But perhaps the most destructive, least noticed part of the bill is a provision that would force virtually all federal regulatory machinery to grind to a halt.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: May 16, 2023 Filed under: Crime, Domestic terrorism, Economy, Global Financial Crisis | Tags: debt limit, GOP extortion, guns, mass shooting, mental illness, violence 12 Comments
HENRI MATISSE -Les Pensées de Pascal,1924
Good Morning!!
I’m still trying to recover from Dakinikat’s post yesterday. She seems convinced that the Supreme Court will agree with the 5th Circuit that the way the Consumer Finance Protection bureau is financed is unconstitutional and their decision will lead to the downfall of the Federal Reserve, Social Security, Medicare, and other off-the-books programs. I’m not convinced it will happen, but I’m still extremely depressed by Dakinikat’s arguments.
But for today, I’m trying to set all that aside and just worry about what’s happening (or not happening) with the debt ceiling. Here’s the latest on that emergency.
This is an opinion piece by The Washington Post’s Katherine Rampell, who is very knowledgeable about economic issues: After breaking itself, Congress tries to break the rest of government, too.
The GOP House’s debt-limit-and-spending-cuts bill does a lot of things to sabotage the basic functions of government. It decimates spending on safety-net programs. It creates more red tape to block Americans from accessing services they’re legally eligible for. And it makes it harder for government to fund itself in the first place.
Tucked into Republicans’ debt-limit-ransom bill is some legislative language that has been kicking around Capitol Hill for a while, known as the Reins Act. If enacted, the law would prevent “major” agency regulations — somewhere around 80 to 100 per year — from going into effect unless Congress first approves each and every one.
To be clear, under current law, Congress already has the ability to rescind regulations it dislikes. This new bill would essentially change the default, so that no major regulation could take effect before Congress gives its blessing.
This change might sound reasonable. After all, tons of American problems have been dumped at the feet of executive-branch agencies (guns, immigration, health costs, etc.). It would be great if federal lawmakers got more involved in trying to solve literally any of them.
But if you think about how Congress actually functions (or rather, doesn’t), you’ll realize this is not an earnest attempt to get lawmakers to roll up their sleeves and conquer the Big Issues. It’s about throwing sand in the gears of the executive branch, so that no one can solve any issue. Ever.
By Ernest Ange Duez
Rampell explains why the system is set up the way it is.
There are two main reasons Congress currently delegates certain regulatory issues to executive-branch agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
First, some policy questions aretechnically challenging. What amount of arsenic in the air is “safe”? What should bethe technical standards for mammography equipment? How should the Volcker Rule be implemented in practice? As talented and hard-working as congressional staff are, they might not have the time or expertise to make informed decisions about such minutiae. Agency scientists or other subject-matter experts are tapped to weigh evidence, solicit input from the public, hold hearings, etc., to execute the objectives Congress has enacted.
The second reason is political.
There are plenty of policy questions that Congress has technical capacity to resolve but might prefer not to. Maybe lawmakers can’t come to an agreement within their caucus. Maybe they know that whatever they choose to do will be unpopular.
So: They punt, and make it some other government functionary’s problem.
For example, Congress has been unable to pass significant immigration reform in more than three decades, leaving the executive branch to address migration-related problems in sometimes legally tenuous ways (see: the legal limbo ofso-called dreamers, or former president Donald Trump’s unfunded border wall). Congress has all but abdicated many of its basic responsibilities to other branches of government, such as passing a budget, setting tariffs or deciding on abortion rights.
Or, you know, making sure the federal government doesn’t default on its debt. Apparently even some Republicans are now rooting for President Biden to direct Treasury to mint a new $1 trillion platinum coin to pay off government expenses or adopt some other deus-ex-machination.
Read more at the WaPo.
Biden and McCarthy are meeting again today. From The New York Times: Biden and McCarthy Set for More Talks as Debt Limit Deadline Nears.
The 3 p.m. meeting comes a day after Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen reiterated that the United States could run out of money to pay its bills by June 1 if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit.
Jean Metzinger (French, 1883–1956), Tea Time, woman with a spoon
Republicans have said they want to slash federal spending before lifting the debt ceiling. The president has maintained that raising the limit is a responsibility of Congress and should be done without conditions to avoid an economic disaster, even as he has said he is open to separate negotiations over spending.
Over the weekend, the White House projected cautious optimism regarding a potential agreement, but on Monday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed doubts.
“I don’t think we’re in a good place,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I know we’re not.”
Some potential areas of compromise have emerged in recent days, however. Mr. McCarthy said on Monday that he wanted to negotiate some of the key provisions of the bill to raise the debt limit that House Republicans passed last month. Those include spending caps, permitting changes for domestic energy projects, work requirements for safety net programs like food stamps and clawing back unspent money allocated for pandemic relief programs. “All of that I felt would be very positive,” he said.
Most of the people on food stamps are children, so this would go along with the new Republican push to get rid of child labor laws.
In addition to Mr. McCarthy, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader; Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader; and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, will join Mr. Biden at the White House.
The government hit the $31.4 trillion debt limit on Jan. 19, and the Treasury Department has been using accounting maneuvers to keep paying its bills. Mr. Biden is also scheduled to leave for Japan on Wednesday to attend the Group of 7 meeting, heightening the sense of urgency to make progress on the debt limit….
“We welcome a bipartisan debate about our nation’s fiscal future,” Mr. Schumer said on Monday. “But we’ve made it plain to our Republican colleagues that default is not an option. Its consequences are too damaging, too severe. It must be taken off the table.”
Ms. Yellen will warn on Tuesday that the standoff over the debt limit is already having an impact on financial markets and is increasing the burden of debt on American taxpayers. Investors, she will note, have become wary of holding onto government debt that matures in early June — when the government could start running out of cash.
“We are already seeing the impacts of brinkmanship,” Ms. Yellen will say at the Independent Community Bankers of America summit, according to excerpts from her prepared remarks.
The Washington Post: Liberals grow fearful Biden may reward GOP for weaponizing debt ceiling.
The White House’s liberal allies are increasingly worried that negotiations with House Republicans over the budget risk rewarding the GOP for threatening the U.S. economy with default, even as Biden administration aides insist the talks have nothing to do with the looming debt ceiling deadline.
Tea Time, by Jacques Jourdan
Since last week, Biden aides have been in talks with staffers representing leaders in Congress about a deal to fund the federal government next year that would also raise the nation’s debt ceiling, which must be lifted by as soon as June 1 to avoid potential economic catastrophe. President Biden will host House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other top congressional leaders again on Tuesday for more discussions.
The fresh talks follow months in which Biden and his top aides insisted that the White House would not entertain making any trade-offs to raise the debt limit, saying that would set a dangerous precedent that encourages GOP brinkmanship. And yet, to some critics, the administration appears to be doing exactly that — following unrelenting pressure from the business community and even some moderate Democratic voices to enter bipartisan talks after the House passed a spending and debt limit bill last month.
Publicly, Biden administration officials are adamant that they are working with House Republicans on a deal to fund the federal government in the next fiscal year — not to raise the debt ceiling. Privately, however, even some Biden aides recognize that the negotiations appear to be in part about the debt limit. Behind the scenes, negotiators are clear that any deal on the budget must resolve the debt ceiling deadline, as well. Democratic negotiators also acknowledge that they will have to agree to more spending cuts if they want to secure a longer extension of the debt ceiling — an implicit recognition that lawmakers are bartering over the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, an approach Biden has repeatedly disavowed.
“The issue here is principle: If you accept the idea that you can, in essence, be held to blackmail with the debt ceiling, it will be done again and again. Not to be crass, but it’s essentially negotiating with terrorists who have taken hostages,” said Dean Baker, a liberal economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a left-leaning think tank. “More and more people in progressive circles are becoming concerned with it.”
Of course most of the mainstream media is reporting on all this as if it’s a typical negotiation over a political dispute, and failing to point out that Congressed raised the debt limit with no fuss when Trump was in the White House.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: The Media Is Normalizing Debt-Ceiling Extortion. No, this isn’t how Congress always does it. It’s different and dangerous.
Ten years ago, when Barack Obama faced down an attempt by House Republicans to extract concessions in return for lifting the debt ceiling, he explained that he saw this tactic as inimical to functioning self-government. “If we continue to set a precedent in which a president … is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to … pay the bills unless you give us … what we want,’ that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely,” he explained….
But as the new Republican-led House seeks to renew the effort to use the debt ceiling as a hostage, a revisionist interpretation has taken hold: This isn’t a new or dangerous tactic, it’s just how Congress operates.
At the Tea Table” (Konstantin Korovin, 1888)
“The House Republicans’ insistence on negotiations and compromise is not hostage taking. It is the ordinary stuff of politics,” claims law professor Michael McConnell. “A standalone clean debt ceiling is dead on arrival … In modern times, the debt ceiling is raised with negotiations,” asserts Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.
Read the rest at the NY Magazine link.
In other news, yesterday the Virginia office of Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly was attacked by a man armed with a baseball bat.
The New York Times: Staff Members Attacked With Bat at Congressman’s Virginia Office.
A man armed with a baseball bat and demanding to see Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, attacked and injured two staff aides in a rampage inside the congressman’s Fairfax, Va., office, the latest episode in a surge of political violence across the country.
Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, was facing charges for one count of felony aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding, according to the Fairfax City Police Department. He was being held without bond.
Police said they had not yet identified a motive, and Capitol Police said in a statement that the suspect was not known to them.
Sgt. Lisa Gardner, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax City Police, said at a news conference on Monday afternoon that the assailant walked into Mr. Connolly’s office after 10:30 a.m. with what appeared to be a metal baseball bat and struck two staff members in the upper body.
Both staff members were conscious when the police arrived about five minutes after a 911 call, she said. They were taken to and then released from the hospital, Mr. Connolly said.
“You could absolutely tell that the people inside were scared; they were hiding,” Sergeant Gardner said.
“It’s quite frankly scary that someone can walk up to an office with a baseball bat and just start swinging at innocent victims,” she added.
Tea in the Garden” (Ernest-Joseph Laurent, 1859-1929)
Here’s some information on Xuan Kha Tran Pham from the AP, via News10: Mentally ill man who attacked congressional staffers has violent history, police say.
A mentally ill man chased and threatened a woman with a metal baseball bat in a northern Virginia neighborhood before attacking U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly’s office, shattering windows and striking two women, including an intern on her first day on the job, authorities said.
Staffers then managed to shelter in an inner office until officers arrived, within five minutes. Connolly said they used a stun gun to subdue the man, identified as Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax. He was held without bond at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on charges of malicious wounding and aggravated malicious wounding. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney pending his first appearance Tuesday.
Pham, 49, has been violent before, attacking police officers last year. His father, Hy Pham, told The Washington Post his son is schizophrenic and had dealt with mental illness since his late teens. He said he had been trying, without success, to arrange mental health care for his son. The father could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press….
“At this time, it is not clear what the suspect’s motivation may have been,” Capitol Police said in a statement announcing a joint investigation with Fairfax City Police.
Police said the man is suspected in a separate attack a short time earlier Monday.
Fairfax County Police said a man later identified as Pham approached a woman parked in her car about five miles (eight kilometers) away from Connolly’s office at 10:37 a.m. The man asked the woman if she was white, then hit her windshield with a bat and ran away, according to police.
A video recorded on a neighbor’s home camera system at the same site shows a man with a bat chasing a woman who can be heard screaming. Dan Ashley, the homeowner, said it was “troubling to see this sort of thing happening in the neighborhood.”
The video is on Twitter if you want to watch it. Just search for Xuan-Kha Tran Pham.
There was gun violence yesterday too–what else is new?
The New York Times: 3 People Killed and 6 Injured in New Mexico Shooting.
An 18-year-old gunman fired indiscriminately while roaming a residential street in Farmington, N.M., on Monday morning, killing three people before the police arrived and killed the suspect, the authorities said. Six other people, including two officers, were injured.
The authorities received several reports of shots fired near Dustin Avenue and Ute Street just before 11 a.m., Chief Steve Hebbe of the Farmington Police Department said in a video statement released on Monday night, adding that the rampage appeared to be “purely random.”
“Old Woman Pouring Tea” (Unknown artist, 19th century)
Chief Hebbe said that the gunman, whom he did not name, had used at least three different weapons, including an “AR-style rifle,” a gun commonly used in mass shootings, as he roamed through the neighborhood, randomly firing “at whatever entered his head to shoot at” including at least six houses and three cars.
Officers located the shooter in the 700 block of North Dustin Avenue, Chief Hebbe said, where they shot and killed him.
The two injured police officers — one from the Farmington Police Department, and a state police officer — were treated at the San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, the authorities said. The state police officer had been released by Monday night and the other officer was “doing well,” according to Chief Hebbe….
The conditions of the others who were injured were not immediately known, and the authorities did not release the names of any victims or the suspect.
The motive for the shooting remained unclear. In an earlier news conference, Deputy Chief Baric Crum said it was not immediately known whether the suspect had any criminal history or why he was in the neighborhood.
I guess we’ll learn more today.
One more from 5NBC Dallas-Ft. Worth: 12-Year-Old Charged With Murder, Accused of Killing Sonic Employee.
A 12-year-old and a 20-year-old are both facing a murder charge after a restaurant employee was gunned down during an altercation with a customer Saturday night in Keene.
Flowers and a cross now stand outside the Sonic Drive-In on Old Betsy Road in Keene. It’s a growing memorial to Matthew Davis, a 32-year-old employee and father who was shot and killed while on the job Saturday night.
According to a statement from Keene Police, the shooting happened at about 9:40 p.m. Angel Gomez, 20, went to the Sonic with several passengers and was acting “disorderly” in the parking lot when Davis confronted him for urinating in the parking lot, Keene Police Chief James Kidd said.
The confrontation turned physical and a 12-year-old who was in Gomez’s car pulled out an assault rifle and fired six rounds at Davis, Kidd said.
Davis was struck multiple times and was taken by an air ambulance to a nearby hospital, but he did not survive.
Gomez and the 12-year-old fled the area, but Gomez eventually returned to the scene and was taken into custody. Police tracked the 12-year-old to Rio Vista where he was arrested.
Unbelievable.
I think that’s about enough bad news for today. I’m sorry to be the bearer of so much horror. Please take care of yourselves today and if you find any good news, I hope you post it in the comment thread.
Lazy Caturday Reads: A Mixed Bag of Stories
Posted: May 13, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, Donald Trump, Twitter | Tags: abortion in Texas, animal cruelty, Chris Licht, CNN, CNN Trump town hall, Diane Feinstein, Elon Musk, Linda Yaccarino, Racism, Tommy Tuberville, violence against women, white supremacistis 11 Comments
August Macke, Still Life with a Cat.
Happy Caturday!!
It has been another exhausting week, and I’m tired of dealing with Trump’s poisonous effect on our country. Unfortunately his evil influence is still affecting a large portion of the GOP electorate. If only he would just disappear. But that’s not going to happen. We are stuck with him for the time being, and we have to face that reality. So I’ll include a few Trump stories in a mixed bag of other topics.
I really hate to post this story, but I’m going to so you know to watch out for this. I just discovered that Elon Musk has enabled animal cruelty tweets and videos on Twitter.
This is from Ben Collins, the disinformation and extremism reporter at NBC News: Cat and dog torture videos litter Twitter, adding to concerns about moderation.
Graphic videos of animal abuse have circulated widely on Twitter in recent weeks, generating outrage and renewed concern over the platform’s moderation practices.
One such video, in which a kitten appears to be placed inside a blender and then killed, has become so notorious that reactions to it have become their own genre of internet content.
Laura Clemens, 46, said her 11-year-old son came home from his school in London two weeks ago and asked if she had seen the video.
“There’s something about a cat in a blender,” Clemens remembered her son saying.
Clemens said she went on Twitter and searched for “cat,” and the search box suggested searching for “cat in a blender.”
Clemens said that she clicked on the suggested search term and a gruesome video of what appeared to be a kitten being killed inside of a blender appeared instantly. For users who have not manually turned off autoplay, the video will begin rolling instantly. NBC News was able to replicate the same process to surface the video on Wednesday.
Clemens said she is grateful her child asked her about the video instead of simply going on Twitter and typing in the word “cat” by himself.
Cats, by Franz Marc
So the autofill function on Twitter was guiding people to these horrific tweets.
The spread of the video as well as its presence in Twitter’s suggested searches is part of a worrying trend of animal cruelty videos that have littered the social media platform following Elon Musk’s takeover, which included mass layoffs and deep cuts to the company’s content moderation and safety teams.
Last weekend, gory videos from two violent events in Texas spread on Twitter, with some users saying that the images had been pushed into the platform’s algorithmic “For You” feed.
The animal abuse videos appear to predate those videos. Various users have tweeted that they have seen the cat video, with some trying to get Musk’s attention on the issue — some dating back to early May. Clemens said she flagged the video on May 3 to Twitter’s support account and Ella Irwin, the vice president of trust and safety at Twitter and one of Musk’s closest advisers….
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, told NBC News that he believes the company likely dismantled a series of safeguards meant to stop these kinds of autocomplete problems.
Of course Musk has fired all the people who used deal with issues like this. NBC reached out to Twitter about this problem and received no response, but apparently by Friday Twitter had completely turned off all search bar autofill suggestions.
Now a little comic relief. Here’s a suggestion for Dakinikat in her ongoing struggle to get her cat Keely to swallow her meds.
Dave Paresh at Wired has a story about Twitter’s incoming CEO: Twitter’s New CEO, Linda Yaccarino, Has a Fearsome To-Do List.
LINDA YACCARINO IS going to have to change her tune. As a long-time executive overseeing ad sales at global television giant NBCUniversal, she spent years fighting social media companies for the billions of dollars that advertisers divide up every year between old and new media….
At Twitter, Yaccarino will have to spin her knowledge of social media’s weaknesses into an asset and start competing with the traditional media industry that she has championed since long before online social networks were even a thing. Elon Musk announced on Friday that Yaccarino will oversee business operations while he focuses on Twitter’s technology and design as executive chair and CTO.
Together, Yaccarino and Musk will try to stop the drain of users and advertisers of the past several months and start to formulate his vision of turning Twitter into an “everything app,” with digital payments tools and other features Musk has yet to clearly articulate. All that will make Yaccarino’s to-do list more wide-ranging than she ever had in TV, and she must do it at a company still reeling from Musk’s sometimes chaotic revamp and his laying off of most of its employees. Here are five tasks awaiting her….
Yaccarino’s deftness at getting advertisers to open up their checkbooks earned her a huge role at NBC. She persuaded them to keep spending on TV spots even as consumers devoted more time to online services, and to try out new streaming options, such as NBC’s Peacock.
The challenge at Twitter is different. Most advertisers want to avoid association with questionable content, but Musk has embraced controversy, chopping down teams that moderate content and monitore potential racial and political bias in Twitter’s recommendation systems. He also relaxed rules for combating hate speech against transgender users, censored journalists and critics, and welcomed back users his predecessors had banned for breaking Twitter’s content rules, including former US president Donald Trump.
Good luck to Yaccarino. That sounds like the hopeful descriptions of Trump staffers who try to control him or at least minimize the damage he causes. Musk is just as much of a narcissistic psychopath as Trump, if not worse. Read more at Wired if you’re interested.
Breakfast with the cat, Rutholph Epp, German
People are still talking about Trump’s disastrous “town hall” on CNN.
Charlie Nash at Mediaite: Republican at Trump Town Hall Says Many in Audience Were ‘Disgusted’ or ‘Bewildered’ By Ex-President.
Many audience members at CNN’s town hall with former President Donald Trump on Wednesday were “disgusted” and “bewildered” by the spectacle, but were told to be respectful and not to boo, according to a report.
“The floor manager came out ahead of time and said, Please do not boo, please be respectful. You were allowed to applaud,” claimed Republican political consultant Matthew Bartlett in an interview with Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri on Thursday.
“And I think that set the tone where people were going to try their best to keep this between the navigational beacons, and that if they felt compelled to applaud, they would, but they weren’t going to have an outburst or they weren’t going to boo an answer,” he said.
Bartlett claimed that, while many in the audience applauded and cheered the former president, “there were also people that sat there quietly disgusted or bewildered.” He estimated that while around half of the audience expressed vocal support for Trump, the other half sat in silence. Bartlett also alleged that Trump repeatedly “lost the audience” when he spoke about topics like January 6 or the results of the 2020 election, despite the appearance on CNN that the audience was consistently on his side.
“In a TV setting, you hear the applause, but you don’t see the disgust,” Bartlett told Palmeri. “So Trump did not have the entire room on his side, make no mistake, even if it certainly came across that way on TV.”
Well, isn’t that special? CNN’s Christ Licht has a lot of answer for. But he still thinks the “town hall” was a success. He didn’t take it well when staffers criticized his decision to hold what amounted to a Trump rally on in prime time.
Alex Griffing at Mediaite: CNN’s Oliver Darcy Reportedly Scolded By Boss Chris Licht Over ‘Emotional’ Trump Town Hall Coverage: ‘They Put the Fear of God Into Him.’
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy was reportedly scolded by his boss Chris Licht, the chairman and CEO of the network, over his critical coverage of the network’s Trump town hall on Wednesday night.
Puck’s Dylan Byers reported Friday that Licht “summoned” Darcy “and his editor to a meeting with himself and top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate.”
Darcy reported on the town hall after the event, writing, “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.”
Jonelle Summerfield. Afternoon Tea for One
He offered some kind words for Kaitlan Collins, who moderated the event, calling her “as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come.” He noted that “she fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall.” On the whole, his analysis was critical of the network.
Byers, a veteran media reporter who has worked everywhere from NBC to Politico to CNN, added further detail:
“summoned Darcy and his editor Jon Passantino to a meeting with himself, CNN comms chief Kris Coratti, editorial executive vice president Virginia Moseley and senior vice president of global news Rachel Smolkin, in which they told him that his coverage had been too emotional and repeatedly stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate when covering the news, be it CNN or any other media organization.”
“Darcy stood by his work and pushed back on the ‘emotional’ characterization, one source with knowledge of the meeting said. But afterward two sources who heard about the meeting described him as visibly shaken,” Byers reported.
“They put the fear of God into him,” Byers reported another source saying. Darcy took over Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter after Licht ousted Stelter at the network.
For Pete’s sake, Darcy is a media critic. He’s supposed to express his opinions. Chris Licht doesn’t seem to know much about journalism.
Diane Feinstein has finally returned to Washington and will again fill her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Perhaps now Biden’s judicial appointments will resume getting approval. But there are concerns about Feinstein’s health.
From Paul McCloud at Rolling Stone: Feinstein’s Health Crisis Goes Back Farther than We Knew.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, 89, returned to Congress this week, ending an almost three-month medical absence that highlighted her advanced age and deteriorating health. But her decline, and the problems it entails for American democracy, date back farther and go deeper than has been publicly known.
Multiple sources tell Rolling Stone that in recent years Feinstein’s office had an on-call system — unbeknownst to Feinstein herself — to prevent the senator from ever walking around the Capitol on her own. At any given moment there was a staff member ready to jump up and stroll alongside the senator if she left her office, worried about what she’d say to reporters if left unsupervised. The system has been in place for years.
“They will not let her leave by herself, but she doesn’t even know it,” says Jamarcus Purley, a former staffer.
Senators juggle a heavy schedule of votes, hearings and meetings on a wide range of subjects. Momentary lapses and mixups about a topic are far from unheard of. But over the last several years, interviews with Feinstein devolved into confusion on a near-daily basis. A familiar pattern would emerge: Feinstein would make an unexpected stance on a bill or policy position, only for her staff to quickly follow up by email to correct the record. It got to the point where reporters would pause before rushing to publish an otherwise-newsworthy declaration because of the inevitability of staff reversing her statement.
By Lotte Laserstein
Feinstein once notably seemed to forget she had relinquished her role as third in line to the presidency. As the longest-serving member of the Senate majority, she would traditionally serve as president pro tempore, behind only the vice president and speaker of the House in the line of succession. Feinstein announced last October via a written statement she would voluntarily give up the title. But when asked about it three weeks latershe told a reporter she was still considering what to do. The staffer quickly corrected the Senator.
It’s a sad career coda for a groundbreaking lawmaker, who has said she will retire when her term expires at the end of next year. Feinstein joined the Senate in 1992 as the first female senator from California, accomplishing a series of firsts as she rose through the chamber’s ranks. As well as advancing landmark gun control and marriage equality laws, she became the first woman to lead the Senate’s intelligence panel in 2009. In 2017, became the first woman to chair the Judiciary Committee.
There’s much more at the link.
Another Senator who should definitely retire is Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who wants to control the Defense Department’s abortion policies and thinks that white supremacists should be welcomed in the U.S. military.
Megan Leibowitz at NBC News: Military promotions impasse drags on as Sen. Tuberville defends blockade.
Dozens of military promotions continue to languish in the Senate as GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville digs in on blocking typically routine approvals over his opposition to the Pentagon’s abortion policy.
About 200 defense-related promotions are awaiting Senate action, but Tuberville has indicated he has no plans to ease up on his blockade unless the Defense Department reverses course on an abortion policy for service members and their dependents that was announced in October.
Since March, Tuberville has been using a procedural tactic to slow promotions that are often quickly approved in the Senate by unanimous consent. One senator’s objection, however, can stall the approval process.
The Alabama senator’s moves have provoked bipartisan backlash, including from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Asked in a press conference Wednesday about Tuberville’s holds, McConnell replied, “No, I don’t support putting a hold on military nominations. I don’t support that.”
Tuberville responded to McConnell’s remarks on Thursday saying the Pentagon has not been responsive.
“I’m not talking to anybody — crickets from anybody in the military, you know, to work this out,” Tuberville told reporters.
When reached for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson said in a statement that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “and the Department continue to engage Senator Tuberville and his office in good faith and have directly relayed how his hold on our general and flag officers have risks to our military readiness and severely limit the Department’s ability to ensure strategic and operational success.”
Still life with cat, Thomas Hart Benton
Philip Bump wrote about Tuberville’s remarks about white supremacists at The Washington Post: Sen. Tuberville rises to the defense of racists in the armed forces.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) offered an unusual criticism of the Biden administration in a radio interview this week.
“We, our military and [Defense Secretary Lloyd] Austin put out an order to stand down and all military across the country, saying we’re going to run out the White nationalists, people that don’t believe how we believe,” he told NPR affiliate WBHM. “And that’s not how we do it in this country.”
He was asked if White nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military.
“They call them that,” he replied. “I call them Americans.”
Tuberville was elected to the Senate with President Donald Trump’s support in the 2020 election that Trump lost. Even before taking office, Tuberville pledged to oppose the electors cast by states Trump lost in an effort to slow or block Joe Biden’s ascension to the presidency.
Trump-adjacent rhetoric: that Biden and his administration are trying to villainize the right as being riddled with racists and domestic terrorists. It’s just that he got it backward. Instead of suggesting that decent, hard-working Americans were being cast as racists, he’s suggesting that racists are simply decent, hard-working Americans.
The idea that Biden (and Austin by extension) are using accusations of White nationalism as a cudgel was a central part of Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric back in his Fox News days. Immediately after Biden’s inauguration, Carlson highlighted a portion of the new president’s speech in which he — obviously alluding to the riot at the Capitol two weeks before — swore to uproot extremism.
Biden promised to “confront and … defeat” the “rise of political extremism, white supremacy, [and] domestic terrorism” that the country was seeing.
“The question is,” Carlson said in response, “what does it mean to wage war on white supremacists? Can somebody tell us in very clear language what a white supremacist is?”
Tuberville is a real looney-tune, and I’m much more worried about what he will do next than I am about Diane Feinstein’s cognitive decline.
I’m going to end with another horror story–this time about abortion rights.
From the AP, via The Washington Post: A Texas woman was fatally shot by her boyfriend after she got an abortion, police say.
A man who didn’t want his girlfriend to get an abortion fatally shot her during a confrontation in a Dallas parking lot, police said.
Thursday Reads: CNN’s “Town Hall” Train Wreck
Posted: May 11, 2023 Filed under: Donald Trump, just because | Tags: CNN Trump town hall, E. Jean Carroll, Kaitlan Collins 15 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!!
CNN’s “town hall” with Donald Trump and a handpicked audience of his fans was–as everyone but CNN boss Chris Licht predicted–a complete disaster. No one at CNN was happy (except Chris Licht), and the rest of the media world is stunned and horrified. I actually turned the program on for a few seconds, but I just couldn’t stomach watching Trump. Anyway, the reviews are in.
For a good summary of the reactions, you can read this Morning Shots post by Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark: The Moment That You Knew. What CNN’s disastrous town hall showed us.
Critics had worried that giving the indicted, twice-impeached, coup-plotting, chronically lying sexual predator an unedited, live television forum might turn out badly.
The reality, however, was far ghastlier: a sh*tshow for the ages, and a moment that captured the thorough degradation of both our politics and the media. “It was a f**king nightmare,” remarked one savvy observer, “and it was programmed to BE a f**king nightmare.”
Trump was, of course, thrilled.
For her part, Kaitlan Collins was poised, prepared, and determined, but she never stood a chance. She raised all of the key questions and tried (not always successfully) to ask followups.
But Trump just rolled over her with a torrent of invective, jibes, and bullsh*t. The fact-checkers were reduced to asterisks. “He declared war on the truth,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said afterward. “And I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”
Where to start?
- Trump called a black law enforcement officer a “thug.”
- He repeated baseless conspiracy theories about 2020.
- He lied about losing the 2020 election. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I’ve lost count of how many times Trump has lied about the election. Collins keeps fact-checking him, but he keeps lying.”)
- He lied about calling for “terminating” the Constitution so he could be returned to power.
- He lied about his role on January 6th.
- He suggested that he would pardon many of the January 6th insurrectionists.
- He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election.
- He endorsed letting the country default on its debt, even if it would bring on an economic cataclysm.
- He claimed that residents of the Chinatown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., “did not speak English as part of an allegation that Biden stored boxes there after his vice presidency because he had nefarious ties to Beijing.”
- He refused to back Ukraine against Russia.
- He lashed out at Collins as “nasty woman” — and the audience CHEERED.
But this was hardly the worst of it. Actually, not even close.
The day after a federal jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Trump turned the episode into a joke, mocking and insulting his victim.
Sykes then offers excerpts of some of the media reactions.
More reactions:
Rex Huppke at USA Today: CNN town hall audience laughs at sexual assault as Trump reminds us how awful he is.
Donald Trump took full advantage of CNN’s willingness to give him a platform Wednesday night, spouting lies faster than a sprinkler on a cocaine bender and giving Americans a reminder — as if they needed one — of how deplorable he and his supporters can be.
Sexual abuse, like the kind a jury just found Trump liable of? That’s a laugh line for these folks. Literally. They laughed during CNN’s town hall as Trump continued to likely defame E. Jean Carroll, the woman he was just found liable of defaming.
The Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump said he’ll swiftly pardon most of the now-imprisoned attackers, possibly even some of the Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, because they’re “great people.” And that brought applause from the crowd.
A rat-a-tat-tat string of lies about the “rigged election”? The crowd chuckled.
A lie about “finishing” the border wall he barely started? You know, the one Mexico didn’t pay for. The crowd applauded.
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Laugh, applaud, chuckle, clap, cheer.
CNN effectively gave America a primetime Trump rally with fewer people selling offensive T-shirts outside. And for anyone who grew weary of Trump’s reflexive dishonesty and bullheaded cruelty while he was president, Wednesday night brought back nauseating memories, as well as a preview of how little has changed.
Legal experts believe that former President Donald Trump’s CNN town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire gave fresh evidence to every one of the three ongoing criminal cases against him, reported Salon on Thursday.
The ongoing criminal cases against Trump — not including the bookkeeping fraud case over the Stormy Daniels hush payment, which has already been charged by Manhattan prosecutors — are the election interference probe in Georgia, the federal January 6 investigation, and the federal investigation of classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago — all of which came up during the town hall under the questioning of moderator and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.
“Trump repeatedly lied during the town hall that the election was ‘rigged,’ that Georgia ‘owed’ him votes, that he had the right to take classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and that he does not know E. Jean Carroll — the writer who was awarded $5 million a day earlier after it found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation,” reported Igor Derysh. “‘All three ongoing criminal cases got new evidence tonight against Trump,’ tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss. ‘He is confessing on live television.'”
“Former FBI agent Pete Strzok called the comment [that he didn’t “really” share the classified documents with anyone] a ‘tacit admission of unauthorized disclosure of classified information,'” said the report. “During another exchange, Collins asked Trump about his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he ‘find’ enough votes to swing the state’s election. Trump said he believed it was a ‘rigged election’ and said he told Raffensperger ‘you owe me votes because the election was rigged.’ ‘File this clip under new evidence for Fani Willis,’ tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor. ‘This sure sounds like an admission of corrupt intent to me.'”
As for the January 6 probe, Trump agreed with Collins that the people who stormed the Capitol “listen to [him] like no one else” — which former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told Mediaite it was “the most important clip of the night” because the essential element of proving the crime is that Trump knew he had an influence on the rioters and “I’ve never heard him so clearly admit that. Everything Donald Trump says is out there. It’s fair game. It can be used.”
Not to mention that E. Jean Carroll could sue him again for defamation.
Abigail Weinberg at Mother Jones: Trump Mocked E. Jean Carroll Live on CNN. The Audience Laughed.
Yesterday, a federal jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. As soon as journalist Kaitlan Collins mentioned the verdict during this evening’s CNN town hall with the former president, the audience of Republican-leaning New Hampshire voters started to laugh.
“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump said, before launching into a mocking retelling of Carroll’s allegations about what Trump did to her in a New York department store. “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?”
Trump swore “on my children” that the alleged attack never happened, despite a jury of nine people unanimously finding otherwise. He also repeated an insult he has frequently lobbed at Carroll, calling her a “wack-job,” to rapturous laughter from the audience.
Ryan Bort, Diana Falzone, and Aswin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone: ‘F–king Disgrace’: CNN Gifts Trump Primetime Campaign Rally.
CNN INVITED DONALD Trump to lie on its airwaves for over an hour on Wednesday night. The evening was billed as a town hall, but played more like a campaign rally for the former president, who steamrolled and repeatedly mocked moderator Kaitlan Collins, pushing a torrent of misinformation about the 2020 election, the multiple investigations into his conduct, and pretty much everything else he commented on.
One CNN insider who spoke to Rolling Stone called the evening “appalling,” lamenting that the network gave Trump “a huge platform to spew his lies.”
Collins tried her best to correct Trump as he spoke. And immediately after Trump went off-air, CNN anchor Jake Tapper led a parade of pundits and fact-checkers to counter his dissembling and pan his performance….
Nevertheless, the town hall was “a fucking disgrace,” in the words of another network insider. “1000 percent a mistake [to host Trump]. No one [at CNN] is happy.”
“Just brutal,” added one of the network’s primetime producers.
Chris Licht was okay with what happened though.
Chris Licht
CEO Chris Licht acknowledged “that there has been people with opinions and backlash” during an editorial call Thursday morning — but he stood by the decision. “I absolutely unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night,” he said. CNN’s own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, didn’t seem to agree. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he wrote in his newsletter the previous night.
CNN is finished if this moron stays in charge.
Wajat Ali at The Daily Beast: CNN Failed America With Its Train Wreck of a Trump Town Hall.
With its Republican presidential town hall on Wednesday, CNN failed journalism, the American public, and its own employees by deciding to invite an arsonist who has spent the past seven years trying to burn down their house.
We should remember that Trump regularly refers to CNN as “fake news,” and has trained his cult to see all media that is critical of him as the “enemy of the people.” As a result, CNN had to evacuate its NYC headquarters in 2018 due to a bomb threat. The next year, Cesar Sayoc, who sent functional pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, including CNN, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In turn, CNN decided to reward Trump for his reckless and dangerous behavior by giving him a 70-minute Festivus to air his grievances and lies in front of a fawning cult of 400 sycophants in New Hampshire, which reflected the full spectrum of whiteness and cruelty.
According to NPR, CNN’s current CEO Chris Licht “told his staff they are re-establishing the channel’s original identity.” After witnessing this embarrassing town hall, one could not be faulted for assuming Licht believes that identity is one of masochism and self-immolation. These are apparently the character traits that are needed to gain ratings, money, and access to GOP power. When CNN anchor and moderator Kaitlin Collins attempted to interject with actual facts, Trump simply doubled down on his bullshit and gave red meat in the form of rage, lies, and conspiracies, which the audience and his MAGA base heartily ate up. An hour into the circus, Trump called Collins a “nasty person”—simply because she stood her ground and asked follow-up questions.
The MAGA audience loved it.
David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, defended the town hall on CNBC last week and said that “all voices should be heard on CNN.” This apparently includes the voices of white nationalists, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, and misogynists. He added, “This is a new CNN.”
There’s more at the link.
I can’t believe I thought we would be rid of Trump after he lost the 2020 election and then led a failed coup against the U.S. government. Boy was I ever wrong! This monster is going to be with us a long as he’s still breathing, and the media is going to help him.
That’s it for me today; I’m already exhausted. Please feel free to discuss this or any other topics in the comment thread.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: May 9, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Allen, AR-15, Barack Obama, E. Jean Carroll, gun violence, guns, mass shootings, NRA, Trump rape trial 18 CommentsGood Morning!!
What is happening to our country? Right now, we are headed in a very wrong direction. As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, we are seeing mass shootings at a rate that is hard to believe. But it’s true. We’ve become a country dominated by guns. Republicans have developed a sickness that can’t be explained just by the NRA and its donations to politicians. Awhile back, I read this piece by Noah Berlatsky and Aaron Rupar at Public Notice, and I hope you’ll check it out. Berlatsky argues that Republicans have development an obsession with guns and violence that goes far beyond a money motive.
The GOP has not been corrupted by capitalism. It would be more accurate to say it’s been corrupted by fascism. Guns are part of white Christofascist identity politics. The GOP supports guns as part of a principled commitment to a death cult, not because they need NRA money to win elections.
Focusing on NRA money obscures the real danger from the GOP. It also can lead gun control proponents to pursue confused and ineffective tactics. We need to understand why the GOP embraces guns if we’re ever going to have a hope of opposing them.
Rep. Thomas Massie and his family at Christmas
The first sign that the NRA is not driving gun policy with its political contributions is the fact that it simply doesn’t spend that much money in political races. That $1.3 million Blackburn received is, again, money taken in over the course of her entire political career, which stretches back to her first election as a Tennessee state senator in 1999, almost 25 years ago. In comparison, in the 2018 campaign in which Blackburn first won her Senate seat, her campaign and outside groups spent $30 million. Even if the NRA had donated that $1.3 million all at once, Blackburn would barely have noticed it in the blizzard of cash.
Blackburn isn’t unusual; NRA contributions are typically a tiny fraction of candidate contributions, as Philip Bump at the Washington Post explained back in 2016. He found that for most candidates, NRA donations were less than .5 percent of direct donations to campaigns. Even if you look at the category of independent outside expenditures, which cannot be coordinated with the campaign, the NRA gives only about 15 percent of donations, coming behind organizations like the Republican senatorial committee and the Chamber of Commerce….
The small size of the NRA’s donations makes it unlikely they’re meaningfully bribing politicians. Nor do GOP politicians behave as if they’ve been bribed. When politicians vote their donors over their constituents, they don’t tend to boast about it.
GOP politicians don’t treat guns like dirty stock trades, and don’t try to hide from constituents after gun votes. On the contrary, they tout their pro-gun credentials every chance they get. Rep. Andy Ogles, who represents the district where the Nashville shooting took place, sent out a Christmas card showing himself with his wife and children standing in front of a tree. They’re all grinning and holding assault weapons.
As communications professor Ryan Neville-Shepard explains at the Milwaukee Independent, guns on the right have increasingly become a symbol of white masculinity — and I’d argue of white Christian masculinity. Guns stand for defending home and family against “criminals” — a term which, in the dogwhistle rich environment of the right, means “non-white people.” In addition, Neville-Shepard notes, guns in right-wing political ads during the Obama administration became a symbol of (violent) opposition to Democratic government. Marjorie Taylor Greene ran an ad touting a gun giveaway in 2021 in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
I found Berlatsky’s argument convincing. It really seems to me at this point that Republicans simply see guns–and specifically assault rifles–as part of their identities. I think the gun obsession began after Obama was elected. The notion of a Black president was just too much for these people. Then came Trump, who gave them permission to be overtly act out the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and misogynistic feelings they previously felt the need to hide in public. I’d be interested to know what you guys thing about this argument.
There have been more mass shootings since this article was written–after the Nashville school shooting, which happened in late March.
There is quite a bit of information available about the latest mass shooter, who mowed down people at an Allen, Texas outlet mall. There’s no doubt at this point that he was a white supremacist, despite being Hispanic, and a Nazi. He had large Nazi symbols tattooed on his body.
This article is by , , and
A social media page appearing to belong to a gunman who killed eight people at a Dallas-area outlet mall had shared extremist beliefs with rants against Jews, women and racial minorities posted since September, as well as posts about struggling with mental health.
Mauricio Garcia, 33, maintained a profile on the Russian social networking platform OK.ru, including posts referring to extremist online forums, such as 4chan, and content from white nationalists, including Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white nationalist provocateur.
In the weeks before the attack, Garcia posted more than two dozen photos of Allen Premium Outlets, where an officer killed him after the shooting Saturday, and surrounding areas, including several screenshots of Google location information, seemingly monitoring the mall at its busiest times.
Many of his posts referred to his mental health. In his final post, he lamented what his family might say and wrote that no psychologist would have been able to fix him.
In another post, he made disturbing comments about what makes a mass shooting “important” and praised a person who opened fire at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, this year, killing six people, including three children.
The shooter also posted a series of links to other sites, including a YouTube account that featured a video published the day of the shooting. In it he removed a “Scream” mask and said, “Not quite what you were expecting, huh?”
He also posted photos of a flak vest emblazoned with patches, one of them with the initialism for “Right Wing Death Squad,” a popular meme among far-right extremist groups. Another post included a series of shirtless pictures with visible white power tattoos, including SS lightning bolts and a swastika.
I don’t want to spend too much time on Garcia; but if you’re interested, you might want to read this Twitter thread by Aric Toler:
Garcia used a Hitler emoji
A few more interesting articles:
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times: Timothy McVeigh’s Dreams Are Coming True.
Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Incel nation.
The Washington Post: Texas gunman fantasized over race wars on social media before mass killing.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: Why non-White people might advocate white supremacy.
Men like Garcia are frightening, but now–thanks to Trump–their horrifying ideologies have infiltrated Republican political culture.
From Media Matters: Hitler-promoting antisemites will speak at Trump’s Miami hotel alongside Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and other Trump personalities.
The Trump National Doral resort will host two antisemites who have promoted pro-Adolf Hitler propaganda and spread virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories. They will be speaking at an event in Miami alongside numerous Team Trump personalities, including Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Devin Nunes.
Trump Doral speaker Scott McKay, who has a streaming show on Rumble, has claimed that Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and were responsible for the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley. He has also said that Jewish people routinely torture children and eat their hearts.
He has praised Hitler for supposedly trying to take down a Jewish banking system and said, “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we’re trying to take down today.”
Trump Doral speaker Charlie Ward, who also streams a show on Rumble, has shared posts praising Hitler for supposedly “warning us” about Judaism; claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”; and attacking the alleged Jewish media for supposedly lying about the Holocaust.
The two are featured speakers in the “ReAwaken America” tour, which is set to stop at Trump’s Miami hotel on May 12 and 13. Scheduled to speak alongside McKay and Ward are numerous members of Trump’s orbit, including: Eric Trump, Lara Trump, former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former senior Department of Defense official Kash Patel, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes, and Trump ally Roger Stone.
Numerous other far-right conspiracy theorists will be speaking, including Stella Immanuel, Mel K, Liz Crokin, Ann Vandersteel, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.
Media outlets have previously noted that the tour, which has been holding events across the country, has also featured QAnon supporters, conspiracy theories, and Christian nationalist rhetoric.
The tour was initiated by Michael Flynn.
Rachel Maddow talked about this on her MSNBC show last night. Watch the segment at Yahoo News: Rachel Maddow Names Pro-Hitler Speakers Appearing At Same Event As Eric Trump.
The E. Jean Carroll vs. Donald Trump rape trial will go to the jury today. A few stories on that:
Erica Orden at Politico: The Trump rape trial is headed to the jury. Here are the questions jurors will weigh.
In more than four hours of closing arguments, lawyers for both sides offered a series of questions for the jury to consider. Here are some of the most critical. [NOTE: I’ll provide a couple of paragraphs from each question. Read the rest at the link.
Is Carroll credible?
Carroll’s attorneys made their client’s three–day appearance on the witness stand the centerpiece of their case, and during closing arguments her lawyer Roberta Kaplan said her client’s testimony was “credible, it was consistent and it was powerful.” Kaplan told the jury that “every single aspect of what she said is backed up or corroborated by other evidence,” including not just the alleged incident at Bergdorf Goodman, but also Carroll’s account that she told two friends about it contemporaneously.
Kaplan pointed to the testimony of those two friends, saying details from their testimony rang true. One of the friends, Lisa Birnbach, testified that when Carroll called her and told her of the attack, Birnbach was busy feeding dinner to her two young children and went into another room to avoid uttering “rape” in front of them. “The fact that she left the kitchen, by the way, is a very telling detail,” Kaplan said. “It’s the kind of detail you don’t make up.” [….]
Is the “Access Hollywood” tape a confession of sexual assault or “locker room talk”?
Carroll’s attorneys showed, referenced or described parts of this tape at least five separate times during their closing arguments. Kaplan argued that Trump’s infamous commentary captured on a hot mic constitutes a roadmap he has used to repeatedly commit sexual assault. The tape is from 2005 and resurfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign….
“What is Donald Trump doing here? Telling you in his very own words how he treats women,” Kaplan said to the jury. “It’s his modus operandi, M.O.” Or as Ferrara put it: “It was a confession.” [….]
Do other Trump accusers prove a pattern, or are they unrelated?
Kaplan told the jury that the accounts of two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who testified that Trump sexually assaulted them, demonstrate that Trump’s actions are part of a pattern of sexual assault.
“Three different women, decades apart, but one single pattern of behavior,” Kaplan said. She displayed a chart with photographs of Leeds, Stoynoff and Carroll accompanied by columns titled “semi-public place,” “grab suddenly” and “‘not my type,’” along with checkmarks. Trump has suggested all three women are not the sort to which he would typically be attracted….
How should Trump’s decision not to attend the trial reflect on him?
Carroll’s lawyers seized on Trump’s decision not to attend the trial, testify or put on a defense case.
Trump, Kaplan said, offered “no one to back up a single thing he said.”
“You only saw him on video,” she added. “He didn’t even bother to show up here in person.” [….]
Tacopina used what he described as Carroll’s vagaries about the date of the alleged incident to help explain why Trump didn’t offer any witnesses. “Who are we going to call, someone who wasn’t in Bergdorf Goodman at some unknown date?” Tacopina asked….
Tacopina also told the jury that Carroll could have called his client as a witness, but chose not to. “Instead, what they want is for you to hate him enough to ignore the facts,” he said.
Two more stories on the rape trial:
CNN: What E. Jean Carroll has to prove to win her case against Donald Trump.
Judge Juan Merchan
One more Trump legal story, before I wrap this up. From NBC News: Trump prohibited from posting evidence in hush money case to social media, judge rules.
The New York state judge presiding over the criminal hush money case against Donald Trump issued an order Monday restricting the former president from posting about some evidence in the case on social media.
Judge Juan Merchan largely sided with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by limiting what Trump can publicly disclose about new evidence from the prosecution before the case goes to trial.
The order says that “any materials and information provided by the People to the Defense in accordance with their discovery obligations … shall be used solely for the purposes of preparing a defense in this matter.”
Merchan’s order said anyone with access to the evidence being turned over to Trump’s team by state prosecutors “shall not copy, disseminate or disclose” the material to third parties, including social media platforms, “without prior approval from the court.”
It also singles out Trump, saying he is allowed to review sensitive “Limited Dissemination Materials” from prosecutors only in the presence of his lawyers and “shall not be permitted to copy, photograph, transcribe, or otherwise independently possess the Limited Dissemination Materials.”
In addition, the order restricts Trump from reviewing “forensic images of witness cell phones,” although his lawyers can show him “approved portions” of the images after they get permission from the judge.
That’s all I have for you today. Please feel free to discuss any these or any other topics in the comment thread.
Lazy Caturday Reads: Cats Stealing Food and (Mostly) January 6 News
Posted: May 6, 2023 Filed under: cat art, Cats, caturday, just because | Tags: Cat shows, Cats stealing food, Donald Trump, Fani Willis, Georgia fake electors, January 6 investigation, Jenny Vargas, Oath Keepers, Peter Schwartz, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Stuart Rhodes 13 Comments
Still Life with Cat. Alexandre-Francois Desportes, 1705
Happy Caturday!!
Because it’s Caturday, I’m going to begin with a story about cat shows by Jonathan B. Losos at The Literary Hub: Cuddly, Cute, Curious Cats: On the Beauty and Diversity of the Feline Species.
Mention a cat show and most people think of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show: smartly dressed trainers parading their beautifully coiffed and perfectly behaved charges around the ring; madcap agility trials in which speedy canines zip through challenging obstacle courses with nary a misstep. A feline equivalent is unthinkable.
And yet, cat shows do exist. I know, because I’ve attended many of them, both as a spectator and as a participant with Nelson. Cat shows are simpler than dog shows. There is no cat promenade and the competitors in the agility competitions (which are a relatively recent addition) generally lack the single-minded zeal of their canine counterparts.
Nevertheless, cat shows are still a spectacle. Imagine two hundred, or even eight hundred, yowling, purring, and snoozing cats packed into a show hall, showcasing the variety of the modern cat. The venues range from shabby high school gymnasia and bare-bones veterans’ halls to hotel banquet rooms and large show halls.
The rooms are filled with rows of long tables, jam-packed with colorful kitty condos; the competitors lounge inside their fabric walls, waiting to be called to the judging tables. Siamese cats yowl incessantly. Occasional shouts of “cat out” or “cat on the ground” lead to a few moments of excitement until the wayward puss is retrieved….
Still Life With a Cat by Sebastiano Lazzari, 1760
If you remember the zany characters in the dog-show mockumentary Best in Show, you’ll be disappointed to discover that the exhibitors are just ordinary folk with a passion for cats and a willingness to let their lives revolve around driving—or sometimes flying—to events weekend after weekend throughout much of the year. Like any group that gets together frequently to compete and socialize, there are deep friendships, intense rivalries, gossip, complaints about the judging, and all sorts of hijinks.
Fascinating as the people at cat shows are, let’s focus on the main event: the cats! The contestants on display are mostly refined and elegant; it’s hard to beat a Siamese for savoir faire or a Norwegian for reserved dignity. Some will charm you with their looks or manner; you’ll be surprised at the unexpected features of others. But above all, what these events display is the amazing variety of catdom. The long, sinuous fluidity of the Oriental, the regal majesty of a Maine Coon, the pantherine sleekness of an Abyssinian. Fluffball Himalayans. Pixie-faced Devon Rexes.
Cat shows reveal that Felis catus is not one cat, but many diverse brands of feline. And the cat cornucopia is growing rapidly. Breeders have capitalized on naturally occurring mutations to develop new breeds unlike anything previously imagined, including the curly-haired Devon Rex and the Ragdoll, named for its penchant for going limp when picked up. Some enthusiasts are looking in a different direction for new sources of variation, mating domestic cats with other feline species to produce the gorgeous spotted Bengal, the long-legged Savannah, and others.
It’s a fun article. Read the rest at the link if you’re so inclined. Losos is the author of the book The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa.
On to the news of the day . . .
The Wall Street Journal has an article with a tantalizing headline: In Trump Probe, Special Counsel Zooms In on Possible Criminal Charges. Prosecutors’ revisiting of earlier witness testimony points to effort to tie up loose ends.
Special counsel Jack Smith is racing through a roster of interviews in his wide-ranging investigations related to former President Donald Trump, including with former Vice President Mike Pence and other top aides, as he contemplates filing charges, according to people familiar with the matter.
Still Life With Cat And Fish by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, 1728
The steps prosecutors are taking, the people say, suggest Mr. Smith is in the late stages of his inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. The special counsel is also considering whether the former president tried to obstruct a separate probe into the handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort by withholding material sought by the Justice Department.
The testimony by some witnesses, often a second or third session and sometimes brief, appears to point to efforts by Mr. Smith’s team to determine whether a crime was committed and decide whether to file charges in the coming months, people familiar with the questioning said….
Earlier this week, Dan Scavino, Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of staff for communications, testified for eight hours before a Washington grand jury, according to a person familiar with the matter, weeks after a federal appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to block his testimony and that of other top aides.
Mr. Pence testified for several hours last week, with Mr. Smith in the room, a person familiar with the matter said, one day after an appeals court also dismissed Mr. Trump’s objections to that and paved the way for that high-level testimony. Mr. Smith’s presence at Mr. Pence’s testimony was earlier reported by CNN.
Prosecutors were interested in Mr. Pence’s interactions with Mr. Trump and the former president’s advisers in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the person said, adding that Mr. Pence largely reiterated the account he provided in his memoir. In the book, Mr. Pence said Mr. Trump had tried to pressure him to delay or block the certification of Joe Biden’s win, something he refused to do….
Mr. Smith has also pushed forward on his inquiry into the handling of classified documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, calling back witnesses who had previously spoken to investigators, some of the people said. Those efforts resulted in a maid who had worked at the complex in Palm Beach having to fly in from abroad to testify, they said.
That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard anything about the Mar-a-Lago maid before. The article wasn’t behind a paywall when I clicked on the link at Memeorandum, but I’ve given you the gist.
Trump appears to be getting very anxious, according to Raw Story:
Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account in the wee hours of Saturday morning to lash out at special counsel Jack Smith as reports grow that he is closing in on witnesses at Mar-a-Lago over the stolen documents recovered by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago.
Still Life With a Cat And a Mackerel On a Table Top by Giovanni Rivalta, 18th century
The former president had a bad week as the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation trial was wrapping up, it was reported late Friday that 8 accused fake Trump electors in Georgia took immunity deals, and the DOJ investigations into both his activities around the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Mar-a-Lago inquiry are ramping up.
Special counsel Jack Smith took the brunt of the former president’s meltdown, with the Trump declaring him a “persecutor.”
The former president also ominously warned, “It is a dangerous time in America!!!”
He first wrote, “The Special ‘Prosecutor,’ Jack Smith, who is harassing, threatening, and terrorizing people who work for me, probably illegally, and totally at odds with the way Crooked Joe Biden is being treated, will no longer be known as the Special ‘Prosecutor,’ but rather, the Special ‘Persecutor.’ He is a Trump Hating SLIMEBALL who is going far beyond the original instructions of the Department of Injustice. The Witch Hunt continues, as it always will, with the Radical Left, Country Destroying, Lunatics!”
Moments later he added, “All of these Fake Prosecutions are merely being done to Interfere with, and Influence, our Elections. It is a dangerous time in America!!!”
More on those electors who have agreed to cooperate in the Georgia election interference case in Georgia from The Washington Post: At least eight Trump electors have accepted immunity in Georgia investigation.
At least eight of the 16 Georgia Republicans who convened in December 2020 to declare Donald Trump the winner of the presidential contest despite his loss in the state have accepted immunity deals from Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating alleged election interference, according to a lawyer for the electors.
Prosecutors with the office of Fulton County District Attorney 
Rhodes, a top deputy and four others were 
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