It’s the second cattle to human case in the United States. As I understand it, H5N1 isn’t a threat to us until it mutates to become transmissible from human to human. As for all the other things, I suggest you immerse yourself like I did until it completely breaks you, so that you can join me in laughing maniacally at all of it.
And here I was, zooming in and seeing stunningly beautiful faces before checking comments.
Won’t you leave these poor billionaires alone?
The ban is beyond absurd. It’s like telling a city under siege to hide from the trebuchets, because they can’t defend themselves until after the walls are breached.
It’s only a gimmick for attention and money, which has always been her pathetic role.
Not only is this posted in the wrong place, it reads like a 16 year old girl’s school report.
Loved the video of Anya the Belgian Malinois pup! Thanks for the links!
Nice start. We should see an average of ~$2,700,000,000 in aid and weaponry going to Ukraine every week during the next 22 weeks, which would account for the nearly $61 billion package during this fiscal year. No more delays, no more excuses.
Russia plans to take first Ukraine, then Balkans, then Poland, then Germany, and collapse the EU, which is a threat even to you in whatever miserable little coal-rolling corner of the United States you happen to be griping from.
You want your share of “those wasted taxes” back? Send me your info and I’ll Venmo your fucking $50, big guy.
Read the latest newsletter from Punchbowl News, bringing you the politics and policy news you need straight from the Capitol.
If you’re looking for the House Republicans’ foreign aid bill, you’re not alone.
The GOP leadership hasn’t yet released the package to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. As of late Tuesday evening, the House Appropriations Committee was still working on finishing the text.
But more importantly, Speaker Mike Johnson still doesn’t have a deal on the rule to bring the legislation to the floor, according to senior aides.
If Republicans release the bill at some point today and want to stay true to their 72-hour rule, the GOP leadership won’t be able to hold a floor vote until Saturday. Then the Senate would have to act.
This is a problem. There are congressional delegations scheduled to leave town this weekend for the scheduled congressional recess. Lawmakers also want to head back home to campaign. House leadership aides say they worry about attendance beginning to drop as the days go by.
Yet what’s going on behind the scenes is even more problematic.
What’s taking so long: As we’ve been warning for a while, hardline Republicans may attempt to strip the gavel from Johnson if he tries to pass Ukraine aid. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have now both said they want Johnson to resign or they’ll seek to remove him from the job. Other hardliners are grumbling about the speaker but haven’t signed onto a motion to vacate yet.
When Johnson first floated his plan for a GOP foreign aid bill on Monday, the Louisiana Republican’s aides understood that they’d need votes from Democrats to get it across the finish line. Republican leaders presented Johnson’s decision as the responsible move to get much-needed funding to embattled U.S. allies at a critical moment.
The theory of the case in both parties’ leadership was that Johnson would be able to remain speaker after Republicans and Democrats joined together to table a motion to vacate. It’s not terribly sustainable politically, but GOP leadership aides appeared comfortable with the odd arrangement.
Yet Johnson now finds himself slipping into an old habit that infuriates his leadership colleagues and senior Republicans. He’s taking meetings with all comers in the GOP conference, mulling different pathways to change his proposed plan in order to mollify the hardliners. To some inside the Republican leadership, Johnson started with a solid offer and now is undermining his own position by negotiating with conservatives who’ll never vote for the proposal no matter what’s in it.
The House Freedom Caucus has floated adding H.R. 2, the hardline GOP border security bill, to the aid package. They also want Israel or Ukraine funding offset with spending cuts or some other budgetary gimmicks. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has told lawmakers that Johnson should simply put a clean Israel bill on the House floor — no Ukraine funding — and send it to the Senate.
Of course, none of this will work. Democratic leaders and the White House won’t support it, making it very unlikely Johnson can pass a rule or the bill. If a Republican is pressing to add H.R. 2 to the measure, they’re trying to kill it.
The question for Johnson is whether he’ll mirror his strategy from the government funding fight. In that squabble, he listened to hardliners about cutting spending and then reverted to the obvious solution of relying on a bipartisan coalition to pass the bills. Or will Johnson cave here in order to save his speakership?
Top Democrats want Johnson to release the bill, not worry about the 72-hour rule and move as quickly as possible to a floor vote.
Johnson is also getting renewed pledges of support from more centrist and moderate members in his own party. Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) — who chair the Appropriations, Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence panels respectively — joined with other senior GOP lawmakers in publicly urging Johnson to “pass the full national security supplemental.”
“We don’t have time to spare when it comes to our national security. We need to pass this aid package this week,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
There’s one other option worth watching — some Republicans, including conservatives, have told House GOP leaders that they should cut GOP members loose to join with Democrats in a discharge petition to force the $95 billion Senate foreign aid package to the floor.
This is another risky move since Johnson would be ceding control of the floor to Democrats, at least on this vote. But it would also allow Johnson to say the majority of the House is working his will even if he personally is opposed to Ukraine funding.
But it would also give some conservative Republicans what they really want — a chance to fight it out internally with moderates, even if that lands the House GOP in the minority. To some of these hardliners, they’d rather be pure than govern.
— Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
The April 14 conference call, which was in response to Iran’s drone retaliation on Israel, involved President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D), and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson(R).
Everyone except Johnson has been in agreement since February that the $95 billion Senate package MUST be passed by the House. It included $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. While Johnson states he supports Ukraine, his refusal to put the Senate package to a House vote speaks volumes. To be fair, Mike Johnson is under the sword of Damocles; Marjorie Taylor-Greene has threatened a motion to vacate if the package is brought to a vote, effectively removing the House Majority Leader from his position.
This general consensus is still not unanimous because Mike Johnson values his power too much to risk it by allowing Ukraine to receive any assistance from the United States.
Anyone who ate hot lunch had to eat everything on their tray, and we weren’t allowed to pass on any part of the meal because children in other countries were starving or something. Lunch ladies checked our trays before we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.
On the days when sauerkraut was served, we’d take turns being the sauerkraut smuggler, cramming that dank crap from about a dozen 8 year old kids’ trays into an empty milk carton, so we could toss it all without the lunch lady catching it. One day when I was the kraut smuggler, lunch nazi grabbed my carton and marched me back to the table. She said I had to eat every strand of the milky garbage we’d all stowed before I could leave.
I tried, but kept gagging and retching. I sat huddled with the collective slop at the table, crying for about 3 hours before my teacher found me and released me from lunch jail.
This picture took me down a fascinating Estonian rabbit hole. I knew nothing about Estonia before today, and now I want to live there!
Also, fuck Russia for centuries of attempted genocide and general assholery.
The summer I was 11, all the bored neighborhood kids decided to play a game of chicken with our bikes. We raced down a narrow ramp that ended at a huge concrete wall, to see who could speed the farthest without braking.
When it was my turn, I hopped on my hot pink Stingray with the banana seat and pedaled for all I was worth. I accidentally hit the wall at full speed, the rear tire flew up behind me and I was smashed flat against the wall like a bug. When the rear tire came back down and I could breathe again, I looked up to all the horrified faces and grunted “I won”, then got back on my bike and casually pedaled away until nobody could see me crying and bleeding all the way home.
That’s just it! POTUS isn’t a dictator. It’s astonishing to see headlines ignore the fact that the powers of the office of the president are limited. No president has the authority to force Congress to pass any kind of foreign aid legislation or to impose peace on the Middle East.
The horrors occurring in Gaza, Ukraine, and throughout the world elicit deep emotions in us, but they’re beyond the control of one elected official, which is what keeps us from living in true tyranny.
It’s disturbing to see so many smart people lean toward a candidate who seeks chaos and destruction simply because they feel outrage at atrocities that can’t be solved by a POTUS, but could definitely be exacerbated by one.
Considering the facts that everything in politics is stupidly transactional, and that:
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The POTUS doesn’t control foreign aid and must rely on congress to agree
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The deeply religious House Speaker Johnson, who controls which aid proposals will come to the floor, is fervently in support of Israel
Is it possible that President Biden is throwing a bone to the hard right, in the form of support to Israel, in order to get desperately needed aid to Ukraine ASAP?
I mean, we ALL understand that a US President doesn’t have the unilateral power of a king, and there’s a shit ton of finessing behind what we can see.
While this CR only extends the deadline for a possible government shutdown to March 8 and March 22, it demonstrates once again how quickly the United States will betray commitments to allies and ultimately stand down at the real threat of Russian invasion.
The “just go through the steps” people is me - the solitary commenter who has declared direct and extensive experience within the organization. You’re correct that one of the steps is approval, yet the woman in this instance never requested approval. What is wrong with requesting approval for an exception from an organization that isn’t yours? Everyone else requests approval, just like we all would if we wanted an exception at work, because we don’t own the company.
It boggles my mind that almost every commenter here is certain that there would never have been approval because GSUSA is Zionist, Girl Scouts is made up of donors who are largely Jewish, GSUSA is genocidal and would lose money by granting approval to the nonexistent request. This is all emotion and vile conjecture. Where are the facts to support such accusations?
Why don’t the rules apply to this one individual. I led many activities that had to be cleared, and because I don’t own the Girl Scouts, because I’m not in charge of the organization, I never thought “Oh, those rules aren’t meant for me”. I simply made the requests and provided details as needed. Then my request was approved almost every time. Somehow, this one person is the only one who is above that? And this means the Girl Scouts are racist? What a massive, crazy leap!
It is the position of the national organization. People here are going on about how a troop was allowed to raise funds for Ukraine, without reading the part that states how that troop asked in advance for an exception to the rules and took the required steps to do it.
I was troop leader for GSUSA, and you called it. The organization is very protective of its image, in order to be open to kids from ALL cultures. The rules regarding political activities under the Girl Scouts banner are clearly stated, and if there are any questions or requests for an exception, the staff is always willing to help.
This troop could have simply cleared the plan in advance, or participated in political, humanitarian fundraisers without involving the organization. The fact that the leader decided to break the rules, take offense, disband, and publicly infer that the Girl Scouts values are questionable says a lot about who has what agenda.