Rep. Jared Huffman: “Madam Speaker, since 1993, every year on January 16th, our nation commemorates the 1786 passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson. That landmark statute would go on to serve as the framework of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, providing the foundation for religious freedom here in our great nation.
“The past four years have made clear that there are those who would choose to distort the true definition of religious freedom, in order to allow the proliferation of discrimination under the guise of what they refer to as ‘religious liberty.’ The result of this callous and malignant effort culminated a week and a half ago with the storming of the United States Capitol building by White Christian Nationalist groups allied with the President, and the deaths of five Americans. The evidence of this fact is made clear by the thousands of ‘Jesus’ signs, banners, and f
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Cartoon by Phil Fountain.
It can’t be easy being California’s 1st Congressional District Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R). The cognitive dissonance alone must be intense, like tinnitus from attending too many Grateful Dead concerts.
After almost two decades in public service, LaMalfa’s still best known for the $5.5 million in rice and wheat subsidies his family’s farming conglomerate leached from the federal government between 1995 and 2020.
At the same time, this supposedly Christian congressman voted to cut food stamps and other financial assistance for the poor every chance he got, because “socialism.”
LaMalfa is fortunate enough to live in rural Northern California, where his pro-God, pro-gun and anti-gay policies play well with the region’s majority right-wing religious voters. They’ve cheerfully elected him to state Assembly District 1 three times and California’s 1st Congressional District four times.