Mother Jones notes that nepo baby Tom Kean
“voted against New Jersey’s historic "Earned Sick Leave Act",
which mandates 5 paid sick leave days per year for New Jersey workers.
He also voted against New Jersey’s "No Surprise Medical Bills act"
and two of its paid family leave laws, in 2008 and 2018.”
Kean also supported Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”,
which makes devastating cuts to Medicaid and Medicare,
and will make life a lot harder for people with disabilities.
Kean, in short, voted to ensure the most vulnerable people in the US suffer, all so the rich can get more tax cuts.
Kean, to be fair, is far from the only politician to be a raging hypocrite.
It’s basically a job requirement,
particularly for Republicans.
There are a number of Republican men who make a big song and dance about how evil abortion is,
but quickly change their tune when their mistress needs one.
In 2017, for example,
Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania resigned from Congress after claims he pressured a woman he was having an extramarital affair with to have an abortion.
The following year, Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for Donald Trump, resigned from the Republican National Committee after it was revealed that he paid $1.6m to a Playboy Playmate he had had an affair with.
Broidy got the woman pregnant and she decided to have an abortion.
Herschel Walker, a former football star who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for a US Senate seat in Georgia in 2022, has also been accused of paying for an abortion.
Walker denied the claim but also said he didn’t know the woman. -- It later transpired she was the mother of one of his children.
Walker, by the way, is now United States ambassador to the Bahamas.
Chuck Darwin@cdarwin@c.imAlmost four months ago Tom Kean Jr, a Republican, vanished from public view.
He missed more than 100 votes,
all while continuing to collecthis full taxpayer-funded salary of $174,000 along with excellent benefits.
The only explanation given for his absence was a cryptic statement from his office in late April saying he was dealing with a “personal health matter”.
Kean’s father, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean Sr, further told CNN in May that his son was battling a temporary illness and would be back to work soon.
This week, Kean finally resurfacedand explained that he’d been absent due to inpatient treatment for depression.
Why hadn’t he said anything about this earlier?
Kean said he was “private person by nature”.
Which is great, but maybe don’t choose a job in public service in that case.
Depression can be debilitating, and empathy should obviously be extended to anyone suffering from it.
However, as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview:
💥“There’s a valid discussion here about when it comes to the volume of an absence, what is our responsibility to our constituents in communicating around that?”
🔥There’s also a valid discussion here about how Kean is a massive hypocrite
who has devoted his life to ensuring normal Americans are not afforded the same sort of time and resources to deal with a personal crisis that he has just enjoyed.
Not everyone gets to take four months of paid leave when they need it:
👉 the US is the only OECD country without a national paid leave policy.
Some employers will offer paid time off for mental health reasons, and various states offer paid leave benefits,
but a majority of Americans have to figure it out on their own.
According to a 2024 Department of Labor fact sheet, “among the lowest wage workers, who are predominately women and workers of color,
95% have no access to paid family leave
and 90% lack access to short-term disability leave.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/04/tom-kean-jr-sick-leave-mental-health-depression?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other