Journalists are surely doing their due diligence with the extreme and dangerous Speaker of the House, Ayatollah Mike. BB did some deep diving on a supposedly adopted young black man with a search that showed a lot of embellishments on a story that can’t be verified by anyone. Get ready to hold your nose as I go further down the Maga Mike rabbit hole.
Johnson insisted that “we’re not going to abandon [Ukraine,] but we have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility over the precious treasure of the American people, and we have to make sure that the White House is providing the people with some accountability for the dollars.”
Already, he seemed to be getting slightly more breathing room from Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who was the leader of the effort to oust McCarthy and has been an implacable opponent of aid to Ukraine. Gaetz left some wiggle room about whether it should receive a vote, saying, “They should definitely be separate questions. We have a lot of members who want to vote for Ukraine funding. And so that may be a vote that they are able to bring to bear through regular order.”
However, Gaetz cautioned that because a recent amendment on Ukraine aid did not receive the support of a majority of House Republicans, future legislation on aid to the Eastern European country should not receive any consideration in the House because it violated the Hastert Rule, the recent tradition among House Republicans that all legislation should have the support of “a majority of the majority.” He noted that “the last time Ukraine funding was on the floor of the House … [a] majority of the majority voted against it. That usually ends a measure’s prospects for consideration.”
Yet despite the drama around Ukraine, the fight over government funding is likely to be far less dramatic than past ones. McCarthy’s ouster was the result of his efforts to avoid a government shutdown by simply continuing current funding levels for the next six weeks at the beginning of October. Not only is Johnson enjoying a honeymoon period among his colleagues after the weeks of internecine warfare among House Republicans, he also starts off with fresh credibility among those who were most opposed to McCarthy to keep the government open for at least a few more months.
As Gaetz, the leader of the hard-right bloc that was opposed to the former speaker, put it, “Kevin McCarthy wanted to govern by continuing resolution to get us to the next continuing resolution. I think Mike Johnson has a lot more credibility [as a] … bridge to single-subject spending bills, not a bridge to just the old ways of Washington.”
But, for whatever criticism that there was of the “old ways of Washington,” at least everyone knew what they were. Everyone was working from the same playbook, and there was at least a basic set of agreed-upon norms. All of that has frayed after the last few chaotic weeks, and the challenges have only grown more complex. It’s a recipe for more weirdness to come.
I’d look for Putin to start making moves on Ukraine with this discussion coming out of the House. More research is revealing a lot about Johnson’s wife, too. Despite the rush to cleanse the internet of all references to their propensity to act like medieval-times demon dispensers, many folks have already put their weird history in files. So, I’m sure our local Dr. BB will have something to say on this one. It’s from the Business Insider. ‘”Kelly Johnson, who is married to House Speaker Mike Johnson, practices an ancient form of Christian counseling that classifies people into ‘choleric,’ ‘phlegmatic,’ and other personality types purportedly ordained by God.” I don’t recall reading this in my King James version back in the day, but who knows what I may have missed being a Presbyterian. I don’t call this “deeply religious,” I call it deeply disturbed.
Kelly Johnson, the wife of the newly elected House speaker, ran a Christian counseling service that is affiliated with an organization that advocates against abortion and homosexuality and whose practices are built on the teachings of the Greek physician Hippocrates.
It is not clear if Kelly Johnson will continue her practice. Not long after Rep. Mike Johnson became House speaker last week, Kelly Johnson’s website became inaccessible. Johnson, her husband of more than 24 years, rose overnight from a virtually obscure House lawmaker to the position that is second in line to the presidency. The couple is deeply religious; both Kelly and Mike Johnson previously worked with religious organizations and causes the religious right advocates for. Along with her counseling, Johnson is also listed as an advisor to the Louisiana Right for Life, an anti-abortion organization.
Kelly Johnson’s website listed a specialty in Temperament counseling, a specialty that she received training for from an organization founded in the 1980s by a Christian couple. According to the materials the organization provides, the National Christian Counselor’s Association is adamant that its offerings take place outside of more traditional state-licensed settings so that counselors and clients can be fully engaged through their faith.
“The state licensed professional counselor in certain states is forbidden to pray, read or refer to the Holy Scriptures, counsel against things such as homosexuality, abortion, etc,” a catalog of the organization’s offerings states. “Initiating such counsel could be considered unethical by the state.”
The temperament-based approach breaks people down into five types: Melancholy, Choleric, Sanguine, Supine, and Phlegmatic. Richard and Phyllis Arno, who established a test to identify people’s temperament, founded the National Christian Counselors Association in the early 1980s. They and their advocates prefer the term temperament over personalities as the term personality is characterized as a “mask” while temperaments are “inborn” and thus inherent to each individual regardless of outside influences such as parenting. Their work is largely based on Hippocrates’ view that there were four temperaments.
Tim LaHaye, a controversial and influential figure on the evangelical right, pointed to Hippocrates’ beliefs when he began his own work in the 60s and 70s. The Arnos cited LaHaye in one of their books. LaHaye was vehemently opposed to LGBTQ people, writing an entire book on why he believed gay people were depressed because homosexuality was immoral and antithetical to the Bible. According to The New York Times, LaHaye’s anti-Catholic and antisemitic writings led him to step down from an honorary position leading Congressman Jack Kemp’s 1988 GOP primary campaign. LaHaye later pushed President George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and worked with then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the 2008 presidential primaries. LeHaye became enormously popular and wealthy later in his life after he penned a series of apocalyptic novels.
One post for an affiliated counselor on the organization’s website describes a deliverance ministry in addition to temperament testing. Using this approach to drive demons out of a client makes sure the person is “better able to receive and act upon godly counsel, including recommendations from the APS profiles.” (APS profiles are the abbreviation for the couple’s temperament testing system.)
It took Mike Johnson just a couple days last week to rise from a relatively obscure Louisiana congressman to House speaker. Suffice it to say his background and policy positions did not hold up well under their first exposure to national attention.
Johnson is an opposition researcher’s goldmine. Even over the weekend, news reports and video clips steadily trickled out exposing the new speaker for embracing views that are far out of step with mainstream America.
In particular, Johnson is deep in the Christofascist derp. And if you didn’t know that already, it became clear last Thursday during his first big TV interview as speaker, a spot on Sean Hannity’s show where he explained that his position on any issue comes straight from the Bible.
“Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview; that’s what I believe,” Johnson told on Hannity, with a proud little head tilt.
Johnson’s statement is difficult to credit. The Bible is a heterogenous document with a long, complicated interpretive tradition, and lots of odd little injunctions tucked away. Johnson has not, as far as I know, come out strongly against mixing fabrics.
But it might be more comforting if he had. Because what Johnson means when he says that his worldview is that of the Bible is not that he’s going to make a good faith (as it were) effort to follow biblical prescriptions. Rather, it means he’s certain that his own particular white evangelical Christian nationalist tradition is sanctioned by God, and that, therefore, whatever smug and barmy thing comes out of his mouth is divinely inspired.
And much of what has come out of Johnson’s has been barmy indeed — not to mention smug, and often terrifyingly cruel. Based on his stated supposedly biblical positions, the Bible in Johnson’s head is a silly, vicious farrago of ignorance and bigotry, and a blueprint for Christofascist tyranny.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) described new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as an “extremist MAGA Republican” and remembered a telling exchange she says she had with him after the violent Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“The secret to the success of Mike Johnson ascending to the speakership, after about a 24-hour run, is that very few people knew him or knew what he stands for,” she told MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman Jr. on Sunday.
Dean recalled that during the House floor vote to elect Johnson, a Democratic colleague asked her: “Do you know anything about this guy?”
Dean said that in fact, she did, because she serves with Johnson on the House judiciary committee.
She looked back on a conversation she said she had with Johnson shortly after the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Johnson “tried to defend to me, and to others on my side of the aisle, why he was such an architect of the election-denying scheme,” and “tried to argue his legal case about it,” she said.
“And when I said to him: ‘But after all, there was an attempted insurrection. You were here for it. That didn’t change your sights at all?’ No, it did not,” she said.
She also noted that Johnson wouldn’t answer questions about whether the election was legitimate as recently as last week.
“It’s chilling to me that he is now third in line to the presidency,” she said.
The 2019 video shows Johnson promoting the organization of which he is a member and disparaging Democratic attempts at firearm reform.
“As NRA members, we understand the Second Amendment is grounded in fundamental freedoms,” says Johnson, whose declaration is used in the headline on X (formerly Twitter). “We make the point on the Hill all the time when these gun bills come up and when Democrats try to push their agenda on the people. We remind them that the Second Amendment is grounded in those fundamental freedoms ― those inalienable rights we have to personal liberty and personal security and private property.
“We can’t lose sight of that,” he continued. “So when they’re pushing a bill for universal background checks or trying to delay the amount of time that it takes for law-abiding citizens to obtain a firearm for self-defense, we have to remind them that what’s really at stake is that fundamental right that we have.”
While the right-wing Johnson’s message isn’t surprising, it was attention-grabbing that the NRA posted it days after Maine’s biggest mass shooting. It’s not clear what Johnson initially shot the video for. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the lawmaker’s office on whether he approved of the video being posted now.
Who exactly backs this guy? I mean, other than holy rollers. Jude Legume has found a few of them. ” Walmart, Meta, AT&T, and Microsoft are among his most prominent corporate sponsors.
Other corporate backers of Johnson include Boeing ($10,000), Capital One ($1,000), Charter ($20,000), Chevron ($21,500), Cox Enterprises ($22,000), Koch Industries ($30,500), National Association of Realtors ($19,000), and Verizon ($4,000).
Here’s more of our history from his antics from Mother Jones’s David Corn. “Mike Johnson Conducted Seminars Promoting the US as a “Christian Nation.” The new House speaker called for “Biblically-sanctioned government.”
Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican House speaker, used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a “Christian nation.” This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.
The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days.
Mike and Kelly Johnson, each a fundamentalist Christian and culture war battler who advocates adhering to what they call a “Biblical worldview,” launched this initiative in 2019. After one such presentation on February 24, 2019, at the First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, where they are members—an event that also featured Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council—a local television news show reported that the seminar’s goal was to “keep God in Government.” Johnson posted the article on his congressional website.
According to a Louisiana Baptist newsletter,the Johnsons intended to first pitch their seminars to Baptist churches in the Pelican State before expanding to other states. The publication reported that the couple’s goal was “to equip churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” It noted that Johnson said he was compelled to create this new ministry while serving in the US House because he was concerned “that too many believers today feel ill-informed to provide substantive answers to fake arguments.” It quoted Johnson: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the Truth.” He was referring to what fundamentalists call “Biblical truth.”
A promotion blurb for the seminar described it this way: “As polls show that Christianity is in rapid decline in America, and the culture is growing more secularized and more coarsened, many believers feel ill-informed and ill-prepared to do anything to reverse these trends. Scripture is clear that we have an obligation to provide substantive answers… But HOW?”
Well, I can tell you exactly why none of my family are Republican or Christian anymore. It has much to do with the demeanor of people like the Johnsons. Who would want to be like that? I remember when 8-year-old Dr. Daughter walked out of her last Sunday School session at our local Methodist Church. She asked if she really had to go back there. I asked why. She told me that her teachers had told her that her best friend–who was and still is Jewish–was going to hell. I said of course not. That’s the age kids really develop a sense of right and wrong. Shortly after that, I gave up on all that, too, and found some love, peace, and understanding in my current Buddhist practice, where telling people they’re on the wrong spiritual path is about the worst action you can take.
So, this guy freaks me out to no end. I know what it’s like to be stalked and threatened by these people. I’ve seen it in my neighborhood in Omaha, and they always show up to harass people at any Gay event. So, I googled what percentage of pedophiles prey on people in their churches. This is a peer-reviewed article that shows the offender levels in Protestant churches. Its focus is due to the massive number of studies on offenders in the Catholic churches. It’s not shocking at all.
Well, that’s the dank rabbit hole for this week. Hopefully, the end of the week will bring some news we could use and rejoice in.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Witch with her cat familiar, woodcut by Meister Drucke (English School)
Lots of us normal people are still trying to figure out the new GOP Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. He thinks the Bible is a history book, and claims to live by biblical teachings; but he doesn’t seem to believe in many of the ethical values the book recommends, since he supports a twice divorced, twice impeached, four times indicted sexual assaulter for president. He has also announced his support for walking crime wave George Santos. Dakinikat and I have both posted quite a bit of information about Johnson, but there is still much more to learn.
Have you heard about Johnson’s black “adopted” son? Josh Marshall looked for more information about what exactly happened there. From Talking Points Memo: What’s Up With Speaker Mike Johnson’s Black Son?
I had only heard this story in passing until this evening when TPM Reader RS flagged something odd about the story. No African-American son shows up in any of the family photographs on Johnson’s House website or on his personal Facebook page. Nor does Michael figure anywhere in any of Johnson’s campaign biographies.
As I went further down this rabbit hole tonight I was a bit dumbfounded. Is Michael made up? Is he excluded from family pictures? I was so baffled that I went pretty far down that rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.
In response to jeering from spectators at the hearing Johnson departed from his prepared remarks to invoke Michael. “Let me finish … Listen, wait a minute … Many of my colleagues in this committee may not be aware, in addition to our four children at home, my wife and I have a much older son who happens to be African American. We took custody of Michael and made him part of our family 22 years ago when we were just newlyweds and Michael just 14 and out on the streets and on a dangerous path.”
A bit later in his remarks Johnson said, “I asked Michael this weekend what he thinks about the idea of reparations. In a very thoughtful way, he explained his opposition.”
Marshall notes that the black son doesn’t appear in any of Johnsons family photos, so he looked into the timeline to figure out why.
I was able to piece the story together from the introduction to the full video of the 2020 interview and a write up in The Advocate centered on the 2019 reparations hearing. In Johnson’s interview with Walter Isaacson it sounds like he’s talking about two 14 year olds, boys of the same age. But if you listen closely he refers to Michael at that age in the past tense. Michael was 36 in June 2019 and presumably 40 today. Johnson is 51.
This isn’t clear in the clip that’s been circulating. Or at least it wasn’t to me. But Johnson wasn’t being misleading. Because the chronology is explained earlier in the interview.
Johnson said at the hearing that he and his wife “took custody of Michael” around 1997. So the exact relationship with Michael is uncertain and it’s unclear whether the Johnsons ever adopted Michael. It sounds like the relationship may have been more of a fostering relationship and that the Johnsons consider him a son in an informal sense. But again it’s simply not clear.
Something familiar, by Peter de Seve
That can’t be right. That would mean Johnson “adopted” Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 11 years old? Another report I saw said that Johnson adopted Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 25 and Michael was 14.
Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed the public absence of his “adopted” Black son.
Johnson and his wife took custody of a Black teenager, Michael, 24 years ago and raised him as a son.
However, questions were raised when Michael was conspicuously absent from Johnson’s public life, including not appearing in his family portrait on his website.
Johnson’s communications director, Corinne Day, explained Michael’s absence in a statement to Newsweek: “When Speaker Johnson first ran for Congress in 2016, he and his wife, Kelly, spoke to their son Michael — who they took in as newlyweds when Michael was 14 years old.”
“At the time of the Speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own. He asked not to be involved in their new public life. The Speaker has respected that sentiment throughout his career and maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”
Johnson has previously compared their experience to “The Blind Side,” a 2009 movie starring Sandra Bullock, in which a white couple takes in a Black teenager who goes on to become a football star, The New York Times said.
Although raising him as his own, Johnson said he never formally adopted Michael because of the “lengthy adoption process,” per The Times.
OK, so he isn’t actually an adopted son. Read more at the Insider link.
The Love Potion, by Evelyn De Morgan
We haven’t heard much about Speaker Johnson’s wife Kelly, and she has reportedly been erasing information about her from social media. The couple have also deleted their past podcasts, but some alert folks have saved copies.
The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.
Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.
“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.
More on Kelly’s activities:
Kelly Johnson features the couple’s podcast on the website of her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website also includes a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the corporate bylaws for the company ― and embraces a number of socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and women’s reproductive rights.
The agreement states that Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other. It puts being gay, bisexual or transgender in the same category as someone who has sex with animals or family members, calling all of these examples of “sexual immorality.”
“We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,” says the eight-page business document.
This agreement also refers to “pre-born babies” and says the company is committed to defending and protecting all human life, “from conception through natural death.”
I wonder if that includes opposing capital punishment?
Much of the media has regarded Mike Johnson’s two-day-old speakership as something of an accident of history.
But the record shows Johnson’s ascent was no accident. It was the culmination of a deliberate series of moves aimed at positioning himself for greater power.
Since Johnson’s first run for Congress, the now four-term Louisianan has always ensured he is in line ideologically with the most conservative faction of the House GOP — without going to their tactical extremes.
That ultimately made him a palatable choice to fellow Republicans, who unanimously elected him speaker Wednesday after 22 fractious days on Capitol Hill.
Johnson was still a first-term state lawmaker when a vacancy opened in the northwest Louisiana House district then held by GOP Rep. John Fleming, a charter member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Fleming was among several Republicans who jumped into the race to succeed retiring Sen. David Vitter, and Johnson moved decisively to pick up Fleming’s baton.
Johnson ran with the Freedom Caucus imprimatur and a six-figure donation from its PAC, as well as backing from Citizens United and the Club for Growth — giving him a crucial leg up over the four other Republicans in the race.
But once sworn in, Johnson made an unexpected pivot: He frequently attended Freedom Caucus meetings but never actually joined the group. This was at a moment when it was solidifying its reputation as a thorn in leadership’s side, helping to complicate the ultimately failed effort to push health care legislation and other parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House.
Johnson instead set his sights on a different perch: leading the Republican Study Committee, the sprawling conservative policy group that counted the majority of the GOP conference among its members.
Ahead of his second term, Johnson took on Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a veteran pol who had served a decade in Congress and spent 25 years in California state politics before that. Johnson leapt into the race early, and where McClintock was openly critical of Freedom Caucus tactics, Johnson was more accommodating, suggesting that the two groups could work in tandem.
After Johnson won, McClintock told Roll Call, “The fact of the matter is he completely out campaigned me during the recess.”
Johnson comes across as wimpy, but he’s obviously very ambitious. There’s more at the link.
The Biden administration hit back Friday on Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent comments that placed blame for mass shootings in the United States on Americans’ “hearts,” calling the remarks “offensive.”
In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the administration “absolutely” rejected “the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans’ ‘hearts.’”
Old Witch and Familiar
“Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry’s lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans,” Bates added.
The comments from Bates marks the first tiff between the newly elected Republican speaker and the Biden administration. It also serves as a reminder of the vast distance between the two most senior elected leaders of their respective parties, after a few short hours in which they showed a bit of good will toward each other.
On Thursday, Johnson appeared on Fox News, where he was asked about the murder of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine. The Louisiana Republican said it was not the right time to consider legislation and defended the Second Amendment.
“At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Johnson said. “We have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves. That’s the Second Amendment and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
The Biden White House, for its part, has renewed a call for gun legislation after the shooting in Lewiston. And it wasted little time hitting Johnson for standing in the way.
Robert Card, the suspect wanted in connection with Wednesday’s deadly mass shootings at two businesses in Maine, was found dead at a recycling center Friday night.
Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said Saturday morning that Card’s body was found at about 7:45 p.m. Friday inside of a box trailer located in an overflow parking lot for the Maine Recycling Corporation at 61 Capital Ave. in Lisbon.
“This is a tractor-trailer style (trailer). You know, you picture that 18-wheeler, this is what the trailer would look like. A box trailer is where he was located, right in the back of that,” Sauschuck said. “Some of those trailers are locked. Some of those trailers aren’t. He was found inside one of those boxes that was unlocked from the outside.”
Sauschuck confirmed that Card died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sauschuck also said two guns were found inside the trailer with Card’s body, but he did provide any further detail about those firearms. Card appeared to be wearing the same sweatshirt he appeared to be wearing the night of the shootings.
In addition, Sauschuck said Card had been an employee of the Maine Recycling Corporation, but he also noted he did not know whether Card was still an employee of that facility at the time of his death.
Israel doesn’t seem to be listening to President Biden anymore.
Meanwhile, Palestinians last night faced what they said were the most intense round of airstrikes on Gaza since Israel began its retaliatory offensive against Hamas.
Here are the headlines you need to know:
Israeli forces are still in Gaza: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said military operations against Hamas have progressed to “a new phase of war” while Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari confirmed Israeli ground forces had entered the enclave overnight from the north. “The forces are in the field and continue the fighting,” he said, without giving further details. While both statements confirm the military operation has undergone a notable expansion, it does not appear any major ground offensive aimed at seizing and holding significant amounts of territory is yet underway.
Renewed evacuation warnings: The Israeli military reissued a call for residents in northern Gazato evacuate to the south of the crowded enclave, with the statement making reference to a coming IDF operation against Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians have said even those heeding the warnings have been wounded or killed by strikes outside the evacuation zone.
Communications severed: Many are struggling to get in touch with people in Gaza after communications links were badly disrupted by the aerial bombardments overnight. Elon Musk has offered his Starlink satellite service, saying the platform will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.
Gazans shelter and mourn: Health workers, patients and civilians in Gaza spent the night “in darkness and fear,” the World Health Organization said. It added that hospitals were operating at maximum capacity, unable to take new patients while also “sheltering thousands of civilians.” Earlier, residents congregated at a central Gaza hospital to mourn relatives killed overnight. Video captured by CNN showed multiple bodies, including those of children, covered in white shrouds or thick blankets in the hospital yard.
On the ground: Near the Gaza border, staging grounds once teeming with hundreds of Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers had mostly emptied out at the time a CNN team visited. CNN also observed some tank units returning from the direction of Gaza, back to their forward operating positions.
Hostage situation unclear: The Israeli military’s expansion of its ground operation in Gaza has alarmed families of hostages seized during the Hamas attacks. “This night was the most terrible of all nights,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group lobbying for the release of the captives.
The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.
Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.
The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said….
In public, President Biden and his top officials have indicated support for a planned ground offensive if Israel concludes that that is its best move, while adding that they are asking “tough questions” about the idea. The private advice is a significant departure from the administration’s public posture, and it is a distinct shift from the administration’s position in the days immediately after the Hamas attack inside Israel.
Former president Donald Trump on Friday revived a two-week-old controversy over his description of Hezbollah terrorist attackers as “very smart,” posting a column on social media that sought to defend his characterization of the group.
The column Trump shared in full, written by the conservative commentator Jeffrey Lord, argued that the former president was justified in using the broadly condemned characterization — and Lord also called Trump “smart” as well.
President Biden’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee seized on Trump’s latest social media post, with the DNC claiming on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Trump was “once again praising a terrorist organization.”
“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”
At the time, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung defended the former president’s comments, saying Trump “was clearly pointing out how incompetent Biden and his administration were by telegraphing to the terrorists an area that is susceptible to an attack” and added that “smart does not equal good.”
Whatever. If only he would STFU.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
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It’s been a lousy news season since Orange Caligula rode that elevator down to infamy. Whenever there’s something nice, religious fundamentalists and their feckless leaders come along to ruin it. I remember not being able to even buy creme de menthe in Omaha on a Sunday when I was just in need of some to make a grasshopper pie for my mother-in-law. I had to find a bootlegger friend who just happened to have one. Now, there are all kinds of things you won’t find in many states because of these fundamentalist buzzkills. I’m thinking I may move to Colorado to set up a “camping ground” for young southern women who need to get away. I hope to get someone to build a venue for Wayward Drag Queens and a library for banned books. Perhaps an inclusive wedding venue and weed store would be appropriate, too. There’s even a Buddhist university–Naropa–in Boulder, so other than having to avoid using grocery stores because of mass-murdering shooters, I’m set with that. Oh, wait. I also must avoid movie theaters, planned parenthood, and wherever Boebert hangs. I still have to admit I’ve been in love with the state since I was a kid, and there’s nowhere to hide from deranged white men and their military-grade weapons going on hate-filled shooting sprees.
Just how the fuck did we arrive at this place? I have an idea. I think the same folks giving death threats to Representative Bacon and his wife from Lincoln, Nebraska, are the same folks that threatened my toddler–the one who is now safe in Colorado–in 1992. It’s a combination of the Southern Strategy and Reagan and Pat Robertson dragging fundies into the party and letting them run amok. They’ve just evolved into much more dangerous and well-armed hooligans due to the various movements united by drinking orange Kool-Aid.
I’m slipping in some wisdom from Chamtral Rinpoche on Karma this morning.
No matter how manipulative, clever, quick, evasive, and secretive that somebody is, it is impossible for them to cheat, run, and hide from their negative karma. If they do not purify the negative karma that they have built up, sooner or later it will ripen into suffering for them.
As Padmasambhava said, “The eagle that is flying high in the sky should not forget that it will come down one day to see its shadow.”
So please, I urge you, think before you act with your body, speech, and mind, no matter how small and insignificant that you think the action is.
Thankfully, Karma is catching up with the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. The rest is a work in process. Deep Breath Time, Sky Dancers! We may see a Speaker of the House indicted eventually. Some things take longer than others to sort out.
Let’s start with that karma. Newsweek’s Nick Mordowanec analyzes the court’s decision to force Ivanka to Testify in the New York State Trump fraud case. “Ivanka Trump Has Fifth Amendment Problem.” This should be interesting.
What Ivanka Trump could say or not say if called as a witness against her father and brothers may add some weight to the state’s civil fraud case while potentially implicating herself.
Last week, her lawyers filed a motion requesting the New York Attorney General’s office to quash a subpoena that forces her to testify, arguing that she was dismissed from the lawsuit initially filed by Attorney General Letitia James. The suit accuses Donald Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization, of inflating assets by up to $2.2 billion to boost net worth and get favorable bank and business deals in return.
The claims of the suit, of which Ivanka was dismissed in June due to a statute of limitations, have been refuted and denied by the former president and others. Trump, the current 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner who has routinely been present in the courtroom, has claimed the case is politically motivated and intended to damage his reputation.
Ivanka Trump’s lawyer, Bennet Moskowitz, wrote in a motion filed October 19 that she should not have to take the stand for multiple reasons. One is that she was never deposed, and another is that she has not been part of the Trump Organization since 2016 and has not legally been a New York resident for nearly seven years.
Moskowitz, who was contacted by Newsweek via email, also argued that the summary judgment in the case “limited the trial to damages and causes of action for which Ms. Trump’s testimony is unnecessary due to being redundant of matters already in the record or immaterial to the issues still in the case.”
New York-based attorney Andrew Lieb told Newsweek via email that should she be forced to testify, Ivanka can plead the Fifth Amendment if the answer to a question could incriminate her regardless of whether she’s a current defendant in the case and regardless of if criminal charges currently exist against her.
“However, given that she is being called as a witness in a civil trial, taking the Fifth will result in a negative inference where her testimony will be presumed to be averse to [Donald] Trump,” Lieb said. “Therefore, she has minimal options if she is forced to testify and does not want to hurt her father and brothers.
Birger Sandzén, At The Timberline, Pike’s Peak, Colorado
U.S. Representative George Santos pleaded not guilty on Friday to a 23-count indictment accusing him of an array of corruption, including 10 felony counts that federal prosecutors added this month.
Santos, 35, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in Central Islip, New York, on Long Island. A trial is scheduled for Sept. 9, 2024.
The Republican first-term congressman had in May pleaded not guilty to 13 charges, including laundering funds to pay for his personal expenses, illegally receiving unemployment benefits, and lying to the House of Representatives about his assets.
His additional charges included accusations that he charged donors’ credit cards without their consent, and reported a bogus $500,000 campaign loan.
The plea came one day after fellow Long Island Republican congressman Anthony D’Esposito called on the House to expel Santos, saying Santos was “not fit to serve his constituents.”
Expulsion requires a two-thirds vote. Republicans hold a 221-212 majority in the House, and at least several dozen would have to vote against Santos for him to be expelled.
U.S. military aircraft have carried out strikes in eastern Syria against facilities associated with Iranian-backed militant groups believed to be responsible for more than a dozen rocket and drone attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria that injured 21 service members, the military said Thursday night.
“Today, at President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces conducted self-defense strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement.
“These precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17,” he said.
“The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” he added.
The retaliatory operations were carried out at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, in the wake of Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and U.S. concerns about preventing that conflict from enveloping the rest of the region.
BIRGER SANDZÉN, ROCKS AND PINES, BOULDER, COLORADO
Today, at President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces conducted self-defense strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups. These precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17. As a result of these attacks, one U.S. citizen contractor died from a cardiac incident while sheltering in place; 21 U.S. personnel suffered from minor injuries, but all have since returned to duty. The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests.
The United States does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop. Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.
These narrowly tailored strikes in self-defense were intended solely to protect and defend U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria. They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict. We continue to urge all state and non-state entities not to take action that would escalate into a broader regional conflict.
This time around, Trump’s rally schedule has been significantly diminished, settling at around two per month in the run up to Iowa.
It’s a reduction due to a confluence of factors, ranging from his legal peril and crowded court schedule to the cost savings and messaging upside of keeping the MAGA festivals to a minimum. His events are increasingly billed as speeches instead of rallies, with the next one scheduled for Nov. 8 at Ted Hendricks Stadium in Hialeah, Florida on the night of the third GOP debate, marking only his seventh major venue rally this year.
“Honestly, given he has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would fuck up his legal defense,” a former senior Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “Let everyone else flame out. Then hit the gas.”
Although Trump’s once cash-flush and now cash-strapped “Save America” leadership PAC can cover legal expenses for himself and his allies, that flexibility comes with a major drawback. While candidates can use leadership PACs to pay for pretty much anything, the tradeoff is they can’t use them to pay for their own campaign activity. Once Trump became a candidate again—officially announcing in November 2022, though some legal experts contend he’d already been in the race for a long time—Save America, which had raised more than $140 million, couldn’t pay the bills for his events. Those expenses fell to his new campaign committee, which didn’t have the kind of cash he’d stashed in Save America. He had to start fresh, more or less.
While the rallies have been crucial to Trump’s relationship with the base, they are not cheap. The rallies can run anywhere from the low- to mid-six-figure range—all the way up to $2 million. (The most notable pricy example was his botched Tulsa rally during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, which set his campaign back $2.2 million.)
After Donald Trump gave his approval Wednesday, House Republicans unanimously elected little-known Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana to serve as speaker.
Johnson, who is in his fourth term of Congress, is the most junior House member to serve as speaker since the 1800s. But he does have some experience that the former president appears to cherish: As a Trump-aligned lawyer and former right-wing talk radio host, he seems skilled in the art of packaging Trumpian talking points in ways that are relatively polished. What he lacks in legislative experience, he appears to make up for with MAGA moxy, as far as Trump is concerned.
It’s easy to see why Trump could be drawn to Johnson. The Louisiana Republican played a key role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and he served on House Republicans’ pro-Trump defense team during Trump’s first impeachment. But perhaps most importantly to Trump, Johnson is being touted among the MAGA faithful as a skilled communicator of extremely conservative values. (I’ll admit his seemingly quiet demeanor and folksy twang have the feel of an off-brand Paul Harvey.)
And there’s ample evidence that Trump likes to keep media tacticians of this sort in his inner circle.
Back in 2018, John Wagner wrote for The Washington Post about Trump’s tendency to hire people at the White House — like Larry Kudlow and John Bolton — after watching them on TV:
Being a pundit is becoming a tried-and-true pathway into the Trump administration, as a reality-show president seeks to surround himself with people who’ve been auditioning for their jobs on television — whether they realize it or not.
Johnson has embodied the MAGA movement with his press appearances in the past, by sharing views that play well among diehard conservatives but could turn off voters who aren’t as decidedly right-wing. Trump may approve of his politics and his presentation, but the more we learn about the new speaker’s record, the clearer it becomes that the GOP just elevated an extremist to serve as the face of House Republicans.
Within hours of Johnson’s election, disturbing previous comments of his were brought to light — including this clip, in which he suggested the U.S. is not a democracy, but rather a republic founded in line with a “biblical admonition.”
"You know, we don't live in a democracy" but a "biblical" republic.
That's what Mike Johnson said in a 2016 interview as he explained his views on the U.S. government.
That's what the new Republican House speaker, who tried to overturn the will of the voters in 2020, believes. pic.twitter.com/AEwQXwutpl
It’s always the mousy ones you have to watch. This is from Brian Beutler. “Make Mike Johnson Famous. If Republicans vote for a medieval insurrectionist, and nobody knows, does it count?” Beutler tries to understand what the media will do with the public face of Mike Johnson. He provides some rather appalling examples of folks who have really missed the biography.
What won’t fade as easily is an indelible caricature. Like Gore the exaggerator again, or Jimmy Carter as the prophet of malaise. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) became a meme when the January 6 Committee released footage of him (daintily, fearfully) fleeing the insurrection he helped inspire. Well here’s Mike Johnson, MAGA Ayatollah, running away from questions about his involvement in the failed coup and support for a national abortion ban.
When Johnson is absent or unavailable for any reason, it must be because he’s hiding from yet more questions about his election lies. Or maybe he’s trying to arrest a gay couple, or a woman who terminated a pregnancy. With him it’s always one or the other.
..
Without that kind of ratatat the public will pick up on the din of some other concerted messaging campaign. Mike Johnson’s extremism and corruption, along with his unwillingness to defend either, have to become social knowledge, and repetition is central to that process.
After I sent Wednesday’s newsletter, the drivers of the #GenocideJoe hashtag that’s gone viral on the left mobbed my Twitter feed (as I suspected they would), which is mildly annoying, but ultimately just a symptom of how ideas, even wrongheaded ones, take root in modern polities.
The American progressives who’ve become convinced they’re witnessing a Joe Biden-supported genocide didn’t get that idea from “lived experience” or “material reality” or “Democrats endorsing an unpopular activist idea.” They live here in the U.S., the material reality is that Biden does not support genocide and one is not underway, and the Biden policy is to insist on restraint in a horrible war. No, what happened is some fringe leftists made some memes and engaged in giddy slander on their popular podcasts, and that was enough to make it an unquestioned assumption in whole thought communities, including among people who say they voted for Biden once and will never again. Politics didn’t drive the media; the media drove politics.
The same aphorism applies here. House Republicans won’t pay much of a price for electing Johnson unless Johnson is understood, at a population level, to be a malign actor, where when you say the name “Mike Johnson,” it conjures a predictable image in the mind of whomever you’re talking to.
Sven Birger Sandzén, Sunset”‘n the Mountains, 1’17.
Questioned about comments and actions deemed by many to be homophobic, the new Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, told Fox News his worldview was: “Go pick up a Bible.”
Speaking on Thursday, Johnson said he “genuinely love[d] all people regardless of their lifestyle choices.
“This is not about the people themselves. I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”
Johnson added: “That’s my personal worldview.”
Johnson’s rise to the speakership was confirmed on Wednesday, as the fourth candidate since Kevin McCarthy was ejected by the actions of a clutch of far-right representatives in his own congressional conference earlier this month.
The Louisianan, 51, won his final vote without Republican dissent but is a controversial pick nonetheless. Before entering Congress in 2016, he was an attorney for rightwing Christian groups and a state legislator. In both roles he advanced extreme views, particularly against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Johnson’s work for the Alliance Defending Freedom has attracted widespread attention. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors far-right activity, calls the ADF a hate group – a label it rejects.
Nonetheless, the SPLC says the ADF has “supported the recriminalisation of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the US and criminalisation abroad; defended state-sanctioned sterilisation of trans people abroad; contended that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to engage in paedophilia; and claimed that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society”.
Johnson’s host for Thursday’s interview, Sean Hannity, said: “Comments you made both in writing and advocacy for this group about homosexuality, calling it sinful, destructive and not supporting gay marriage, quote, ‘No clear right to sodomy in the constitution.’ You have been getting hammered on this and I … wanna know … where you stand.”
Johnson said: “I don’t even remember some of them. I was a litigator called upon to defend the state marriage amendments.
“If you remember back in the early 2000s, I think there [were] over 35 states … that the people went to the ballot in their respective states and they amended their state constitutions to say marriage is one man and one woman. Well, I was a religious liberty defense and was called to defend those cases in the courts.”
Earlier, CNN unearthed editorials for a newspaper in Shreveport, Louisiana, in which Johnson said homosexuality was “inherently unnatural”, would lead to legalised paedophilia and could destroy “the entire democratic system”.
“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural,” Johnson wrote in 2004, “and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.”
Legalising gay marriage, he said, meant “we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, paedophiles and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”
Johnson also called same-sex marriage, which would be made legal across the US in 2015, “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic”.
Mindless, simplistic babble about a collection of laws, stories, and letters written over hundreds of years. This is first-grade Sunday school nonsense. https://t.co/DsRJBlhJGn
Here are some more depressing headlines. You may want to follow Robert Mann. He’s got a lot of insight into Lousyana Politics and Ayatollah Mike.
From the New York Times: ‘Could Mike Johnson, the New House Speaker, Undermine the 2024 Election? The Louisiana Republican played a pivotal role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But his elevation to the top post in the House does not give him special powers in the certification process if he tries again.’
From Axios: ‘Speaker Johnson on shootings: “Problem is the human heart, not guns”‘
From Bloomberg: ‘House Speaker Mike Johnson’s First Big Bill Cuts Biden’s Climate Change Funding
Measure would end rebates for energy-efficient appliances
Slashes funds for other programs to counter climate change’
From Phillip Bump and the Washington Post: ‘Mike Johnson points to a Biden impeachment, even if the facts do not.’
From Politico: “He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule’. A Q&A with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez on the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson.’
On Wednesday, when newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson gave his first speech in that role, he quoted British statesman and philosopher GK Chesterton, who once said, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded upon a creed,” and that it is “listed with almost theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.”
“That is the creed that has animated our nation since its founding and has made us the great nation that we are,” Johnson said.
That line caught the attention of Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian who specializes in evangelical Christianity and politics. The idea that America is founded on a creed is a common one among evangelicals, and it was a sign to her that Johnson adheres to a worldview that can be described as Christian nationalist.
Johnson, a Shreveport, Louisiana, native, entered politics after spending more than two decades defending conservative Christian causes as a litigator at the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, and throughout his career, he has argued in courts and drafted legislation to outlaw same-sex marriage and restrict abortion.
That was one reason I reached out to Du Mez, who combed through his long record of statements about his beliefs and influences to help me understand how his faith drives his politics. “As he understands it, this country was founded as a Christian nation,” Du Mez told me. “So really, Christian supremacy and a particular type of conservative Christianity is at the heart of Johnson’s understanding of the Constitution and an understanding of our government.”
Be as afraid as I am of leaving the confines of Orleans Parish. This man is more nutty than Justice Alito, and that’s a hard achievement.
So, you will be reading more of me on this subhuman piece of shit. He job hops a lot and leaves a paper trail. If we’d have had the election maps drawn the way they should’ve, he probably wouldn’t be sitting in the House. They gave him much of the East part of Lousyana that would be better placed in East Texas.
Take care and be careful out there! The country is awash with people who love to hate others and are unafraid to act on it.
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Former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty Tuesday in the Georgia election subversion case and will cooperate with Fulton County prosecutors – the third guilty plea in the past week.
At an unscheduled hearing in Atlanta, Ellis pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements, a felony stemming from the election lies that Ellis and other Donald Trump lawyers peddled to Georgia lawmakers in December 2020.
She was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.
Ellis delivered a tearful statement to the judge Tuesday while pleading guilty, disavowing her participation in Trump’s unprecedented attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
“If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse,” Ellis said, her voice breaking at times.
The development comes after back-to-back guilty pleas last week in the sprawling case from former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who helped devise the fake electors plot.
These three plea deals are a monumental step forward for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged the case in August and is preparing for trials against Trump, his former attorney Rudy Giuliani, his chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top figures. (They have all pleaded not guilty.)
Ellis, Chesebro and Powell all agreed to testify on behalf of the prosecution at future trials. By flipping, these onetime Trump insiders are now on track to become major Trump nemeses. They are all lawyers and can shed light on what was happening behind the scenes in 2020.
Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., had no shortage of doubters when she brought an ambitious racketeering case in August against former president Donald J. Trump and 18 of his allies. It was too broad, they said, and too complicated, with so many defendants and multiple, crisscrossing plot lines for jurors to follow.
But the power of Georgia’s racketeering statute in Ms. Willis’s hands has become apparent over the last six days. Her office is riding a wave of momentum that started with a guilty plea last Thursday from Sidney K. Powell, the pro-Trump lawyer who had promised in November 2020 to “release the kraken” by exposing election fraud, but never did.
Maple Tree Listening, by Kazuko Shiihashi
Then, in rapid succession, came two more guilty pleas — and promises to cooperate with the prosecution and testify — from other Trump-aligned lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis. While Ms. Powell pleaded guilty only to misdemeanor charges, both Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Ellis accepted a felony charge as part of their plea agreements.
A fourth defendant, a Georgia bail bondsman named Scott Hall, pleaded guilty last month to five misdemeanor charges.
With Mr. Trump and 14 of his co-defendants still facing trial in the case, the question of the moment is who else will flip, and how soon. But the victories notched thus far by Ms. Willis and her team demonstrate the extraordinary legal danger that the Georgia case poses for the former president.
And the plea deals illustrate Ms. Willis’s methodology, wielding her state’s racketeering law to pressure smaller-fry defendants to roll over, take plea deals, and apply pressure to defendants higher up the pyramids of power.
The strategy is by no means unique to Ms. Willis. “This is how it works,” said Kay L. Levine, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, referring to large-scale racketeering and conspiracy prosecutions. “People at the lower rungs are typically offered a good deal in order to help get the big fish at the top.”
Former President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith’s team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.
According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.
“Obviously we didn’t win,” a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith’s team in hindsight.
Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president’s closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a “special friend” and “a great chief of staff — as good as it gets.”
The descriptions of what Meadows allegedly told investigators shed further light on the evidence Smith’s team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully retain power and “spread lies” about the 2020 election. The descriptions also expose how far Trump loyalists like Meadows have gone to support and defend Trump.
Sources told ABC News that Smith’s investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office — a book that promised to “correct the record” on Trump.
Peonies and Irises, by Emil Nolde
ABC news found several passages in the book that differ from Meadows’ reported testimony. See examples at the link. People are claiming that Meadows “flipped” on Trump, but that’s not what this sounds like:
Under the immunity order from Smith’s team, the information Meadows provided to the grand jury earlier this year can’t be used against him in a federal prosecution.
That immunity came after a lawyer for Meadows requested that his client be immunized to testify before the grand jury, sources familiar with the matter said. A senior Justice Department official signed off on the request and an immunity order was then issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge at the federal court in Washington, D.C., days before Meadows appeared before the grand jury in March, sources said.
Had Meadows not been granted immunity, prosecutors expected him to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, sources said.
It sounds like Meadows was given “use immunity” in order to force him to testify without taking the Fifth. That’s not “flipping.” It just means that he cannot be prosecuted for truthful testimony he gave to the grand jury. He may end up cooperating with the government, but he hasn’t done it yet.
Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows testified to a federal grand jury earlier this year about efforts by the former president to overturn the 2020 election results pursuant to a court order that granted him limited immunity, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The immunity – which forces witnesses to testify on the promise that they will not be charged on their statements or information derived from their statements – came after a legal battle in March with special counsel prosecutors, who had subpoenaed Meadows.
Trump’s lawyers attempted to block Meadows’ testimony partially on executive privilege grounds. However, the outgoing chief US district judge Beryl Howell ruled that executive privilege was inapplicable and compelled Meadows to appear before the grand jury in Washington, the people said.
The precise details of what happened next are unclear, but prosecutors sought and received an order from the incoming chief judge James Boasberg granting limited-use immunity to Meadows to overcome his concerns about self-incrimination, the people familiar with the matter said.
That Meadows testified pursuant to a court order suggests prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith were determined to learn what information he was afraid to share because of self-incrimination concerns – but it does not mean he became a cooperator.
Typically, under limited-use immunity orders, witnesses provide limited statements. With the payoff potentially small and with the increased difficulty that comes from charging immunity recipients in the future, the justice department is broadly averse to seeking such orders.
The approval must also come from the top echelons of the justice department, according to guidelines, and the preferred method for federal prosecutors to obtain testimony is to have defendants plead guilty, and then have them offer cooperation for a reduced sentence.
Nevertheless, I think it’s unlikely that Meadows will be willing to go to prison for Trump; so he may end up cooperating. He just hasn’t done it yet.
Anemones, Edvard Munch
Last night in a Truth Social post, Trump blatantly attempted to witness tamper Mark Meadows.
In a rage-filled stream of consciousness on his Truth Social network on Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at the ABC report about Meadows.
“I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!),” the former president wrote.
“Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
The other big story today is House Republicans’ endless search for a Speaker candidate they can agree on. The latest candidate is Rep. Mike Johnson, an ultra-MAGA guy, after Trump put the kibosh on previous candidate Tom Emmer, who supported the transition of power in 2020.
Just hours after Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) won the Republican Conference’s nomination to be House speaker on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to deride the congressman as “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters” and a “Globalist RINO.”
He then got on the phone with members to express his aversion for Emmer and his bid for speaker.
By Tuesday afternoon Trump called one person close to him with the message, “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”
Just minutes later, Emmer officially dropped out of the race.
His withdrawal made Emmer the third nominee for speaker to have his hopes dashed for the most cursed job in politics. And it showed that while Trump may not be able to elevate someone to the post — his earlier choice for the job, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also flopped — he can very well ensure that a person doesn’t get it….
Trump had signaled to aides last week that he did not support Emmer’s bid for the speakership. The former president complained that Emmer had criticized him following the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 Capitol riot and, among other things, had not forcefully enough defended him against his multiple indictments.
The House will supposedly vote on Johnson for Speaker today. So who is Mike Johnson?
It remains unclear whether Johnson has enough support to win the gavel. But after he was nominated in a Republican closed-door vote on Tuesday, Johnson, flanked by his colleagues, projected confidence, promising to restore voters’ trust in government and to govern effectively if he is elected speaker.
Red Roses with Blue, by Alex Katz
Here are five things to know about Mike Johnson and his political views.
He opposed certifying the 2020 election.
Johnson, 51, contested the results of the 2020 election — urging President Donald Trump to “stay strong and keep fighting” as he tried to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the presidential race.
Johnson also objected to certifying Biden’s electoral win and was one of the architects of a legal attack on the election that consisted of arguing that states’ voting accommodations during the pandemic were unconstitutional. He led a group of 126 Republican lawmakers in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court alleging that authorities in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan “usurped” the constitutional authority of state legislatures when they loosened voting restrictions because of the pandemic. The court rejected the underlying complaint — filed by the state of Texas — due to lack of standing, and dismissed all other related motions, including the amicus brief.
He voted against further Ukraine aid.
Johnson, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, was one of 57 lawmakers — all of them Republicans — who voted against a $39.8 billion aid package for Ukraine in May.
According to the Shreveport Times, Johnson explained his opposition to the bill by saying that the United States “should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.”
Johnson has also called for more oversight of the aid sent to Ukraine — totaling more than $60 billion to date. In February, following a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the topic, he tweeted that American taxpayers “deserve to know if the Ukrainian government is being entirely forthcoming and transparent about the use of this massive sum of taxpayer resources.” [….]
He is anti-abortion.
Johnson, a constitutional lawyer who identifies as a Christian, opposes abortion and has celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established constitutional protections for abortions nationwide.
“There is no right to abortion in the Constitution; there never was,” Johnson told Fox News on the day the decision was announced, calling it “a great, joyous occasion.”
The antiabortion nonprofit Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America gives Johnson an A+ ranking on this issue, stating that he “has voted consistently to defend the lives of the unborn and infants,” including by “stopping hard-earned tax dollars from paying for abortion, whether domestically or internationally.”
He is a close ally of Donald Trump
Johnson is a close ally of Trump, having served on the former president’s legal defense team during his two impeachment trials in the Senate.
He has called charges against Trump — which include a federal case relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election — “bogus,” and has said the legal and political systems have treated Trump unfairly.
He supports LGBTQ restrictions.
Johnson has positioned himself on the far right of the political spectrum on several social issues, even within the current conservative Republican conference. Notably, he introduced legislation last year — modeled after Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill — that would have prohibited discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as related subjects, at any institution that received federal funds. The Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBTQ civil rights organization, gave Johnson a score of 0 in its latest congressional scorecard.
Johnson also opposes gender-affirming care for minors and led a hearing on the subject in July. In a statement, he described gender-affirming care — meaning medical care that affirms or recognizes the gender identity of the person receiving the care, and which can include giving puberty or hormone blockers to minors under close monitoring from a doctor — as “adults inflicting harm on helpless children to affirm their world view.”
Well before he secured the GOP nomination for House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., played a key role in efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 election.
Johnson, who currently serves as the GOP caucus vice chair and is an ally of Trump, led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called on the Supreme Court to delay the electoral vote in the four states in order for investigations on voting issues to continue amid Trump’s refusal to concede his loss. It alleged that the four states changed voting rules without their legislatures’ express approval before the 2020 election.
“President Trump called me this morning to express his great appreciation for our effort to file an amicus brief in the Texas case on behalf of concerned Members of Congress,” Johnson wrote in the December 2020 email, which was obtained by NBC News….
The lawsuit swiftly drew backlash from battleground state attorneys general, who decried it as a “publicity stunt” full of “false and irresponsible” allegations. Legal experts also pointed to a series of hurdles the lawsuit had faced, saying that Texas lacked the authority to claim that officials in other states failed to follow the rules set by their legislatures….
Johnson’s role in pursuing efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has regained attention recently amid his speakership bid. On Tuesday, the political team of former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — who broke with Trump over his baseless claims of a stolen election — circulated a New York Times article that called him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” on Jan. 6, 2021, aimed at keeping then-President Trump in office even after he lost.
The Times reported last year that many Republicans who voted to discount pro-Biden electors cited an argument crafted by Johnson, which was to ignore the false claims about mass fraud in the election and instead hang the objection on the claim that certain states’ voting changes during the Covid-19 pandemic were unconstitutional.
This guy is MAGA all the way. As speaker, he would likely try to find a way for the House to decide the 2025 election. We’ll find out later today if House Republicans can get together enough votes to elect him.
That’s all I have for you today. No war news. I’m really burned out on that. Feel free to post on anything in the comment thread.
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It’s a weird news day today. The most laughable thing I’ve ever read is trending on the X Zone. I was hoping the hashtag on the #DaytheDelusionDied was about how Republicans have finally come to realize Trump sold the country to the highest bidder, even his lawyers are pleading guilty and selling him out, and this was the day that The New York Timeshad to apologize for printing Hamas propaganda. Instead, some Karen has written something weird about us waking up after the Hamas terrorist attack and becoming interested in owning guns, securing the border, and not voting for rational actors in elections. It was a good thing because the commenters are mostly a running list of who to block on the dead brain/open mouth site. Delusional people with binders full of conspiracy theories don’t get to redefine words in the dictionary.
So, yes, the New York Times apologized for getting the information on the Gaza Hospital attack wrong. I know I fell for it.
On Oct. 17, The New York Times published news of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza City, leading its coverage with claims by Hamas government officials that an Israeli airstrike was the cause and that hundreds of people were dead or injured. The report included a large headline at the top of The Times’s website.
Israel subsequently denied being at fault and blamed an errant rocket launch by the Palestinian faction group Islamic Jihad, which has in turn denied responsibility. American and other international officials have said their evidence indicates that the rocket came from Palestinian fighter positions.
The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.
Sultry Moon, Charles Burchfield
It’s part and parcel of their “both sides having the right information” policy. They also don’t get to scream how patriotic they are when their cult leader sells the country’s secrets to please a billionaire from Australia who buys big-ticket items at Mar a Lardo. The 60 Minutes Australia interview of Anthony Pratt should be a cautionary tale to letting this guy get near our democracy again. We’re not a wholesale outlet for Trump. This is from CNN. “Reports: Trump told Mar-a-Lago member about calls with foreign leaders.” The details about our Nuclear subs appear to be just the beginning.
Mar-a-Lago member and Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt said then-President Donald Trump told him about his private calls with the leaders of Ukraine and Iraq, according to reports published Sunday about private recordings of Pratt, a key prosecution witness in Trump’s classified documents case.
The reports from The New York Times and “60 Minutes Australia” revealed previously unknown recordings of Pratt candidly recalling his conversations with Trump – and build on existing allegations that Trump overshared sensitive government material.
In the tapes, Pratt says Trump shared insider details about his phone calls with world leaders during his presidency. Pratt also offers searing critiques of Trump’s personal ethics.
CNN previously reported that Pratt gave an interview to special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with mishandling national security materials by hoarding dozens of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. (Trump pleaded not guilty.) Pratt is also on Smith’s witness list for the trial, which is scheduled for May.
Concerns about Trump’s freewheeling approach to state secrets are at the center of that case. Past reports from ABC News said Trump discussed potentially sensitive information with Pratt about US nuclear submarines. The new reports Sunday expand what is known about Pratt’s recounting of their conversations to include foreign policy matters.
“It hadn’t even been on the news yet, and he said, ‘I just bombed Iraq today,’” Pratt said in one recording that was made public Sunday, recalling a conversation with Trump.
Pratt then recalled Trump’s description of his December 2019 call with Iraqi President Barham Salih. According to Pratt, Trump said, “The president of Iraq called me up and said, ‘You just leveled my city. … I said to him, ‘OK, what are you going to do about it?’”
The recordings also indicate that Trump spoke with Pratt about his now-infamous September 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressured Zelensky to help him win the 2020 election by publicly launching unfounded corruption probes into Joe Biden. That phone call formed the basis of Trump’s first impeachment.
“That was nothing compared to what I usually do,” Trump told Pratt about the Zelensky call, according to the tape. “That’s nothing compared to what we usually talk about.”
Storm at Sunset, 1959 Charles Burchfield
This is the fun part.
The new recordings also shed light on Pratt’s candid, private thoughts about Trump’s behavior. It’s unclear who Pratt was speaking to, but Pratt said in one tape that Trump “says outrageous things nonstop,” and compared his business practices to “the mafia.”
“He knows exactly what to say — and what not to say — so that he avoids jail. But gets so close to it that it looks to everyone like he’s breaking the law,” Pratt said in one tape.
We all knew that, but what will Jack Smith do with the information? Will Judge Loose Cannon ever let this trial go forward? So, one of the big questions was what Melania thought when Trump asked her to trot around in a bikini? This is from Newsweek. There are audio recordings btw.
According to the audio recordings, one of the conversations Pratt shared about the former president were details surrounding Trump and the former first lady.
In the recordings, Pratt shares that Trump asked Melania to parade around the pool at Mar-a-Lago in a bikini “so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing.”
In response, according to Pratt’s audio, “Then Melania said back to him, ‘I’ll do that when you walk around with me in your bikini.'”
Autumnal Fantasy, Charles Burchfield
Trump is denying everything, but you know, the recordings!!!
The objection, in court papers filed late Thursday, calls the subpoena from the New York attorney general’s office overly broad.
It also accuses the attorney general’s office of botching how it served Trump with her subpoena, alleging a technical foul her lawyer says should invalidate her obligation to testify.
The technical foul? Copies of the subpoena were sent to three of her corporate addresses but not to her personally, said the lawyer, Bennet J. Moskowitz.
“Each of these three subpoenas listed Ms. Trump’s name only in the ‘to’ line above the LLCs’ names and the names and addresses of their registered agents,” Moskowitz wrote.
“The body of the Subpoenas requested a ‘personal appearance’ ‘to give testimony’ at trial but did not identify any specific employee, officer, or director that the NYAG wanted to appear,” he wrote.
Former President Donald Trump’s elder daughter was originally named as a defendant in the lawsuit from New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, but her name was removed earlier this year.
The House GOP’s enormous speaker field is officially set, with nine Republicans seeking to somehow unify their splintered party after almost three weeks without a leader.
It’s the most crowded field since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fall 19 days ago. The latest round of candidates includes current GOP leaders — like Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.) — as well as more surprising rank and file members like Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.). Another last-minute addition, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who serves as GOP policy chair, raised eyebrows on Sunday.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who had been encouraged to run by fellow Texans, announced Sunday that he won’t. “I’m standing down for this round,” Arrington told POLITICO. “Hope we get there.”
The full GOP conference will hear from all nine members on Monday night for a candidate forum, followed by an internal vote Tuesday morning. And all will be under intense pressure to present a pitch that can bring together an exasperated House GOP that is rife with division.
“This is my tenth term in Congress. This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen,” House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told ABC News on Sunday. “We’re essentially shut down as a government.”
McCarthy, who was stripped of the gavel earlier this month after working with Democrats to avert a shutdown, also called the chaos “embarrassing” for the party and the country, stressing the need to elect Emmer — his No. 3 deputy — next week.
Emmer has thus far avoided getting the ultimate kiss of death — an endorsement from Elise Stefanik — but is still hard to see his candidacy going anywhere, and I have no idea who the runner-up would even be. The aristocrats!
Charles Burchfield : Ancient Maples in August, 1957
The ongoing GOP House speakership debacle has been a clownish, humiliating spectacle which has made basically every Republican involved look like a dunderhead unfit to look smug on Sean Hannity’s show, much less govern the country. So it’s all the more surprising that one legislator who has emerged as a figure of resolve is Colorado’s Ken Buck.
Buck has not, up to now, been a figure of integrity, to put it mildly. He’s a radical right Freedom Caucus member who was instrumental in defenestrating former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Buck was in fact one of the eight Republicans who voted with oleaginous self-promoter Matt Gaetz to end McCarthy’s speakership, plunging the caucus into chaos.
And yet, suddenly and unexpectedly, Buck has located a spine and used it to stand up to his colleagues. In the leadership forum following McCarthy’s ouster, Buck demanded that the two leading candidates, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, state clearly that Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, won the 2020 election. When neither would do so, Buck said he wouldn’t vote for either of them. You have to imagine Buck asking his question during the leadership forum and every single Republican in the room doing a spit take, wiping the coffee off their chins, and having flashbacks to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Buck’s newfound concern with election integrity doesn’t make him a good person. It does indicate, though, that the GOP House leadership crisis has, perhaps, opened up space for some bad actors to make better choices. And it’s also a reminder that, if the GOP is going to get to a better place, some pretty awful people will need to decide to be — tactically, perhaps temporarily — less awful.
It sounds like Noah Berlatsky has a future at the New York Times.
February Thaw, Charles Burchfield
And, in the Republican Presidential Primary, there’s a horse race at the bottom of the pack. This is from USA Today. “Exclusive poll: Nikki Haley surges, nearly ties Ron DeSantis as the alternative to Trump. Haley’s support has surged to 11% and DeSantis’ plunged to 12%, the USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll finds. But Trump still dominates.” Who amongst us has found a poll these days we don’t trust? One poll? Several polls? All polls? Uh, check out the MOE on this baby!
Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has surged nationally in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, challenging a faltering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the top alternative to Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.
Haley’s support has risen to 11% of registered voters who plan to vote in GOP primaries or caucuses, up from 4% in the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll taken in June and just one percentage point below DeSantis. His 12% standing was a steep fall from his 23% support four months ago.
Trump continues to dominate the field, backed by 58%, up 10 points.
The survey of 309 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, taken Tuesday through Friday by landline and cell phone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points.
This party deserves to go the way of the Whig Party. They can’t govern. They can’t get a platform together. They only care about air time on Fox, granting their donors their most fond wishes, destroying our democracy, and hurting women, immigrants, and people of color.
So, that’s enough weirdness for today. I’ve had enough weirdness since the weekend. The reason I’ve chosen the art of Charles E. Burfield is because of his weirdish take on landscape. We’ve got marsh fires down here that stink up the place and have brought us “Super Fog.” Yes, that’s the technical word for it. It’s been an eerie weekend of thick black fog and nasty smells. You may remember me writing this blog from a small university on the other side of the river for a few years. You may also remember me complaining about how extending daylight savings time made the morning commute seem like a midnight funeral. Well, the combination of no sunshine in the morning and Super Fog messed up that morning commute for many folks. Today, it cost some of them their lives.
We are seeing aftermath video of the fiery crash on I-55 between Ruddock and Manchac.
Horrible situation on I-55 with multiple vehicles on fire, at least one death and emergency responders on the scene. I-10 closed in both directions at the Bonne Carre Spillway to enable first responders to get to the scene. pic.twitter.com/buppTR292l
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I’d look for Putin to start making moves on Ukraine with this discussion coming out of the House. More research is revealing a lot about Johnson’s wife, too. Despite the rush to cleanse the internet of all references to their propensity to act like 
This sounds like some form of torture to me.
There’s a long list of his views and actions there if you can stand reading it. Here’s one Democratic Congresswoman’s take on her exchange with Ayatollah Mike on the Trump false election accusations. This is from HuffPo and reported by Josephine Harvey. 
This reporting is also from HuffPo. Ron Dicker has the lede. “
Well, I can tell you exactly why none of my family are Republican or Christian anymore. It has much to do with the demeanor of people like the Johnsons. Who would want to be like that? I remember when 8-year-old Dr. Daughter walked out of her last Sunday School session at our local Methodist Church. She asked if she really had to go back there. I asked why. She told me that her teachers had told her that her best friend–who was and still is Jewish–was going to hell. I said of course not. That’s the age kids really develop a sense of right and wrong. Shortly after that, I gave up on all that, too, and found some love, peace, and understanding in my current Buddhist practice, where telling people they’re on the wrong spiritual path is about the worst action you can take.
Israel doesn’t seem to be listening to President Biden anymore.
Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.
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