Death threats, tweets jolt GOP infrastructure supporters

WASHINGTON » The last time Congress approved a major renewal of federal highway and other transportation programs, the votes were 359-65 in the House and 83-16 in the Senate. It was backed by nearly every Democrat and robust majorities of Republicans.

This year’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill easily cleared the Senate 6913 with GOP support, but crawled through the House last week by 228-206, with 13 Republican votes. Those defectors were savaged afterward by former President Donald Trump. Hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called them “traitors” while tweeting their names and office telephone numbers, and one of the 13 says he received a death threat.

The votes, six years apart, and the harsh blowback against Republican mavericks illustrate a GOP in which conservative voices have grown louder and more militant, fanned by Trump’s four years in office. Growing numbers of progressives have made Democrats more liberal too, with both shifts fueling a sharpening of partisanship in Washington.

“This madness has to stop,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., an 18-term moderate, who said his offices received dozens of threatening calls following his yes vote. That included one obscenity-laced rant that aides provided in which the caller repeatedly called Upton a “traitor” and expressed hope that the lawmaker, his family and aides would die.

Upton closed his two Michigan offices for a day and reopened them after increasing their security.

This year’s bill, triple the size of the 2015 measure, is a keystone of President Joe Biden’s push to create jobs and build out the nation’s roads, water systems, broadband coverage and other projects. A compromise between Senate Democrats and Republicans, it will send money into every state, and is the kind of bill that politicians have loved promoting back home for decades. Biden plans to sign it Monday.

Democrats say GOP opposition to the bill is indefensible on policy and political grounds.

“It’s a sad statement of how the other party has lost its way,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y.