#Jim McGovern

[liberalsarecool]

“He’s been indicted more times than elected.”

That’s all I’d need to know about a candidate.

Love the Democrats' messaging! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

[sher-ee]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

Republicans ground the House to a halt Wednesday afternoon after U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) objected to remarks made by Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA), during which he delivered a short overview of the 88 criminal charges Donald Trump is facing, and civil court findings including one deeming him an adjudicated rapist. “Take down his words,” Congresswoman Houchin declared, interrupting Rep. McGovern. “I demand that his words be taken down.” For more than one hour, according to Fox News’ Chad Pergram, the people’s business stopped as Republicans, angered by the Democrat’s factual remarks, had them investigated by the House Parliamentarian. “Donald Trump might want to be a king, but he is not a king,” Congressman McGovern observed. “He is not a presumptive king. he’s not even the president – he’s a presumptive nominee.”

“At some point,” McGovern told his congressional colleagues, “it’s time for this body to recognize that there is no precedent for this situation. We have a presumptive nominee for President facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it. These are not alternative facts. These are real facts. A candidate for President of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. He’s also charged with stealing classified information and a jury has already found him liable for rape and a civil court. And yet, in this Republican controlled House, it’s okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham.” The decision to strike McGovern’s “offensive” remarks appears to have come from U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL), who was presiding over the chamber. He cited House Rule XVII, which Pergram reported “says House members are prohibited from impugning the motives of fellow House members, senators or the President. And in this case, the former President.”

Earlier, before Rep. Houchin demanded his remarks be stricken, McGovern also blasted Republicans for traveling to New York in their “cult uniforms,” to show support for Donald Trump at his criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. The Massachusetts Democrat told his colleagues, “my friends over the other side of the aisle have pandered to their most extreme members over and over and over again. They let the extremists kick out their own Speaker. They let the extremists dictate the agenda on the House floor. They let the extremists take down seven rule votes since January 2023 – a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done. And speaking of indictments, Republicans are skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to New York to try to undermine Donald Trump’s criminal trial. No time to work with Democrats, but plenty of time to put on weird matching cult uniforms and stand behind President Trump with their bright red ties like pathetic props.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)’s speech on the House floor calling out criminal defendant Donald Trump was delivering truth bombs left and right, and it made Republicans upset, especially the part in which he said that Trump “might want to be a king, but he is not a king” and the fact that he was calling out his criminality.

Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) was the Republican who ordered a frivolous halt to McGovern’s speech by demanding “that his words be taken down.” Floor Presider Jerry Carl (R-AL) granted Houchin’s request, and McGovern was barred from speaking on the Floor for the rest of the day.

See Also:

NBC News: Democrat McGovern ruled 'out of order' after listing off Trump's legal woes on the House floor

Daily Kos: GOP brings House to a halt to debate whether facts are allowed

[vyorei]

[tomorrowusa]

« There are a lot of Republicans who are rational human beings who are horrified by this, but don’t seem to have the guts to stand up to it and push back. »

— US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA-02) quoted in the New York Times about the stranglehold which the loony far right has on House Republicans.

Trump urges government shutdown as McCarthy scrambles ahead of weekend deadline

Trump has made himself the de facto House Speaker. Kevin McCarthy is little more than a spineless puppet who grovels both to Trump and to the bomb throwers in his own caucus. While some Republicans may understand the shambles caused by their inertia, they are still unwilling to do anything about it.

The GOP is not a party which can be trusted with government.

[meandmybigmouth]

THE RICH NOT GETTING THEIR FAIR SHARE?

[thekeypa]

“One year ago today, American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot & killed by Israeli troops while wearing press credentials and reporting in the West Bank. I stand with those demanding justice and accountability for her death.”

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Early Friday an intruder broke into Pelosi's San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, leaving the 82-year-old hospitalized. The suspect was reportedly looking for the House Speaker, but she was not home at the time. In response to the attack, Greene tweeted that "violence and crime are rampant in Joe Biden's America," adding that "it shouldn't happen to me." She noted that she was swatted multiple times and has received death threats on a daily basis. McGovern denounced Greene and blamed her for calling for Pelosi's execution in the past. "YOU called for Nancy Pelosi to be executed. YOU said she should be hung for treason," the Massachusetts lawmaker tweeted. "And now that someone listened, you're making Paul Pelosi's attack about YOU. This is what Republicans stand for, America. It's sick." Greene recently testified that she does not recall supporting political violence against members of the Democratic Party, including Pelosi. However, in a Facebook video in 2019, Greene called Pelosi a "traitor to our country." "She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That's what treason is," Greene reportedly said at the time, per CNN. "And by our law, representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government. And it's a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason."

[plitnick]

Smotrich receives a cold American welcome

While fringe American Jewish elements like the Orthodox Union, the far-right Zionit Organization of America and Israel Bonds are welcoming the racist Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, most of the American Jewish community is shunning him. Some of those publicly denouncing him are people who have heretofore hewn to the mantra of never criticizing Israel no matter how horrible its…

[filmjunky-99]

a i r p l a n e !, 1980 🎬 dir. david zucker, jerry zucker, jim abrahams 'Magazines'

[angel-princess-anna]

Downton Abbey 3 Filming - Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate

Source is the Daily Fail so take any of their wordings with a grain of salt. If this is a larger event in the plot, they might be filming again there tomorrow and we might get more of the cast...

More pics under the read more:

The return of Lady Manville??

The rest appear to be extras:

[emcgoverns]

elizabeth mcgovern (with jim carter and allen leech) at a private charity dinner (october 2015) | 📸: john coles

[bonhughbon]

Downton Abbey: A New Era - Behind The Scenes (Part 6/6) (x) (x)

[tomorrowusa]

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL-16) wonders why so few Republicans have spoken out about the assassination attempt on Paul Pelosi.

Rep. Kinzinger told Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

This is what happens when you convince a third of the country that the election was stolen and that the other side is an enemy. You other-ize people. You convince folks that your political opposition is out to get you and your family. So, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that every Republican needs to speak out on, just like every Democrat, Republican should speak out when Steve Scalise was shot. But the Republicans not speaking out now, let me say this, this is going to be visited on our side, not that it should actually matter what side you're on, but speak out now.

[ ... ]

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that all these candidates and members of Congress speak out. I'm afraid that they are not going to. I am afraid they are going to just use this as an opportunity with the election around the corner to make some snide reference to something. But listen, we're all humans, we have to start seeing each other as humans again. And it's really disappointing.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA-02) slammed semi-fascist Marjorie Taylor Greene who bizarrely tried to blame the attack on Mr. Pelosi on the Biden administration.

Vote for Trump Republicans and you’re saying you approve of political violence and instability. You are saying you approve of their embrace of domestic terrorism.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Susan B. Glasser

“Guilty.” Donald Trump had avoided the word for so long that it was understandable to think he might never face it. When he was finally hit with a criminal conviction, soon after 5 p.m. on a sunny late-May afternoon, he had to sit and listen inside a New York courtroom as the label he so dreaded was directed at him again and again—thirty-four guilties, one for each of the thirty-four felony counts against him. Too bad the television cameras weren’t able to record this historic moment. We the people will be left to imagine what it looked like when the only former American President to go on trial became the only ex-President to bear the title of “convicted felon.”

Trump himself seemed a bit stunned—deflated, even. Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, he offered a lacklustre rant, a sort of mashup of his greatest hits: “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial”; “I’m a very innocent man.” Soon, he was complaining about “millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now, from prisons and from mental institutions.” Was his standard-issue inflammatory anti-immigration diatribe related to his falsifying of business records in a 2016 hush-money payoff to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels? Trump didn’t care. “We have a country that’s in big trouble,” he said, before returning to the matter at hand. “This is long from over.” Then he turned his back and left.

What Trump lacked in truly incandescent rage, however, was soon supplied, in excess, by his followers—a backlash that unfolded as a carefully choreographed and truly unprecedented assault on the legitimacy of the American legal system. It struck me as no less threatening for having obviously been planned largely in advance. “Kangaroo court. Banana republic,” one social-media post from the Trump White House veteran Nick Ayers read—a pithy summation of much of the maga response. Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, called the verdict “the most egregious miscarriage of justice in our nation’s history,” proving both that he does not know our nation’s history and that hyperbole in defense of their leader is considered the most forgivable of G.O.P. sins.

Rewriting history—and, at times, even outright inverting it—is one of the signatures of Trumpism, as it is of so many authoritarian political movements. In Washington on Thursday morning, hours before the verdict, Senator Marco Rubio posted on social media an old newsreel video of revolutionary justice being meted out in front of thousands of spectators at a sports palace in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. “The public spectacle of political show trials has come to America,” he wrote. A day earlier, in another social-media post, he had compared Trump’s hush-money case to “the kind of sham trial used against political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union.”

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, surely knows better: Trump will not be summarily executed, as so many hundreds of thousands were in the Soviet purges. He won’t even have to wear an orange uniform if he does, in fact, end up serving time—inmates in New York are actually banned from doing so. After the verdict came out, on Thursday evening, Rubio complained again about “a political show trial.” Like Trump himself and many of his followers, and with no apologies to Woody Allen, he blamed Joe Biden for the whole travesty of a mockery of a sham.

Few Republicans dared to dissent from this instant new orthodoxy. Their lockstep statements made one long for the old bipartisan clichés about the sanctity of the courts and the wisdom of a jury made up of one’s peers. Indeed, when one prominent Republican, the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, who is now running for Senate, ventured to offer the formerly standard comforting mush about respecting the verdict and reaffirming the rule of law that “made this nation great,” the reaction from other Republicans was swift and stunning. “I don’t respect this verdict,” the Utah Senator Mike Lee posted, in response to Hogan’s tweet. “Nor should anyone.” Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s top campaign advisers, was so offended by Hogan’s defense of the American justice system that he appeared to publicly threaten his Senate bid. “You just ended your campaign,” LaCivita wrote to Hogan on X.

The blunt language set off all my post-2020 alarm bells—the Party that calls on its followers not to respect the courts is one that has already shown it can next order them to the streets. If this is how they are talking now, what will they do if the presiding judge in the trial, Juan Merchan, orders Trump imprisoned? The sentencing is currently set to take place on July 11th, just four days before the opening of the Republican National Convention. Is it fanciful, alarmist, or shrill to envision angry Trumpists storming the Manhattan courthouse? No, of course not. They have already shown what they’re capable of.

I found one of the statements reacting to the verdict especially chilling. It came from House Speaker Mike Johnson. There was nothing particularly notable about what Johnson said—he used the same buzzwords about “the weaponization of our justice system” and the “absurd verdict” that so many of his Republican colleagues did. The difference was that Johnson, unlike many of the empty suits who bluster around Washington, has already taken actions to rewrite history to suit Trump’s version of events—a project that will be crucial in determining whether Trump can overcome the stigma of a criminal conviction to win back the Presidency in November.

Just last week, in fact, Johnson’s House Republican majority went so far as to literally decree the fact of Trump’s trial off-limits. The episode, which did not get much attention at the time, is worth recounting in a bit of detail, because it hardly seems believable. And because it may be a preview of things to come.

The fight began a week ago Wednesday, when Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts representative who, for years, has been the decidedly unflashy top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, began debate on a procedural motion by criticizing the do-nothing 118th Congress, which is on track to be the least productive in recent memory. The session has been, McGovern concluded, “a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done.” The matter would have ended there had McGovern not had a few more things to say on the topic of indictments—and, more specifically, Trump’s four pending ones. Perhaps, McGovern theorized, House Republicans were offering lame measures to debate on the floor “to distract from the fact that their candidate for President has been indicted more times than he’s been elected,” or that “the leader of their party is on trial for covering up hush-money payments to a porn star for political gain.”

This language earned him an admonition from the Republican congressman presiding, who told McGovern to “refrain from engaging in personalities towards presumed nominees for the office of the President.” Incredulous, McGovern pointed out the hypocrisy of reprimanding him for stating the simple fact of the charges against Trump, while Republicans regularly take to the House floor to inveigh against the “sham” legal proceedings. Eventually, he picked up a well-thumbed copy of Jefferson’s “Manual,” the original parliamentary bible for the U.S. Congress, drawn from centuries of British tradition. He noted its prohibition on speaking “irreverently or seditiously against the King,” and added, “Is that what this is about?”

When McGovern then had the temerity to enumerate all Trump’s various criminal cases, a Republican congresswoman from Indiana jumped in, demanding that McGovern’s words be “taken down”—that is, struck from the official record. And sure enough, when the ruling came back, the archaic prohibition on trashing the kings of yore was indeed cited, and McGovern’s words were officially deleted on the grounds that he had accused Trump of “illegal activities”—as if McGovern were somehow just slinging charges on his own rather than referring to actual cases in courts of law. Trump is no sovereign, regal or otherwise—not yet, anyway. But, in the House overseen by his party, unpleasant events concerning him can officially be written out of history with the bang of a gavel.

Now that Trump has become the first former President in American history to be convicted of a crime, will the MAGA Congress ban that information, too? What happens when McGovern, or one of his Democratic colleagues, goes to the floor to read out Thursday’s stunning news, all thirty-four counts of it? The jury’s word may have been “guilty,” but it is far from the last one we’ll hear.