Dem Congresswoman Retires With Message to All Old People in Office

New Hampshire Democratic Representative Annie Kuster is making her feelings known on her way out of Congress.

The longtime congresswoman fired shots at President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump, and everyone in between in an exit interview with The Boston Globe published Thursday.

Kuster’s answer as to why she is retiring from Congress was twofold. The first reason was the issue of gerontocracy. 

“I’m trying to set a better example,” Kuster said. “I think there are colleagues—and some of whom are still very successful and very productive—but others who just stay forever.”

Her second reason was that she’s not the best “gladiator” as Donald Trump returns to office. 

Kuster, who announced her retirement in March, suspected that Trump would win the election. “Just in my heart, [I] reached the conclusion that this would be a very challenging campaign for [Biden], and to put himself out there for another four-year term was going to be a struggle.”

“I was one of the last members of Congress in the gallery on Jan. 6, and as it turns out, we have the security footage that shows it was only 30 seconds from when I was able to evacuate that the insurrectionists were in that hallway hunting for us with zip ties and bear mace and who knows what else,” Kuster said in a similar interview with Roll Call on Monday. “I just felt like, he tried to kill me once. I’m not available for it again.”

Kuster still sees the whole of her time in Congress as a success, even with the recent tilt toward the GOP. 

“Twelve years is a good amount of time to put your shoulder to the wheel and try to make a difference on these issues,” she said. “I can’t say we solved them, but I think we made a difference, not just in changing policy, changing funding, but changing attitudes.”

During last week’s negotiations to avert a government shutdown, Congress quietly slashed $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.

Republicans have long targeted the tax agency, and their cuts will hurt its efforts to go after rich tax evaders and improve the IRS’s functionality. It’s their second successful cut from President Biden’s $80 billion funding boost to the agency in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, as the GOP took away an earlier $20 billion in a 2023 budget deal.

The latest cuts to the IRS will come automatically thanks to the 2023 deal, as the language was repeated in last week’s bill. The Biden administration said the cuts would end up adding $140 billion to the national debt, as they hurt the tax agency’s ability to audit big corporations and the wealthy.

Specifically, the White House said, the IRS will conduct 400 fewer major business audits each year, and 1,200 fewer audits of rich individuals. Customer services for taxpayers will also be hurt, according to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. Last month, he warned that by 2026, the IRS will only have the resources to answer two of every 10 phone calls to its helplines, with wait times increasing to an average of 28 minutes.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s boost to the tax agency helped relieve a long backlog of tax filings, and created a well-liked free tax filing pilot program. All of that is on the chopping block now, fitting in with Donald Trump and Republicans’ plans to weaken the IRS. The president-elect plans to appoint anti-tax extremist Billy Long to take over the agency next year, who repeatedly tried to abolish the IRS as a member of Congress.

These cuts combined with Long’s planned appointment mean that tax season next year will almost certainly result in headaches for the average taxpayer and windfalls for the wealthy and powerful. A ballooning national debt is also on the horizon. The question is whether Trump and the GOP will be able to get away with all of it.

“New age guru” to some, center-left crank to others—former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has thrown her name into the hat for the next Democratic National Committee chair. 

“I’m proud to announce I’m running for Chair of the DNC. In order to respond to the challenge of this moment, the Democratic Party needs transformation,” Williamson, who is 72, wrote Thursday in an X post linked to a longer statement. 

“I am announcing I’m running for DNC chair because I feel that I can bring a level of expertise to the process of lifting up this possibility of victory over the next two and four years in a way that will not occur if we are only looking to traditional means of politicking in order to make that happen,” the former spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey said in a video announcement on YouTube. 

She joins former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, New York State Senator James Skoufis, and former Maryland Senate candidate Robert Houton in the race to succeed outgoing Chair Jaime Harrison.  

This upcoming DNC chair election may be a pivotal moment in time for the direction and ideology of the Democratic Party. Its sweeping defeat in November has resulted in a renewed energy to redefine the party towards the working class.    

“I’ve traveled extensively throughout this country, and I’ve seen how much pain there is out there,” Williamson said in her announcement. “I’ve been up close and personal with people who didn’t have health care, who couldn’t survive on just one job, who were so depressed about so many of the conditions in their lives that were, in fact, at least indirectly due to bad public policy, and too many of them didn’t feel like the Democratic Party had their back.… We need to understand what it is that has made people emotionally and psychologically disconnect from a sense that the Democratic Party was part of a great legacy in American history.”

Williamson has an eclectic range of both progressive and questionable views. She’s on the record supporting Medicare for All, abortion access, and reparations for Black Americans. But she also views vaccine mandates as “draconian” and referred to cancer and AIDS as “physical manifestations of a psychic scream.” She also chimed in with an awful aside about Haitians while President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance were spreading horrendous lies about them eating pets. 

​​“Continuing to dump on Trump because of the ‘eating cats’ issue will create blowback on Nov. 5,” she said in a now deleted post on X. “Haitian voodoo is in fact real, and to dismiss the story out-of-hand rather than listen to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio confirms in the minds of many voters the stereotype of Democrats as smug elite jerks who think they’re too smart to listen to anyone outside their own silo.”

Expect more strangeness from Williamson as the DNC chair race heats up.

Donald Trump’s inaugural fund is set to break the fundraising record the president-elect set in 2017. 

The fund is not restricted by campaign finance law and is made up of donations by businesses and executives, raising questions about corruption and influence peddling in the next Trump administration. Seven years ago, Trump’s first inaugural fund raised $107 million, and this time, corporate leaders will shatter that amount, with pledges already exceeding $150 million. 

For example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have each pledged $1 million to the fund. Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin has said he’ll donate $1 million, and Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, plan to donate $1 million each. Automakers General Motors, Ford, and Toyota are also donating $1 million apiece, with Ford reportedly donating a fleet of vehicles as well.  

Some companies on the donation list, according to The Wall Street Journal, are scrubbing their websites and corporate policies of anything that could be perceived as pro-Democrat or hostile to Trump, including, in the case of hardware manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker, criticism of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The company is donating $1 million to the fund, up from the $25,000 it donated to Trump’s 2017 inauguration. 

The donations come with immediate perks: Anyone who donates $1 million or raises $2 million from other donors will get six tickets to pre-inauguration events, including a black-tie ball, a candlelight dinner with Trump and his wife, Melania, and a reception with Cabinet nominees. 

Trump celebrated last week, posting, “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” on his Truth Social profile. More likely, all of these businesses and executives don’t want to run afoul of the president-elect’s trade policies or deal with anger from his supporters. Trump’s tariffs, if they go ahead, will upend the economy and hurt several U.S. industries such as automobiles. CEOs will be hoping for exceptions and carve-outs, and the way to Trump’s heart is through his wallet.

Trump went shitposting for Christmas.

The president-elect spent Wednesday on Truth Social taking shot after shot at his perceived enemies. What started as a “MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!” became 34 straight posts of vitriol. In one post, he gave a shoutout to “the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’”

He then took shots at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, suggesting that he’d slash the country’s taxes if they’d be oh so kind enough to become our “51st State.”

The posting marathon continued as Trump got into his usual self-victimization bag. “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME,” he wrote in yet another Truth Social post in the afternoon. He also aimed his ire at the 37 prisoners on death row whom Biden granted clemency, commuting their sentences to life in prison rather than execution. “Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!”

Aside from the two longer posts, Trump posted a meme with a picture of himself and former President Barack Obama captioned “when you see the guy who said ‘you’ll never be president’ at your inauguration.” He also reshared multiple headlines and positive articles regarding his FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, and defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.

“We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!” he concluded.