Amid speaker debacle, California GOP congressman pens scathing letter to ‘wayward colleagues’
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MCCLINTOCK ADDRESSES ‘DEAR WAYWARD COLLEAGUES’ IN SCATHING LETTER
Via David Lightman...
The House Republican civil war erupted anew Monday with a strongly worded rebuke from Rep. Tom McClintock to the eight colleagues who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.
In a letter, he sarcastically branded them as martyrs and geniuses, and wrote “we don’t deserve you.”
McClintock, R-Elk Grove, was a fierce McCarthy defender in the days before the October 3 vote.
His missive, addressed to “Dear Wayward Colleagues,” cited the offer from the eight last week to accept punishment for their effort to dethrone McCarthy.
“Your letter of October 20, in which you graciously offer to martyr yourselves as long as you can get your way, is perhaps the most selfless act in American history,” McClintock said sarcastically.
“I was certain that our Republican colleagues ‘who refuse to vote’ with the Republican majority would have been inspired by your stirring example of party discipline and loyalty to ‘vote with the team,’ as you so eloquently phrased it.
“I was frankly stunned when they did not,” McClintock said. “We should have appreciated how you (and 206 Democrats) saved us from a Republican speaker.
“We truly don’t deserve you,” McClintock said.
What the eight Republicans have done, he said, is create a new standard where it would take 98.2% of the caucus to elect a GOP speaker. “Some day, a messiah will be born who can achieve this miraculous threshold,” McClintock wrote.
When that happens, “you will be hailed as the geniuses that you are.”
He proposed a different path, telling the renegades to “plan your martyrdom in the only way that truly matters: to have the wisdom to see the damage you have done to our country and to have the courage to set things right before it is too late.”
McClintock included a resolution that would criticize the McCarthy vote, and once again say he is the House GOP’s nominee. Looks like that is unlikely to happen, though.
Nine Republicans are seeking the Speakership. McCarthy, who hasn’t completely ruled out a comeback, is not one of them.
BONTA CO-AUTHORS OPEN LETTER ABOUT YELP CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTER DISCLAIMER
Should “crisis pregnancy centers” — anti-abortion organizations that frequently portray themselves as reproductive health clinics — come with a warning label?
Yelp, the influential online review website, thinks so. The company is locked in a legal battle with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over its decision to include disclaimers on pages for crisis pregnancy centers that they “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”
While some crisis pregnancy centers are licensed medical clinics, including in California, many are not. And many of them engage in deceptive practices such as providing inaccurate medical information about the possibility of reversing an abortion or claiming to offer referrals for abortions while actively counseling patients against seeking one, according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who along with 15 other attorneys general penned a letter supporting Yelp’s initiative.
“We have watched with increasing concern in recent years as anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) have proliferated in our states, outnumbering abortion clinics by a three-to-one ratio, while misleading consumers and delaying access to critical, time-sensitive reproductive healthcare,” the letter reads in part.
You can read the letter here.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Going to home depot to buy an 18-foot tall Scott Wiener statue to put on my front lawn.”
- Film and television editor Michael Tae Sweeney, discussing YIMBY Halloween ideas, via Bluesky.
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