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A Democratic congressman made a comparison on Friday between the balloon being flown over the U.S. by the Chinese communist regime, and the move by the Department of Homeland Security to fly blimps over over the Arizona border to monitor smuggling and trafficking along the southern border. "People are outraged by a Chinese surveillance balloon, but when @DHSgov puts up a surveillance blimp in Arizona border communities without community consultation," Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., tweeted, followed by a silenced emoji and a "sssh" emoji. He later edited the tweet to clarify that people are "rightfully" outraged.

House Democrats introduced sweeping climate legislation Tuesday that would halt fossil fuel production on public lands for at least a year as the nation prepares to drastically cut climate-warming pollution from its own land holdings. The bill from the House Natural Resources Committee requires the Department of the Interior to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions on public lands by 2040. “The Trump administration is handing out drilling and coal mining leases like candy, and no thought is ever given by this administration to the climate change impacts,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) a sponsor of the bill as well as...

“Ryan Zinke needs to resign immediately as Secretary of the Interior.” That’s how Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) began his USA Today op-ed Friday. His reasoning? “Zinke is embroiled in scandals and nepotism.” Here’s where Grijalva claims Zinke erred: As has been widely reported, an Interior Department inspector general investigation of Mr. Zinke — one of at least 17 publicly known formal probes of either him or his department since he took office — was recently referred to the Justice Department. The referral centers on a land development project called 95 Karrow in Mr. Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Mont., involving David...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ripped into Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva on Friday and accused him of past “drunken and hostile behavior” after the lawmaker called for the Cabinet member’s resignation earlier in the day. In a remarkably scathing Twitter post, Zinke referenced past news reports that Grijalva in 2015 paid a female aide on Capitol Hill nearly $50,000 in a taxpayer-funded settlement after she complained about his drinking and office environment. “It is hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Zinke said of Grijalva. “This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who scored an upset victory in a congressional primary over Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., in June, visited lawmakers in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday **SNIP** The candidate held separate meetings with Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and had lunch with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the report said. Ocasio-Cortez said that her visit was designed to "get the lay of the land" in Washington. She is widely expected to win in her heavily Democratic New York district in the November election, the report said. She is on board to "translating" her win to help other Democrats around...

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva quietly arranged a “severance package” in 2015 for one of his top staffers who threatened a lawsuit claiming the Arizona Democrat was frequently drunk and created a hostile workplace environment, revealing yet another way that lawmakers can use taxpayer dollars to hide their misbehavior on Capitol Hill

The top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources used taxpayer dollars to pay off a former staffer who threatened to sue, claiming the lawmaker was often drunk and created a hostile workplace. Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva’s secret deal with a former female staffer was revealed by The Washington Times on Monday. The payout was negotiated by the House Employment Counsel, the body’s attorney, and cost taxpayers $48,395. The settlement, however, may have violated House rules, The Times reported. It’s against House rules for a lawmaker to retain “an employee who does not perform duties for the offices of...

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva quietly arranged a “severance package” in 2015 for one of his top staffers who threatened a lawsuit claiming the Arizona Democrat was frequently drunk and created a hostile workplace environment, revealing yet another way that lawmakers can use taxpayer dollars to hide their misbehavior on Capitol Hill.

Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Three Democratic congressmen were arrested outside Trump Tower in New York City while protesting for immigrants' rights. Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois and Adriano Espaillat of New York were arrested on civil disobedience charges. Melissa Mark-Viverito, speaker of the New York City Council, and six other protesters were also arrested. "I stood in front of Trump Tower today with a whole lot of DREAMers, immigrants and Americans to say enough to Trump and his criminalization of our immigrant communities," Grijalva wrote on his official Facebook page. In a statement, Guttierez...

Three Democratic members of Congress have been arrested at a protest outside Trump Tower. U.S. Reps Raul Grijalva, of Arizona; Luis Gutierrez, of Illinois; and Adriano Espaillat, of New York, were among a small group of demonstrators who sat down in the street on Fifth Avenue Tuesday afternoon and refused to move. Protest organizers had said prior to the event that the lawmakers planned to get arrested.

I'm a little under the weather (which is not as chronic as being under the climate), but I wanted to add something to what I said the other day about thug operator Raúl Grijalva, Democrat Representative from Arizona and Ranking Member of the House UnEnvironmental Activities Committee. It is not a small thing when even a jumped-up twerp hack announces that the national legislature of the world's superpower is targeting seven private citizens for disagreeing with him. In this case Commissar Grijalva is clamping the electrodes to various climate scientists - Robert Balling, John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Hayward, David...

Thursday on MSNBC's "José Díaz-Balart," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said President Barack Obama should use an executive order and grant amnesty to an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States because it will "quell some of the unrest" caused by "racial overtones" of anti immigration rhetoric. He said, "Latinos that are fourth, fifth generation -- they see this as a civil rights issue." Grijalva said Obama's amnesty, "Will quell some of the unrest that we are seeing in our communities and the racial overtones that continue to build around this issue." He explained, "The issue of...

(CNSNews.com) – At a House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation on Thursday, ranchers from Western states testified that they are routinely threatened and bullied by federal land management officials, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife. “I sit before you today to let you know what’s going on up there, and I hope that we can come to some kind of agreement on what needs to be done and move forward on it, because enough is enough when it comes to bullying people that have been on this land for...

A Democratic member of Congress is using the government shutdown to pressure the Department of the Interior to prohibit oil and gas exploration on federal land. Energy companies should not be able to use federal lands if those lands are closed to hikers and campers, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Grijalva started an online petition to demand that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “stop mining [on] public lands while visitors are locked out.” “Fossil fuel and logging companies shouldn’t have special access to our federal lands while...

All this talk of government shutdown, defunding Obamacare and going to war with Syria has pushed immigration reform the back burner. Today, Congressman Raul Grijalva announced he was introducing a new immigration-reform proposal. The press release from Grijalva: Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva and Filemon Vela today introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP) Act of 2013, a bill closely mirroring the 2009 version introduced by Rep. Solomon Ortiz. Grijalva and Vela co-chair the Congressional Border Caucus. A side-by-side comparison of the CIR ASAP bill and S. 744 on key issues is available below. A more...

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) and CPC Whip Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) voted against the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013, H.R. 3102, a Republican bill to drastically cut nutrition programs. .... “Some of my Republican colleagues want to cut food assistance for needy families instead of closing business tax loopholes as a way to save money,” said Rep. Grijalva. “There's a basic question of fairness and who our country looks out for here. If you think more corporate tax cuts are the answer, go ahead and say so,...

House Democrats said Tuesday they will offer an amendment to push to overturn stand-your-ground self-defense laws in states like Florida. The amendment, which would withhold some grants from states that have such laws, will come as part of the House's debate on the Commerce Department spending bill. Emphasis added

Raul Grijalva Most Arizona voters are probably aware that the 7th district Rep. Raul Grijalva leans pretty far to the left. After all he is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the nearly 80 strong bloc of mainly socialist connected Democrats. Some might know too, that while studying at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s Grijalva was a member of MEChA, the infamous Chicano separatist group known for its love of Cuba and its Marxist values. I’m betting though that few voters know of Raul Grijalva’s connection to the Arizona District of the Communist Party USA. Arizona’s communists...

Liberal House Democrats are pressuring President Obama to ignore his conservative critics and take "bold action" to tackle the lingering jobs crisis. Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) — the co-chairmen of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — want the president to champion sweeping investments in the nation's crumbling infrastructure as a way to create jobs and jolt the sluggish economy. "With 14 million Americans still looking for work, this is not the time to tinker around the edges," the lawmakers wrote to Obama Thursday. "We must take bold action, and that requires federal emergency jobs legislation." Obama is...

WASHINGTON — A bill that would grant the Department of Homeland Security unprecedented access to federal lands near the border was sharply criticized Friday for giving the department unchecked authority. The National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act would let DHS waive 36 environmental-protection laws for patrol activities within 100 miles of U.S. borders. -------------------------- 1505 may succeed in decreasing immigration, but only because the water, air and environments of border communities will be so degraded, no one will want to come here,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson.