First stop: @TheRedAppleFarm, a 100 year old, 4th generation family farm in Phillipston that uses green solar & wind energy to offer 50+ varieties of apples & pick-your-own pumpkins, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears & potatoes.
They’ve also got a fantastic country store that’s got New England maple syrup, fresh coffee, cider, local jams and jellies, and cider donuts!
☔️ Last year the very wet weather New England had kept people away on the weekends & ruined three pumpkin fields.
🌪 This year was the first time they’ve ever had hail from an unusually strong storm that swung down from the north (also strange) and damaged several fields.
This is what hail does to blueberries. If #ClimateChange causes more hail, farmers are going to be dealing with this kind of damage more and more often.
Can’t think of a better way to kick off Farm Tour 2019. Thank you @TheRedAppleFarm for the warm welcome & everything you do for our community!
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1/ USAID is an agency that saves lives, fights hunger, and strengthens democracy. It’s also an investment in the American people.
Let’s talk about what USAID actually does—and why it makes America safer, stronger, and more respected in the world. 🧵
2/ USAID fights child mortality. Since 2008, it has saved 4.6 million children and 200,000 mothers. When kids thrive, families and communities grow stronger. Healthier societies means more global stability, which enhances our own security.
3/ USAID helps fight diseases like malaria and AIDS. Since 2007, it has saved 6 million lives from malaria and helped 9.5 million people get HIV/AIDS treatment. Fighting disease abroad protects Americans at home from pandemics.
2/ First, some history. In the middle of COVID, I led efforts to allow Members of Congress who couldn’t physically attend due to the public health emergency to vote remotely so that their constituents would still be represented. It worked. rollcall.com/2024/01/29/end…
3/ Speaker Johnson is right that he joined a lawsuit claiming voting by proxy was unconstitutional, but that's not the whole story.
First, he LOST! The district court dismissed the lawsuit. The Appeals Court agreed. The Supreme Court wouldn’t hear it. His view lost. Full stop.
1/ Let’s set the record straight on the Laken Riley Act, because I’m hearing a lot of people who say they support this bill, but who don't seem to know what it really does.
2/ First things first, if you are undocumented and arrested or convicted of a felony, you're already subject to detention and deportation. That’s already on the books. It’s a good law, I agree with it, and it should be enforced.
3/ That’s not what this bill is about. This bill targets people who have been accused of shoplifting. Not rapists and murderers like the monster who killed Laken Riley. People accused of shoplifting.
Today the @HouseGOP put out their rules for the next two years of Congress.
If you thought their dysfunction, disorganization, and disarray was bad before, buckle up, because it’s about to get even worse. A 🧵…
You’d think House Republicans might look at their failures and try to change course by working with Democrats, as we’ve been asking, to address the major problems facing our country.
You’d think. But you’d be wrong.
First, by injecting partisan extremism into the rules, Republicans are totally destroying the role of Speaker of the House.
Their proposed changes would, for the first time in history, shield the Speaker from accountability to the entire chamber by making it so that only Republicans can move to vacate the chair.
This makes it clear that they have no intention of working together to find common ground. Instead of electing a Speaker of the House, they decided to elect a Speaker of the Republican Conference—held hostage by their most extreme members.
1/ The one big thing nobody is talking about: Did Elon want to shut the government down because of his business deals with China? A thread... 🧵
2/ Trump didn’t get the one thing he wanted in the government funding deal: A debt ceiling increase so he could give himself and his billionaire friends a tax break.
But you know who got exactly what he wanted? Elon Musk...
3/ The original funding bill (that he killed) included what’s called an “outbound investment” provision—which would limit & screen U.S. money flowing to China. That would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech—as well as jobs—in America.
🧵 This afternoon during debate, Republicans moved to “take down my words,” a procedural term meaning they think I violated the rules and that my words should be stricken from the record. Why? Because I stated facts about Trump’s trials.
Let’s talk about it.
Here are my remarks. Read them yourself. Whether you love Trump or hate him, I was simply stating facts about his legal problems. I didn’t say he was guilty or innocent. I didn’t disparage him. I was stating facts.
My point was this: We are in unprecedented times. But the way the rules work, we aren’t able to have an honest debate about Donald Trump. When we speak on the House Floor, we’re not allowed to suggest a president—or a presumptive nominee—broke the law.
Obviously, these rules were written in an era when no presidential nominee had ever been criminally indicted, much less on 88 felony counts.