Latest news with #FirstCongressionalDistrict
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
No prison time for campaign worker charged with falsifying nomination papers in R.I. congressional race
In a statement on Monday, Matos said she feels 'pleased to have my name cleared by today's conviction.' Advertisement 'I have supported this investigation at every step in the hopes that the truth would come to light,' Matos said. 'With this case settled, the facts are clear: Holly McClaren committed a serious crime that undermined the sanctity of our state's free and fair elections. I'm grateful to the law enforcement officers who handled this investigation thoroughly and professionally and whose work ultimately led to today's results.' Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up McClaren was McClaren worked as a part-time field volunteer gathering signatures for Matos during the 2023 Democratic primary for the First Congressional District seat. A criminal investigation was launched, however, when officials in Jamestown, Newport, and East Providence reported suspect signatures of dead people and others who claimed to have never signed the forms. Advertisement The scandal rocked Matos' campaign. The lieutenant governor ultimately finished fourth in the 11-candidate primary election won by now-Congressman Gabe Amo. Prosecutors alleged McClaren knowingly falsified and submitted nomination papers to the Jamestown and Newport Boards of Canvassers on behalf of Matos between July 11 and 13, 2023. McClaren has John R. Grasso, an attorney representing McClaren, maintained that position on Monday. 'She has always denied that she secured any fraudulent signatures,' Grasso told the Globe. 'The charge was that she signed the documents, attesting to the fact that she personally authenticated those signatures, when, in fact, they were gathered by someone else and then just handed to her in a pile of papers, and she signed them.' Grasso said McClaren, who now lives in Virginia, brought the papers 'to wherever they needed to go, and whoever checked them said, 'You got to sign these.'' 'So she flipped the page over and signed them,' he said. 'That's a case of don't sign a document that you haven't read.' McClaren was one of two people charged with falsifying nomination papers for Matos' campaign: In April 2024, Christopher M. Cotham, of Massachusetts, Court records show the case against Cotham remains pending. Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report. Christopher Gavin can be reached at
Fox News
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Journalist turned potential House candidate says fellow Democrats 'keep losing' by failing working class
EXCLUSIVE – A seasoned reporter and self-described lifelong Democrat was so fed up by her party's failures with the working class that she's considering jumping into the fray herself. Hanna Trudo, a former reporter for The Hill who's also made stops at such sites as The Daily Beast, Wired, The New Republic and Politico, is mulling a run for the First Congressional District in her home state of New Hampshire. The seat, currently occupied by Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., is opening up next year as Pappas runs for U.S. Senate to replace outgoing Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. Trudo, a fourth-generation, millennial New Hampshire native, has reported extensively on the Democratic Party's left flank during her journalism career. And to hear her put it, she's gotten tired of them not delivering for a base of voters that started flocking to President Donald Trump over the past decade. "I've been a lifelong Democrat, but being from New Hampshire, from a working-class family, a lot of the issues that I've reported on over the years in terms of the progressive wing of the party, and even the centrists and the moderates, it's oftentimes a failure in my view to address the needs of working-class people," she told Fox News Digital. "And so when we wonder why Democrats keep losing, to me, the answers are sort of obvious. When you're not able to deliver on what people are asking you to deliver on, you lose." Trudo, who's been in journalism since 2012, said she was considering leaving the profession even before Trump was re-elected last year. The president's win, buoyed by his continued strength with working-class voters flocking to Republicans, crystallized to Democrats like Trudo that her party's leadership had become hopelessly out of touch. "There's a big disconnect from the D.C. punditry that I've seen and observed up close, and the strategist and the consultant class and the donor class, to what actual Democrats, working-class people, of all parties, frankly, what they want," she said. Trudo is the latest mainstream media figure who's gotten wrapped up in Democratic Party politics. CNN's John Avlon lost his bid for Congress as a Democrat in New York in 2024, and ex-ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd launched an ill-fated campaign for Lieutenant Governor as a Democrat in Texas in 2021. Former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera ran an unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2020, and President Barack Obama's second press secretary was longtime Time Magazine editor Jay Carney. Last year, former NPR editor Uri Berliner revealed he found in 2021 that registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans 87 to zero in the outlet's Washington office. "I think we're kidding ourselves if we don't come to the table with our own biases," Trudo said about being a journalist with strong political opinions. "My bias has always been not necessarily towards Democrats, but towards the working-class issues, which Democrats, in terms of what I've covered, have been the ones talking about these things as long as I've been in journalism. So to me, it's always been sort of prioritizing that." Asked by Fox News Digital if Americans concerned about liberal media bias had a point, Trudo said it was a good question. "I've debated it a lot over the years," she said. "I do think we have to be really careful. And not so much left versus right. I do think we have to be on the side of truth. And maybe that sounds cliché, but I genuinely believe that. I think we have to be able to call out things as true, period." Trudo, an admirer of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called him the Democratic Party's current leader last month. She noted his and Ocasio-Cortez's headline-grabbing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour is the kind of proactive politics that's capturing the angry mood of the country. However, Trudo, who has no set timeline for when she'll decide about running for Congress, bristled at the "Democratic socialist" label for herself, saying she prefers "working-class Democrat" who embraces economic populism. Sanders won the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries in New Hampshire, the former in a landslide over Hillary Clinton that served as notice that his far-left populism resonated with the grassroots. The state, which has one of the country's highest-percentage White populations, is known for its fiscal conservatism and social liberalism that can make it difficult to pigeon-hole politically. Trump lost New Hampshire all three times he ran for the White House, and it sports two Democratic U.S. Senators, but the state's current governor is Republican Kelly Ayotte and the GOP controls the legislature. "I think in New Hampshire in particular, there's sort of this disconnect between the leaders that we elect within the party and the actual mood of the people," Trudo said. "It's always kind of interesting to see this pull towards the middle or towards the centrist approach in a state whose motto is quite literally 'Live Free or Die.'" Trudo said she's worried most about social programs like Medicaid and Social Security being under attack by Republicans and wants Democrats to pursue economic populism to regain credibility with voters. "They hear platitudes," she said. "They hear working across the aisle… I've covered Congress, I've covered Democrats for 10 years professionally. So I'm very well aware of the sort of electoral calculations that come into play when we talk about these kinds of things. But I think it's going to take someone who's not beholden to the inter-party dialog, because so often that has failed. It's definitely failed people here." As she mulls jumping into the race officially, Democrats are going through a wrenching period as reports of a White House cover-up of President Joe Biden's cognitive decline in office dominate headlines. Meanwhile, Trump is more accessible to the media than ever, while also antagonizing the press at every opportunity. While critical of Trump over his anti-media rhetoric, Trudo said she applauds accessibility, and she'll talk to anybody to get her message out, something she feels her fellow Democrats have been too scared to do. "I think we see a big part of the problem with Democrats is that closed-off mentality," she told Fox News Digital. "People go in very rehearsed to interviews. They have specific sound bites that they want to get their point across. They don't want to say anything controversial or off the cuff. And it's alienated a lot of people in the party." A day after she spoke with Fox News Digital, the conservative Ruthless Podcast accused Trudo of "ghosting" them on an interview after she'd offered in an X post on May 5 to speak to the hosts. The show's hosts said they reached out multiple times after her public offer to come on the program, and she ignored them. "Like most politicians, she's saying one thing and doing another. We have many questions and plan to keep asking until the truth is revealed," Ruthless co-host John Ashbrook told Fox News Digital. Trudo didn't immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Belchertown High School senior wins 2025 Congressional Art Competition
BELCHERTOWN, Mass. (WWLP) – Kaia Couture, a student at Belchertown High School, was inspired by her art teacher to enter the 2025 Congressional Art Competition. 'I feel like a lot of times people feel like that art is just something you're born with being good at,' said Kaia Couture, a Belchertown High School student. For Couture, art became her favorite hobby as a child. Now she's a senior at Belchertown High School with a platform to show off her work. Her prized possession is a painted piece of marbles that came from an art class project. 'It was like a value study with gouache and they had to pay attention to you know lights and darks values,' said Elizabeth Teixeira, Art Teacher at Belchertown High School. Without any doubt, her art teacher knew Couture's piece would fit perfectly as a submission for the contest. Couture spent 2 to 3 weeks working on her artwork for the 2025 congressional art competition. In front of family, friends, and faculty, Congressman Richard Neal announced that she was the winner of the tough competition judged by museum officials and photographers. 'Literally for the first tens of thousands of applicants, and so for the First Congressional District to be honoring Kaia today indicates the keen sense of competition, the achievement. America will have a chance to witness as the work hangs in the candid building underneath the exit entrance ramp of the Capitol,' said U.S. Congressman Richard E. Neal. Couture's piece will be an inspiration to others at a year-long exhibit in Washington, D.C. 'I think it represents the district, just by I mean the teachers in this classroom, the art that's being produced in this classroom. We're constantly having kids join these classes, even if it's just for an elective, they're being put in these art classes, and they're being allowed to create all this great art,' said Couture. Couture will also be flown out to Washington, D.C., to see her work on display at the United States Capitol. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Amo, Magaziner to hold town halls Thursday
EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Both of Rhode Island's congressmen will be back in their districts Thursday to hear directly from constituents and provide updates about what's happening in Washington, D.C. The energy at town halls for members of Congress has made headlines in recent months, with both Republicans and Democrats facing tough crowds. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, advised his fellow Republicans to avoid hosting town halls, according to the Associated Press. MORE: Speaker Johnson tells GOP lawmakers to skip town halls after an onslaught of protests Democratic Congressman Gabe Amo is holding a town hall for residents of the First Congressional District in Riverside. His event will start 7 p.m. at Riverside Middle School. According to his office, Amo will be joined by Attorney General Peter Neronha and East Providence Mayor Bob DaSilva. Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Seth Magaziner's town hall for residents in the Second Congressional District will be in East Greenwich. The event is set to start at 6 p.m. and will be at Swift Community Center. RELATED: Magaziner won't move into his congressional district after all Neither of the town halls require an RSVP to attend. Download the and apps to get breaking news and weather alerts. Watch or with the new . Follow us on social media: Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
2025 Congressional Art Competition announced
Mar. 21—Congressman Brad Finstad (MN-01) today invited high school students from Minnesota's First Congressional District to participate in the 2025 Congressional Art Competition. The contest is open to all high school students (ninth — 12th grade) in Minnesota's First District. All submitted artwork must be original in concept, design, and execution. Submissions, including the entry form, may be mailed or hand-delivered to the Rochester office at 2746 Superior Drive NW, Suite 100, Rochester, MN 55901, or the New Ulm office at 110 N. Minnesota St., Suite 5, New Ulm, MN 56073 by 5 p.m. on Friday, April 25. Further information, including official rules, guidelines, and student release forms for the 2025 competition can be found on Congressman Finstad's website or by calling the Rochester office at 1-507-577-6140. The first-place winner of last year's First District Congressional Art Competition was Dean Wang from Century High School in Rochester, for his piece, "Shades of Winter."
