Knoxville-area U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett has applauded the blocking of funds to Ukraine in his constituent newsletters. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
DCInbox.com is a very useful tool for keeping track of what our federal legislators are putting in their online constituent newsletters. I decided to run a check on Tennessee’s nine House members and two U. S. Senators and stumbled into a strange world often at odds with global reality. I checked on all of them from the start of this year through mid-May, looking especially at how they presented global threats like Russia’s war against Ukraine and the existential threat of climate change.
The only Democrat in the mix, Steve Cohen of Memphis, was also the only member of our delegation to mention Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Cohen did so in eight of his weekly installments. For example, Cohen spoke at an international event and called for the release of Russian dissident journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, a political prisoner sentenced to 25 years in prison for criticizing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In another newsletter, Cohen critiqued the kangaroo court mishandling the Kara-Musa case and in a third, he congratulated Kara-Musa for winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
As the ranking member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Cohen joined the commission’s chairman in two actions rejecting Putin’s sham election. Two newsletter items remarked on the death in custody of Putin opponent Alexi Navalny, and the courage of Navalny’s widow, Yulia.
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. Photo by Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images)
Cohen showed pride in his support for Ukraine in newsletter items, and also quoted President Joe Biden about Ukraine aid. “The clock is ticking. Every week, every month that passes without new aid to Ukraine means fewer artillery shells, fewer air defense systems, fewer tools for Ukraine to defend itself against this Russian onslaught. Just what Putin wants. Ukrainians are fighting bravely…We can’t walk away now. That’s what Putin is betting on.”
Despite a lot of international ruminations, the word Putin did not appear in any of the Tennessee Republican congressional newsletters during the time period examined.
Ukraine came up in strange ways in the Republican newsletters. Nashville-area House member Andy Ogles complained an appropriations bill contained “millions of taxpayer dollars to fund bloodshed in Ukraine.” In his end-of-April newsletter, Ogles highlighted and bragged about his vote against Ukraine aid.
Knoxville Congressman Tim Burchett applauded Speaker Mike Johnson for blocking a vote on Ukraine aid. He also parroted the Republican line linking Ukraine to southern border fears. “The Washington Uniparty wanted $60 billion more of your taxpayer dollars to fund the war in Ukraine but didn’t want to provide provisions to secure our southern border,” wrote Burchett. Ogles flogged a similar line when criticizing a border security bill.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn says she supports Ukraine as it fights off Russian aggression, but she mimics Putin talking points when she wrote, “we need a full accounting of what has been spent in Ukraine, along with a clear and winning strategy for the war.” Congressman John Rose of the 6th District ticked off the same talking points when he wrote early this month, “I have consistently voted against sending billions of borrowed dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine without a realistic strategic plan from the Biden Administration to win the war against Russia. Like so many Americans, I also believe there should also be sufficient cost-sharing by the European countries more directly affected by the invasion.”
West Tennessee congressman David Kustoff recently mentioned his vote for Ukraine aid in a newsletter, and has a good overall voting record on aid to Ukraine, earning him a B from “Republicans for Ukraine,” dropping a bit for this worrying statement on Feb. 20, 2023. “We’re all for Ukraine, we support their effort against the Russians as we approach the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. But the message that I get from constituents across west Tennessee, and I think other members of Congress get, is we need to stop the spending.”
The same group gives an F to Burchett, Ogles, and East Tennessee’s Diana Harshbarger.
Rarely did any of our Tennessee federal legislators mention the phrase “climate change” or “global warming.” Burchett linked to a clip where he slammed Environmental, Social and Governance funds and declared, “Getting ripped off in the name of climate change sounds like fraud to me.” In the same newsletter he griped that, “The Biden administration is trying to force electric vehicles onto the American people long before the market is ready, which doesn’t help my constituents but does help the climate lobby and China.”
Keyword searches instead confirmed the scare tactics largely led by our GOP legislators: 27 mentions for illegal immigration, 15 for border crisis, eight for border security, six mentions of an invasion as related to immigration, though Blackburn also used the term in a headline for a piece about TikTok. We must remember that, at Donald Trump’s bidding, these same legislators turned away a bipartisan bill on border security so they could have an issue instead of a policy change.
Election season is well underway, and we can expect the newsletters to drift steadily into even weirder takes on the world.
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