Houston-area TV news stations covering Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s congressional district are so far ignoring a report from the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general which found that the Republican member of Congress helped VA Secretary Robert Wilkie smear a fellow veteran who reported a sexual assault in a VA facility.
In the fall of 2019, Democratic House aide and Navy veteran Andrea Goldstein reported that she was sexually assaulted at a VA medical center in Washington, D.C.. In a January letter to the chair of the House VA committee, Wilkie called Goldstein’s report “unsubstantiated,” for which he was widely criticized.
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MCCONNELL IN THE MIDDLE Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did today what President Donald Trump has not: He congratulated Joe Biden on winning the presidential election in November.
McConnell’s recognition of Biden, along with his plea to Senate Republicans not to challenge the election results, was calculated. McConnell was careful not to alienate Trump he waited an entire month after the election, until the Electoral College cast its votes but he also surely wanted to protect his majority from voting to confirm the election results on Jan. 6. As Marianne LeVine and Melanie Zanona write, if the Sen
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Biden’s Congress Whisperer
Louisa Terrell is the quintessential Capitol Hill dealmaking pro. In 2021, are there any deals to be had?
President-elect Joe Biden delivers a Thanksgiving address at the Queen Theatre on November 25, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. | Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images
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Nancy Scola is a reporter covering technology for POLITICO.
It was just after Barack Obama took the oath of office in 2009 when Louisa Terrell got on the phone with Shawn Whitman, chief of staff to Sen. John Barrasso. It had the potential to be a painfully odd-couple pairing. Barrasso was a new Republican senator from Wyoming eager to make a name as a fierce conservative. Terrell worked in the White House legislative affairs office, and her job was to win senators over to the new Democratic president. For an Obama aide, getting assigned to Barrasso was “drawing the short straw,” Whitman said with a laugh.
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The Big Four met on and off for more than three hours Tuesday night in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s conference room in the Capitol. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
DRIVING THE DAY
HERE’S WHAT WE CAN SAY at this early hour. If you are gambling or setting odds, there’s a damn good chance that there will be a stimulus deal reached. It could be reached today maybe! Theoretically! given that: Friday is the government funding deadline, all the leaders agree a Covid relief deal should be paired with government funding, they have said they won’t leave town until a Covid deal is notched and passed,