Nancy Pelosi’s Signature H.R. 1 Bill Is A Grotesque Usurpation Of Power By the Federal Government

The first bill of the House of Representatives of each Congress is H.R. 1. Often (maybe always, but I’m too lazy to do the research to be able to say this) the Speaker uses this bill number for some symbolic purpose. Nancy Pelosi and her newly elected Bolshevik and Jacobin majority are doing just that. They’re attempting to gut the First Amendment and take the first step to putting the Democrat party in charge of elections everywhere.

This is what the bill does:

• use YOUR tax dollars to support political candidates you don’t agree with;

Gives a 6:1 federal match of “small donations,” which are defined as being less than $200. There is no requirement that those donations come from within the congressional district or state. There is no mechanism for policing this to ensure Tom $teyer (ooops, my anti-Semitism is showing) hasn’t set up a boiler room to send hundreds of thousands of $200 contributions to candidates named Beto.

• regulate speech that mentions a federal candidate or elected official at any time;
• regulate the online speech of American citizens;

This, you’ll recall, was the masturbatory fantasy of the late John McCain and Russ Feingold with their “Campaign Finance Reform” bill. Why would any incumbent not want a bill that could make it a federal crime to say bad things about them. How bad is this? When you’re a Democrat and you’ve lost the ACLU, you know you’ve gone batsh** crazy. This is from McConnell’s email:

“The ACLU is not often an organization that would be described as bipartisan. But here’s what the ACLU wrote in a letter to House Democrats just a few days ago: Quote: ‘[T]here are … provisions that unconstitutionally impinge on the free speech rights of American citizens and public interest organizations… [it] strikes the wrong balance between the public’s interest in knowing who supports or opposes candidates for office and the vital associational privacy rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.’ They go on: ‘[H.R. 1] interferes with that ability by impinging on the privacy of donors to these groups, forcing the groups to make a choice: their speech or their donors. Whichever they choose, the First Amendment loses.’

He goes on to note that these are exactly the kinds of laws that had the ACLU in court in the Deep South in the Civil Rights era where these “sunshine” laws were used to make civil rights groups divulge who was giving them money. Were this to pass, RedState would not be able to legally offer political commentary or endorse candidates. Or talk smack about them. That would be a bad thing.

• end the long-standing parity in the campaign finance law between corporations and unions;

This repeals Citizens United and returns us to the era where unions could use coerced money to buy elections but corporations were banned from contributing to candidates.

• turn the Federal Election Commission from a balanced board of three Republicans and three Democrats into a partisan commission with a 3-2 majority;

The purpose here is weaponize the FEC. They know the Democrat commissioners will gleefully criminalize GOP campaign finance violations but the Bulwarkian Republicans that gravitate to this kind of sinecure will be too stump broke to do anything when they have a majority.

• mandate that all states adopt same day voter registration, automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and other provisions that undermine election integrity;

The ejects the the whole “time, place and manner” from the Constitution. It ignores the problems shown by this bullsh**.  According to Vox, it prohibits the purge of voter rolls. It increases the use of absentee ballots despite the widespread fraud in their use.

• mandate that all states adopt redistricting commissions that take the power to draw congressional districts away from our elected state officials and give it to unelected bureaucrats;

Even though as a resident of Maryland’s Sixth district, I am benefiting from judicial meddling in a perfectly good partisan gerrymander, I’m against it. Redistricting is a political act and losing elections should have consequences. I fail to see how putting bureaucrats in charge of redistricting makes it more fair or just.

• declare that Congress supports DC statehood.

Great. What could possibly go wrong?

Mitch McConnell is terming this the “Politician’s Protection Act,” with good reason. None of these actions benefits an insurgent candidate. All of them benefit incumbents. All of them benefit Democrats. The law is totalitarian in the way it interferes with political speech. If this travesty were enacted, nearly all of it would eventually be declared unconstitutional. But that would be a long battle and a battle we simply don’t need right now. Fortunately, this will not get to a vote in the Senate but still, it shows the socialist…actually, the communist…intentions of the current House majority and we should make them live with it.

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