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The public can meet local and state legislators, candidates and elected officials during Sept. 11 political gathering

The Republican Party of Jefferson County announces the 16th year of Central Oregon's premier political gathering, Burgers and Politics. This gathering will honor the victims and survivors of 9/11 as well as the first responders who braved that assault on the nation. The organization recognizes all who continue to honor the country with their patriotic service.

On Saturday, Sept. 11 between 1 and 5 p.m., the Burgers and Politics event will take place at Over the Edge Tap House, 13959 SW Commercial Loop Drive in Crooked River Ranch.

As in past Burgers and Politics gatherings, they will reserve a solemn moment of reflection to show their resolve to Never Forget 9/11. Many local Republican elected officials as well as statewide candidates who have thrown their hat in the ring for various positions in the 2022 elections will be introduced. This is an opportunity for the public to meet the men and women who want to make a difference in the state and to ask questions.

This family-friendly get-together offers the community a chance to get to know and be informed by current elected officials and Republican legislators from various parts of the state, including Jefferson, Crook and Deschutes counties. Oregon Sen. Dennis Linthicum will be the keynote speaker and will share the victories and challenges the Republican Party faces statewide and how each member can have a voice and make a difference.

This will be an informal event with a town hall feeling. Admission and music are free. All food and beverages will be discounted, and there will be raffles and an auction. Kurt Silva will provide music as attendees mix, mingle, and meet like-minded neighbors, officials and candidates.

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Pamplin Media Group - Republican group hosts Burgers and Politics - Pamplin Media Group

Republicans already appeared divided over how far to go in confronting the University of Wisconsin System specifically former Governor Tommy Thompson over setting its COVID-19 policies.

On Thursday, the split widened.

First,UW System interim PresidentThompson and UW Regent President Edmund Manydeeds III sent a letter to the Republican leaders of the Legislatures rules committeeconfirming they would not come to the committee for permission before implementing such steps as mandatory testing and mask rules on UW campuses.

Then state Sen. Robert Cowles,R-Green Bay, issued a statement saying he supports the UW System's ability to make its own decisions about how to control the spread of COVID-19 on campuses.

Finally, state Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, capped the day by saying he'll formally ask State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader DevinLeMahieu, R-Oostburg, to take the state university system to court.

Nass is the senator whoproposed a motion in the Legislature's rules committee that requiresthe UW System to submit any COVID-19 protocolsfor approval.The motion passed on a party-line vote Aug. 3, which Nass and committee co-chair Rep. Adam Neylon, R-Pewaukee, said gives them power over pandemic-related rules on campus.

In their letter to Nass and Neylon, Thompson and Manydeeds called out the rules committee for not holding a public hearing on Nass' proposal and for not taking any steps in the 14 months before this point to weigh in on campuses' pandemic responses.

"On its face, this directive is overly broad and lacks reasonable specificity by which to evaluate and discuss concerns rationally," Thompson and Manydeeds wrote."We believe (the rules committee's) position is instructive, however, as it highlights the nature of the executive functions and actions that your committee takes issue with that have beenexplicitly delegated to us by statute and rule, and have been long recognized as core responsibilities of the Board of Regents by the legislature and the courts."

The letter also noted Nass' own previous actions conflicted with the idea that the UW System has to consult with the Legislature, pointing to a bill proposed butnever taken up to change established state law so that UW campuses are prohibitedfrom implementing vaccine mandates.

Thompson, a Republican and the state's longest-serving governor,had made his feelings knownlast week, calling the directive "both wrong on the law and wrong as a matter of public policy."

More: 'Not abdicating my responsibility': Tommy Thompson spurns the GOP attempt to control, block COVID rules on campuses

He essentially dared his former colleagues to take him and the UW System to court, saying he'd take the fight all the way to the state Supreme Court.

"We think we've got a great case," he said.

His comments drew support from Republican Assembly leaderJim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, who indicated last week that he had no interest in suing UW, saying doing so"would only add more confusion during an already stressful time" as students return to campuses.

More: Republican Assembly Leader not interested in suing UW System for control of COVID policies on campus

Now Cowles has joined in.

"I do not support a legal challenge by the State Legislature to UW-Systems COVID-19 mitigation measures," Cowles said."During this ongoing workforce shortage thats bound to only maintain or intensify, tying the hands of one of our states most powerful workforce development tools and driving decisions that could cancel or limit in-person instruction doesnt seem to be in the best interests of our local communities or business sector.

None of this sitswell with Nass, a relentless critic of the UW System and opponent of COVID protocols.

His chief of staff,Mike Mikalsen, said Thursday it was "unfortunate" that Cowles did not support suing.

"Last year, the Legislature went to court to end unlawful Covid-19 mandates issued by Governor Evers Department of Health Services,"Mikalsen said in an email."Senator Nass opposes unlawful Covid-19 mandates issued by any state agency regardless of if they are led by a Democrat appointee or a former Republican governor."

Later, Nass added he thought some of his colleagues had "gone soft" and would only oppose the mandates when they were "issued by the other party."

LeMahieu's communications director said he would not have a response Thursday on what path the Senate leader would take. Vos' office has not responded to multiple requests for comment since last week.

Contact Devi Shastri at 414-224-2193 or DAShastri@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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GOP divided over whether to push UW System on COVID rules, with Nass digging in and others siding with Thompson - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and then- President Donald Trump. (Photo by Erin Schaff / Getty Images)

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With the approach of another Labor Day, it is clear that American workers could use some help. There are jobs to be hadbut without a living wage or the workplace protections that are more necessary than ever in this pandemic age. The federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour, no higher that it was in 2009. And working people who want to form unions and bargain for better pay are constrained in the majority of states by so-called right to work laws that empower multinational corporations like Amazon to thwart organizing drives.

To a greater extent than in any country with which the United States would choose to compare itself, our policy-makers have tipped the balance against the working class. Why?

Lets start with the Republican Party. Ever since Ronald Reagan broke a legitimate and necessary strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 40 years ago this summer, the Republican Party has positioned itself as an explicitly and aggressively anti-labor party. Reagans progenyconniving political careerists like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and former Ohio Governor John Kasichtook the GOPs war on workers to the states and attacked teachers and their fellow public employees. Now, at the federal level, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy are using their positions to obstruct even the most basic efforts to improve the conditions of working Americans.

In March, when the House voted on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021, 220 Democrats supported the proposal to make it easier for workers to secure collective bargaining rights. Two hundred and five Republicans voted against it. Despite the overwhelmingly GOP opposition to the measure, the Democratic support was sufficient to send the bill to the Senate. Unfortunately, McConnell and his colleagues are using their filibuster powers to prevent consideration of a measure that Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat and one of the few union members currently serving in Congress, says is designed to allow workers to fight back against corporations and anti-union special interests that have attacked and eroded the labor movement for decades.

It is interesting that Republicans lately have been trying to falsely rebrand themselves as the party of working people while opposing the strongest bill in Congress to give power to workers, Pocan said during the House debate in March. The same Republicans who fought tooth and nail to reduce stimulus checks and unemployment insurance, championed union busting, and prevented an increase in the minimum wage from being included in COVID relief. They claim they are the party of the working people. Their idea of helping working people is voting for a $2 trillion tax cut for corporate donors and billionaire friends but refusing to vote for a $1.9 trillion investment in the American people.

Pocans right: Just as todays Republicans have abandoned their partys historic commitment to civil rights and voting rights, they have also abandoned their commitment to worker rights.

The great union organizer and Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs used to delight in pointing out: The Republican Party was once red. Lincoln was a revolutionary. Current Issue

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That was not a casual claim. Debs knew a lot more about the first Republican president than does Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy. Lincoln was a fervent reader of Horace Greeleys New York Tribune, which featured regular columns by European correspondent Karl Marx; and he worked closely with the immigrant socialists who were among the founders of the Republican Party.

So passionate was Lincoln about the issue that he raised it in his first annual message to the Congress in 1861. The 16th president took time away from discussing challenges posed by the Civil War to raise what he referred to a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. This, he explained, was the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government.

Lincoln rejected that view as blasphemy:

It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

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Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

That higher consideration was recognized by Republicans in Lincolns day, and through much of the GOPs first century. The Republican platform of 1960 reflected on the need to enhance and not impede the processes of free collective bargaining and declared: Republican policy firmly supports the right of employers and unions freely to enter into agreements providing for the union shop and other forms of union security.

Todays Republicans have abandoned not just Lincolns prioritization of labor but also his pursuit of a more perfect union. They have rebranded themselves as the very embodiment of the greed and cruelty that the Party of Lincoln once sought to upend.

Link:
There Is No Greater Threat to Worker Rights Than This Republican Party - The Nation

MSNBCs Joy Reid dedicated her Absolute Worst segment on Friday to explaining why the GOP is anything but the pro-life party, despite its claims.

The ReidOut anchor referenced Texas extreme new anti-abortion law, Republican opposition to COVID-19 mask mandates, GOP voter resistance to receiving the coronavirus vaccine, and the partys anti-environment policies to make her point.

You cant call yourself a pro-life party if your policy goals are to allow the maximum number of people to die of COVID, including children, by banning mask mandates in businesses and schools and raising doubts about vaccines, she said.

You cant call yourself the pro-life, pro-family party if your policy goals are to put bounties on pregnant women and to force teenage girls to give birth after getting pregnant as a result of incest and rape, Reid added.

The Republican Party is a lot of things; anti-democracy, anti-voting, anti-history, anti-facts, deeply opposed to anti-racism. What they are not is pro-life, she concluded, saying its now loudly and proudly the pro-death party.

Watch Reids monologue here:

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Read the rest here:
MSNBCs Joy Reid Busts A Big Myth Republicans Tell Themselves About Their Party - Yahoo News

Republican Tricia Flanagan is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, and she wants Donald Trumps help.

At an event for another candidate at Trumps Bedminster golf club in June, she said she met briefly with the former president and sought his backing in what could be one of the states most competitive House races in 2022.

Im bold, Flanagan said. I said, Mr. President, I need your help.

Flanagan is one of four prospective 2022 Republican congressional candidates from New Jersey who trekked to Bedminster this year after Trump decamped there from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that has filed several complaints against the former president.

Closely aligning with Trump could bring support and money from the Republican base. But it runs the risk of turning off independent and other voters who helped turn a 6-6 House delegation to a 10-2 Democratic advantage in just two elections. Trump lost New Jersey to Joe Biden, 57% to 41%, last November.

This is the burning question right now for the Republican Party in the state: Does the blessing of former President Trump help or hurt a candidate in New Jersey? said Ashley Koning, assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers UniversityNew Brunswick.

Its a delicate dance and balance for any candidate. It helps them rally the party base. It doesnt seem like it would bode well with the broader electorate.

So far, many New Jersey congressional hopefuls arent staying away.

The list of visitors to Bedminster includes:

Rik Mehta, who lost the 2020 U.S. Senate race to Cory Booker and now is competing with state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. for the nomination to challenge Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7th Dist.;

Nick DAgostino, trying to take on Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist.;

Darius Mayfield, running against Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist.;

Billy Prempeh, who has embraced the QAnon conspiracy movement and is seeking a rematch against Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist.

Flanagan said she met Trump while attending a June 29 event for Rep. Jody Hice, who has the former presidents backing in a Republican primary challenge against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The incumbent rejected the former presidents false charges of voter fraud in last falls presidential election.

Mayfield was there as well and also met Trump and discussed his congressional campaign with him, according to campaign spokeswoman Krissy Brahney.

Darius shared with him that hes been a vocal supporter from the beginning and thanked him for inspiring his run and interest in politics, Brahney said.

A long time Trump aide, Lynne Patton, was the guest speaker at Mayfields campaign kickoff fundraiser and is seeking support for him from the pro-Trump Save America political action committee, Brahney said.

And Prempeh, who also was at Bedminster then, posted a picture on Instagram of him standing next to Trump.

If you were to meet me in 2019 and told me that not only would I be running for office in 2022 but that Id also meet the President of the United States. I wouldnt believe you. Yet here we are, he wrote next to the photo.

DAgostinos campaign said he attended a Bedminster fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Phil Rizzo, who closely aligned himself with Trump but lost the Republican primary to former state Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli. He also met in Washington with Trump allies Ben Carson and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.

Neither Mehta, who posted on Instagram that he played golf at Bedminister, nor Prempeh responded to requests for comment.

A spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, James Singer, said he welcomed Trumps involvement.

New Jersey Republicans are free to go to the moon to please President Trump if they choose to, Singer said. It wont change the facts on the ground Donald Trump lost the state by more than 15 points last November and then encouraged a mob to attack the Capitol.

Trump hasnt endorsed any of the New Jerseyans yet.

But Flanagan said she hoped he eventually would endorse her in a district that Trump carried by a slim margin in 2020 even while losing the state.

Toward that end, she has touted several issues near and dear to Trumps heart, such as immigration, expanding gun rights, and allowing the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission to regulate social media companies.

Im going to continue to ask for his support and more importantly Im going to work to earn that endorsement, she said. Mr. President, we need you in New Jersey.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.

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These N.J. Republicans sought Trumps blessing at his Bedminster golf club this year - NJ.com