Kamala Harris Just Slammed the Senate GOP for “Reckless” Endangerment of Capitol Staff

“Senate Republicans have made it crystal clear that rushing a Supreme Court nomination is more important than helping and supporting the American people.”

Adam Schultz/Zuma

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Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) just slammed Senate Republicans’ “reckless” decision to hold Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing “inside of a closed door room for hours while our nation is facing a deadly airborne virus.”

Harris pointed out that Republicans in the Senate have failed to advance a second coronavirus relief bill to assist the millions who are facing economic devastation because of the pandemic, but nonetheless are attempting to push Barrett’s confirmation in the final few weeks before the presidential election—all while endangering people’s health.

“This committee has ignored common sense requests to keep people safe, including not requiring testing for all members, despite a coronavirus outbreak among senators of this very committee,” she said. “The decision to hold this hearing now is reckless and places facilities workers, janitorial staff, and congressional aides and Capitol Police at risk.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday deemed the White House celebration of Barrett’s nomination a “superspreader event.” Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who both serve on the Judiciary Committee, tested positive for COVID after attending the White House event.

Watch the video of Harris’ testimony below:

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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