Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District looms large in upcoming election
One week until the presidential election and pundits are running all sorts of scenarios in which former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris win the necessary 270 electoral college votes. One key battleground is Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
Nebraska is one of two states that splits its electoral votes. Democratic presidential candidates won the district, which includes the city of Omaha, in 2008 and 2020. Democrats are hoping the district goes for Harris this year and she garners its one electoral vote. They have also given the district a nickname: Nebraska’s Blue Dot.
A New York Times poll, out this week, has Harris leading Trump by 12 points in the district, 54% to 42%. Trump is ahead statewide and if the numbers hold, Trump would win four electoral votes and Harris one.
There is also a key congressional race in the 2nd District. Republican incumbent Don Bacon is vying for a fifth term. His Democratic challenger is State Sen. Tony Vargas, who narrowly lost to Bacon in 2022.
Democrats need to pick up just four seats in the upcoming election to take control of the House of Representatives.
For Bacon to keep his seat, he might need many voters in the 2nd District to be ticket-splitters, which means voting for Harris for president but then switching to Bacon in the congressional race.
Bacon admits he is facing strong political headwinds this time around.
With dozens of retirements, resignations, the face of Congress is changing quickly
When the 119th Congress gavels in on Jan. 3, 2025, both the House and Senate will look very different. Forty-seven members of Congress and counting will not return for another term after the 2024 elections. That includes 39 representatives and eight senators who are either retiring, running for another office or resigning early.
Members have mixed feelings about the new faces that will inevitably enter the chamber.
“I think it’s good to have some new blood in here,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said.
“We’re losing a lot of corporate knowledge, and I’m worried about that,” Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said.
Some who are leaving, like Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., are known to be moderate, likable, and able to work across the aisle.
Then there are lawmakers like Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who has been in the House of Representatives for more than 25 years, and is taking a lot of institutional knowledge with him when he retires.
Straight Arrow News asked Blumenauer how the loss of experienced members will impact Congress.
“Well, it will be replenished as new people come on board and get some experience and dive into these issues. It’ll take a while, but life goes on. We hope that people will be a little more inclined to work together cooperatively,” Blumenauer told Straight Arrow News.
Some of the best, brightest and most-liked from both sides of the aisle are leaving, which made another well-respected member, Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., think twice about staying.
“I was talking to both McCarthy and McHenry today. And I told them, I said, ‘With you all leaving, it’s really tempting to follow you.’ But at the same time, I think that the obligation to make sure that the House goes on the right track, to make sure that this country doesn’t go south, is really important. And that’s what’s keeping me here,” Graves said.
But not everyone will be sad to see long-time members go. There’s a bipartisan group that wants to implement term limits.
“Well, I don’t think anyone thinks the Congress is doing well. Having new folks here, maybe it’ll improve things. But I don’t understand the argument for all this experience when we can’t even get budgets passed,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told Straight Arrow News.
Ro Khanna is calling for twelve-year term limits, while other members have called for six-year limits.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., supports a limit but doesn’t think it would work unless it applies to everyone.
“I never said I was going to term-limit myself unless it is for everyone. The alternative is you’re just going to have people in Nebraska with no seniority. But I do think in principle, for across the board, it should be the policy for term limits, and I would support that,” Bacon said.
The reality is that members have been introducing term limit bills for years. But like many elected officials, those bills haven’t gone anywhere.
Lawmakers ask DOJ to force TikTok to register as foreign agent
A bipartisan group of Congress members is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to require TikTok to register as a foreign agent. The members have cited evidence to prove it’s necessary for national security, including a Chinese law that requires TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.”
“It’s clear that China is using TikTok as a propaganda machine to influence Americans and collect our data,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., said.
“We believe TikTok has met the statutory requirements for registration based on its clear pattern of operating within the United States to spy on the American people and sow propaganda,” Gottheimer and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., wrote in a letter to Garland.
The Foreign Agent Registration Act requires anyone who works within the U.S. on behalf of another country to register in order to address foreign influence and national security threats.
“TikTok in America is meant to be corrosive, addictive to our youth,” Bacon said. “If you go to China and look at TikTok in China, it was meant to be very educational and aspirational for the Chinese youth.”
The lawmakers are also introducing a new bill, the STOP Hate Act, to crack down on disinformation and terrorism online.
The STOP Hate Act would:
Require social media companies to release detailed reports of violations to their terms of service and how they are addressing violations.
Impose a $5 million fine for every day the companies don’t comply.
Require the Director of National Intelligence to provide a report on the use of social media by terrorist organizations.
The members found extra motivation to release this proposal after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, and in the wake of the misinformation that has spread online about the war, much of which has been antisemitic.
“They are some of the most profitable companies in the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “They’re some of the most innovative companies in the history of business. It is not too much to get them to eject the anti-Zionists. It is not too much to get them to halt the flow of raw hate.”
The bill’s sponsors are members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, so they will have the help of those 60 caucus members to build support for this bill.
House Republicans feeling time crunch say they’ll stick with Scalise for now
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., is actively working to win over about 10 holdouts who won’t support his bid to be the next House speaker. Without their support, he can’t get the 217 votes needed to officially be elected on the House floor.
Straight Arrow News spoke with lawmakers about the progress as they left a closed-door meeting with Scalise on Thursday, Oct. 12.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D: “We really need to get our act together. This is a continuation of a pretty, pretty dysfunctional disease of the 118th [Congress]. We have a lot of members who just feel like that they will let perfect be the enemy the good. That is not how any functional government or any functional marriage or any functional business works. At some point, you get to a majority decision and then you go execute.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga: “There’s concerns of him not having a clear plan. That’s also one of my concerns. Jim Jordan did lay out a clear plan. There’s also still, we aren’t really healed up from what happened last week when eight of our Republicans joined with all the Democrats and ousted our speaker.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J: “You have to give Steve his chance. I said I was a big supporter of Jim Jordan. However, I said I would support the winner. I am supporting the winner which is Steve Scalise. If it doesn’t work in a relatively short amount of time, nobody’s defined that, then we need to move on and find somebody that can gain consensus. We can’t keep doing this.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb: “They’re showing to a degree that they can’t govern. So we’re gonna, you have to get 218 somewhere. So we’re giving them some time to try to do this right. But I believe in the continuum, it’s going to have to be a bipartisan solution.”
Scalise short of the votes he needs to be elected speaker, working on holdouts
The House gaveled in and gaveled out without a vote for speaker on Thursday afternoon, Oct. 12. Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., doesn’t have the 217 votes he needs to be officially elected as speaker on the House floor.
Scalise won the nomination in a simple majority vote amongst Republicans Wednesday, Oct. 11.
There are 221 Republicans in the House of Representatives, so Scalise can lose only four votes. There are at least eight Republicans who stated they won’t vote for him. Some of the holdouts announced they still support Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, while at least two simply said they won’t vote for Scalise.
“I’m not convinced we’re unified though,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said. “We got the same problem. You got eight goofballs who don’t follow, only follow themselves. No loyalty at all.”
“I would say that it is my estimation that 90% of those who supported Mr. Jordan will come over to support Scalise. I am not naive to think that we will get all of them in the first vote. But if you go to the floor and you have an open process, I think we will winnow that group down to where we get to 217 in a matter of, you know, one or two more rounds,” Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said.
There’s now a rift in the Republican Party between those who want to go out and have public votes and those who want to settle their differences behind closed doors.
“I think we should have some more dialogue. I just want to make sure that we don’t go through what we did in January and embarrass ourselves because it was the clown show,” Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, told reporters.
Many members, regardless of whether they support Scalise, are saying time is of the essence and they need to elect a speaker as soon as possible.
Congress wants to pass a resolution supporting Israel and government funding runs out in a little over a month. Members can’t do anything without a speaker.
US lawmaker hacked by Chinese points to his criticism of CCP, support for Taiwan
Chinese hackers gained access to the email accounts of Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and senior officials at the departments of State and Commerce from May 15 to June 16. Bacon told Straight Arrow News that the FBI Cyber Division informed him hackers obtained all incoming and outgoing emails by exploiting a weakness in Microsoft’s system.
“Because I explicitly asked, ‘Did I push on something that I shouldn’t have pushed, or did I not have my system, you know, defended well enough, or did I do something that wasn’t right?’ And he goes ‘No, it had nothing to do with you. It was a vulnerability in the system,’” Bacon said.
To the best of Bacon’s knowledge, he is the only congressman who was hacked in this attack. In an exclusive interview with Straight Arrow News’ Ryan Robertson, he explained why he thinks he was targeted out of 535 members of Congress.
“Well, I’ve been very vocal about communist China, the government. I love the Chinese people and I love the Chinese Americans. But the communist government, you know, they’re threatening Taiwan, they are committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs, a million people in slave labor,” Bacon said as he listed human rights violations committed at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party.
Bacon said the U.S. should stand with Taiwan in the face of Chinese aggression. The retired Air Force general is calling on defense companies and the government to fulfill $19 billion in military sales to the island nation that have been delayed due to supply chain issues and limited production capacity.
Bacon said it’s likely the hackers were “fishing” for something they could leak.
“I think the Chinese government sees me as an adversary. And they were probably trying to find embarrassing emails that maybe I sent or received or whatever they could find that they thought they could undermine me,” Bacon said. “And thankfully, I’ve been married 40 years, loyal to my wife, crime free and I don’t think there’s anything there that could even come close to being embarrassing on my emails.”
While Bacon believes hackers wanted to embarrass him, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns were also hacked in a cyber-espionage attack. The Wall Street Journal reported that the unclassified messages could have given hackers insights into internal policy discussions and planning for visits by senior administration officials.
Sec Def was warned Pentagon abortion policy would have ‘severe consequences’
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is being heavily criticized for placing a unilateral hold on more than 300 military nominations. Tuberville is protesting a Pentagon policy that provides paid time off and travel expense reimbursement for active duty members who get an abortion.
The senator said he will keep this going as long as the Pentagon’s abortion policy remains in place.
“It’s not hurting readiness. That’s not a problem. I’ve talked to generals and admirals, all the jobs remain filled until somebody is promoted up,” Tuberville said.
On Monday, Aug. 14, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the hold, “unprecedented,” “unnecessary” and “unsafe.”
But in an exclusive interview with Straight Arrow News, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said Secretary Austin shares some of the blame.
“I was there when the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee warned Secretary Austin that if he did this in a unilateral way, with no input from Congress, that there would be consequences, severe consequences. So Secretary Austin knew this before he even did the policy,” Bacon said.
Bacon said had Austin worked with Congress, they could have reached a compromise. For instance, Bacon suggested a permissive leave policy, where time spent traveling for an abortion wouldn’t count against vacation time.
“To do this in a unilateral way and expect zero consequences was foolish by Secretary Austin. He should have sat in a room and made a deal with the leadership,” Bacon said.
“The longer that this hold persists, the greater the risk the U.S. military runs in every theater, every domain, and every service,” Austin wrote.
Bacon is a retired Air Force general and said the hold’s impacts on military readiness are likely negligible, but there are costs.
“This is not the right way to run our military, by no means. So I’m not trying to defend what’s going on because I think it’s not fair to the generals involved,” Bacon said. “This should be what two adults in a room can solve if they were sincere.”
Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have spoken out against Tuberville’s hold. That includes Republicans who disagree with the Pentagon’s policy but think Tuberville is going about this the wrong way.
“The senator from Alabama risks permanently injecting politics into the confirmation of routine military promotions. And that would risk our entire national security,” Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in March when there were 160 pending nominations.
“No, I don’t support putting a hold on military nominations. I don’t support that,” Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said May 10.
SAN reached out to the Pentagon for comment on Bacon’s comments and will update upon response.
The Senate could confirm the nominees to head the Army, Navy and Marines individually. The three branches are currently without a Senate confirmed leader. Those votes would take about three days each because they have to go through the filibuster and cloture process. If Tuberville relented on his hold, the other nominees could be swiftly approved “en bloc” without having to go through a filibuster and cloture.
Improving military quality of life starts in the home
When someone volunteers for the U.S. military, they typically expect basic needs like food, housing and healthcare will be provided. On the whole, the United States takes care of most of its service members’ needs, but there is room for improvement.
Take Fort Cavazos, for instance, the Army post formerly known as Fort Hood. It’s the largest U.S. military installation in the world. At 340 square miles, it’s bigger than New York City. But there are only 10 dining facilities on post.
This summer, staffing shortages and training exercises meant only two of those facilities could stay open, forcing some soldiers to travel up to an hour just to get a meal on post.
Within a few days of Military.com reporting on the Fort Cavazos food situation, the Army opened more dining facilities.
Other issues like addressing affordable housing, access to timely health care and improved pay require a bigger effort, like an act of Congress.
Congressman Don Bacon, a retired Air Force general, is leading a House panel focusing on improving quality of life in the military.
“The main takeaway I’ve received is housing is a big issue,” Bacon said during an interview with Straight Arrow News from his campaign office in Omaha. “The housing allowances we’re paying our military is under what they’re having to pay [for housing].”
Each month, the Pentagon gives a Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) to nearly 1 million troops serving in the military. But, right now, the BAH only covers 95% of the cost of housing.
“Which means that’s less money for food, to make a car payment,” Bacon said. “So, bottom line is the housing allowance hasn’t kept up with inflation.”
Bacon said the panel may recommend boosting the BAH back to 100% of the cost of housing by the end of the year. Bacon said he wants to deliver the panel’s other recommendations by the time the next National Defense Authorization Act needs to be signed.
Those future recommendations will likely include a measure to boost pay for junior enlisted.
“We have learned about 15% of our junior enlisted could qualify for SNAP, or there abouts,” Bacon said.
SNAP is the federal food assistance program, also known as food stamps.
“We want to look at that. We think that the pay increases over the last 18 years, they’ve been doing like a 2% across the board or 3% across the board … when you do across the board pay increases, the lowest income earners and higher just keeps going farther apart. And we think that we probably need to right-size the junior pay and try to catch it up.”
The Congressman said while he knew pay and housing needed to be addressed, he was surprised to learn when military families are given orders to move, they’re footing much of the bill.
“The average family is out approximately $5,000 to $8,000 every time they move. That wasn’t an issue with me when I was in, I don’t remember that. I normally came out ahead a little bit.”
Bacon said improved access to timely healthcare is another major need for military families, as well as more options for childcare. In those regards, the military and civilian worlds have a lot of overlap.
The House panel examining quality of life in the military is really just getting started. Congressman Bacon said the panel has met twice since July and will continue to do so until next year. Then, the panel’s recommendations will be sent to the whole of Congress for greater discussion.
Expunge Trump impeachments? Dems call it meaningless, Republicans hesitate
Could the House of Representatives try to expunge former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments? According to a new report from Politico, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Trump it would.
It all started in June after McCarthy made a comment about Trump’s electability on CNBC.
“The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer,” McCarthy said.
Trump was reportedly furious when he heard that and wanted McCarthy to endorse his presidential run immediately. Politico reported that McCarthy declined to endorse Trump but told him that the House would vote to expunge his two impeachments. McCarthy denied that he made the deal.
Some Republicans publicly support expungement. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced a resolution to expunge the impeachments in June.
“We’ve just got to get 218 votes. And I think a lot of the conferences is [sic] there and there’s a few more and I think they’ll get there. And it’s the right thing to do, expunging these wrongful impeachments. They were politically motivated, the processes were wrong,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said.
But there are only 222 Republicans in the House, so getting 218 votes is not a sure thing. Moderate Republicans are questioning whether the House has the authority to do expunge and add that it wouldn’t change the fact that it happened.
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Because if you’re found not guilty, what do we expunge?” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Politico.
Even the chairman of the House Oversight Committee wouldn’t say if he supports it.
“I haven’t even given much thought about that,”Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said.
“But I’ll tell you, I was sitting there thinking yesterday, listening to the whistleblowers talk about the millions of dollars that the Biden’s took from Burisma,” Comer added. “And now I’m thinking about Jamie Raskin sitting beside me and he led the impeachment of Donald Trump for simply asking the President of Ukraine about that corruption. I thought, ‘my goodness, Jamie Raskin must feel really uncomfortable right now.’”
Straight Arrow News asked Rep. Raskin, D-Md., to respond. He said there is no procedure for expunging an impeachment and called the move meaningless.
“We still had commanding bipartisan, bicameral majorities establishing as a legislative fact that Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the government,” Rep. Raskin said.
Ten Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 riot. Only two remain in Congress: Reps. David Valadao, R-Calif., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.
SAN spoke with Newhouse exclusively and he said he’s unlikely to support expungement.
“I’m not sure it’s a thing, really. Can you really expunge something like that? Is that, is there a vehicle to do that other than this legislation? Which doesn’t really erase it from history, does it?” Newhouse said.
“Well look up the term expunge. It’s, it’s righting a wrong, it’s erasing these wrongs. And we have the power to do that here in the House of Representatives,” Greene said.
To get this done before the August recess, the House would have to vote on it during the week of July 23. But lawmakers didn’t give any indication that a vote is being scheduled.
US military needs troops. Top brass look for ways to improve ‘quality of life’
The United States military is struggling to find enough recruits to fill its ranks. The nation’s top brass are taking several steps to rectify the problem, including taking advice from some of their own.
Mandatory Funday is the online handle of a social media influencer who caters to a specific audience. Straight Arrow News is honoring his request to not use his real name, but can report he’s an active-duty lieutenant in the United States Army. He’s also what’s called a “Mustang officer” because he served as an enlisted soldier first.
As the lieutenant explained, “I humanize the uniform, so to speak. I’ve been shocked to find out that there’s a lot of people that believe that you have to be some kind of, like, superhuman to join the military. And it’s just not the case. We can take damn near anybody, and turn them into what we need to turn them into.”
The videos Mandatory Funday creates poke fun at a range of topics to which most military families can relate. One video explores what many call the “paradox of service,” where a person may disdain certain aspects of the military, but still misses it when they leave.
The lieutenant said he first started making videos because he wanted to have some fun and share his experiences in the Army. As it turns out, those funny videos are leading to real changes.
“I have gotten messages from many senior leaders too, at this point in, in every branch of service and even some people in other NATO militaries telling me that they’re implementing new policy, or a new way of doing things based on some of the videos that I’ve created,” the lieutenant said. “It’s been really cool because there’s a disconnect between senior leadership and junior guys, right? And I feel like I’m bridging that gap a little bit.”
The videos Mandatory Funday creates, as well as the impact they have, are a sort of microcosm of a much larger effort within the military: senior leadership listening to junior enlisted on ways to improve military life.
During the opening ceremonies of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2023 Exhibition in National Harbor, Maryland, the top officers from the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard all talked about the immediate need to invest in people.
The Honorable Erik Raven, the under secretary for the Navy, said, “Our navy and Marine Corps are more than just advanced platforms and weapons systems. Our people remain our greatest strength and are at the heart of everything that we do.”
Adm. Linda Fagan, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said “If we don’t make the investments in the people [then] the aircraft won’t operate. The ships won’t be able to maneuver.
“If nothing else, I’ve learned in the past years the most important thing, most often, we can do is listen. Actually not talk,” explained Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps.
“If we ask them what’s important to them, it’s not all that complicated. They live somewhere: the barracks or their family housing. They get up and they work out in the morning: fitness centers. And then they go home and if they have kids, they’re going to need to find a place to watch their kids during the day: child development centers. And they’re going to work somewhere in a hangar or a maintenance bay or go to the field. Where they work, where they eat, where they live. All these are things that some people call ‘quality of life,’ but I think they are the centerpiece. They’re the focus. And we must invest in that now,” Berger said.
To be clear, the United States government is making investments toward improving the quality of life for military members, but it may not be enough.
Included in the Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Bill was a provision to set aside more than $17 billion to help restore and improve military facilities. Another $2 billion went to improve privatized housing. The most recent National Defense Authorization Act also increased pay by 4.6% for military members and civilians serving in the Department of Defense.
At the same time, a recent study showed around 1 in 4 military members went through some form of food insecurity recently. There’s a growing number of military families qualifying for SNAP benefits, also called food stamps. And just like in the civilian world, access to affordable childcare can be a struggle.
“We have to adjust our pay, or the basic allowance for subsistence now,” Congressman Don Bacon said. The Nebraska representative is also a retired Air Force general. He’s the chair of a new house subcommittee focused on quality of life for U.S. military members.
In addition to raising housing and food allowances for junior enlisted through mid-level enlisted soldiers, particularly those with families, the congressman said there are other challenges that need to be addressed.
“We have housing that’s falling behind. We have medical care that’s being hollowed out a little bit at a time. We have families on long waiting lists to get daycare. We have spouses who can’t get jobs because we move them too often,” Bacon said. “So, I wanted to look at this holistically and say ‘we could do so much better for quality of life.’”
Bacon said improving the quality of life in the military will also make it easier to get new members to sign up. In 2022, every service branch except the Space Force missed its recruiting goals. 2023 isn’t looking much better.
Bacon’s subcommittee will meet twice a week for eight months starting in June. From there, the committee will offer up its recommendations to be included in future legislation.
“This [subcommittee] is going to be something in the House that won’t be Republican versus Democrat,” Bacon said. “It’s going to be Americans, and patriotic Americans, trying to solve a problem for patriotic Americans.”
Patriotic Americans like the Mustang lieutenant behind Mandatory Funday. The lieutenant said he’s not surprised there’s a House subcommittee on improving quality of life in the military. For him, it’s proof of what the Army teaches in its official doctrine: Good leaders listen.
“I think the Army and, you know, the military in general does a fairly good job of trying to meet people halfway, if that makes sense,” the lieutenant said.