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andy biggs
"It's Only 'Free Speech' If You Agree With Them," Says AOC of GOP-Only Town Hall
"The fact is, we work for everybody. If Republican politicians can't get that we work for the public, then the public should give them the boot," said the Democrat from New York.
Mar 19, 2025
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, had sharp words for Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona and two other Arizona elected officials, following reporting that the trio was scheduled to speak at a town hall on Tuesday evening—which only Republicans were allowed to attend.
"It's only 'free speech' if you agree with them. Everyone else gets stripped from their community's town hall," wrote Ocasio-Cortez on X in response to the reporting. "The fact is, we work for everybody. If Republican politicians can't get that we work for the public, then the public should give them the boot."
According to a flyer posted to the Legislative District 12 Republican Committee website, Biggs, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-12), and Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan were slated to speak at a town hall event in Chandler, Arizona on Tuesday evening.
Camaron Stevenson, chief political correspondent for the outlet The Copper Courier, posted a screenshot of the flyer on X on Tuesday, alongside a screenshot of an email from the First Vice Chair of the Arizona Legislative District 12 Republican Committee Patty Porter that reads: "Tonight's townhall is a private event. I have been reminded that only members of the Republican Party will be admitted into the venue."
According to The Phoenix New Times, Porter did not answer queries about why the event was being called a "townhall"—the spelling used by Porter and on the flyer—if it is private.
Neither Petersen nor Biggs responded to requests for comment, according to the outlet, though Biggs called Stevenson's social media post saying that he is "hosting" the town hall "false." He did not address the Republican-only nature of the event, per the New Times.
Stevenson on Tuesday shared a video of an Independent voter who said he registered for the town hall but was turned away after they reviewed his voting history.
This news out of Arizona follows multiple instances where GOP lawmakers have faced angry crowds at town halls, with constituents showing up to express concerns about President Donald Trump's efforts to slash federal programs and personnel.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has encouraged Republican lawmakers to skip the town halls, according to The Associated Press. "They're professional protesters," Johnson said at a news conference in early March. "So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?"
Democrats have sought to capitalize on the development. Minnesota Gov. and 2024 vice presidential candidate Tim Walz recently launched a town hall tour targeting GOP districts and the Democratic National Committee is targeting vulnerable House Republicans with ads that say the lawmakers "won't talk to his/her constituents," according to Tuesday reporting from Axios.
Ocasio-Cortez is set to join Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for five stops of his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada from Thursday through Saturday.
This article has been updated to correct the quote in the headline.
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Exposed: The 'Bigoted Conspiracy Caucus' in US Congress
"Invasion and great replacement theory rhetoric, both deeply rooted in white nationalist and antisemitic tropes, are no longer a bug on the Hill, they are a regular feature," said one campaigner.
Aug 02, 2024
Republican U.S. lawmakers who embrace and amplify racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants are helping to stoke deadly politically motivated violence, according to a report published Friday by a coalition of advocacy groups.
The report—titled Bigoted Conspiracy Caucus—"exposes the normalization of xenophobic 'great replacement' and 'invasion' conspiracies within the 118th Congress, documenting their historical roots and widespread promotion by members of Congress."
"The great replacement conspiracy claims Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white Christian Americans with nonwhite immigrants, people of color, or others who they think are inferior and 'easier to control,'" the report states. "Today's versions may generally avoid referencing race and religion explicitly, instead emphasizing culture, immigration status, or political power."
"Invasion conspiracies describe immigrants as 'invaders' who pose an existential threat to American 'culture,' or 'traditions,' and implicitly call for hate-fueled attacks to counter this imagined threat," the publication continues.
The report details how "invasion" rhetoric "has metastasized and spread within the 118th Congress," and how "it is not only immigration hardliners" who are engaging in it.
"As of publication, the 118th Congress has held more than 30 congressional hearings where bigoted conspiracies of cultural replacement or an invasion were espoused" and dozens of "immigration hardliners, far-right figures, and members of SPLC-designated anti-immigrant hate groups were called to testify, the paper notes, referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which designates and monitors hate groups.
"In total, there have been 1,411 unique social media posts from official congressional accounts promoting the same bigoted conspiracies," the report's authors wrote.
Examples cited in the report include Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) producing an ominous video titled " Alien Invasion" and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) publishing an xenophobic opinion piece in his official capacity on the far-right new website Daily Caller, which in 2017 published a video encouraging running over protesters with cars. This, just months before James Fields, a neo-Nazi supporter of former President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies, used his car to murder civil rights activist Heather Heyer at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The report details how right-wing lawmakers also engage in "coded versions of replacement-style ideas," including by "warning of supposed nefarious plots to import a new voting bloc of immigrants as well as intentionally importing a number so large it will change the demographics in favor of the Democrats, who are often alleged to be behind the scheme."
For example, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) appeared on Fox News and asserted that President Joe Biden "is more concerned about future votes for his party than he is the security of the American people." Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) declared on social media that Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas "have spent nearly four years working to systematically replace the American people."
The report shows that "this rhetoric has gone beyond posting and public comments and has shown up in official legislation."
Examples include Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) introducing the " No Tax Dollars for the United Nations' Immigration Invasion Act," which would ban the federal government from funding crucial U.N. refugee and migrant agencies that the U.S. has backed with bipartisan support for over 70 years, and Rep. Jodey Arrington's (R-Texas) resolution to invoke the Constitution's invasion clause to give states "sovereign power to repel an invasion." Arrington's proposal is backed by at least 50 GOP colleagues.
Lawmakers' "great replacement" and "invasion" rhetoric has had deadly consequences. The report highlights the massacres in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso. The mass shooting in Texas—in which another white supremacist Trump supporter gunned down dozens of mostly Latino people in a Walmart after penning a manifesto citing the great replacement theory—took place five years ago Saturday.
The report argues that anti-immigrant rhetoric threatens democracy by adding "fuel to election deniers' claims that elections cannot be trusted because the ballot box is polluted with fraudulent undocumented immigrant votes." When given false legitimacy by lawmakers, this erodes "public trust in elections and gives justification for overturning unfavorable results."
"The 'great replacement' and 'invasion' conspiracies are a danger to individuals, communities, and democracy itself."
The eight groups that produced the report are: America's Voice, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Help Refugees & Asylum-Seekers (HIAS), Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Presente.org, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Western States Center.
"The 'great replacement' and 'invasion' conspiracies are a danger to individuals, communities, and democracy itself," Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington director of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, said in a statement Friday. "These lies have inspired violence and mass murder in places such as El Paso, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo."
"But instead of calling out and marginalizing these reckless falsehoods, far too many members of Congress have instead amplified them and brought them into the mainstream for their own cynical gain," he added. "It is long past time to hold these elected officials accountable for their recklessness. American Jews will not be silent in the face of this threat not only to our safety, but to the safety of so many communities in our broader American family."
HIAS vice president of U.S. policy and advocacy Naomi Steinberg said that "invasion and great replacement theory rhetoric, both deeply rooted in white nationalist and antisemitic tropes, are no longer a bug on the Hill, they are a regular feature."
"It is incumbent upon all of us to speak up to denounce this language every time we hear it and to insist upon good faith, fact-based debates about how to address immigration challenges in the U.S.," she added, "rather than the dangerous hate-slinging that has taken over the immigration debate in the halls of Congress and on campaign trails around the country."
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The Very Dangerous Reasoning Behind the Freedom Caucus' Hatred for Kevin McCarthy
The far-right Opposed-to-Big-Government cultists are dead set on destroying the working class.
Jan 06, 2023
While Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to become Speaker of the House of Representatives appears to be about personality and struggles within the House Republican caucus, it’s really about something much larger: the fate and future of American “big government” and the middle class it created.
Ever since the Reagan Revolution, the phrase “big government” has been on the lips of Republican politicians. They utter it like a curse at every opportunity.
It seems paradoxical: Republicans complain about “big government,” but then go on to support more and more government money for expanding prisons and a bloated Pentagon budget. Once you understand their worldview, however, it all makes perfect sense.
First, some background.
From the founding of our republic through the early 1930s the American middle class was relatively small. It was almost entirely made up of the professional and mercantile class: doctors, lawyers, shop-owners and the like. Only a tiny percentage of Americans were what we would today call middle class.
Factory workers, farmers, carpenters, plumbers, and pretty much all manner of “unskilled laborers” were the working poor rather than the middle class. Most neighborhoods across America had a quality of life even lower than what today we would call “ghettos.”
As recently as 1900, for example, women couldn’t vote, senators were appointed by the wealthiest power brokers in the states, and poverty stalked America.
There was no minimum wage; when workers tried to organize unions, police would help employers beat or even murder their ringleaders; and social safety net programs like unemployment insurance, Social Security, public schools, Medicare, food and housing supports, and Medicaid didn’t exist.
There was no income tax to pay for such programs, and federal receipts were a mere 3 percent of GDP (today its around 20 percent). As the President’s Council of Economic Advisors noted in their 2000 Annual Report:
“To appreciate how far we have come, it is instructive to look back on what American life was like in 1900. At the turn of the century, fewer than 10 percent of homes had electricity, and fewer than 2 percent of people had telephones. An automobile was a luxury that only the very wealthy could afford.
“Many women still sewed their own clothes and gave birth at home. Because chlorination had not yet been introduced and water filtration was rare, typhoid fever, spread by contaminated water, was a common affliction. One in 10 children died in infancy. Average life expectancy in the United States was a mere 47 years.
“Fewer than 14 percent of Americans graduated from high school. ... Widowhood was far more common than divorce. The average household had close to five members, and a fifth of all households had seven or more. …
“Average income per capita, in 1999 dollars, was about $4,200. … The typical workweek in manufacturing was about 50 hours, 20 percent longer than the average today.”
The Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, though, was a huge wake-up call for American voters, answered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
His New Deal programs brought us, for the first time, “big government” and the people loved it. They elected him President of the United States four times!
FDR created Social Security, unemployment insurance, guaranteed the right to unionize, outlawed child labor, regulated big business by creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies, and funded infrastructure across the country from roads to bridges to dams and power stations.
He raised taxes on the morbidly rich all the way up to 90% and used that money to build schools and hospitals across the nation. He brought electricity to rural parts of the country, and put literally millions to work in various “big government” programs.
“Big government,” in other words, created the modern American middle-class.
By the 1950s a strong middle class representing almost half of Americans had emerged for the first time in American history.
By the late 1970s it was around 65 percent of us.
And that’s when the billionaires (then merely multimillionaires) decided enough was enough and got to work.
In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president with the Libertarian Party, an organization created by the real estate lobby to give an air of legitimacy to their efforts to outlaw rent control and end government regulation of their industry.
His platform included a whole series of positions that were specifically designed to roll back and gut FDR’s “big government” programs (along with those added on by both Nixon and LBJ’s Great Society) that had created and then sustained America’s 20th century middle class:
— “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.
— “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.
— “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.
— “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.
— “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.
— “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service.
— “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.
— “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.
— “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.
— “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.
— “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.
— “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.
— “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.
— “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
— “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.
— “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.
— “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.
— “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called ‘self-protection’ equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.
— “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.
— “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.
— “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.
— “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
— “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
— “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
Today’s challenges to Kevin McCarthy are mostly coming from members of the Republican House Freedom Caucus, pretty much a reinvention of the Tea Party Caucus, funded in substantial part by rightwing billionaires and CEOs who share the late David Koch’s worldview.
The world is made up of “makers” and “takers,” they’ll tell you. The billionaire “job creators” shouldn’t be taxed to support the “moochers” who demand everything from union rights to a living wage to free college.
Why, these Freedom Caucus members ask, should their billionaire patrons be forced — at the barrel of an IRS agent’s gun! — to pay taxes to support the ungrateful masses through “big government” programs? Isn’t it up to each of us to make our own fortunes? Wasn’t Darwin right?
These Republicans believe our government should really only have a few simple mandates: maintain a strong military, tough cops, and a court system to protect their economic empires.
That’s why they’ll support massive prison expansions and nosebleed levels of pentagon spending but (metaphorically) fight to the death to prevent an expansion of Social Security or food stamps.
And that’s why they hate Kevin McCarthy.
In the past, McCarthy has shown a willingness to compromise and negotiate with Democrats. Most recently, as Congressman Chip Roy pointed out on the House floor yesterday when nominating Byron Donalds to replace McCarthy, he failed to block the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill through Congress that was loaded with what rightwing billionaires consider “freebies” for “taker” and “moocher” Americans.
It appears all or nearly all of the Freedom Caucus members, dancing to the tune first played by David Koch, don’t believe in our current form of American government. They want us to go back to the pre-1930s America, before FDR’s New Deal.
Those were the halcyon days when workers cowered before their employers, women and minorities knew their places, and government didn’t interfere with the business of dynasty-building even when it meant poisoning entire communities and crushing small businesses.
They appear to agree with the majority of the Supreme Court Republicans who recently began dismantling the “big government” administrative state by ending the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gasses.
They’ve already succeeded, over the past 40 years of the Reagan Revolution, at whittling the middle class down from 65 percent of us to around 45 percent of us: NPR commemorated it in 2015 with the headline: “The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class.”
Now they want even more poverty for workers and more riches for their morbidly rich funders, and don’t believe that “moderate” Republicans will get them there. As Ginni Thomas and a pantheon of “conservative” luminaries wrote yesterday in an open letter opposing McCarthy’s speakership:
“[H]e has failed to answer for, or commit to halting, his coordinated efforts in the 2022 elections to promote moderate Republican candidates over conservatives.”
The “conservative” Republicans have already announced that once they get their act together in Congress with a new speaker, their first order of business is going to be to cut more taxes on billionaires.
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology and policy. It’s about the future of “big government” and whether or not we will continue to have an American middle class.
And as long as Libertarian-leaning billionaires continue pouring cash into the campaigns and lifestyles of Republican members of Congress, this battle that’s been going on for over 40 years to tear apart the American middle-class is not going to end or go away any day soon.
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