Was Schumer Covering for Gillibrand?
Someone persuaded Senate Democrats to back the GOP funding bill
Mar. 18: Gillibrand met with Wall Streeters during shutdown debate … Israel violates Gaza ceasefire by killing hundreds … Social Security considers cutting beneficiaries by limiting phone services … Doctor deported for “sympathetic photos” …
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Tomorrow is the one-week anniversary of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) telling the world that his caucus would stand almost uniformly united against a bill to prevent a government shutdown — a bill that also cut government services and benefits, gave Pres. Donald Trump unprecedented leeway to direct funding, and which Republicans crafted without even seeking Democratic input.
Instead, Democrats said, they would push for a continuing resolution (CR) to keep funding at current levels for a month so that Republicans would have time to include Democrats in talks on a longer-range funding bill.
Almost a week later — and bizarrely for the party that’s here to save democracy — we still have virtually no daylight on how the Democrats flipped, announcing just one day later that there were enough non-Republican votes to pass, not block, the Republican bill. And our political media seem to have stopped asking or even trying to figure out how this watershed moment in the party’s current struggles came about.
So TFN’s gonna give it a shot.
As of Wednesday, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the only Senate Democrat on record saying he would vote for the Republican funding bill. Schumer said everyone supported trying to buy more time for a bipartisan alternative.
“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer announced. This was somewhat overinterpreted in the media as unity against the GOP bill.
But deep down in the reporting, we got details indicating the party was far from unified. The Times reported on Thursday that “lengthy discussions” on the bill had been going on for three days.
And here’s NBC, from Wednesday:
“Outside the room where Democrats held their lunch meeting, reporters could hear senators loudly making their point to their colleagues inside…”
But the only word used to identify Democrats (other than Fetterman) who refused to allow a shutdown was “some.”
NBC: “…some worried that a shutdown would be worse…”
New York Times: “Some suggested allowing the stopgap spending bill to move forward as long as Republicans agreed to give them a chance to revise it on the Senate floor.”
Who specifically? Some!
So maybe Schumer was bluffing. Maybe he wanted Republicans to think their funding bill couldn’t pass so they’d agree to 30 days for real negotiations. As TFN laid out yesterday, Schumer sees his job as protecting his members, regardless of which positions they take.
So maybe, given the loud point-making, Schumer thought it possible that the senators making the loud point against allowing a shutdown were on course to get enough votes to block a shutdown and he was scrambling to clear an alternate path.
The big flip — now seen as a potential pivot point for the party — came the next day. Seemingly but not really out of nowhere.
The turning point seems to have been the Democrats’ closed-door lunch on Thursday. Here’s what we know about it.
The New York Times reported that Schumer “indicated that he had enough votes to help Republicans break any filibuster by his own party.” That makes it sound as though Schumer got those votes.
But there’s evidence he didn’t. During the meeting, Politico reported, Schumer said he wouldn’t twist anyone’s arms on the vote.
But that doesn’t mean no one was arm-twisting.
And the Times says that when Schumer announced that the filibusterers didn’t have the votes to block the GOP bill, his own caucus was “stunned.” Which would be weird if Schumer had been pressing everyone to change their votes — why would they be stunned if they knew Schumer was trying to pass the bill?
And if this was an outcome Schumer wanted, why wouldn’t the majority of Senate Democrats want to oust him now for secretly lobbying against them?
In fact, Politico reports, Schumer still has their support. Why? “They know he took a bullet for the team.”
Meaning: He made his face the face of this mess. Instead of someone else’s.
Schumer himself told the Times, “I’ll take some of the bullets.” But why only some?
Maybe because someone else lobbied to produce the flip that “stunned” the Democratic senators.
And, sure enough, the Thursday debate was loud, just as the Wednesday one was. But this time, reporters outside identified one voice arguing against a shutdown: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
Politico reported that Gillibrand “was overheard warning her colleagues behind closed doors of ‘serious harm’ and that ‘this will not be a normal shutdown.’”
How could she be overheard behind closed doors? Because she was yelling. Here’s the Times:
“Thursday’s session was particularly emotional … and at times growing heated. At one point, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York could be heard through closed doors shouting, ‘This will not be a normal shutdown!’”
Fox reported that Gillibrand “Keeps yelling at her colleagues about a shutdown … screaming so loud we can all hear it through the thick wood doors.” And that she “seems to be opposed to a shutdown.”
Punchbowl was also listening:
“I can hear Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) speaking quite loudly inside the Senate Dem lunch. She seems to be making the case against allowing the government to shut down.”
In other words, Schumer wasn’t twisting arms, Gillibrand was.
Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for Schumer to cover for Gillibrand if she — like Fetterman — were happy letting voters know where she stood. But after yelling her position privately, she “declined to answer questions from reporters as she left the lunch,” Politico said. “Not answering any questions today,” HuffPost reported.
And when it came time to vote, she didn’t lead the charge publicly. Her “yes” vote came later (and not just because it’s technically alphabetical, they have a long time in which to register their votes).
If it’s true that Gillibrand was responsible for all of this…why? Schumer historically has been known as the senator from Wall Street. But it’s her state, too. And he mentored her. And Wall Street definitely didn’t want a shutdown with the markets already spooked by tariffs.
Your diligent TFN hasn’t seen anyone else report this, but according to her public calendar, Gillibrand had only two meetings last week outside government. Both were on Wednesday, prior to her loud lunch with fellow Senate Democrats:
To be clear, I have no reason to think those meetings had anything to do with last week’s vote. But they do reflect her closeness with Wall Street. (UniSwap is crypto, Goldman Sachs is just one Wall Street source of Gillibrand campaign money).
And her religious life includes close relations with Christian Republicans. Before embracing progressive positions when she ran for Senate, she was known as a conservative House member.
Piecing all of this together — to post-mortem how Senate Democrats sold out their House colleagues and made possible an outcome most of their own party loathes — should, in theory, be a prime goal for our political-news outlets. Instead, it’s all quiet on the Kirsten front.
The New York Times got a big interview with Schumer during all of this. Not one question on the mechanics of the flip. Or its leaders.
And if Gillibrand was, in fact, the driving force behind this massive political moment, that ought to matter to every voter, not just her New York constituents. Because polls and all the anecdotal evidence suggest Democrats want someone willing to stand up to Republicans.
That means they want Senate candidates who fight. It means they want the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to back Senate candidates who fight.
And as of January, the new chair of the DSCC is Gillibrand.
Gaza Ceasefire Shattered Somehow
Remember when Pres. Donald Trump brought peace to the Middle East on Jan. 20? Well, Israel violated the Trump ceasefire this morning more bigly than all the previous violations, killing at least 404 men, women, and children in massive airstrikes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the airstrikes because Hamas was violating its end of the ceasefire by not making good on talks to release more of the remaining two dozen hostages. The White House was notified of the airstrikes beforehand and said sure, go ahead, it’s not as if voters will regret rejecting Vice Pres. Kamala Harris over Gaza.
Despite Netanyahu’s statement, American journalists struggled to identify who possibly might have ordered the Israeli airstrikes. To their credit, CNN’s headline writers were able to determine that the ceasefire shattered at virtually the same time as the airstrikes:
Boy, what are the odds of each of those things happening at exactly the same time AS the other thing? Remember those early Civil War news accounts of that time President Abe Lincoln’s eye suddenly bulged out as John Wilkes Booth carried out shooting of him?
Anyway, maybe some crack investigative journalists will identify who shattered the ceasefire someday.
Trump Replacing Social Security with Antisocial Insecurity
Remember when Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was ejected from Pres. Donald Trump’s congressional address? Remember the reason?
It was for real-time fact-checking that Trump has no mandate to cut Medicaid. But Republicans don’t need a mandate. Because they have a formula for cuts that involves disguising them as not-cuts.
The formula for GOP cuts to our entitlements is two-fold:
Claim the cuts are saving benefits by eliminating waste and fraud.
Make benefits harder to get (in the name of thwarting waste and fraud).
That’s what they’ve been gearing up for to attack Medicaid. Now we’re seeing the first signs of it with Social Security.
Substacker Judd Leggum obtained an internal Social Security Administration (SSA) proposal to make it harder for recipients to prove their identity. Which will, of course, “save” Social Security from their elderly, frauding asses.
Social Security recipients can establish their identity online. But those who lack internet access or comfort can do so over the phone. They establish their identity with information such as name and Social Security number and prove their age by correctly identifying Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly.
Under the SSA’s fraudulent anti-fraud proposal, the elderly and sometimes disabled recipients would have to establish their eligibility in person at an SSA field office that DOGE hasn’t closed yet. This would mean an estimated 75,000 in-person visits per week, impossibly straining the system.
And Axios reports that transitioning the system would cost more than the “savings” realized by efficiently impoverishing the elderly. Who’s up for a town hall?
Deported Doctor Had Ties to Terrorist Ghost
A Brown University assistant professor was deported to Lebanon over the weekend due to her connections with a dead guy.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh was detained in Boston on Thursday while returning from Lebanon. A Justice Department filing indicated that she had “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders.
As a result, Alawieh could face charges of attempted sympathy with intent to compassion. She also allegedly admitted attending last month’s funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, making her guilty of association with ghosts and/or the dead.
The funeral, CNN notes, was a public event attended by thousands of people. Alawaieh said her interest was in the religious teachings, not the political positions. Not that that should matter.
Trump’s Pentagon Doesn’t See Heroes of Color
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is honoring America’s white military heroes by erasing anyone who might in any way compete with them for attention. Namely, official military remembrances of achievements by non-white military.
The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has deleted webpages related to:
The Navajo code talkers of World War Two.
A Pima Indian who helped raise the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima.
The Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the surrender terms for the Confederacy’s traitorous pieces of shit.
Here’s the archived version of the deleted Pentagon page about Pfc. Ira Hayes (USMC). You can see Hayes, the Pima Indian in question, on the far left of this not-yet-Photoshopped still-historic photo:
And it’s worth noting that America’s diversity contributed to the victory in World War II. The code talkers knew indigenous languages other than English. They couldn’t be understood by the enemy. Just like today!
They were recruited for and succeeded due to their differences. They’re now being erased because of that. But the good news is that future exhibits will remember them both for defeating the enemy then and for the enemy’s doomed attempts to erase them now: To your right we have a restored exhibit on the Navajo code talkers. To your far right we have a new exhibit on the Trumpian effort of the 2020s to erase non-white heroes.
Axios found even more erased pages, which are now getting more prominence than they have in decades because censors are stupid jerkholes who never succeed for long.
TCB
I know, I’m still hella behind on much news things. Yes, I saw the deportion-planes/judicial order story. It’s on my radar ha ha and I’ll get to it and we’ll see how it plays out. I’m still playing catch-up!
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ELECTIONS Thanks to Newsfucker Alicia Coker for flagging upcoming special House races!
April 1: House of Representatives (Florida-1) — Democrat Gay Valimont vs. Republican Jimmy Patronis, whose homepage rictus1 I just have to share:
April 1: House of Representatives (Florida-6) — Democrat Josh Weil vs. Republican Randy Fine.
April 1: Wisconsin state Supreme Court — Democrat Susan Crawford vs. Republican Brad Schimel.
TAKING ACTION Upcoming events/actions:
Today-The Second Coming: Tesla boycott.
March 21-28: Nestlé Blackout (water wars, child labor)
March 28: Economic Blackout #2
April 7-13: Walmart Blackout (‘nuff said)
April 18: Economic Blackout #3
April 21-27: General Mills Blackout
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Go get ‘em, kids! Because democracy means fighting amongst ourselves about how to fight for a better future…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Forced and/or terrifying grin.
If what you perceive is true, then Schumer is a worse politician than I thought. Selling out the all the protestors and the entire Democratic Party to cover fir Gillibrand is not tragic, it is betrayal. I have always thought that Nancy was Chuck’s backbone and that be has been rudderless since she stepped down. And we also need to remember that Gilliband was the leader of the gang that made Al Franken leave the senate. It seems to me that when push comes to shove, she supports the things that will weaken the Dems. Perhaps I don’t remember all she had done but that is my impression of her. Chuck needs to step down from leadership. Both need to be primaried. I have very little faith in the senate election fund; it seems to be used mostly to reelected members and not to help others, even open seats. I admit I that I am biased.
We have to have a platform and a leader. The courts need us in the streets. You thought there were only 3, but we are the 4th branch of this government. March on DC! https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/a-just-movement?r=3m1bs