Thursday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Reader with a yellow book, Henri Manguin

There’s still no word on the crazy judge in Texas who could block access to the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide. Reuters has a good article summarizing the yesterday’s hearing.

Gabriella Borter and Brendan Pierson at Reuters: Judge mulls banning abortion pill in US, questions regulatory approval.

AMARILLO, Texas, March 15 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday questioned lawyers for President Joe Biden’s administration on whether the federal regulatory approval given to the abortion pill mifepristone 22 years ago was proper as he considered a request by anti-abortion groups to ban sales of the drug nationwide.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk during a hearing in Amarillo also pressed the groups, led by the Texas-based Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, to explain how he could reverse approval of a long-established drug.

The judge raised the possibility of a more limited ruling, keeping the drug on the market but re-imposing some restrictions lifted by Biden’s administration, including requiring it to be dispensed in person rather than by mail. Kacsmaryk, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, said he would rule “as soon as possible.”

It is shaping up as the most consequential abortion case since the U.S. Supreme Court, powered by its conservative majority, last year overturned its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognized a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

The anti-abortion groups sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November, contending the agency used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under age 18.

The plaintiffs are asking Kacsmaryk for a preliminary order halting sales of mifepristone nationwide – even in states where abortion is legal – while their lawsuit proceeds.

On yesterday’s arguments:

Erik Baptist, a lawyer with the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom representing the plaintiffs, said the scope of the judge’s ruling should be “universal and nationwide.”

Woman Reading, Albert Reuss, 1889-1975

The judge questioned lawyers for Biden’s administration on how the FDA accelerated its approval for mifepristone under a process typically used for drugs to treat HIV infection and other life-threatening illnesses. The administration has said that the drug’s approval was well supported by science, and that the challenge comes much too late.

Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department and an attorney for mifepristone’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, argued that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case, and said mifepristone has an impressive safety and efficacy record.

“An injunction here would upend the status quo. An injunction would cause significant public harm,” Justice Department attorney Julie Straus Harris told the judge.

Harris also argued that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would undercut trust in the FDA, the agency charged with signing off on the safety of food products and drugs in the United States. Harris said such a ruling would also increase the burden on surgical abortion clinics, already overcrowded as they admit patients from states where clinics have closed in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision.

Read the rest at Reuters

Some breaking news on that U.S. drone that collided with a Russian fighter plane:

NPR: The U.S. military releases footage of Black Sea drone crash with Russian jet.

The U.S. European Command has declassified footage showing the moments when two Russian fighter jets flew very close to a U.S. drone over the Black Sea, dumping fuel on it — and, the Pentagon says, eventually flying into the drone. The video footage appears to show the U.S. craft was damaged by a collision.

The release of the video comes two days after the Pentagon said a Russian Su-27 fighter clipped the propeller of an uncrewed MQ-9 Reaper drone that was operating in international airspace, forcing it down into the water. The Kremlin says its jets did not make contact with the drone.

The footage gives brief glimpses of the encounter, which U.S. officials say lasted for at least a half hour. The Pentagon says the video depicts events in the order they happened, although it was edited to condense the action.

In the 42-second video, a Russian Su-27 aircraft is seen approaching from the drone’s rear quarter, releasing a plume of fuel as it pulls upward and over the drone, causing the footage to partially pixelate. The camera recovers as the fighter jet pulls away, showing the drone’s rear-mounted propeller in normal working condition.

The footage then shows what the Pentagon says is an “even closer” pass from a Russian jet.

Approaching from what looks to be a lower angle, the Su-27 releases more fuel and its fuselage is seen coming extremely close to the drone before the video cuts out entirely. The Pentagon says the camera feed was lost for around 60 seconds.

When the feed returns, the camera, which is mounted beneath the MQ-9, pivots to show the drone’s propeller has been partially mangled.

Shortly afterward, the aircraft crashed into the Black Sea off the southern coast of Ukraine — a country that the U.S. and dozens of other countries are supporting in its war against Russia. The U.S. has been monitoring movements by Russian troops and warships in the area.

The U.S. European Command described the encounter as “an unsafe and unprofessional intercept.”

There’s more at the link.

More from Courtney Cube and Carol Lee at NBC News: Russian leadership approved aggressive actions of jets that damaged U.S. drone, U.S. officials say.

Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday.

The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities.

Lucie Belin Smiling (1915). by Jean-Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940).

It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.

One official said he had not gotten indications that the signoff went all the way up to Putin. Other officials declined to provide specifics beyond “highest levels.”

The Russian jet actually clipping the propeller of the drone — which the U.S. says occurred and Russia denies — was likely not intentional, said the officials, who believe it was pilot error, based on U.S. video of the incident.

Three defense officials and one Biden administration official also said the Russians have already reached the area where the MQ-9 Reaper crashed. The Russians are actively looking for the debris with ships and aircraft, but the U.S. hasn’t seen any indication that they’ve been able to recover any of it, officials said. One official said much of the debris sank into the Black Sea.

The U.S. is unlikely to try to recover the remnants of the crashed drone, according to the three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference on Wednesday that there’s probably not a lot of debris to recover and noted the part of the Black Sea where the drone landed is as much as 5,000-feet deep.

News on the Georgia election interference case:

If you watched TV last night, you probably heard about this story by Tamar Hallerman and Bill Rankin at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but it’s well worth reading the whole article; I can only excerpt a small part of it. The article is a detailed description of what happened in the grand jury, based on interviews with several jurors: EXCLUSIVE: Behind the scenes of Trump grand jury; jurors hear 3rd leaked Trump call.

A number of the jurors criticized Emily Khors, the jury foreperson, who previously spoke to media outlets.

Several jurors said they decided to speak out for the first time in responseto criticism leveled at the probe after Kohrs spoke to multiple media outlets last month. Some detractors, including Trump’s Georgia-based legal team, said that Kohrs’ remarks showcased an unprofessional, politically tainted criminal investigation.

The jurors, who stressed their aim was not to drag down Kohrs, underscored that they understood the gravity of their assignment and took care to be active participants and attend as many sessions as possible. They said the investigation was somber and thorough.

“I just felt like we, as a group, were portrayed as not serious,” one of the jurors said. “That really bothered me because that’s not how I felt. I took it very seriously. I showed up, did what I was supposed to do, did not do what I was asked not to do, you know?” [….]

They also divulged details from the investigation that had yet to become public.

Piero di Cosimo, 1462-1522, Magdalen Reading

One was that they had heard a recording of a phone call Trump placed to late Georgia House Speaker David Ralstonin which the president asked the fellow Republican to convene a special session of the Legislature to overturn Democrat JoeBiden’s narrow victory in Georgia.

One juror said Ralston proved to be “an amazing politician.”

The speaker “basically cut the president off. He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails,” the juror said. “‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”

Ralston and other legislative leaders did not call a special session. A former Ralston aide declined to comment for this story, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

There was a tidbit about Lindsey Graham’s testimony:

One grand juror recalled U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony about Trump’s state of mind in the months after the 2020 election.

“He said that during that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots, that Trump would’ve believed it,” the juror said.

Just one more excerpt:

The group said they had no idea what Willis planned to do in response to their recommendations. But many described an increased regard for the elections system and the people who run it.

“I can honestly give a damn of whoever goes to jail, you know, like personally,” one juror said. “I care more about there being more respect in the system for the work that people do to make sure elections are free and fair.”

Said another juror: “I tell my wife if every person in America knew every single word of information we knew, this country would not be divided as it is right now.”

The grand jurors said they understand why the public release of their full final report needs to wait until Willis makes indictment decisions.

“A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later,” one of the jurors said. “And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.”

Read much more at the link if you’re interested.

January 6 investigation news:

Zoe Tillman at Bloomberg News: DOJ Told Court to Expect a Deluge of New Jan. 6 Prosecutions.

More than 1,000 additional people could still face charges in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, according to a letter to the DC federal court from the US attorney in Washington.

The one-page letter, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News, was sent late last year to the chief judge and hasn’t been previously reported. It offers details on what Attorney General Merrick Garland has called “one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.”

berthe Morisot, Reading, 1873

The Oct. 28 letter from US Attorney Matthew Graves to Chief Judge Beryl Howell, which came as the department neared its 900th arrest, estimated an additional 700 to 1,200 defendants. That could roughly double the number of cases filed so far – with this month marking the 1,000th arrest, according to statistics from the US attorney’s office.

The more than 1,000 people already charged have clogged the court’s docket over the past two years. And prosecutors continue to bring new cases as Special Counsel Jack Smith pursues a separate probe into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to undermine the 2020 election results.

Graves warned Howell in the letter that it was “incredibly difficult” to predict future cases given the “nature and the complexity of the investigation.” He wrote that he didn’t know how many of the new cases would involve misdemeanor versus felony charges, but he expected a higher percentage of felonies.

“We expect the pace of bringing new cases will increase, in an orderly fashion, over the course of the next few months,” Graves wrote.

Judge Beryl Howell is stepping down as the top judge in DC. At CNN, Katelyn Polantz and Courtney Sneed report on her replacement: There’s a new chief judge in DC who could help determine the fate of Donald Trump.

A new chief judge in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, is poised to take over as that position has become one of the most influential in the nation’s capital, playing a key role in deciding issues that could factor into whether former President Donald Trump is indicted.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who has served in that role since 2016, has repeatedly green-lit Justice Department requests to pursue information about Trump’s actions, from his top advisers and lawyers and even inside the White House. She’ll be succeeded by James “Jeb” Boasberg, a fellow Barack Obama appointee and one-time Brett Kavanaugh law school roommate who’s well-known in Washington.

While presiding over the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2020 and 2021, Boasberg encouraged the declassification of information so that the public could read proceedings related to the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between Trump and Russia.

If the Justice Department were to indict Trump, the case would be randomly assigned to one of the district court’s judges, meaning the chief could handle the case but may not. Still, the chief judge has unusual sway over the pace and scope of investigations as the Justice Department attempts to enforce its grand jury subpoenas, obtain warrants and access evidence it has collected by arguing to the chief judge in sealed proceedings.

“This court would be ready,” Howell said in a recent interview with CNN, when asked about the historic possibility of a Trump indictment. She added any judge on that court “would do it justice.”

Howell, who steps down from the position on Friday, may conclude her tenure by issuing decisions in sealed cases related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago. Already, she granted Kash Patel – a former administration official – immunity for testimony he provided the grand jury investigation. She also held off a Justice Department request to place Trump in contempt for his alleged failure to turn over subpoenaed classified documents.

Read more at CNN.

Ron DeSantis is getting plenty of media attention as he builds up to a presidential run.

Axios fired a reporter after attacks from the DeSantis administration. The Washington Post: Fla. reporter fired after calling news release on DeSantis event ‘propaganda’

An Axios reporter in Tampasaid he was fired this week after he responded to a Florida Department of Education email about an event featuring Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), calling the news release “propaganda.”

Ben Montgomery said he received a call on Monday evening from Jamie Stockwell, executive editor of Axios Local, who asked Montgomery to confirm he sent the email before saying the reporter’s “reputation in the Tampa Bay area” had been “irreparably tarnished.”

Leer para vivir, by Lucy McGowan Diecks (1907-1998)

The news release sent Monday afternoon said DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, had hosted a roundtable “exposing the diversity equity and inclusion scam in higher education.” It also called for prohibiting state funds from being used to support DEI efforts.

“We will expose the scams they are trying to push onto students across the country,” DeSantis said in the statement.

Montgomery, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, replied to the email three minutes after getting it. “This is propaganda, not a press release,” he wrote to the Department of Education press office.

About an hour after that, the Education Department’s communication officer, Alex Lanfranconi, shared Montgomery’s reply on Twitter, where it has since been viewed more than 1 million times.

Montgomery said the news release had “no substance,” adding that he “read the whole thing and it was just a series of quotes about how bad DEI was.”

Axios editor in chief Sara Kehaulani Goo confirmed Montgomery is no longer employed by Axios, but declined to comment further.

Just one more reason to dislike Axios beside their ridiculous bullet-point story style.

Sarah Mervosh at The New York Times: Florida Scoured Math Textbooks for ‘Prohibited Topics.’ Next Up: Social Studies.

…[I]n Florida, textbooks have become hot politics, part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign against what he describes as “woke indoctrination” in public schools, particularly when it comes to race and gender. Last year, his administration made a splash when it rejected dozens of math textbooks, citing “prohibited topics.”

Now, the state is reviewing curriculum in what is perhaps the most contentious subject in education: social studies.

In the last few months, as part of the review process, a small army of state experts, teachers, parents and political activists have combed thousands of pages of text — not only evaluating academic content, but also flagging anything that could hint, for instance, at critical race theory.

A prominent conservative education group, whose members volunteered to review textbooks, objected to a slew of them, accusing publishers of “promoting their bias.” At least two publishers declined to participate altogether.

And in a sign of how fraught the political landscape has become, one publisher created multiple versions of its social studies material, softening or eliminating references to race — even in the story of Rosa Parks — as it sought to gain approval in Florida….

It is unclear which social studies textbooks will be approved in Florida, or how the chosen materials might address issues of race in history. The state is expected to announce its textbook decisions in the coming weeks.

Emphasis added.

One more from The Daily Beast: The GOP Campaign Trail Is Already Getting DeSantis-Proofed.

At any given fundraiser or VIP room where he’s present, Ron DeSantis is usually easy to find—in the corner, keeping to himself.

Despite having a job that entails exchanging small talk and pleasantries on a daily basis, the Florida governor tends to brush off those obligations and struggles with basic social skills, according to a source close to DeSantis, several of his former staffers, and other GOP operatives who have worked with him and his team.

As DeSantis gears up for a potential White House run in 2024, his aloof public persona is being thought of by his rivals—namely, former President Donald Trump—as his Achilles heel in the retail politics-heavy early primary states.

And even though he hasn’t announced a bid yet, DeSantis’ apparent desire to test the waters of a presidential campaign—while barely dipping a toe into the aspects he recoils from—is already being put to the test.

During his donor retreat in Palm Beach in late February, an attendee stood up and called him “DeSatan,” according to Republicans familiar with the outburst.

At his recent book tour stop in Davenport, Iowa, a volunteer English teacher and seasoned caucus enthusiast posed for a photo alongside the governor with the term “fascist” carved out within her design of a paper snowflake.

The governor’s aversion to pressing the flesh, and his concern over the risk of unexpected interactions with the public, is already so well-known that early primary state players are working to DeSantis-proof their events in order to attract the flinty would-be candidate and his tight-knit team.

The problem is, hosts often have no idea what the DeSantis team wants.

“Easily the least responsive campaign I’ve ever dealt with,” one veteran event host in an early primary state told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity to avoid alienating the Florida governor.

There has been a lot of reporting on DeSantis’ nasty personality and lack of charisma. I hope it will keep him from the nomination.

That’s it for me today. I’m really late because I had quite a struggle with WordPress. I ended up having to completely redo the formatting–had to hunt down all the article links and redo the indentations. I hope I did it right.

Tuesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

I need to spend some more time rereading Dakinikat’s Monday offering. I came down with a stomach virus yesterday and I was too nauseated to deal with serious news; but I read enough to know that it was a very good post. Why must we continually be forced to clean up the messes created by America’s greedy millionaires and billionaires?

Here’s some breaking news on the SVB story:

The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department, SEC Investigating Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, according to people familiar with the matter, after the California lender was taken over by regulators last week amid a historic run on its deposits.

The separate probes are in their preliminary phases and may not lead to charges or allegations of wrongdoing. Prosecutors and regulators often open investigations after financial institutions or public companies suffer big, unexpected losses. Shares in SVB Financial Group SIVB 0.00%increase; green up pointing triangle, which formerly owned the bank, fell 60% last week and have been stopped from trading since Friday.

The investigations are also examining stock sales that SVB Financial’s officers made days before the bank failed, the people said. The Justice Department probe involves the department’s fraud prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco, the people said….

Before SVB failed last week and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., it catered mainly to the insular world of startups and the investors who fund them. Its deposits boomed alongside the tech industry, rising 86% in 2021 to $189 billion.

The bank fell victim last week to a run on deposits. Customers tried to withdraw $42 billion—about a quarter of the bank’s total deposits—on Thursday alone. The flood of withdrawals destroyed the bank’s finances. It had poured large amounts of deposits into U.S. Treasurys and other government-sponsored debt securities whose market value declined as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates over the past year.

SVB Financial cautioned in its latest annual report to investors that its business was heavily focused on lending to newer companies in the technology, life-science and healthcare industries. “Our loan concentrations are derived from our borrowers engaging in similar activities that could cause those borrowers to be similarly impacted by economic or other conditions,” it said.

Mr. Becker expressed optimism days before his bank collapsed, saying at a conference last week that it was “a great time to start a company.” He said at a different conference last month that the bank’s focus on those industries didn’t create the risk of too much concentration, citing clients’ different specializations and the bank’s business overseas.

This is interesting:

Securities filings show Mr. Becker and Mr. Beck, the chief financial officer, both sold shares the week before the bank collapsed. Mr. Becker exercised options on 12,451 shares on Feb. 27 and sold them the same day, netting about $2.3 million.

Mr. Beck sold just over $575,000 worth of shares on Feb. 27, roughly one-third of his holdings in the company.

Both sales were done under so-called 10b5-1 plans filed 30 days earlier. These plans allow insiders to schedule share sales in advance to allay suspicion of trading on nonpublic information. The SEC recently tightened rules for the plans, which include a 90-day waiting period before sales can be executed. The new rules went into effect on Feb. 27, the same day the executives sold.

There’s a bit more at the link, but that’s the gist of the story. I didn’t encounter a paywall.

This is insane. Republicans are trying to claim that SVB is a “woke” bank and that explains the collapse.

This is from Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: The Boys Who Cried ‘Woke!’

As soon as it was clear that Silicon Valley Bank would not survive the weekend, conservative influencers and Republican politicians had a culprit in sight.

Wokeness.

“They were one of the most woke banks,” Representative James Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said during a segment on Fox News.

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, also spoke to Fox News about the collapse of the bank, and he also blamed the bank’s diversity programs. “I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with D.E.I. and politics and all kinds of stuff. I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission,” he said.

A Saturday headline in The New York Post declared, “While Silicon Valley Bank Collapsed, Top Executive Pushed ‘Woke’ Programs.” And over at The Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler wondered if “the company may have been distracted by diversity demands.”

On Twitter, a number of prominent conservatives took this message and ran with it. Donald Trump Jr. said that “SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedent over common sense business practices.” Stephen Miller, a key White House aide to Donald Trump, accused the bank of wasting its funding on “trendy woke BS.” And Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, complained that “these SVB guys spend all their time funding woke garbage (‘climate change solutions’) rather than actual banking and now want a handout from taxpayers to save them.”

Can you believe this shit? Well known right-wing libertarian Peter Thiel is the one who recommended that companies should pull their money out of SVB and sparked the bank run.

It is unclear whether these conservatives are working from the same memo or just have the same narrow obsession. Regardless, there is no evidence that any diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. It is nonsense. And while it shouldn’t be taken seriously on its own terms, this deflection is worth noting for what it represents: the relentless effort to mystify real questions of political economy in favor of endless culture war conflict.

The real story behind the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has much more to do with the political and economic environment of the previous decade than it does with wokeness, a word that signifies nothing other than conservative disdain for anything that seems liberal.

Read the rest at the NYT.

Mike Pence is in the news, and not in a good way. He gave a speech at the Gridiron Dinner a couple of days ago, and the headline from that was that he weakly criticized Trump, indicating history should deal with his crimes instead of law enforcement actions in the present. Today, Pence is also being criticized for a “joke” he told about Peter Buttigieg at the dinner.

CNN: White House calls on Pence to apologize for ‘homophobic joke’ about Buttigieg.

The White House on Monday called on Mike Pence to apologize for his remark that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had gone on “maternity leave,” saying that the former vice president’s “homophobic joke” at the Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday was “offensive and inappropriate.”

“The former vice president’s homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “He should apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Pence delivered the line Saturday evening at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, DC – an event bringing together some of the city’s most prominent journalists, including from CNN, and the government officials they cover. It traditionally features politicians making jokes about notable Washington figures.

The former vice president quipped that if President Joe Biden doesn’t run for reelection, “there’s Pete Buttigieg, who’s an old friend of mine.”

“When Pete’s two children were born, he took two months maternity leave, where upon thousands of travelers were stranded in airports, the air traffic system shut down, airplanes nearly collided in midair,” Pence said. “I mean, Pete Buttigieg is the only person in human history to have a child and all the rest of us get postpartum depression.”

Mike Pence is vile trash. Buttigieg’s husband fired back.

MSNBC opinion writer Zeeshan Aleem on Pence’s remarks about Trump: Mike Pence’s latest fighting words are not in fact fighting words.

Speaking Saturday at the Gridiron Dinner, a white-tie event organized by journalists in Washington, Pence delivered his sharpest break from Trump to date. “History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence said. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”

The Washington media received Pence’s remarks as “biting” and as an “unexpected twist.” Given that Pence was attending a dinner with journalists, it’s clear he was trying to launch a new narrative about his relationship with Trump and about his own willingness to stand up for what he apparently believes is right.

But Pence’s comments stand out as much for what they don’t say as for what they do. Who exactly is meant to hold Trump accountable? In Pence’s account, justice is delegated to the ethereal forces of “history,” instead of, say, the GOP, the American public or the criminal justice system. Pence’s calling for accountability but ruling out its meaningful pursuit reveals how his Trump challenge is affective in nature, not substantive.

Pay close attention, too, to how Pence frames Trump’s behavior. Trump was “wrong”; his behavior was a “disgrace”; acknowledging this is as matter of “decency.” Pence’s language carefully limits his criticism of Trump to a matter of personal misconduct. What’s missing is a reckoning with the political mechanics of what was happening — an authoritarian rejection of the democratic process. And while Pence talks about the lives of Pence’s family and lawmakers at the Capitol, he doesn’t talk about the ongoing threat posed to democratic life. The central question facing the GOP as it evolves in the age of Trump is whether or not it will choose to reject full-fledged denialism of empirical reality and the legitimacy of democratic institutions. Pence has nothing of significance to say about that question.

Yesterday Trump was in Iowa and he responded to Pence’s remarks about him.

From the WaPo piece:

DAVENPORT, Iowa — Donald Trump on Monday sharply rebuked Mike Pence’s assertion that history would hold him accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, telling reporters that his former vice president should shoulder the blame for the violent riot that day by Trump’s supporters.

“Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6,” the former president said, referring to Pence’s refusal to reject the electoral college votes in Congress as Trump wanted him to do that day. “Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it.”

A pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol on that day following months of false claims by Trump that the election was stolen from him. He also used incendiary and false rhetoric about the election at a rally at the Ellipse near the White House shortly before the rioters stormed the Capitol.

Trump was responding to Pence’s remarks on Saturday, where he said unequivocally that Trump had been “wrong” to demand he overturn the election, something Pence maintained he had no power to do. “His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day,” Pence said during a speech at the white-tie Gridiron dinner in Washington. “And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

Trump suggested that Pence’s condemnation was driven by his single-digit showings in recent surveys of potential 2024 Republican presidential contenders. (Pence has not officially announced his candidacy, even as he has made moves toward entering the race.)

“I guess he figured that being nice is not working,” Trump said. “But, you know, he’s out there campaigning. And he’s trying very hard. And he’s a nice man, I’ve known him, I had a very good relationship until the end.”

Ron DeSantis was in Iowa yesterday too, and he expressed opposition to the U.S. supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

From NBC News:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential candidate, broke with many in his party Monday and told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that protecting Ukraine is not a “vital” national interest for the U.S.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis wrote in a questionnaire response Carlson posted on his Twitter feed.

“The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” DeSantis continued.

He argued that “peace should be the objective” for the U.S. and expressed his opposition to sending “F-16s and long-range missiles” to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

The response aligns DeSantis with former President Donald Trump — who leads many GOP primary polls — and against many congressional Republicans who have supported aid to Ukraine. It signals the growing power of isolationist sentiments within a party that has long advocated for an active U.S. presence in global affairs. And it is likely to be an issue in the party’s presidential primary.

I really can’t stomach the idea of watching a primary fight between Trump and DeSantis. I’m still not feeling so hot and that notion is making my symptoms worse. Take care, Sky Dancers!

Lazy Caturday Reads

Painting by V. Rumyanzev

Happy Caturday!!

I’m really late getting going today, so I’m going to get right to the latest news. Dakinikat posted in the comments about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank yesterday. There was a run on the bank by nervous customers, many of whom had huge deposits that wouldn’t be covered by FDIC insurance in case of a bank failure. The limit for FDIC coverage is $250,000.

CNN Business: Silicon Valley Bank collapses after failing to raise capital.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed Friday morning after a stunning 48 hours in which a bank run and a capital crisis led to the second-largest failure of a financial institution in US history.

California regulators closed down the tech lender and put it under the control of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC is acting as a receiver, which typically means it will liquidate the bank’s assets to pay back its customers, including depositors and creditors.

The FDIC, an independent government agency that insures bank deposits and oversees financial institutions, said all insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits by no later than Monday morning. It said it would pay uninsured depositors an “advance dividend within the next week.” [….]

The wheels started to come off on Wednesday, when SVB announced it had sold a bunch of securities at a loss and that it would sell $2.25 billion in new shares to shore up its balance sheet. That triggered a panic among key venture capital firms, who reportedly advised companies to withdraw their money from the bank.

The company’s stock cratered on Thursday, dragging other banks down with it. By Friday morning, SVB’s shares were halted and it had abandoned efforts to quickly raise capital or find a buyer. Several other bank stocks were temporarily halted Friday, including First Republic, PacWest Bancorp, and Signature Bank.

The mid-morning timing of the FDIC’s takeover was noteworthy, as the agency typically waits until the market has closed to intervene.

“SVB’s condition deteriorated so quickly that it couldn’t last just five more hours,” wrote Better Markets CEO Dennis M. Kelleher. “That’s because its depositors were withdrawing their money so fast that the bank was insolvent, and an intraday closure was unavoidable due to a classic bank run.”

More from CNBC: Silicon Valley Bank is shut down by regulators in biggest bank failure since global financial crisis.

Financial regulators have closed Silicon Valley Bank and taken control of its deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Friday, in what is the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The collapse of SVB, a key player in the tech and venture capital community, leaves companies and wealthy individuals largely unsure of what will happen to their money.

Napping Buddies, Carol Jenkins

According to press releases from regulators, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed SVB and named the FDIC as the receiver. The FDIC in turn has created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara, which now holds the insured deposits from SVB.

The FDIC said in the announcement that insured depositors will have access to their deposits no later than Monday morning. SVB’s branch offices will also reopen at that time, under the control of the regulator.

According to the press release, SVB’s official checks will continue to clear.

The FDIC’s standard insurance covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, for each account ownership category. The FDIC said uninsured depositors will get receivership certificates for their balances. The regulator said it will pay uninsured depositors an advanced dividend within the next week, with potential additional dividend payments as the regulator sells SVB’s assets.

Whether depositors with more than $250,000 ultimately get all their money back will be determined by the amount of money the regulator gets as it sells Silicon Valley assets or if another bank takes ownership of the remaining assets. There were concerns in the tech community that until that process unfolds, some companies may have issues making payroll.

Why did these individuals and companies put all their eggs in one basket? Would it have been smarter to use more than one bacnk for these huge deposits? Maybe Dakinikat can explain this.

The New York Times broke another story about the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump and his $130,000 payment for Stormy Daniels’ silence about their sexual relationship. You’ll recall, this payoff happened in 2016 shortly after the release of the “grab them by the pussy” tape and just before election day. The investigation is exploring whether Trump was deliberately trying to conceal the payment from voters.

The New York Times: Michael Cohen to Testify at Grand Jury as Likely Trump Indictment Looms.

Michael D. Cohen, the former fixer who for years did Donald J. Trump’s dirty work, is expected to testify before a Manhattan grand jury next week, a sign that prosecutors are poised to indict the former president for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has already questioned at least seven other people before the grand jury hearing evidence about the hush money deal, according to several other people with knowledge of the inquiry, potentially making Mr. Cohen the last witness.

Once he has testified, nearly every crucial player in the hush money matter will have appeared before the grand jury — with the exception of the porn star herself, Stormy Daniels, who may not be called to testify.

It would be highly unusual for a prosecutor in a high-profile white-collar case to go through a weekslong presentation of evidence — and question nearly every relevant witness — without intending to seek an indictment.

Mr. Cohen’s testimony is the second strong indication that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will ask the grand jury to indict the former president, possibly as soon as this month. The first came when Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors informed Mr. Trump’s lawyers that if he wanted to testify before the grand jury, he could do so next week, people with knowledge of the matter said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close.

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in the grand jury shortly before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump is likely to decline the offer.

Painting by Sandra Bierman

There’s also this piece on the multiple investigations of Trump at The Washington Post. I’m not a fan of the top two authors–Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey–who tend to focus on gossip rather than serious issues, but I guess it’s worth a read. They suggest that Trump may be in trouble with voters.

The Washington Post: Trump in growing legal and political peril ahead of 2024.

The Manhattan district attorney has invited former president Donald Trump to testify next week before a grand jury, potentially signaling a significant development in the ongoing investigation into Trump’s business affairs.

An Atlanta-area district attorney investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia could announce in coming weeks whether charges will be filed in that case.

Andsome former allies of Trump, as well as some Trump voters, haveexpressed a desire for a different 2024 Republican standard-bearer — most specifically, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has privately indicated he plans to seek the White House.

Trump — who stoked an insurrection trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and is running again in 2024 — finds himself in growing peril, both legal and political. Multiple investigations into him and his actions are entering advanced stages, all while many in the Republican Party — in private conservations and public declarations — are increasingly trying to find an alternative to him.

On Friday, former congressman Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), one of Trump’s earliest backers in 2016, took to Twitter to say that he and Tom Marino, another former Republican representative from Pennsylvania, were urging DeSantis to formally enter the presidential fray.

“More than ever our country needs strong leadership, someone that gets things done & isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right,” Barletta wrote. “So Tom Marino & I are calling on our former colleague @RonDeSantisFL to run for president in 2024. Come on Ron, your country needs you! #NeverBackDown.”

On Thursday, a new pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, also disclosed that it will be led by Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official. In a statement, Cuccinelli touted DeSantis as “a fighter with a winning conservative track record” with the ability to marshal “an unmatched grassroots political army.”

Read more at the WaPo.

Fox News’s problems from the Dominion lawsuit are still in getting plenty of attention and there are some new interesting stories today.

This is from former trial lawyer Katie Phang at MSNBC: The true cost of Dominion’s devastating Fox News bombshells.

In the Dominion versus Fox News defamation case, Fox is now trapped in an ever-worsening spiral of lies of its own creation. Time and time again, Fox allegedly trafficked in lies and falsehoods. And the result just might be a financial death penalty for the network.

As we’ve seen put forth in the thousands upon thousands of pages of evidence released during the discovery process in this case, people at Fox News allegedly knew the channel was repeatedly peddling lies. But it didn’t care. Because, according to the lawsuit, profits were more important than the truth. Because, as in the words of Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, Fox did not want to “antagonize [Donald] Trump further,” and he wanted to keep Trump’s supporters as viewers, even as he admitted under oath during his deposition that he “never believed” that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election.

In its most recent filing, Dominion alleges that Fox has now conceded that what it put out for its viewers to consume about Dominion was lies. “Fox has produced no evidence — none, zero -supporting those lies.” Dominion goes even further and argues that Fox could have ultimately reported the truth, but it chose not to do so. Fox also could have retracted those lies, but it chose not to do so….

Armed with thousands of pages of texts and internal chats and emails by and between Fox hosts, producers and executives, Dominion now seeks to convince a Delaware judge that a jury no longer needs to hear the case because, as a matter of law, there is no work left to be done to decide whether Fox defamed Dominion. On March 21, both sides will appear in court for oral arguments. As Dominion has argued, “It is the rare case to grant summary judgment of actual malice, but it is also the rare case where direct evidence of actual malice exists, as it does here.”

And some legal experts agree: Dominion doesn’t just have the upper hand, it has the truth on its side. If Dominion is successful, then all that would be left to determine is the amount of damages that Dominion is entitled to receive. That’s where the numbers become astronomical. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in lost profits and reputational harm. But it’s also seeking punitive damages, which are not capped under New York state law and could also be in the billions of dollars.

This is from the Future Tense Newsletter at Slate: The Misinformation Is the Point.

The evidence is overwhelming: There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about a foreign-backed influential media platform undermining faith in America by leveraging its hypnotic hold on its audience to spread misinformation harmful to our social cohesion and democracy.

TikTok, you ask?  Nah—Fox News.

Future Tensers aren’t prone to the type of xenophobia peddled on a daily basis by Fox News. But if we were to turn the tables and go all Fox News on Fox News, we could make much of the fact that in order to launch and control the Fox broadcast network that would later beget the cable news channel without running afoul of foreign ownership limits on broadcasting licenses, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media tycoon, became a naturalized American citizen. Isn’t it interesting, as any number of Fox News hosts might sneer, that this supposedly “American” outlet that goes to such lengths to wrap itself in the flag has made so much money by dividing Americans and sowing mistrust in our institutions?

The extent to which Fox knowingly spreads falsehoods harmful to the country has become abundantly clear (contrary to its claims that it was just reporting one campaign’s allegations) in the treasure trove of evidence coming to light thanks to the $1.6 billion defamation suit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems. Network officials and on-air talent, we now know, were variously annoyed and concerned that their since-ousted election data analysts called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.

Frederick the Literate, by Charles Wysocki

This accurate call, which appeared to seal Trump’s electoral fate, triggered an existential crisis for the network because loyal Fox News viewers were woefully unprepared to accept that Trump could lose the 2020 presidential election fair and square—precisely because they were loyal Fox News viewers. Their sense of reality had been so hopelessly distorted by a news channel whose business model has long been predicated on convincing its aging, conservative audience that disdainful, know-it-all cosmopolitan elites are preying on their decency, credulity, and patriotism to conspire against American greatness. Under Fox’s proven formula (adopted from right-wing talk radio), Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, and other hosts become America’s last line of defense, decoding the vast conspiracies targeting them—conservative network and audience alike. The cultish hold Fox developed over its viewers was akin to the bond binding besieged combatants who’ve shared a trench or a bunker.

Now, the water hose of incriminating evidence emerging from the lawsuit proves that the disdainful know-it-all conspirators preying on viewers’ anxieties were actually their Fox News trenchmates.

Read the rest at the Slate link.

And here’s a tidbit from The East Bay Times: Rupert Murdoch: Fox News fired Kimberly Guilfoyle for ‘inappropriate behavior.’

After Kimberly Guilfoyle mysteriously left Fox News in the summer of 2018, she found herself vehemently denying news reports that said her departure was due to allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior.

But her former boss, Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch, has apparently confirmed that he wanted her gone because of the allegations, which were detailed in a 2020 report in The New Yorker. Murdoch’s concerns about Guifoyle, a former top campaign aide for Trump, were revealed in a trove of texts and emails that were recently leaked in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.

Murdoch said in an email, sent in the wake of the 2020 election, that he had “insisted” Fox News fire Guilfoyle “for inappropriate behavior.” The 91-year-old executive also ripped into his once-popular Fox News host in other ways, according to the email, which was shared by Semafor media reporter Max Tani.

While Murdoch’s note mistakenly called Guilfoyle “Kimberly Strassel,” an opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal, he clearly was referring to Guilfoyle when he wrote about her association with Newsmax. The rival news network was known for pushing even harder than Fox News to promote debunked conspiracy theories that Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden was due to widespread election fraud.

“Newsmax not good people!” Rupert wrote in the email. “Being advised by Don jr’s girlfriend Kimberley Strassel who I insisted we fire for inappropriate behavior. Not one of our people will join her. Newsmax desperate for money. Scoured the world, so far without luck.” [….]

The idea that Murdoch wanted Guilfoyle gone adds weight to the New Yorker report, published a month before the 2020 election. The report suggested that Guilfoyle had to leave Fox News, where she had worked since the mid-2000s, because of sexual harassment allegations made by a former assistant. Before the New Yorker report, the popular explanation for Guilfoyle’s departure from Fox was that she wanted to avoid conflicts of interest posed by her new romance with Trump Jr.

Reporter Jane Mayer detailed allegations in a 42-page draft complaint, which said that Guilfoyle showed lewd photos of male genitalia to colleagues, regularly discussed sexual matters at work, urged the assistant “to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors,” and exposed herself to the assistant while asking for a critique of her naked body.

By Adrie Martens

A few days ago, I wrote about how Twitter had a serious outage because Elon Musk has decided to charge outside researchers who want to use Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API). Now we know the price Musk wants to charge, and it’s sky high.

Wired: Twitter’s $42,000-per-Month API Prices Out Nearly Everyone.

SINCE TWITTER LAUNCHED in 2006, the company has acted as a kind of heartbeat for social media conversation. That’s partly because it’s where media people go to talk about the media, but also because it’s been willing to open up its backend to researchers. Academics have used free access to Twitter’s API, or application programming interface, in order to access data on the kinds of conversations occurring on the platform, which helps them understand what the online world is talking about.

Twitter’s API is used by vast numbers of researchers. Since 2020, there have been more than 17,500 academic papers based on the platform’s data, giving strength to the argument that Twitter owner Elon Musk has long claimed, that the platform is the “de facto town square.”

But new charges, included in documentation seen by WIRED, suggest that most organizations that have relied on API access to conduct research will now be priced out of using Twitter.

It’s the end of a long, convoluted process. On February 2, Musk announced API access would go behind a paywall in a week. (Those producing “good” content would be exempted.) A week later, he delayed the decision to February 13. Unsurprisingly, that deadline also slipped by, as Twitter suffered a catastrophic outage.

The company is now offering three levels of Enterprise Packages to its developer platform, according to a document sent by a Twitter rep to would-be academic customers in early March and passed on to WIRED. The cheapest, Small Package, gives access to 50 million tweets for $42,000 a month. Higher tiers give researchers or businesses access to larger volumes of tweets—100 million and 200 million tweets respectively—and cost $125,000 and $210,000 a month. WIRED confirmed the figures with other existing free API users, who have received emails saying that the new pricing plans will take effect within months.

“I don’t know if there’s an academic on the planet who could afford $42,000 a month for Twitter,” says Jeremy Blackburn, assistant professor at Binghamton University in New York and a member of the iDRAMA Lab, which analyzes hate speech on social media—including on Twitter.

Read more details at the link.

I’m going to wrap this up, but I’ll probably post a few more links in the comment thread. I hope you’ll also share your thoughts and your recommended reads.