prevent a “two-state” solution. As many centuries of European history can attest, the slaughter of infidels is what happens pretty much whenever God becomes the head of state. What’s going on in Gaza today fits the very definition of genocide. Except it’s not Israeli Jews being massacred.

How like us to quibble over legalisms in the face of catastrophe.

Gene Lyons is a former columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a winner of the National Magazine Award, and co-author of The Hunting of the President.

Rep. Elise Stefanik

Stefanik Secretly Promised Trump 'Aggressive' House GOP Attack On Prosecutor

A new CNN report details secret back channel talks between House Republicans and Donald Trump in which the former president exerts pressure on his congressional allies to do his bidding.

According to CNN's sources, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has emerged as House Republicans' point person for keeping Trump informed of their assorted investigations, and she recently promised the former president that the caucus would offer an "aggressive" response to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's potential indictment of him for his 2016 hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who serves on the House Oversight Committee, tells CNN that she also regularly spills details to Trump about Republicans' plans, and she says she's sometimes surprised at how much Trump already knows what's going on.

“I keep him up on everything that we’re doing,” she explains. “He seems very plugged in at all times. Sometimes I’m shocked at how he knows all these things. I’m like, ‘How do you know all this stuff?’”

CNN notes that it is unprecedented for a party to essentially let itself be used as a "shield" to protect a former president who is under multiple criminal investigations.

As of this writing, Trump has still not been indicted on any criminal charges.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Santos Drops Committees, But Constituents Demand His Resignation

Santos Drops Committees, But Defies Demands For His Resignation


Rep. George Santos (R-NY) told House Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that he is stepping down from his committee assignments, House Republican Conference leader Rep. Elise Stefanik announced.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told CNN that Santos "felt like there was so much drama" around himself that he will resign from his two committee spots. Santos faces questions daily on Capitol Hill about the seemingly unending string of lies he's told about his background.

The news comes a day after Santos, who is under both state and federal investigation over his campaign finances and "numerous fabrications and inconsistencies" about his background, met privately with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, according to the New York Post.

"I met with George Santos yesterday and I think it was an appropriate decision that until he could clear everything up, he's off committees right now," McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill.

On Sunday, however, one day before Santos and McCarthy met, the Speaker dodged questions from CBS News' Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan about why he'd let Santos serve on committees when Santos is "under state, local, federal and international investigation." McCarthy didn't answer the question, instead pivoting to talk about proxy voting.

McCarthy has continued to stand by Santos, refusing to call on him to resign from Congress, even as more of Santos' campaign finance troubles and lies continue to emerge.

Mother Jones reported on January 27 that Santos' campaign finance reports contain the names of donors who don't exist. Other outlets have reported on questions about where hundreds of thousands of loans to Santos' campaign came from, and why Santos' campaign finance reports have dozens of suspicious expenditures.

Santos has also been caught lying about his supposed Jewish heritage, his work history, his charity work, and his education. He even claimed falsely that his mother died from cancer she contracted at the World Trade Center on 9/11; in fact, his mother was not in the country during the attack.

"The voters elected him to serve," McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill earlier in January. "If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics, let him move through that."

With such a narrow majority on Capitol Hill, losing Santos would give McCarthy even less ability to pass legislation, something he is already struggling to do.

Santos' constituents, however, overwhelmingly want him to resign.

A new Siena College/Newsday poll published Tuesday found 78 percent of voters in New York's Third Congressional District want him to resign — including 71 percent of Republicans. That's an 18-point increase from earlier in January, when 60 percent of voters, and just 38 percent of Republicans, in the district wanted Santos to resign.

The Siena College poll found just seven percent of voters in the district view Santos favorably, and 63 percent of people who voted for him in November say they wouldn't have cast their ballot for him if they had known about his lies.

"His constituents view him unfavorably and they don’t want him to continue serving in Congress – by huge bipartisan margins rarely seen in today’s divided political climate," Siena College Poll director Don Levy said in a news release.

Even some of Santos' own House Republican colleagues from New York want Santos to resign.

"As I said, I think he should resign and focus on his defense," Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) told Politico's Olivia Beavers, adding that he does "welcome this decision" for Santos to step down from his committees.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.