ALL HELL Breaks Loose in SENATE HEARING as GOP GETS EXPOSED

ALL HELL Breaks Loose in SENATE HEARING as GOP GETS EXPOSED

Wow. These hearings in the United States Senate during the government shutdown this week have been absolutely explosive. You had one hearing where Democratic senators were exposing that in the demolition of the White House East Wing, the construction workers may have been exposed to deadly asbestous. We’ll talk about that. Then there was another hearing in what should have been a sleepy Senate commerce hearing on transportation nominees as Dan Diamond refers to it as. But then it was uncovered that a MAGA Republican senator Bernie Moreno was secretly spying on a Democratic senator, Jackie Rosen. He was sneaking like right outside her car to get her VIN number. And Democratic Senator Jackie Rosen was like, “Were you spying on me? You were looking at my VIN number. You went to my dashboard. Like, what the hell are you doing?” And then there was even more than that. You had a hearing where um a courageous uh officer, a Capitol police officer, testified u before the United States Senate. And then you had these um MAGA Republican witnesses all say that the individual who beat and almost killed this Capitol police officer deserve to be pardoned. And there’s even more explosive data than that and details that. So, let me go through with you what went down. The first thing I want to show you is where you have uh Democratic Senator Marky. He’s uh questioning some of these witnesses at this hearing about apprenticeship programs that are offered by unions that the Trump regime is gutting. And Senator Marky uses his time to ask uh these uh apprenticehip union leaders who help with these apprenticeship programs, you know, are you aware if there was any uh asbestous controls or steps taken at the East Wing when they demolished it at the White House because they used non-union workers. So, as a result, I mean, we saw these smoke clouds outside of the east wing that look like what we normally see in very deadly and fatal asbestous exposures in the past. And we know asbestous was used in the east wing. And in Donald Trump’s rush to tear down the East Wing, what we may uncover in the future is that he exposed those workers who did not go through the steps that the safety precautions that take place in unions because Trump went around the unions that Trump may have exposed those workers to very deadly asbestous exposure where those people may die early in the future. Watch this questioning and again you haven’t seen this in many other places and hat tip to Dan Diamond for flagging it here. Play this clip. Luna runs a worldclass apprenticeship program that includes training on esbestos abatement. Many old buildings were constructed and renovated when asbestos laden products were industry standard including the white house. Are you aware of any permits or other indications that the White House that President Trump took any of the appropriate safety steps when Trump demolished the east wing of the White House to protect against asbestos exposure? I’m not aware of anything that they would have done to protect. So the White House could have exposed workers and passes by to deadly asbestos. Is that your view? They could have. And I can tell you had it been a union workforce, we would have access to that. Um, this administration chose to use a non-UN workforce to go do that uh on a on a union project, one of the the the first things we teach in our apprentichip is to have your brother or your sister’s back. And if you see something, you say something. If something’s unsafe, you can stop that work. This isn’t a union job site, so we have no access to it. So, I don’t know what’s going on out there. No, thank you. And and those safety standards, they exist for a reason. It’s to protect workers. It’s to protect innocent people who may be nearby, even working in the White House from exposure to asbestos. Uh, and those standards just don’t disappear on the whim of President Trump. They’re there because of all the lessons we learned, especially because of asbestos workers who died at unbelievably high levels before we actually put protections in place. And that’s why I wrote to the contractor who tore down the East Wing to demand answers on whether and why workers were put at risk for Trump’s big donor ballroom. It’s just another example of how Trump is the most anti-UN president, anti-safety uh president in history. Uh and that is something that absolutely we have to get to the bottom of. I’ve received no answers yet in terms of any asbestos protections, any other safety protections that were put in uh in order to ensure that workers were not unnecessarily exposed to health endangering uh situations. So I thank uh both of you for your work on these issues. Thank you, Mr. For the record, every merit shop that I visited emphasizes and takes great pride upon their safety record and they’re they are subject to the same OSHA regulations as regarding maintaining safety and exposure to asbestous or anything else. So just for the record, no, I agree with you. The question is does the president think he can wave all regulations because it’s the White House and not any other property in the United States? And if that was the case, then these workers were exposed. Next, we’ll show you this sleepy Senate Commerce hearing on transportation nominees. And it quickly devolves into a heated fight, as Dan Diamond puts it, between Jackie Rosen, Democrat, and Senator Bernie Moreno when Moreno admits that he was tracking her team’s cars and her automobiles VIN numbers. Here, play this clip. As somebody who’s been here 10 months, I think what what uh we just saw was exactly classic Washington DC. In other words, the car that I drive should be safe. The car that my staff drives, who cares about them? I get a paycheck. I object to you stalking my car and my staff to find the VIN numbers to present to this committee. What are you doing there? What are you going to do with them? It’s an invasion of our privacy. If you came and asked me for my VIN, I will tell you what I have in my car. It’s visible. It’s visible from the outside of the car. So, you went and followed me. Is this my time? You went and followed me to see where who drives me. Write down their VIN number. You interrupted me. You’re attacking me. You watched me go to see who drives me. Writing down their VIN number so you could find out what they have. That’s a That seems a little just to expose expose expose the hypocrisy. Much like for example hypocrisy that you get paid you get my car you get a paycheck but you walk by you walk you get you get paid I’m donating my paycheck sir and I am would happily be on legislation to give what do you say to the staff what do you say to the TSA workers what do you say to the air traffic controllers to you Republican shutdown my friend you are in control of the white house you are in control of the house and you are in control of the senate if you went home to a food bank instead of going to Mara Lago at a goldplated dinner while people are starving. You might see and hear your constituent. Sir, you are you are blind to the suffering of your people. Does it take 60 votes? It takes you listening and coming to the table. If you want to have this, come talk to me in private, sir. So, it does take 60 votes for the record, just so that we’re clear on the reporting so that there’s no misinformation. It does take back to you, Mr. Edwards. um question about uh airports. How bizarre is that? As Arthur Delaney writes, earlier in this hearing, Bernie Moreno said he looked up all of his colleagues VIN numbers to expose them for not buying newer vehicles with expensive safety features. Maybe a weird way of making the point is Jamie Depri writes, “To get a car’s VIN number, you have to physically walk up to the car and look into the windshield.” So Marino was personally going up to his colleagues cars. How many cars? Staff cars, senator cars. He was spying on their vehicles. What the hell is going on here? Then in the Senate Judiciary uh committee here, you have Democratic Senator Dick Durban cross-examining one of Trump’s federal judicial nominees about the kind of anti-abortion uh anti-women, anti-reroductive right stance. here. Play this clip. You believe that female patients are less likely or less able to understand medical advice than male patients? Um, Senator, I’m sorry. I don’t I’m not sure I understand your question. Could you Well, you said not every patient understands the consequences and we certainly know that we’re talking primarily of women of childbearing status. And you went on to say there are a number of patients who don’t understand the nature of the fetus. Do you believe that female patients are less likely to understand this? No, Senator, those what those what we were saying in those arguments is um we were summarizing the evidence in the record for the court. There were several witnesses who uh testified by sworn declaration that they wished my recollection is they said they wish they had had that information because they didn’t quite understand um the nature and the consequences of of of didn’t understand the nature of the fetus women. My recollection is and is that the testimony in the record in those sworn declarations said that that would have been helpful information that they would have liked to have had. And I believe that also was um kind of um hearkening back to statements in the Supreme Court’s Casey opinion as as well as perhaps Gonzalez var. I’m I’m going to tell you I don’t understand what you’re saying based on this quote here and I if you wish it’s your decision. If you want to clarify what you’ve just said in light of what I quoted, please do so because at this point I believe there’s real really a serious question as to what you were trying to say. Senator, we were just simply making an argument based on the evidence in in the record and it was it was the your decision as to whether you want to clarify it, but at this point I think it’s going to be a problem for some of us. What if you could always find exactly what you’re looking for right away? Parking spots, holiday gifts, that phone charger that always goes missing. Imagine how much time that would save. Well, you may never instantly find these things. 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Donald Trump has waged an allout assault on union clean energy jobs in Massachusetts alone. 17 projects, $ 8.6 6 billion dollar of investment and almost 17,000 clean energy jobs have been axed or stalled in just nine months. And because of Donald Trump’s attacks, from cancelling permits to repealing the inflation reduction act tax credits, union workers are seeing job offers evaporate and work sites shutter. A port development project in Salem with hundreds of union jobs under a project labor agreement. Axed a cable manufacturing plant in Somerset that would have created hundreds of union jobs. Axed 3,000 good jobs from the solar forall program that Trump cut. axed the offshore wind projects up and down the Massachusetts coast, which were going to have thousands of union workers, putting those workers out there in a new industry. They’re all in the crosshairs to be axed. So, so far we have lost nationwide 158,000 clean energy jobs in just 9 months. That is an economic record. Look at that destruction. That’s the most destruction that anyone’s ever taken to one industry such a brief period of time. That’s Trump’s record. Union building trades workers are starting to see the unemployment roles for the first time in over a decade. It is a shameful uh uh situation and Trump’s attacks will have a chilling effect on new projects for years to come. Union apprenticeships actually require highquality education programming, but they also required mentored on the job experience. And with Trump and Republicans shuttering these work sites, apprentices cannot train. So, General President Booker, how are President Trump’s attacks on clean energy sector affecting your workers, including your apprentices? It’s, you know, it it’s the chaos, it’s the uncertainty, it’s the inability to recruit new members into it. It’s the inability to have our current members who are in the system um not be able to graduate the system because they don’t have a job to go to. They’re going to finish their current job. They’re not going to have their next job. So, it’s just this chaos and uncertainty is it’s it’s it’s creating an environment where it’s going to be very hard to bring people back into the construction industry at a time where we should be bringing people into registered apprentichip and in the construction industry. General President Downey, could you add your perspective to this situation as it’s unfolding? No, I I would echo um I would echo the same sentiments from President Booker. You know, the one other piece I guess I would add would be that um you know, we put a lot of time, energy, effort, and resources into training to do this offshore wind work. And uh that all just came to a screeching halt. And so now we have a bunch of members with a bunch of credentiing that we don’t know if we’re going to be able to put back to work in the future. Next, we see Senator Adam Schiff from California uh asking critical questions during this week’s Senate Agriculture confirmation hearing about why is the Department of Agriculture stealing people’s personal private data? And are they selling it to AI companies? Are they selling it to government contractors? Are they spying on people? Why are they getting and gathering all of this data on people and creating a database and a list? Is this part of the further plan to put um Americans and migrants into concentration camps that ICE and Border Patrol is doing here? Play this clip right here. Mr. Wal, uh, can you tell us what the legal authority is that USDA is relying on to collect, store, and share the personal data of tens of millions of Americans, including social security numbers, home addresses, um, simply because they received or applied for SNAP benefits. Senator, I I appreciate that question. Um, my understanding is there there were there were four requests uh for state data, for state recipient data. Uh, one of the requests was made in May and so I was at FMCS. Um, but as I recall I had no um involvement in drafting or issuing that particular request. Um, but I was aware of what was going on. Um and um I would say I I know that the that um there is a lawsuit um brought by um um numerous attorneys generals um and I hesitate to give my opinion in terms of what that authority might be because I the the um that may be an issue in the case. Um Mr. Wal, uh, if confirmed, uh, are you committed to reviewing this policy, uh, independently, objectively to ensure that it does not violate federal privacy laws, uh, which protect Americans personal data and identities? Sarah, I appreciate that question and and um I I will say that um I think the collection of data itself um is something that we need to look at in in general um as a 24-year federal employee, I certainly understand the privacy implications and that we have laws that protect data throughout the information life cycle from collection to to transmission to storage to disposal. Um and I will um and I want to make sure that as we we use those the data technologies which carries promise that we also make sure that we employ deploy them in a way that abides by the law. Now here was a moment a very somber moment for me to even watch this to see what even took place. You’re going to see all of the Republican witnesses at this Senate hearing. um they’re so the MAGA Republicans wanted to do this like performative hearing on political violence. All the violence takes place with Democrats. It’s all Democrats fault. But Democrats were pushing back at this hearing. And here you have Democratic Senator Welch uh examining the witnesses. Most of them, all all of the Republican witnesses who were there raised their hands when they asked, “Do you support the pardons of the violent January 6th extremists by Donald Trump? The ones who killed police officers, almost killed police officers. Do you support um the pardons of them?” Every Republican witness raised their hand here. Play this clip. Everybody who was involved and convicted was pardoned. uh raise your hand if you believe that those pardons were appropriate. All right. So that includes pardons for folks who were involved in attacking um officer Hajes. It does. And that means that included like literally on that panel the Democrats called Daniel Hajes, the uh DC police officer. um who courageously defended the Capitol and who was uh almost killed by the January 6th insurrectionist. He’s sitting next to them. He almost died, this guy. And all the Republican witnesses were like, “Yeah, the people who attempted murder on you, that makes sense to pardon them a year after they went to jail. You know, we support Donald Trump pardoning the people who wanted to kill you.” I just want you to think about that. But he persevered. Daniel Hajes gave this incredible speech. I want to share it with you during that same hearing here. Play this clip. I’m speaking in my personal capacity. However, I draw upon my experiences as one of the few police officers in this country who has policed both the protests and riots of 2020 as well as the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. I am intimately familiar with political political violence as when I fought to defend the United States capital and many of your very lives. I was beaten, bloodied, crushed with my eye gouged and my skull smashed with my own baton. Political violence is a worthy topic for discussion. However, the press release I saw from the subcommittee chair made it clear this was not going to be an honest consideration of various causes and effects, but rather a hamfisted attempt to propagate the unsupported notion that liberal ideology is the greatest origin of modern political violence. This is particularly gling to me since every single member of the majority on the subcommittee has either contributed to one of the most infamous examples of conservative political violence of our age or the protection of its perpetrators. Every majority member who could do so voted to acquit Donald Trump during a second impeachment. And now we find ourselves in a new horrific age of political violence. One word is carried out by the state itself. A permanent resident was arrested without a warrant and is being threatened with deportation simply for his politics. A Tennessee man was arrested and is being held on $2 million bail for sharing a Trump meme on social media. Members of Congress have been denied access is facilities despite the law granting them unannounced oversight rights. These detentions and prohibitions are all grounded in the threat of deadly force and violence, are absurd or outright illegal, and politically motivated by by right-wing ideology. The fact that these actions are carried out by agents of the state doesn’t make them acceptable. It makes them far worse. The current administration is doing whatever it can to downplay the threat that right-wing violence presents to the United States, including literally erasing data. Between September 12th and the 13th of this year, the Department of Justice deleted their own study from their website, which came to the conclusion that right-wing extremism poses a much greater threat than left-wing extremism. I quote, “Now the opening paragraph of this National Institute of Justice report published just last year.” Quote, “Militistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violence extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives. A recent threat assessment by the US Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that CO9 pandemic related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions. There will always be those who seek to further their own political agenda through extraleal violence and that is what law enforcement is for. But to reduce the risk of the population at large from falling under radical rad radicalization, the solution is simple. It’s unfettered democracy. One of democracy’s greatest assets is how when unsullied, it provides a mechanism for everyone to have their voice heard. And when people believe their government speaks for them in some manner, they’re less apt to seek violent means to accomplish their political agendas. So make voting easier, not harder. Stop gerrymandering people into oblivion. Stand on the strength of your ideals, not the depth of your donor’s pockets. Stop shopping for judges and start seeking ideas that withstand scrutiny from any political ideology. When you tell the people that an election was stolen from them, they will take up arms against their neighbors without a shred shred of evidence. I know. But if you tell them brilliant political rhetoric is their birthright and civic engagement is their privilege. They’ll instead take up the book and the pen and we’ll all be richer for it. And when you just so you know that this is the um helmet that US Capital Police Officer Brian Siknic wore on January 6, 2021 and um he uh died the following day. We just the family member just got back that just got back that today. Thank you. And by the way, are you seeing what I’m showing you on any hopefully you’re not watching corporate news anymore, but have you even heard this stuff? Like think about the um the the significance behind this report that I’m doing. Like have you seen this anywhere else? Next, I want to show you Senator Mike Rounds, Republican Senator right here. And he views the election as a real repudiation of the fact that Republicans are just not having government work right now. Here, play this clip. We are losing money in the economy. That’s not good for anybody. Let’s focus on that. Let’s get our jobs done. I think people want to see the trains run on time. They want to see the airplanes run on time, right? Uh and that’s something that that we want to get back to. The sooner the better. And you had Claire McCascal on MSNBC. Um and she was talking about how the results from Tuesday’s election show that Americans, if you’re running for a Senate seat as a Democrat, that this could be a good year for you. So Sherid Brown in Ohio, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, that this blue wave that we saw can now allow the Democrats to take control of the Senate and it’s looking more and more like that’s going to happen. But just think about what these clips I just shared with you in the Senate. But let’s play what Clare McCascal has to say. Hey, play the clip. So I think the cumul DOJ all the stuff with him prosecuting his enemies it piles up after a while and the frustration that people have that I encounter at the grocery store. What can we do Claire? What can we do? I mean you guys see it right everywhere you go. Well today people could do something. They could vote. And I think um unless Donald Trump turns into a different person tomorrow um I think this trend will continue. And I think you’re going to see um I’ve talked to a lot of people tonight and there’s people like Sharon Brown that are very happy tonight. There are people like Roy Cooper that are very happy tonight. Uh I think the Senate we didn’t think the Senate was going to be in play next year. I think after tonight the Senate’s definitely in play. It it definitely is. It’s is it’s on the uh on that sort of circle. It’s on the cusp right before they get to the banners boxes. Next year Texas I’m talking to you. You can do it next year. Well, there you have it, folks. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you think. Okay, hit subscribe. Let’s get to 6 million. And thanks so much for watching. Love this video. Support independent media and unlock exclusive content. 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MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Senate Hearing where Democrats exposed that the White House East Wing demolition may have resulted in massive asbestos exposure to workers and the Senate hearings also revealed that a GOP Senator was spying on Democratic Senators.

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