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Cori Bush, ‘Squad’ Member and Vocal Critic of Israel, Loses Her Primary (web.archive.org)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by TrippyFocus@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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Summary of events:

Bush was elected in 2020 when she beat former Rep. William Lacy Clay in the Democratic primary.

In a phone call last summer her challenger Bell told her he would not run against her.

Bush was one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian American member of Congress.

This primary AIPAC spent $8.5 million supporting Bell including mailers which featured images with distortions made to Bush’s features. It is the fourth most expensive primary in House history.

This is now the 2nd Squad member AIPAC has removed through its campaign financing.

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[–] bl4kers@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A local political commentator put out this scathing review of her voting record and spending. Curious what other folks think about it because it seems pretty damming

[–] TrippyFocus@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Cori Bush was one of only six Democrats who partnered with 200 Republicans to vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Anyone who has driven in St. Louis lately understands , and how desperately we needed that investment.

IIRC this was because they split the bill with the social programs part that was originally all supposed to be 1 package. She was originally for the combined package.

Nope, not for Cori Bush, who’s repeatedly voted against defense spending.

Is this supposed to be bad…?

Despite the fact that Defund the Police was never effective, is wildly unpopular , and is overwhelmingly unpopular with Black voters, Cori Bush stubbornly continues to support the cause. She did in 2022, and she’s not backing away in 2024.

But here’s the kicker: Bush spends more on private security than just about any other member of Congress, having spent close to $500,000 on private security in the 2022 cycle. Just to be clear, this is highly aberrant. Combined, the rest of Missouri’s House delegation has spent a grand total of $0 on private security.

Without getting into a whole separate thing on defund the police I will say the spending is eye raising, she has said:

“I’m going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have too much work to do,” she said.

I would agree the spending is a bit much but I don’t know the number of threats either. He does later mention she employed her now husband as security as well which is being investigated.

With a national platform, she fails to take even basic steps to help St. Louisans

This whole section feels like it’s reaching. Like maybe she felt the best route was to push to give her constituents more time? Why aren’t other state reps also getting heat for the unused funds?

To a fault, Cori Bush is uncompromisingly partisan

Like this is meaningless in a vacuum, reaching across the aisle isn’t some automatic good.

Take her “no” vote on sanctions against Russia

There are leftists that believe sanctions primarily hurt the working class of countries and not the people in power and so are against them. They haven’t removed Putin from power so far and trying to sanction a third of the countries in the world also has other downsides.

US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said she is concerned about the strength of the US dollar going forwards, after widespread implementation of sanctions by the country has pushed other financial institutions to seek trades in other currencies.

Overall not a lot in there outside of the security spending/investigation which I’ll agree should be looked at.

Edit:

Also before any tries to frame voting No on H.R.6679 as problematic look at the actual bill:

The bill also expands an existing admissions bar against officers, representatives, and spokespersons of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Under this bill, all PLO members are barred from admission into the United States.

Per Wikipedia:

the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty with the Oslo I Accord, and now only seeks Arab statehood in the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.