Speech Urging Congressman Brad Schneider to Support the Block the Bombs Act (August 27th, 2025)

      The following speech will be delivered at 10:30 A.M. on the morning of Wednesday, August 27^th, 2025, at Congressman Brad Schneider’s neighborhood office, inside the Avon Township Center (located at 433 E. Washington St. in Round Lake Park, Illinois).

          Thank you for having me. I’m Joe Kopsick, Chair of the Green Party of Lake County. I ran as an independent against Brad Schneider, for U.S. House, in 2016 and 2020.

          The phrase “Blue Dog Democrat” refers to a voter who believes so deeply in “voting blue, no matter who”, that that person would even vote for a blue dog – no matter how pro-war, or capitalist, the dog might be – as long as the dog were to run as a Democrat.

          In 1995 – in a completely tone-deaf move – a group of “moderate”, “centrist”, and conservative Democrats adopted this disrespectful nickname, as the name of their new ideological caucus within the Democratic Party, the Blue Dog Coalition.

          Together, BlueDogPAC – and the New Democrat Coalition (associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel) – donated more than $50,000 to Brad Schneider between 2013 and 2019.

          Brad Schneider also accepted $7,500 from NoLabelsPAC, a pro-Israel group that disguises itself as “moderate” and “centrist” just like the Blue Dogs do.

          But, thankfully, the era of these “Democrats In Name Only” is almost over. That is, as long as Congressman Brad Schneider promises to support the Block the Bombs Act.

Brad Schneider, the current chair of the New Democrat Coalition – which brokered the deals between Bill Clinton and Wall Street that turned the banking sector into the oligopoly it is today – is going to save us.

          Brad Schneider, who was among the top three congressmen in terms of money received from pro-Israel P.A.C.s, for three out of four election cycles between 2013 and 2020.

          Brad Schneider, who failed to meaningfully distance himself from his former opponent Bob Dold’s statement that he would not be willing to “give one of our allies an ultimatum” by making continued aid to the State of Israel conditional upon that country signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

          What does this mean? Brad Schneider wants the State of Israel to be free to sell nuclear weapons to other countries. Well, I’d certainly like to know what countries those might be, wouldn’t you?

          In 2019, I asked Congressman Schneider whether he would have supported H.R. 3585, which authorized the expenditure of funds, to the military, in a way that would have allowed females as young as seventeen, to be required to register for the selective service (alongside males).

          Schneider mentioned his son’s military service, and - more or less - simply said “everyone should serve”. Residents of the Tenth District: Brad Schneider supports a draft.

          The enforcement of the draft potentially allows the government to fine parents nearly $200,000 for failing to register their children as cannon fodder for a military that’s stuck in an endless, unwinnable war against “terror” (which is really just a war on Islam and the continued existence of the Palestinian people). This policy is unconscionable. We should not be expanding the draft; we should be abolishing it.

 

          But New Democrats, like Schneider – and Rahm Emanuel, in particular – seem to reason that “Oh, Israel has a draft, so let’s have ‘mandatory national service’ too. Israel drafts most of their eighteen-year-olds, so let’s make seventeen-year-olds register, and then keep it legal to draft them when they turn eighteen.”

          Folks, I don’t know about you, but a country that appears on the verge of considering bringing back the draft, or even child soldiers, is not a country I recognize; it was the all-volunteer army that has made this country great. Moreover, this is not the behavior of something that should be calling itself “the most moral army on Earth”; and it should certainly not serve as an inspiration for our policies, here in America.

          Since arriving in Congress, Brad Schneider has presided over a more than tripling of U.S. aid to Israel (from $3.5 billion per year, to $12 billion).

          In 2009, Ohio congressman Jim Traficant told Fox News that that $3.5 billion only represented “the foreign aid bill”, and that another 11.5 to 16.5 billion dollars are sent to Israel, in total, by American taxpayers (including “trade compacts”, “economic assistance”, and “military assistance”).

          [Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0scNGzWfv8A]

          As you can imagine, Traficant did not last very long in Congress.

          The point being: The State of Israel does not even need more U.S. taxpayer -funded foreign aid money, to begin with.

          But, it’s OK, because now it’s all gonna change. That’s because Brad Schneider knows that his inaction, regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, is the last straw for people in the Tenth District, or else his career in politics is at stake.

          He knows that this is his last chance to declare his commitment to not only the law, but also to peace; and his commitment to defense over aggression, by joining as a co-sponsor on this Block the Bombs bill, which would limit only the sale of weapons of war; not the sale of defensive tools, to the Israeli Defense Forces.

          And so – Congressman Schneider – we want to know, once and for all, what it is. Are you going to take this once-in-a-lifetime, “least you can do” step, to help end a genocide?

          Are you going to take this tiniest baby-step towards saving the American people approximately half a trillion dollars per year, by ceasing to let Netanyahu and his coalition choose who will be America’s enemies, and in which wars America will fight?

          The choice is simple, Brad: Be on the right side of history, or else announce your retirement; right here, right now. This is your last chance; announce your support of the Block the Bombs Act today.

          The people are watching.

 

 

Image created in Adobe Illustrator by Joseph W. Kopsick,
based on a hand-drawn image by a Green Party member
who did not ask to be credited.

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Written between August 24^th and 27^th, 2025

Published on August 27^th, 2025

Image created between August 24th and 27th, 2025
and added on October 9th, 2025.