Tuesday’s 97-2 vote in the Senate to extend permanent protections for 9/11 first responders came after many years of visits to Capitol Hill — more than 280 for John Feal alone, a former demolition specialist and responder from Long Island whose advocacy has helped bring a national conversation to the issue.
And minutes after the lopsided vote, Feal made sure to alert lawmakers that his days of tirelessly knocking down their doors are thankfully coming to a close.
“We’ll put down our swords,” he said on Capitol Hill, acknowledging the good-faith efforts that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell exhibited in recent months to get the bill a clean vote.
After all, during a recent trip to Washington, Feal came bearing a special memento for McConnell: the NYPD badge of Detective Luis Alvarez who died on June 29, a gesture that Jon Stewart recently told Cheddar he had hoped would secure passage of the measure.
McConnell’s commitment to Feal was widely noticed.
Jake Lemonda, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, told Cheddar, “When someone gives you their word, that’s their bond. I have so much respect. He stuck to his word. And I thank him.”
Republican Rep. Pete King added, “You have to give [McConnell] credit.” King was joined by his GOP colleague in the Senate Cory Gardner to gather support for the compensation fund from skeptical conservatives, although two Republicans — Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator Mike Lee of Utah — were on full blast Tuesday with their no votes.
“Trying to block this was inexcusable,” Rep. King told Cheddar about Paul and Lee.
There is a line that some New York Democrats like Rep. Carolyn Maloney and House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler say about the immediate post-9/11 reality: that New Yorkers were told, as Maloney puts it, a “toxic lie” — that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe. (Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman apologized in 2016 for her role in government-led misinformation in the fall of 2001.)
“Government told them to go back,” Maloney told Cheddar Tuesday on Capitol Hill. History] will show it was a "horrible, horrible judgment and horrible decision.”
But Tuesday was not the day for the sharpest of barbs, nor the most accusatory of finger-pointing. It was, instead, a day of muted celebration: a victory of a hard-fought battle that has come — and continues to come — with devastating consequences (members of Congress have indicated that 18 people have died in the past month alone from 9/11-related illnesses). And while the bill got its final push over the goal line from McConnell, a simple credo has united the advocacy efforts for so many others along the way. As Maloney told Cheddar Tuesday, “We promised we would never forget.”
Ursula Perano, politics reporter at the Daily Beast, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss the wave of 30 House Democrats retiring or not seeking re-election in November.
Jimmy Hoover, Supreme Court editor-at-large for Law360, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss the high court's latest ruling in an Alabama gerrymandering case that could end up further chipping away at the Voting Rights Act.
GLAAD, the media watchdog for the LGBTQ community, released its “Where We Are on TV” report last week, with updated data on the entertainment industry. Rich Ferraro, chief communications officer for the non-profit organization, joined Cheddar News to talk about the progress that has been made on media representation and what's at stake in the process of humanizing queer people in popular culture as a recent backlash in legislative trends demonstrated. "We just saw the news yesterday in Texas, a move from Governor Abbott that would try to pull trans youth away from their parents for receiving gender-affirming care," Ferraro said. "And television and entertainment can be a frontline to preventing such anti-LGBTQ legislation from moving forward."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has begun. Explosions and sirens were reported across the country early Thursday morning, as Russia launched a wide-ranging attack with shelling, tanks, and missile strikes. Lauren Baer, former State Department Senior Adviser and current Managing Partner at Arena, joined Cheddar to provide the latest update on the crisis.
A six-year battle over equal pay has finally come to an end-- as U.S. Soccer and The United States Women's Soccer Team have agreed to settle their lawsuit. Under the terms of the deal, the athletes will receive $24 million from U.S. Soccer, and a pledge from the federation to equalize pay for the men's and women's national teams. Lily Roberts, Managing Director of the Poverty to Prosperity Team at the Center for American Progress joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
President Biden has hit back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unleashing robust new sanctions, ordering the deployment of thousands of additional troops to NATO ally Germany, and declaring that America will stand up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Grant Stark, Director of Research at CapWealth, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says that his firm is closely monitoring oil prices amid the geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and elaborates on how inflation will continue to be a problem across multiple sectors.
A private prison company plans to run a new pilot program that would place hundreds of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border under house arrest. The "home curfew" pilot program is part of "impactful detention reforms," according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign organizer with Mijente, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
