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AI Overview

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) is a frequent guest on Fox News, where he delivers folksy, sharp critiques of Democratic policies, administration officials, and progressive platforms. [1, 2]

Media Appearances and Commentary

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jack smith fail poster hold up, threw up in mouth

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dem beat bad by tp guy, so flipped to gop 2016 trump won la by 20 pts; dems give free stuff then you pay for it

sept event w climate town yt foghorn channel Climate Town

Please Don’t Watch This Senate Hearing

sen rept apr 2024 65 pp: https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fossil_fuel_report1.pdf

Citations reference first appearance, without repeating for subsequent usage:

Episode Credits

Creator/Host: Rollie Williams

Writers: Rollie Williams & Matt Nelsen

Director: Matt Nelsen

Editors: Rollie Williams & Paul Ramsdell

Executive Producers: Rollie Williams, Matt Nelsen & Daniella Philipson

...

5:56

5 minutes, 56 seconds

And then it's Senator Kennedy's turn to talk and things take a little twist. He doesn't want to talk about the report or oil disinformation or oil companies at

6:06

6 minutes, 6 seconds

all. He wants to talk about carbon emissions from forest fires. Are you familiar with a with with a what's

6:13

6 minutes, 13 seconds

called a boreal forest? Millions of acres burn there naturally every year. But obviously forest fires produce carbon.

6:22

6 minutes, 22 seconds

Okay. So immediately we're veering away from oil and gas company misconduct and into is climate change even real

6:29

6 minutes, 29 seconds

territory? But I guess let's see where he's going with this. And I was reading a study this weekend.

6:36

6 minutes, 36 seconds

I want to get my facts straight here. They said u um the carbon released by

6:43

6 minutes, 43 seconds

the these naturally occurring forest fires and in in boreal forests, nobody lives there. Um let's see.

6:56

6 minutes, 56 seconds

Wildfires in the boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in one year, 2021,

7:03

7 minutes, 3 seconds

released double the amount of all global CO2 produced in 2001.

7:11

7 minutes, 11 seconds

Wa. Okay, that is a crazy stat. It's also not even close. First of all, I think he's messing up 2021 and 2001,

7:20

7 minutes, 20 seconds

which is fine. People make mistakes. But in 2021, the boreal fires emitted about half a gigaton of CO2 compared to

7:28

7 minutes, 28 seconds

humanity's 36.3 gatons. So they weren't so much twice as much carbon dioxide as

7:34

7 minutes, 34 seconds

they were 75 times smaller. Which, you know, is so super wrong that it almost makes you forget that the sentence right

7:42

7 minutes, 42 seconds

before that was, I want to get my facts straight here.

7:45

7 minutes, 45 seconds

It's also a pretty disingenuous argument because he's cherry-picking [music] 2021 because there were record-breaking boreal fires that he insists were naturally occurring.

7:55

7 minutes, 55 seconds

Burn there naturally. Naturally occurring forest fires. Naturally occurring boreal forest forest fire.

8:02

8 minutes, 2 seconds

But of course, if you looked at the actual study for the boreal forest fires in 2021, you'd see this line. The hotter and drier fire seasons in boreal

8:10

8 minutes, 10 seconds

regions, likely due to human-driven climate change, increase the flammability of vegetation biomass and lightning ignition efficiency.

...

8:568 minutes, 56 secondsfellowship at Harvard. The dude is not [ ] around, okay? He is an expert in climate disinformation and he has dedicated his career [music] to

9:049 minutes, 4 secondsinvestigating the impact of big oil on the public's understanding of climate change. From the late 1980s onwards, oil companies and their trade associations

9:129 minutes, 12 secondsabetted by front groups as well as PR consulting and law firms have waged a multi-deade multi-billion dollar campaign of disinformation, lobbying,

9:209 minutes, 20 secondspropaganda, and the colonization of academia to sabotage science, scare and confuse the public and politicians, and undermine climate and clean energy

9:289 minutes, 28 secondspolicies. As a scholar of disinformation, I do not use the word lie lightly, but no other word adequately describes the oil industry's

9:359 minutes, 35 secondsbrazen efforts to mislead the public about its history of misleading the public.

9:399 minutes, 39 secondsBut when it was Kennedy's turn to ask Supran about his testimony, instead of talking about any of that, he hit Supan with this.

9:479 minutes, 47 secondsUh, Dr. Supin on December 14th, 2023, you you tweeted in support of climate defiance.

9:599 minutes, 59 secondsThat's an entity that uh the Brookings in Institute uh has called a radical climate change group. Is that correct?

10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsUh I don't recall, I'm afraid.

10:0910 minutes, 9 secondsOkay. Would this be the same climate defiance that you I'm looking at your tweet. You you uh tweeted in

10:1710 minutes, 17 secondssupport of them. Would this be the same climate uh defiance that called uh

10:2410 minutes, 24 secondsSenator Joe Biden quote a sick [ ] I don't know. But as I would this be the same climate defiance

10:3310 minutes, 33 secondsthat calls Senator Lisa Marowski a murderer?

10:3710 minutes, 37 secondsI do not know. As I said in my statement, would this be the same climate defiance who who told the CEO of Exxon Exxon to quote, "Eat [ ] Darren." Close quote.

10:5010 minutes, 50 secondsOkay, remember this is a hearing on oil and gas company malfeasants and Senator Kennedy has printed out Dr. Supran's

10:5810 minutes, 58 secondsTwitter feed to insinuate [music] that Supran is some kind of radical climate activist. And just to say it, climate

11:0511 minutes, 5 secondsdefiance is not some kind of eotterrorist group blowing up bridges. They're these guys.

11:1111 minutes, 11 secondsI am Andrew Cuomo. Okay, I am the real Andrew Cuomo. If you are an oil exec, I

11:1911 minutes, 19 secondswill support you no matter what. I do not take no for an answer ever.

11:2511 minutes, 25 secondsAnd also, Dr. Supernan's not part of the group. He retweeted one climate defiance tweet one time. Dr. Supan is a

11:3311 minutes, 33 secondsresearcher who studies big oil. Yet Kennedy's entire line of questioning is him reading climate defiance tweets at

11:4111 minutes, 41 secondsSupan, a man who has never seen some of those tweets before in an attempt to paint Supran as some kind of climate scop.

11:4811 minutes, 48 secondsI'm not responsible for the statements of other people. And I also do not know the answer. That is not my tweet, sir.

11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsAnd Kennedy does this until his time expires. Not a single question about the thing we're here to talk about. Superan

12:0112 minutes, 1 secondtries to clarify that this was a retweet and then we get this little final moment. I did not say that I don't support this.

12:0712 minutes, 7 secondsI simply did not tweet it which as you alleged but you retweeted.

12:1012 minutes, 10 secondsI'd like to make very clear that this form of characteristation is characteristic of the propaganda techniques. You retweeted Senator Mkeley. Thank you.

12:1812 minutes, 18 secondsAre you going to call me a sick [ ] It's Senator Mkeley's time.

12:2212 minutes, 22 secondsAre you going to call me a sick [ ] Are you going to call me a sick [ ] Are you going to call me a sick [ ]

12:3012 minutes, 30 secondsInteresting. Interesting. Now, at first glance, it might seem like a 72-year-old man shouting, "Are you gonna call me a

12:3812 minutes, 38 secondssick fuck?" at a witness on the floor of the Senate might seem a little stupid.

12:4312 minutes, 43 secondsBut in order to understand just how devious this little outburst actually was, we've got to learn a little bit more about John Kennedy. And the first

12:5112 minutes, 51 secondsthing we'll notice is that you don't have to dig to find this clip. You can actually watch it over on Senator Kennedy's YouTube channel where his team

12:5912 minutes, 59 secondsclips out his wackiest Senate takedowns and puts them all online. You tweeted, "Both Texas and Louisiana have their

13:0713 minutes, 7 secondsknives out for black immigrants." Guessing the context, but my suspicion is that it has to do the attorney general Ken Paxton and the attorney

13:1513 minutes, 15 secondsgeneral of You don't [music] have a name, do you? I I just said Ken Paxton.

13:1913 minutes, 19 secondsYou don't have a name, do you? You just said it. You need to stop dipping into your ketamine stash. I want to read you one of your tweets. Gag me with a spoon.

13:2813 minutes, 28 secondsDo you think Senators [music] Yellow Brand is a crook?

13:3113 minutes, 31 secondsNo. And I do not think all politicians are crooks. And why did you call her a crook?

13:3613 minutes, 36 secondsI did not call her a crook. Now, Senator, you need to focus on bill.

13:4213 minutes, 42 secondsYou're doing this again. You did it the last year. You're a whack job.

13:4613 minutes, 46 secondsSenator, what planet did you just parachute?

13:4813 minutes, 48 secondsNo. No. No. Hey guys, you you you [music] trigger my gag reflex, Mr. Be.

13:5613 minutes, 56 secondsWe got a process here. And it's good to know you don't have an agenda.

14:0114 minutes, 1 secondYep. Reading tweets at Soup Brand was not Kennedy's first rodeo. It's actually one of his favorite ways to clip farm for subscribers and followers. He'll dig

14:0914 minutes, 9 secondsup some old tweets and no matter how irrelevant to the task at hand, he'll hit you with some gotcha questions and post the results for views. And if his 5

14:1814 minutes, 18 secondsmillion followers across his social media platforms are any indication, I'd say he's pretty [ ] successful at it. But Kennedy isn't just some dude

14:2614 minutes, 26 secondsstanding outside a bar trying to trick drunk girls into saying something embarrassing. Congressional witnesses [music] are under oath, which Kennedy

14:3414 minutes, 34 secondsvery well knows. That means he can hit them with a retweet from years ago. On June 8th, 2020,

14:4014 minutes, 40 secondsyou tweeted, "The war on drugs was intentionally created to incarcerate black people on mouse." I don't remember typing that.

14:5114 minutes, 51 secondsYou don't?

14:5214 minutes, 52 secondsNo, it's on your Twitter feed. Maybe a retweet. I don't.

14:5614 minutes, 56 secondsAnd if they can't remember it or if they get something wrong, that could constitute lying to Congress, which is not only frowned upon, it's a felony.

15:0315 minutes, 3 secondsNow, obviously, if you're in the administration, it's totally fine. There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. I believe you just lied under oath.

15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsThere is ample evidence in the Epstein. Don't you ever accuse me of a crime.

15:1715 minutes, 17 secondsThat's right. Swing for the fences. No wrong answers. But Kennedy is doing this to regular people who almost immediately start questioning everything about their

15:2615 minutes, 26 secondslives because I don't know, maybe I did tweet that and I don't want to go to prison. So, they almost automatically appear confused or shady or weird. And

15:3415 minutes, 34 secondslo and behold, Senator Kennedy's social media team has something new to post for the engagement. Mix in a couple of Kennedy's famous oneliners that he's always coming up with. They're so good.

15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsHe's nervous as a pregnant nun. And you've got yourself a viral moment.

15:4915 minutes, 49 secondsAnd you don't have to take my word for it. Take it away, possessed American Girl doll from the Forbes YouTube channel.

15:5515 minutes, 55 secondsAs many viewers on this channel know, Louisiana's Senator John Kennedy often is caused for viral moments and highly viewed videos. The often humorous

16:0316 minutes, 3 secondsRepublican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee has boasted multiple moments that have exceeded half million views on this channel.

16:1016 minutes, 10 secondsNow, that's the kind of hard-hitting journalism you can always expect from Forbes.com. But the more I looked into Kennedy's often humorous oneliners, the

16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsmore I realized that a lot of his jokes were actually just other people's jokes that he had memorized and then regurgitated. Like this one.

16:2616 minutes, 26 secondsI don't eat kale. You know why? Because tail tastes to me like I'd rather be fat. [laughter]

16:3516 minutes, 35 secondsNice. I love that joke. I also loved it four years before that when this dude tweeted it. And I also loved it 10 years

16:4216 minutes, 42 secondsago when it was already so old it was a fridge magnet joke. But don't worry, there's more.

16:4916 minutes, 49 secondsI think she's the reason there are [music] directions on a shampoo bottle.

16:5416 minutes, 54 seconds[laughter]

16:5516 minutes, 55 secondsAnd unless you're the reason that your parents drank, you see that it was a big victory.

17:0117 minutes, 1 secondMy mama did not raise a fool. And if she did, it was one of my brothers.

17:0617 minutes, 6 seconds[laughter]

17:0717 minutes, 7 secondsThe brain is an amazing organ. It starts working in a mother's womb. And it

17:1417 minutes, 14 secondsdoesn't stop working until you get elected to Congress.

17:2017 minutes, 20 secondsYep. I mean, that one's a meme. That one's from a t-shirt. That's a bumper sticker joke. And that one's from a famous American poet [music] who died

17:2717 minutes, 27 secondsmore than 60 years ago. I also took a look at Kennedy's best-selling book, How to Test Negative for Stupid and Why

17:3417 minutes, 34 secondsWashington Never Will. I mean, the title's hysterical. The title's just fantastic.

17:3817 minutes, 38 secondsHow to test negative for stupid for stupid.

17:4317 minutes, 43 secondsYou just can't stop this guy. And in the first two pages, there are nine jokes, which is a pretty great ratio until you

17:5117 minutes, 51 secondsrealize that every single one was lifted from somebody else. And I'm not joking, it's every single one. Most notably, for

18:0018 minutesas long as I can remember, one thing has been true about me. I have the right to remain silent, but not the ability.

18:0718 minutes, 7 secondsAnd that's pretty good. But if it sounds familiar, here's comedian Ron White from the BlueCollar Comedy Tour. I had the

18:1418 minutes, 14 secondsright to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability.

18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsKennedy probably would have titled his book that if Ron White hadn't already done it 20 years ago. Seemed to be a

18:2918 minutes, 29 secondspattern. And the more we looked into it, the more it seemed like Kennedy was just kind of memorizing southern sounding jokes so we could drop them into his

18:3818 minutes, 38 secondsspeeches to sound more folksy. But I mean, he is folksy, right? I mean, there aren't people out here who think he's maybe faking his accent, are there?

18:4818 minutes, 48 secondsWell, let me play you a couple of clips. Here's what he sounds like today. I will [music] not let you down.

18:5618 minutes, 56 secondsI'd rather drink weed killer.

18:5718 minutes, 57 secondsAnd here's a clip from when he was Louisiana State Treasurer.

19:0119 minutes, 1 secondWell, we have another program here at Treasury that we're very proud of that we think can help a lot of Louisianans.

19:0719 minutes, 7 secondsWhoa, different. And now, if you listen to this clip from 2004 when John Kennedy was running for Senate, you might notice another thing that's changed.

19:1519 minutes, 15 secondsI'm very proud of my record on civil rights. I have appointed women and minorities to positions of authority.

19:2119 minutes, 21 secondsYeah. In 2004, Kennedy was running as a Democrat, which might explain why he said things like, "I will not support

19:2819 minutes, 28 secondstax cuts for the top 1% of Americans, and I want an America in Louisiana whose citizens understand that everybody

19:3519 minutes, 35 secondscounts and I'm [music] a Democrat." And Kennedy lost that election in a landslide to a Republican. But don't you worry, folks, because Kennedy just

19:4419 minutes, 44 secondsswitched parties a few years later. So when Trump won Louisiana by 20 points in 2016, Kennedy suddenly had a really good election strategy.

19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsI believe in more freedom. My opponent in this race believes in more free stuff and he wants you to pay for it. And I

20:0220 minutes, 2 secondswant you to extend a warm down home Louisiana welcome to my president-elect

20:1020 minutes, 10 secondsDonald J. Trump. [cheering] Awesome. And according to a mass communication professor from Louisiana

20:1920 minutes, 19 secondsState University, before he got to the Senate, Kennedy never pretended to be a hick. After he [music] got to the Senate and realized that Fox News and its

20:2620 minutes, 26 secondsviewers enjoyed his shtick, he went all in on this new persona. You can write that down and take it home [music] to mama.

20:3320 minutes, 33 secondsNow, maybe he really does have a natural fogghorn leg horn accent.

20:3820 minutes, 38 secondsWhose response? I say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person?

20:4320 minutes, 43 secondsMaybe. But it's just very hard for me to reconcile this whole like I'm a regular guy just like you angle with the fact

20:5120 minutes, 51 secondsthat he is a very wealthy Oxford educated lawyer with a meandery accent who has found incredible success

20:5920 minutes, 59 secondsadopting the Republican party and pandering to a conservative audience with regurgitated bumper sticker jokes and gotcha questions under oath. So,

21:0821 minutes, 8 secondsallow me to present an alternate hypothesis for why Senator John Kennedy is shouting, "Are you going to call me a sick fuck?" at an expert in climate

21:1621 minutes, 16 secondsdisinformation rather than engaging with the actual material. [music] I mean, it's a great way to get clicks, but even more than that, it's a great way to

21:2421 minutes, 24 secondsdiscredit Dr. Supran. I mean, if he's some kind of radical communist, well, we can't very well listen to what he has to

21:3221 minutes, 32 secondssay about big oil. I mean, he's got an agenda. But while we're, you know, talking about agendas, John Kennedy is

21:3921 minutes, 39 secondsnot just a random senator. He's the senator for the great state of Louisiana, which has historically been a massive oil and gas state.

21:4821 minutes, 48 secondsIf Louisiana was a country, we'd be number one in the world in LG exports.

21:5321 minutes, 53 secondsNow, that is a real accent. Not saying Kennedy's isn't. I'm saying that one definitely is. Also, according to Open

22:0122 minutes, 1 secondSecrets, oil and gas companies contributed $1.7 million to Senator Kennedy, putting him in the top 20 for senators over the past three decades.

22:1122 minutes, 11 secondsEven former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy called Senator Kennedy out by name as someone they knew they could work with in Congress.

22:1822 minutes, 18 seconds2022 class is focused on reelection. So, I know I have them. Those are the Marco Rubios. Those are the Senator Kennedys.

22:2522 minutes, 25 secondsYou can have those conversations [music] with them because they're a captive audience. So, all that brings us back to this hearing. Of all the times Kennedy

22:3222 minutes, 32 secondspulled this exact same retweet surprise,

22:3422 minutes, 34 seconds[music]

22:3522 minutes, 35 secondswhy are we focusing on this time for the video? Well, it turns out that this hearing is actually pretty important.

22:4222 minutes, 42 secondsBecause a bunch of states are in the process of suing major oil players like Exxon, Chevron, Coke Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and more

22:5022 minutes, 50 secondsfor misleading the public on their role in climate change. And my god, you better believe they don't want that to happen. I mean, no company wants to get

22:5922 minutes, 59 secondssued, but in this case, even having any of those lawsuits go to trial could be catastrophic for big oil because those

23:0623 minutes, 6 secondstrials will involve something called discovery. Discovery is part of the pre-trial proceedings where both sides go out and gather up the evidence

23:1323 minutes, 13 secondsthey'll use during the trial. And for these particular lawsuits about whether big oil misled the public about climate change, discovery will probably involve

23:2223 minutes, 22 secondsdepositions with former employees who might not be able to talk because they're under NDAs. and also the court forcing oil companies to turn over a ton

23:3023 minutes, 30 secondsof internal documents. Now, you may remember when the United States Congress tried to get them to turn over documents and they pull this little move.

23:3923 minutes, 39 secondsNow, apparently that'll work in Congress. I mean, technically, you're not allowed to defy their orders, but they let you do a little defying if they

23:4623 minutes, 46 secondslike you. But when a US court subpoenas documents, you are legally compelled to comply. And that means actually legally

23:5423 minutes, 54 secondscompelled. This is basically what happened to the tobacco companies in the9s. A whole bunch of states sued the tobacco companies and Discovery forced

24:0124 minutes, 1 secondthem to turn over thousands of documents, including one from 1985 that showed that R.J. Reynolds destroyed records and suppressed research about

24:0924 minutes, 9 secondsthe toxic effects of smoking. The company initially fought to keep that document private under attorney client privilege until a Minnesota judge ruled

24:1824 minutes, 18 secondsagainst them. These cases led to big tobacco being held liable under a thing called the master settlement agreement.

24:2524 minutes, 25 secondsAnd as you can probably imagine, it was devastating to the tobacco [music] industry. And that might explain why if you look at Jeffrey Supran in this

24:3424 minutes, 34 secondshearing and then you look a little bit to his left, you see an empty chair. But then if you look even more to the left, you see a different much closer chair.

24:4224 minutes, 42 secondsBut a little more to the left. And what's that? A shoulder. Well, that shoulder belongs to this woman. Her name is Sharon Eubanks and she's the former

24:5024 minutes, 50 secondsdirector of the tobacco litigation team for the United States Department of Justice.

24:5524 minutes, 55 secondsBoth industries lied to the public and regulators about what they knew about the harms of their products and when they knew it. The deceptive advertising

25:0425 minutes, 4 secondsand the PR of the fossil fuel industry is now under intense legal scrutiny.

25:1025 minutes, 10 secondsMore than 1,800 lawsuits has been fi have been filed regarding climate liability worldwide. Many of these cases

25:1825 minutes, 18 secondsconcern the misleading fake science that the industry per purposefully distributed to the public for decades.

25:2625 minutes, 26 secondsBut luckily for big oil, the US government looks a little different these days. Don't you ever accuse me of a crime.

25:3325 minutes, 33 secondsAfter some lobbying from the oil companies, the Trump administration is actively trying to prevent these lawsuits from going forward. In early

25:4125 minutes, 41 secondsMay, the Trump DOJ filed its own lawsuit to stop a Minnesota case, which was on track to begin discovery after the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the suit.

25:4925 minutes, 49 secondsThat same Justice Department filed similar lawsuits in Hawaii and Michigan, also designed to stop these state level cases. [music] I think we actually have a clip of the Trump DOJ here.

25:5925 minutes, 59 secondsOh no.

26:0226 minutes, 2 secondsOh no. Oh, [ ] my life. And to top it all off, Republicans have now introduced federal legislation that would give big

26:1026 minutes, 10 secondsoil full legal immunity from any lawsuit and the discovery process that goes along with them. Here's the Senate

26:1826 minutes, 18 secondsversion introduced by stand-up comedian John Kennedy's number one fan, Ted Cruz, to prohibit liability against those

26:2526 minutes, 25 secondsengaged in the mining, extraction, production, refinement, transportation, distribution, marketing, manufacture, or

26:3226 minutes, 32 secondssale of energy for damages or injunctive or other relief from the use of their products and for other purposes. So,

26:3926 minutes, 39 secondshere we are with some lawmakers arguing, "Yeah, maybe we should give open-ended absolute immunity to the biggest oil companies in the world." Well, also we get this [music] in the Senate.

26:4826 minutes, 48 secondsAre you going to call me a sick [ ] So, what are we going to do about it?

26:5226 minutes, 52 secondsWell, this is mostly playing out in the courts and apparently the highest levels of government. But if you want to learn more about this and maybe even get involved, you can visit the website

27:0027 minutesnoimmunity forbigo oil.com where you can join the petition and a bunch of other stuff you can do to support [music] the cause. Check it out. Link in the description. And if you want to support

27:0927 minutes, 9 secondsSenator Kennedy, there are a ton of old t-shirts and knick-knacks with some of his best jokes on them. and you can buy them so they're part of your life,

27:1627 minutes, 16 seconds[music] too. I'm not going to tell you what to buy. There are truly too many options, but you can just Google what he says and usually find something for less

27:2427 minutes, 24 secondsthan [music] $10, like this mug from the time he said this.

27:2727 minutes, 27 secondsEven duct tape can't fix stupid. Um, and we can all look forward to the day when Kennedy or one of his staffers

27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsfinds this Reddit post [music] with one of my favorite old sayings, cuz I would love to hear Kennedy cover this. That

27:4227 minutes, 42 secondsskeer was so big it could stand flatfooted and [ ] a turkey. Now that, my friends, is one big mosquito. And

27:5127 minutes, 51 secondsthat's the end of the episode. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. And thank you to the Center for Climate Integrity and to Amy Westervelt for their research, help, and

28:0028 minutesexpertise on this episode. If you liked what you saw and you want to support us, the best way to do that is through our Patreon page. And I'm going to animate a

28:0828 minutes, 8 secondslittle Patreon like that cuz I really want to emphasize it. Patreon is critical to this channel. It is the backbone of Climate Town and you can be

28:1628 minutes, 16 secondspart of it, my friend. Maybe like like a vertebrae or some of that gross spinal fluid. What is that doing? Just lubricating the spine. I don't know. You

28:2528 minutes, 25 secondscan be it though, brother. We also give you access to behindthe-scenes videos, monthly town halls, the phone number for the Climate Town Landline. That's a real

28:3428 minutes, 34 secondsphone in our office. You can call it, we'll answer it. Even access to discounted tickets for our live shows, kind of like the one we're doing on September 21st in Brooklyn at the Bell

28:4328 minutes, 43 secondsHouse. That's right, we got a live show featuring the aforementioned Amy Westervelt. It's going to be a great time and tickets are already online

28:5028 minutes, 50 secondsright now. Ticket link in the description. It's going to be magma hot and you can even get a discounted ticket to it if you join our Patreon. And then

28:5828 minutes, 58 secondsyou can quit Patreon and make money on the deal. It's insane that I'm telling you to do this, but I've been I've begun

29:0529 minutes, 5 secondsthis riff before and I haven't thought this out, so I guess we're going to keep it in. But thank you for watching this video. We couldn't do it without you.

29:1329 minutes, 13 secondsOkay. Okay. Don't you ever accuse me of a crime. I have not [music] tried marijuana.

29:2129 minutes, 21 secondsUh I have never used it at any time.

29:2429 minutes, 24 secondsAre you going to call me [music] a sick [ ] You're going to call me a sick

29:2829 minutes, 28 seconds[ ] in my Senate? I'm not a sick [ ]

29:3129 minutes, 31 secondsYou're a sick [ ] You're calling me a sick [ ] That's that sick [ ] behavior. You sick [ ] You're trying to sick [ ] me. Sick [ ] you, man.

29:4029 minutes, 40 secondsSick [ ] you, dude. I'm not going [music] down to be a sick [ ] You're the sick [ ] It takes one to no one.

29:4729 minutes, 47 secondsAnd I know you're [music] one sick [ ] brother.

29:5429 minutes, 54 secondsDid you hear that, Pop? Goodbye.

Sync to video time

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an 2 25

During a confirmation hearing for nominees chosen for high-profile posts within the Department of Justice, two of President Donald Trump's appointees wouldn't rule out disobeying federal court orders.

NBC News reported Wednesday that both Aaron Reitz and Dean John Sauer (who have been nominated as assistant attorney general and solicitor general, respectively) suggested to senators that they may ignore a ruling from a federal judge that they disagree with. While neither Reitz — who is chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — or Sauer outright said they would ignore a ruling, both gave cagey answers and notably didn't once definitively say that they would always abide by judges' decisions.

Sauer in particular hinted that he could disregard future orders, in citing two maligned Supreme Court cases: *Korematsu v. United States* and *Dred Scott v. Sandford*. In the Korematsu decision handed down in 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to detain Japanese Americans in remote prison camps. In the 1857 Dred Scott case, the Court ruled that slaves did not have the same protections as citizens and lacked standing to sue in court. Both decisions have been widely regarded as some of the worst in the Supreme Court's history.

READ MORE:**'Fake news': Law professor schools JD Vance after he suggests Trump ignore federal judges**

"I just wonder whether some historians might think we’d be better off if it [Korematsu] hadn’t been followed," Sauer told Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during the hearing.

While Democrats and Republicans on the committee were typically divided in their support of Trump's nominees, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) agreed with Democrats who were concerned about the possibility of DOJ officials disregarding the federal judiciary. NBC reported that Kennedy took a veiled jab at former President Joe Biden's administration in his warning to Reitz and Sauer that they shouldn't entertain the idea of disobeying federal judges. He noted that the federal bench relies on its "legitimacy" as it doesn't have an "army" at the ready to enforce its orders.

“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court. Ever. Now, you can disagree with it. Within the bounds of legal ethics you can criticize it. You can appeal it, or you can resign,” Kennedy said. “For four years, I have watched people in this town — not all, not, not everybody — but many try to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary and it triggered each and every time my gag reflex."

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance opined that the Trump administration was being unfairly treated by federal judges striking down some of his executive actions, like his order attempting to repeal birthright citizenship (which is guaranteed by the Constitution) and his order freezing federal funds already appropriated by Congress from being disbursed. But the administration appears to already be flouting the latter order, as some nonprofits have said they still can't access federal grant money that had already been approved.

READ MORE:**'First of many': Internet erupts after judge blocks Trump's 'blatantly unconstitutional' order**

Click here to read NBC's report in full.

===

note anti expert, eco hypocrit old BS

DDSB

Biden 'doubling down' in the face of 'absurdity' with latest climate push, expert says

Fox Business

Climate Depot executive editor Marc Morano reacts to comments from a Senate hearing on climate concerns and sounds off on the Biden ...

nyt ben keys

ditch home; extremiest arent you? cli hypoc on blast hdline; cli obsession ethos; expose absurdity; wharton prof; un says extreme wether not increasing; own hse in flood zone; nyt long hist gone after home racism, cli emergency, houses more dang to cli than cars; doing all the things they tell us not to do [kerry pvt plane?] giant homes oprah lame duck joe pedal to metal on his cli agenda; new emission targets; cuts GG 60 percent by 2035; gum up sys w new regs; very easy to undo; climate agenda hates us, hates---. hates am way, 2x down in face of ... magical thinking paperwork climate agenda get us out of paris treaty by going to congress woman fear based agenda, requieres their intervention; misnamed IRA is really the grn new deal; get rid of epa, ? endangerment finding; day 1 reverse agancy pentagon abolish every climate agy and goal do fast and rapid, do in 2 wks

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an 12 24

Retired Major General Randy Manner pushed back on Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) after he complained about President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters being called fascists.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Trump's mass deportation plans on Tuesday, Kennedy accused Manner of wanting "open borders."

"It makes you angry that most Americans don't believe in open borders, doesn't it?" the senator asked.

"Not in the slightest, sir," Manner replied.

Kennedy took issue with a statement Manner made to CNN on Oct. 14.

"President Trump is not like any sane leader. I'm very proud of General Milley for saying that President Trump is a total fascist," Kennedy recalled Manner saying. "The challenge is because most MAGA Republicans, they don't understand what fascism is. The reality is that they are, in fact, fascists themselves."

"Did I read that accurately?" the senator pressed.

"Senator, I am happy to discuss my personal perspectives with you separately at any time," the general said. "That's not the purpose of the hearing today."

"You think you're smarter than the American people, don't you?" Kennedy wondered.

"Absolutely not, senator," Manner stated. "I am here to discuss the use of the military as part of this mass deportation."

ALSO READ:Agenda 47: Alarm sounded about Trump’s dystopian plans for his second term

"You think you're more virtuous than the American people, don't you, general?" Kennedy remarked.

"Senator, I am insulted by your comment," Manner insisted. "Senator, for 35 years, I served my country with absolute honor and distinction, and I will continue to do so."

Watch the video below from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

===

an 12 24

One Republican senator sparred with a witness during a hearing Tuesday over a tweet published two years ago.

"Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) malfunctions during a hearing on mass deportations," Heartland Signal wrote via X, sharing a video of the Louisiana lawmaker attempting to grill witness Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, who is a lawyer and senior fellow at American Immigration Council.

"On November 1, 2022, you tweeted, 'Both Texas and Louisiana have their knives out for Black immigrants.'" Kennedy said, asking Reichlin-Melnick, "Do you remember that tweet?"

READ MORE:**'Completely un-American': Progressives slam Trump plan to end birthright citizenship**

He replied, "I don't, but it's quite possible."

Kennedy said, "It's not only possible, but it happened. You're not denying it, are you? Who in Texas had their knives out for Black immigrants? Give me a name. Give me a name."

Reichlin-Melnick replied, "My suspicion is Attorney General Ken Paxton."

"Give me a name," the GOP senator said again. "Give me a name."

READ MORE:**'Quickly get into problems': These 3 obstacles could slow down Trump’s mass deportations**

"I just did," Reichlin-Melnick emphasized.

"You don’t have a name, do you?" Kennedy asked.

"I just said Ken Paxton," the witness replied.

Watch the video below or at this link.

===

Arab American Leader Responds After GOP Senator Says at Hearing, “You Should Hide Your Head in a Bag” | Democracy Now!

September 18, 2024 4:50 pm

According to the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, JD Vance knew the truth about Haitian immigrants. The senator and Donald Trump kept lying anyway.

During an appearance on The Auron MacIntyre Show, Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl not only celebrated the spread of these false claims, he predicted that it will be a “winning issue” for the Republican Party.

Quickly debunked claims spread like wildfire on X on Wednesday that explosives were found in a car near the site of former President Donald Trump’s upcoming rally on Long Island, New York.

Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy accused an Arab American activist of being a member of Hamas, in an incredibly racist tangent during a congressional hearing.

“My kids keep me humble,” Ms. Sanders said at an event with former President Donald J. Trump. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.” The remark quickly drew backlash.

It’s no surprise that another clip of Robinson being the worst has emerged. This time Robinson is caught on camera in a 2022 church appearance, going on a tirade about how women don’t need birth control because — as he gestures to his crotch for emphasis — they need to “get this under control” instead.

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ref new rep

During a congressional hearing on hate crimes Tuesday, Republican Senator John Kennedy accused Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, of supporting terrorism.

Berry was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the rise in hate crimes against Arab and Jewish Americans since October 7. Instead of hearing her thoughts, the Louisiana senator advanced an antagonistic and acrid line of questioning.

“You support Hamas, do you not?” asked Kennedy. Berry replied, to the applause of some in attendance, “Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support, but you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.”

Kennedy continued, “You support Hezbollah too, don’t you?” Over interjections from the senator, Berry said, “Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing, Senator. You have Arab American constituents that you represent.… The answer is I don’t support violence, whether it’s Hezbollah, Hamas, or any other entity that invokes it.”

“You can’t bring yourself to say no, can you?” Kennedy persisted. “Do you support or oppose Iran, and their hatred of Jews?” Berry’s response was again interrupted by Kennedy, who cast aspersions on her for having previously criticized Congress’s decision to cut funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which provides relief to Palestinians.

The move to defund UNRWA, which was based on unconfirmed Israeli allegations that 12 of its staff had been involved in the October 7 Hamas attack, was widely criticized by Palestinian rights activists, including Berry—who began explaining that her criticism was based on foreign policy. Kennedy again cut in: “Let me ask you one more time, you support Hamas don’t you? You support UNRWA and Hamas, don’t you?”

“Sir, I think it’s exceptionally disappointing that you’re looking at an Arab American witness before you, and saying, ‘You support Hamas.’ I do not support Hamas,” Berry responded, before another interruption from Kennedy. “You know what’s disappointing to me,” the senator said. “You can’t bring yourself to say you don’t support UNRWA, you don’t support Hamas, you don’t support Hezbollah, and you don’t support Iran. You should hide your head in a bag”—a comment that elicited gasps from attendees.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has condemned Kennedy for his display of anti-Arab bigotry and deployment of “common anti-Arab and Islamophobic stereotypes during his questioning.”

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testimony oppos res fuckery

U.S. Senator John Kennedy

E-mail Sen. Kennedy - U.S. Senator John Kennedy

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wiki talk 5 24

see there is no mention in this article right from the get-go that this man's persona and popularity largely stems from his homespun manner of speaking and whimsical anecdotes. However, it's totally fake as Kennedy has a law degree from the University of Virginia and was a Rhodes Scholar getting a First from Oxford University in England. He plays dumb on TV to appeal to his state voters. He ain't dumb nor is he folskie. When his entire shtick is to come across as a southern patrician with homespun banter and affected accent, it's egregious to omit the fact it's phoney and he's putting it on. There are enough news stories claiming as such:

"actually talks like Sherlock Holmes when he’s behind closed doors in his house"

"They say he used to carry himself as closer to an Oxford-educated lawyer, which he is, than a fountain of folksy rejoinders."

" this “authentic” message is tinsel and the persona fake"

" Kennedy’s co-workers have also accused him of exaggerating his accent and potentially faking his politics"

"His folksy, exaggerated Southern-cornpone accent now is an affectation, mere political theater to stand out among the Senate’s bevy of stuffed shirts. It’s about as authentic as a cow in a camel costume."

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DR. D.P. CALHOUN

The able physician and successful planter, DR. D.P. CALHOUN, who is so well known throughout Catahoula parish, La., was born in Abbeville district, S.C., December 24, 1819, a son to Nathan and Martha (Pucket) Calhoun, who were also born in the Carolinas.

The father was a son of William Calhoun, and both were planters throughout their lives, the former being the owner of a large amount of real estate and many slaves. Dr. D.P. Calhoun is one of a family of six children, of whom he is the only survivor. By a second marriage Nathan Calhoun became the father of ten children, but only Robert, who resides in South Carolina, is living. Dr. D.P. Calhoun was given the advantages of a good education, and his preparatory course in Greenwood academy included all the English branches, higher mathematics, Greek and Latin.

He then began attending medical lectures in Charleston, S.C., and in 1842 graduated in that science, after which he began practicing his profession. This calling he followed for five years before coming to Louisiana. He settled in Catahoula parish in 1847 and began practicing at Trinity, but some four or five years later purchased about 250 acres southwest of the town and began planting.

Here he has remained ever since, with the exception of three years, from 1863 to 1865, when he was a resident of Washington county, Tex., where he built up a fine practice. He was married in 1850 to Miss Ellen Neely, a native of Louisiana, and a daughter of Sanders and Sarah A. (Davis) Neely, both of whom were born in South Carolina. To the Doctor and his wife a family of six children were born, four of whom are now living - three sons (two of whom are physicians and the other a lawyer) and one daughter.

Their names are as follows: Dr. William S.N., Nathan M., Dr. Leonidas F. and Jennie L., wife of S.N. Yarrell. Mrs. Calhoun died in October, 1862, and four years later the Doctor married Mrs. Ann (Nugent) Otis, but their union has never been blessed in the birth of children.

After losing his second wife Dr. Calhoun married Mrs. Mary J. (Rourke) Oswald, a native of Mississippi. Dr. Calhoun has been a member of the police jury, and in politics has always been a member of the democrat party, but has never been a politician, preferring to devote his attention to his profession until within a few years, when he turned over the most of his practice to his son, Leonidas, and has since given his attention to planting.

The Doctor is a member and steward in the Methodist church, of which he is president of the board of trustees, but his wife is a member of the Christian church. Although he was for a number of years a member of the A.F. & A.M., and the I.O.O.F. lodges, he has not for many years affiliated with either order.

His plantation, "Peachland," consists of 1,700 acres of land, of which about 300 acres are under cultivation, producing on an average twenty-five bushels of corn per acre and three-fourths of a bale of cotton. He also raises a considerable amount of stock, principally horses, which brings him in a fair sum annually. He is the manager of J.U. Payne & Co., of the Nacolia plantation, on which he cultivates 150 acres of land, the most of which is devoted to the raising of cotton, some attention being also given to the culture of corn.

NATHAN M. CALHOUN, son of Dr. D.P. Calhoun, was born in Catahoula parish, La., in 1853, but received his education in Claiborne parish, afterward studying law in New Orleans, where he graduated in 1876. After practicing his profession for a short time in his native parish he removed to Terre Bonne parish, where he practiced law, a part of the time serving in the capacity of parish recorder. Upon his return to Catahoula parish, in 1882, he engaged in planting on Utah plantation on Black river, five miles below Jonesville, where he has since made his home. He was married in January, 1878, to Miss Nannie Williams, of Ouachita parish, by whom he has two children: Robert B. and Benjamin C.

Dr. LEONIDAS F. CALHOUN, the brother of Nathan M., received his literary education at Cooper institute, after which he took a course of lectures in the Louisville Medical college, and later attended the Kentucky School of Medicine, graduating in 1885. In the interim between his medical courses he practiced his profession at Catahoula parish.

DR. WILLIAM S.N. CALHOUN, another son of Dr. D.P. Calhoun, received his education at Homer college, and his medical education at Tulane university, New Orleans, La., and graduated in the same. He has practiced his profession in Catahoula parish, and has a lucrative practice. He never married. [Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana; Chicago; The Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1892; transcribed by Kim Mohler]

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usa-slavery-families

...

Emancipation dealt many slaveholders a staggering economic blow, wiping out vast amounts of wealth across the South. In 1870, five years after the war ended and about 4 million Black people were freed from slavery, the states that once made up the Confederacy were enduring one of the largest wealth shocks in American history. The reported wealth of Southerners dropped by $4.3 billion, or about 65%, from a decade earlier, a Reuters analysis found. Put another way, war and emancipation appear to have erased about two-thirds of wealth in the South.

For this story, Reuters traveled to Arkansas and Georgia, and interviewed more than 20 experts on Southern history and economics. Journalists also used thousands of pages of newspaper accounts, census documents, court records, history books, family papers and other material to construct this story. The data analysis of the wealth shock in the South is based on a comparison of 1860 and 1870 census data from IPUMS.

Those who lost the most, like Congressman Hill’s direct ancestor, were the largest enslavers. They also had the clearest path to rebuilding – often by replicating elements of the slavery economy and reinstituting feudal systems that embraced white supremacy.

The Black people who had been enslaved emerged with far less. Racial violence and voting laws locked them out of political power. Schooling was limited, leaving most unable to read and write. The federal government let former slaveholders keep their land, and the newly freed were afforded few paths to prosper – leaving them once again at the mercy of the white elite.

In a report published in June, Reuters found that a fifth of the U.S. political elite – congressional members, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors – are direct descendants of slaveholders in America. Among the richest just before the Civil War were the forebears of three members of today’s Congress: Hill, Representative Dina Titus and Senator John Kennedy. Each had a slaveholding ancestor who was among the wealthiest 1% of Americans in 1860, Reuters found. By 1870, each of those forebears had lost between 60% and 90% of their wealth.

What remained, however, was land – and key social and political connections that, a 2021 study concludes, proved critical to the financial recoveries of the largest slaveholding families.

Such connections, Reuters found, helped the ancestors of Hill, Titus and Kennedy. In each family lineage, for example, at least two slaveholders or their descendants married descendants of other enslavers, pooling their assets and increasing their influence as they shaped the South’s postwar economy.

A REUTERS SERIES

Slavery’s Descendants

PART 1

America’s Family Secret

INTERACTIVE

Explore The Ties To Slavery

PART 2

“The Slaves Built That”

PART 3

“All We Are is Memory”

PART 4

American Dreams

PART 5

The Crown, the Cabinet and the UK’s Legacy of Slavery

PART 6

Heirs of Power

PART 7

The Speaker’s Forebears

RACIAL WEALTH GAP

A history of inequity

REPARATIONS

Where some of slavery’s descendants stand

MAKING AMENDS

A history of reparations

METHODOLOGY

How we researched the genealogies

Webinars for genealogy research

“The power of enslavers came not simply from their ownership of property, but from their ability to wield political power and from their clans,” said Steven Hahn, a professor of history at New York University who studies slavery, capitalism and the U.S. South.

Hahn said he believes that some lawmakers in both political parties benefit from advantages that stem from the slaveholdings of their ancestors. “And to this day,” he said, “their power and wealth can’t be dissociated from that.”

Representative French Hill, Republican from Arkansas

Representative Dina Titus, Democrat from Nevada

Senator John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana

In examining the lineages of Hill, Titus and Kennedy, Reuters focused on how their forebears reclaimed family wealth and power in the decades following the post-war Reconstruction era. It was a time when the old South sought to reassert itself socially and politically, stripping away the rights Black people had gained during Reconstruction before federal troops withdrew from the region in 1877.

Hill’s great-great-grandfather leased prisoners, most of them Black, to pick cotton and handle other farmwork for pennies a day in Arkansas. Unlike the people Hill’s ancestors enslaved, the prisoners represented labor without substantial investment.

A forebear of Titus married the daughter of a former congressman and slaveholder, and became a regional power broker in politics and real estate. In an address to state lawmakers, he explained that “in Georgia, the white race intended to dominate the negro race and control the government of the state, no matter how large the negro majority,” according to a newspaper account at the time.

And Kennedy’s ancestors expanded the family’s Louisiana land holdings through marriage and inheritance, then used poor Black farmers to work the land. Family estate records and an interview with a descendant of one of those farmers suggest the family used both sharecropping and tenant farming, which effectively kept some of their Black neighbors in debt.

As Black people were denied basic rights, the strategies used by the ancestors of today’s political elites illustrate key facets of the legacy of slavery in America. Taken together, they make clear how the descendants of some of the largest former slaveholders regained prominence and wealth by subjugating Black people in new ways after 1865.

...

...

The Paralyzing Debt of Sharecroppers

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The farm fields of Catahoula and Concordia parishes made white men rich and Black men miserable for many years in central Louisiana. Fed by a sprawling set of waterways, Concordia’s floodplains turned into what some call “million-dollar soil,” sprouting rows thick with cotton that were flanked by towering plantation homes.

Central Louisiana is where the ancestors of U.S. Senator John N. Kennedy came to secure their fortunes. In 1840, less than 30 years after Louisiana became a state, Kennedy’s great-great-great-grandfather enslaved 120 people in Concordia Parish. His estate in 1860 was worth about $57 million in current day dollars. His ancestor’s brother, a farmer and politician, enslaved 55 people on his Mississippi land in 1860. He then used cash from that estate – worth some $68 million in today’s dollars – to buy nearly 1,800 acres in neighboring Catahoula Parish.

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After the Civil War, when the Black people they had enslaved were freed, the forebears of Kennedy were never again as rich. But they remained monied and powerful – a lineage of doctors, politicians and landowners surrounded by poor Black families.

Marriages between the descendants of slaveholders further grew their holdings. Among the senator’s direct ancestors was his great-grandfather, Leonidas Calhoun, who controlled large swathes of land along or near the Mississippi River Delta.

Calhoun went to medical school in Kentucky in the 1880s, then returned to live on a family plantation in Catahoula Parish. From there, he practiced medicine and oversaw hundreds of acres of farmland in Catahoula and adjacent Concordia Parish. He died in 1903 at age 44.

Portrait of Leonidas Calhoun. Via Facebook.

At the time of his death, estate records examined by Reuters suggest that the Calhoun family was both sharecropping its land and also renting out larger tracts to tenant farmers.

In sharecropping, landholders typically gave farmers the right to live on and farm their land in exchange for a portion of the crops they produced. Farmers – those around the Calhoun land were typically Black and illiterate – often needed credit from their landlords simply to put a crop in the fields. Owners would front them everything from food and clothing to seeds and tools, typically provided at inflated prices and sold at stores on the plantations themselves.

After harvest, whatever was borrowed was deducted from the sharecropper’s earnings. In bad years, many may have owed more than they earned. Until those debts were repaid, laws forbade sharecroppers from leaving.

Sharecroppers picking cotton in Savannah, Georgia, circa 1870s. Via Library of Congress.

“During the end of the year, when it’s time for settlement, (landowners) would then pull out these accounting records to say, ‘Oh, you and your family almost made it out of debt,’” said Cassie Sade Turnipseed, a history professor at Jackson State University who has studied sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta.

Using the appraisal of Calhoun’s assets and matching them with census records, Reuters identified at least two Black farmers who owed Calhoun money at that time.

Louisiana Lynchings

Racial violence in or near Catahoula and Concordia parishes continued for decades after the Civil War:

•

1873Black residents made a stand at the Colfax courthouse, some 50 miles from Catahoula. They worried that white militias would seize it in an effort to undermine state elections. Estimates indicate between 62 and more than 100 Black people were killed. Few arrests were made. A book about the Colfax massacre made clear why: After a Black man reportedly spoke with a deputy U.S. marshal, white men hacked off the Black man’s hands and feet, disemboweled him, poured kerosene on his body and set it aflame. Then they weighted down the “hollowed-out body” with stones and threw it into a bayou.

•

1889A Black man named Ed Gray was accused of killing several mules on a white man’s plantation in Concordia. “About a dozen persons, who were masked” and armed, showed up at the jail and seized Gray. The mob “strung him up and quietly rode off,” the Daily Picayune reported.

•

1908 Three Black men were hanged in Catahoula Parish after reports that one had called for a cotton gin to be burned. “All is now quiet in Catahoula Parish,” reported The Weekly Town Talk.

One was Granville Swift. Records show he owed $20 to Calhoun, and the debt was already at least six months past due. The 1900 census shows that Swift, a 23-year-old Black farmer, lived with his 22-year-old wife, who was a farmhand. Both were illiterate. Swift is also listed as a farmer in Catahoula Parish in the 1910 census, and records indicate he died there in 1918, at age 42. Reuters could find no evidence that he ever owned any of the land he farmed.

Another Black farmer who owed Calhoun money was Ben Polk. His debt was $5, according to estate records. The 1900 census for Catahoula Parish shows 49-year-old Benjamin Polk. He was listed as the head of a household with 10 other mouths to feed: his wife, eight children and one grandchild.

At some plantations, the owners issued their own scrip for use at their stores. Turnipseed, the scholar of sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta, said this meant that, even in profitable years, sharecroppers were unable “to acquire any kind of wealth because your currency would only be honored in very limited ways” on the plantation.

In an interview with Reuters, Ben Polk’s great-granddaughter recounted her ancestors’ description of working the Calhoun land.

Men in the family labored “sun up to sun down” in the cotton fields and had little autonomy, said Bettye Johnson, now 75. She said they were forced to buy food and goods on credit and at inflated prices in a plantation general store. Their debts often dwarfed their earnings, Johnson said.

“It was the Calhouns’ place,” Johnson said, “and they were in charge.” In the 1930 census, the occupation for Leonidas Calhoun’s son, who inherited the family land, was listed as “overseer” of a plantation.

The struggle to earn a living was intensified by violence and racial animus, some that was chronicled by the Calhoun family itself.

Legacy of Slavery

The 1870 census shows the dramatic disparities after the end of slavery between Black and white people in Concordia Parish, Louisiana.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Source: Reuters analysis of IPUMS data.

During Reconstruction, Black residents of Concordia Parish gained power at the voting booth.

In 1860, about 91% of people living there were counted as “slaves,” the third-highest percentage of any county or parish in the United States, according to data from a recent study. After emancipation, Black people outnumbered white people in the parish 9,257 to 720.

Those figures underscore how important slavery was to families including the Calhouns, and how different the post-slavery political landscape became during Reconstruction. In the 1870s, Black men in Concordia were sheriffs and district court clerks. A formerly enslaved man was elected to the state legislature and then founded a newspaper.

A book by a local historian named Robert Dabney Calhoun, a nephew of Leonidas Calhoun, provided a window into how at least some local white people viewed those results. Black officeholders, Robert Dabney Calhoun wrote, were “illiterate, dishonest and sweating” men who carried out “unscrupulous designs.”

“Our substantial citizens were forced to engage in election manipulations,” wrote Calhoun. “They prayed for the dawning of the new day of white supremacy.”

That is what the white people of Concordia and surrounding parishes established for decades, by unleashing a deadly campaign in the 1870s.

“Lynchings, massacres, and terroristic intimidation was absolutely central to how many plantation dynasties reasserted dominance,” said John Bardes, a history professor at Louisiana State University, whose studies focus on slavery in Louisiana. “It was just horrific spasms of violence all throughout the state.”

A wood engraving showing the Colfax Massacre in 1873. The Historic New Orleans Collection.

**A recent report by the The Equal Justice Initiative found that Louisiana ranked third in the nation between 1877 and 1950 in what it terms “racial terror lynchings” – killings that were “acts of terrorism” outside of any legal proceedings. The state had 549 such murders in that period, the group found.

Around the time Leonidas Calhoun took control of the land in Concordia and Catahoula parishes, white people across the South had succeeded at reasserting political dominance. Another report by the Equal Justice Initiative notes that, “from 1885 to 1908, all 11 former Confederate states rewrote their constitutions to restrict voting rights using poll taxes, literacy tests, and felon disenfranchisement.”

Near the turn of the 20th century, changes in Louisiana tightly restricted who could vote. In 1897, before the changes, state records show 164,088 registered white voters and 130,344 registered Black voters. After the changes, records show 125,437 registered white voters and just 5,320 registered Black voters in 1900. The year after Leonidas Calhoun died, the number of registered Black voters across all of Louisiana had dropped to 1,718.

Today, the great-grandson of Leonidas Calhoun is the junior U.S. senator representing Louisiana. John Neely Kennedy – his middle name is the surname of two of his slaveholding ancestors – was president of his senior class at Vanderbilt University. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, and earned a degree in civil law from Oxford University in England. Before being elected to the Senate in 2016, he spent five terms as Louisiana’s treasurer.

One of the ancestors of U.S. Senator John Kennedy wrote that, in Louisiana, “our substantial citizens were forced to engage in election manipulations. They prayed for the dawning of the new day of white supremacy.” REUTERS/Elizabeth Frant

Real estate records and Kennedy’s latest public financial disclosures show his net worth is between $8.3 million and $22.6 million.

Kennedy doesn’t live in either Concordia or Catahoula parish. But after his mother died, he was named as one of the inheritors of her estate. Among her possessions listed in a 2005 probate document was hundreds of acres in Catahoula – family land that once belonged to one of Kennedy’s slaveholding ancestors.

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John_Neely_Kennedy

legistorm

committees

Senate Appropriations Committee Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee

Senate Appropriations Committee Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, Ranking Member

Senate Appropriations Committee Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee

Senate Appropriations Committee Homeland Security Subcommittee

Senate Appropriations Committee Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee

Senate Appropriations Committee Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Subcommittee

Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Economic Policy Subcommittee, Ranking Member

Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Housing, Transportation and Community Development Subcommittee

Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Securities, Insurance and Investment Subcommittee

Senate Judiciary Committee Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism Subcommittee

Senate Judiciary Committee Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights Subcommittee, Ranking Member

Senate Judiciary Committee Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee

Senate Judiciary Committee Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee

Caucuses

Awards

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2024 wiki

U.S. Senate (2017–present)

115th Congress (2017–2019)

being sworn in as Louisiana's junior U.S. senator by outgoing Vice President [Joe Biden in the U.S. Capitol's Old Senate Chamber on January 3, 2017

Kennedy was sworn in as Louisiana's junior U.S. Senator on January 3, 2017. He had resigned his position as state treasurer earlier that day.[90]^

In June 2017, Kennedy "grilled" Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a hearing before the Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Service, Education and Related Agencies. In the exchange, he contrasted the lack of school choice available to younger pupils in many rural areas of the country with the numerous brands of mayonnaise available at grocery stores: "Now I can go down to my overpriced Capitol Hill grocery this afternoon and choose among about six different types of mayonnaise. How come I can't do that for my kid?" Kennedy asked. The remark attracted national attention.

DeVos replied that the Trump administration budget proposal would give parents and students more power and opportunity so that American education could again become "the envy of the world".[91] Kennedy served as a volunteer substitute teacher for more than a decade in Louisiana public schools to better understand issues in the education system.[92][93] He attracted comment for his manner in the Senate. A January 2018 Huffington Post article reported: "Since being elected to the Senate a year ago, Kennedy ... has made a name for himself on Capitol Hill with his wit, humor and penchant for folksy expressions―a notable feat in a place where jargon and arcane procedure tend to reign supreme".[94]^

Kennedy received widespread media attention after he crossed party lines to oppose the appointment of three of Trump's U.S. District Court judicial nominees who Kennedy believed were not qualified: Jeff Mateer, Brett Talley, and Matthew S. Petersen. The White House withdrew all three nominations.[95]

On December 13, 2017, during Petersen's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kennedy asked Petersen about basic legal procedure,[96] whether he knew what the Daubert standard was, and what a motion *in limine* was. Petersen struggled to answer.[97][98] Kennedy also voted against the nomination of Gregory G. Katsas to the D.C. Circuit, but Katsas was confirmed.[99]^

On April 7, 2017, Kennedy voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. Kennedy participated in Gorsuch's confirmation as a member of the Judiciary Committee.[100] During the confirmation process, Kennedy said, “Neil Gorsuch is obviously very well-qualified based on his education and background, but I want to know what’s in his heart. I want to know what he thinks about past Supreme Court decisions and how the justices reached those decisions. I want to know whether he thinks personal preferences have a role in the judicial decision-making. I want to know if he knows the name of the person who cleans his office. Also, I'm rather fond of the U.S. Constitution, and I want to make sure he is, too."[101]^

On October 6, 2018, Kennedy voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.[102] As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Kennedy participated in Kavanaugh's contentious nomination hearing after Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Kennedy criticized the hearing, saying, "No fair-minded American can believe that he's not qualified—he went to Yale Law School; he didn't get his law degree from Costco. He has a total command of Supreme Court precedent. I think he’s a legal rock star."[103] Kennedy broke from Republicans during the hearing to call for the FBI's investigation into Ford's allegations to be made public.[104]^

In March 2018, after a dog died in an overhead bin while flying United Airlines, Kennedy said he would file a bill to "prohibit airlines from putting animals in overhead bins" and added that officials "would face significant fines" if they did not comply.[105][106] That month, he introduced the Welfare Of Our Furry Friends (WOOFF) Act, but the bill died in committee.[107]^

In July 2018, Kennedy and several other Republican members of Congress met with Russian government officials in Moscow. During the meetings, the two sides discussed election interference, upholding nuclear arms treaties, maintaining peace in Syria, and respecting Ukrainian sovereignty. The delegation was criticized for visiting the country during Fourth of July celebrations and for holding the talks just days after an incident in the United Kingdom in which a couple were poisoned by a suspected Russian nerve agent.[108][109]^

On October 12, 2018, the Senate voted to pass Kennedy's Rural Business Investment Program Advisers Relief Act of 2018. The bill removes compliance costs on a venture capital program aimed at stimulating business in rural America. It became law in 2019.[110]^

On December 18, 2018, Kennedy voted against the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill that reduced the prison sentences of some federal inmates. He said, "I voted against this bill because the most important goal of the criminal justice system for American families is justice. This bill is backwards. It favors criminals over victims. It forgets that the ultimate goal is justice. We’ve seen what’s happened with so-called criminal justice reform in Louisiana. People are literally getting killed."[111]^

On October 5, 2018, Kennedy introduced a Small Business Administration Disaster Loan bill to stop the agency from dropping SBA loan limits from $25,000 to $14,000 to ensure businesses have funds to rebuild following natural disasters.[112] The bill passed the Senate with unanimous consent. President Trump signed it into law on November 29, 2018.[113]^

On November 15, 2018, Kennedy introduced the National Flood Insurance Program Extension Act, a bill that amended the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program until June 1, 2019, to avoid a lapse in the program.[114] The bill passed the Senate with unanimous consent and passed the House with a vote of 315–48. Trump signed the bill into law on December 21, 2018.[115]^

In 2018, Kennedy worked with Senator Joe Manchin on the Justice Against Corruption on K Street (JACK) Act. The bill was named after Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who was convicted of fraud, corruption, and conspiracy. Kennedy said, "This idea is simple: If you have been convicted of a felony like bribery, extortion, embezzlement or tax evasion, you should have to disclose that when registering to become a lobbyist. Political leaders and businesses need to know the backgrounds of those who are trying to influence public policy."[116] The bill passed the Senate on December 20, 2018, and was signed into law in 2019. In February 2020, JACK Act disclosures revealed that lobbyists with criminal histories collected $3.1 million.[117]^

Leading up to the 2019 election, Kennedy was mentioned as a prospective candidate for governor in the jungle primary against incumbent John Bel Edwards, but on December 3, 2018, he said he preferred to remain in the Senate and would not run for governor.[118]^

116th Congress (2019–2021)

In March 2019, Kennedy introduced the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which Trump signed into law on December 18, 2020.[119] The law prohibits any company from listing on an American stock exchange if it refuses to allow the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to audit its annual private audit for three consecutive years. It also requires companies to disclose whether they are owned by a foreign government.[120]^

In 2019, Kennedy again introduced a bill to extend the National Flood Insurance Program. It extended the program through September 30, 2018, rather than lapsing on May 31.[121] The bill passed the Senate on May 23, 2019, and was signed into law.[122]^

[

In 2019, Kennedy called on the Treasury Department to establish a website where citizens could find out whether they had unclaimed Treasury savings bonds.[123] He established a similar website for the state of Louisiana when he was treasurer.[30] On October 22, 2019, the Treasury Department announced that it would launch a website for unclaimed bonds. Kennedy said, "The bond might be lost, the physical bond in the days when we used paper bonds, and the people who loaned the money to the federal government might have forgotten about the bonds. But you know who knows about the bonds? The United States Department of Treasury, because they've got the names and the addresses, and right now they've got the money—$26 billion that they are holding that belongs to the American people, and they won't give it back."[123]^

On November 25, 2019, Trump signed Kennedy's Recovery for Small Businesses After Disaster Act, a bill allowing small business disaster loans to remain at a limit of $25,000, rather than dropping to $14,000.[124]^

After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death in 2020, Kennedy supported Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Kennedy voted to confirm Barrett, and said in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight, "you would have to be barking mad to think that she is not qualified".[125] After her confirmation on October 26, he applauded it as a "victory for our founders".[125]^

On February 4, 2020, Kennedy voted against Trump's first impeachment.[126]^

On March 26, 2020, Kennedy voted for the first COVID-19 stimulus package, the CARES Act, saying, "This virus poses a unique health risk, and we know that poverty can also threaten lives. Understanding that, I voted today to protect the well-being of Louisianans now and into the future by investing in medical services, families, workers and businesses."[127][128]^

In July 2020, Kennedy voted for the second COVID-19 relief package, saying, "I’m very conservative fiscally, as I think most of you know, but people are in pain and the size of the American economy is just extraordinary. This is the largest economy in all of human history, and government just shut down, just shut it down, and a lot of people have gotten hurt, through no fault of their own, and we need to help them without wasting any money."[129]^

Kennedy helped draft the Water Resources Development Act of 2020, a bill that determines which projects the Army Corps of Engineers will build. With few options, Louisiana agreed to let the Corps build a flood protection system for the New Orleans region that meets the standards for national flood insurance. He added a provision that allowed Louisiana to renegotiate a loan agreement with the Corps for a flood protection system that saved Louisiana taxpayers $1.3 billion.[130]^

On March 10, 2021, the Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Kennedy as one of the ten most effective Republican senators of the 116th Congress, and the most effective Republican senator in the areas of commerce, education, and trade.[131]^

117th Congress (2021–202

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John-N-Kennedy_presiding_senate_%28cropped%29.png)Kennedy on the senate floor speaking about attempts to slow the ongoing surge in inflation, December 2022

After the 2020 presidential election, Kennedy and 11 other Republican senators said they would object to certain states' electoral votes in the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021, unless the vote was audited.[132][133][134] He was participating in the certification when Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol. Kennedy called the attack "despicable and shameful" and called for the rioters "to go to jail and pay for the destruction they caused."[135] When the Capitol was secured and Congress returned to complete the certification, he objected to the certification of Arizona's electoral votes.[136][137]^

On February 9, 2021, Kennedy voted against Trump's second impeachment.[138] Kennedy said the impeachment effort was unconstitutional because Trump was no longer president.[139] He called the impeachment process "a thinly veiled effort by the uber-elites in our country, who look down on most Americans, to denigrate further those people who chose to vote for President Trump and not vote for President Biden."[140]^

On March 6, 2021, Kennedy voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a COVID-19 recovery package. He said he voted against it because it was "an orgy of pork",[141] adding, "This is not a coronavirus bill, not the way it's been portrayed".[142]^

On May 28, 2021, Kennedy voted against the January 6 commission House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed[143] to investigate the January 6 attack.[144][145] The commission failed to gain traction, but the House later successfully established the January 6 committee as an alternative.

On June 22, 2021, the Senate passed the Accelerating Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, a bill by Kennedy that moves up the deadline for a bill passed in 2019 that required U.S. markets to delist any foreign company that refused to allow the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to inspect its audits. Kennedy said, "When foreign companies flout America's security laws, they put Americans' retirement plans and savings at risk. China is bent on exploiting American investors, so we need more accountability for foreign companies using American capital, and we need it now."[146]^

On July 29, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the DUMP Opioids Act, Kennedy's eighth piece of legislation to become law in his first term as a U.S. senator.[147] Kennedy has authored more bills signed into law than any first-term senator from Louisiana except Newton Blanchard.[148]^

On August 8, 2021, Kennedy voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, saying, "I realized pretty quickly that if you look up 'stupid stuff' in the dictionary, there's a picture of this bill. They told us it was a real infrastructure bill. It's not; only 23% of the bill is real infrastructure. The rest is Green New Deal and welfare. They told us the bill was paid for; it isn't. We're gonna have to borrow maybe up to $400 billion to pay for it. They told us there were no tax increases. There are; my state's gonna have to pay $1.3 billion in new taxes on our petrochemical industry. They told us … the Democrats were really wary of this bill and that if we passed this bill, it would make it harder for them to pass their $5 trillion tax and spending binge reconciliation bill. Well, if that's true, how come every Democrat voted for this infrastructure bill? And finally, they told us that it's not going to add to inflation, but it will."[149]^

On September 27, 2021, Kennedy introduced the Unclaimed Savings Bond Act of 2021 to require the Treasury Department to speed the process of returning unclaimed savings bonds to the American people, continuing work he had done as state treasurer. He said the Treasury was sitting on more than $26 billion in unclaimed bonds.[150] President Biden signed an executive order based on Kennedy's efforts.[151]^

In November 2021, while questioning Saule Omarova, the nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Kennedy mockingly said: "I don’t mean any disrespect. I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade". This came after an exchange between Omarova and Kennedy about her upbringing in the USSR and her former connections to communist groups. Senator Sherrod Brown interrupted Kennedy's line of questioning, accused him of engaging in character assassination.[152]^

On April 7, 2022, Kennedy voted against Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court to succeed Stephen Breyer, who was retiring. At the hearing, he said that he "found Judge Jackson to be smart, well-versed in the law, and extraordinarily deft and artful in her ability to speak at length without saying anything of substance on critical questions—especially the limits of judicial power and the importance of judicial restraint", adding, "I don't agree with the judge on where, based on her opinions, she draws the limits of judicial power, and I don't think she places as great an importance as I do on judicial restraint in a Madisonian system of checks and balances and separation of powers, and, for that reason, I will be voting no."[153]^

On July 27, 2022, Kennedy voted against the Chips and Science Act, a bill regarding semiconductor production. He called the bill "a subsidy to Big Tech", adding, "These are extraordinary American companies that Congress just helped, but they're very profitable, and the supply of chips is growing now. My concern is the amount of money. For that amount, we could have doubled the R&D tax credit for every company in America."[154]^

On August 7, 2022, Kennedy voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, calling it a "massive tax-and-spending bill".[155] While the bill was being amended, Kennedy attempted to include an amendment he drafted with Senator Raphael Warnock to cap the price of insulin at $35 per month; the amendment did not receive the 60 votes needed to be included.[156]^

118th Congress (2023–present)[edit]

By late 2022 there was again speculation that Kennedy might run for governor in the 2023 election, when Edwards would be term limited, but he ended the rumors on the second day of the 118th Congress by announcing he again would prefer to stay in the Senate.[157]^

On January 25, 2023, Kennedy quizzed Biden's judicial nominee Charnelle Bjelkengren on basic questions about the Constitution of the United States, whether she could state the functions of Articles V and II, and whether she could define purposivism and the independent state legislature theory.[158] Bjelkengren failed to answer all four questions.[159] After the hearing, Kennedy told a local reporter at NBC News, "Some of these nominees that have been forced in the last two years have no business being anywhere near a federal bench—they don't have any business being anywhere near a park bench."[159] Bjelkengren later withdrew her nomination.[160]^

In May 2023, Kennedy sparked a diplomatic row with Mexico after he said, "Without the people of America, Mexico, figuratively speaking, would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent",[161] while asking DEA Administrator Anne Milgram why the U.S. was not asking Mexico to partner more effectively with the U.S. to stop the flow of fentanyl over the border.[162] Kennedy introduced a bill to classify drug cartels as terrorist organizations because they traffic fentanyl, a drug that killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2022.[163] He also introduced a bill in 2023 to increase the prison sentences for fentanyl dealers, saying, "You have to have 400 grams. . . to face a mandatory 10-year sentence. Four hundred grams will kill 200,000 people dead as a doornail. Shreveport, Louisiana, is home to 184,000 people. So, a dealer could [have] 400 grams—an amount that could kill every man, woman, and child in Shreveport—in order to get a mandatory 10-year sentence."[164] Senate Democrats blocked the bill, citing concerns over incarceration rates.[165]^

In 2023, Kennedy and Senator Kyrsten Sinema introduced a bill to install a special inspector general to track the money the U.S. sends Ukraine to fight its war with Russia, like the inspector general tasked with tracking money in Afghanistan. Kennedy and Sinema said of the bill, "One of the best ways we can avoid escalation (and bring this conflict to a close) is by ensuring that the investments America has already made pay off instead of being wasted, lost or diverted."[166] A vote to add the bill to the National Defense Authorization Act failed.[167]^

Kennedy was among the 31 Senate Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.[168]^

In September 2023, Kennedy read explicit passages from All Boys Aren't Blue and Gender Queer during a Senate judiciary hearing on book banning. When he asked whether the books should be available to children, Senator Dick Durbin replied, "No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or a children's section of a library."[169]^

===

Staff

Chief of Staff David Stokes

# David Stokes

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Chief of Staff at U.S. Senator John Kennedy

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U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA)U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA)2018 - Present · 6 yrs 5 mos2018 - Present · 6 yrs 5 mos

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U.S. Senator David VitterU.S. Senator David Vitter2015 - 2016 · 1 yr2015 - 2016 · 1 yrWashington, D.C. / Baton Rouge, LAWashington, D.C. / Baton Rouge, LA

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Louisiana State UniversityLouisiana State University Master of Public Administration (MPA), Public Policy AnalysisMaster of Public Administration (MPA), Public Policy Analysis2012 - 20152012 - 2015

Louisiana Christian UniversityLouisiana Christian University B.S. Public Administration, Political Science MinorB.S. Public Administration, Political Science Minor2001 - 20062001 - 2006

April 22, 2024

Baton Rouge, LA – Today, Governor Jeff Landry announced new appointments to serve on the Ascension-St. James Airport and Transportation Authority, Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice, Louisiana Educational Television Authority, Louisiana Housing Corporation, and the Louisiana Real Estate Commission.

Ascension-St. James Airport and Transportation Authority

David L. Stokes Jr.

dad? david.stokes

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Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research · Full-timeSheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research · Full-timeSep 2013 - Sep 2016 · 3 yrs 1 moSep 2013 - Sep 2016 · 3 yrs 1 moRas Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates · On-siteRas Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates · On-site

===

david Stokes, chief of staff for U.S. Senator John Kennedy, will be the keynote speaker for the Ascension GOP Roundtable sponsored by Ascension Republican Women at 11:30 a.m. Nov. 18 at the Clarion Inn on La. 30 in Gonzales.

For the past four years, Stokes has led Kennedy’s Senate operations in both the Washington and Louisiana offices. In addition to his official duties, he also manages Sen. Kennedy’s campaign and fundraising efforts.

Following graduation from Louisiana College in Pineville, with a Bachelor of Science in public administration, Stokes was chosen as a White House intern by former President George W. Bush. He then went on to receive his master’s degree in public administration with a specialization in public policy analysis from LSU, where he was awarded the David B. Johnson award as the program’s top graduate student.

===

kristin-sapperstein-019b9728

# Kristin Sapperstein

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Deputy Chief of Staff, Administration, Senator John Kennedy at United States Senate

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# Paloma Chacon

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Press Secretary for Senator John Kennedy at United States Senate

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Endorsed by 2 colleagues at The Heritage FoundationEndorsed by 2 colleagues at The Heritage Foundation](https://www.linkedin.com/in/palomafchacon/overlay/urn:li:fsd_skill:%28ACoAACn79u4Bi_j8AtV7bE_CDJXLBo6VeByLZTg,1%29/endorsers?profileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAACn79u4Bi_j8AtV7bE_CDJXLBo6VeByLZTg&tabIndex=1&modalTabIndex=1)

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# Ryan Matthew Neuhaus

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Ryan Neuhaus is a policy advisor in the United States Senate, Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute, and graduate student of Hillsdale College

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• Attended Congressional hearings and briefings on the Iran Nuclear Deal to compile research memos for Ogilvy Senior Vice President of Foreign Policy and President.

• Assisted office of the President in scheduling and facilitating meetings and conference calls with high-level executives and elected officials.

• Attended Congressional hearings and briefings on the Iran Nuclear Deal to compile research memos for Ogilvy Senior Vice President of Foreign Policy and President. • Assisted office of the President in scheduling and facilitating meetings and conference calls with high-level executives and elected officials. …see more

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• Assisted Chief of Staff on special projects, such as tracking Member support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, reaching out to other House offices, and sitting in on meetings with major stakeholders and national trade associations.

• Aided Communications Director with media outreach, scheduling interviews, and drafting press releases.

• Answered constituent phone calls and drafted response emails.

• Assisted Chief of Staff on special projects, such as tracking Member support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, reaching out to other House offices, and sitting in on meetings with major stakeholders and national trade associations. • Aided Communications Director with media outreach, scheduling interviews, and drafting press releases. • Answered constituent phone calls and drafted response emails. …see more

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• Facilitated high-level VIP visits to Washington, D.C., serving as liaison for duration of trip for visiting ambassadors, senior company executives, high ranking military officers, and elected officials, including Major General Duane A. Jones

• Facilitated high-level VIP visits to Washington, D.C., serving as liaison for duration of trip for visiting ambassadors, senior company executives, high ranking military officers, and elected officials, including Major General Duane A. Jones …see more

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2012 - 20162012 - 2016

Grade: Cum Laude

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# Adam Brown

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Press Secretary at U.S. House of Representatives

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Loaded 3 Posts posts

[Some Exciting News: I have joined the communications team for the Congressional Western Caucus! As the voice for rural America and the second largest caucus in Congress, I am proud to join such an amazing team and I look forward to serving America’s rural communities and amplifying rural America’s priorities, goals, and voices. I want to thank my former supervisors and colleagues at the Republican National Committee (RNC) for the unforgettable memories and experiences! 🦬🇺🇸…show mo

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5 24

summary?cid=N00026823

2024

appropriations

FIRST ELECTION

2016

NEXT ELECTION

2026

TOP INDUSTRY 2019 - 2024

Retired

$12,020,086

TOP CONTRIBUTOR 2019 - 2024

Charter Communications

$50,250

Campaign Committee & Leadership PAC Combined Fundraising, 2019 - 2024

Leadership PAC: Common Sense for America PAC

Raised:$11,563,230
Spent:$8,154,626
Cash on hand:$13,466,018
Debts:$0

LAST REPORT: 03/31/2024

Top Contributors, 2019 - 2024

ContributorTotalIndividualsPACs
Charter Communications$50,250$250$50,000
UBS AG$42,550$12,550$30,000
ClearPath Foundation$39,600$39,600$0
Capital One Financial$38,641$141$38,500
Ochsner Health System$37,910$37,910$0

Top Industries, 2019 - 2024

IndustryTotalIndividualsPACs
Retired$12,020,086$12,020,086$0
Securities & Investment$1,182,836$1,082,936$99,900
Real Estate$1,160,254$1,021,254$139,000
Lawyers/Law Firms$707,527$627,902$79,625

|Oil & Gas|$618,838|$431,288|$187,550|

---

2022

tOP INDUSTRY 2017 - 2022

Retired

$9,181,003

TOP CONTRIBUTOR 2017 - 2022

Amedisys Inc

$46,810

Campaign Committee & Leadership PAC Combined Fundraising, 2017 - 2022

Leadership PAC: Pelican PAC

Raised:$40,525,928
Spent:$31,782,993
Cash on hand:$9,963,276
Debts:$0

LAST REPORT: 12/31/2022

Top Contributors, 2017 - 2022

ContributorTotalIndividualsPACs
Amedisys Inc$46,810$11,810$35,000
UBS AG$44,250$9,250$35,000
Ochsner Health System$42,060$42,060$0
Apollo Global Management$38,010$33,010$5,000
Capital One Financial$36,115$115$36,000

Top Industries, 2017 - 2022

IndustryTotalIndividualsPACs
Retired$9,181,003$9,181,003$0
Real Estate$993,638$857,638$136,000
Securities & Investment$933,045$823,645$109,400
Lawyers/Law Firms$892,827$798,327$94,500
Oil & Gas$614,457$384,407$230,050

===

may 2019

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — U.S. Sen. John Kennedy is adding his prodigious fundraising talents to a political organization aimed at electing more conservative Republicans to the Louisiana Legislature, joining Attorney General Jeff Landry in the effort.

With both Kennedy and Landry in leadership roles, the Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority has unified the state’s top two GOP standard-bearers in its work to shift the Legislature rightward, particularly as term limits will keep many of the longer serving Republican moderates in the state Senate from running for re-election this fall.

“We are very excited to have Sen. Kennedy’s support. He has been a Republican leader here in Louisiana for many years and is a solid conservative voice in the United States Senate,” Landry said in a statement. “He will be a huge help to our efforts.”

The political action committee was started more than a decade ago by former U.S. Sen. David Vitter as the Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority. It helped recruit and elect many of the state’s newer GOP lawmakers.

The name change came after Landry became the organization’s figurehead in 2016, as he and the high-dollar donors on the board sought to shift the philosophical bent of the House and Senate now that Republicans are firmly in control of both legislative chambers.

“We all agree on the same principles,” Kennedy said in an interview Thursday. “I’m just looking for people who understand the proper role of government, who understand that we need government — but not too much government.”

Vitter helped form the organization ahead of the 2007 elections, bringing a more Washington-style campaign strategy to state legislative races, complete with detailed polling, opposition research and campaign financing.

The PAC was instrumental in helping Republicans make historic gains in that election cycle, when legislative term-limits kicked in for the first time. Then, the committee helped Republicans gain majorities in the state House and Senate in 2010 and 2011, with party switches and special elections building on the previous wins.

Nearly $4 million has been spent through the most recent election cycle, with those involved including several regular big-ticket GOP donors, such as shipbuilder Donald “Boysie” Bollinger of Lockport. The committee reported nearly $1 million in the bank in its latest finance report, and Kennedy is expected to help boost that further. He’s known for an ability to raise large sums of cash.

“I’m going to be very aggressive in trying to provide the resources to elect good women and men in our state,” Kennedy said. “I’m not afraid to ask for financial support. I think that’s well-known. I’m going to raise as much money as I can.”

With Kennedy joining Landry’s involvement in the PAC, two of Louisiana’s major GOP figureheads have the opportunity to make a significant mark on the House and Senate terms that begin in 2020, with all 144 legislative seats on the Oct. 12 ballot, many of them open.

More than 40% of the Senate members (16 out of 39 senators) and nearly 30% of the House (31 out of 105 members) are unable to run again for their seats. In addition, some House lawmakers who aren’t term-limited but want to seize an open Senate seat will create further vacancies.

===

===

[### Opinion | Sen. John Neely Kennedy, the useful idiot from ...

Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › useful-idiot-louisiana](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/02/useful-idiot-louisiana/)

Dec 2, 2019 — A few weeks ago, I wrote about Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) showcasing the “typical shell game” of Republicans on impeachment: Eliminate ...

Missing: staff ‎| Show results with: staff

[### Sen. Kennedy again invites custodian to State of the Union

Politico

https://www.politico.com › news › 2020/02/04 › john-k...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/john-kennedy-invites-custodian-to-state-of-the-union-110759)

Feb 4, 2020 — “This is the people's campus and what makes it work, and what makes it so beautiful, is sort of a team effort,” the Louisiana Republican says.

===

bad code

wack job ?  dumb? nope oxford   dunno how to rank , how much infl damage

useful idiot ? #partyoftraitors

---

an 11 23

. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) met an unexpected answer on Tuesday after pushing a GOP talking point that suggests Democratic-run cities are the most dangerous and Chicago is the most violent.

“Why do you think that Chicago has become America’s largest outdoor shooting range?” Senator Kennedy asked Dr. Megan Ranney, Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the intersection of U.S. gun violence and public health, according to C-SPAN. “Do you think it’s because of Chicago citizens who have no criminal record? But who have lawfully a gun in their home for protection, or perhaps for hunting? Or do you think it’s because of a finite group of criminals who have rap sheets as long as King Kong’s arm?”

Dr. Ranney, who is an expert in gun violence and co-founded the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM) at the Aspen Institute, gave Senator Kennedy an answer he did not appear to appreciate.

“So Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates. Obviously, there’s –” Dr. Ranney replied before Kennedy interrupted her.

READ MORE: Pence Bombshell Resurfaces Old Questions About Grassley and January 6

“What about Chicago?” the Senator from Louisiana asked, trying to move back to his focus on the Windy City.

“So I don’t live in Chicago. It’s not my primary area of research,” Ranney replied.

“You don’t have an opinion on that?” Kennedy continued.

“I think there’s easy access to firearms combined with environmental conditions, lack of great education. There have actually been studies showing that when you green vacant lots and repair abandoned buildings in urban neighborhoods, you see decreases in gunshots and violence as well as in stress and depression in the neighborhoods around them,” said Ranney, who has also served as a professor of emergency medicine and as an ER physician.

“No disrespect, doc,” Kennedy replied, not looking at Dr. Ranney, “but that sounds a lot like word salad to me.”

Despite Senator Kennedy’s focus on Chicago, that city doesn’t even make list of the top 15 most dangerous cities in America. According to a report in Forbes, they are (in ranked order):

St. Louis, Missouri

Birmingham, Alabama

Baltimore, Maryland

Memphis, Tennessee

Detroit, Michigan

Cleveland, Ohio

New Orleans, Louisiana

Shreveport, Louisiana

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Little Rock, Arkansas

Oakland, California

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Kansas City, Missouri

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Richmond, Virginia

Forbes also listed the 5 Worst Cities for Mass Shootings in the US. Chicago is not on that list either:

Boulder, Colorado

San Jose, California

Indianapolis, Indiana

Atlanta, Georgia

Colorado Springs, Colorado

“Cities and states run by Republicans do not actually have less crime,” The New York Times reported in August. “Consider DeSantis’s state, Florida. Its homicide rate was roughly 50 percent higher than New York’s in 2021. Florida’s two most populous cities, Jacksonville and Miami, each had a homicide rate more than double New York City’s last year, even though both had Republican mayors.”

Watch Senator Kennedy below or at this link.

---

no lnx

'Dead as fried chicken': Senate Republicans lash out after Supreme Court ethics bill clears committee

https://www.alternet.org/as-fried-chicken-senate/

Brandon GageJuly 20, 2023

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in an 11-10 vote along party lines advanced The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act for a floor debate in the upper congressional chamber. According to its sponsor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), the bill "would require Supreme Court justices to adopt a code of conduct, create a mechanism to investigate alleged violations of the code of conduct and other laws, improve disclosure and transparency when a justice has a connection to a party or amicus before the Court, and require justices to explain their recusal decisions to the public."

But as Politico reports, the measure faces almost certain defeat in the House of Representatives, which just like in the Senate, Republicans view "as an erosion of separation of powers and an attack on the conservative court."

Thursday's hearing lasted more than three hours, Politico notes, wherein lawmakers "struck down more than a half dozen Republican amendments, on topics such as the size of the court, punishing leakers and further regulating stock trades by lawmakers. But GOP committee members never called up the vast majority of the more than 60 amendments they said they planned to offer."

READ MORE: Democrats 'don’t like democracy' claims Ted Cruz, who voted against certifying the 2020 election

According to Politico, "The Whitehouse proposal would give the court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct and allow the public to submit ethics complaints that would be reviewed by a randomly selected panel of lower court judges. It also would establish more stringent rules for disclosure of gifts and travel. Justices would also be subject to clearer rules on recusing themselves from cases where they may have a conflict of interest, or an appearance of one."

Multiple jurists on the High Court — most notably Associate Justice Clarence Thomas — are under intense scrutiny for receiving gifts and having personal financial relationships with individuals who had stakes in the outcomes of cases that came before the Court. Nonetheless, Republicans were less than cordial about the legislation.

"You're going to fail miserably. This bill is going nowhere," said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), while Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) voiced similar, albeit more colorful criticism.

:{:{}:

}:

"You don't have to be Oliver Wendell Scalia to figure out that this legislation is meant to be a court-killing machine," Kennedy quipped. "This thing's dead as fried chicken on the Senate floor and it's dead as fried chicken in the House."

READ MORE: Expand the Supreme Court? Activists livid Senate Democrats are holding out

Meanwhile, Whitehouse pushed back against the GOP's claims that Democrats are attempting to "pack" the Court:

:{:{}:

}:

I would like to make a few points as we wrap this up. The first is I would react to the comments that some of my colleagues said Democrats wanna pack the court. My sense is the court has already been packed. It has been packed as the result of a very long and expensive effort run by a handful of secretive right-wing billionaires through a bunch of front groups.

:{:{}:

}:

The tally of the cost of the operation has risen from the original $250 million estimate of The Washington Post to now $580 million spent on trying to make sure that those billionaires succeeded in what has been characterized in this room as the long effort to make this a conservative court.

Watch Whitehouse's statement below via The Recount or at this link.

READ MORE: How the Supreme Court pulled a right-wing doctrine 'out of thin air' to 'invalidate' Biden’s policies

Politico's analysis continues here.

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---

---

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/john-neely-kennedy

12* 6%

tai nom, ~ gt am lands

2021

500Sung Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021459Restoring the Voting Rights ActJustice and Democracy

2021426Pérez Confirmation (Second Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021420Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021401Stone-Manning Confirmation (BLM Director)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021357Build Back Better Budget ResolutionClimate Change, Clean Energy, Environmental Justice, Public Lands/Forests

2021346Promoting Polluting Energy SourcesDirty Energy, Climate Change, Air

2021320Eliminating Safeguards on Fossil Fuel ProductionDrilling, Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Oceans, Public Lands/Forests

2021303Defunding the Civilian Conservation Corps and Wildland FirefightingClimate Change, Public Lands/Forests, Other

2021298Restarting Construction of the Harmful Border WallWildlife, Public Lands/Forests, Environmental Justice

2021279Kim Confirmation (DOJ-ENRD Assistant Attorney General)Other, Environmental Justice

2021246Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021236Fox Confirmation (EPA Assistant Administrator)Water

2021231Jackson Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary, Climate Change, Justice and Democracy

2021203Clarke Confirmation (DOJ-CRD Assistant Attorney General)Justice and Democracy, Other

2021178Investing in Water InfrastructureWater

2021175Repealing Assault on Methane Pollution SafeguardsClimate Change, Dirty Energy

2021150Mallory Confirmation (Council on Environmental Quality Chair)Other, Environmental Justice

2021125Becerra Confirmation (Health and Human Services Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

2021123Tai Confirmation (United States Trade Representative)Other

2021119Haaland Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021116Regan Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Other, Climate Change, Water, Air, Environmental Justice

2021114Garland Confirmation (Attorney General)Other, Justice and Democracy

2021113Fudge Confirmation (Housing and Urban Development Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

202186Striking Provisions to Help Farmers of ColorEnvironmental Justice, Agriculture

202170Raimondo Confirmation (Commerce Secretary)Other, Oceans

202166Granholm Confirmation (Energy Secretary)Other, Clean Energy

202159Impeachment for Incitement of InsurrectionJustice and Democracy

202143Bolstering the Dirty Water RuleClean Water

202132Supporting the Destructive Keystone XL PipelineDirty Energy, Environmental Justice

---

2021

28Promoting Drilling for Fossil FuelsDirty Energy, Drilling

202111Buttigieg Confirmation (Transportation Secretary)Other, Transportation

20212Certifying Pennsylvania’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

20211Certifying Arizona’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

2020224Barrett Confirmation (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020222Barrett Cloture Vote (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020168Inadequate COVID Relief PackageOther

2020126Inadequate Policing ReformJudiciary, Other

2020125Wilson Confirmation (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020123Walker Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020121Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

2020118Defeating Effort to Derail the Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

202072Danly Confirmation (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)Dirty Energy, Clean Energy, Climate Change

202060MacGregor Confirmation (Interior Deputy Secretary)Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Lands/Forests, Oceans, Drilling, Wildlife

202041Kindred Confirmation (U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska)Judiciary

202036Brasher Confirmation (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

202014USMCA Trade DealClimate Change; Other

2019339Undermining the Land and Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2019324Stopping Rollbacks of Carbon Pollution Limits for Power PlantsClimate Change

2019313Scalia Confirmation (Labor Secretary)Other

2019300Jorjani Confirmation (Interior Solicitor)Other, Lands/Forests

201977Bernhardt Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Climate Change, Drilling, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other

201968Wyrick Confirmation (District Court for Western District of Oklahoma)Other, Justice and Democracy

201944Rao Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201933Wheeler Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water

201929Miller Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201922Public Lands PackageLands/Forests

201920Undermining the Antiquities ActLands/Forests

201919Blocking Permanent Reauthorization of the Land & Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2018259Farm Bill Conference ReportClimate Change, Clean Water

---

[[https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/gop-lawmakers-face-barrage-of-questions-over-viral-russian-ad/

[vid]

an 322

Republican Party is being labeled as the "Party of Treason” in a new, scathing political ad chronicling all that has transpired since Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to HuffPost, the ad was released by Really American, a progressive political action committee (PAC). The video highlights Independence Day 2018 when several Republican lawmakers' traveled to Moscow to visit the Kremlin.

With the video, the PAC tweeted, "A day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Russia interfered in our elections, 8 Republicans flew to Russia for a photo-op. Now they're blaming Biden for the invasion of Ukraine while repeating Kremlin talking points."

Although the trip was reportedly intended to address Russian interference, the video notes that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), "downplayed said established threat just days later."[twt]

the video's narrator posed a number of compelling questions to Republican lawmakers asking: "why Republicans have 'consistently taken' the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin by, among other things, voting to block election security bills and backing Donald Trump for threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden, misconduct that led to the first impeachment of the former president."

The narrator concluded by saying, “Putin has shown his goal is to destabilize Western democracy from Ukraine to the U.S. We can’t allow his puppets to sink their claws deeper into our government.”

In just a short period of time, the video has gone viral. Since its release on Thursday, March 10, it has received more than 850,000 views as it continues to circulate on social media.

[ron j, shelby, moran, daines, thune, kay granger, john kennedy hoeven

#partyoftraitors

---

ref 2

... GOP is slammed as the “#PartyOfTreason” in a new viral ad from progressive PAC Really American.

The group’s spot recalls the visit to the Kremlin that eight Republican lawmakers controversially made on Independence Day in 2018,

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-july-4-in-moscow no names ] a day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

---

ref july 2018

mADISON – Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is downplaying the threat Russia poses to U.S. elections, saying “these are not the greatest threats to our democracy.”

Johnson was part of a contingent of senators who met with Russian officials in Russia last week. He told reporters Tuesday that over half of their five-hour discussion focused on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Johnson says Russian interference is “unacceptable” and “serious,” but “when you look at threats to this nation I look at much larger threats.”

He says U.S. elections are very difficult to hack and remain secure, while Russia’s interference on social media in 2016 was minimal.

Johnson has been critical of Senate sanctions against Russia, saying they have been ineffective and don’t leave President Donald Trump with enough negotiating room on other issues.]]

\

dan bishop asked if naacp a revolutionary

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/louisiana-s-kennedy-dabbles-modern-day-mccarthyism-n1284201

no lnx

louisiana's Kennedy dabbles in modern-day McCarthyism

If Sen. John Kennedy's line of questioning against Saule Omarova sounded familiar, it's probably because it echoed Joe McCarthy's tactics.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., speaks during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.Patrick Semansky / Pool via AP

Nov. 19, 2021, 6:27 AM PST

By Steve Benen

Senate fights over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are not especially common, but the dispute over Saule Omarova's nomination is proving to be unusual.

At face value, Omarova's story reads like a classic American story. She was born in Kazakhstan, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. She immigrated to the United States, studied law and business, became an American citizen, took on a role in the Bush administration's Treasury Department, and ultimately became a law professor at Cornell University. see WITH pod]

President Joe Biden nominated her for a position in which she'd be responsible for regulating bank assets — she specializes in financial regulation — and yesterday, Omarova's nomination arrived at the Senate Finance Committee for a confirmation hearing.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana apparently thought it'd be entertaining to take aim at her personal background, starting with this question: "You used to be a member of a group called the Young Communists, didn't you?" The Washington Post took it from there:

But this isn't where Kennedy was headed. Instead, he spent his designated time suggesting that Omarova was a communist sympathizer, beginning with that loaded question. Omarova indicated that she wasn't sure what group he was referring to, a bit of caution that Kennedy wasn't interested in. Kennedy, reading from handwritten notes, identified the group by name: "the Leninist Communist Young Union of the Russian Federation," also known as the Komsomol.

As a child in a USSR country, Omarova's participation in Komsomol was not optional. The professor patiently tried to explain this to the Republican senator, who didn't seem overly concerned about the relevant details.

"I don't mean any disrespect — I don't know whether to call you professor or comrade," Kennedy said.

Of course, why would anyone find such nonsense disrespectful?

As part of the line of questioning, the Louisiana Republican sought proof that Omarova "resigned" from the school program as a child. She explained that participants didn't have to formally quit the group, since they simply "grow out of it with age."

Kennedy, either confused or willfully ignorant, wasn't satisfied, seeking some kind of letter of resignation. No such letter existed, because the question didn't make sense.

The Post's analysis added, "It's safe to assume that Kennedy, who attended Oxford University during the Cold War, is aware that Soviet youth were conscripted into party organizations and that socialist views are not communist ones. But he is a politician representing a deep-red state, and he clearly understands that it's easier to submarine a presidential nominee using old-school Red scare tactics than it is to challenge her actual belief systems one by one."

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It was notable in large part because contemporary examples of McCarthyism usually aren't this literal. Kennedy was, for all intents and purposes, on the lookout for communists. If that meant unfairly smearing a qualified nominee — who is not, in reality, a communist — so be it.]

"My family suffered under the communist regime. I grew up without knowing half of my family. My grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime," Omarova explained. "This is what's seared in my mind. That's who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I'm proud to be an American, and this is why I'm here today, senator. I'm here today because I'm ready for public service."

It was a good answer to a bad question.

To be sure, Omarova's confirmation will be difficult for reasons that have nothing to do with her family history or experiences as a child in Kazakhstan. Some moderate Senate Democrats have expressed reservations about her nomination because of her opposition to a financial deregulation bill several years ago. Despite her qualifications, experience, and expertise, it's unfortunately easy to imagine her nomination coming up short in the evenly divided Senate.

But that doesn't make Kennedy's display and Joe-McCarthy-like tactics any less offensive.

And yet, visitors to the Louisiana Republican's website this morning were greeted with one prominent headline, splashed across the homepage near the top: "Kennedy questions Biden nominee on membership in communist organization."

It was cheap and ugly — and for Kennedy, a source of pride.

---

an 10 21

attorney General Merrick Garland laughed at a Republican senator's question during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), like every other GOP senator before him, used his allotted time to pepper Garland with questions about an Oct. 4 memo directing the Department of Justice to investigate threats against local school board members after a national organization asked President Joe Biden for federal intervention.

"The National School Board Association sent the letter to the White House and the White House promptly called you and said, 'Sic the FBI on parents at school board hearings, and that's what I mean," Kennedy said. "The White House is the prophet here and you're just the vessel, correct?"

Garland insisted he did not coordinate with the White House on the memo, which he said reflected his own views on protecting public officials from violence and threats while protecting parents' rights, but Kennedy pressed on.

Garland laughed out loud before continuing.

"I'm not -- I signed on this memorandum on my own," Garland said. "I said from the very beginning, I've taken this job to protect the Department of Justice and make independent determinations with respect to prosecution, and I will do that."

---

---

an 121

...(The satirical news site The Onion deftly handled this, calling out each of the 126 with an individualized message. To Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, "You have been absolutely fearless when stopping the American people from participating in elections;" to Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, "Never again will we allow U.S. citizens to recklessly turn in their ballots;" to Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, "Thank you for bravely standing up to the American voters;" and so on. Each was accompanied by an especially beguiling photo of a maggot.)

Many of those same members and more—some 140—are now lending their names to the smoke-and-mirrors effort in Congress to challenge the votes of the Electoral College, which already has given the election to Joe Biden. The votes of the electors officially are to be announced on Wednesday by Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as President of the Senate.

In normal times, this would be a mere formality, but Trump and Republicans have decided to turn it into a clumsy attempt at a coup d'etat, ignoring the rule of law and numerous court rulings. They're putting on an act, trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election as a dumbshow of power, all out of fear of Tin Hat Trump's "base" of voters and to preserve a status quo that ignores the diversity of America, cossets the rich and fosters hate, poverty and inequality.

In the House, the leaders of this effort include the feckless Louie Gohmert of Texas, known as "America's craziest and dumbest congressman." Having just had an election lawsuit thrown out by a Federal appeals court on New Year's Day, he went on Newsmax suggesting that the alternative now is going to the streets and "being as violent as antifa and BLM."

He's joined in this mad pursuit—simultaneously dumbing down and radicalizing a significant portion of the party and American populace—by the usual suspects, led by Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and including Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Jody Hice of Georgia and Joe Wilson of South Carolina. New members of the House are piping up, too, including QAnon queen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

On the Senate side, opposition to finalizing the presidential result is being led by Josh Hawley of Missouri, a man of vaulting ambition who wants to be president so badly he's is willing to violate his sworn oath of office and destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights to get there, using conspiracy theories and falsehoods to oil his way into the White House as early as 2024.

In a letter published Saturday, eleven other Republican senators and senators-elect demanded an "emergency 10-day audit" of results in "the disputed states,"—in other words, the states Trump is shocked—shocked!—that he lost to Joe Biden, states he assumed would be a cinch for him. They weren't.

Remember their names:

Ted Cruz (Texas)

Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)

James Lankford (Oklahoma)

Steve Daines (Montana)

John Kennedy (Louisiana)

Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee)

Mike Braun (Indiana)

Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) (new senator)

Roger Marshall (Kansas) (new senator)

Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) (new senator)

Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) (new senator)

Sadly, this Dirty Dozen (including Hawley), a so-called "Sedition Caucus" in the Senate, probably won't be deterred by news of that phone call Trump made to Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, trying to bully him into finding more votes to change the result in the state from Biden to Trump—a conversation much like the one with Ukraine President Zelensky that a year ago got Donald Trump impeached.

Trump's impeachment didn't lead to conviction by the Senate, thanks to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who would brook no new evidence or witnesses, turning the trial into a sham with a predetermined outcome. But McConnell now is opposed to his colleagues' efforts to subvert the Electoral College. Why? Because McConnell is all about the raw power he alone holds in the Senate. He cares for that and little else except, of course, tax cuts for the superrich, holding rules and regulations at bay and getting as many conservative Federal judges approved by the Senate as quickly as he can.

...

---

---

admittedly he got facts wrong?

Chuck Todd accuses GOPer John Kennedy of being ‘duped’ by Russia and spreading their propaganda in contentious interview

In a fairly contentious interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,”…

==

---

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510818-trump-yates-either-lying-or-grossly-incompetent

no lnx vod

trump: Yates either lying or grossly incompetent

BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 08/06/20 08:16 AM EDT 1,747

President Trump on Thursday accused former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates of “either lying” or being “grossly incompetent” after her testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Justice Department investigations into election interference in 2016.

“It is not possible she could have known so little about Dirty Cop James Comey (and others) from her high position in the Department of 'Justice,'" the president tweeted early Thursday. “The political Crime of the Century, [// fox hanty tucker rhet on obamagate]and she had no idea what they were doing?”

Yates told the committee that the FBI, under the leadership of then-Director James Comey, in January 2017 interviewed incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn without her authorization or advanced knowledge.

"I was upset that Director Comey didn't coordinate that with us and acted unilaterally," Yates said.

"Did Comey go rogue?" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked.

"You could use that term, yes," Yates responded.

Despite her criticism of Comey’s handling of the process, Yates defended the FBI’s need to interview Flynn due to his conversations with the then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak after the November 2016 election.

"Interviewing General Flynn was really right at the core of the FBI's investigation at this point to try to discern, what are the ties between the Trump administration and the Russians?" she said during her testimony.

Flynn was fired in 2017 for misleading Vice President Pence about those conversations. He had initially entered into an agreement in 2017 to cooperate with the Department of Justice and pleaded guilty, but he subsequently withdrew from the plea agreement and was fighting the charges.

The Justice Department decided earlier this year to drop the case against Flynn, a decision that sparked outrage among Democrats, who claimed Attorney General William Barr was politicizing the agency.

Yates, asked about the decision to drop those charges on Wednesday, said she thought it was “highly irregular.”

Prior to her testimony, Trump lashed out at Yates and tweeted that she has “zero credibility.”

“She was a part of the greatest political crime of the Century, and ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING! Sally Yates leaked the General Flynn conversation? Ask her under oath. Republicans should start playing the Democrats game!” Trump tweeted.

Trump fired Yates in January 2017, while she was serving as acting attorney general, after she refused to defend his controversial travel ban

When asked if she doesn’t like Trump, Yates told senators, "I don't respect the manner in which he has carried out the presidency."

[Trump attacks Cuomo after his Democratic convention speech

Roger Stone drops appeal of felony convictions]

“You despise Donald Trump, don’t you?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) shot back.

“I don't despise anyone, senator,” Yates added.

The GOP is ramping up their Obama-era investigations and Graham is centering his efforts around the origins of of the FBI’s investigation into Russia's election interference and the Trump campaign as well as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s subsequent probe.

==

==

It was Russia’: Chris Wallace issues live fact check to GOP senator who says Ukraine could have hacked election

David Edwards / Raw Story

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was corrected by Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday after he said Ukraine could have been behind interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

==

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CNN’s Jim Sciutto was openly stunned after Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy said it was fine with him if President Donald Trump blocked the merger of AT&T-Time Warner because he didn’t like the way he’s covered by CNN, saying the president, like everyone else, has the right to an opinion.

“The New Yorker is reporting this morning that the president ordered the Department of Justice to attempt to block the merger between AT&T and Time Warner,” said Sciutto, noting that the move had raised objections from Trump’s advisors. “In your view is that an acceptable use of presidential power, a president trying to block a merger because he doesn’t like the coverage by a news station, this one, owned by one of the companies involved?

“Well, number one, I don’t know if it’s true,” said Kennedy, saying the source was anonymous. “Number two, I think it’s perfectly acceptable for the president of the United States to have an opinion.”

“To block a merger — to block a merger, to punish what he considers a critic?” asked Sciutto.

“I don’t think that it’s been established. I know it’s been alleged that that was what his mental perspective was at the time,” said Kennedy. “I don’t know what the president thought, and neither do you, frankly. It’s an anonymous source once again talking to ‘The New York Times.”

“Well, it’s ‘The New Yorker,’” said Sciutto, raising the question of whether Kennedy had even read the article he was dismissing. “If the president were to do that, would you consider that an acceptable use of presidential power?”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a fair question,” said Kennedy with a stammer. “Because they haven’t proven that he did it.

Watch the video below.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27062018/hfcs-global-warming-climate-pollution-lawsuit-trump-epa-regulations-kigali-amendment

Eleven states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, demanding enforcement of regulations on super-polluting greenhouse gases in air conditioners and refrigerators.

A similar lawsuit was filed by environmentalists on Tuesday. Both challenge an attempt by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to roll back federal regulations on the class of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.

The HFC lawsuits are the latest in a string of legal challenges to the Trump administration's far-reaching agenda of rolling back environmental regulations, especially those relating to climate change. Instead of launching a new formal rulemaking procedure to rescind or replace the HFCs rule, Pruitt announced in April that the agency would no longer enforce the Obama-era rule, which a federal court had partially struck down in a case brought by two foreign HFCs manufacturers.

The court had struck down only part of the HFCs rule, leaving some elements in place, yet Pruitt's move essentially eliminated the rule entirely. By using "guidance" to do that rather than going through the formal rulemaking process, Pruitt violated administrative law, the NRDC's Lissa Lynch wrote in a blog post explaining her group's lawsuit over the move.

"Throwing out these commonsense restrictions on this potent pollutant is contrary to the law and science, and it is disruptive to the manufacturers that have invested in alternatives," Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in announcing the states' lawsuit. "We are suing to protect the health of our residents and the planet."

An EPA spokesperson, asked about the lawsuits, said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Thousands of Times More Potent Than CO2

HFCs have become the world's fastest growing greenhouse gases as use of refrigeration and cooling spreads in a warming and more populous world. In the short term, they are thousands of times more potent as global warming gases than carbon dioxide, and while they don't last as long in the atmosphere, the short-lived climate pollutants have a rapid global impact.

The Obama administration finalized a rule in 2015 to phase out the chemicals. By then, U.S. manufacturers were already producing less damaging alternatives, and many companies supported the phase-down.

An analysis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated the rule would have provided about 4 percent of the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions the U.S. needed to meet its obligations under the Paris climate agreement.

What About the Kigali Amendment?

Another move to phase out HFCs has been developing at the international level, and the Trump administration at one point indicated it supported it.

In 2016, nations agreed to an update to the Montreal Protocol called the Kigali Amendment that requires all countries to slash production and consumption of HFCs by at least 80 percent over the next 30 years. It has the backing of a wide array of U.S. businesses, many of which manufacture safer alternatives to HFCs. But the Trump administration has yet to send it to the Senate for ratification.

Thirteen Republican senators, led by John Kennedy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine, have urged the White House to move forward with the treaty, saying the amendment would help domestic companies by leveling the playing field worldwide and giving them long-term certainty on what chemicals to use going forward.

In the meantime, Pruitt's deregulatory moves, if they survive court challenges, would undercut U.S. progress toward meeting the Kigali goals.

Connections to an Ethics Scandal

HFCs have come up in the ethics allegations swirling around Pruitt, as well, the Washington Post reported this week. Emails obtained by the Sierra Club under the Freedom of Information Act show that J. Steven Hart, a lobbyist whose wife rented Pruitt a condo on Capitol Hill last year, had contacted Pruitt's chief of staff in 2017 seeking to discuss the HFCs rule and issues it might cause for companies. The agency has maintained that Hart did not lobby the agency on environmental issues. The matter is under investigation by both the EPA's inspector general and the House oversight committee.

The attorneys general who sued over HFCs represent New York, California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, and they were joined by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Earlier this year, Californiaregulators adopted their own state prohibition on HFCs in new air-conditioning and refrigeration.

"The Trump EPA is seeking to gut critical climate protection rules through the backdoor—once again endangering New Yorkers while thumbing their nose at the law," New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

REGULATION

SHORT-LIVED CLIMATE POLLUTANTS SCOTT PRUITT EPA

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_(Louisiana_politician)

John Kennedy

United States Senator

from Louisiana

Incumbent

Assumed office

January 3, 2017

Serving with Bill Cassidy

Preceded by David Vitter

Treasurer of Louisiana

In office

January 10, 2000 – January 3, 2017

Governor Mike Foster

Kathleen Blanco

Bobby Jindal

John Bel Edwards

Preceded by Ken Duncan

Succeeded by Ron Henson (Acting)

Personal details

Born John Neely Kennedy

November 21, 1951 (age 66)

Centreville, Mississippi, U.S.

Political party Republican (2007–present)

Other political

affiliations Democratic (before 2007)

Spouse(s) Rebecca Stulb

Children 1 son

Education Vanderbilt University (BA)

University of Virginia (JD)

Magdalen College, Oxford(BCL)

Website Senate website

John Neely Kennedy (born November 21, 1951) is an American attorney and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Louisiana since January 3, 2017. After prevailing in Louisiana's 2016 U.S. Senate jungle primary, Kennedy defeated Democratic candidate Foster Campbell by more than 21 percentage points in the 2016 Senate election runoff.

Kennedy was a member of the Democratic Party until 2007, when he became a Republican. Before being elected to the Senate, he served multiple terms as Louisiana State Treasurer.

Contents  [hide]

1 Education and early career

2 Political career

2.1 Treasurer of Louisiana

2.2 U.S. Senate

2.2.1 Elections

2.2.2 Tenure

2.2.3 Committee assignments

2.3 Political positions

2.3.1 Animal rights

2.3.2 Abortion

2.3.3 Gun law

2.3.4 Judicial nominees

2.3.5 Net neutrality

3 Personal life

4 Electoral history

5 References

6 External links

Education and early career[edit]

Born in Centreville, Mississippi, Kennedy was raised in Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish. He graduated in 1969 from Zachary High School. He finished magna cum laudein 1973 from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, with a degree in Political Science, Philosophy, and Economics.

At Vanderbilt, he was elected president of his senior class and named to Phi Beta Kappa. After Vanderbilt, Kennedy received a J.D. degree in 1977 from the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, Virginia. At the University of Virginia School of Law, he was an executive editor of the Virginia Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.[1] In 1979, he earned a Bachelor of Civil Law degree with first class honours from Magdalen College, Oxford in England.[2][3]

Prior to entering politics, Kennedy practiced law at the New Orleans and Baton Rouge firm of Chaffe McCall. Before he took office as state treasurer, Kennedy had served as appointed secretary of the Department of Revenue and was a legal counselor and secretary for then Governor Buddy Roemer.[citation needed]

He has also served as an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge.[4]

Political career[edit]

In 1988, Kennedy became special counsel to then-Democratic Governor Roemer.[5] In 1991, he was appointed cabinet secretary and served in that post until 1992. In 1991, he was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for state Attorney General of Louisiana to succeed the retiring William J. Guste.[6]

Following his first stint in state government, Kennedy returned to the private practice of law until 1996. That same year, he was appointed Secretary of the state Department of Revenue in the cabinet of Republican Governor Mike Foster.[7]

Treasurer of Louisiana[edit]

NatchitochesChristmas Parade in 2014

Kennedy left the Foster administration when he was elected State Treasurer in 1999, having unseated incumbent Democrat Kenneth "Ken" Duncan, 621,796 (55.6 percent) to 497,319 (44.4 percent).[8] Kennedy was re-elected Treasurer without opposition in 2003.[9]

After being courted by the Republican Party for months, Kennedy announced in a letter to his constituents that he was leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republicans, effective August 27, 2007. In his letter, he announced that he would run again for State Treasurer.[10]

During the State Treasurer's term to which he was elected in 2007, Kennedy devised a twenty-four-point plan by which the state could save money.[11] Governor Bobby Jindal said Kennedy could "streamline" his own department. Many of Kennedy's ideas were derived from the Louisiana Commission for Streamlining Government, of which the Treasurer was a member.[12]

U.S. Senate[edit]

Elections[edit]

Main articles: United States Senate election in Louisiana, 2004; United States Senate election in Louisiana, 2008; and United States Senate election in Louisiana, 2016

President-elect Donald Trumpand Kennedy campaigning in Baton Rouge

In 2004, Kennedy campaigned for the United States Senate seat held by John Breaux, who retired from elected office. Kennedy ran as a Democrat in the state's jungle primary, losing to Republican David Vitter and Democrat Chris John.[13] Vitter defeated John to win the seat in the general election.[14][15]

Kennedy ran for the U.S. Senate again in 2008. This time, Kennedy ran as a Republican. He was defeated, 52.1 to 45.7 percent, by incumbent Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu; the same year, Republican presidential nominee John McCain defeated Barack Obama in Louisiana, but Obama was elected nationwide.[16][17]

On January 26, 2016, Kennedy announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate for a third time. In seeking to succeed the retiring David Vitter, he faced more than twenty opponents.[18] Vitter announced his retirement from the Senate in 2015 after losing a bid for governor to the Democrat John Bel Edwards.[19]

Kennedy's senatorial campaign was endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Rifle Association, the National Right to Life Committee, the American Conservative Union, Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump.[20][21] Kennedy, who had supported Vitter for governor the previous year, won the jungle primary and faced Democrat Foster Campbell in a December 10 runoff election. President-elect Donald Trump—who had received Kennedy's support in the 2016 presidential election[22]—campaigned for Kennedy the day before the runoff election.[23] Kennedy defeated Campbell, 536,204 (61 percent) to 347,813 (39 percent), in the runoff election. Kennedy lost the largest populated parishes of Orleans and East Baton Rouge, in which he had been reared, but he was a runaway winner in Campbell's home parish of Bossier.[24]

Tenure[edit]

Kennedy was sworn in as Louisiana's junior U.S. Senator on January 3, 2017.

In June 2017, Kennedy grilled Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a hearing before the Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Service, Education and Related Agencies. In the exchange, he contrasted the lack of school choice available for younger pupils in many rural areas of the country to the widespread brands of mayonnaise available on the grocery store shelf: "Now I can go down to my overpriced Capitol Hill grocery this afternoon and choose among about six different types of mayonnaise. How come I can't do that for my kid," Kennedy said. The remark attracted national attention. DeVos replied that the Trump administration budget proposal would give parents and students more power and opportunity so that American education could again become "the envy of the world."[25]

Kennedy has attracted comment for his manner in the Senate. The Huffington Post reported: "Since being elected to the Senate a year ago, Kennedy[...] has made a name for himself on Capitol Hill with his wit, humor and penchant for folksy expressions ― a notable feat in a place where jargon and arcane procedure tend to reign supreme. At a time when many of his colleagues are using modern forms of media to communicate with their constituents ― e.g., Twitter ― Kennedy has managed to command viral headlines with little more than Southern wisdom and a Pelican State drawl, distilling events of the day into blunt terms regular people can understand."[26]

Committee assignments[edit]

Committee on Appropriations

Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies

Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development

Subcommittee on Homeland Security

Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies

Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

Subcommittee on Economic Policy

Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development

Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection

Committee on the Budget

Committee on the Judiciary

Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism

Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration

Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts

Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law

Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Political positions[edit]

Animal rights[edit]

Senator Kennedy stated he would be filing a bill to "prohibit airlines from putting animals in overhead bins" following the death of a dog in an overhead bin while flying United Airlines during March 2018.[27] He said, "officials would face significant fines" if noncompliant.[28]

Abortion[edit]

Kennedy is "strongly opposed" to abortion.[29]

Gun law[edit]

Kennedy has an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA), which endorsed him during his 2016 Senate run. He is very close to former NRA president Wayne Lapierre.[30][31]

Judicial nominees[edit]

Kennedy bucked party lines to block the appointment of three U.S. District Court judicial appointees by U.S. President Donald Trump of individuals whom Kennedy believed were not qualified for the position. These included Matthew Spencer Petersen, Brett Talley, and Jeff Mateer. All three nominations were withdrawn by the White House.[32]

Net neutrality[

John Kennedy introduced a bill on March 7, 2018, that would "prohibit companies like Comcast and Verizon from blocking or throttling web content."[33]. Kennedy was one of three Republican senators, alongside Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, that voted with the entirety of the Democratic caucus on May 16, 2018, to overturn the FCC's repeal of net neutrality.

Personal life[

Kennedy resides in Madisonville in St. Tammany Parish outside New Orleans with his wife, Becky, and son, Preston. He attends North Cross United Methodist Church in Madisonville.[4] He is unrelated to the Kennedy family of Massachusetts.[34]

==

[bad code?]

... not every day you learn Congressional Republicans are excited to pass an Obama-era climate deal, but that seems to be the case when it comes to a treaty that would eliminate an obscure but potent greenhouse gas.

On June 4, a group of 13 Senate Republicans sent a letter to President Trump urging him to send them the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol for approval. Negotiated in 2016 under former President Obama and agreed on by leaders of 170 nations, the Kigali Amendment phases out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), substances developed for use in refrigerators and air conditioning units after the Montreal Protocol banned their ozone-destroying cousins, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), beginning in the late 1980s. endit[bad code] Experts believe eliminating their use will stave off half a degree Celsius of global warming, which is why, when the deal was first agreed on,  as “the single most important step we could take at this moment to limit the warming of our planet.”

But for the U.S. to be party to the agreement, it requires a two thirds majority vote in the Senate. And while the Trump administration voiced support for Kigali last year, E&E News reports that the effort to eliminate HFCs has since hit snags, most notably the Environmental Protection Agency, which under the leadership of Scott Pruitt is far more interested in unwinding climate regulations than implementing them.

Hence the recent Senate letter, which conspicuously makes no mention of climate change or Obama. To these Republicans, the Kigali Amendment is simply good business. The letter notes that it’s projected to add 33,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs and generate $4.8 billion in export revenues in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration industries. Failure to ratify the amendment, meanwhile, could cede these economic benefits to China....“We urge you to send this amendment to the Senate for consideration,” the letter reads. “The impacted industries in our country played a major role in shaping this amendment and are supportive of its ratification and implementation.”

David Doniger, Senior Strategic Director at the NRDC’s Climate and Clean Energy Program, said he hoped the letter is a signal that the Senate will move quickly to ratify the amendment if and when Trump sends it their way (no word on when that might happen, though).

“I think you’ll assume this will have general support from the Democrats,” Doniger told Earther. “What this letter signals is it’s also got substantial support from the Republicans and shouldn’t be controversial.”

In Doniger’s view, the reason for that bipartisan support is support from the industry that’s being regulated. Unlike, say, the Paris Agreement, which is fundamentally at odds with the survival of the fossil fuel industry, replacements for HFCs will come from the cooling industry, and should help it prosper.

“This is an agreement focused on a small set of industries [that] has the expertise, engagement, focus, formula for success to deal with these refrigerants, blowing agents, [and] solvents in a focused way,” Doniger said. “They are content to treat this as an industrial sector agreement.”

Although it wasn’t its intention at the time, implementing the Montreal Protocol has already had major climate benefits. A study published last year found that the phase-out of CFCs and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) under the Montreal Protocol had, between 2008 and 2014, yielded about half the climate benefit of all other regulations enacted by the EPA

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kigali amend to montreal protocol

kennedy murkowski collins...

13 Republican senators are urging President Trump to back a policy achieved under former President Obama that they say would create American manufacturing jobs. It would also cut greenhouse gas emissions, but that went unmentioned.

Why it matters: In a letter, dated last week and obtained by Axios on Monday, the senators don’t mention "Obama" or "climate change." It's one of the starkest signs of how the Republican Party is willing to support efforts cutting emissions as long as they don’t mention one of these two hyper-polarizing topics....United States Senator United States Senator...Murkowski Johnny Isakson

United States Senator United States Senator

Lamar Alexander Marco Rubio

United States Senator United States Senator

Jerry Moran Tim Scott

United States Senator United States Senato

Roy Blunt? Boozman

United States Senator United States Senator...Todd Yo

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endit2