Omar and ‘the Squad’ Reportedly Isolated by Pelosi, Saddled With Work to Avoid Spotlight

  Tensions between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) and the freshmen progressives in her party are starting to boil over. It was clear from the beginning that “the squad,” comprised of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-13) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-07), wasn’t going to make things easy for Pelosi. For one thing, she’s repeatedly had to defend Omar and Tlaib against claims of anti-Semitism. The squad wants impeachment proceedings, while Pelosi would prefer to wait things out. Some members of the squad called for new leadership and would’ve liked to see Pelosi go. The Pelosi-squad schism has been the subject of several articles out of The New York Times and The Washington Post in the past few days. The squad’s vote against the House’s border-funding bill, which Pelosi called “our bill,” plus an “offensive” tweet from Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff that compared moderate Democrats to segregationists, are both factors that are threatening to bring the spat over the edge. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said of the squad in a recent interview with The New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how…

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Ilhan Omar Floats 90 Percent Tax Rate on America’s Wealthiest

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) recently floated the idea of taxing America’s wealthiest citizens up to 90 percent in an interview with Yahoo News. “So there are a few things that we could do. One of them is that we could increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities” Omar said. “Seventy percent, 80 percent, we’ve had it as high as 90 percent.” The comments came in the context of a discussion about Omar’s support for the Green New Deal, a progressive climate change proposal put forward by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY-14). The proposal would convert the U.S. economy entirely to renewable sources of energy in 12 years and establish a universal basic income. It would, of course, require radical tax hikes on America’s wealthiest. During a recent 60 Minutes interview, Ocasio-Cortez welcomed the “radical” label, telling host Anderson Cooper that “if that’s what radical means, [then] call me a radical.” “There’s an element where, yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” she said. “You know, you look at our tax rates back in the ‘60s, and when you have a progressive tax rate system, your…

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Idea of Building Dorms for Members of Congress Returns

by Evie Fordham   The difficulties some members of Congress have affording housing are again front and center because of Nov. 8 comments from Democratic New York Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about making rent. Her comments about “squirreling away” money until she starts receiving her congressional salary of $174,000 in January re-ignited debate on the issue that has included proposals to allocate living expenses for members of Congress or even build a dormitory for them. “I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress, so how do I get an apartment?” Ocasio-Cortez said to The New York Times earlier in November. “Those little things are very real. … I’ve really been just kind of squirreling away and then hoping that gets me to January.” Ocasio-Cortez’s comments received mixed reactions amid reports that she had more in savings than her average fellow millennial, reported MarketWatch. But the young incoming congresswoman brought up the quandaries that members of Congress, especially those who have families to support, can find themselves in. A Tuesday Politico Magazine column titled “Want to drain the swamp? Build Congress a dorm” argued that when politicians must find ways to afford housing in Washington, D.C., and their home district, it…

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Ocasio-Cortez, Activists Occupy Nancy Pelosi’s Office And Demand A Green New Deal

by Michael Bastash   A group of young environmental activists occupied House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office with a list of demands, including one that Democrats support what they’re calling a “Green New Deal.” Activists began their “sit in” at Pelosi’s Capitol Hill office on Tuesday morning, wearing matching t-shirts and holding yellow signs with slogans such as, “We have twelve years. What’s your plan?” The sit in is part of the Sunrise Movement’s plan to create an “army of young people to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs,” according to the group’s Twitter bio. The group is demanding Democrats back their petition to rapidly “green” the economy to fight global warming. BREAKING: we’ve begun a sit in inside @NancyPelosi’s office because @HouseDemocrats have failed our generation time and time again. They offer us a death sentence. We demand a #GreenNewDeal. https://t.co/uSgzfQmLQu pic.twitter.com/eVM92i5hub — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) November 13, 2018 “How is @NancyPelosi going to respond to the young people occupying her office for a #GreenNewDeal right now?” Sunrise Movement tweeted on Tuesday. This summer, a GOP candidate called 18-year-old Rose #youngandnaive for demanding he refuse fossil fuel money. How is @NancyPelosi going to respond to…

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