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Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota.Bill Clark and Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

Some members of Congress file financial disclosures that are basically illegible. And it's legal.

Reps. Spanberger and Johnson are introducing a bill that would require electronic submissions.

The goal is to increase transparency amid a broader conversation about banning stock trading.

A bipartisan duo of House members will introduce a bill on Tuesday to require members of Congress to file financial disclosures electronically, according to a release shared exclusively with Insider.

Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota are introducing the Easy to Read Electronic and Accessible Disclosures (READ) Act, which would allow users to search, sort, and download financial disclosure data filed by House members, Senators, and candidates for both chambers.

The simple, two-page bill would also ensure that the resulting user interface is accessible to people with disabilities by mandating compliance with the Rehabilitation Act.

As Insider's Dave Levinthal reported in May, members of Congress are currently allowed to submit their yearly financial disclosures as well as periodic reports on their stock trades via paper on a pre-printed form.

That's led to lots of members submitting disclosures that are essentially impossible to read.

Retiring Republican Rep. Fred Upton, for example, often hand-writes his reports.

A financial disclosure from Rep. Fred Upton, a Republican from MichiganUS House of Representatives

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California files reports that his office claims are legible when filed, only to appear garbled when uploaded electronically.

"[Khanna] is committed to transparency and looking into options to make it easier to read the scan of his disclosure forms in the future," spokesperson Marie Baldassarre told Insider in May. "The originals he files are always very legible."

A stock trade disclosure from Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from CaliforniaUS House of Representatives

"Poor penmanship shouldn't be the enemy of transparency," said Spanberger in the release. "By making this change, we can increase transparency and help rebuild a degree of trust in our democracy."

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"This bill is commonsense," said Johnson in the release. "Congress has a public trust problem, and we should do all we can to ensure our constituents have faith in their elected officials."

The bill has been endorsed by outside advocacy groups across the political spectrum, including the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Taxpayers Protection Alliance, National Taxpayers Union, and FreedomWorks.

"Government is only as effective as it is open and accessible," said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a government affairs manager at POGO. "This means that government records, including financial disclosures filed by elected officials, must be easy to find and easy to understand."

"These requirements will help bring critical transparency to the financial situation of members of Congress and more opportunity to spot potential conflicts of interest," added Hedtler-Gaudette.

The bill comes amid a broader push to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated last week that a bill banning trading could come to the floor this month, though some lawmakers in her own party are skeptical that will happen.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told Insider last week that a consensus bill to tackle the issue wouldn't come until after the midterms.

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A House Republican and Democrat are introducing a bill that would require members of Congress to file financial disclosures electronically - Yahoo...

In the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden won the popular vote in only 10% of the nation's rural counties. There was a certain type of rural county where Biden doubled that rate of victory. Unfortunately for Democrats, it was rural counties that are losing the most population.

From 2010 to 2020, 244 rural counties lost 10% or more of their population. Biden won the popular vote in 20% of those counties, as opposed to the rest of rural America, where he won at about half that rate.

Population loss didn't cause those counties to support Biden. Rather, it's the demographics of those counties that are losing population that explain the difference. The rural communities with the most population loss had higher percentages of ethnic or racial minorities than the rest of rural America. And these are populations that tend to vote more Democratic.

Rural counties that lost large portions of their population also tended to be economically distressed. That in turn leads to more people leaving.

Rural counties that lost 10% or more of their population are clustered in a few regions: Central Appalachia, the Mississippi River Delta, the border region of Texas, and parts of the Great Plains, and the Black Belt, a crescent stretching from Virginia to Texas with large numbers of Black residents.

The Black Belt of the Southeast is a region named for its dark soils where plantation agriculture dominated the economy before the Civil War. Because of slaverys impact, systemic disparities persist in the Black Belt, where the average poverty rate is 23.8%. Thats 10 percentage points higher than the national rural average.

The counties with the most population loss also had higher percentages of vulnerable individuals, such as those who are elderly or living in poverty.

Take Quitman County, Mississippi, for example. Quitman County, located in northwest Mississippi, is part of the Delta region. Its a farming community where approximately two-thirds of the population voted for Biden in 2020. Quitman County was classified as a persistent poverty county in 2013, which means the poverty rate exceeded 20% for at least three decades. In 2020, 75.9% of the population were ethnic or racial minorities, compared to 23% of the population in the rest of rural America.

Between 2010 and 2020, Quitman County lost 9.3% of its population, dropping from 8,223 residents in 2010 to 6,176 in 2020, according to the Census. The average population change in rural counties was 1.89% between 2010 and 2020.

Bamberg County, South Carolina, had a 16% decline from 2010 to 2020. The population dropped from 15,987 a decade ago to 13,311 in the last Census. Sixty-two percent of voters in 2020 voted for Biden in Bamberg County, which is also in persistent poverty. Sixty-two percent of the population were ethnic or racial minorities in 2020.

Bamberg and Quitman counties were not exceptions among Black Belt communities. The population change map shows a band of dark blue in the Black Belt region, indicating severe population loss.

Perry County, Alabama, lost 20% of its population between 2010 and 2020, while Duplin County, North Carolina, and Madison Parish, Louisiana, lost 17%. In Perry County, ethnic or racial minorities comprised 72.4% of the population and 65.9% of the population in Madison Parish. Both Perry County and Madison Parish voted for Biden in 2020, while Duplin County voted for Trump, who won by more than 20 percentage points.

The 2020 Census report showed that half of the population was white in Duplin County, which might explain the landslide win for Trump. In 63 of the 64 rural southern counties that had majority Black or African American populations, only Early County, Georgia, voted for Trump in 2020.

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by Sarah Melotte, The Daily Yonder September 20, 2022

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Rural Counties with the Most Population Loss Voted the Most Democratic in 2020 - Daily Yonder

Democrats

In latest ad, Michigan House candidate Hillary Scholten says her family is forgoing air conditioning, new shoes

Michigan Democrat Hillary Scholten, who is running in one of the country's most competitive congressional races, wants voters to believe she's "making do with less and making things last longer" just like them.

In her latest campaign ad, Scholten claims her family has dramatically cut back on spending because of inflation. Higher energy prices, for example, mean no more air conditioning for the Scholten family, the ad shows.

Nor can Scholten even afford shoes for her children. "Things [are] so expensive," she says after the ad shows her son wearing duct-taped sandals.

But those images may be a tough sell for Michigan voters, considering Scholten netted more than $200,000 last year working as an immigration attorney for a Grand Rapids-area law firm, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of her financial disclosure forms. Her family's total income was likely far higher given her husband scored consulting fees from two nonprofits, on top of his salary as a professor at a local university.

Scholten's latest ad push is part of a broader trend of Democrats struggling to relate to average voters during a period of immense economic uncertainty. For candidates such as Scholten, who makes roughly six to seven times Michigan's median individual income, that means making questionable statements about their own financial security.Scholten did not respond to a request for comment.

In the same ad, Scholten demands Democrats "stop the spending" and promises to "focus on the issues that matter most to Michigan families because they matter to mine too."

Scholten, however, has backed seemingly every Democratic spending proposal since President Joe Biden entered office. In March, she celebrated the one-year anniversary of the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan.

"Every single Republican voted against it," Scholten tweeted. "#Democrats deliver."

Economists from across the political spectrum blame the American Rescue Plan for partially causing the historically high inflation seen in the United States. Consumer prices continued rising in August despite lower gas prices.

Scholten also applauded the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and claimed it would "lower costs for working families across the country & improve the lives of all [West] Michiganders." Contrary to the bill's name, there is no evidence that the bill will materially lower inflation.

The Free Beacon in April reported that Scholten failed to provide health coverage for her campaign staff. Scholten has called health care a "human right."

Scholten will face Republican John Gibbs in November for the state's Third Congressional District, which is currently held by Republican Peter Meijer. Scholten ran against Meijer in 2020 and lost by 5 points.

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Meet the Democrat on a Six-Figure Income Who Cant Afford To Buy Her Kids Shoes - Washington Free Beacon

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Sen. Patty Murray on Thursday dodged questions about whether she can support any limits on abortion, even as she and other Democrats criticized Republicans for supporting a policy of allowing abortions up until the 15th week of pregnancy.

"I supported what was the principle in this country for 50 years, and that is the Roe decision, which was rejected by the Supreme Court and has now put our country into chaos," the veteran Washington Democrat said when asked by Fox News Digital whether Democrats support any limit on abortion.

GRAHAM INTRODUCING 15-WEEK ABORTION BAN, SAYS BILL MAY HELP GOP IN MIDTERMS

When asked to clarify whether there are any potential time limits Democrats may consider putting on abortion, Murray again refused to directly answer.

Murray chairs the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., right speaks at a press conference with Sens. Maize Hirono, D-Hawaii, center, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., left. (Tyler Olson/Fox News)

"We want to put in law protections for every woman in the country, no matter where they live, or how much money they make, or where they come from [to give them] the ability to make their own health care decisions as they had under Roe before it was overturned," she said.

Murray also deflected when asked about Republicans' argument that a 15-week limit is consistent with many other developed countries, including most in Europe.

DEMOCRATS REJECT GRAHAM'S RADICAL PLAN TO ALLOW ABORTION UP TO 15 WEEKS

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proposed a 15-week limit on abortions this week. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

"They can debate weeks and countries and everything else," Murray said. "I know what my constituents want. I know what the women and men of America want in vast numbers. And that is the ability to make their own health care decisions with their family, their faith, their doctor, depending on what they need. I am not in that doctor's office with them, neither should any other politician be. That is their decision."

The exchange came after Murray and multiple other Democrats, including Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Maize Hirono, D-Hawaii, slammed a bill Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proposed this week to limit abortions after 15 weeks. They said the bill amounts to a major step back on women's rights.

The Supreme Court overturned the decision in Roe v. Wade this year in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. (Joshua Comins/Fox News Digital)

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Graham's bill includes several exceptions, including for rape, incest and when a woman's life is in danger from a pregnancy. It also explicitly bans the prosecution of women seeking abortions.

"I see this as a responsible alternative to the very radical position by Democratic senators," Graham told Fox News Digital about his bill earlier this week. "I can assure that a vast majority of Americans do not support abortion on demand up to delivery."

Tyler Olson covers politics for Fox News Digital. You can contact him at tyler.olson@fox.com and follow him on Twitter at @TylerOlson1791.

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Top Democrat refuses to say whether she would accept any limits on abortion - Fox News

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nate Blouin, a democratic candidate for Utah Senate District 13, talks on Friday after someone stole an election sign from his yard and deflated two tires on the family car overnight.

| Sep. 16, 2022, 11:43 p.m.

Utah Senate candidate Nate Blouin says he wants Utahns who disagree with him about his political stances to talk to him person just dont deflate his tires.

The Democratic nominee for the Utah Senate District 13 said his wife was about to go to work around 9 a.m. when she found two tires on their car were deflated. Shortly after, Blouin realized a campaign sign was missing from the yard of their Salt Lake City home.

I dont want to make allegations about things, but it seems likely when a campaign yard sign is taken at the same time you find some issue with your property, you know, theres probably a connection there, Blouin told The Salt Lake Tribune.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nate Blouin, a democratic candidate for Utah Senate District 13, talks with his neighbor Sept. 16, 2022. Blouin said someone stole an election sign from his yard and deflated two tires on the family car Thursday night.

The Utah Senate hopeful said he doesnt believe the car tires were slashed, but were more likely deflated. The two deflated tires, Blouin said, were on the passenger side of the car, which was facing away from the house. He said he filed a police report to document the incident.

While the theft of campaign signs from yards is a common occurrence during election years, the mischief is relatively harmless compared to the potentially dangerous act of deflating car tires.

If you have a disagreement, Im easy to find, Blouin said. Reach out on Twitter, give me a call, send me a text or an email, and Im more than happy to talk and hear those concerns.

Shortly after the discovery Friday morning, Blouin took to Twitter, saying the behavior was unacceptable, regardless of who does it. He told The Tribune this isnt the first or the worst instance of poor behavior in politics, but the modern state of politics rewards peoples bad behavior.

He said this kind of behavior is frustrating, and he believes it is modeled by elected officials who encourage people to go out and take matters into their own hands sometimes.

I think thats completely unacceptable, Blouin added.

Blouin resoundingly won his primary in June, winning over 75% of the vote. The district, which leans heavily toward Democrats, is made up of parts of Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake and Murray.

He defeated longtime state Sen. Gene Davis, who has since been suspended from the Utah Democratic Party following allegations of sexual misconduct by a former intern and campaign staffer.

Blouin faces Republican nominee Roger Stout in Novembers election.

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Democrat Nate Blouin says his tires were deflated and a campaign sign was stolen from his yard - Salt Lake Tribune