cloud, michael Rep 0 0%

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merri ok

sworn in 2018

xian? troll waNNA BE FREEDOM COCKS

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/michael-cloud

0 0%

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fired for jan 6 bs, anticipated DEI attack by doge:

Foreign-Aid Group Faces Reckoning over Support for DEI Ideology

Jun 19, 2024

Media

Foreign-Aid Group Faces Reckoning over Support for DEI Ideology

National Review

Jimmy Quinn | June 19, 2024

After using divisive rhetoric about ‘whiteness,’ a powerful NGO faces a possible funding ban from Congress.

A House committee voted last week to block all U.S. government funding for a prominent foreign-aid organization that pushed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology and other left-wing talking points on race.

Long a fixture of the foreign-aid scene, the group, InterAction, convenes other powerhouses in the industry and argues on their behalf before government offices. Among its members are well-known aid groups, such as Save the Children, OxFam, and Habitat for Humanity.

Now its efforts to push a DEI-centered approach to race into foreign-aid work is posing a liability amid growing complaints that it is politicizing U.S. foreign-assistance programs. An amendment to the State Department and foreign-operations budget passed on June 12 by the House appropriations committee explicitly prohibits any of those funds from being diverted to InterAction, which has long received contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“American taxpayer dollars should not fund advocacy groups that politicize humanitarian aid. InterAction has demonstrated a clear pattern of using its influence to prioritize its own agenda over the needs of those it claims to help,” Representative Michael Cloud told National Review. Cloud was the author of the provision, which was also supported by the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of House Republicans.

“This organization operates within an ‘aid industrial complex’ that encourages a pay-to-play system, diverting much-needed resources from the needy to instead serve as a vehicle for implementing their radical social policies or propping up oppressive regimes.”

In an interview Tuesday, InterAction president Tom Hart suggested that the NGO is pivoting away from that DEI focus and trying to rebuild bridges with Republicans alarmed with the DEI push.

“Obviously, we were surprised and disappointed about the amendment,” he told National Review, emphasizing that he joined InterAction six months ago and is relatively new. “This organization is going through a new strategic planning exercise where we want to focus and we want to be more bipartisan.” He added that he spent 25 years at Bono’s ONE Campaign public-health initiative, “building bridges between right and left — successfully, I might add.”

InterAction also receives about $2.5 million in U.S. government contracts to carry out foreign-aid work and educational programs every year, Hart said.

InterAction’s work on infusing DEI principles into foreign-aid work drew attention from conservatives last year, after a Heritage Foundation report, by Tim Meisburger, a former USAID official in the Trump administration, highlighted its support of DEI ideology in foreign-aid work.

Meisberger cited a 2022 InterAction memo, “The DEI Compact: INGO Commitments Toward Greater Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” as a reason for concern. The Heritage report accused InterAction of using “typical Marxist language,” citing its invocation of concepts such as oppression, privilege, and “power structures of society.” “The DEI Compact” has since been taken down from InterAction’s website.

The Heritage report flagged another InterAction memo titled “Anti-Blackness & Racism,” which urges workers in the foreign-aid industry to confront racism. The report uses language common in left-wing activist circles, accusing aid workers of approaching their work with a “problematic white gaze.”

“Through this lens, the sector often places people of color, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, against a model of whiteness — specifically, a whiteness rooted in the Global North — as the default or highest standard to strive toward,” it reads.

“Anti-Blackness & Racism” remains accessible on InterAction’s website, but Hart distanced himself from it, saying that the task force that produced it operated under prior administrations and is currently defunct. The program that published the paper on “whiteness” had ended before he arrived at InterAction, he added, but he was not sure whether it ended before or after Heritage issued its report.

“They’re trying to steer American taxpayer dollars to promote DEI, a woke climate agenda, and radical left wing foreign policy views,” Representative Kevin Hern, the chairman of the RSC, said in a statement. “Humanitarian aid should not be politicized, but that’s exactly what this organization is doing. We should not fund InterAction.”

In addition to InterAction’s advocacy for DEI, Republican congressional offices were troubled that the group lobbied against legislation that would block the U.S. from normalizing diplomatic ties with the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and that would place sanctions on the Wagner Group. Hart said that he was not familiar with those efforts, which took place before he started at InterAction, and that it was his predecessor who had signed the letter protesting the Assad bill.

Hart said that he wants to rebuild his organization’s ties to conservatives. “There are a lot of disagreements between or among some conservatives and what InterAction has done in the past. . . . This is a moment for us to find common ground to move forward together to tackle the challenges that the world is presenting some of the most vulnerable people,” he said, adding that U.S. leadership on foreign assistance could boost America’s ability to compete with China.

It’s unlikely that Representative Cloud’s provision will survive through passage on the House floor, then consideration in the Senate, under the control of a Democratic majority.

Still, it may be a sign of where the winds are blowing for an industry that has unapologetically embraced left-wing talking points. InterAction’s embrace of DEI rhetoric reflects long-running trends in the foreign-aid realm, said Max Primorac, a former USAID official in the Trump administration and now a senior research fellow at Heritage.

“It is the first time that this industry — and, effectively, this is the foreign-aid-industrial-complex industry — is held accountable for its wacky and extremist social agenda that’s pushing through DEI.” Primorac said. He added that those efforts and the industry’s focus on abortion and “other things that have no place in foreign aid” don’t represent mainstream America and are “resented by those communities that we’re trying to help.”

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four House Republicans have sent a letter to Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith challenging his standing to prosecute former President Donald Trump.

The letter — which was co-signed by Reps. Eric Burlison (R- Missouri), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) — asserts that there has not been appropriate congressional oversight of Smith's office or his investigation into Trump. The letter's signatories are asking Smith to provide them with "all documents and communications concerning your authority" to empanel grand juries in the two federal court districts where he's prosecuting the former president, as well as Smith's authority to have those grand juries return indictments, and his authority to offer immunity in exchange for testimony as well as documents pertaining to DOJ oversight.

"We respectfully request a response from you on or before 1pm [on] February 9, 2024," Burlison, Cloud, Greene and Luna wrote.

:{:{Conservatives have argued that because Smith was not formally appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the US Senate, he is merely a private citizen and does not have the Constitutional authority to prosecute Trump.}:

Ed Meese, who was attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last month arguing that Smith's appointment was improper and that his prosecution of Trump is therefore null and void.}:

"Not properly clothed in the authority of the federal government, Smith is a modern example of the naked emperor," Meese's brief read. "Illegally appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court, or in the underlying prosecution, than Tom Brady, Warren Buffett, or Beyoncé."

Meese further argued that the statutory authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed gave him the power to appoint Smith as special counsel did not authorize "the appointment by the Attorney General of a private citizen to receive extraordinary criminal law enforcement power under the title of Special Counsel," adding that "there is no statute specifically authorizing the Attorney General, rather than the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint such a Special Counsel."

However, the DC Circuit is unlikely to take that argument seriously, as there have been three special counsel appointments not confirmed by the US Senate. In 1999, then-Attorney General Janet Reno appointed John Danforth as special counsel to investigate the siege of cult leader David Koresh's compound in Waco, Texas. Then in 2003, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey — following the recusal of Attorney General John Ashcroft — appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel to oversee the Valerie Plame affair. And in 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to look into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.

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no lnx an 8 23

twenty-two House Republicans have signed on to a motion filed in federal court requesting to be allowed to join Governor Greg Abbott in defending the Texas Republican against a federal government lawsuit alleging his 1000 feet of razor wire and floating buoys constructed of circular saw blades, designed to prevent migrants from crossing into the United States from Texas, are illegal.

They have invoked the Bible’s Book of Genesis, including Noah’s Ark, to make their case.

“In a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, and other GOP members, lawyers for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundationhave asked to be part of the case and targeted how a key law is interpreted in it,” the Houston Chronicle reports.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is the right-wing organization The New York Times last year profiled as “The Texas Group Waging a National Crusade Against Climate Action.”

RELATED: Supreme Court in Hand, Far Right Wing Prepares to ‘Take the Reins of Government’

The buoys, deployed on the Rio Grande river, may have led to the deaths of two migrants, possibly including a child.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas called the buoys “barbaric,” and in video showed they are constructed of circular saw blades. In that video Congressman Castro also points to Governor Abbott’s razor wire fences.

Sawyer Hackett, a senior advisor to former Obama Cabinet Secretary Julián Castro, referred to the floating fences as “razor wire death trap buoys.”

“A key point to the Arrington group’s defense is whether the 1,900-mile Rio Grande should be defined as a navigable waterway despite being used by thousands of boats every year,” The Chronicle explains. “They point to a court case from 1870 that suggested that the term navigable waterway is intended to mean moving commerce from one state to another or to a different country and not just one where any small boat occasionally uses the river.”

READ MORE: Critics Blast Top US Conservative Think Tank President for Applauding Italy’s Election of ‘Neo-Fascist’ Prime Minister

That’s where the Bible and Noah’s Ark come in.

“Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock,” the proposed amicus brief reads. “Under the federal government’s theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation.”

Governor Abbott has had a long partnership with theTexas Public Policy Foundation.

In 2016, as NCRM reported, Abbott while at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, unveiled a major policy plan toalter the U.S. Constitution, adding nine amendments,the result of which could have lead to same-sex marriage bans and anend of LGBTQ protections.

According to Congressman Arrington, the list of signatories to his amicus brief include: Rep. Jodey Arrington, Dr. Michael Burgess, Rep. August Pfluger, Rep. Brian Babin, Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Roger Williams, Rep. Lance Gooden, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Rep. Jake Ellzey, Rep. Vern Buchanan, Rep.Chip Roy, Rep. Nathaniel Moran, Rep. David Rouzer, Rep. Pete Sessions,Rep. Ronny Jackson, Rep. Sam Graves,Rep. Clay Higgins, Rep. Michael Cloud, Rep. Keith Self, Rep. John Carter, Rep. Jeff Duncan, Rep. Kat Cammack.

Watch the video above or at this link.

'Very scary': Former RNC staffer dishes on the more terrifying members of GOP's right-wing

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oversight 9 22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4exyXG-Gg1c&t=32s

1:55 china mineral mine; virtual signal; finite resource;

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pow

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36741995/tucker-carlson-january-6-fbi-republicans/

...Sedition Caucus within the Republican minority in the House of Representatives. Here is a good place to start if you’re formulating a roster.

Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Andy Harris (Md.),Lance Gooden (Tex.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.),Michael Cloud (Tex.), Andrew S. Clyde (Ga.), Greg Steube (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.) and John Rose (Tenn.). Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Barry Moore (Ala.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.), Chip Roy (Tex.), Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.), Jody Hice (Ga.) and Mary Miller (Ill.).

My favorites among the bunch are the 10 Republicans who previously voted for awarding the gold medal who flipped to vote "no" on Wednesday. What a noble clutch of primates they are. And while some of the names are those of familiar space aliens, there are some newbies in there with whom I was not familiar. For example, there's Mary Miller of Illinois, who wasn’t in office for a week before she started quoting Hitler....

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wiki 9 22

Michael Jonathan Cloud (born May 13, 1975) is an American politician representing Texas's 27th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2018. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Early life and career

Cloud graduated from Oral Roberts University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in mass media communications.^[1] At Oral Roberts, he was on the cross country and track teams.^[2] He chaired the Victoria County Republican Party from 2010 to 2017.^[3]

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018 special election

Main article: 2018 Texas's 27th congressional district special election

Cloud succeeded Republican Blake Farenthold, who resigned amid controversy due to settling a sexual harassment lawsuit with public money.^[4][5] He won the Republican runoff for the regularly scheduled election with help from the Club for Growth and the endorsement of Ron Paul, who had previously represented parts of the district.^[6] On June 30, 2018, he won the special election, defeating Democratic nominee Eric Holguin, 55% to 32%.^[7]

2018 regular election

Cloud defeated Holguin again in November, along with independent candidate James Duerr and Libertarian candidate Daniel Tinus, with 60.3% of the vote.

2020

Cloud defeated Democratic nominee Ricardo "Rick" De La Fuente and Libertarian candidate Phil Gray with 63.1% of the vote.^[8]

Tenure

Cloud was sworn in on July 10, 2018.^[9]

In December 2020, Cloud was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated^[10] incumbent Donald Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.^[11][12][13]

During the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Cloud and his colleagues were ushered to a secure location. Later, video footage of him surfaced in which he refused to wear a mask, in violation of House rules.^[14][15]

Cloud was one of 12 House Republicans to vote against HR 1085, to award three Congressional Gold Medals to the United States Capitol Police who protected the Capitol on January 6, 2021.^[16][17][18] In a statement defending his vote, he said, "I have always stood by and supported our brave law enforcement and still do but this bill was not truly about that, despite its name. Instead of simply being about honoring the Capitol Police who bravely protected the Capitol on January 6th, Speaker Pelosi included damaging language that unnecessarily weighs down the bill. The text refers to the Capitol as the temple of democracy. Simply put, it’s not a temple and Congress should not refer to it as one. The federal government is not a god."^[19] In June 2021, Cloud and 20 other House Republicans voted against a similar resolution.^[20]

Iraq

In June 2021, Cloud was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the AUMF against Iraq.^[21][22]

Immigration

Cloud voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.^[23][24]

Cloud voted against Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1158) which effectively prohibits ICE from cooperating with Health and Human Services to detain or remove illegal alien sponsors of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).^[25]

Committee assignments

Caucus memberships

Freedom Caucus^[26]
Republican Study Committee^[27]

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