We Spoke to the Congressman Singing Rihanna on the House Floor for Climate

Sean Casten has no shame when it comes to climate advocacy.

In fact, the Illinois representative spent his Tuesday morning singing praises for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to the tune of Rihanna’s “Work.”

“To my colleagues in the Senate, the eyes of the nation in this chamber are on you, we will never, no never, neglect you. We do not hold your past against you,” Casten urged the Senate, to a rhythm that would make Lin Manuel-Miranda blush. “But you need to get it done, done, done, done, done, done.”

“Mr. Speaker, what else can I say, I’m trying babe,” Casten finished, yielding to presiding Speaker Pat Ryan.

FERC oversees much of the energy sector, including interstate electricity transmission, hydroelectric project licensing, and natural gas and oil pipeline projects. Casten—who beat a six-term Republican incumbent in his district in 2018—was seeking to bring attention to the Senate failing to renominate FERC’s fifth commissioner, Chairman Richard Glick.

Biden had set a previous goal of a zero-carbon pollution power sector by 2035, and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, something the Inflation Reduction Act puts America on track to approach. Massive electricity generation, transmission, and storage are needed to attain such goals. Without a fully-staffed FERC, it’ll be hard to meet them.

The danger is if any FERC decisions related to the energy transition are split 2-2, Casten told The New Republic. “The things that we’re trying to do, that capital markets are trying to do, to give us cleaner, more reliable, more efficient energy are now going to be stalled just for a bureaucratic reason because we didn’t appoint a commissioner. It’s an own-goal.”

“A deadlocked FERC would eliminate up to 80 percent of the emissions reductions created by the IRA,” Casten noted in his musical remarks Tuesday.

For months, the fate of Glick’s renomination has been up in the air. Senator Joe Manchin, who has enjoyed millions of dollars from coal companies he founded, chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee tasked with conducting hearings with FERC nominees. Thus far, the senator has refused to hold a hearing.

In March, Manchin did call a hearing, but only to reprimand Glick and the commission’s Democrats for requiring more information from natural gas projects about their economic justification and environmental impacts. And Manchin was further incensed after President Biden last month called to shut down coal-powered energy plants.

Manchin, who has spent months lobbying for permitting reform that would—beyond clearing the path for a natural gas pet project in his own state—ostensibly promote construction of new electrical transmission lines, is hindering the staffing of the agency that would oversee that reform. He moreover threatens the timely execution of the IRA, one of Biden’s most signature accomplishments.

Last year, Casten led a #HotFERCSummer campaign featuring House floor renditions inspired by Megan Thee Stallion, Fergie, and Dolly Parton to advocate for FERC-related legislation and to fill a previously empty FERC seat, which was completed in November 2021.

And his advocacy continues.

“Having had some degree of success to break the deadlock last time—just at the expense of humiliating myself on the House floor—I thought we’d try to do it again and cringe it up and do some more dad jokes and see if we can strike lightning twice.”

President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a historic bill enshrining the right to marriage equality into law.

The Respect for Marriage Act, which applies to both same-sex and interracial marriage, would require that two people be considered married so long as their marriage was legal in the state in which it was performed. The act also repeals a 1996 law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which has remained on the books despite being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2015.

Many civil rights activists had warned that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, same-sex marriage may be next on the chopping block.

About 2,000-3,000 people attended the signing ceremony on the White House lawn, according to spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre. The event opened with a performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. The singers wore silver sequin scarves and sang “Harmony’s Never Too Late,” an original piece.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer highlighted how personal the bill is for him, as his daughter and her wife are expecting their first child. “Yes, this is about making life better for millions of LGBTQ Americans…but it’s also [for] the countless children and families who will be protected by this bill,” he said.

Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi highlighted the numerous wins for the LGBTQ community over the years, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at the end of her first term as speaker.

Musicians Sam Smith and Cyndi Lauper performed their respective songs “Stay With Me” and “True Colors.” Lauper opened her song by saying, “This time, love wins,” and punctuated the grand finale calling out, “Power to all the people.”

Gina and Heidi Nortonsmith, one of the seven couples who sued the state of Massachusetts for marriage equality in 2001, gave a speech celebrating how much progress has been made but acknowledging how much farther there is to go.

Finally, Biden stepped up to the podium. He thanked all the activists and members of the LGBTQ community whose work helped bring the legislation to pass.

“It’s one thing for the Supreme Court to rule on a case,” he said. “But it’s another thing entirely for the elected representatives of the people to take a vote on the floor of the United States Congress and say loudly and clearly, love is love. Right is right. Justice is justice. These things are fundamental things that America thinks matter.”

Biden also warned about the “extreme” Supreme Court, which rolled back the nationwide right to abortion and has threatened to do more. He decried the attacks on spaces that affirm gender and sexual orientation.

The House of Representatives voted 258-169 last week to pass the final bill to Biden’s desk. At least two Republican House members, Representatives Vicky Hartzler and Glenn Thompson, voted against the bill despite having LGBTQ family members.* Thompson had also voted against an earlier version of the bill this summer, just three days before attending his son’s same-sex wedding.

The Senate voted 61-36 two weeks ago to pass the bill. One of its opponents was Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who is in an interracial marriage.

Critics of the bill have said, though, that it does not go far enough with LGBTQ protections. Part of the amendment says that religious organizations do not have to marry same-sex couples, which would allow groups to continue to be homophobic, and the bill does not require all states to actually issue same-sex marriage licenses.

* This article originally misstated the voting records of Hartzler and Thompson.

Masses of rail workers across the country are rallying Tuesday in efforts to draw the public attention toward their demands, including giving rail workers paid sick days, after President Joe Biden signed legislation imposing a labor deal on workers.

Rallies are taking place in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.

“We demand that Biden sign an Executive Order that he apparently has the capacity to do and allow for 7 days sick time for RR workers like other Government contractors. Done, end of story,” a spokesperson for the Railroad Workers United labor caucus said in a statement to The New Republic. “Why not? And if he refuses, he owes us an explanation for sure.”

Workers are also asking for two-person crews on all trains and eliminating what’s known as “precision-scheduled railroading.”

Precision-scheduled railroading, or, as workers sometimes dub it, “positive shareholder reaction,” manages freight movement by the individual car level, as opposed to the whole train—ensuring train cars are constantly on the move. In practice, this has cut jobs, consolidated dispatch centers, and made trains less safe, as fewer workers have less time to conduct checks on even more train cars.

The rallies come after 72 members of Congress, led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib, published a letter outlining how Biden could “guarantee rail workers the seven sick days that they desperately need through executive action.”

The letter followed Biden’s decision to impose a labor contract on workers, in an ostensible effort to avoid a national rail strike.

Despite Biden’s cave to railroad companies, these 72 members of Congress are not relenting.

“We are going to continue to fight. We are going to continue to organize. And we’re going to continue to make sure that labor—the workers who create the wealth for these companies—get their fair share of that wealth,” Bowman bellowed at the Washington, D.C., rally.

“We have corporations making record profits,” Bowman continued. “We allow them as many stock buybacks as they want. But we continue to give workers and labor the short end of the stick.… That’s bullshit.”

The consumer price index, or CPI, a key government measure of inflation, indicates that inflation finally seems to be slowing a bit, according to a report released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The index measures the monthly change in prices paid by U.S. consumers for specific goods.

Here are three things to know about the inflation report, and what it might mean looking forward.

1. It has some of the the lowest increases in almost a year.

Prices rose 7.1 percent in November compared to a year earlier. This is a big slowdown from October, which saw a 7.7 percent increase compared to the previous year, and the smallest yearlong increase since December 2021.

It may seem counterintuitive to celebrate a 7.1 percent increase, but overall, prices in November rose just 0.1 percent from the previous month.

Removing the price increases for food and energy, which are always volatile, even before the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, prices rose 0.2 percent in November. This is the smallest monthly increase since August 2021.

2. But inflation remains high in key areas.

A big contributing factor in the low price increases was energy. Prices for gasoline, natural gas, and electricity fell 1.6 percent from October.

But prices for food and shelter increased. In fact, they went up the most of any sector. Costs for groceries and eating out went up 0.5 percent, and housing costs rose 0.6 percent.

3. Will it affect the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday?

The Federal Reserve begins its policy-setting meeting Tuesday and is expected to announce a 0.5 percent increase in interest rates. The new CPI report is unlikely to affect that decision any further, according to Dean Baker, the senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research.

“The Fed is always worried about pulling surprises,” he explained.

The U.S. central bank is scrambling to achieve a so-called soft landing, or a decrease in inflation without tipping the economy into a recession. The labor market has remained strong overall, causing concerns that the economy has not slowed sufficiently to avoid a downturn. But Baker says a soft landing is “definitely” still possible.

“It is now indisputable that inflation has slowed sharply, without a big rise in unemployment,” he said. “It is not clear yet that it is at a rate that the Fed considers acceptable, but the rate clearly is much lower than it was earlier in 2022.”

During the long-awaited congressional hearings on FTX’s collapse on Tuesday, Democratic Representative Brad Sherman wasted no time making his stance clear on the crypto industry, nor on Sam Bankman-Fried’s role within it.

“My fear is that we will view Sam Bankman-Fried as just one big snake in a crypto Garden of Eden. The fact is, crypto is a garden of snakes,” said Sherman, the only House member to receive an “F” from crypto advocacy group Crypto Action Network.

“Is there a big advantage that crypto has over the U.S. dollar if it actually became a currency, which it’s not yet?” Sherman posed. “Well, there are drug dealers, human traffickers, sanctions evaders who will find that to be a good feature. And as Sam Bankman-Fried would tell you, there’s a hell of a market for bankruptcy court evasion. But the big market is tax evasion. And I know there are some on the other side who cheer every time a billionaire escapes taxes.”

Moving from broader critiques of the industry, Sherman then focused on Bankman-Fried. “Now, Sam Bankman-Fried, or should I say inmate 14372, had one purpose in all of his efforts here in Congress … to keep the SEC out of crypto. To provide a patina of regulation, baby regulation, from the CFTC,” Sherman continued, before addressing his colleagues.

“I have one comment for my colleagues: Don’t trash Sam Bankman-Fried and then pass his bill,” he added, referring to bipartisan-backed legislation pushing for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to become the primary regulator overseeing crypto, rather than the Securities Exchange Commission. The former would oversee crypto with less scrutiny than the latter.

“I fear that could happen, because Sam was not the only crypto bro with PACs and lobbyists—and there is no PAC or lobbyist here to work for efficient tax enforcement, or sanctions enforcement.”

Sherman closed with a focus on Republicans, citing a letter signed by 19 Republican members that was “attacking the SEC for paying attention to, and I quote, the purported risks of digital assets,” and comments from eight members “that were designed to attack the SEC as being a Luddite and anti innovation for their efforts.”

While Republicans—and some Democrats—will assert that Bankman-Fried and company were simply bad apples, Sherman continues earning his F from crypto advocacy groups, bashing all who try to defend it and its proven potential for massive fraud.

On Monday, Talking Points Memo reported on at least 34 Republican members of Congress who exchanged text messages with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

One message in particular stuck out for its illustration of how blatant these efforts were and, perhaps too, how dumb they were.

On January 17, 2021, Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina texted Meadows:

“Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic!! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO.”

Beyond appearing to be a seditionist, Norman seems to think “martial law” is spelled like “Marshall”—similar to messages released previously between Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Meadows, in which she wrote: “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law.” Perhaps Norman just copied and pasted the spelling from the world’s worst possible group chat.

But who is Ralph Norman?

In 2018, while meeting with members from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Norman placed his loaded handgun on a table during the conversation to prove “guns don’t shoot people; people shoot guns,” making the activists feel unsafe.

At an election debate in 2018, Norman joked about the sexual assault allegations against then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. “Did y’all hear this latest late-breaking news on the Kavanaugh hearings? Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out saying she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.”

In 2019, Norman led the charge to try reinstating Representative Steve King to his committee assignments, after King had made one of his career’s many racist comments and asked when “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” became offensive language.

Norman was also one of 126 House Republicans who signed onto a lawsuit contesting the 2020 election results.

In February 2021, Norman and 12 other Republican House members skipped votes, citing Covid-19; instead, they were all happily attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. Norman, the agent of the personal responsibility party that he is, blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for apparently changing “the voting to interfere with CPAC.”

In June 2021, Norman was one of 21 House Republicans who voted against giving honors to officers who defended the Capitol on January 6. That same month, he was one of 14 House Republicans who voted against establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. And in July 2021, he was one of just five Republicans who voted against appropriations for granting visas to Afghan allies and enhancing Capitol security.

Norman has repeatedly criticized President Biden for forgiving student loan debtors; Norman himself—with a net worth of over $20 million—had at least $306,520 of PPP loans forgiven.

Based on his history, Norman is the perfect example of someone who’d throw whatever integrity he did have on the line for an individual like Donald Trump.

Representative Brian Babin was among at least 34 Republican members of Congress who texted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The chilling messages, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, include some notable names, but the rest read like a veritable “who’s that?” of election deniers in Congress.

Texas Representative Babin texted Meadows at least 21 times, starting before the election, but TPM was only able to verify a paltry four responses. He also signs his texts, which is not an indication of culpability but is weird.

Babin urged Meadows to “fight like hell” to win, warning that a Joe Biden victory would usher in a “corrupt Marxist dictatorship.”

He also expressed concerns that other members of Congress would try to do the right thing and stop him and his cohort from overturning the election. He asked Meadows to reach out to then–Vice President Mike Pence to help them.

Throughout his texts, Babin repeated baseless claims that the election had been stolen. He described the vote as a “theft” and, in late December, sent Meadows an article describing claims from Pennsylvania Republicans that the votes didn’t “add up.”

Pennsylvania’s Department of State had thoroughly debunked the article and roundly rebuked the state representative pushing the so-called “analysis,” but Meadows replied to Babin that he had forwarded the piece to the Department of Justice.

A former dentist, Babin has been a Trump supporter and apologist since the former president took office. In September 2020, he insisted Trump took every possible preventive measure to stop the spread of the coronavirus. He defended Trump against accusations that he had downplayed Covid-19’s deadly nature, and even compared him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.

In 2021, Babin voted against multiple major bills, including Build Back Better, the American Rescue Plan, the Women’s Health Protection Act, and the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. Last week, he also voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex and interracial marriage.

Senator Joe Manchin would not say Monday whether he would follow his colleague Kyrsten Sinema and switch his party affiliation to independent from Democrat—but he didn’t shut the door on the option, either.

Sinema made waves Friday when she announced she was changing to independent, putting the Democrats’ hard-won Senate majority at risk.

“I’ll look at all of these things. I’ve always looked at all those things, but I have no intention of doing anything right now. Whether I do something later, I can’t tell you what the future is going to bring,” Manchin told CNN reporter Manu Raju.

“I’m not a Washington Democrat.… We’ll have to look. People are registering more for independent than any other party affiliation,” Manchin added.

If Manchin does switch parties like Sinema, their move would sharply curtail the Democrats’ power in Congress and would once more give the two centrist senators outsize influence over legislation.

Senate Democrats were elated when Raphael Warnock won the Georgia runoff election, giving them a 51–49 majority. This meant that they would control committees and could more easily approve judicial appointments. They could block dangerous legislation or investigations from the Republican-controlled House.

Crucially, it meant that if a senator stonewalled, major legislation would no longer automatically tank. Manchin and Sinema have spent the past two years stalling bills, including President Joe Biden’s signature Build Back Better plan.

Sinema’s change to independent has thrown the Democrats’ assured control up in the air once more. If Manchin follows suit, the two of them will become the deciding factors on every decision.

Senator Bernie Sanders, previously the only registered independent in the Senate, told CNN Sunday that Sinema’s decision likely had to do with her “political aspirations”—although she said the move had to do with her values.

When asked by Dana Bash if he thought Sinema had the “guts” to take on powerful special interest lobbies, Sanders replied: “No, she doesn’t.”

“She is a corporate Democrat who has, in fact, along with Senator Manchin sabotaged enormously important legislation,” he said.

After intervening on behalf of the former president who gave her her job, federal Judge Aileen Cannon has now admitted she never should have done so in the first place.

On Monday morning, Cannon dismissed a months-long order she enacted that hindered the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged smuggling of classified government documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort home. This after Trump had specifically appealed to her in order to derail the investigation in the first place.

“The case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” Cannon wrote in a short, defeated order.

Cannon’s order initially mandated the use of a special master to review classified, stolen documents seized by the Justice Department from Mar-a-Lago in August.

The order also barred investigators from “[using] the seized materials for investigative purposes.” In other words, she personally stopped federal investigators from investigating someone who had stolen a stash of national secrets.

On December 1, however, a three-judge panel from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked Cannon’s order. “It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president … [but to] create a special exception here would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank,’” the panel wrote in its ruling.

The panel consisted of three Republican appointees—two being Trump’s own.

Trump’s failure to maintain Cannon’s stalling of the investigation follows an earlier attempt to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the probe and appoint a special master specifically to review classified papers. The judges rejected Trump’s plea in a short, unsigned order, with no noted dissents.

Now, with Cannon’s dismissal, the Justice Department is cleared to continue its investigation into the stolen documents with no further delay.

Meanwhile, that a federal judge was able to intervene so summarily in the federal investigation of the man who appointed her perhaps warrants its own serious legal inquiry.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel refused Monday to say whether Donald Trump was to blame for the Republican Party’s flop during the midterm elections.

After the promised “red wave” failed to materialize in November, Republicans have been split on why that might be—despite the majority of MAGA candidates losing across the country. When asked on Fox Business whether Trump was at fault, McDaniel refused to lay the blame on him.

“I don’t like this, I don’t like these parceling out” of responsibility, she said. McDaniel said she felt there needed to be more analysis of what went wrong, particularly “the amount of ticket-splitting.”

“Why are Republicans going and voting for one Republican and not the other?” she asked.

When host Stuart Varney repeatedly insisted it was Trump, and whether that candidate campaigned on his message, McDaniel pushed back.

“I’m not into the blame game right now. I think we’ve got to do an analysis,” she said. “I think you can’t parcel out, ‘Well, this endorsement helped this one’...It’s the whole message. It’s, ‘What did each candidate do?’”

Except the biggest thing each candidate did was embrace Trump. Across the board, dozens of candidates who denied the 2020 election, spouted MAGA theories, and campaigned with Trump lost their race.

The list includes Kari Lake and Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. More than 35 Trump-endorsed gubernatorial, House, and Senate candidates lost the election.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Lake had been strongly advised to distance herself from Trump but refused. She became so focused on mimicking Trump that she failed to address actual issues that Arizonans were concerned about.

The RNC has launched a council to advise the Republican Party on how to perform better in future elections. One council member is Masters, who is definitely the person to consult on winning races.

Trump himself said that he should only be considered responsible if the candidates he endorsed won during the midterms. But as loss after loss rolled in, it became clear that voters and the party were tiring of him.

One of his former employees went so far as to call him a “loser.”