Monthly Archives: January 2021

Harriet Tubman, circa 1870

HB Lindsey | Underwood Archives | Getty Images

The Biden administration will revive the push to make Harriet Tubman the face of a new $20 bill, an effort that was shelved during former President Donald Trump's term.

"We're exploring ways to speed up that effort," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday after being asked if the new administration would pick up the Obama-era initiative.

An updated $20 note featuring Tubman, the former slave who became an icon of the abolitionist movement, was originally set to be unveiled around the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

But Trump's Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, announced during a 2019 congressional hearing that the redesign would be delayed until 2028. Mnuchin said at the time that the primary reason for redesigning a currency is to combat counterfeiting efforts.

Psaki said Monday that the Treasury Department is "taking steps to resume efforts" to put Tubman's image on the front of the new $20 bills.

It's important for the bills to "reflect the history and diversity of our country," Psaki said, "and Harriet Tubman's image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that."

Tubman's face on the bill would replace that of Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president. Trump was such a big fan of Jackson that he featured a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office. Joe Biden, who took office last Wednesday, removed the painting.

Trump before being elected had called the plan to replace Jackson with Tubman "pure political correctness."

A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department echoed Psaki's remarks in a separate statement to CNBC. Jack Lew, the Treasury secretary under former President Barack Obama who spearheaded the effort to put Tubman on the $20, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Redesigning the bill is an intricate process that will take time and require more changes than just a simple face swap. For example, it took 11 years to develop the blue security strip that now adorns the $100 bill.

Producing the new $20 notes with robust anti-counterfeiting technology and other security measures in place will require a new high-speed printing facility, which is currently scheduled for 2025.

Concepts for an updated $50 note are in development.

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Biden's Treasury revives push to put Harriet Tubman on $20 bill after Trump shelved it - CNBC

Ill readily admit that the face gracing the $20 bill is not our most urgent issue not with 420,000 people needlessly dead and 45 Republican senators saying that their insurrectionist in exile should get a pass.

But we can all agree that symbols are important, define who we are as a people and help us craft our national narrative.

So, in that sense, it surely matters whether the face on the $20 bill depicts a racist genocidal white guy who enslaved human beings or a Black woman who repeatedly risked her life to successfully free human beings. The good news is that the Biden administration intends to right a wrong by putting Harriet Tubman where she belongs.

As press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put (Tubman) on the front of the new $20 notes. Its important that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country.

Well, yeah. White men werent the only people who built this nation. Black women have never appeared on American currency. Tubman, a fugitive slave and heroine of the Underground Railroad, rescued hundreds of African-Americans from servitude.

She was a Union spy during the Civil War, recruited ex-slaves for a Union regiment, and led an assault that freed 700 more. In her late 70s she delivered speeches for womens suffrage, but died seven years before women won the right to vote.

Wait, let me back up a bit.

Did Psaki say that the Biden administration wants to resume the process to put Tubman on the $20 bill?

When did that process start and why did it stop?

Take a wild guess why it stopped.

Back in 2016, President Barack Obamas Treasury secretary announced a plan to replace facial incumbent Andrew Jackson starting in 2020. But that plan was quickly shelved during the MAGA occupation. As the MAGA candidate had signaled during the 2016 campaign, when asked about replacing Jackson with Tubman, I dont like seeing it. I think its pure political correctness.

In his mind, the reality of racial diversity and the truth of our national narrative was political correctness. And he was reportedly blunter in conversation with White House aides. According to Omarosa Manigault Newman, the ex-aide who last year wrote the book Unhinged, her boss told her what he really thought about Tubman: You want me to put that face on the $20 bill?

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was thus tasked with telling Congress that the switch to Tubman was unfeasible because of security concerns, something to do with unspecified counterfeiting issues.

And so the woman who once said that slavery is the next thing to hell was thereby consigned to the back of the bus.

Besides, the insurrectionist-in-chief loved Jackson and put the guys picture on the Oval Office wall. In his words, Andrew Jackson had a history of tremendous success for the country.

If living as a member of the landed gentry with slave labor and ethnic-cleansing Native Americans is what constitutes success, then, yes, Jackson was boffo.

As the recent excellent book Jacksonland chronicles in great detail, Jacksons style of negotiating (with Native Americans) was frank and coercive. In talk after talk over the years, he told native leaders he was their friend, and that he wanted to pay for their land but that if they failed to sell, white settlers would take their land for nothing.

Jackson, his family members and his closest business associates, ultimately stole more than 45,000 acres. Having thus enriched himself prior to becoming president, he worked with his postmaster general to suppress anti-slavery mail from northern abolitionists.

Yes, were only talking here about faces on currency. But its high time we honored people such as Tubman who truly made America great. This was a woman who in her last years preached hope to people of color during the worst of Jim Crow. She once said: Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

And she was right on the money where she belongs.

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Dick Polman is a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia. His column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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Dick Polman | Show me the money: Put Tubman on the $20 bill - TribDem.com

The White House will resume the Obama-era push to put Harriet Tubmans image on the $20 bill, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes, Psaki said in response to a reporters question during the daily briefing. Its important that our money reflects the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubmans image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that.

Harriet Tubman, born into slavery, was a 19th-century abolitionist and conductor of the Underground Railroad, risking her life to rescue dozens of enslaved people and bring them to freedom after she escaped herself. Tubman learned the escape houses and secret routes throughout the Underground Railroad, making her an asset to the Union military during the Civil War, according to the National Womens History Museum. Tubman also joined the fight for womens suffrage after the Civil War ended.

In 2016, the Obama administration set out to redesign the $20 bill, replacing Andrew Jackson, who enslaved people and both fought Native Americans and forced them to move from their land. The Obama administration was hoping for a release of the new bill in 2020 to mark the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, a right that could at that point be exercised mainly by White women.

The project to get Tubman represented on the currency was delayed during the Trump administration. In the spring of 2019, then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said counterfeit issues would make it impossible to unveil Harriet Tubman on the bill by 2020, the deadline set by the Obama administration. Trump, who put Jacksons portrait in the Oval Office, had criticized changing the image on the bill, saying it was being done out of pure political correctness.

Psaki said that the Biden administration doesnt have a set deadline for the release of the new bill but that the administration is working on it.

Were exploring ways to speed up that effort but any specifics would of course come from the Department of Treasury, said Psaki.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Originally published by The 19th.

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Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill: Biden Administration Says It's Resuming the Effort - GovExec.com

Palm Beach Post

In two prophetic books, Animal Farm: A Fairy Storyand 1984,the British essayist George Orwell depicted a future world in which the state would exercise complete control over all facets of social life.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four," Orwell wrote. "If that is granted, all else follows.

Sadly, Orwell's depiction of state-controlled life is being ignored and challenged today by the "cancel culture"cult. Nonviolent free speech, our First Amendment right in our Constitution, is being attacked vitriolically and is tearing our nation apart. People are being fired from their jobs, expelled from schools, blacklisted, abused verbally and even harmed physically by simply declaring, for example, "All lives matter."

A surge of selective censorship has been directed at conservative ideas especially if those ideas are not consistent with the narrative of the political elitists and advocates of political correctness.

Freedom of speech is one of the powers of freedom of the will. It is the right to speak and think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. It is the polar opposite of political correctness, which is used as a weapon of fear and is a threat to our nation's survival.

My past and present stance on mob violence of any kind has been to confront it without prejudice. Wrong is wrong no matter who you are, what color you are, what religion you are, or what your politics are. Sadly, the hypocrisy is in plain sight today when individuals react vigorously but selectively to criminal behavior that fits their own interests and agendas.

Well-meaning citizens or large segments of our population who protest peacefully or vote differently cannot be branded as pariahs just because the majority in government power want to maintain Orwellian control as Big Brother.

Our nation was built on compromise and a free exchange of ideas. If we abandon these two tenets, our future is doomed. If we disrespect our First Amendment, knowing full well that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, then perhaps we should recall the words of the providential biblical figure who said as his life ebbed away beneath a crown of thorns, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!

We must embrace the gift of free will granted to us by Providence, and stand up and resist political correctness in every form. If not, we may be forced to accept that 2+2=5.

DR. DAVID TUCKER, PALM BEACH GARDENS

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Point of View: 'Cancel culture' is tearing the nation apart - Palm Beach Post

Nearly everyone in Connecticut knows that its capital city, Hartford, is a mess, and that its largest city, Bridgeport, is too. Yet for saying so about Hartford in an essay in The Wall Street Journal on New Year's Day, former gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski continues to generate outrage from news organizations and the establishment leaders they strive to give voice to. Predictably enough, none of the responses has addressed Stefanowski's specific criticisms. Instead the responses have constituted only mindless boosterism for Hartford.

Decades of boosterism haven't improved the city but the latest installment may be meant to prevent the failure of Connecticut's urban policies from becoming the issue it should be.

For example, why, despite ever-greater state spending on Hartford, do its demographics grow only poorer and its schools never improve?

Though it was already insolvent and a ward of the state, why was Hartford allowed to borrow tens of millions of dollars to build a minor-league baseball stadium, leading to a $500 million bailout by state government? State government could have prevented that disaster, so why didn't it?

Why did Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin pander to the "defund the police" crowd by reducing the city police budget by $2 million only to have to appeal for state troopers a few weeks later as crime in the city exploded?

Even the news organizations purporting to serve Hartford have yet to pose such questions. With his essay Stefanowski began to do so, and the response from those news organizations was only: That's mean! Don't do that again!

What'sreallymean is leaving Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven in perpetual poverty and dysfunction, where they will stay until the failures of policy and management are acknowledged. As Stefanowski wrote, state government shares responsibility for those failures. Those who took offense at their mere mention now share responsibility too.

* * *

COURANT'S P.C. POSE: Congratulations to the Hartford Courant for pledging, in the name of social justice, to do less of what it hardly had been doing anyway: publishing police photos, "mug shots," of arrested people.

This pledge was just a load of what is called virtue signaling, since few mug shots have appeared in the Courant lately not because of concern for social justice but because of the newspaper's long retreat from local news.

Of course this retreat doesn't contradict the Courant's argument that mug shots can be prejudicial and contribute to racial stereotyping. But crime itself is racially disproportionate, and it is not stereotyping to acknowledge it. A mug shot doesn't stereotype; it signifies an actual arrest. Andanyarrest publicity is potentially prejudicial.

So is the publicnotto be reminded that crime is racially disproportionate, just as family disintegration, educational failure, and poverty are? And is criminal justicenotto be watched closely so injustice may be diminished? Are only the arrests and mug shots ofwhitepeople to be published?

One could get that impression lately, as national news organizations are going out of their way to publicize any trivial incident in which a white person mistreats a Black person, like the incident the other day in New York City where a white woman mistakenly accused a Black teenager of stealing her cell phone. Meanwhile there is no reporting of trivial incidents in whichBlacksmistreatwhites. Are there no such incidents, or is political correctness overwhelming the news?

* * *

TEACHING MOMENT LOST: University of Connecticut President Thomas C. Katsouleas toadied to political correctness again last week in responding to an internet petition urging the university to "condemn" two students from Stafford who attended the "Stop the Steal" protest in Washington that ended with the attack on the Capitol. There was no allegation that the students broke the law, but one was photographed with the infamous provocateur Alex Jones.

Responding to the petition, Katsouleas wrote that Jones is "despicable." Katsouleas didnot write that the university has no business condemning anyone for peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights.

So a teaching moment was lost. Instead the P.C. petitioners were reminded of how easily the university president can be made to dance. Students may be learning that much anyway.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

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No one dares to answer for the disaster of Connecticut's cities - Journal Inquirer

WASHINGTON Josh Hawley was a precocious 15-year-old in 1995, writing a regular column for his hometown paper, The Lexington News, when he was still in high school.

He used the early platform to opine on politics, culture and those he believed had been unfairly maligned by the media among them anti-government militias and Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman.

Hawley warned against depicting all militia members as domestic terrorists after the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 children. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who carried out the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, had ties to the Michigan Militia.

Many of the people populating these movements are not radical, right-wing, pro-assault weapons freaks as they were originally stereotyped, Hawley wrote two months after the bombing.

He argued that middle-class Americans had gravitated to anti-government organizations out of genuine concerns about federal overreach and a disillusionment with mainstream politics.

Dismissed by the media and treated with disdain by their elected leaders, these citizens come together and form groups that often draw more media fire as anti-government hate gatherings, Hawley said.

Feeling alienated from their government and the rest of society, they often become disenchanted and slip into talks of conspiracy theories about how the federal government is out to get them.

Fuhrman, whose use of racial slurs came to light during the O.J. Simpson trial, was the victim of a new censoriousness that plagued the culture, in Hawleys estimation.

In this politically correct society, derogatory labels such as racist are widely misused, and our ability to have open debate is eroding, he wrote.

Twenty-six years later, the junior senator from Missouri is the face of the failed effort to overturn the 2020 election, captured in a photograph that shows him raising a fist in solidarity with a crowd of former President Donald Trumps supporters shortly before they laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.

The insurrection left five people dead, including a police officer, after a mob made up of militia members and racists with Confederate flags and neo-Nazi paraphernalia stormed the Capitol. Their deadly rage was fueled by the election of President Joe Biden, whose victory was due in large part to Black voters.

Prior to Jan. 6, Hawley had enjoyed an uninterrupted trajectory from Rockhurst High School valedictorian to the U.S. Senate by way of Stanford University, Yale Law School, a clerkship for Chief Justice John Roberts and a brief tenure as Missouri attorney general.

It placed Hawley, at 41, the youngest Republican in the Senate, as a likely contender for the presidency in 2024. His decision to become the first senator to announce that he would contest Bidens Electoral College totals was widely viewed as part of his bid to capture Trumps base within the party.

Since the Capitol rampage, Hawleys mentors have disavowed him. Donors have demanded refunds. Colleagues have called for his resignation or expulsion. And those who helped guide his career are asking themselves if they missed something essential about their former mentee.

I am more than a little bamboozled by it, certainly distressed by it, said David Kennedy, the Stanford professor emeritus of history who served as Hawleys academic adviser and wrote the foreword to his 2008 book on Teddy Roosevelt.

But the Lexington columns suggest that Hawleys ideology took root long before he entered public life, and that his passage from Roosevelt scholar to Trumps ideological heir was not entirely unforeseen.

His early writing touches on themes that have defined his Senate tenure: a rejection of political correctness and a belief that mainstream politics has failed to deal with a growing disillusionment in American society.

That same year he wrote about Fuhrman, Hawley said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. must be rolling over in his grave at the Rev. Jesse Jacksons defense of affirmative action. He described a perverted racial spoils system and said affirmative action has stirred up resentment amongst the races.

Hawleys animosity toward programs aimed at boosting racial equality continued during his college years as a contributor to The Stanford Review, a conservative student paper founded by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and, later, a major political donor.

In this season of cultural concern, when Americans worry more about values than anything else self-righteous pronouncements on racial oppression and gay rights activism seem oddly out of place, like disco music at a swing dance, Hawley wrote in a 1999 piece criticizing Democratic Sen. Bill Bradleys presidential campaign.

Hawley did not consent to an interview for this story. His office pointed to an earlier statement in which he said he wouldnt apologize for voicing concerns about election integrity.

Hawley has condemned the violence in general terms. But in language that echoes his high school columns, hes lashed out at the press and Democratic colleagues for suggesting that he and other GOP leaders helped incite the attack by indulging Trumps baseless claims that the election was stolen.

Joe Biden and the Democrats talk about unity but are brazenly trying to silence dissent, Hawley fumed after seven Democratic senators requested an ethics investigation of him and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another leader of the effort to contest the election. Missourians will not be canceled by these partisan attacks.

Andrea Randle grew up in Lexington with Hawley and often carpooled with him for student council and clubs at Lexington Middle School. She recalled that he signed her eighth grade yearbook Josh Hawley, president 2024.

Its the same yearbook where she and Hawley were among four eighth graders given the title Future President.

Randle, one of only three Black students in her grade, remembered Hawley as inclusive and sociable. So much so that following the death of George Floyd last year in Minneapolis, she emailed Hawleys campaign, urging her childhood friend to speak out.

I know the young man who looked into the future. America needs him desperately right now, Randle, now 41 and a St. Louis resident, said in a May 31 email she shared with The Kansas City Star.

She never received a reply.

Hawley condemned Floyds murder, but explicitly rejected the notion that his death after a white officer knelt on his neck was evidence of systemic racism. He railed against the broader racial justice movement Floyds death spurred as a veiled attack against Trumps supporters.

Theyre telling us that it wasnt a homicidal cop who killed George Floyd. No, his death now is the product of systemic racism, were told. And anyone who doesnt acknowledge their role in his death, anyone who doesnt bend their knee to this extreme ideology is complicit in violence, Hawley said in a Senate floor speech less than two weeks after Randle sent her email.

Hes not who he was, Randle said.

Hawleys middle school principal, Barbara Weibling, said she thought Hawleys parents, banking executive Ronald Hawley and Virginia Hawley, were grooming their son for a future in politics.

I just remember some of the teachers sitting around and saying, you know, that he was probably going to be president one day, she said.

But her admiration of the young Hawley has soured into bafflement, anger and even disgust for the leading role he played in sowing doubt about the elections integrity.

Thats what ticks me off about Josh so bad. Going along with the Big Lie and everything, said Weibling, now retired and living in Oklahoma.

I just think with his moral upbringing, why would he propagate that lie is beyond me, she said. Its just his ambition, I think. You know, its just simply the ambition. He saw that as a way to get attention.

Shirley Guevel attended church with Hawleys family in Lexington and surmised that his political views were influenced by his mother, whom she remembers as a firm opponent of abortion.

A lot of people think it was his mom who actually groomed him to go into politics, she said, explaining that it didnt surprise her when Hawley espoused intractable conservative views. People would say, Thats his mother coming out.

Guevel, 87, who said her daughter baby-sat Hawley a few times as a child, said she viewed him as a person who had never been told no as a child and that she was not shy about sharing her opposition when he appeared on the Missouri political scene.

I told people when he was running for attorney general, I wouldnt vote for him for dog catcher. I wouldnt inflict that on the dog, said Guevel, who said she votes for both Republicans and Democrats.

Hawley attended high school about an hour away from Lexington at Rockhurst, a prestigious all-boys Jesuit prep school where students are implored to be Men for Others.

Former classmates remember him as highly ambitious even among a peer group full of young men with lofty aspirations, an observation shared by others who encountered Hawley as he leapfrogged one elite institution to the next during the following decade.

At Stanford, his intellect was quickly recognized by Kennedy, the historian who advised Hawley on his thesis on President Teddy Roosevelt. He said the young Missourian stood out at an institution which is overstuffed with overachieving and very talented young people.

Kennedy, who said he re-read the book after the Capitol insurrection, speculated that Hawley was drawn to Roosevelt after one or two days of lectures the professor gave on the 1912 presidential election. Kennedy said he presented the contest as one of just a couple elections in American history where deep philosophical principles were debated.

The election pitted Roosevelt, a Progressive, against Democrat Woodrow Wilson, incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and Socialist Eugene Debs. Wilson won with Roosevelt coming in second.

The title of Hawleys book, Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness, comes from a Bible verse about Gods wrath that Hawley used as an epigraph, from the Second Epistle of Peter.

God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them reserved for pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, the verse says.

Hawley, an evangelical Christian, has long championed the view that political leaders should be guided by their religious faith and that secularism runs counter to the countrys founding principles.

Kennedy said he doesnt believe Hawley incited the mob at the Capitol, but his actions did give credence to the patent falsehood that the election was rigged and its results illegitimate.

He also said that Roosevelt, Hawleys hero, would have been appalled by the chaos at the Capitol.

I think Roosevelt had a deep reverence for the sacred quality of our constitutionally prescribed institutions and that mob of louts and clowns that stormed the Capitol building dont seem to have any regard for that at all, he said.

Hawleys classmates at Yale Law School remember him as politically ambitious and a deeply religious conservative. But they say they witnessed a startling transformation when he railed against elites as a Senate candidate.

Josh came across as decent and kind and thoughtful at Yale. Today he seems like a steaming mass of grievance, said Ian Bassin, who attended Yale with Hawley before going on to work in the Obama White House and found the group Protect Democracy.

Bassin was one of 12 Yale Law alumni to sign a letter in 2018 warning that the Hawley they saw campaigning in Missouri was unrecognizable compared to the person they knew in school.

Hawley cultivated key allies in politics and the conservative legal movement during his time at Yale and his early legal career in Washington. It helped propel him from a teaching post at the University Missouri School of Law to the attorney generals office despite entering his 2016 race as a relative unknown.

In a memorable television ad from his 2016 run, Hawley promised that he wasnt a ladder-climbing politician, as illustrated by the men in suits ascending ladders behind him.

His Senate campaign followed less than a year into his tenure as attorney general.

I dont think Josh ever thought he was going to stop at the attorney generals office, said a source involved in Missouri Republican politics. It was a very good political ad and presented a very nice contrast with the opponent immediately before him. It is about winning the day, winning the challenge in front of you.

Hawley adopted the persona of a reluctant politician who was uninterested in higher office and who required encouragement from Vice President Mike Pence and former Sen. John Danforth among others to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018.

But internal emails obtained by The Star show Hawleys team was in close contact with Danforth and others during the prolonged public recruitment campaign that began just months into his tenure as attorney general.

Patrick Keller, a Lexington native who knew Hawley during his youth, said the image Hawley projected on the campaign trail did not match reality.

You ran on, you know, being this farm kid, Keller said. I remember he was this little preppy kid. He grew up in a subdivision.

Hawleys embrace of Trump was also tactical. The first time Trump came to Missouri as president in 2017, Hawley, the attorney general who was already exploring a Senate run, left the state for a family vacation.

But after that spurred backlash from Trumps devotees, Hawley took steps to win his favor and repeatedly appeared on stage with him in the lead-up to the 2018 election.

A former Hawley staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity said political consultants figured prominently in his transformation from a favorite of establishment Republicans to a Trump loyalist.

They saw where the base was going if he wanted to run in '24, the staffer said.

Hawleys consulting team, OnMessage Inc., began to rack up thousands in monthly payments shortly after he took office as attorney general. The campaign-paid consultants had direct access to his official staff.

A conspicuous example of the consultant-driven agenda was a 2017 raid on a Springfield massage parlor. According to the former staffer, Hawley donned a badge and windbreaker for television cameras on the advice of his consultants and appeared on CNN to promote it as a major blow to international sex traffickers.

The raid resulted in misdemeanor charges against seven women, but no felony charges were brought against the alleged traffickers.

Hawley faced investigations from both Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway after The Star revealed the consulting arrangement. Ashcroft found no wrongdoing, but Galloway concluded it was a potential misuse of taxpayer resources.

The source involved in Missouri GOP politics said Hawleys consultants continue to have strong influence over his Senate office, and his advisers share some of the blame for the violence at the Capitol.

Even if he did not intend that, he certainly bears responsibility. But the people around him are just as responsible, said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Brad Todd, the owner of OnMessage Inc., which advises Hawley and Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, another potential 2024 contender, did not respond to an email inquiry about whether he advised his clients to vote to block Bidens electors.

Hawley has repeatedly rejected the notion that his objection to Bidens electors helped spur the violence at the Capitol. He has brushed off calls for his ouster.

Im not going anywhere, he told the Senate press pool hours after Biden was officially sworn in as president on Jan. 20.

Hawley downplayed the significance of his raised fist when asked if he regretted making the gesture to the pro-Trump crowd.

I wave at people all the time, he said.

Hawleys decision to block the quick consideration of Alejandro Mayorkas, Bidens nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security, shows that he will continue to position himself as a barrier to Bidens agenda during the next four years.

His whole act is all about inheriting the Trump base and winning Iowa in 2024, said Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat who represents Pennsylvania, the state whose 20 electoral votes Hawley sought to block.

Thats what this whole thing was about. He was willing to throw out 7 million legally cast votes in my state just to modestly further his ambition, Boyle said. Hawley will always have a black mark against his name recorded in the history books. It is well deserved.

Hawleys allies in Missouri believe that he will not only weather the backlash, but that hell emerge stronger from it ahead of 2024 when his Senate seat and the presidency will be on the ballot.

There are (a lot) of Trump flags still flying in this state, said James Harris, a Jefferson City-based GOP consultant who was involved in Hawleys 2018 campaign.

Early polling shows that while his approval rating in Missouri has dropped, his national name recognition and favorability have increased since the riot, according to The Morning Consult.

I firmly believe he is someone our party will look to, Harris said. I think there are more conservatives today who know who Josh Hawley is than knew a month ago or two months ago.

2021 The Kansas City Star. Visit at kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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'Bamboozled': Hawley mentors stunned by conduct, but early warning signs were there - Gazettextra