Civic Register
| 1.30.22

Congress Returns From Recess: House to Take Up China Competition Bill, Senate Considers Nominations
How do you feel about this week’s congressional schedule?
What’s happening in Congress?
- Lawmakers will return to the Capitol this week fresh off a one-week recess, with the House expected to consider a bill to bolster America’s economic and geopolitical competitiveness with China and the Senate set to continue considering nominations.
SENATE SCHEDULE
- The Senate meets Monday for a procedural vote on the nomination of Bridget Brennan to be a federal district court judge for the District of Northern Ohio. If it succeeds, a confirmation vote would likely follow Tuesday.
- Over the course of the rest of the week the Senate is expected to consider two more federal judicial nominees to the District of Northern Ohio ― Charles Fleming and David Ruiz ― before it moves onto seven nominees to the District of Columbia’s court of appeals; and several nominees to diplomatic and military positions.
- Later in the week, the Senate may take a procedural vote on the nomination of Judge Leonard Stark to be an appellate judge on the Federal Circuit.
- Committees will hold hearings on mental health and substance use disorders; Sudan’s transition following a coup and U.S. policy; the state of the U.S. territories; improving domestic recycling and composting programs; and a bipartisan anti-trust bill.
HOUSE SCHEDULE
- The House starts its week on Tuesday with the consideration of a bill to promote efficiency in procurement and acquisitions within the Dept. of Homeland Security; in addition to 10 bills naming post offices around the country.
- The rest of the week will largely be focused on the China competitiveness bill, although it’s unclear when a final vote will occur or how much it will differ from the Senate’s version of the legislation which passed last summer with bipartisan support.
- Committees will hold hearings on “Respecting Artists with the American Music Fairness Act”; the dynamic landscape of terrorism and what it means for America; and the Biden administration’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East and North Africa.
Check below throughout the week to see the vote results and updates to the schedule.
Schedule subject to change. All times Eastern.
HOUSE
Monday
- No votes are scheduled.
Tuesday after 6:30pm (under suspension of the rules)
- S. 583: PRICE Act of 2021
- H.R. 5577: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 3900 Crown Road Southwest in Atlanta, Georgia, as the "John R. Lewis Post Office Building"
- S. 566: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 42 Main Street in Slatersville, Rhode Island, as the "Specialist Matthew R. Turcotte Post Office"
- H.R. 2324: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2800 South Adams Street in Tallahassee, Florida, as the "D. Edwina Stephens Post Office"
- H.R. 735: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 502 East Cotati Avenue in Cotati, California, as the "Arthur Luis Ibleto Post Office Building"
- H.R. 3539: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 223 West Chalan Santo Papa in Hagatna, Guam, as the "Atanasio Taitano Perez Post Office"
- H.R. 2842: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 120 4th Street in Petaluma, California, as the "Lynn C. Woolsey Post Office Building"
- H.R. 3579: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 200 East Main Street in Maroa, Illinois, as the "Jeremy L. Ridlen Post Office"
- H.R. 3613: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 202 Trumbull Street in Saint Clair, Michigan, as the "Corporal Jeffrey Robert Standfest Post Office Building"
- H.R. 4168: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 6223 Maple Street, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the "Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Jackson French Post Office"
- H.R. 1298: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1233 North Cedar Street in Owasso, Oklahoma, as the "Staff Sergeant Marshal Roberts Post Office Building"
Wednesday or Thursday after 12pm, or Friday between 9am and 3pm
- H.R. 4521: America COMPETES Act of 2022
- Additional legislative items are possible.
SENATE
Monday after 5:30pm
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Bridget Brennan to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio
Rest of the Week
- (If cloture is invoked) Confirmation of Bridget Brennan to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Charles Fleming to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio
- Cloture motion on the nomination of David Ruiz to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Rupa Puttagunta to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Kenia Lopez to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Sean Staples to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Ebony Scott to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Donald Tunnage to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of John Howard III to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Loren AliKhan to be an Associate Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals for a term of 15 years
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Amy Gutmann to be Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Lisa Carty to be U.S. Representative on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Scott Nathan to be Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Chantale Wong to be U.S. Director of the Asian Development Bank
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Gabriel Camarillo to be Under Secretary of the Army
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Andrew Hunter to be an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
- Cloture motion on the nomination of John Coffey to be General Counsel of the Dept. of the Navy
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Alexandra Baker to be a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Reta Lewis to be President of the Export-Import Bank for a term expiring January 20, 2025
- Cloture motion on the nomination of Leonard Start to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Federal Circuit
Tell your reps how to vote on this week's bills and share your thoughts below!
— Eric Revell
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As alleged Democrat Joe Manchin appears on all the news programs endorsing Republican Lisa Murkowski for another term, he still can't ever quite find the time to vote any help for America's poor, needy, and desperate. Priorities, no doubt.
“Legitimate Political Discourse” Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs and "servicing the target" for bombing),[1] in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language of the Insurrectionist Fascist Party. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing ‘Insurrectionist Fascist Party’, orthodoxy Doublethink is a process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to one's own memories or sense of reality.
@Frank-001 I personally write to DeSantis probably every other day, calling him out and I also write to all of these bill’s sponsors. The Democratic leaders are standing up as best they can but they are out numbered. It’s really frustrating. A huge number of people down here are stoned 24/7 and think DeSantis’ shit smells like perfume. But I am sensing that the larger urban areas are starting to wake the fuck up. I just hope it’s not too late.
Hey @Dave, @Dave wrote: "..I personally write to DeSantis probably every other day, calling him out and I also write to all of these bill’s sponsors." Good! "The Democratic leaders are standing up as best they can but they are out numbered." Any of these Democratic activists nearby? Ever think of stopping by just to say thanks? Might lead to something. Might not. Phone bank much? "It’s really frustrating." Yep! "A huge number of people down here are stoned 24/7" Don't hear much about this. Say more, if you can. "and think DeSantis’ shit smells like perfume." I guess there are thus of us know that Red Shit and Blue Shit both stink. "But I am sensing that the larger urban areas are starting to wake the fuck up. I just hope it’s not too late." Hope so! Can you speak to Florida's Demographics? I just know Miami Cubans have tended to vote Republican. My late father had a grand old time talkin' politics with an old school Cuban friend. And then there's that pocket of idiot rich retired white people with Yatches. Have a über racist cousin who I rarely hear from somewhere in Highly Humid Florida. Working class. I think that family and a bunch of others i. my extended family became zombie Christians. Is there a big Fundamentalist community In Florida? Had to tell another cousin to stop forwarding me a screwy collection of Hateful Racist stuff along side Crazy Fundamentalist stuff. I know where the religious stuff & hate came from, grandma was very religious and my low education uncles suffered from racism against Southern, Mediterranean Europeans and it just morphed into Hispanic & Black Fear and Hatred. (Real West Side Story stuff according to the more sane and articulate older cousins some part of gangs of 50s & early 60s and younger uncle (now in his eighties). Hang in there! Looking foward to learning about Florida from a Progressive on the front lines.
WTF is the RNC drinking? In their censure of Cheney and Kinzinger, they write that the 2 Reps are .... "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in 'LEGITIMATE POLITICAL DISCOURSE'" (emphasis mine), by working on the Jan. 6 committee. Gosh, I guess investigating people pissing, shitting, breaking, stealing and maybe even enabling an insurrection should be regular business in the Capitol. .... And then there's Pence, who while finally TELLING THE TRUTH to dump, is DREAMING!!!!! He thinks he IS a voice in the party? He thinks ANYONE in the party wants/needs/cares one iota about this old white shit? He thinks that he has ANY backing in the party to run for president? He thinks SOMEBODY/ANYBODY who votes would actually VOTE for him? Well, I guess that's the life of an OLD WHITE GUY that has no touch with reality and as a 'professional' politician, has NOTHING to fall back on when times get tough. Hope he can make it on his VP pension or he will die penniless. ... WHAT A FRIDAY!!
Revised. I respond before Pence's speech denouncing Trump. I was heartened. A bit. ******** ******** ******** ******** ******** ******** ******** ******** @Andy, I think Pence is trying to stay relevant. It's pathetic! He'd be better off aligning himself with Cheney & Kinzinger. But all those hours looking at trump with adoring eyes has no doubt affected his mind. I think everyone except a handful of people knows the "Big Lie" is just that. The “Big Lie” works best with certain people, but does not work on every one Hence the attacks on Voting, Democrats, BLM, LGBQTIA, etc. We Must Stay Strong, Stand Our Ground, and Strike Back Against these M-Fers! We need Intellect, Passion & Strength! @Andy wrote: "WTF is the RNC drinking? In their censure of Cheney and Kinzinger, they write that the 2 Reps are .... "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in 'LEGITIMATE POLITICAL DISCOURSE'" (emphasis mine), by working on the Jan. 6 committee. Gosh, I guess investigating people pissing, shitting, breaking, stealing and maybe even enabling an insurrection should be regular business in the Capitol. .... And then there's Pence, who while finally TELLING THE TRUTH to dump, is DREAMING!!!!! He thinks he IS a voice in the party? He thinks ANYONE in the party wants/needs/cares one iota about this old white shit? He thinks that he has ANY backing in the party to run for president? He thinks SOMEBODY/ANYBODY who votes would actually VOTE for him? Well, I guess that's the life of an OLD WHITE GUY that has no touch with reality and as a 'professional' politician, has NOTHING to fall back on when times get tough. Hope he can make it on his VP pension or he will die penniless. ... WHAT A FRIDAY!!"
Official pearl-clutching! Biden is politicizing the Supreme Court by actively seeking to place a Black woman! Affirmative action! It’s irrelevant that a Black woman could be as or more qualified than a White person! How can we possibly move quickly? Sober and lengthy consideration with integrity being a feature of prime importance is how this nomination should proceed - the process by which Coney-Barrett and Kavanaugh were seated is irrelevant, not improper, and not due to political urgency. “Biden's intention to fulfill his promise to name a Black female justice, which secured the blessing of South Carolina's most powerful Democrat, Rep. James E. Clyburn, has caused howls on the right, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and National Review to the consternation of the reliably reactive Diamond and Silk. "This can really turn ... the Supreme Court upside down," Lynnette "Diamond" Hardaway said on the Trumpaganda network OAN, because replacing one liberal justice with another liberal justice on the 6-3 conservative court will surely shift its balance. (Huh?) Much of the grievance toward Biden stems from the notion that some eminently qualified white male may be passed over for the high court because of the race and gender criteria the president has set forth, though white men haven't exactly been locked out of power in America these last 245 years. For those keeping tabs, four Black women have flown in space, which is four times the number who have sat on the Supreme Court. There is also professed outrage that such raw political calculation — Biden's desire to save his skin in South Carolina — would dictate his choice for a court that has approached its work in such transcendently nonpartisan fashion. (This is sarcasm, right?)” Biden "helped politicize the entire nomination process," Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tut-tutted on ABC's "This Week." As if the three justices placed on the court by President Trump arrived through a kind of miracle birth.” https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-02-01/biden-reagan-supreme-court-politics “…Republican senators and others who are critical of his decision to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court on two fronts. Neither of the lines of criticism hold up to scrutiny. The first one is that Biden somehow erred or acted outside the bounds of normal judicial politics by making the pledge. Maine Senator Susan Collins, a self-styled moderate Republican who played a key role in the Trump-era Supreme Court confirmation battles, criticized the Biden administration’s actions over the weekend. “The way that the president has handled this nomination has been clumsy at best ,” she said in an interview on ABC News. “It adds to the further perception that the court is a political institution like Congress, when it is not supposed to be.” …using Supreme Court nominations for coalition-building isn’t unprecedented at all. Dwight Eisenhower nominated William Brennan for the high court in 1956 in the hope that it would garner him more Catholic votes in the Northeast in that year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail for the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan pledged to nominate the first woman on the Supreme Court. “It is time for a woman to sit among our highest jurists,” Reagan told reporters. “I will also seek out women to appoint to other federal courts in an effort to bring about a better balance on the federal bench.” Richard Nixon had previously tried to name the first woman on the high court. In 1971, when two vacancies on the court opened within months of each other, the White House planned to nominate Mildred L. Lillie, a prominent state appellate judge in California. But the plan ran into stiff opposition from the American Bar Association, which unfairly rated her as unqualified; then–Chief Justice Warren Burger also reportedly piled on, threatening to resign from the court if Nixon appointed a woman to it. The Nixon administration backed down. Less than a decade later, Sandra Day O’Connor sailed through the Senate confirmation process after Reagan nominated her…. Collins said in her interview that Biden had “politicized” the process by making his pledge on the campaign trail, perhaps mistakenly omitting that Reagan had done the very same thing. Even if Reagan hadn’t done so….Former President Donald Trump not only pledged to appoint “pro-life justices” who would overturn Roe v. Wade on the campaign trail in 2016 but also released public Supreme Court shortlists to secure the backing of the conservative legal movement and evangelical Christian voters ahead of the election. A more disturbing line of attack that’s emerged from the right revolves around the nominee’s race, gender, and qualifications, and how they intersect. “The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination, while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, told a local radio host on Saturday. He predicted that the nominee would not get a “single Republican vote” and added that Biden’s choice would not be a “nice, stately, left-wing liberal type” like Breyer but someone “in the style of Sonia Sotomayor,” the court’s first Latina justice. The implication appears to be that, by pledging to choose a Black woman, Biden will inevitably nominate a Supreme Court nominee who is either unqualified or less qualified for the job…. As it happens, there are many qualified Black women for the Supreme Court, and they appear to be on the White House’s radar. The most widely reported picks for Biden’s shortlist are Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Leondra Kruger on the Supreme Court of California, and Judge J. Michelle Childs on the federal district court in South Carolina. Other commentators have also suggested New York University law professor Melissa Murray and NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill. CNN reported that at least eight other judges and judicial nominees are under consideration, most of whom serve on state supreme courts or federal appellate courts. Those backgrounds would be entirely consistent with those of past Supreme Court nominees….” https://newrepublic.com/article/165251/bidens-supreme-court-prospects-qualified
Congress is a FAILURE...Crist needs to be Voted out
No Democrat will be re-elected in Ohio. So you might as well go out of office with a rejecting vote to all spending legislation. (or are you moving to China?) https://axne.house.gov/sites/axne.house.gov/files/2022%2001.24%20USICA%20Member%20Letter%20FINAL.pdf is awful and totally BAD for America. Vote against it!
Free speech does not mean everyone is obligated to be passive bullshit receptacles for every nonsense opinion. It does not mean you deserve an audience or even basic respect from others. It means that the government — which derives its power from representing everyone equally — can’t use that power to play favorites.
Returning is one thing, but how they spend their time and prioritize their effort needs to be known. It is time for transparency.
I don't think the Senate deserved a recess after practically doing no legislating yet this year, but I'm glad to see they're confirming more of President Biden's judicial nominees. This diverse slate of judges will be an important part of his legacy.
Look Screw China! A bill is just more spending we have too pay for that is why they are called bills. Stop making useless laws and let start making goods here and not 95% over there, it’s as simple as that. Give people the incentive to open new companies that make the goods and we will stop our dependence on China. Keep scrap steel here and we make the cans and steel for building here. Bills are what they are money out of our pockets in taxes.
@Dave, What distresses me is that we hear very little push back in Florida. Is this correct? I read more about pushback in Arizona. What about Wasserman Schultz or Val Demmings? Instead of the Home of The Fountain of Youth, Seaworld and Disneyworld we're seeing a fast, expanding Toxic Cesspool where the leaders are bizarro life guards throwing everyone into the cesspool. Gross on so many levels! @Dave wrote: "As Congress continues to do get nothing done, states are quickly passing repressive legislation in huge numbers. Florida and Ron DeSantis ..." Read more here: https://www.causes.com/comments/1518590
I would like to know when Congress will work on a budget? You can’t keep spending and spending without some formal plans or goals in place. All this other crap is just noise. I’m sick of Congress wasting TAX PAYER DOLLARS on BS.
I want to know why Trump is not in jail.
Until I see actual work being accomplished, I for one won't be happy. All it seems to be is bickering, stalling and nothing gets done. Democracy hangs by a little thread. There's so much bullshit going on and nothing is being done to stop it. Why? Our country is not United anymore and that's disgraceful. There's no balance. Instead of fighting, there needs to be unity for all of We the People, not just the rich and save our democracy.
Do something dip shits you can j/o without being a politician
What the a American people should be afraid of is if the GOP take control of the house and senate, the republicans party / GOP will sweep all the dirt and corruption under the rug, to hide all their involvement in racist bigotry, white supremacy, white nationalist, KKK, proud boys and militants.
Jan 2022 Still having to listen to dumbkopf and his minions applause on the lost 2020 election, criminal conduct of gop trying to throw electors, jan 6 ‘patriots’, misinformation on vacc/mask shows how miserably all institutions have failed us! To the brain bereft idiots who continue to believe the lies of a cult kleptocracy … get a brain check. You certainly do not qualify as Americans Shame on congress Shame on scotus & judiciary