President Joe Biden hasn’t submitted an emergency supplemental request for federal funds to restore the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, however the Home Freedom Caucus is already taking the funding hostage.
The extremists laid out their official place Friday, forward of Biden’s journey to Baltimore to go to the location of the lethal bridge collapse and meet with officers and victims’ households. The hard-liners insist that any federal cash solely be used on bridge repairs, however are additionally demanding a White Home coverage reversal on a difficulty that has nothing to do with the bridge.
Biden is in Baltimore Friday to “ship remarks reaffirming his dedication to the individuals of Baltimore.” Forward of the journey, the White Home issued a reality sheet detailing what the Biden administration has finished thus far and what it would take to revive the Port of Baltimore, calling it “important to the regional economic system and the nationwide provide chain.” Workplace of Administration and Price range Director Shalanda Younger additionally despatched a letter to key Home and Senate committee chairs asking for authorizing language for “a one hundred pc Federal price share for rebuilding the bridge.”
The Home maniacs, as typical, don’t wish to pay for it. They’ve been demanding the curbing of catastrophe reduction for the reason that devastating 2005 Hurricane Katrina catastrophe and insisting that any funding for restoration must be taken out of different spending. In 2018, 179 Republicans voted towards Hurricane Sandy reduction, and in 2019, they held up a crucial assist package deal for weeks that may assist Puerto Rico and communities devastated by wildfire and excessive climate.
In fact, in terms of emergency help to crimson states, that opposition fades.
As The Washington Put up’s Aaron Blake identified in 2022, “solely three of 18 Home Republicans from Florida voted for the bigger Sandy invoice, however each one among them voted for the 2017 invoice that included assist for his or her house state.” A lot for fiscal self-discipline.
This time round—with assist going to the blue state of Maryland—the Freedom Caucus members are pulling out that previous playbook, once more insisting that any federal cash has to return from cuts to different packages, and that “burdensome laws” defending staff and the setting be put aside in terms of rebuilding.
Out of far-right area, they’re additionally demanding that the administration reverse a brief maintain on liquified pure gasoline export approvals, dubiously arguing that it, “just like the Baltimore harbor closure, has extreme implications for international commerce.” Republicans have been banging on about this for months, largely as a result of the maintain impacts one crimson state: Speaker Mike Johnson’s house state of Louisiana.
Johnson has even tried to situation assist to Ukraine on lifting the export pause, laughably arguing on Fox Information that “We wish to have pure gasoline exports that may assist unfund Vladimir Putin’s warfare effort.”
The White Home shortly shut that argument down.
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Florida’s Supreme Courtroom simply greenlit a poll measure to enshrine abortion within the state structure—and concurrently allowed the GOP’s new six-week abortion ban to grow to be legislation. That makes the already-high stakes for this modification even greater, as we talk about on this week’s episode of The Downballot. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard additionally speak in regards to the dying of New Jersey’s notorious “county line” and the way the GOP managed to choose yet one more whackjob candidate for yet one more congressional particular election.
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