House speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday named Representatives Scott Perry and Ronny Jackson to the House Intelligence Committee, a name that becomes more ironic with every new appointee.
An avid election denier, Perry has been extensively linked to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified before Congress that Perry had begged Donald Trump to pardon him for his involvement in the insurrection and later called him “central” to the plan to “shred the Constitution” and keep Trump in power.
In 2022, Perry sued the Department of Justice after the FBI seized his cell phone as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the events of January 6, arguing that the phone contained privileged information. In December 2023, a judge ruled that Perry would have to disclose nearly 1,700 items to the Department of Justice, excluding a little under 400 from the disclosure.
Jackson is also a lackluster pick. Trump’s former doctor was demoted by the U.S. Navy in 2022 after the Pentagon inspector general found that he regularly drank on the job, berated his subordinates, and acted inappropriately, according to CNN. Last year, Jackson was filmed unleashing a profanity-laced tirade on a Department of Public Safety officer.
Under Jackson’s tenure, the Trump White House was reportedly “awash in speed,” with West Wing employees encouraged to take drugs to keep their energy levels up. Of course, none of this has affected his trajectory within the GOP, as he may be tapped to be Trump’s health secretary if he wins in November.
Perry and Jackson will now be granted oversight of the FBI’s counterintelligence programs, which, among other things, could likely be directed onto pro-Palestinian protesters at the behest of committee Chair Mike Turner.
Representative Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s possible vice presidential picks, seems to believe that Black families were better off under the segregation of the Jim Crow era.
Donalds was speaking Tuesday at a “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event at a cigar bar in Philadelphia with Representative Wesley Hunt, which was meant to promote “Black Americans for Trump.”
Sports journalist Michelle Tafoya, who moderated the event, was leading a discussion on the GOP’s outreach to Black Americans when Donalds began claiming that Democratic policies have eroded Black family values. Specifically, Donalds said that Black voters had embraced those policies after becoming loyal to the Democratic Party when the Civil Rights Act passed.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative—Black people have always been conservative-minded—but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson—you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” Donalds added, referring to the former U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to Donalds’s remarks the next day, calling them “factually inaccurate” and an “ignorant observation.”
Jeffries: It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that black folks were better off during Jim Crow. How dare you make such an an ignorant observation. You better check yourself before you wreck yourself pic.twitter.com/TfxOwHGCl8
Connecting desegregation to the decline of the Black family is probably not the best way for the Republicans to win more Black voters, even if the message is coming from a Black conservative like Donalds. Plus, the social programs that Donalds laments were rolled back by Democrats in the 1990s, led by President Bill Clinton.
But it’s only the latest example of Donalds saying something he shouldn’t have. Also on Tuesday, he attempted to criticize Democrats on Newsmax, only to inadvertently describe the GOP’s propensity for gaslighting. He continues to back Trump, even when the Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon spouts outlandish conspiracy theories. And Donalds went as far as to declare that the federal government should not be involved in managing elections.
Is this the kind of devotion Trump is looking for in a vice president, a sycophant who can defend Trump and the Republican Party’s racist history by the virtue of his own identity?
Representative James Comer once accidentally imported Chinese marijuana on behalf of one of his donors. The massive Mary Jane mistake, from a politician who has gone on to decry doing business with the foreign superpower, was never made public—until now.
Correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast from a third-party group through a records request, shows that a shipment of “hemp” Comer acquired nearly a decade ago tested 10 times higher than the legal limits for THC. While the emails suggest there were plans to destroy the gaffed ganja, it’s still unclear what became of the shipment, which the U.S. government would classify as marijuana.
After Comer was elected as Kentucky’s commissioner of agriculture in 2011, he embarked on an industrial hemp pilot program, which he has since touted as one of the triumphs of his career.
As part of the program, Comer worked with Caudill Seed, a company that he’d previously awarded as a “Kentucky Proud Partner in Excellence.” Brothers and company executives COO Sanford “Dan” Caudill and CEO Pat Caudill reportedly only became interested in working with hemp seeds after speaking with Comer when he was running for the office. That year, both brothers donated the maximum to Comer’s campaign, according to the Beast.
Comer was reportedly aware that Caudill Seed had a relationship with Chinese suppliers, and in June 2014, a box........
