Some Miller votes
Against money for Ukraine, against money for infant formula, against a bill to prevent price gouging on fuel.
Another vote from Mary Miller
My (nominal) representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), was one of fifty-seven House Republicans to vote yesterday against additional emergency appropriations for Ukraine. There’s something about Mary.
Jane Lynch for Illinois
Jane Lynch has directed a series of TV commercials promoting Illinois tourism.
Motive in prisons
“Big prisons in small towns”: that’s the focus of the third season of the WBEZ podcast Motive. The stories are Illinois-centric, but Illinois here is a stand-in for a nation.
Eww
Our household’s representative in Congress, Mary Miller (Illinois-15), has been endorsed by Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas.
Shining star, or dim bulb?
“She’s one of the shining stars representing Illinois because of her leadership, intelligence and courage”: thus an Illinois congressional candidate touts his endorsement from Mary Miller.
“Casimir Pulaski Day”
Sufjan Stevens.
Miller vs. Davis
In Illinois’s redrawn 15th Congressional District, Mary Miller, endorsed by a defeated former president, is struggling in her primary race against fellow Republican incumbent Rodney Davis.
Mary Miller again
For a third time, Representative Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15) appears in The New Yorker (January 31). She’s mentioned in Jane Mayer’s long, revealing article about Virginia Thomas, the hard-right activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Mary Miller in The New Yorker
When the Republican members did address the matter at hand, it was in startlingly vitriolic terms. Representative Mary Miller, of Illinois, said that the committee’s work is “evil and un-American.” You know what’s really “evil and un-American”? Attempting to overturn an election.
Yikes
Our own Mary Miller ((R, Illinois-15) made the PBS NewsHour tonight. An unmasked Marjorie Taylor Greene sat behind her.
Mary Miller, troublemaker
In office for nearly one year, Miller hasn’t done a damn thing for the people of her district — except make us look like idiots to the world beyond “east-central Illinois.”
Here in downstate Illinois
We had strong wind and rain, but the closest tornado (quite close) bypassed our town, or nearly all of it. Other places were not nearly so lucky.
Rural hospitals and COVID-19
I was startled to see a doctor from a local hospital on MSNBC’s The Week with Joshua Johnson. Jeremy Topin, MD, is respectful of local reality at every turn, but you can sense his exasperation about life here in COVID times.
Chris Miller again
The man who purportedly represents me in the Illinois House of Representatives, Chris Miller (R-110), is in the news again for telling the Big Lie.
Unforgivable
In downstate Illinois, a county fair refused to allow a pop-up site for COVID-19 vaccinations.
Mary Miller, outcast
The Illinois House Speaker will not be meeting with her.
Useful reading
A ten-point checklist from Samuel L. Perry, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma: How can we spot #ChristianNationalism in the wild? My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), hits on at least eight of ten.
Mary Miller won’t wear a mask
It’s still not known whether she has been vaccinated. If she has been, she’s keeping her (unmasked) mouth shut about it.
Camp COVID
From CNN: “More than 80 teens and adult staffers from a Central Illinois summer camp tested positive for Covid-19 in an outbreak that has impacted people across three states, officials said.”
Nuts in Illinois
My representative in Congress is hosting another member of Congress, the xenophobic space-laser Q lady, at a July fund-raising event in a nearby city.
The Millers in Esquire
Congresswoman Mary Miller has now made it into Esquire as a member of the Sedition Caucus. Also appearing in a supporting role: her husband (and Illinois state representative) Chris. The Millers’ ignominious appearance in Esquire joins previous appearances in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair.
Another Mary Miller vote
Mary Miller (Illinois-15) was one of twenty-one Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted yesterday against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to all police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6. The measure passed with 406 votes.
Illinois-15, COVID-Central
Illinois-15, the congressional district represented by Mary Miller, has the lowest rate of vaccination in the state.
Jaylan Butler v. Staes, et al.
“The memories of that night being pressed to the ground, with officers swearing at me and a gun pointed at my head, will remain with me forever. But I know that unlike other Black men who have been stopped and manhandled by police, I got to go home. For me, this lawsuit has always been about holding the officers accountable for their actions that night. I believe I have accomplished that goal. As a result, I am happy to dismiss the suit and move forward.”
Some of Mary Miller’s votes
My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), votes with the worst of the worst.
Vaccine, anyone?
My hopes for widespread vaccine acceptance in deep-red Illinois were ill-founded.
SAFE-T
The killing of Daunte Wright and the events that followed last night in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, prompt me to share a Chicago Reader article about Illinois’s SAFE-T Act.
“It’s pathetic”
Here’s an anonymous resident of Villa Grove, Illinois, quoted in the Chicago Sun Times. She’s speaking of life in the town where a bar opening in February 2021 was linked to forty-six cases of COVID-19 and a two-week-long school closing.
COVID-19 in Douglas County
Forty-six cases from one bar opening. This story is now everywhere, with “rural Illinois” or, at best, Douglas County given as the location. A local news source has identified the bar in question.