Matthew Chapman

Trump cheers Senate GOP move to repeal Obamacare provisions he claimed to support

Shortly after his first meeting with President Obama following the election in November, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would like to keep intact crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the ban on discriminating against people for pre-existing conditions and the requirement that children be allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until age […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 12, 2017

Freshman GOP congressman: “Trump should release his tax returns”

All around the country, those few Republican lawmakers who have deigned to show up for their own town hall meetings have been pushed by angry constituents to seek answers on Donald Trump’s finances. One such lawmaker, first-term congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), has listened to his constituents and stated at his town hall, to great applause, that he believes Trump should release his tax […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 24, 2017

This “sanctuary city” sheriff will not be bullied by the Governor of Texas

One of Donald Trump’s key promises upon taking office was to crack down on “sanctuary cities” — jurisdictions which offer protection to undocumented immigrants and forbid law enforcement officials from asking for a person’s immigration status or sharing their local data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Despite the overheated rhetoric, studies show that in sanctuary cities, crime […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 02, 2017

12 days and counting: Shamed GOP quietly miss deadline to start Obamacare repeal

Republicans have definitively said that they are going to repeal President Obama’s landmark healthcare law as quickly as possible under the new administration. In January, the GOP-controlled House and Senate appeared to make good on that promise by easily agreeing to a resolution to repeal Obamacare via budget reconciliation. The only problem? They missed their own deadline. Section […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 08, 2017

Senate Dems push back hard during Rex Tillerson nomination hearing

In a continuing show of strength by Democrats in the confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) today came out swinging against Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil and Trump’s pick for Secretary of State. Democracy will not defend itself. We need to nurture it and protect it from […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 11, 2017

Kellyanne Conway reverses her position on Trump’s tax returns twice in 24 hours

A major flashpoint of Donald Trump’s candidacy, and now his presidency, is his ongoing failure to release any detailed financial disclosure about his taxes. Every single major party candidate for president after 1976 has released at least one year of their tax returns. It is an essential gesture of transparency to ensure no candidate has unethical […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 23, 2017

Republican super PAC tries to attack Democratic candidate, accidentally makes him look awesome

In the wake of multiple victories in special elections around the country, Democrats are turning their sights on Georgia, where another special election on April 18th will fill the congressional seat vacated by Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price. Georgia’s 6th congressional district has been solidly Republican since 1978, when Newt Gingrich was elected […]

By Matthew Chapman - March 02, 2017

Koch brothers forced to come clean about millions spent attacking Obamacare

Ever since the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed groups unaffiliated with campaigns to spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of elections, there has been an enormous proliferation of “dark money” groups designed for exactly that purpose. The poster children for these groups are Charles and […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 17, 2017

This is the man Trump is citing to justify his claim millions of people illegally voted

Donald Trump continues to cling to his lie, contradicted by his own lawyers’ past statements, that he only lost the popular vote because upwards of 3 million people illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election. And plans to launch a full investigation into these baseless claims on the taxpayers’ dime. After dodging press questions to provide evidence, […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 28, 2017

Conservative confab spins alt-right as “left-wing”

The “alt-right” movement remains a huge part of Donald Trump’s base of support. But some conservatives seem to be uncomfortable with their president’s close ties to a movement led by white nationalists, and are now attempting to deny the connection. Enter Dan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the annual […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 23, 2017

WSJ: Three dozen law students cast doubt on Trump Supreme Court pick’s claims of volunteerism

Even before Donald Trump announced the nomination, Senate Democrats vowed to put up a solid front against the confirmation of Colorado appellate judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on the grounds that Republicans stole the seat from Merrick Garland — a sentiment echoed by some legal scholars. But new questions are starting to emerge about whether Gorsuch […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 06, 2017

New York Times admits they were too “timid” to cover Trump/Russia story

It has long been clear that the corporate media did a disastrous job covering the presidential election. And despite a reputation as the “paper of record,” the New York Times was one outlet that exemplified this journalistic malpractice, particularly in their wildly unbalanced coverage of the main stories dogging each candidate. The Times’ coverage of […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 21, 2017

Trump flouts federal anti-nepotism law by appointing son-in-law chief advisor

President-elect Donald Trump has faced numerous ethical conflicts during his transition period, including refusing to divest from his business holdings and many of his cabinet nominees failing to turn in their ethics paperwork. Now he is adding nepotism to his growing list of unprecedented hostilities to established ethical standards and federal law by naming Jared Kushner, a New […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 09, 2017

House GOP appallingly votes to conceal cost of Obamacare repeal to taxpayers

As House Republicans voted on the new congressional rules package for the 115th Congress, many passages drew controversy, including a provision to unconstitutionally fine legislators for taking video footage on the House floor, and an attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. But one passage made it through without attention from the corporate media: A provision that […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 05, 2017

Paul Ryan proposes unconstitutional rules to stymie House Democrats

President-elect Donald Trump has received scrutiny for his eyebrow-raising authoritarian proposals, such as stripping citizenship from political protestors and maintaining a private security force to eject anyone he pleases from his events. But he is not the only Republican resorting to authoritarian threats — House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is joining in. In June, a group of Democratic representatives […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 28, 2016

While Trump and Pence go after Obamacare, Obama and the Dems fight to save it

The differences between the two parties are vast and varied, but there is perhaps no issue that more starkly represents their current ideological contention than the Affordable Care Act. Today, the outgoing president and his party huddled to defend his signature healthcare initiative, while the incoming president and his party strategized how to repeal it. […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 04, 2017

Can’t wait for 2018: This month’s special elections are key for the Resistance

Following Donald Trump’s first month in the White House, which was such a disaster even many Republican pundits could not defend it, the popular resistance to the new regime has an upcoming opportunity to send a substantial message in two upcoming special elections where control of the legislature hangs in the balance. On February 25th, […]

By Matthew Chapman - February 22, 2017

Republicans in Congress are prepared to give Trump as much power as he wants

On Inauguration Day in 2009, Republicans held a planning session to discuss ways they could completely counteract and hamstring everything President Obama did. By killing compromise immigration legislation, shutting down the government, suing the president over executive actions, holding hearings on the taxpayers’ dime to try to implicate his appointees in scandals and conspiracy theories, illegally writing to the Iranian mullahs […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 21, 2016

REMINDER: Trump is planning to stifle free expression on the Internet

Our new president-elect has already shown a rampant disregard for Internet freedom. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump once stated he would like to “close up the Internet” in some areas to stop terrorism, the way Iran and China do. No less dangerous, though, is his position on Net Neutrality. Simply put, Net Neutrality is a […]

By Matthew Chapman - January 04, 2017

Trump’s nominee for White House budget director is a disaster

President-elect Donald Trump has compounded the numerous ongoing controversies over members of his transition team with yet another troubling pick for a high-ranking position, naming Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), a far-right Tea Party representative who founded the House Freedom Caucus, to be White House budget director. During the debt ceiling fight in 2011, Mulvaney advocated letting the U.S. Treasury default — which is […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 19, 2016

In North Carolina, Republicans are waging an all-out assault on democracy

With the disclosure that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered the cyberattacks on the presidential election, Americans are waking up to threats to our democracy from overseas. But there is a simultaneous war against democracy on the home front as well, and nowhere is this more apparent than North Carolina. A month ago, voters in the Tar […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 16, 2016

Emerging strategy: Another GOP senator pretends to support investigating Russia

Previously, I have written about the underhanded strategy of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) coming out in favor of a Senate investigation of Russian election tampering while actually taking steps to ensure any investigation goes nowhere. He is not alone: His colleague, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), is adopting the same stance. A month ago, Corker appeared to […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 14, 2016

Do not be fooled: McConnell’s call for a Russia probe is a ploy to sabotage it

In the wake of the explosive revelations that the “consensus view” of the intelligence community is “that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” Democrats have stepped up and demanded answers, along with a few notable Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), however, wants us […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 13, 2016

Keeping Trump as a producer renders NBC’s news division untrustworthy

NBC has confirmed that not only will they go forward with airing President-elect Donald Trump’s reality show Celebrity Apprentice (albeit with a new host), but Trump will also keep his executive producer title, and be listed in show credits — a decision that has sparked widespread outrage and a petition to remove him. It is hard […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 09, 2016

Trump’s bigotry has empowered hatred and bullying in schools

Donald Trump has used his platform, first as a candidate and now as President-elect, to bully and belittle marginalized people. The tolerance of his high-profile expressions of bigotry has empowered the people who share his views, leading to numerous reports from educators that young people are starting to follow his lead. My colleague Ginger McKnight-Chavers […]

By Matthew Chapman - December 02, 2016

Trump’s HHS pick thinks women can, and should, pay out of pocket for birth control

(Editor’s Note: Although women’s agency is a primary target of these policies, not only women need access to reproductive care.) It is no secret that Representative Tom Price (R-GA), a former physician and House Budget Committee chairman whom Donald Trump has nominated for Secretary of Health and Human Services, wants to repeal the Affordable Care […]

By Matthew Chapman - November 29, 2016

Trump fails his first diplomatic test

Donald Trump and his aides have long promised that he would be more civil on Twitter as he moves into his role as president. Yet his tweeted response to the death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro is a failure to keep that promise — and a failure of his first major diplomatic test: Fidel […]

By Matthew Chapman - November 26, 2016

Team Trump’s ties to white supremacy are even deeper than you imagined

In an interview with New York Times reporters this week, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he “condemns” the white nationalists who have been celebrating his election. But many of the people Trump is bringing into his administration have connections to key players in the white nationalist community. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief policy czar, spent years […]

By Matthew Chapman - November 23, 2016

North Carolina Republicans refuse to admit they lost the governor’s race

One of the exceptions to the Republicans’ series of wins on Election Day was North Carolina governor Pat McCrory. After four years of toxic far-right policy, including severe cutbacks to voting rights, shutting down abortion clinics, and the infamous “bathroom bill” which sparked nationwide boycotts of the state, North Carolinians rejected their Republican governor in favor […]

By Matthew Chapman - November 21, 2016

Trump is already poised to commit an impeachable offense on day one

Donald Trump’s financial conflicts of interest have been well-documented for months. His property holdings in foreign countries create a serious risk that he could manipulate federal law to reduce oversight of his own businesses, offer preferential treatment to foreign states that give him business contracts, or profit from real estate deals with international entities which […]

By Matthew Chapman - November 20, 2016