Rule of Lawler

If You See It, Squish It

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Happy shutdown day.

Mike Lawler has been on a media blitz these past two weeks, trying to burnish his “moderate Mike” moniker by crusading against hate speech and government shutdowns.

In a relentless stream of interviews and social media posts the past 24 hours, Lawler has railed against the Democrats he blames for the looming shutdown. Telling Chuck Schumer to “stop playing politics, stop being scared of AOC, and do his job.”

I would counter by asking Mike Lawler to stop insulting our intelligence with his “moderate, common sense” schtick; and to stop being scared of Donald Trump. The man who in 2018 said “I am proud to shut down the government for border security.” The man who refused to meet with Schumer this week to discuss government funding, then changed his mind when he saw the politics working against him. The man who held the meeting with Schumer yesterday with no intent of negotiating. The man who emerged from that meeting and posted this:

This is our President? Mike plays politics by steadfastly supporting this authoritarian bully-toddler, going along to get along. All while pretending to represent us.

Let’s take a simple example from this week. This is Mike’s latest play on the “bipartisan” scoreboard:

Said Lawler, “”Vineyards, orchards, and family farms in the Hudson Valley are already feeling the impact, and the costs will only grow if we don’t act.” This is Mike Lawler’s urgent farm policy. A bill that will go nowhere, that will do nothing for NY’s family farms, but will give him another statistic to boast that he is “one of the most bipartisan members of Congress” — a tagline that appears in every one of his press releases.

Ask not what Mike Lawler has done for NY family farmers, but what he has done to them, in the form of tariffs, immigration policy and budget cuts to the Department of Agriculture — supporting his MAGA daddy.

Mike Lawler voted just 2 weeks ago to extend the surrender of Congress’s tariff powers to Trump through next year, despite the obvious turmoil Trump’s on-again off-again tariffs are creating in the economy, especially for farmers.

As the New York Farm Bureau said in February, when the tariff insanity began:

“New York exported over $2 billion in domestic agricultural products in 2022, with our largest exports being dairy products, other plant products, corn, soybeans and feed grains. We have heard from several members that their products are already being pulled off shelves, or are threatened to be pulled off shelves, in Canada….At a time when our farmers continue to operate on razor-thin margins, we ask that Congress take any step necessary to protect them from retaliatory tariff measures, and, instead, create new market opportunities.”

In addition, Mike Lawler voted to supercharge ICE and mass deportations with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). NY’s $8B farming industry depends on migrant workers, with roughly 30,000 farms and 67,000 farm workers. Here’s what Lawler’s vote yielded for those farms:

Trump and Lawler are rounding up productive, law-abiding undocumented New Yorkers, who pay more than $3 billion in state and local taxes. Meanwhile, federal drug prosecutions have fallen to the lowest level in decades as Trump has shifted enforcement efforts towards mass deportation. As he deploys troops to “War-ravaged Portland”….

So sure, squish the lanternflies if you see them. But let’s also squish any thought of reelecting that other destructive invasive species threatening agriculture and ecosystems in New York and across the country — the MAGAns and Mike Lawler.

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