Tina smith Sen

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GOT IN MIKE FUCKING LEE'S FACE ON FB FUCKERY

SCOTUS REFORM

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‘Final decision’ made on military medals awarded to Wounded Knee soldiers

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KTTC) – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced the soldiers who fought at Wounded Knee will keep their military awards, but the decision isn’t sitting well with some U.S. lawmakers.

The Medal of Honor was awarded to 19 members of the 7th Calvary Regiment following the 1890 events on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek.

While sometimes described as a battle, historic records show the Army was in the midst of a campaign to repress the tribes in the area. An estimated 250 Native Americans, including women and children, of the Lakota Sioux Tribe were killed as the soldiers attempted to disarm Native American fighters who had already surrendered at their camp.

The soldiers’ awards cite a range of actions, including bravery, efforts to rescue fellow troops and actions to “dislodge Sioux Indians” who were concealed in a ravine.

The event became a celebrated part of the regiment’s history, with its coat of arms still featuring the head of a Native American chief to “commemorate Indian campaigns.”

Fast-forward to 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee but did not revoke the medals.

Jump to 2024, when an order was issued by Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, to review the awards after a congressional recommendation.

Native American groups, advocates, state lawmakers from South Dakota and a number of Congress members have called for officials to revoke the medals, which represent the military’s highest honor.

“Under my direction, we’re making it clear, without hesitation, that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals,” Hegseth said in a video posted on the social platform X.

“This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate,” he continued. “We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did.”

“This was the wrong decision,” said Minnesota DFL Senator Tina Smith. “There was no honor in what happened that day. This is a stain on our history. Revoking their Medals of Honor would help tell the true story of what happened.”

A Defense Department official told The Associated Press that it’s unclear whether the report Hegseth cited in his recent social media video will be made public.

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indiv minne ice shooting 1 26

an 6 25

After a longtime Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated over the weekend — and another legislator and his wife were hospitalized after being attacked by the same shooter — Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) joked about it on social media. And one of his Senate colleagues from Minnesota took notice and recently confronted him.

57 year-old Vance Boelter is the primary suspect in the killings of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark on Saturday. Boelter is also allegedly responsible for the shooting of Democratic-Farmer-Labor (or DFL, which is the Minnesota equivalent of the Democratic Party) state senator John Hoffman and his wife on the same day, who both remain in critical condition. Investigators say he had a list of other DFL elected officials, including Sen. Tina Smith (DFL-Minn.) and former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. Boelter is accused of dressing as a police officer, in which he donned body armor and a "hyper-realistic mask" before allegedly carrying out the attacks.

In two tweets from his official X account, Lee wrote "this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way" and "nightmare on Waltz street." As of Monday evening, the tweets have not been taken down."

On Monday, Multiple Capitol Hill reporters noticed that Smith pulled Lee out of a Senate Republican meeting to confront him over the posts. She told reporters "let me just gather myself" before eventually giving the details of the confrontation.

IFrame Content

"I told him that I thought it was brutal and cruel. He should think about the implications of what he's saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation," she told CNN reporter Maju Raju.

"I wanted him to hear from me directly how painful that was and how brutal that was to see that on what was just a horribly brutal weekend," she continued. Smith went on to say that the Utah Republican "didn't say a lot," and that "frankly, I think he was a bit stunned."

"He certainly didn't promise to take it down or say anything publicly about it," she added. "He seemed kind of surprised to be confronted."

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AN 9 24

alternet NO LNX

From moderate to manipulator: Behind the unmasking of John Roberts

WASHINGTON — John Roberts may have a robe. Still, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has no clothes, according to Democrats who are outraged to bewildered by new reporting that paints the nation’s most potent jurist as a masterful MAGA manipulator.

Congressional Democrats are accusing Roberts of bending, twisting and contorting the Supreme Court — along with the Constitution he swore an oath to — to fit former President Donald Trump and the allegedly illegal actions he took that have kept him tied up in state and federal courts alike since he left the White House four years ago.

New illustrious, behind-the-scenes reporting from the New York Times reveals Roberts personally directed the court’s three historic Jan. 6, 2021 rulings, including the one granting presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for their “official acts.”

Democrats are now redoubling their efforts to make the high court a centerpiece of this year’s elections as they continue their uphill battle to pass meaningful ethics reforms to try and rein the high court in.

“Chief Justice Roberts exudes much more of an establishment aura about him, but he really has been a crucial force behind the degradation of constitutional jurisprudence on the Supreme Court,” Rep, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) — a Constitutional lawyer and law professor by trade — told Raw Story after digesting the illuminating new reporting.

According to the scoop-strewn NYT piece by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, Roberts authored a Feb. 22 memo to his eight colleagues “that radiated frustration and certainty” regarding the monumental cases winding through lower courts centered on efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

While revelatory, sadly, the new reporting on the Roberts Court isn’t surprising to Raskin.

ALSO READ: The simple yet powerful way Tim Walz just exposed Donald Trump

“It's what anybody can see in reading their decisions. We know what's going on there. They're not textualists — they completely ignored the text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Raskin said. “They're not originalists — nobody even made an originalist argument about why the president of the United States should be immune from criminal prosecution for felonies he commits under the cloak of office. And, you know, they have really drifted a long way from any recognizable constitutional jurisprudence of interpretation.”

The carefully manicured image of Roberts as a moderate is now melting away. It’s left Democrats on Capitol Hill debating how to restore public confidence in a Supreme Court many in the party and the public have lost faith in.

“Very short-term thinking”

It’s more than just Chief Justice Roberts moving in the shadows to orchestrate this year’s three seemingly pro-Trump Jan. 6 rulings. Accusations of corruption are also in the air.

Coupled with the estimated $4.2 million in gifts Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly openly accepted from Republican megadonors over the years, as first reported by ProPublica, many Democrats now fear this Supreme Court has been weaponized by the far-right.

“His court's going to go down as the most corrupt in history and, honestly, the most political in history, too,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) — a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein — told Raw Story on the Capitol steps this week.

Then there’s the luxurious all-expense paid fishing trip Justice Samuel Alito accepted from billionaire Paul Singer, which he publicly defended in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Not to mention the politicking. There’s the upside-down American flag that proudly flew outside the Alito’s Northern Virginia home in the wake of the 2021 attack on the Capitol and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flapping in the ocean breeze outside the Alito’s New Jersey beach house, both of which the justice blames on his wife, Martha-Ann.

As for Thomas, he refused to recuse himself from the monumental J6 cases even after his wife Ginni — and the string of conspiratorial text messages she sent to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — was found to be central to Trump’s efforts to overturn the last presidential election.

“It might not be illegal, but it certainly should scare the hell out of every American that somebody with that kind of access and power and proximity to a Supreme Court justice can be pushing that type of nonsense," former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) — who served as a technical advisor to the select Jan. 6 committee — told Raw Story back in 2022. “The text messages validate that many elected officials believed it.”

Critics are left questioning where the high court ends and the RNC begins.

“I'm naive. I was raised to think that the justices were there to look at the Constitution and the law and work together to find the best decision for the American people. Now they're a function of the Republican Party, which the court never was before,” Don Beyer said. “Very short-term thinking. If we look at our 40-some-odd presidents, only one would it apply to.”

The five-term congressman says Supreme Court justices — especially the chief justice — need to open their eyes because, to him and an expanding chorus of critics, there’s nothing partisan about Democrat’s fears.

“There's no other Republican president I would have worried about,” Beyer said. “Not George Herbert Walker Bush or Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford — certainly none of our Democratic presidents — but this one. It isn't like he's conferring an advantage on the next Democratic president who will do whatever he wants — no.”

The nakedly political and grossly unethical turn of the Roberts Court weighs on the 74-year-old.

“Incredibly discouraging. I've been discouraged by Justice Roberts for a long time,” Beyer said. “I know the judiciary’s independent — I don't ever want to interfere — but the fact that he could let the ethical abuses go on and on, no treatment whatsoever, which is, I mean, the greatest discouragement.”

Last year, after months of punishing press coverage, Roberts reversed himself and signed off on a new, if unenforced, Supreme Court Code of Conduct. It was unanimous.

These days, the signatures of all nine Supreme Court justices also make the document almost worthless, at least to many lawmakers across the street at the Capitol.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Throughout this session of Congress, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate have relentlessly tried to impose mandatory and enforceable ethics rules on Supreme Court justices—basically, the same ones that apply to every other federal judge in the nation. Republicans have been united in blocking every such effort.

Senate Republicans have the back of the conservative majority on the Roberts Court, much like Roberts has advanced the agenda of congressional Republicans.

“If you go back and look at the most anti-democratic decisions of the Supreme Court — the immunity decision being one, but the little array of insurrection decisions, of which it was a part of in the threesome that's in this article — you see a lot of backstage maneuvering by the chief justice,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story as he walked through the basement of the Capitol. “It reminds me of the backstage maneuvering by the chief justice that brought us Citizens United.”

The former Rhode Island attorney general and U.S. attorney is the second highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee where he’s been pushing the SCERT — or Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency — Act, which would place a binding code of conduct and mandatory disclosure requirements on the justices.

Ethics reform is one thing. Unlimited corporate funding is another corrosive element of contemporary American politics altogether.

Democrats are still smarting from Citizens United and the floodgates of political spending it unleashed. The chief justice also deftly moved behind the scenes to manipulate that 2010 ruling, Whitehouse readily recalls.

“Remember, [Roberts] had to restructure the case. He changed the question presented. He set up the case so that there would be no record — actual record,” Whitehouse recalled. “He changed the standard.”

That was a bipartisan complaint in that Senate of a bygone, if recent, era. The ruling led then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who co-authored the McCain-Feingold law that Citizens United decimated — to publicly and personally call out Chief Justice Roberts.

"I am more disappointed in him than any of the other four that voted to overturn McCain-Feingold," McCain said back in 2012.

Republicans beg to differ

Roberts indeed has allies. Lots of them. Powerful ones. And they’re laughing in Democrat’s faces.

Republican Party leaders, like former Senate Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) — who’s running to replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — basically just avoid critics and critical reporting, like the New York Times just dropped, these days.

“I think I saw the headline — that's about all,” Cornyn told Raw Story while hopping a tram under the Capitol.

Before arriving in Washington in 2002, Cornyn served on the Texas Supreme Court. He says Roberts shouldn’t even entertain what his senatorial critics have to say.

“He's got lifetime tenure,” Cornyn said through a laugh. “I wouldn't be taking advice from members of Congress on how to do my job if I was him, either.”

Just as they have with Justices Thomas and Alito — no matter the latest eye-popping revelation — today’s Republicans have united around the Chief Justice, as if they are one.

“Even without having read it, I think extremely highly of him and believe him to be a person with the utmost integrity and dedicated to the independence of the courts,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Raw Story as she walked through the Capitol Wednesday.

Collins must not have gotten the memo from her Democratic colleagues.

The ‘court packing’ myth

Many pundits hailed Roberts for opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but in the Dobbs decision, he lost out to the five Republican appointees on ‘his’ court who are seemingly even further right than he is.

Many progressives weren’t buying the righteous, caring and politically aloof version of himself Roberts portrayed back then, and they say this latest reporting shows they were right.

“That's interesting how there's sort of this story out there that Roberts was like a moderate and mediator. And the [NYT] story would suggest that’s not really necessarily the case,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) told Raw Story after voting on the Senate floor this week.

While Republican rhetoric paints all elected Democrats — from the top of the party’s presidential ticket on down — as wanting to expand, or ‘pack,’ the court, only three Senate Democrats have formally endorsed a progressive measure to expand the size of the court, as Raw Story reported last month.

Smith and Massachusetts Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are the three who’ve publicly endorsed Markey’s measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court. That’s it.

Even with all the negative press, Smith says other Senate Democrats haven’t approached them about their measure to expand the size of the court.

“I haven't heard any,” Smith said.

That doesn’t mean her colleagues aren’t discussing the Roberts Court.

“There's a lot of conversation about the court and challenges to the court,” Smith said. “Once we get through this election and we have a better understanding of what the landscape is, we'll talk more about it.”

Or maybe they won’t.

“We're not going to get expansion”

Some Democrats have already basically, shut the door on the conversation of expanding the court. Many just don’t see it as a practical solution.

“We're not going to get expansion,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story on his way to a vote in the Capitol Wednesday. “There's a lot of downside to expansion — we expand, they expand — and it politicizes it.”

As President Joe Biden proposed back in July, Welch and most congressional Democrats now support instituting an 18-year term limit for the nation’s justices.

“First of all, that's a very substantial term, and they're inside, so they have the benefit of protections,” Welch argued. “And then number two, every president is going to have an opportunity to appoint two members, so that means the American people get to weigh in indirectly by choosing the president. I think it would really take the extreme politics out of the court.”

As for Roberts, Welch is no fan of the jurist he’s predicting historians will frown upon.

“He’s very skillful and, unfortunately, a driving force, I think, in the radical redirection of the court,” Welch bemoaned to Raw Story. “The court has got an extreme radical majority. It's lost public respect.”

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8 26

Tina Smith - Wikipedia

Christine Elizabeth "Tina" Smith (née Flint, born March 4, 1958)^[1] is an American politician, retired Democratic political consultant, and former businesswoman serving as the junior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2018. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota's affiliate of the national Democratic Party, she served from 2015 to 2018 as the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota under Governor Mark Dayton.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Smith moved to Minnesota in the 1980s to work for General Mills and later became the vice president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. She then began a career as a political consultant and organizer for local Democratic candidates. Smith managed Walter Mondale's unsuccessful last-minute campaign in the 2002 United States Senate election in Minnesota after incumbent senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election.^[2]

After Mondale lost the Senate election, Smith served as chief of staff to Mayor of Minneapolis R. T. Rybak. She then helped run Dayton's successful campaign for Governor of Minnesota in 2010. After his victory, Dayton named Smith his chief of staff. Later, for Dayton's reelection campaign in the 2014 election, Smith was named as Dayton's pick for lieutenant governor.^[3] After winning her first election to public office, Smith served from 2015 to 2018 as Minnesota's 48th lieutenant governor. Dayton then appointed her to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Al Franken's resignation in 2018. She won the 2018 special election and was elected to a full term in 2020.^[4]

On February 13, 2025, Smith announced that she will not run for reelection in 2026.^[5]

Early life and education

Smith was born on March 4, 1958,^[6] in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of Christine, a teacher, and F. Harlan Flint, a lawyer.^[7] She mostly grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, attending Manderfield and Acequia Madre Elementary.^[8] She finished high school at Redwood High School in Larkspur, California.^[7][9]

Before going to college, Smith worked on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. She graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and later earned a Master of Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.^[10]

Early career

In 1984, Smith moved to Minnesota for a marketing job at General Mills.^[11] She later started her own marketing firm, where she consulted with businesses and nonprofits.^[12]

In the early 1990s, Smith became involved in local politics, volunteering for DFL campaigns in Minneapolis.^[13] She managed Ted Mondale's unsuccessful 1998 campaign for governor. After Minnesota's U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash weeks before the 2002 election, Smith managed former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale's campaign for the seat.^[14] After Mondale lost a narrow election to Norm Coleman, Smith began working as the vice president of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.^[15]

In 2006, Smith left her job at Planned Parenthood to serve as chief of staff to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.^[16] In 2010, she was picked to manage Rybak's gubernatorial campaign, which ended after Margaret Anderson Kelliher won the DFL endorsement.^[14] Smith then joined the campaign of Mark Dayton, who skipped the endorsing convention and eventually won the DFL primary.^[13] After Dayton defeated Republican Tom Emmer in the general election, Smith was named a co-chair of the transition. When Dayton took office in January 2011, he appointed Smith as his chief of staff.^[17]

Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota

2014 election

When Lieutenant Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon announced she would not seek reelection, Dayton selected Smith as his running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial election. He cited Smith's work on passing legislation for the new Minnesota Vikings Stadium, as well as her support for the Destination Medical Center project with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.^[17]

Smith stepped down as Dayton's chief of staff to campaign for lieutenant governor. After being nominated by acclamation at the DFL state convention, and facing only token opposition in the DFL gubernatorial primary, Dayton and Smith defeated Republicans Jeff Johnson and Bill Kuisle in the general election.^[18]

Tenure

Smith in 2016

Smith took office as lieutenant governor on January 5, 2015, and served until she was appointed to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate on January 2, 2018.^[19] During her tenure, Smith was described by many political observers as having a much higher profile and playing a much more significant role in legislative negotiations than her predecessors.^[11][20] She spent a significant amount of time traveling the state in support of the priorities of Dayton's administration, including funding for optional preschool for all four-year-olds, transportation infrastructure, and rural broadband internet access. She also served as chair of the Destination Medical Center board until her resignation in December 2017.^[21][22]

In 2016, Roll Call named Smith to its "America's Top 25 Most Influential Women in State Politics" list, citing her high-profile role in the Dayton administration.^[23]

Despite widespread speculation to the contrary, Smith announced in March 2017 that she would not run for governor in the 2018 election.^[24][25]

U.S. Senate

Appointment

Dayton appointing Smith to the Senate

On December 13, 2017, Governor Dayton announced Smith as his pick to fill the United States Senate seat held by Al Franken, who had announced he would resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct.^[26][27] Democrats in the state immediately united around Smith as the party's candidate in the November 2018 special election to fill Franken's term.^[28] Franken resigned on January 2, 2018.^[29][30]

Elections

2018 special

Main article: 2018 United States Senate special election in Minnesota

In August 2018, Smith won the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party primary with 76% of the vote. Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, finished second with 14%.^[31][32]

In the November general election, Smith defeated Republican nominee Karin Housley, a state senator from St. Marys Point, with 53% of the vote to Housley's 42%.^[33][34]

2020

Main article: 2020 United States Senate election in Minnesota

Minnesota was seen as a swing state in the 2020 presidential election, which made Smith a swing-state Democrat up for reelection. Her campaign focused on delivering results for Minnesotans on local issues, such as farming in southern Minnesota, police brutality in wake of the George Floyd protests, and North Shore drilling in the Duluth area, and took strong positions on national issues such as the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination. Smith defeated Republican nominee Jason Lewis with 48.8% of the vote to Lewis's 43.5%, thus winning her first full six-year Senate term.^[35]

Tenure

Smith being sworn into the Senate by Vice President Mike Pence on January 3, 2018

With Vice President Mike Pence administering the oath of office, Smith was officially sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2018,^[36] alongside Doug Jones of Alabama. She was accompanied by fellow Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President and former Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale.^[37]

Smith was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol. She called the participants in the attack "seditionists" and blamed Trump for inciting the attack. When the Capitol was secure and the Congress returned to session, Smith supported the certification of the count.^[38]

In response to the insurrection, she called for Trump's immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and impeachment, saying that the president needed to be held accountable for the attack and that "he is dangerous to our democracy and to public safety."^[39][40] She said that Representatives Michelle Fischbach and Jim Hagedorn, who objected to certifying the election, "were complicit in pushing for the president's big lie",^[39] and also called on Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to resign for objecting to the certification of the election and spreading falsehoods about election integrity.^[41]

Official portait, 115th Congress

On January 31, 2024, Smith sent a one-minute video to the Washington Press Club Foundation's annual congressional dinner, "roasting" U.S. Representative Dean Phillips over his campaign in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party's nomination for president.^[42][43]

Smith is a member of the Fight Club in the U.S. Senate.^[44]

Committee assignments

Smith chairs the Housing, Transportation, and Community Development Subcommittee

^[45][46][47][48][49][50]

Smith previously served on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from January 10, 2018, to January 3, 2019, during the first session of the 116th Congress.

Caucus memberships

Rare Disease Caucus ^[51]

Political positions

Abortion

Smith supports abortion rights. She was a vice president at Planned Parenthood from 2003 to 2006, where she lobbied against efforts to restrict abortion.^[52][53]

In February 2019, Smith voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, saying that the bill "would override physicians' professional judgment about what is best for their patients" and "put physicians in the position of facing criminal penalties if their judgment about what is best for their patient is contrary to what is described in this bill."^[54]

On May 2, 2022, just after Politico obtained and released a 98-page U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, Smith responded in a tweet, "This is bullshit."^[55] After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, Senators Smith and Elizabeth Warren wrote a New York Times op-ed calling on President Joe Biden to unblock "critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services."^[56] On April 2, 2024, Smith published an essay, "I Hope to Repeal an Arcane Law That Could Be Misused to Ban Abortion Nationwide", in The New York Times.^[57]

Agriculture

Smith visits the Haubenschild farm in Princeton, Minnesota

In March 2019, Smith was one of 38 senators to sign a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue warning that dairy farmers "have continued to face market instability and are struggling to survive the fourth year of sustained low prices" and urging his department to "strongly encourage these farmers to consider the Dairy Margin Coverage program."^[58]

Climate change

In November 2018, Smith was one of 25 Democratic senators to have cosponsored a resolution in response to findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and National Climate Assessment. The resolution affirmed the senators' acceptance of the findings and their support for bold action to address climate change.^[59]

Smith was a member of the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, which published a report of its findings in August 2020.^[60]

Digital assets

In a 2021 letter, Smith and four colleagues wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to criticize the company's Diem digital currency project. In the letter, they argued that "stablecoins in general" are "incompatible with the actual financial regulatory landscape."^[61] In 2022, Smith and Elizabeth Warren wrote to Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson to object to a plan to allow for the inclusion of Bitcoin in their 401(k)s.^[62]

Drug policy

Smith discusses measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs and medical care

In December 2018, Smith was one of 21 senators to sign a letter to Food and Drugs Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stating their approval of the Food and Drug Administration's actions to hinder youth access to e-cigarettes and urging the FDA "to take additional, stronger steps to prevent and reduce e-cigarette use among youth."^[63]

In July 2020, Smith introduced the Substance Regulation and Safety Act to legalize cannabis at the federal level and direct federal agencies to develop various regulations regarding cannabis.^[64] During a floor speech on racial justice, she called for passage of the bill along with the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act to end the "failed policy" of cannabis prohibition that "contributes to mass incarceration and over-policing of communities of color".^[65]

Foreign policy

In April 2019, Smith and 33 other senators signed a letter to President Donald Trump asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that by preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity". The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries decreased migration to the U.S. by helping to improve conditions in those countries.^[66]

In March 2024, Smith urged the Biden administration to recognize a "nonmilitarized" Palestinian state after the end of the Gaza war.^[67] In November 2024, Smith was one of 19 senators to vote to halt the United States' arms sales to Israel.^[68] In April 2025, Smith voted for a pair of resolutions proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders to cancel the Trump's administration's sales of $8.8 billion in bombs and other munitions to Israel. The proposals were defeated, 82 to 15.^[69]

Gun control

In March 2018, Smith and nine other senators signed a letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairman Lamar Alexander and ranking Democrat Patty Murray requesting they schedule a hearing on the causes and remedies of mass shootings in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.^[70]

Health care

In the lead-up to the 2018 elections, Smith said her record in the Senate showed she would fight pharmaceutical companies to improve people's lives, and that she would continue to fight to lower the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs in Minnesota, for example by making generic drugs more available, preventing people with preexisting conditions from being charged more, and allowing Minnesotans to buy in to Medicare if they are dissatisfied with their options on the insurance market.^[71]

Smith has endorsed single-payer healthcare.^[72]

In December 2018, Smith and 41 other senators signed a letter to Trump administration officials Alex Azar, Seema Verma, and Steve Mnuchin arguing that the administration was improperly using Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act to authorize states to "increase health care costs for millions of consumers while weakening protections for individuals with preexisting conditions." The senators requested the administration withdraw the policy and "re-engage with stakeholders, states, and Congress."^[73]

In January 2019, during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown, Smith and 33 other senators signed a letter to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb recognizing the efforts of the FDA to address the shutdown's effect on public health and employees while remaining alarmed "that the continued shutdown will result in increasingly harmful effects on the agency's employees and the safety and security of the nation's food and medical products."^[74]

In February 2019, Smith and ten other senators signed a letter to insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi about their increased insulin prices, which had deprived patients of "access to the life-saving medications they need."^[75]

Housing and infrastructure

Smith speaks at the Building Trades Council meeting of unionized construction workers in Minnesota, 2024

In April 2019, Smith and 40 other senators signed a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the Housing and Urban Development Department's Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing "HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country" and expressing disappointment that President Trump's budget "has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development." The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.^[76]

In June 2019, Smith was one of eight senators to sponsor the Made in America Act, legislation that would designate federal programs that had funded infrastructure projects not currently subject to Buy America standards and mandate that the materials used in these programs be domestically produced. Bill cosponsor Tammy Baldwin said the bill would strengthen Buy America requirements and that she was hopeful both Democrats and Republicans would support "this effort to make sure our government is buying American products and supporting American workers."^[77]

Immigration

In August 2018, Smith was one of 17 senators to sign a letter spearheaded by Kamala Harris to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen demanding that the Trump administration take immediate action in attempting to reunite 539 migrant children with their families, citing each passing day of inaction as intensifying "trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection."^[78]

In July 2019, following reports that the Trump administration intended to cease protecting spouses, parents and children of active-duty service members from deportation, Smith was one of 22 senators led by Tammy Duckworth to sign a letter arguing that the protection gave service members the ability "to fight for the United States overseas and not worry that their spouse, children, or parents will be deported while they are away" and that its termination would both cause service members personal hardship and negatively affect their combat performance.^[79]

LGBTQ rights

In October 2018, Smith and 19 other senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging him to reverse the rolling back of a policy that granted visas to same-sex partners of LGBTQ diplomats who had unions that were not recognized by their home countries, writing that too many places around the world have seen LGBTQ individuals "subjected to discrimination and unspeakable violence, and receive little or no protection from the law or local authorities" and that refusing to let LGBTQ diplomats bring their partners to the US would be equivalent of upholding "the discriminatory policies of many countries around the world."^[80]

Railroad safety

In June 2019, Smith and nine other senators cosponsored the Safe Freight Act, a bill that would require freight trains to have one or more certified conductors and a certified engineer on board who can collaborate on how to protect the train and people living near the tracks. The legislation was meant to correct a Federal Railroad Administration rollback of a proposed rule intended to establish safety standards.^[81]

Personal life

Smith's husband, Archie Smith, is an independent investor, focusing largely on health care and medical companies.^[82] The couple have two sons.^[83]

In May 2019, during a speech on the Senate floor, Smith described her experiences with getting help in college and in her early 30s for depression.^[84]

On July 16, 2025, feeling ill, Smith was hospitalized and kept overnight for observation.^[85]

Awards

Smith received the Joan and Walter Mondale Award for Public Service at the 2026 Humphrey-Mondale Awards.^[86]

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sen. Tina Smith, Rep. Paul Tonko to speak at Citizens’ Climate Lobby virtual conference

Published on November 27th, 2022 | by Citizens' Climate Lobby

The midterms have been pivotal in forecasting the political leanings of the next Congress, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby is poised to make a difference no matter who is in office. One way to make sure that you’re fully prepared for climate action going into the new year is to attend CCL’s free, virtual December conference!

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Facing growing callsfor his resignation or explusion for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on Monday filed an ethics complaint against the seven Democratic senators who filed an ethics complaint against him and fellow GOP Sen. Ted Cruz last week over their roles in inciting the deadly January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Missouri Republican's counter-complaint (pdf) against Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.) accuses the Democratic senators of filing an "unprecedently frivolous and improper ethics complaint" and demands that the Senate Ethics Committee mete out "discipline" in response.

In a letter to the group of seven Democrats on Monday, Hawley wrote that he was "astounded to see the outrageous personal and partisan attack you labeled an 'ethics complaint.' It is a startling abuse of the ethics process and a direct assault on democratic debate."

Hawley's counter-complaint prompted immediate mockery, with Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) likening the filing to a schoolyard taunt:

Mcconnell republican who incited fascist insurrection against democracy going with the ‘I’m rubber you’re glue’ def… https://t.co/wLaHykELmj

— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@Bill Pascrell, Jr.)1611582286.0

The Democratic complaint against Hawley and Cruz states that the Republican senators "amplified claims of election fraud that had resulted in threats of violence against state and local officials around the country."

"Cruz and Hawley continued to amplify the claims of fraud that they likely knew to be baseless and that had led to violence earlier that day," the complaint continues. "Violent action provoked by false fraud claims remains a persistent threat."

In the early hours of January 7—shortly after the violent right-wing mob incited by then-President Donald Trump invaded and ransacked the halls of the Capitol Building—Hawley and Cruz voted with several of their Senate GOP colleagues and more than 100 House Republicans to toss out Arizona and Pennsylvania's electoral votes for President Joe Biden, an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Hawley's role in the last-ditch Republican attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters drew particularly close attention, in part thanks to the now-infamous photo of the Missouri senator raising his fist in support of the pro-Trump mob just before it stormed the Capitol, resulting in five deaths.

While Hawley now claims he was "never attempting to overturn the election," The Washington Post's Greg Sargent argued last week that the senator's narrative is "just clever parsing: Hawley and others who announced plans to object to Biden's electors plainly helped persuade untold numbers of Americans that the election result might still be overturned (Hawley even subsequently voted to sustain the objections)."

"As long as a large enough constituency still continued believing the election was stolen from Trump, Hawley would be remembered among them as the leading fighter on their behalf," Sargent wrote. "Hawley thought he could harness these impulses. He is now stuck in the monumentally absurd position of condemning the violence without retracting or apologizing for his role in feeding the Big Lie that incited it."

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