Yesterday my high school sweetheart, the love of my life for over 35 years, the loving mother of our 4 children, the smartest kindest woman I ever knew, my beautiful and wise queen forever, Rhonda went to Heaven. Thank you for your prayers for our family in this difficult time.
She was valedictorian at our high school where we went to the Prom together, accepted at MIT and Harvard, earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from MIT, and devoted her life to our family.
We spent last week touring Mt Rainier with our grandson - she was the best mammaw ever! We love you Rhonda.
Thank you @anncormican for reminding me of this rare recording of Rhonda singing (on YouTube). I loved her singing voice and she tolerated my out-of-time swarping at a banjo. This was Mike Maggard’s #nothinfancyfarm liberty event, August 28, 2011.
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🧵 Last night Trump endorsed the idea of eliminating the Department of Education!
On February 7th, 2017, the US Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos as Trump’s Secretary of Education.
Purposefully, on that same day, I introduced HR 899, a bill to terminate the Department of Education.
🧵 I remember meeting Betsy DeVos for the first time at the White House Christmas party and that uncomfortable moment when I told her I was trying to eliminate her department.
To my surprise she quietly agreed.
She said publicly this week she would eliminate the department!
🧵 I have reintroduced this bill each Congress, and I have taken care that it is always designated as HR 899.
Many people like that my bill is only one sentence long. No beating around the bush.
Americans are suffering under crippling inflation, and the Federal Reserve is largely to blame.
During COVID, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars out of thin air and loaned it to the Treasury Department to enable unprecedented deficit spending.
🧵 By monetizing the debt, the Fed devalued the dollar and enabled free money policies that caused the high inflation we see today.
Monetizing debt is a closely coordinated effort between the White House, the Fed, Treasury Department, Congress, Big Banks, and Wall Street.
🧵 Americans see their savings and wages evaporate due to the actions of our central bank pursuing inflationary policies that benefit the wealthy and connected.
If we really want to reduce inflation, the most effective policy is to end the Federal Reserve
🧵 At the time of that breakfast with Scalia, John Boehner was Speaker of the House and Barack Obama was President.
There was concern that Obama was doing things we hadn’t authorized and Boehner had convinced most of my GOP colleagues there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
🧵 Scalia finished his breakfast and began to speak. He started by saying that being a referee between us and the executive branch was not his job.
He explained that his job as a jurist was to determine if there was harm and what the remedy might be.
🧵 Occasionally, constitutionality of a law was a question, but only as a side effect of Scalia’s job, which was to determine if someone had been harmed and what the remedy was.
He was adamant that his job was not to referee disagreements between the executive & the legislature.
🧵I once had breakfast with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and about 18 other members of Congress in a private room at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington DC.
He was invited to speak on the topic of “restoring the constitutional balance of government.”
🧵 At the time of that breakfast with Scalia, John Boehner was Speaker of the House and Barack Obama was President.
There was concern that Obama was doing things we hadn’t authorized and Boehner had convinced most of my GOP colleagues there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
🧵 Scalia finished his breakfast and began to speak. He started by saying that being a referee between us and the executive branch was not his job.
He explained that his job as a jurist was to determine if there was harm and what the remedy might be.
🧵 How does Lucy pull the football from Charlie Brown in Congress?
This $100 billion bill that moves us to the brink of war around the globe…
began as a House bill to help VETERANS get reimbursed for emergency care!
🧵 The Veterans’ bill, HR 815, passed the House as a Veterans’ bill and went to the Senate.
The Senate stripped every word from it, inserted the foreign aid supplemental, and sent it back to the House.
The House will vote on 4 separate bills (Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, +other).
🧵 After the 4 separate bills pass the House tomorrow, a tricky Rule that passed in Rules Committee last night converts them into amendments to the Senate supplemental… HR 815, the bill that started in the House as a Veterans’ bill !
There was a vote on a resolution that would have allowed FISA, as well as 6 amendments to it, including a warrant requirement amendment, and three other pieces of legislation to come to the floor.
On partisan procedural votes like this, Democrats reflexively vote no and Republicans typically vote yes.
19 Republicans voted with all the Democrats to stop everything from coming to the floor today, including the warrant amendment to FISA.
Many of us who are adamantly opposed to warrantless surveillance voted for the resolution, wanting to get a recorded vote on warrants, and recognizing the Speaker can otherwise suspend the rules and bring anything to the floor without a resolution, like he did with the omnibus.