Matthew Foldi

Are you a man? Need a job? Well, former labor lawyer and current Michigan congresswoman Hillary Scholten would really rather you didn't apply to be her new senior communications director in DC, according to a job posting obtained by The Spectator.  The job posting stipulates that “our office deeply values staff diversity (both because we recognize we are a better office for it and because we know that it is objectively the right thing to do!)” “We strongly encourage women (and all individuals who do not identify as male), people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, people with disabilities, veterans, and members of other underrepresented communities to apply,” the post continues.

Democrats are taking today’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank hearing seriously. So seriously that they circulated an emoji-filled document of suggested tweets that they would like for committee members to post. The saddest part is that one of those committee members then repeated those talking points almost word-for-word at the hearing. “Democrats 👏 the decisive action taken by the Biden administration in a critical moment to restore confidence in our banking system,” the Financial Service Committee Democrats circulated in a memo obtained by The Spectator this morning.

Thursday was a sickening day for TikTok. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew came to Congress flanked by low-energy and likely highly-compensated “influencers.” He left looking queasy, like he'd just been force-fed a dish of FDA-condemned “NyQuil Chicken” — the infamous recipe popularized by users of his platform. Time after time, Chew was thanked by both Republicans and Democrats for doing the impossible: making members of both parties on the Energy and Commerce Committee unite against his own company. While TikTok’s fate is still uncertain, the Biden White House’s distance from his fellow Democrats is curious.

A politically-connected electric battery company with deep ties to the Biden administration is in trouble. Proterra could be staring down financial ruin, even though everyone from the president to his cabinet have worked overtime to boost the bus company. The Biden administration was supposed to be a ticket to ride for California-based Proterra. In 2021, it told shareholders that it was ready to “ride the wave” of taxpayer-funded incentives for vehicle electrification. It had all the right friends in all the right places. It hired a lobbying firm with extensive ties to Democratic politics weeks before Biden toured its facility.

President Biden has been clear: he’s itching to attack Republicans for “wanting to cut Medicare.” But he’s running into a problem: his own administration rolled out a little-noticed rules change that’s poised to slash benefits for millions of retirees across the country. The change could jeopardize his own standing with a crucial voting bloc and could put down-ballot Democrats in electoral peril.  Biden has used everything from the pages of the New York Times to his State of the Union’s teleprompter to accuse Republicans of wanting to slash benefits to seniors who’ve paid into the retirement fund.

“Whoever controls big data technologies will control the resources for development and have the upper hand,” Xi Jinping declared shortly after assuming control of China. In the years since, the Chinese surveillance state has exploded at home and abroad, thanks to espionage-adjacent apps such as WeChat, but none has raised as much ire as TikTok. Following reams of data showing that your teenager’s favorite app is poisoning their mind and spying on them, the calls to ban TikTok are now coming from inside the House… and Senate. But how would such a ban actually work? What does it mean to ban an app that is supported by the technological infrastructure of the CCP?

Everywhere liberal journalists look, they see George Santos. They see him in fellow freshman Republicans Anna Paulina Luna and Andy Ogles, both of whom have recently been accused of fabricating details about the past in newspaper hit pieces. With the breathless coverage of Santos’s brief tenure in Congress, you’d be forgiven if you thought that the new House GOP majority was filled with liars and résumé embellishers — that’s clearly the big picture that Democrats and their allies in the press are painting. Something that curiously escapes national attention — like the multiple late-night “comedy” hours that have mocked Santos — is that shockingly, Republicans aren’t the only ones who lie about everything from their résumés to their religions.

A disturbing trend is emerging among Virginia Democrats in Richmond, as the entire state House and Senate chambers are up for reelection in just a few months: by word and deed, they are increasingly serving as useful idiots for the Chinese Communist Party. In recent weeks, Virginia Democrats have warned that so-called “China-bashing” could lead to mass internment of Chinese Americans, and argued against requiring taxpayer-funded universities to disclose grants from the CCP. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Democrats were excited to focus on abortion this year in the hopes of further stymying Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s legislative agenda, much of which the Democratic-controlled State Senate has stopped. Youngkin, however, had other things in mind.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, or what’s left of it, is in shambles. The Democratic group’s staff has dwindled down to nothing, following months of turmoil under its newly elected chair, Representative Nanette Barragán, who took over in December. In the weeks since, the group’s staff have all either left voluntarily or been fired. Most recently, Barragán fired the group’s lone survivor, executive director Jacky Usyk — news that was first publicized by the anonymous Instagram account, Dear White Staffers, which has been prolifically documenting the CHC turmoil. While Barragán has only been in Congress for six years, Legistorm data show that she has the third highest turnover rate of congressional staff in the past twenty years.

George Santos is frustrated. In an hour-long interview with The Spectator, Santos tried to make it clear he came to Washington with the hope to get things done. But he’s been “slapped in the face” with the reality that there is so much red tape. “Washington, DC is performance art,” he says. “This is a master course on performing arts... everybody here is acting.” Santos of course knows a thing or two about acting; his exploits have been well publicized since his election. Perhaps the most well-known of his roles took the form of his popular drag performances in Brazil. A fan of drag for many years, it’s surprising to learn that Santos only began watching RuPaul’s Drag Race only once the coronavirus pandemic hit.

House Republicans have launched an all-out war on the remaining Covid vaccine mandates being enforced by the Biden administration. So far they have won some important concessions, but are pushing for more. The Spectator spoke with several key players involved in the legislative battle, which they claim forced the Biden administration to finally declare an end to some of its coronavirus emergency powers later this year. The Republicans, however, want them shut down right now.

Democrats in Washington, DC and Iowa are now led by a pair of election deniers. Following a disastrous cycle, Iowa Democrats have elected one of their party’s most prominent 2020 election deniers to helm them into a critical 2024. The decision comes weeks after House Democrats threw out their old leadership and elected veteran election denier Hakeem Jeffries to run their caucus. In Iowa, Rita Hart — whose 2020 House campaign ended in a six-vote defeat at the hands of now-Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks — won a contentious vote held over Zoom to run the Democratic state party. In the months after the 2020 election, Hart mounted a dubious challenge to Miller-Meeks’s win where she asked the US House of Representatives to overturn her defeat and install her in office anyway.

House Republicans will be investigating the Transportation Security Administration to work out how a prolific Swiss hacker who identifies as a “tiny kitten” was able to obtain over a million entries from the No-Fly List, The Spectator has learned. The hacker, a twenty-three-year-old who goes by Maia Arson Crimew, was able to access a 2019 version of the list after what she described as just a few hours of hacking.

As President Biden plans to launch his reelection campaign, he is whistling past a graveyard of recently discarded Democratic Party icons, who have either left the scene willingly or are being gracelessly kicked out. Nancy Pelosi. Steny Hoyer. Pat Leahy. Jim Clyburn. Anthony Fauci. Dianne Feinstein. Their combined age is 500 — and until a few months ago, they were running the country. Now they’re shadows of their former selves, headed to the greener pastures of retirement, book deals or the backbenches of the House of Representatives. Over the past few months, the Democratic Party’s leadership has transitioned from the Silent Generation to a mixture of baby boomers and Gen Xers.