Newt Gingrich, who is advising the House GOP leadership, is now threatening jail time for the members running the select committee investigation of the January 6th insurrection. “I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down,” Gingrich told Maria Bartiromo. “The wolves are gonna find out they’re now sheep, and they’re the ones who are, in fact, I think, going to face a real risk of going to jail for the kind of laws that they’re breaking.”
Continue reading “Newt Threatens Jail for Jan 6th Investigators”Virginia’s New GOP AG Fires State University Attorney Helping Jan. 6 Panel
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
This Is The New Virginia
Jason Miyares, Virginia’s newly inaugurated Republican attorney general, has fired the University of Virginia’s counsel, Tim Heaphy, who was on leave to assist the House Jan. 6 Select Committee in its investigation.
- Miyares’ spokesperson claimed Heaphy’s ouster was unrelated to his involvement with the panel. The spokesperson said the counsel was fired for giving legal advice based on “the philosophy of a university” and not the law.
- Heaphy will continue working with the committee, according to a spokesperson for the panel.
- Miyares also quickly took aim at abortion rights on Friday, withdrawing Virginia’s opposition to Mississippi’s abortion ban, which is currently being considered by the Supreme Court. With Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) support, the new state attorney general sent a letter to the high court urging it to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Mississippi case.
US Orders Families Of Embassy Staff In Ukraine To Leave
On Sunday, the State Department ordered American families of U.S. embassy workers in Kyiv to leave the country due to the “continued threat of Russian military action” at the border.
- Biden is also considering sending thousands of U.S. troops to Eastern Europe and the Baltics, according to the New York Times, CNN and NBC News. Pentagon officials reportedly laid out the President’s options during his retreat at Camp David this weekend.
- The State Department also changed its travel advisory to Ukraine to “Do not travel,” citing both COVID-19 and the the rapidly escalating situation with Russia.
Wisconsin GOPer Straight-Up Calls For Election Cheating
Wisconsin state Rep. Elijah Behnke (R) was caught on camera telling what appeared to be a group of visitors at the state’s capitol building to “cheat like the Democrats” because — surprise surprise — he believes the 2020 election was rigged and that someone’s “always” going to try to cheat in the elections.
- “You’d love for no fraud to exist, but it’s not going to ever happen,” Behnke said.
- The Republican lawmaker also said he wanted to punch Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) in the face over his COVID-19 policies if he ever encountered the governor in person.
New Mexico Guv Volunteers As Sub Teacher
In a very normal state of affairs, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) registered to get her license as a substitute teacher amid dire school staffing shortages caused by COVID-19.
- The governor volunteered as part of her initiative asking state workers and National Guard troops to fill in as substitutes for pre-K-12 teachers. 50 National Guard members and 50 state employees, including Lujan Grisham, have signed up for the program, according to the governor.
- Lujan Grisham has no prior experience in education, but she told CNN that there aren’t any other options.
Fauci Sounds Hopeful Note On COVID Case Rate
The rate of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is going in the “right direction,” dropping both abroad and in certain areas of the country, such as the Northeast, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. However, the doctor also warned against getting overconfident given how the virus has taken unpredictable turns before.
NYT To Face Off Against Sarah Palin In Court
Today’s expected to be the first day of the trial in infamous ex-Veep candidate Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, which has been dragged out for four and a half years. Palin is suing the outlet over a 2017 editorial that connected the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords (AZ) to a map distributed by Palin’s super PAC.
Giuliani And Flynn’s Honorary University Degrees Revoked
The University of Rhode Island’s board of trustees voted to withdraw ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and ex-Trump adviser-turned-QAnon-celebrity Michael Flynn’s honorary degrees at the school on Friday. The two MAGA cronies no longer “represent the highest level of our values and standards that were evident when we first bestowed the degree,” said the university’s president, who had recommended the move. Giuliani had gotten his honorary degree in 2003, after the 9/11 attacks, and Flynn in 2014, the year he retired from the military.
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Jan. 6 Committee Chair Reveals Bill Barr Has Spoken With Investigators
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who chairs the Jan. 6 Committee, on Sunday said that the panel has had conversations with former Attorney General Bill Barr.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Committee Chair Reveals Bill Barr Has Spoken With Investigators”Coons: Dems Are Frustrated After Sinema And Manchin Joined GOP’s Opposition To Filibuster Carveout
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) on Sunday highlighted the stark difference between most Senate Democrats and Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) when it comes to the urgency of passing voting rights legislation in the wake of the senators’ vote last week joining all Republican senators to oppose a filibuster carveout.
Continue reading “Coons: Dems Are Frustrated After Sinema And Manchin Joined GOP’s Opposition To Filibuster Carveout”Sanders: Arizona Dems’ Censure Of Sinema For Filibuster Vote Was ‘Absolutely’ Appropriate
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday threw his support behind the Arizona Democratic Party’s censure of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) following her vote against Senate rules changes that would have helped to pass Democrats’ voting rights legislation.
Continue reading “Sanders: Arizona Dems’ Censure Of Sinema For Filibuster Vote Was ‘Absolutely’ Appropriate”Arizona Democrats Censure Sinema Following Blow To Voting Rights Legislation
It’s official: The Arizona Democratic Party has had enough of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-AZ) bold mavericking.
The party voted on Saturday to formally censure Sinema, following her refusal to support a filibuster carveout that would allow voting rights legislation to move through the Senate.
Continue reading “Arizona Democrats Censure Sinema Following Blow To Voting Rights Legislation”‘No More Crazies’: Trump’s Final Days In Office, As Documented By The Jan. 6 Committee
One week before Jan. 6, Fox News host Sean Hannity was trying to make the White House see reason.
Continue reading “‘No More Crazies’: Trump’s Final Days In Office, As Documented By The Jan. 6 Committee”The Sunsetting Of The Child Tax Credit Expansion Could Leave Many Families Without Enough Food On The Table
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.It first appeared at The Conversation.
The big idea
The discontinuation of the Biden administration’s monthly payments of the child tax credit could leave millions of American families without enough food on the table, according to our new study in JAMA Network Open. The first missed payment on Jan. 15, 2022, left families that had come to rely on them wondering how they would make ends meet, according to many news reports.
The American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March 2021, made significant changes to the existing child tax credit. It increased the size of the credit by 50% or more, depending on a child’s age, to either $3,000 or $3,600 per year. It also made more low-income families eligible and paid half of this money out as a monthly “advance” payment.
Biden’s Build Back Better plan calls for a second year of an expanded child tax credit disbursed monthly. But that package of measures stalled in the Senate after passing the House in November 2021. As a result, the monthly advance payments of the child tax credit that American families with children had been receiving since July 2021 were left hanging in the balance.
Nearly 60 million families with children received the first payment, which was sent out in July 2021. The payments were widely credited with bringing about huge declines in poverty and malnutrition. Our study found that the introduction of these advance payments was associated with a 26% drop in the share of American households with children without enough food.
We used nationally representative data from over 585,000 responses to the Census Household Pulse Survey from January through August 2021 to assess how the introduction of the child tax credit advance payments affected food insufficiency in the weeks following the first payment on July 15, 2021. Food insufficiency is a measure of whether a household has enough food to eat. It is a much narrower measure than food insecurity, which is a more comprehensive measure based on 18 questions used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Importantly, we were able to separate the effect of these payments from other types of support, like the use of food pantries, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, unemployment benefits and COVID-19 stimulus payments.
Why it matters
Food insufficiency spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among families with children: It rose from 3% among all households in December 2019 to 18% in December 2020. Even after many, if not most, U.S. families received pandemic stimulus checks and other benefits, food insufficiency still hovered around 14% in June 2021. But following the first advance payment, from July 23 to August 2, 2021, food insufficiency among households with children fell drastically, to 10%.
This support is ending just as the omicron variant of COVID-19 is leaving many families without work, child care and, in many places, child care via in-person instruction at school.
All these factors are leading to lower income and, where school is virtual once again, creating the need for more meals at home. Other analyses of the Census Household Pulse Survey have found that most families were using the child tax credit advance payments for food and other necessities, such as housing and utilities.
What’s next
We are going to look further into how the advance payments affected low-income families through the rest of 2021, analyzing which groups of Americans saw the most benefit and what happened once the advance payments expired in 2022.
The full impact of the expansion of the child tax credit for the 2021 tax year has not yet been seen either. Eligible families will get the rest of that money, equal to all six monthly payments combined, when they file their 2021 tax returns this year.
Paul Shafer is an assistant professor of Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University.
Katherine Gutierrez is a PhD Candidate in Economics at University of New Mexico
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Jan. 6 Committee Obtains Draft Trump-Era Order Laying Out Plan To Seize Voting Machines
A draft Trump-era executive order directed the Defense Secretary to seize voting machines and authorized the appointment of a special counsel to investigate them weeks after the 2020 elections, Politico reported Friday.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Committee Obtains Draft Trump-Era Order Laying Out Plan To Seize Voting Machines”DOJ Task Force On Election Worker Threats Makes First Arrest
The Justice Department charged a man from Texas on Friday with threatening three government officials, the first criminal case brought forward by the department’s task force on combating violent threats against election workers.
Continue reading “DOJ Task Force On Election Worker Threats Makes First Arrest”