Witch with her cat familiar, woodcut by Meister Drucke (English School)
Lots of us normal people are still trying to figure out the new GOP Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. He thinks the Bible is a history book, and claims to live by biblical teachings; but he doesn’t seem to believe in many of the ethical values the book recommends, since he supports a twice divorced, twice impeached, four times indicted sexual assaulter for president. He has also announced his support for walking crime wave George Santos. Dakinikat and I have both posted quite a bit of information about Johnson, but there is still much more to learn.
Have you heard about Johnson’s black “adopted” son? Josh Marshall looked for more information about what exactly happened there. From Talking Points Memo: What’s Up With Speaker Mike Johnson’s Black Son?
I had only heard this story in passing until this evening when TPM Reader RS flagged something odd about the story. No African-American son shows up in any of the family photographs on Johnson’s House website or on his personal Facebook page. Nor does Michael figure anywhere in any of Johnson’s campaign biographies.
As I went further down this rabbit hole tonight I was a bit dumbfounded. Is Michael made up? Is he excluded from family pictures? I was so baffled that I went pretty far down that rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.
In response to jeering from spectators at the hearing Johnson departed from his prepared remarks to invoke Michael. “Let me finish … Listen, wait a minute … Many of my colleagues in this committee may not be aware, in addition to our four children at home, my wife and I have a much older son who happens to be African American. We took custody of Michael and made him part of our family 22 years ago when we were just newlyweds and Michael just 14 and out on the streets and on a dangerous path.”
A bit later in his remarks Johnson said, “I asked Michael this weekend what he thinks about the idea of reparations. In a very thoughtful way, he explained his opposition.”
Marshall notes that the black son doesn’t appear in any of Johnsons family photos, so he looked into the timeline to figure out why.
I was able to piece the story together from the introduction to the full video of the 2020 interview and a write up in The Advocate centered on the 2019 reparations hearing. In Johnson’s interview with Walter Isaacson it sounds like he’s talking about two 14 year olds, boys of the same age. But if you listen closely he refers to Michael at that age in the past tense. Michael was 36 in June 2019 and presumably 40 today. Johnson is 51.
This isn’t clear in the clip that’s been circulating. Or at least it wasn’t to me. But Johnson wasn’t being misleading. Because the chronology is explained earlier in the interview.
Johnson said at the hearing that he and his wife “took custody of Michael” around 1997. So the exact relationship with Michael is uncertain and it’s unclear whether the Johnsons ever adopted Michael. It sounds like the relationship may have been more of a fostering relationship and that the Johnsons consider him a son in an informal sense. But again it’s simply not clear.
Something familiar, by Peter de Seve
That can’t be right. That would mean Johnson “adopted” Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 11 years old? Another report I saw said that Johnson adopted Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 25 and Michael was 14.
Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed the public absence of his “adopted” Black son.
Johnson and his wife took custody of a Black teenager, Michael, 24 years ago and raised him as a son.
However, questions were raised when Michael was conspicuously absent from Johnson’s public life, including not appearing in his family portrait on his website.
Johnson’s communications director, Corinne Day, explained Michael’s absence in a statement to Newsweek: “When Speaker Johnson first ran for Congress in 2016, he and his wife, Kelly, spoke to their son Michael — who they took in as newlyweds when Michael was 14 years old.”
“At the time of the Speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own. He asked not to be involved in their new public life. The Speaker has respected that sentiment throughout his career and maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”
Johnson has previously compared their experience to “The Blind Side,” a 2009 movie starring Sandra Bullock, in which a white couple takes in a Black teenager who goes on to become a football star, The New York Times said.
Although raising him as his own, Johnson said he never formally adopted Michael because of the “lengthy adoption process,” per The Times.
OK, so he isn’t actually an adopted son. Read more at the Insider link.
The Love Potion, by Evelyn De Morgan
We haven’t heard much about Speaker Johnson’s wife Kelly, and she has reportedly been erasing information about her from social media. The couple have also deleted their past podcasts, but some alert folks have saved copies.
The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.
Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.
“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.
More on Kelly’s activities:
Kelly Johnson features the couple’s podcast on the website of her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website also includes a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the corporate bylaws for the company ― and embraces a number of socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and women’s reproductive rights.
The agreement states that Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other. It puts being gay, bisexual or transgender in the same category as someone who has sex with animals or family members, calling all of these examples of “sexual immorality.”
“We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,” says the eight-page business document.
This agreement also refers to “pre-born babies” and says the company is committed to defending and protecting all human life, “from conception through natural death.”
I wonder if that includes opposing capital punishment?
Much of the media has regarded Mike Johnson’s two-day-old speakership as something of an accident of history.
But the record shows Johnson’s ascent was no accident. It was the culmination of a deliberate series of moves aimed at positioning himself for greater power.
Since Johnson’s first run for Congress, the now four-term Louisianan has always ensured he is in line ideologically with the most conservative faction of the House GOP — without going to their tactical extremes.
That ultimately made him a palatable choice to fellow Republicans, who unanimously elected him speaker Wednesday after 22 fractious days on Capitol Hill.
Johnson was still a first-term state lawmaker when a vacancy opened in the northwest Louisiana House district then held by GOP Rep. John Fleming, a charter member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Fleming was among several Republicans who jumped into the race to succeed retiring Sen. David Vitter, and Johnson moved decisively to pick up Fleming’s baton.
Johnson ran with the Freedom Caucus imprimatur and a six-figure donation from its PAC, as well as backing from Citizens United and the Club for Growth — giving him a crucial leg up over the four other Republicans in the race.
But once sworn in, Johnson made an unexpected pivot: He frequently attended Freedom Caucus meetings but never actually joined the group. This was at a moment when it was solidifying its reputation as a thorn in leadership’s side, helping to complicate the ultimately failed effort to push health care legislation and other parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House.
Johnson instead set his sights on a different perch: leading the Republican Study Committee, the sprawling conservative policy group that counted the majority of the GOP conference among its members.
Ahead of his second term, Johnson took on Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a veteran pol who had served a decade in Congress and spent 25 years in California state politics before that. Johnson leapt into the race early, and where McClintock was openly critical of Freedom Caucus tactics, Johnson was more accommodating, suggesting that the two groups could work in tandem.
After Johnson won, McClintock told Roll Call, “The fact of the matter is he completely out campaigned me during the recess.”
Johnson comes across as wimpy, but he’s obviously very ambitious. There’s more at the link.
The Biden administration hit back Friday on Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent comments that placed blame for mass shootings in the United States on Americans’ “hearts,” calling the remarks “offensive.”
In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the administration “absolutely” rejected “the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans’ ‘hearts.’”
Old Witch and Familiar
“Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry’s lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans,” Bates added.
The comments from Bates marks the first tiff between the newly elected Republican speaker and the Biden administration. It also serves as a reminder of the vast distance between the two most senior elected leaders of their respective parties, after a few short hours in which they showed a bit of good will toward each other.
On Thursday, Johnson appeared on Fox News, where he was asked about the murder of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine. The Louisiana Republican said it was not the right time to consider legislation and defended the Second Amendment.
“At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Johnson said. “We have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves. That’s the Second Amendment and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
The Biden White House, for its part, has renewed a call for gun legislation after the shooting in Lewiston. And it wasted little time hitting Johnson for standing in the way.
Robert Card, the suspect wanted in connection with Wednesday’s deadly mass shootings at two businesses in Maine, was found dead at a recycling center Friday night.
Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said Saturday morning that Card’s body was found at about 7:45 p.m. Friday inside of a box trailer located in an overflow parking lot for the Maine Recycling Corporation at 61 Capital Ave. in Lisbon.
“This is a tractor-trailer style (trailer). You know, you picture that 18-wheeler, this is what the trailer would look like. A box trailer is where he was located, right in the back of that,” Sauschuck said. “Some of those trailers are locked. Some of those trailers aren’t. He was found inside one of those boxes that was unlocked from the outside.”
Sauschuck confirmed that Card died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sauschuck also said two guns were found inside the trailer with Card’s body, but he did provide any further detail about those firearms. Card appeared to be wearing the same sweatshirt he appeared to be wearing the night of the shootings.
In addition, Sauschuck said Card had been an employee of the Maine Recycling Corporation, but he also noted he did not know whether Card was still an employee of that facility at the time of his death.
Israel doesn’t seem to be listening to President Biden anymore.
Meanwhile, Palestinians last night faced what they said were the most intense round of airstrikes on Gaza since Israel began its retaliatory offensive against Hamas.
Here are the headlines you need to know:
Israeli forces are still in Gaza: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said military operations against Hamas have progressed to “a new phase of war” while Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari confirmed Israeli ground forces had entered the enclave overnight from the north. “The forces are in the field and continue the fighting,” he said, without giving further details. While both statements confirm the military operation has undergone a notable expansion, it does not appear any major ground offensive aimed at seizing and holding significant amounts of territory is yet underway.
Renewed evacuation warnings: The Israeli military reissued a call for residents in northern Gazato evacuate to the south of the crowded enclave, with the statement making reference to a coming IDF operation against Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians have said even those heeding the warnings have been wounded or killed by strikes outside the evacuation zone.
Communications severed: Many are struggling to get in touch with people in Gaza after communications links were badly disrupted by the aerial bombardments overnight. Elon Musk has offered his Starlink satellite service, saying the platform will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.
Gazans shelter and mourn: Health workers, patients and civilians in Gaza spent the night “in darkness and fear,” the World Health Organization said. It added that hospitals were operating at maximum capacity, unable to take new patients while also “sheltering thousands of civilians.” Earlier, residents congregated at a central Gaza hospital to mourn relatives killed overnight. Video captured by CNN showed multiple bodies, including those of children, covered in white shrouds or thick blankets in the hospital yard.
On the ground: Near the Gaza border, staging grounds once teeming with hundreds of Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers had mostly emptied out at the time a CNN team visited. CNN also observed some tank units returning from the direction of Gaza, back to their forward operating positions.
Hostage situation unclear: The Israeli military’s expansion of its ground operation in Gaza has alarmed families of hostages seized during the Hamas attacks. “This night was the most terrible of all nights,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group lobbying for the release of the captives.
The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.
Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.
The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said….
In public, President Biden and his top officials have indicated support for a planned ground offensive if Israel concludes that that is its best move, while adding that they are asking “tough questions” about the idea. The private advice is a significant departure from the administration’s public posture, and it is a distinct shift from the administration’s position in the days immediately after the Hamas attack inside Israel.
Former president Donald Trump on Friday revived a two-week-old controversy over his description of Hezbollah terrorist attackers as “very smart,” posting a column on social media that sought to defend his characterization of the group.
The column Trump shared in full, written by the conservative commentator Jeffrey Lord, argued that the former president was justified in using the broadly condemned characterization — and Lord also called Trump “smart” as well.
President Biden’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee seized on Trump’s latest social media post, with the DNC claiming on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Trump was “once again praising a terrorist organization.”
“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”
At the time, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung defended the former president’s comments, saying Trump “was clearly pointing out how incompetent Biden and his administration were by telegraphing to the terrorists an area that is susceptible to an attack” and added that “smart does not equal good.”
Whatever. If only he would STFU.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
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It’s another rainy weekend in Boston, and I overslept because it was so dark. They were predicting a nor’easter. I don’t know if this qualifies, but it’s very dark and raining hard, with high winds expected later on. This feels like about the 20th rainy weekend in a row here.
Yesterday, House Republicans rejected Jim Jordan as Speaker after he lost more votes on a third ballot. Members then held a secret ballot to see if he should keep trying, and this time he got only 86 votes of the 217 he would need to be elected.
In a shocking turn, Jim Jordan on Friday lost an internal GOP vote that was intended to show confidence in him remaining as his party’s speaker designee.
The Ohio Republican is now no longer his party’s pick to lead the House, a demise sealed by a GOP secret ballot just after his third failed floor vote as a speaker hopeful.
It was an unexpectedly fast end to the Ohio conservative’s candidacy to lead the chaos-ridden Republican conference — and a sign that the flailing party is fed up on its 17th day without a speaker. Lawmakers now plan to leave Washington for the weekend as the next round of ambitious Republicans decide whether to mount their own speaker bids.
But most Republicans acknowledge that even with new faces to consider, they still have no clear path to uniting their splintered conference. They have already rejected two speaker candidates — Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise — as well as former Speaker Kevin McCarthy during this month alone.
McCarthy gave voice to a sentiment that’s growing within the GOP: The party’s inability to run the half of Congress that it narrowly won doesn’t bode well for its broader future.
“I’m concerned about where we go from here,” said McCarthy, who had been backing Jordan. “It’s astonishing to me, and we are in a very bad position as a party.”
Jordan’s loss of the speaker nod from his party came as something of a surprise, since he had sought the internal vote with allies preparing to cite it as a show of continued support for his candidacy. Instead, the secret ballot revealed that while Jordan’s public opposition never topped 25 votes, scores more House Republicans wanted to see him out of the race.
The next race to replace him is expected to get crowded, even as Congress faces no shortage of pressing business that it’s unable to conduct while the House stays shut. At the top of that list: a government shutdown deadline that’s less than a month away and a $100 million-plus emergency funding request from the Biden administration, encompassing aid to both Israel and Ukraine.
I don’t know why Politico didn’t expect this. It had become clear that semi-normal Republicans weren’t responding well to being bombarded with death threats by MAGA Jordan supporters.
There is still no end in sight for the high-stakes speakership battle after House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two weeks ago.
The search is on for a new GOP speaker nominee after Rep. Jim Jordan on Friday became the latest exit from the race, and it’s already shaping up to be a crowded candidate field.
It will be our secret, by Margaryta Yermolayevay
Frustrations and divisions have only intensified within the conference as Republicans search for a way to resolve the impasse. That, along with the GOP’s narrow majority, has made it increasingly unclear whether any candidate will be able to secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor.
The House, meanwhile, remains in a state of paralysis as Republicans struggle to coalesce around a speaker candidate, with the chamber effectively frozen amid the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolding abroad.
House Republicans are expected to hold a candidate forum Monday evening and more candidates are likely to throw their names into the running before then….
Here are some of the candidates now vying to become the next GOP speaker nominee:
Rep. Tom Emmer, who serves as majority whip, said in a letter to his colleagues shared on Saturday that he was seeking the speakership with the goal of delivering “historic change.”McCarthy is backing Emmer for speaker, sources tell CNN, delivering an early boost for his candidacy.
Rep. Kevin Hern told CNN on Friday that “yes” he plans to run for speaker. When asked how he plans to get 217 votes, Hern said he’ll work “hard” to get people on his side.
Rep. Jack Bergman is running for the speaker role, his spokesman told CNN.
Rep. Austin Scott, who launched a last-minute bid against Jordan last week, but quickly dropped out and then supported Jordan, is now running for speaker again now that the field is wide open, his spokesperson told CNN.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Freedom Caucus member, announced on X that he’s seeking the speakership to advance a “conservative vision for the House of Representatives and the American people.”
Rep. Mike Johnson, the House Republican conference vice chairman, also announced a run for speaker in a letter to his Republican colleagues Saturday, saying “after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”
Meanwhile, in the midst of this Republican chaos, the first thing I saw this morning–at the top of the Memeorandum news feed–was this opinion piece by a Republican named Douglas MacKinnon, who argues that both Biden and Harris should step down. LOL!
Playtime is over. We have to put the toys away and have the adults in the room re-exert their authority.
It’s one thing when the issues of the day are identity politics; “green” energy; organized looting; cashless bail; Trump’s legal exposure; political corruption; or who’s really in charge of the border, when having a president and vice president in power who even countless Democrats no longer have faith in. It’s quite another when the world is teetering on the edge of massive violent conflict or outright nuclear war and that leadership looks demonstrably lost and feeble.
Beware of magic cats, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The barbaric attack by Hamas upon men, women and children in Israel, coupled with the war in Ukraine inching us ever closer to a nuclear conflict, should serve as stark reminders that real and resolute leadership does matter and is needed before it is too late.
Unfortunately, history reminds us that it is not uncommon for presidents — or vice presidents — to find themselves in untenable or overwhelming positions in which they can no longer cope or effectively govern. They often can’t see the proper course forward because they are either standing too close to the problem or are shielded from the negative fallout by overprotective aides or a partisan media.
Such a case came during the summer of 1974. It was becoming obvious to all that the Watergate break-in and the subsequent widespread coverup had politically and legally ensnared President Richard Nixon in a trap from which there was no viable escape.
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently nee
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently needed.
We all know the story, which is not at all analogous to anything happening with Biden/Harris. Who are these “adults” that MacKinnon refers to?
We need Biden — and Harris — to rise above that nonsense while turning the eyes of our nation toward the true threats that could destroy us. We need a president who is actually “presidential.”
We need a Thomas Jefferson, an Abraham Lincoln, a John F. Kennedy, or a Bill Clinton. This is not a partisan point. It is one about mutual survival….
I can’t find a Democrat I know who wants either one on the ticket for 2024. Be it for age reasons; cognitive-health concerns; potential Hunter Biden corruption issues; plain competency fears; or record-low polling numbers, a second act of Biden-Harris comes across as political kryptonite for many Democrats hoping to retain the White House in 2024….
That stated, where are the “adult in the room” Democratic powerbrokers willing to emulate the 1974 Republicans and travel down to the White House to tell Biden and Harris that they are “in over their heads” and that their “time has come and gone”?
MacKinnon would do better to ask where the Republican “adults” are.
This weird perception of Biden is so mysterious to me. He has just traveled all over the world and returned to give an oval office speech last night. He doesn’t seem tired or confused to me.
With viewing taking place across 10 networks, President Biden‘s Thursday night address from the oval office has reached a total audience of 20.326 million total viewers, according to Live+Same Day figures from Nielsen.
First trick or treat, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
Coverage of the 15-minute speech lasted from approximately 8 pm to 8:22 pm ET, varying by network with nearly 65% of the 20.3 million viewers tuning in to the president’s speech on broadcast networks, Nielsen reports. 35% of the audience watched on cable networks. People ages 55 and up make up the majority of the audience at 15.94 million and averaged an audience rating of 15.7. Notably, the adults 18-34 key demo made up only 4% of the Thursday night audience.
Biden addressed the nation on the U.S.’s response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, telling his constituents why it’s necessary to show continued support for America’s partners in Israel and Ukraine.
“The security package I’m asking congress to do is an unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen their qualitative military edge which we’ve committed to,” Biden said. “At the same time, President Netanyahu and I discussed the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat. The people of Gaza urgently need food, water, and medicine. Yesterday, in discussions with the leaders of Israel and Egypt, I secured an agreement for the first shipment of humanitarian assistance from the United Nations to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
“As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution,” the President said.
President Joe Biden’s task, as he looked America in the eye from the Oval Office, was to explain why a nation wearied by its own foreign quagmires and political estrangements should send $100 billion to help other people fight their wars.
His answer was that Israel and Ukraine were fighting existential struggles and that their wars were not just their own but were critical to the security of each American watching his primetime speech on Thursday.
But the most profound takeaway from what was only his second Oval Office address was this: While Biden scheduled the appearance to discuss two nations fighting for their survival against outside attack, his real topic was America itself – and perceived threats to its foundational values in a volatile political age.
He implored his country to honor the global role that has cemented a stable world order since World War II and to reject the appeasement of terrorists and tyrants. And in remarks that foreshadowed a reelection bid that will help decide the character of America and its place in the world for years to come, he sought to inspire it to reject intolerance as bitter politics rage at home.
Biden delivered his speech hours after returning from Israel and meeting victims of the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,400 civilians, and months after his daring trip to another war zone in Ukraine. Even as he spoke, the first signs of an expected Israeli incursion into Gaza began to unfold, suggesting a crisis he sought to contain with his trip on Wednesday is about to get far worse.
“I know these conflicts can seem far away, and it’s natural to ask – why does this matter to America?” Biden said. “So let me share with you why making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America’s national security.”
The president beseeched Americans to understand that if the “pure unadulterated evil” of Hamas and the attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to “erase” Ukraine’s independence prevailed, terrorism emanating from the Middle East would threaten Americans again and Russia would imperil global peace.
Biden’s address is likely to be seen by historians as a signature moment in his presidency because of the messages he sent to American allies and foes abroad and how he sketched his vision for his own deeply divided nation.
President Joe Biden said that Hamas’ attacks on Israel were intended in part to scuttle the potential normalization of the U.S. ally’s relations with Saudi Arabia.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden said at a campaign event Friday night, according to pool reports. “Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel,” the president added.
Less than a month ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also expressed optimism about the potential detente, telling Biden that a “historic peace” between the two countries seemed attainable.
Invitation, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The normalization push began under former President Donald Trump’s administration and was branded as the Abraham Accords.
But Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and sustained retaliation from the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza have pushed the possibility of normalization between Israel and neighboring Arab countries farther from reach.
On Saturday, the first 20 trucks carrying about 3,000 tons of aid passed through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Saturday, bringing humanitarian assistance to Gazans, who have been rationing food and water and relying on dwindling medical supplies amid the barrage of Israeli airstrikes.
In his speech at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser, Biden emphasized his administration’s commitment to supporting the longevity of the Israeli state.
“I am convinced with every fiber of my being: If there were no Israel, there’s not a Jew safe in the world — not in the entire world … including the United States,” Biden said.
Likening the conflict to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as he did in his Oval Office speech Thursday night, Biden underscored America’s role in providing aid to both allies, once more invoking former secretary of state Madeleine Albright in calling the U.S. the “essential nation.”
The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.
“This is a global phenomenon,” said the assessment. “Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective.”
A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Russia was encouraged to intensify its election influence operations by its success in amplifying disinformation about the 2020 U.S. election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Success breeds more, and we definitely see the U.S. elections as a catalyst,” the official said.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The release of the assessment comes amid serious tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow’s war against Ukraine and a raft of other issues.
The assessment was sent in a State Department cable dated Wednesday to more than 100 U.S. embassies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa for distribution to their host governments, he said.
Washington was privately briefing recipient governments and shared the assessment “to get ahead of elections that are over the horizon over the next year,” the official said.
The report represents Washington’s latest move to combat what it says are Moscow’s efforts “to sow instability” in democratic countries by portraying elections as “dysfunctional, and resulting governments as illegitimate.”
Washington “recognizes its own vulnerability to this threat,” said the report, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies found that “Russian actors spread and amplified information to undermine public confidence in the U.S. 2020 election.”
Finally, here are a few interesting stories about Trump’s many problems.
Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The witch is coming, by Margaryta Yerrmolayeva
The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
The pleas are a stark display of the reality that the Georgia case against Trump and his co-defendants is getting stronger. While Trump has vowed to fight until the bitter end, these newly inked plea deals force his co-defendants to confront the same difficult choice: cut a deal or roll the dice at trial.
or two prominent Trump co-defendants – Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro – the looming five-month trial, potentially resulting in a yearslong prison sentence, appears to have spurred them into flipping.
Their decisions to transform from Trump diehards to key witness against him have likely shattered any sense of invincibility that the former president or others charged may be feeling – perhaps for the first time.
What can these two testify about?
Chesebro directly implicated Trump in a criminal conspiracy, and his plea establishes for the first time that the fake electors plot was illegal. Notably, Chesebro has now admitted that “the purpose” of the fake electors conspiracy was to “disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” which is a key element of the federal charges Trump is facing.
As part of the plea, Chesebro established that the fake electors plot was part of “an attempt… to violate” the US Constitution and federal law, by subverting the Electoral College proceedings. This dovetails with the allegations against Trump in Smith’s federal indictment.
On Thursday, former Trump campaign lawyer Powell pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a separate, but complementary, effort to interfere with the 2020 election by breaching Georgia voting systems.
While Powell’s guilty plea only covers charges related to the breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, her deal with prosecutors opens the door for testimony about first-hand interactions with Trump and other key co-defendants.
For example, if called to the stand in a future trial, Powell could face questions about White House meetings she attended where Trump considered taking extreme steps to overturn the 2020 results, like ordering the Pentagon to seize voting machines.
After a mini-saga in the classified documents case against Donald Trump, both of the former president’s co-defendants have waived concerns that their attorneys have represented witnesses in the case.
During Friday’s hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida, Trump’s personal aide Walt Nauta told federal Judge Aileen Cannon he had no concerns that his attorney, Stanley Woodward, has represented several witnesses in the case.
Moonlight Tea, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
“I still choose Mr. Woodward as my lawyer,” Nauta told the judge after she went through the potential conflicts in detail.
Last week, Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, also waived potential conflict of interest concerns raised by prosecutors who noted that his attorney also represented witnesses in the case, too.
Woodward and prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith have gone back and forth in court filings and before Cannon over the potential conflicts. In court Friday, Woodward agreed that he would not cross-examine witnesses he has represented or is currently representing.
One of those witnesses, Yuscil Taveras – an IT director at Mar-a-Lago – cut an agreement with prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation in the case after switching attorneys from Woodward.
Nauta is completely screwed. He’s going to prison unless Judge Cannon somehow protects him. I wonder if he knows that?
In a double serving of what could arguably be described as doses of one’s own medicine, special counsel Jack Smith plucked apart Donald Trump‘s latest efforts to throw out criminal conspiracy charges against him in Washington, D.C., by citing two arguments the former president would seem hard pressed to deny — one from the U.S. Supreme Court justice he appointed, Brett Kavanaugh, and the other from Trump’s own mouth when he was impeached for the second time.
The pointed response from federal prosecutors is found in a 52-page filing directed at Trump’s early October motion when he urged U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the election subversion indictment against him on the grounds that as former president, he held “absolute presidential immunity” from prosecution.
While Trump argued his public proclamations of rampant voter fraud and efforts to advance slates of false electors, among other things, fell squarely within the parameters of his duties as president, special counsel argued those schemes were largely rooted in “fraud,” “conspiracy,” “exploitation” and “deceit.”
Discussion of the nature of the crimes themselves aside, Smith contends that an inability to prosecute a former president for his crimes alleged or otherwise as Trump would have it is antithetical to the very premise of the office of the presidency, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and longstanding legal precedent on similarly aligned subjects throughout years of case law.
“Indeed no sound policy supports granting a former president blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for a time he or she served as president,” Smith wrote.
Fox News was essential to Donald Trump’s success in both of his last presidential runs. Now, as the former president navigates another campaign through a tidal wave of indictments and legal problems, he’s facing a much frostier relationship with the cable giant—and that could be bad news for both of them.
Jokers, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
In recent months, Trump’s inner circle has become convinced that Fox News is essentially sidelining the former president by restricting live appearances on the network.
“Trump is not allowed live on Fox,” a Trump operative told The Daily Beast, chalking it up to “fear” that Trump could level a baseless allegation that could leave the network in a legal mess.
A Trump adviser told The Daily Beast a similar story—that the former president isn’t allowed live on air anymore, and that Fox News prefers to have Trump in a pre-recorded setting.
“Fox sent down word from the top that they don’t want to ‘platform’ Trump like they did before,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “I find it hilarious. For one, it sounds like something MSNBC would do.”
After a lengthy hiatus last year, Trump re-emerged on Fox News in March, but in a diminished capacity in a string of interviews with Fox hosts and anchors including Sean Hannity, Bret Baier, and Larry Kudlow. Gone are the days when Trump could simply call in live and share his stream of consciousness.
According to a search by The Daily Beast and Media Matters for America, Trump last phoned in live to a Fox News program in April of 2022. And Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, told The Daily Beast the live freeze-out is no accident.
“Fox News’ record defamation settlement stemmed in part from its on-air Trump fanatics refusing to correct their guests’ election-denial conspiracy theories live, even when they knew their claims were lies,” Gertz said. “It’s wildly implausible to imagine the likes of Sean Hannity pushing back on Trump’s rigged-election fantasies, so it looks like Fox’s lawyers may have engineered a solution that doesn’t require its propagandists to perform journalism.”
One Trump confidant contrasted the apparent ban on Trump’s live appearances to earlier Fox News coverage, when they “used to go live at every single one of his rallies!”
As Trump would say, “Sad.”
So . . . that’s all the news I have for today. What stories have you been following?
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Cats can be mysterious creatures to begin with, but their ability to purr has long perplexed scientists. How can so small an animal make such a deep sound?
Now, scientists may be one step closer to solving this perplexing pet puzzle. Cats, they say, have pads within their vocal cords that may help produce the low-frequency vocalizations involved in purring, according to a new paper published last week in the journal Current Biology.
Big animals, like elephants, have longer vocal cords than smaller animals do, which allows them to produce lower sounds. The same rule applies to musical instruments: A large double bass can produce lower notes than a small violin does, for example.
“Typically, the larger the animal, the longer the vocal folds and so the lower the frequency of sound created,” says study co-author Christian Herbst, a voice scientist at the University of Vienna, to New Scientist’s Jason Arunn Murugesu.
But domestic cats, with their relatively short vocal cords, seem to be an exception to this rule. Though they typically weigh around ten pounds, when purring, they can make low-frequency rumbles between 20 and 30 hertz—lower than the lowest bass sounds made with the average human voice.
To explain this phenomenon, researchers studied eight domestic cats that had already been euthanized because of terminal illness. With the cat owners’ consent, the scientists removed the animals’ larynges from their bodies, then pushed warm air through them to simulate feline vocalizations.
With this method, the researchers were able to produce purring sounds at frequencies between 25 and 30 hertz—without any input from the cat’s brain, and without any muscle contractions. The vocal cords vibrated in a way that resembled “vocal fry” in humans, or the creaky, low register sound some people make when speaking.
Other vertebrates produce sounds in a similar way—via a passive process known as flow-induced self-sustained oscillation. When this occurs, the brain sends a signal to the vocal cords that causes them to press together. As air flows through the vocal cords, they begin to vibrate—and from here, physiology takes over, and the brain is no longer involved….
The researchers analyzed the deceased cats’ vocal cords and found masses of tissue embedded within them that they theorize might be the key to purring. These structures, which they termed “pads,” might slow down the vocal cords’ vibrations by making them denser, enabling the animals to make lower-frequency sounds in spite of their diminutive size.
Interesting, huh?
In people news, longtime GOP strategist and author Kevin Phillips has died.
“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”
That insight was the brainchild of Kevin Phillips, the longtime political analyst who passed away this week at 82 years old. Phillips’s 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” provided the blueprint for the “southern strategy” that the Republican Party adopted for decades to win over White voters who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.
Phillips advised Republicans to exploit the racial anxieties of White voters, linking them directly to issues such as crime, federal spending and voting rights. The strategy, beginning with Richard M. Nixon’s landslide victory in the 1972 presidential race, helped produce GOP majorities for decades.
To the witch’s house we go, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
Though Phillips later reconsidered his fealty to the GOP, updated versions of the “southern strategy” live on in today’s Republican Party, shaping the political world we inhabit today. So I asked historians and political theorists to weigh in on Phillips’s legacy. Their responses have been edited for style and brevity.
Kevin Kruse, historian at Princeton University and co-editor of “Myth America”: Kevin Phillips was a prophet of today’s polarization. He drew a blueprint for a major realignment of American politics that is still with us. For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the national scene, because of the reliable support of the “Solid South.”
But the “Negro problem” of the 1960s, Phillips argued, presented Republicans an opportunity to take the South and Southwest, too, a new region he anointed “the Sun Belt.” All they had to do was appeal to the hatreds of White voters there, through racially coded “law and order” appeals.
Phillips, of course, proved correct about the regional realignment. Republicans won every single state in the South in the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Today, Republicans dominate the region partly because they still employ Phillips’s polarizing politics of resentment and reaction, from complaints about Black Lives Matter to panics about “woke” education. Donald Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP shows that the underlying instinct to exploit division and inflame hatred remains.
Read the rest, including more quotes by experts, at The WaPo.
House Republicans are still in chaos. Yesterday, one of the craziest House reps, George Santos, had an insane freakout in the midst of the Speaker fight.
We’ve all had an extremely long week, as you’re likely aware. On Friday afternoon, George Santos, the New York representative whose tally of alleged federal crimes is now up to 23, was spotted screaming in the hallway of the Longworth House Office Building. It appears Santos — who famously suggested his family was Jewish then revised this to “Jew-ish” — was accosted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Normally, neither a small protest on Capitol Hill nor George Santos shouting in front of a gaggle of reporters would be all that notable. But there’s the twist: Santos was holding a 2-month-old baby when this all went down….
You probably have a lot of questions right now, as do I. Hartmann doesn’t have any answers. She posted some tweets, but WordPress won’t let me do that anymore. You can read them at NY Mag.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) had a complete meltdown on Friday afternoon during a tense interaction on Capitol Hill that ended with a man in police custody—and somehow involved a baby.
According to a clip shared by NBC News’ Sahil Kapur, Santos called the man, identified by cops as Shabd Khalsa, “human scum” for asking him questions critical of Israel’s bombings in Gaza….
“You came into my personal space yelling at me,” Santos fumed. “What are you doing about terrorists destroying Israel?” He then sped down a hallway in the Capitol’s Longworth Building, screaming statements condemning Hamas….
Capitol Police said in a statement to The Daily Beast that 36-year-old Khalsa was arrested and charged him with simple assault “after an officer witnessed him have physical contact with a congressional staffer in the Longworth Building.” The staffer was not identified.
A profile on X under the name Shabd Singh, the same name Khalsa gave to reporters, says that he is a former campaign organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).
He told The Hill that he was Jewish-American and that Santos, who was previously busted falsely claiming to be Jewish, “began yelling at me, essentially framing what I am saying as some sort of antisemitic trope.”
Still no information about the baby. If you’ve heard anything about the origins of the child or what Santos was doing with him/her, please let us know.
As Daknikat wrote yesterday, Insurrectionist Jim Jordon is currently the leading candidate for House Speaker, but he doesn’t yet have the votes to be election, thank goodness.
After a series of setbacks, Republicans ended the week no closer to electing a new speaker as deep internal divisions have left the conference struggling to govern and the House in a state of paralysis.
The chaos within House GOP ranks intensified dramatically over the past several days as the conference has tried and so far failed to find a viable successor to Kevin McCarthy following his unprecedented ouster at the hands of a small faction of hardline conservatives.
Black Cat Halloween, by Iva Wilcox
Rep. Jim Jordan is the new GOP speaker nominee following Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s exit from the race. But the Ohio Republican faces the same kind of grim vote math that doomed Scalise’s speaker bid as Jordan lacks the 217 votes needed to win the gavel in a full House floor vote.
Jordan has the weekend to continue to make his case and attempt to flip holdouts, but he faces a steep uphill battle.
The GOP conference faced whiplash this week after Scalise won an initial vote to become speaker nominee, only to drop out not long after as a result of entrenched opposition to his candidacy. The week ended with another vote, this time to make Jordan the new nominee. But it soon became clear that Jordan also faces a stiff wall of resistance.
The House remains effectively frozen as long as there is no speaker, a dire situation that comes as Congress faces a fast-approaching government funding deadline in mid-November and as crisis unfolds abroad in Ukraine and with Israel’s war against Hamas.
Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju how the entire episode reflects on the GOP, McCarthy said on Friday, “it’s terrible.”
Centrists are signaling they’re open to a deal. Democrats are outlining terms. With no speaker in sight yet, House Republicans are ramping up their discussions about a way to reopen the chamber.
A bipartisan solution to the GOP’s leadership chaos still sounds farfetched to most on the Hill — but then, so does the idea that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) might overcome his dozens of skeptics and win a floor vote early next week.
There’s just one problem with the idea that a temporary compromise could get the House back to legislative business: It has the same issue that plagued the speakership bids of Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise and now Jordan. Right now, no solution has the near-unanimous House Republican support that’s required to pass on the floor.
Which means that, unless Jordan can overcome his skeptics and push to victory on the floor in the next several days, the only way forward might be with Democrats. A group of centrist Democrats wrote to Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) on Friday to propose a limited agenda and some perks for the opposing party in exchange for temporarily restarting House business during a time of global crisis.
Some self-described GOP pragmatists have suggested that if Republicans can’t chart a course on their own, they could cut a deal with Democrats to break the 10-day impasse.
“At some point we have to do a bipartisan deal. I mean, they don’t want to acknowledge it, but these guys do not want to govern,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said of his own party’s conservatives.
But as desperation creeps into the GOP while Jordan pushes to lock down the gavel, it’s clear that any attempt to further empower a caretaker speaker would fall short within their own party. McHenry has indicated that his future role as acting speaker is up to his colleagues to settle — even as the Nov. 17 shutdown deadline draws closer and Israel seeks U.S. aid — but his fellow Republicans simply can’t agree on anything.
Read more at the link above.
I suppose I have to include some news from the war between Israel and Hamas. (BTW, is it just me, or has the Ukraine war completely disappeared from the media?)
A blast has struck a convoy on an evacuation route in Gaza, killing a number of people including several children, after a stark deadline ahead of a possible Israeli ground assault.
The IDF told civilians in and around Gaza City Friday that they must move south to avoid being caught up in Israeli military operations and announced a six-hour evacuation window on Saturday.
Black Cat at Halloween, by Daniel Eskridge
Israel has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, and continued bombarding the densely populated territory in response to the deadly October 7 attacks by the Islamist militant group, Hamas.
Videos authenticated by CNN showed a scene of extensive destruction following Friday’s blast on Salah Al-Deen street. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. There are also a number of badly burned and damaged cars.
It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.
Even before the evacuation warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had already been internally displaced by the past week of fighting as conditions worsen inside the bombarded strip.
But the evacuation statement and the prospect of a potential incursion have been sharply criticized by rights groups, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head, who warned that such a move could bring “catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”
As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” the Israeli president claimed, “No, I didn’t say that.”
But he then stated: “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”
At another point in the press conference, Herzog presented a different perspective, saying, “Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to this — but unfortunately in their homes, there are missiles shooting at us, at my children.”
Ghost Cat, by Neocale at Deviant Art
Herzog’s comments follow Israel’s announcement that it had directed the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate, likely ahead of a ground invasion. Israel dropped thousands of flyers over northern Gaza and left voice messages on Friday directing people to leave their homes and flee south.
Human rights groups and the United Nations denounced the evacuation order.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said in a statement. “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
“Ordering a million people in Gaza to evacuate, when there’s no safe place to go, is not an effective warning,” Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor to Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “World leaders should speak up now before it is too late, he added.
Documents exclusively obtained by NBC News show that Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.
The attack plans, which are labeled “top secret” in Arabic, appear to be orders for two highly trained Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gather. Israeli authorities are still determining the death toll in Kfar Sa’ad.
The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with NBC News. They include detailed maps and show that Hamas intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.
One page labeled “Top Secret” outlines a plan of attack for Kfar Sa’ad, saying “Combat unit 1” is directed to “contain the new Da’at school,” while “Combat unit 2” is to “collect hostages,” “search the Bnei Akiva youth center” and “search the old Da’at school.”
Another page labeled “Top Secret Maneuver” describes a plan for a Hamas unit to secure the east side of Kfar Sa’ad while a second unit controls the west. It says “kills as many as possible” and “capture hostages.” Other orders include surrounding a dining hall and holding hostages in it.
The detailed plan to attack Kfar Sa’ad is part of a trove of documents that Israeli officials are analyzing, according to one source in the Israeli army and one in the government. Surveillance video of Hamas terrorists entering a kibbutz on Oct. 7 shows tactics similar to those laid out in the documents obtained by NBC News.
The Israeli officials said that the wider group of documents show that Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children.
The judge presiding over the upcoming damages trial against Rudy Giuliani said Friday she will tell jurors that the former Trump lawyer intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders.
Vlad Vampire Cat, by Carrie Hawks
In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the move was necessary given “Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets” and other pertinent information.
That means jurors deciding how much Giuliani should pay two Georgia election workers he defamed will be told they can assume the worst about why the former New York City mayor has failed to turn over the court-ordered records.
“The jury will be instructed that it must, when determining an appropriate sum of compensatory, presumed, and punitive damages, infer that defendant Giuliani was intentionally trying to hide relevant discovery about the Giuliani Businesses’ finances for the purpose of shielding his assets from discovery and artificially deflating his net worth,” the judge wrote.
Additionally, Giuliani and his lawyer will be prohibited “from making any argument, or introducing any evidence, stating or suggesting that he is insolvent, bankrupt, judgment proof, or otherwise unable to defend himself” since he failed to hand over evidence that would show that’s true, the judge wrote.
You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline “Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”
Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks, a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.
Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about Covid-19 since January 2020, when New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about this.”
This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).
As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and
urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the sinking of the Titanic.
Read the rest at The Nation. The gist is that Covid-19 is still out there and still dangerous. Pretending it’s not won’t help us.
That’s my contribution for today. What do you think? What other stories have caught your interest?
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It has been another busy week in politics, with Trump’s businesses on trial in New York as well as new evidence that Trump shared top secret information with foreign nationals; the House of Representatives in chaos without a speaker; a violent attack by Hamas on Israel overnight; and other odds and ends. Let’s get started.
The story getting the most attention today is the attack on Israel.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are running live updates.
The Israeli prime minister ordered a call-up of reservists after Palestinian militants fired thousands of rockets and invaded several Israeli towns. More than 250 people have been killed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Israel battled on Saturday to repel one of the broadest invasions of its territory in 50 years after Palestinian militants from Gaza launched an enormous and coordinated early-morning assault on southern Israel, infiltrating several Israeli towns and army bases, kidnapping Israeli civilians and soldiers, and firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.
By early evening, the Israeli military said fighting continued in at least five places in southern Israel, around 70 Israelis had been reported dead by emergency medical groups, and Israel had retaliated with huge strikes on Gazan cities. At least 198 Palestinians were killed in either gun battles or airstrikes, the Gazan Health Ministry said….
At least 100 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian militant assault began on Saturday morning, said Zaki Heller, a spokesman for the Magen David Adom emergency service. The number is expected to continue to rise in the coming hours and days.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday “we are at war, and we will win it” after the Islamist militia Hamas launched an assault and took captives following the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The confrontation, which has killed at least 40 Israelis and injured at least 740, is one of the most serious in years after weeks of rising tensions along the volatile border. Israeli air force strikes killed nearly 200 people on the Gaza Strip and injured 1,600, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Israeli authorities said that an unknown number of Israeli civilians, soldiers and commanders have been taken captive by Hamas….
Autumn Cat, by Tatiana Feoktistova
Israel ordered residents in areas around Gaza to remain inside after militants infiltrated Israeli territory — including by paraglider and by sea — and launched more than 3,000 rockets, the Israel Defense Forces said. The Israeli air force began striking targets late Saturday morning, the military said, adding that gun battles were taking place in Israeli areas near the border.
U.S. officials including President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and numerous members of Congress condemned the attacks on Israel. Biden described the attacks as “appalling” and said he offered Netanyahu “rock-solid and unwavering” support.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. stands squarely by Israel and will ensure it “has what it needs to defend itself” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war against Palestinian militants that launched a surprise attack on his country.
Austin said in a statement he was “closely monitoring developments in Israel” and extended his condolences to families of the victims who lost their lives in the Saturday attack.
“Our commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself remains unwavering,” Austin said. “Over the coming days the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism.”
The U.S. is one of Israel’s staunchest allies and has provided around $3.8 billion a year to the country.
The chaos-ridden, speaker-less House is threatening to stymie a host of bipartisan legislative efforts across the Capitol — and senators are getting really tired of it.
Forget the expectations earlier this year of achieving even modest policy reforms, or passing spending bills under so-called “regular order.” Senators will consider themselves lucky to escape the calendar year without a catastrophe. Among the possibilities: a shutdown and a crush of blown deadlines on expiring legislation addressing aviation law, surveillance authority and flood insurance.
Possibly, the best case is lurching from crisis to crisis until the presidential election.
“It’s hard to pass legislation and send it to the president when one House is not able to function,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of the prognosis for the months ahead, one of several senators interviewed who implied the legislative calendar is looking bleak.
One of the frontrunners for House speaker, Jim Jordan of Ohio, didn’t even support the stopgap spending bill that avoided a shutdown. And he opposes new aid for Ukraine — the two biggest priorities among Senate Democrats and at least half of the Senate Republicans.
What’s more, with no speaker and no clear candidate who has the votes to wrap up an election quickly, there’s no one currently empowered to negotiate with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House on behalf of the only Republican-controlled lever of the federal government.
“Only a new speaker [can negotiate], if they’re willing to do that,” echoed Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a former House member. “Somebody has to face the reality.”
The Senate’s challenges for the next few months are tough to square with the disorderly state of the House GOP majority. Aviation law, surveillance authority and flood insurance all expire later this year. That’s not to mention modest Senate policy priorities that bipartisan gangs are coalescing around.
Staunch conservative Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is in the spotlight after launching a bid for the speaker’s gavel this week, a race that is sure to provide even more drama and chaos than the unprecedented ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
But one critical aspect of Jordan’s history that has been omitted by most Beltway publications is the prominent role he played in spreading lies about the 2020 election and rallying supporters to contest the results. The extraordinary effort led by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Jordan’s bid for speaker, led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who co-chaired the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the insurrection, said in a speech at the University of Minnesota this week.
“Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election,” she added.
Jordan, who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee, refused to cooperate with the select committee regarding his communications with Trump as the attack was occurring, defying subpoenas for testimony.
Cat in autumn, unknown illustrator
Trump spoke on the phone with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of Jan. 6. Jordan has never divulged the nature of the conversation, saying only that he had spoken to Trump “a number of times” that day.
Jordan also phoned then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows while the attack was underway, according to former Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
“They had a brief conversation,” Hutchinson told the committee. “In crossfire, I heard briefly what they were talking about. I heard conversations in the Oval [Office] dining room at that point talking about the ‘Hang Mike Pence’ chants.”
Jordan also sent a text to Meadows on Jan. 5 outlining a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, had the authority to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
In recent days, Democrats have tried to show our colleagues in the Republican majority a way out of the dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House. That path to a better place is still there for the taking.
Over the past several weeks, when it appeared likely that a motion to vacate the office of speaker was forthcoming, House Democrats repeatedly raised the issue of entering into a bipartisan governing coalition with our Republican counterparts, publicly as well as privately.
It was my sincere hope that House Democrats and more traditional Republicans would be able to reach an enlightened arrangement to end the chaos in the House, allowing us to work together to make life better for everyday Americans while protecting national security.
Regrettably, at every turn, House Republicans have categorically rejected making changes to the rules designed to accomplish two objectives: encourage bipartisan governance and undermine the ability of extremists to hold Congress hostage. Indeed, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) publicly declared more than five hours before the motion to vacate was brought up for a vote that he would not work with House Democrats as a bipartisan coalition partner. That declaration mirrored the posture taken by House Republicans in the weeks leading up to the motion-to-vacate vote. It also ended the possibility of changing the House rules to facilitate a bipartisan governance structure.
Things further deteriorated from there. Less than two hours after the speakership was vacated upon a motion brought by a member of the GOP conference, House Republicans ordered Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former majority leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) to “vacate” their hideaway offices in the Capitol. The decision to strip Speaker Emerita Pelosi and Leader Hoyer of office space was petty, partisan and petulant.
“A different path?”
House Republicans have lashed out at historic public servants and tried to shift blame for the failed Republican strategy of appeasement. But what if they pursued a different path and confronted the extremism that has spread unchecked on the Republican side of the aisle? When that step has been taken in good faith, we can proceed together to reform the rules of the House in a manner that permits us to govern in a pragmatic fashion.
By Lorelai ArtsyPartsy
The details would be subject to negotiation, though the principles are no secret: The House should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support. Under the current procedural landscape, a small handful of extreme members on the Rules Committee or in the House Republican conference can prevent common-sense legislation from ever seeing the light of day. That must change — perhaps in a manner consistent with bipartisan recommendations from the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.
In short, the rules of the House should reflect the inescapable reality that Republicans are reliant on Democratic support to do the basic work of governing. A small band of extremists should not be capable of obstructing that cooperation.
On the final day of the first week of the trial, lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office again grilled Jeffrey McConney, a former Trump Organization senior vice president.
In a dramatic finale, McConney admitted that ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg asked for his help in committing tax fraud. He said he kept engaging in this illegal conduct because Weisselberg was his boss and if he refused, he would probably have lost his job.
Judge Arthur Engoron later in the day turned down an effort from Trump’s lawyers to suspend the trial.
An appeals court judge denied Trump’s bid to halt the fraud trial, but agreed to stay enforcement of Engoron’s order canceling business certificates involving the former president and top officials at his company.
An Appellate Division judge who heard emergency arguments Friday wrote the application is “granted solely to the extent of staying enforcement of Supreme Court’s order directing the cancellation of business certificates. The interim application is denied in all other respects.”
In a court filing earlier in the day, Trump’s attorneys argued that part of Engoron’s ruling was tantamount to “corporate death sentences” for various Trump companies that would have to be dissolved.
Attorney General Letitia James had already said she would hold off on the cancellation of certificates until the end of the trial, so not a big deal.
Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club — an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Autumn Pumpkin Cat, by Ryan Conners
The potential disclosure was reported to special counsel Jack Smith’s team as they investigated Trump’s alleged hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the sources told ABC News. The information could shed further light on Trump’s handling of sensitive government secrets.
Prosecutors and FBI agents have at least twice this year interviewed the Mar-a-Lago member, Anthony Pratt, who runs U.S.-based Pratt Industries, one of the world’s largest packaging companies.
In those interviews, Pratt described how — looking to make conversation with Trump during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in April 2021 — he brought up the American submarine fleet, which the two had discussed before, the sources told ABC News.
According to Pratt’s account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump — “leaning” toward Pratt as if to be discreet — then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.
It’s far from the first time Trump has done this. In fact, very early in his term as “president,” Trump outed an Israeli spy to Russians in the oval office. Remember that? It was the day after he fired James Comey and he thought the Russia investigation was over.
Trump allegedly told Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt in April 2021 that Australia should start buying its submarines from the U.S. Trump then told Pratt the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads a U.S. sub can carry, and how close it can supposedly get to a Russian sub without being detected, ABC News reported late Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
Pratt then told at least 45 other people—including six journalists, 11 employees at his company, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers—about Trump’s comments before he was approached by special counsel Jack Smith’s team….
The incident with Pratt is far from the first time that Trump shared classified information with people unauthorized to hear it. In May 2017, Trump shared highly classified information with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States that the U.S. hasn’t shared with some of its closest allies. Current and former U.S. officials warned that Trump had jeopardized a crucial intelligence source on the Islamic State group.
Later that month, Trump told then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. had positioned two nuclear submarines off the Korean peninsula. The locations of nuclear subs are meant to be kept secret, as a matter of national security. In fact, only the captains and crews know the sub’s exact location.
Then, in July 2017, CNN reported that the U.S. was forced to extract a spy embedded in the Russian government after concerns that Trump had shared classified information that could have exposed them.
Rather than learn his lesson, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit (also in July 2017). Trump confiscated the interpreter’s notes at the end of the meeting, an unusual move that led intelligence officials to believe he had shared more classified information.
Trump tweeted a video in December 2018 of the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, exposing a SEAL team’s faces and location. The next year, he bragged about U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities to reporter Bob Woodward and tweeted photos that revealed the location of U.S. spy satellites.
And of course, it didn’t stop after he left office. One of the documents he allegedly kept detailed a plan to attack Iran. He is accused of waving the paper around in front of people.
Weird Odds and Ends
Republicans and Fox News are once again up in arms about something Hillary Clinton said.
Supporters of Donald Trump may need to be “deprogrammed” as if they were cult members, Hillary Clinton said.
“Sadly, so many of those extremists … take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” the former first lady, senator, secretary of state and Democratic nominee for president told CNN.
“He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions. And when do they break with him? Because at some point maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen.” [….]
By Atey Ghailan
Clinton said: “I think, sadly, he will be the nominee and we have to defeat them. And we have to defeat those who are the election deniers, as we did and 2020 and [in the midterms of] 2022. And we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican party.”
Clinton was speaking after the fall of Kevin McCarthy, who became first US House speaker ever ejected by his own party thanks to pro-Trump extremists.
Clinton called Trump “an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotional [and] psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population and the base of the Republican party, for whatever combination of reasons.”
Republicans, she said, “see in him someone who speaks for them and they are determined they will continue to vote for him, attend his rallies and wear his merchandise, because for whatever reason he and his very negative, nasty form of politics resonates with them.
“Maybe they don’t like migrants. Maybe they don’t like gay people or Black people or the woman who got the promotion at work they didn’t get. Whatever reason.”
Hey, she’s right. But now all the Trump fans have something else to have fun being outraged about.
Three months after a Florida man and his three sons were convicted of selling toxic industrial bleach as a fake COVID-19 cure through their online church, a federal judge in Miami sentenced them to serve prison time.
Jonathan Grenon, 37, and Jordan Grenon, 29, were sentenced on Friday to 151 months in prison for conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug, and for contempt of court, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Florida. Mark Grenon, 66, and Joseph Grenon, 36, were sentenced to 60 months in prison, the statutory maximm for conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug.
All four had been found guilty by a federal judge this summer after a two-day trial where the Grenons represented themselves, according to The Miami Herald. Mark Grenon is the father of Jonathan, Jordan and Joseph Grenon.
Prosecutors called the Grenons “con men” and “snake-oil salesmen” and said the family’s Genesis II Church of Health and Healing sold $1 million worth of their so-called Miracle Mineral Solution, distributing it to tens of thousands of people nationwide. In videos, the solution was sold as a cure for 95% of known diseases, including COVID-19, Alzheimer’s, autism, brain cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis, prosecutors said.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had not approved MMS for treatment of COVID-19, or for any other use. The FDA had strongly urged consumers not to purchase or use MMS for any reason, saying that drinking MMS was the same as drinking bleach and could cause dangerous side effects, including severe vomiting, diarrhea, and life-threatening low blood pressure. The FDA received reports of people requiring hospitalizations, developing life-threatening conditions, and even dying after drinking MMS.
Read more nutty stuff at the link if you so desire.
Have a nice weekend, everyone!!
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Cat and Flowers, by Ruskin Spear, British, 1911-1990
There has been a terrible earthquake in Morocco, with hundreds of people dead. President Biden is attending the Group of 20 summit meeting in India. Back in the U.S., a Georgia federal judge said no to Mark Meadows’ request to transfer his case to federal court; and now Trump’s lawyers are scrambling to figure out a way for him to still do that. It’s not likely to happen. The 5th Circuit court of appeals reversed some of a previous ruling that hamstrung government agencies, but they still found that the Biden administration violated the first amendment in trying to influence social media companies. Finally, The New York Times has an interesting read about the former Mar-a-Lago IT guy who had turned on Trump.
The strongest earthquake to hit the country of Morocco in more than 120 years has left over 800 people dead and many thousands more trapped, missing, or injured.
The quake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale with the epicenter located in the Atlas Mountains and not far the city of Marrakesh where historic buildings—many built of mortar and stone not designed to withstand such tremors—collapsed and the streets filled with people overnight trying to flee the destruction and danger.
“The problem is that where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse resulting in high casualties,” Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, told the Associated Press. “I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known. As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue.”
Morocco’s interior ministry put the initial death toll at 822 as of Saturday morning, with 672 injured, but both numbers are certain to rise. Though the stronger impacts were closer to Marakesh, the earthquake was felt across the country, including in Casablance, Essaouira, and the capital city of Rabat.
Large nations, including both the United States and China, sent their well wishes to the people of Morocco.
“I am deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the earthquake in Morocco,” said U.S. President Joe Biden in an overnight statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this terrible hardship.”
Biden said his administration as in contact with Moroccan officials and willing to send whatever help might be necessary. “We are working expeditiously to ensure American citizens in Morocco are safe,” Biden said, “and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people.”
NEW DELHI (AP) — President Joe Biden and his allies on Saturday announced plans to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, an ambitious project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.
“This is a big deal,” said Biden. “This is a really big deal.”
The corridor, outlined at the annual Group of 20 summit of the world’s top economies, would help boost trade, deliver energy resources and improve digital connectivity. It would include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel and the European Union, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
Sullivan said the network reflected Biden’s vision for “far reaching investments” that come from “effective American leadership” and a willingness to embrace other nations as partners. He said the enhanced infrastructure would boost economic growth, help bring countries in the Middle East together and establish that region as a hub for economic activity instead of as a “source of challenge, conflict or crisis” as it has been in recent history.
The prosecution of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for attempting to overturn the 2020 election will remain in Georgia state court, a federal judge ruled Friday as he turned down Meadows’ bid to move the case to federal court.
The decision is a victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ drive to bring former President Donald Trump, Meadows and 17 other defendants to trial under the state’s broad criminal racketeering statute for their roles in trying to help Trump cling to power.
“The Court concludes that Meadows has not shown that the actions that triggered the State’s prosecution related to his federal office,” U.S. District Judge Steve Jones wrote in his decision, while emphasizing that he was not ruling on the right of any other defendant to have the case against them moved to the federal system.
By Belinda Del Pesco
Jones, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, concluded that Meadows was not acting within the scope of his employment at the White House when he organized a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call where Trump pressed Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to declare him the victor in that state. Other actions that Meadows took, as described in a grand jury’s indictment last month, similarly fell outside Meadows’ official duties, the judge said.
“Meadows’s participation on the January 2, 2021 call was political in nature and involved the President’s private litigation, neither of which are related to the scope of the Office of White House Chief of Staff,” Jones wrote. “The Court finds that these contributions to the phone call with Secretary Raffensperger went beyond those activities that are within the official role of White House Chief of Staff, such as scheduling the President’s phone calls, observing meetings, and attempting to wrap up meetings in order to keep the President on schedule.”
By finding that Meadows acted outside the scope of his duties, Jones concluded that Meadows is not eligible for so-called “removal” — a procedure under federal law that allows federal officials to transfer a case from state court to federal court if the case is based on their official acts.
It’s now unlikely that any of the other people trying to move their cases to federal court–including Trump–will succeed. Meadows had the strongest case according legal experts.
Reacting to U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones late Friday ruling that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may not have his election tampering case moved to a federal court, former Re[publican National Committee chair Michael Steele said that was a major blow not only to Meadows but also all of the other 18 Georgia co-conspirators facing RICO charges including Donald Trump.
As Steele put it, any hopes that defense attorneys might have had in the outcome of the Meadows hearing died a quick death.
Meadows’ attorneys had signaled that they hoped to move the case to federal court as a precursor to arguing that the case against him should be thrown out on grounds that as a former federal officer he’s immune from charges relating to his duties. And if a trial went forward in federal court, the jury pool would likely have been broader and slightly friendlier to Trump and his allies than one drawn only from Fulton County.
A federal court trial also would be unlikely to be televised, whereas the state court judge has already vowed to livestream all the proceedings.
Four other defendants in the Georgia case have also asked for the cases against them to be moved to federal court: former Justice Department official Jeff Clark and three pro-Trump activists accused of falsely certifying that they were presidential electors from the state. Those requests remain pending with Jones, and he said he was not pre-judging them as he turned down Meadows.
Nora Heysen (Australian, 1911-2003) – A Boy with his cat
A federal appeals court on Friday said the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment in some of its communications with social media companies, but also narrowed a lower court judge’s order on the matter.
The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that certain administration officials – namely in the White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – likely “coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment in its efforts to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
But the three-judge panel said the preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty in July, which ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, was “both vague and broader than necessary to remedy the Plaintiffs’ injuries, as shown at this preliminary juncture.”
The Biden administration had previously argued in the lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general claiming unconstitutional censorship that channels with social media companies must stay open so that the federal government can help protect the public from threats to election security, Covid-19 misinformation and other dangers.
n briefs submitted earlier this summer, the administration wrote, “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” adding that Doughty had “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”
The 5th Circuit left in place part of the injunction that barred certain Biden administration officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”
“But,” the appeals court said, “those terms could also capture otherwise legal speech. So, the injunction’s language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.”
So it’s some good news and some bad news if you care about disinformation on social media.
In a deep dive into the life of the key Donald Trump employee who has flipped on the former president and some of his colleagues who worked with him at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times is reporting that Trump’s head of security made a fateful decision that helped out special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.
Composition with Cat on the table with striped tablecloth – Herdis Gelardi , 1951 Danish, 1916-1991
As part of their profile of IT manager Yuscil Taveras, the Times creates a moment-by-moment timeline where Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira contacted Yuscil Taveras to meet him “somewhere more private” to discuss deleting the surveillance video.
As part of their profile of IT manager Yuscil Taveras, the Times creates a moment-by-moment timeline where Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira contacted Yuscil Taveras to meet him “somewhere more private” to discuss deleting the surveillance video.
As the Times is reporting, “According to the indictment, which does not name Mr. Taveras but refers to him as ‘Trump Employee 4,’ Mr. De Oliveira led him through a basement tunnel to a small room known as an ‘audio closet,’ where Mr. De Oliveira delivered a message from Mr. Trump: ‘the boss’ wanted the footage deleted. Mr. Taveras rebuffed the request, prosecutors said in the indictment, but Mr. De Oliveira raised it again.”
Noting that Taveras once again denied the request, the report states that Taveras then reportedly confided to fellow employee Renzo Nivar about what had happened and days later alerted “a superior in Trump Tower.”
According to the Times, “One executive in New York, Matthew Calamari Jr., the Trump Organization’s corporate director of security, apparently became alarmed, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He alerted the company’s legal department, prompting a senior lawyer at the company to deliver a stern warning not to delete anything.”
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Israel doesn’t seem to be listening to President Biden anymore.
Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.
What’s more, with no speaker and no clear candidate who has the votes to wrap up an election quickly, there’s no one currently empowered to negotiate with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House on behalf of the only Republican-controlled lever of the federal government.
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