Posted: December 28, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Congress, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Anime, Bird Flu, Debt Ceiling, January 6 seditionists, MAGA violence, MAGA vs Tech Bros, mass deportations, Milk, pandemics, Stewart Rhodes, violence by correctional officers |
Good Afternoon!!
Cat Bus, from My Neighbor Totoro
It’s a slow news day, as expected during the dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Most of the mainstream outlets are covering the ongoing battle between MAGAs and Tech bros over H1B visas, which Dakinikat in detail in yesterday’s post. Here’s one update to the story by Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic: Steve Bannon Joins War Against Elon Musk as MAGA Implodes.
Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday.
“H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily.
“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,” Bannon added.
Musk set off the MAGA faithful on social media on Wednesday morning, posting on X about how more foreign tech workers need to be allowed to work in the United States because “there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent.” Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sidekick, generated his own backlash from the right Thursday by suggesting American culture was to blame for why employers seek tech employees from overseas.
Many on the right disagreed vehemently, particularly racists like Laura Loomer, who spent most of Thursday on her X account attacking Musk and tech executives who share his views. Musk then retaliated against Loomer and his other MAGA friends turned critics that evening, allegedly censoring them on the platform by removing their verification badges and hurting their engagement.
Neither side is right on the issue, though. Bannon, Loomer, and other anti-immigration conservatives are motivated by nativism and racism in their opposition to foreign tech workers, and tech CEOs like Musk seek low-wage immigrants to work for long hours in their companies instead of American workers who don’t have a fragile visa status hanging over their heads.
A bit more on Bannon from James Bickerton at Newsweek: Steve Bannon Mocks Elon Musk In H-1B Visa War: ‘Toddler.’
Steve Bannon has labeled Elon Musk a “toddler” after the tech billionaire urged opponents of H-1B skilled migrant worker visas to “F*** YOURSELF in the face.”
Bannon, who served as Donald Trump‘s White House chief strategist for seven months in 2017, made the comment on social media platform Gettr, which is primarily used by conservatives….
Bannon’s comments are just the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter row within Trump’s MAGA [Make America Great Again] coalition over H-1B visas, and legal immigration more generally, which has pitted some of his key supporters in big business and Silicon Valley against more nativist elements.
Once in office Trump could struggle to placate both those in business who believe skilled legal migration boosts the U.S. economy, and those of his supporters who think it takes place at the expense of American workers….
In a post on his X social media platform, formerly Twitter, South African-born Musk commented: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.
“Take a big step back and F*** YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
A screenshot of the post was shared by Bannon on Gettr, with Trump’s former strategist and 2016 campaign manager adding: “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’— need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.” [….]
The H-1B visa allows American companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. These typically require theoretical or technical expertise in fields such as information technology (IT), engineering, mathematics, finance, medicine, science, or other professional disciplines.
The number is currently capped at 65,000 per year, though an additional 20,000 visas are made available annually for foreigners who graduate in the U.S. with a master’s degree or doctorate.
Luna from Sailor Moon
On a more serious note, as Trump prepares to take office, the U.S. faces the strong possibility of another pandemic. That is frightening, considering how badly Trump handled the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Trump has nominated anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Junior as head of the Department of Human Services (DHS).
Brad Reed at Raw Story: ‘We are screwed’: Virologists warn about disease they say could become the next pandemic.
A new report from PBS highlights the potential danger of bird flu turning into a full-blown pandemic in the United States.
In particular, PBS spoke with several experts who said the United States has been behind the ball when it comes to keeping a handle on the pandemic and they point to the fact that the United States Department of Agriculture has only recently started testing milk nationwide for bird flu contamination.
“It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis reemerge,” explained Tom Bollyky, the director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Health Program….
Tom Peacock, a bird flu researcher at the Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom, said that the real danger could come if the bird flu virus mutates in a way that makes it easily transmissible between humans.
“Even if there’s only a 5 percent chance of a bird flu pandemic happening, we’re talking about a pandemic that probably looks like 2020 or worse,” he told PBS. “The U.S. knows the risk but hasn’t done anything to slow this down.”
Gigi- Kiki’s delivery service
Here’s the report from Amy Maxmen at PBS: “How America lost control of the bird flu and raised the risk of another pandemic.”
Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.
But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.
“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.
Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states have tested positive.
Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.
“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”
To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.
Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.
Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched….
Far more bird flu damage is inevitable, but the extent of it will be left to the Trump administration and Mother Nature. Already, the USDA has funneled more than $1.7 billion into tamping down the bird flu on poultry farms since 2022, which includes reimbursing farmers who’ve had to cull their flocks, and more than $430 million into combating the bird flu on dairy farms. In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2 percent to 5 percent of infected dairy cows and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20 percent.
The Baron from Whisper of the Heart
Read the rest at the PBS link.
From the AP, more bad news from the Treasury Department: Janet Yellen tells Congress the US could hit debt limit in mid-January.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said her agency will need to start taking “extraordinary measures,” or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling, as early as January 14, in a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday afternoon.
“Treasury expects to hit the statutory debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23,” Yellen wrote in a letter addressed to House and Senate leadership, at which point extraordinary measures would be used to prevent the government from breaching the nation’s debt ceiling — which has been suspended until Jan. 1, 2025.
The department has in the past deployed what are known as “extraordinary measures” or accounting maneuvers to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow.
“I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said.
The news comes after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law last week that averted a government shutdown but did not include President-elect Donald Trump’s core debt demand to raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit. The bill was approved by Congress only after fierce internal debate among Republicans over how to handle Trump’s demand. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” Trump said in a statement.
After a protracted debate in the summer of 2023 over how to fund the government, policymakers crafted the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which included suspending the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority until Jan. 1, 2025.
Notably however, Yellen said, on Jan. 2 the debt is projected to temporarily decrease due to a scheduled redemption of nonmarketable securities held by a federal trust fund associated with Medicare payments. As a result, “Treasury does not expect that it will be necessary to start taking extraordinary measures on January 2 to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” she said.
Muta from Whisper of the Heart
Will the Republicans have a Speaker of the House by mid-January? They not only have to deal with the debt ceiling, but also they will need a Speaker in order to count and certify the electoral votes on January 6, 2025.
Trump has promised to take a number of steps on “day 1” of his administration, including pardoning people who were convicted of crimes on January 6 2021 and beginning plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. A couple of related stories:
Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone: Does Trump Jan 6. Pardon Plan Include the Seditionists? Trump’s transition team is not ruling it out.
With Donald Trump winning back the White House, his Big Lie that Jan. 6 was just an enthusiastic rally that got out of hand, rather than an insurrectionist mob he unleashed to disrupt the count of the 2020 electoral college, has new currency.
A new congressional Republican report, spearheaded by MAGA lapdog Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) has recommended a criminal probe of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for co-chairing the House Jan. 6 investigation. Loudermilk’s report reached a through-the-looking-glass conclusion that Cheney & co. had promoted “a false, pre-determined narrative that President Trump was personally responsible for the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and should therefore be held accountable.”
Trump is returning to the Oval Office with an explicit agenda to rewrite history — and upend convictions. He has vowed to issue “Day One” pardons to Jan. 6 criminals and defendants, whom he has called “great patriots,” “hostages,” and “warriors.” During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump referred to Jan. 6 itself as “a day of love.” And when he recently summoned tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to Mar-a-Lago, Trump reportedly prompted his guests to rise and place their hands over their hearts, while listening to a rendition of the national anthem sung by jailed Jan. 6 defendants.
It is not precisely clear whom Trump wants to pardon. But the list of Jan. 6 convicts includes many serving long sentences for serious felonies — ranging from injuring police officers to sedition. In mid-December, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has handled many Jan. 6 criminal cases, spoke out from the bench. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said the idea that Trump could pardon the former head of the Oath Keepers militia haunts him: “The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening — and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy,” Mehta said, per a courtroom report in Politico. In 2023, Mehta handed down an 18-year sentence to Rhodes for “seditious conspiracy.” (The prison term included a terrorism enhancement.)
Asked by Rolling Stone if Trump planned to pardon Rhodes — or others imprisoned on seditious conspiracy charges, like Enrique Tarrio, the ex-honcho of the Proud Boys — the presidential transition team didn’t rule it out. “President Trump will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis for those who were denied due process and unfairly targeted by the justice system,” says Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
In the buildup to Jan. 6 and in its aftermath, Rhodes spearheaded militia activity that that saw Oath Keepers lieutenants stockpile weapons across the border in Virginia, creating “Quick Reaction Forces” or QFCs, that could be activated in the hoped-for scenario that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and summon militia groups to battle his enemies to help him cling to power.
Rhodes was outside the Capitol during the rioting, but communicated with members in the building. When Rhodes received a report that members of Congress were in danger and looking to flee, he replied, per court documents, “Fuck ‘em.” At sentencing, Rhodes compared himself to the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Mehta told Rhodes to his face that he was no “political prisoner” — but rather an “ongoing threat and peril to this country.”
Daren Humbert Vaughn:, Gikkingen from The Cat Returns
More at the link.
From the AP: Mexico tests cellphone app allowing migrants to send alert if they are about to be detained in US.
Mexico is developing a cellphone app that will allow migrants to warn relatives and local consulates if they think they are about to be detained by the U.S. immigration department, a senior official said Friday.
The move is in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass deportations after he takes office on Jan. 20.
The app has been rolled out for small-scale testing and “appears to be working very well,” said Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs.
He said the app would allow users to press a tab that would send an alert notification to previously chosen relatives and the nearest Mexican consulate. De la Fuente described it as a sort of panic button.
“In case you find yourself in a situation where detention is imminent, you push the alert button, and that sends a signal to the nearest consulate,” he said.
U.S. authorities are obliged to give notice to home-country consulates when a foreign citizen is detained. Mexico says it has beefed up consular staff and legal aid to help migrants in the legal process related to deportation.
From The Cat Returns
Two stories of violence in “Trump’s America”: The AP: Man accused of attacking TV reporter, saying ‘This is Trump’s America now.’
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man is facing possible bias-motivated charges for allegedly attacking a television news reporter after demanding to know whether he was a citizen, saying “This is Trump’s America now,” according to court documents.
Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander.
After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.
According to the station’s website, Alex is a native of Detroit. KKCO/KJCT reported that he was driving a news vehicle at the time.
Eric Ortiz at NBC News: ‘Shocking’ bodycam video released of New York officers fatally beating prisoner.
The office of New York’s attorney general released body camera footage Friday showing the fatal beating of a state prisoner this month by correctional officers who punched and kicked him repeatedly while he was handcuffed on an infirmary bed.
The incident, which has drawn outrage from political leaders and was condemned by the officers’ union as “incomprehensible,” is being investigated by state Attorney General Letitia James. The inmate, Robert Brooks, 43, died in the hospital a day after the Dec. 9 attack.
“I do not take lightly the release of this video, especially in the middle of the holiday season,” James said at a virtual news conference.
“These videos are shocking and disturbing,” she added.
Brooks can be seen in the videos with his hands cuffed behind his back. In one video, he is sitting up as an officer presses his foot down on him. He is then punched by two officers.
At another point, he is forcefully yanked from the bed by his shirt collar and held up above the ground, his face visibly bloodied.
Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to begin the process of firing 14 workers at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, where the incident occurred. They include correctional officers, sergeants and a prison nurse. In the interim, all have been suspended without pay, except for one officer, who already resigned.
In a statement following the release of the videos, Daniel Martuscello, the commissioner of the state corrections department, said his office has launched its own investigation in an effort to bring “institutional change.”
Read much more at the NBC News link.
Those are my recommended reads for today. Take care, everyone.
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Posted: December 25, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Congress, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: democracy, Donald Trump, Election 2024, politics |
Winter Landscape, by Pablo Picasso
Good Afternoon!!
As we inch close to January 20 and another Trump administration, my feeling of dread only grows stronger. Already, Trump is dominating the news and acting as if he is in charge.
Last time, Trump had the “adults in the room” to occasionally hold back his efforts to destroy the country; this time, he only has Elon Musk, and Trump still doesn’t seem to comprehend that Musk is manipulating him. It’s going to be every bit as chaotic and exhausting as last time. And, of course, there will be the ugly Trump social media posts. Here’s his Christmas greeting from Truth Social:
Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Hunters in the Snow
Isn’t that sweet? I will never understand how anyone could stand to be in the same room with this monster, let alone vote for him for POTUS.
There’s not much exciting news today, but I’ve found some interesting reads.
This one isn’t controversial, as far as I know. NBC News: The bald eagle is officially America’s national bird after Biden’s signature.
The bald eagle has landed in the U.S. code after President Joe Biden signed a bill Tuesday making the predator the official national bird.
Congress passed the measure with unanimous support.
Although the bird of prey is at the center of the Great Seal of the United States, it was never formally recognized as the country’s official bird. Some of the Founding Fathers — Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — were tasked with creating a national seal but simply couldn’t come to an agreement.
In 1782, a version of the seal with a bald eagle was submitted by Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson and approved. Most Americans are familiar with the seal’s eagle carrying a flag-emblazoned shield holding an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other.
Franklin was historically against the decision, arguing in a letter to his daughter that the bald eagle was “a bird of bad moral character.”
Either way, the U.S. has not had an official bird in the almost 250 years since its founding.
Richard Davis at The Hill: We were warned: First-term aides told us about Trump’s governing style.
Nearly eight years ago, reports began circulating in Washington that the Trump administration was going to be chaotic. One obvious sign was the rapid turnover of aides close to the president. Within months, Trump had replaced his chief of staff, national security advisor, press secretary and counselor to the president. Ultimately, in a four-year period, Trump would go through four chiefs of staff, four national security advisors, four press secretaries and five counselors to the president.
Beyond the rapid turnover, those who worked with Trump in his first term recounted his anarchic governing style. He refused to read briefing books before meeting with government leaders and simply “winged” important negotiations. He read only one-page summaries, and even then, only if they were filled with maps, photos and graphs. He ignored advice from his counselors in favor of information (or misinformation) from Fox News and extreme social media posts. He made policy on his own via tweets rather than through consultations with others.
Aides, who sought anonymity for obvious reasons, recounted that Trump was spending several hours every day watching television, typically Fox News, and impulsively walking out of meetings he was bored with. As a result, his governing style whipsawed between a lack of interest and sudden intense activity. Simply put, he did not pay attention until, suddenly, he understood a policy he did not like was being made without him. For example, in 2018, he intervened at the last minute as a government shutdown loomed to insist that the continuing resolution include money for a Mexican border wall. One aide reported that Trump was an “instinctive and reactive” leader.
His aides revealed that his attention span was extraordinarily short. They confessed that when he made some outrageous demand, they would distract him with something else, expecting he would forget about the order he just gave. One journalist found that Trump was live-tweeting Fox News, setting his agenda based on what Fox News was reporting.
Political scientist David Drezner analyzed statements by Trump aides and supporters comparing him to a toddler who throws temper tantrums when he does not get his way, has a short attention span, and has no interest in learning if it is not presented in an extremely simple manner. Drezner says his aides would treat Trump like a toddler by using reverse psychology on him (telling him he cannot do something that they actually wanted him to do), keeping him busy so he would not have time to tweet, and feeding him simple information.
Van Gogh-Snowy Landscape with Arles in Background
This time, it will be much, much worse. Trump has already threatened to take over Panama, Greenland, and Canada. And, of course, he has threatened repeatedly to attack Mexico.
Denmark has taken note. BBC: Denmark boosts Greenland defence after Trump repeats desire for US control.
The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.
Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on the shortest route from North America to Europe. It has major mineral reserves.
Poulsen said the package would allow for the purchase of two new inspection ships, two new long-range drones and two extra dog sled teams.
It would also include funding for increased staffing at Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk and an upgrade for one of Greenland’s three main civilian airports to handle F-35 supersonic fighter aircraft.
“We have not invested enough in the Arctic for many years, now we are planning a stronger presence,” he said.
The defence minister did not give an exact figure for the package, but Danish media estimated it would be around 12-15bn krone.
The announcement came a day after Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Gauguin: Breton Village
The Guardian quotes John Bolton’s warning: Major international crisis ‘much more likely’ in Trump’s second term, says his ex-national security adviser.
A major international crisis is “much more likely” in Donald Trump’s second term given the president-elect’s “inability to focus” on foreign policy, a former US ambassador to the United Nations has warned.
John Bolton, who at 17 months was Trump’s longest-serving national security adviser, delivered a scathing critique of his lack of knowledge, interest in facts or coherent strategy. He described Trump’s decision-making as driven by personal relationships and “neuron flashes” rather than a deep understanding of national interests.
Bolton also dismissed Trump’s claims during this year’s election campaign that only he could prevent a third world war while bringing a swift end to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
“It’s typical Trump: it’s all braggadocio,” Bolton told the Guardian. “The world is more dangerous than when he was president before. The only real crisis we had was Covid, which is a long-term crisis and not against a particular foreign power but against a pandemic.
“But the risk of an international crisis of the 19th-century variety is much more likely in a second Trump term. Given Trump’s inability to focus on coherent decision making, I’m very worried about how that might look.” [….]
Bolton was Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.
Bolton recalled: “What I believed was that, like every American president before him, the weight of the responsibilities, certainly in national security, the gravity of the issues that he was confronting, the consequences of his decisions, would discipline his thinking in a way that would produce serious outcomes.
“It turned out I was wrong. By the time I got there a lot of patterns of behaviour had already been set that were never changed and it could well be, even if I had been there earlier, I couldn’t have affected it. But it was clear pretty soon after I got there that intellectual discipline wasn’t in the Trump vocabulary.”
Winter landscape: Wassily Kandinsky
The Independent: Trump has Christmas Eve meltdown over Biden’s commutation of nearly every federal death row prisoner’s sentence.
Donald Trump has lashed out at President Joe Biden’s commutation of nearly every federal death row prisoner’s sentence in a Christmas Eve outburst.
Less than a month before Trump takes office, Biden on Monday removed 37 people from death row who were all convicted of murder charges, meaning they will now serve life imprisonment without parole.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” Trump fumed on Truth Social on Christmas Eve morning.
“When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
Trump vowed to take action as soon as he takes office.
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” he said in a follow up post. “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”
Says the adjudicated rapist and convicted felon.
At The Washington Post, Cat Zakrzewski writes about Trump’s constant grifting: How to have a Trumpy Christmas, and make the president-elect richer, too.
The Trump Store has a gift for every patriot on your Christmas list.
It’s a little late for this year’s celebrations, but you can get a very early jump on next year and count down with the $38 Trump Advent calendar. Or trim the tree with a $95 Mar-a-Lago bauble or a $16 MAGA hat ornament, sold in nine colors. (A glass version of the hat ornament is $92.) Stuff stockings with an $86 “GIANT Trump Chocolate Gold Bar” and a $22 pair of candy cane socks printed with “Trump.” Prepare a holiday feast with a $14 Trump Christmas tree pot holder and $28 Trump apron featuring Santa waving an American flag.
The profits from these holiday trinkets do not benefit a political committee or a charitable cause, but the Trump Organization, the Trump family’s privately owned conglomerate of real estate, hotel and lifestyle businesses. As the company encouraged customers to celebrate the holidays with Trump gifts for all ages, President-elect Donald Trump personally profited off of his upcoming term in a manner that is unprecedented in modern history — even during his unconventional first stint in the White House.
The Trump Organization thought of everyone celebrating Trump’s nonconsecutive terms this yuletide season, rolling out a line of merchandise printed with “45-47,” including $195 quarter-zip sweatshirts, $85 cigar ashtrays and $38 baseball caps. Fido can’t go without his gear, of course: The store also sells gifts for dogs, including orange leashes and camo collars emblazoned with Trump’s name. And don’t forget the kids! How about a $38 teddy bear wearing a red, white or blue Trump sweater, $8 MAGA hat stickers or an array of Trump sweets, including $16 gummy bears?
All of these gifts can be wrapped in $28 golden Trump wrapping paper or stuck into Trump ornament gift bags ($14 a pair), and accompanied by a note on $35 stationery featuring bottles of Trump wine.
“Make the holidays that much greater this year with essentials from the Trump Home and Holiday collection,” the website says, over a photo of an Elf on the Shelf toy and a lime-green MAGA hat.
Trump has long delighted in finding new ways to market his name, creating a merchandise empire that includes digital trading cards, pricey sneakers, expensive watches and signed Bibles. But his expansion of offerings in the run-up to the inauguration has further concerned ethics experts and watchdogs, who say his behavior is the opposite of what they expect from a president-in-waiting during the transition.
“How much is he going to use the presidency just to sell Trump products?” said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications for the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Claude Monet, The Magpie
Washington.
That’s what I want to know. Are he and Melania going to continue hawking their tasteless junk from the White House?
A serious piece from Timothy Noah at The New Republic: Democracy Is No Bulwark Against Oligarchy.
The hard lesson of 2024 is that liberals spent too much time fretting that Donald Trump would subvert democracy if he lost and not enough that Trump would win a free and fair election. We can argue about the reason why voters elected Trump—inflation, transgender hysteria, Joe Biden staying too long in the race—but we can’t pretend that those who cast their vote for Trump didn’t know they were choosing oligarchy.
Thanks to the 14-year run of The Apprentice, even the politically ignorant were well aware that Donald Trump (net worth $6.2 billion, per Forbes) was a wealthy real estate tycoon. If anything, the voting public judged Trump wealthier than he really is; as John D. Miller, a marketer for the NBC series, pointed out in October, “We created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty.” Given that narrative’s predominance, nobody can be surprised that the president-elect’s sidekick ended up being the richest person in the world, or that he’s appointed a dozen billionaires to top posts.
How could this happen? None of liberals’ usual explanations is available. We can’t blame Trump’s victory on the distortions of the Electoral College (as we could in 2016) because Trump won the popular vote. And we can’t blame Trump’s victory on the distortions of money, because even when you figure in outside money, including more than a quarter-billion to Trump from Elon Musk, it was the loser, Kamala Harris, who raised the most cash. Yes, Trump indicated before the election that if he lost he wouldn’t accept the result, just as he still refuses to concede the 2020 election. But in the end, democracy didn’t come under threat. Democracy turned out to be the problem.
This has happened before. The worst presidential choice prior to 2024 was James Buchanan in 1856. Like Trump, Buchanan won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. These two presidents are the lowest-ranked in an annual poll of American political scientists, and Buchanan ranks last in a 2021 survey of American political historians (though for some mysterious reason that one ranks Trump only fourth-worst). Buchanan is reviled for fumbling Confederates’ threats to secede, which of course led to the Civil War. I would argue that the public also chose very badly in reelecting Richard Nixon in 1972 and George W. Bush in 2004—and that in choosing Ronald Reagan in 1980, the party cleared a path that eventually led to Trump.
But 2024 may be the first election in American history in which a majority of United States voters specifically chose oligarchy. This is terra incognita, but it turns out to be a problem to which our second president, John Adams, gave considerable thought.
Read the rest at TNR.
Speaking of oligarchs, Ramesh Ponnuru writes at the Washington Post: Congressional Republicans have a new headache: Elon Musk.
Democrats spent much of the presidential campaign warning that a second Donald Trump presidency would move methodically and remorselessly toward sinister goals: persecuting immigrants, enriching billionaires, ending democracy, imposing theocracy. This time, they said, he and his people would already know how to use the powers of his office. His party would put up less, maybe no, resistance. He now has the backing of the world’s richest man. The fact that Trump won a plurality of the popular vote and enjoys his best polling ever has deepened progressive despair.
Last week’s fight over the continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded should calm some of these fears. It won’t change progressive minds about Republicans’ ambitions. But it should suggest that many of the limits on Republican effectiveness that were in place during Trump’s first term remain — and new ones have arisen….
Trump’s decision to insist that the legislation include a lifting of the debt ceiling also suggests that he still has little interest in figuring out how to build a legislative coalition. He was effectively demanding that Republicans lift the debt ceiling on a party-line vote. He should have known that they would never accede. Now, seeing his demand so widely ignored has moved him a little closer to lame-duck status. Congressional Republicans may be learning that if enough of them balk at a Trump order — 38 of them voted down the funding bill he endorsed — he cannot credibly threaten all of them.
The president-elect also kneecapped Johnson by telegraphing his disappointment with the way the speaker handled the continuing resolution. This was unfair, since Trump hadn’t articulated his key priorities, such as raising the debt limit, or done anything else to make them achievable. It was also counterproductive. By blaming Johnson for the embarrassing zigzags of the spending bill, Trump avoids taking any responsibility himself. But he has increased the chances that House Republicans will be consumed by a fight over their leadership rather than enacting his administration’s agenda.
By now, though, Republicans are used to the drawbacks of working withTrump. Their new difficulty is Musk. During Trump’s first term, Republicans in Congress and the executive branch had to anticipate what would draw the president’s wrath. Now they will have to wonder, as well, what will bring them negative attention from Musk. They can’t count on either man to telegraph his views well ahead of time or privately; they will just have to keep a social media tab open. The two men also have varying views and priorities, with Musk more concerned about controlling federal spending than Trump has ever shown himself to be. (Even Musk, though, did not stir himself against the bipartisan bill to spend nearly $200 billion more on Social Security — which passed Congress at the same time as the government-funding deal.)
Republicans can’t be sure, either, how long Trump and Musk will stay allied. Musk isn’t like Steve Bannon, whom Trump could put into political exile and then summon back. He has fame, a fan base, a means of communication and resources of his own. This would be Trump’s messiest divorce yet.
I expect Trump to tire of Musk stealing the spotlight, but Ponnuru is probably right that Musk will be difficult for Trump to eliminate.
I hope you all have a nice, relaxing day whether you celebrate the holidays or not.
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Posted: August 29, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, American Fascists, Congress, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: Catholic reactionaries, Franklin Foer, government shutdown, Mark Meadows, Pope Francis, Rep. Andrew Clyde, UNC Chapel Hill shooting |
Good Afternoon!!
As a lapsed Catholic, I was surprised and heartened yesterday to read that Pope Francis has criticized right wing American Catholics–several of whom sit on the Supreme Court.
From the AP via Yahoo News: Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology.
Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
Francis’ comments were an acknowledgment of the divisions in the U.S. Catholic Church, which has been split between progressives and conservatives who long found support in the doctrinaire papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, particularly on issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.
Many conservatives have blasted Francis’ emphasis instead on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor, while also branding as heretical his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.
Francis made the comments in a private meeting with Portuguese members of his Jesuit religious order while visiting Lisbon on Aug. 5; the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, which is vetted by the Vatican secretariat of state, published a transcript of the encounter Monday.
More details:
During the meeting, a Portuguese Jesuit told Francis that he had suffered during a recent sabbatical year in the United States because he came across many Catholics, including some U.S. bishops, who criticized Francis’ 10-year papacy as well as today’s Jesuits.
The 86-year-old Argentine acknowledged his point, saying there was “a very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” in the U.S. church, which he called “backward.” He warned that such an attitude leads to a climate of closure, which was erroneous.
“Doing this, you lose the true tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In other words, ideologies replace faith,” he said.
“The vision of the doctrine of the church as a monolith is wrong,” he added. “When you go backward, you make something closed off, disconnected from the roots of the church,” which then has devastating effects on morality.
“I want to remind these people that backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correct evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals,” that allows for doctrine to progress and consolidate over time.
I’m surprised this pope has lasted this long. I hope he has supporters in the hierarchy.
The Daily News added more specifics:
He said it was an “error” to consider the Church’s stances on issues a “monolith,” citing how it had changed positions in the past on issues like slavery.
“In other words, doctrine also progresses, expands, and consolidates with time and becomes firmer but is always progressing,” he said.
In regards to LGBTQ issues, he said, “It is apparent that perception of this issue has changed in the course of history.”
Well, that’s a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, I doubt if the reactionaries in the Supreme Court and the Federalist Society will be swayed by Francis’ arguments.
NBC News has some specifics on the shooting at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill yesterday.
NBC News: UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student charged with murder in fatal shooting of faculty member.
A graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was charged with first-degree murder after the fatal shooting of a professor in his research department.
Tailei Qi, an applied physical sciences major, was apprehended Monday afternoon following the shooting at Caudill Labs, a science building on the UNC campus, which prompted an hourslong lockdown that forced students and faculty to barricade themselves in classrooms and dorms as authorities searched for a suspect.
Qi, 34, was booked Tuesday in the Orange County Detention Center in Hillsborough and also charged with possession of a gun on an educational property, a felony.
The incident, which occurred in the second week of the fall semester at UNC, began when students were alerted to an armed and dangerous person after 1 p.m. The university issued another alert at 2:24 p.m. that the suspect remained at large. A photo of an unnamed person was released, and the suspect was later apprehended in a residential neighborhood near campus.
It sounds like the victim–a faculty member–might have been targeted, but that’s just my speculation.
The victim was initially described as a university faculty member, and was not immediately identified pending notification of family. The arrest warrant names the shooting victim as Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the applied physical sciences department.
A university department web page that has since been removed had listed Qi as being a member of Yan’s lab group.
On his LinkedIn profile, Qi says he enrolled at UNC’s flagship campus in January 2022 as a graduate student and research assistant, and shared links to papers on his research. One paper published last month
in the journal Advanced Optical Materials was co-authored by Yan.
So the two were well known to each other. We’ll probably learn more in the coming days.
At The Daily Beast, attorney Shan Wu has a piece on Mark Meadows’ choice to testify under oath yesterday: Mark Meadows Just Took an Enormous Risk. Will It Pay Off?
Meadows wants out of the Fulton County court so badly that on Monday, he took the enormous risk of testifying in his own criminal trial and subjecting himself to cross-examination by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
Meadows’ longing for federal court may seem puzzling because switching is but a change of courthouses. In federal court, Meadows will face the same charges, under the same state laws (including the Georgia RICO Act), brought by the same prosecutor.
However, Meadows may be counting on the fact that a federal trial would give him a broader geographic jury pool which might be more favorable to him. He also may think that a federal court would be more sympathetic to his argument that his position as a federal official should automatically make him immune from a state criminal prosecution.
Theoretically, Meadows’ removal argument under 28 U.S. code § 1442 doesn’t look that hard to make, since he only needs to show that he was a federal official at the time and that he can raise a “colorable legal defense.” Meadows was a federal official at the time as Trump’s White House chief of staff, so he can meet that part of the legal standard.
He also has a “federal defense” to raise based on so-called “Supremacy Clause Immunity,” meaning that as a federal officer he cannot be criminally prosecuted by a state for actions performed in his official federal capacity. The question though is whether that defense is a “colorable one” in these circumstances. In plain English, a “colorable defense” is just one that passes the smell test. That may prove challenging for Meadows.
The problem for Meadows is that he needs to convince federal judge Steve C. Jones–a former state judge appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Obama–that his actions in allegedly conspiring with Trump and 18 other co-defendants to overturn the election results in Georgia were part of his job description as White House chief of staff.
Holding aside the fact that the Hatch Act bars a federal official from using their office to engage in partisan political activity, Meadows must prove that his involvement in such acts as the phone call to Brad Raffensberger, in which Trump pressured the Georgia secretary of state to find votes for Trump, were just part of doing his job.
The federal government does not have the power to regulate presidential elections. A strict reading of Article II, Section 1, clause 4 of the Constitution would allow only regulation of the “time” of choosing presidential electors and certainly there is no known precedent for a White House chief of staff overseeing any aspect of a state election process.
Read more at the link.
Republicans are trying to find a way to shut down the prosecutions of Trump by any means necessary.
From NBC News:
WASHINGTON — Four criminal indictments of Donald Trump have ignited his followers and spurred his House Republican allies to try to use the upcoming government funding deadline of Sept. 30 as leverage to undermine the prosecutions.
The bad news for them: A government shutdown wouldn’t halt the criminal proceedings against the former president.
Trump’s indictments in New York and Georgia would not be affected, while his federal indictments — for allegedly mishandling classified documents and for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection — are criminal matters that have been exempted from shutdowns in the past. The Justice Department said in a 2021 memo that in a shutdown, “Criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property.” The Justice Department’s plans assume that the judicial branch remains fully operational, which it has said in the past can carry on for weeks in the event of a funding lapse.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is funded by a “permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels,” the department said in its statement of expenditures. Given its separate funding source, the special counsel would not be affected by a shutdown and could run off of allocations from previous years.
So how are these idiots planning to stop the prosecutions?
As a result, Republicans are looking at ways to insert provisions in government funding legislation that would hinder federal and state prosecutors who have secured indictments of Trump, based on unproven claims that he’s being politically targeted.
It won’t be easy to achieve. The demands, spearheaded by hard-right Republicans, have sparked internal party divisions over reining in law enforcement power and will struggle to pass the House. The Justice bill is one of two appropriations measures the House GOP hasn’t yet passed, out of 12 total, a Democratic aide noted, which could signify splits about how to proceed. And Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, are pushing back on those calls to derail law enforcement as interference in Trump’s cases….
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., a Trump ally who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said Monday he will introduce two amendments to eliminate federal funding for all three of Trump’s prosecutors — Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His office said the measures would block their prosecutorial authority over “any major presidential candidate prior to” the 2024 election.
“Due to my serious concerns about these witch hunt indictments against President Trump, I intend to offer two amendments to prohibit any federal funds from being used in federal or state courts to prosecute major presidential candidates prior to the 2024 election,” Clyde said in a statement.
These so-called legislators have done nothing this session except “investigate” Hunter and Joe Biden and try to protect Trump.
A new book on the Biden administration by Franklin Foer is coming out on September 5. You can read an excerpt that focuses on the withdrawal from Afghanistan at The Atlantic.
This is from today’s Politico Playbook: A first look at the big new Biden book.
Atlantic staff writer FRANKLIN FOER originally set out to write an account of Biden’s first one hundred days in office, focusing on the Biden team’s response to the pandemic and the undoing of Trump’s major policies. But Foer kept reporting as the story of the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine and ultimately the midterm elections unfolded.
Along the way he conducted nearly 300 interviews from November 2020 to February 2023. The result is his eagerly anticipated 407-page tome about Biden world: “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future” ($30).
In recent days Biden aides have been scrambling to secure a password-protected PDF of the book that has been sent to select journalists and reviewers, some of whom were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and promise not to share the contents with newsroom colleagues.
A major media rollout of the book is set to kick off this week. (In fact, we’ll be recording a conversation with Foer this afternoon for next week’s episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast.)
In the publishing world, “The Last Politician” is seen as a test of the market for political books about figures other than DONALD TRUMP. In Washington, the book will be a test for how a generally leak-proof White House grapples with the first detailed excavation of its successes and failures from the Inaugural through the midterms.
Minutes ago, the first excerpt of the Foer book was posted at the Atlantic and will appear across 13 pages in the magazine’s October issue. The piece — “The Final Days” — is a gripping history of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan during August 2021, a month that marks one of the low points for a team that was elected for its competence. Foer’s account is notable both for his deep reporting as well as his shrewd insights into how Biden thinks, including the president’s unsentimental views on his decision to end America’s longest war.
Read more Politico-style analysis at the link.
That’s all I have for you today. Here’s hoping that Hurricane headed for Florida won’t cause too much damage. Take care everyone.
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Posted: November 12, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2022 Elections, Afternoon Reads, cat art, caturday, Congress, Donald Trump | Tags: Arizona, authoritarians, Brian Klaas, Catherine Cortez Masto, independent voters, Katie Hobbs, Mark Finchem, Nevada, young voters |
By Sandra Bierman
Happy Caturday!!
I’m completely exhausted! I spent most of my time since Tuesday glued to the TV and Twitter, obsessing on the vote counts. My eyes feel as if they are about to fall out. But democracy seems to be surviving for now, thanks to voters who clearly understood the danger and who didn’t like the Supreme Court trying to turn women into broodmares. And thanks to the young people who turned out to vote in swing states.
The New York Times: Young Voters Helped Democrats. But Experts Differ on Just How Much.
Preliminary figures indicate that Democrats, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, benefited from a strong turnout of young voters, aged 18-29, the age group that regularly shows the strongest support for the party — and regularly votes the least.
But less certain and much debated after Tuesday’s vote was whether the turnout was particularly strong this year, or more a continuation of support seen in the last midterm election in 2018 — which restored the party’s control of the House of Representatives — or the 2020 vote that elected President Biden and gave the party control of both chambers of Congress.
Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life, perhaps the most assiduous tracker of young voters, estimated on Thursday that 27 percent of 18-to-29 voters cast ballots in midterm elections — and that 63 percent of them voted for Democrats in House of Representatives elections.
That estimate was based on a nationwide exit poll of voters jointly conducted by the three major television networks and CNN; those preliminary numbers will be updated with data from actual voting. The turnout rate for all voters was 47 percent, according to a preliminary estimate by the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida….
“What’s clear from the data is that young Democrats turned out,” said Victor Shi, the director of strategy for Voters of Tomorrow, a Generation Z-centered civics advocacy group. An analysis of early voting data, he said, indicated that young people had cast a million more Democratic votes than Republican ones. And he said that early voting by young Democratic supporters exceeded 2018 totals in three battleground states — Georgia, Michigan and Ohio.
Independents also broke for Democrats. Everyone except the crazies is sick and tired of Trump and his whining. The Wall Street Journal: Why Independent Voters Broke for Democrats in the Midterms. GOP candidates closely aligned with Trump turned off some centrists and in-play Republicans.
Lisa Ghelfi, a 58-year-old registered Republican in Arizona, voted for Donald Trump for president two years ago but has grown tired of his election-fraud claims. It is the main reason she voted for Democrats for governor, senator, secretary of state and attorney general this fall and plans to change her registration to independent.
“Not allowing the election to be settled, it’s very divisive,” Ms. Ghelfi, a semiretired attorney from Paradise Valley, said of the 2020 race. “I think the election spoke for itself.” She said she voted for Republicans down-ballot who weren’t as vocal about election fraud or as closely tied to Mr. Trump, yet couldn’t support Arizona’s four major Republican candidates because they echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims.
Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump.
Control of the House and Senate, which had seemed poised to land with the Republican Party, is coming down to a handful of races that so far are too close to call, though the GOP remains on track to winning a narrow majority in the House. Republicans have won nearly 5.5 million more votes in House races than have Democrats, a tally by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds, as many voters were motivated by anxiety over high inflation and a low opinion of President Biden’s response.
Pierre Bonnard – Marthe à la Chatte, 1912
We are still waiting on Nevada’s Senate race, but it looks like Catherine Cortez Masto has a good chance to win, Right now, she is only behind Laxalt by 862 votes, according to Jon Ralston, with Las Vegas still outstanding. If she wins, the Democrats will control the Senate. Nate Cohn at The New York Times: Mail Ballots Around Las Vegas Are Likely to Put Democrats Ahead.
Democrats appeared on the cusp of securing control of the Senate over the weekend, as the counting of mail ballots in Nevada brought Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democratic incumbent, within 1,000 votes of overtaking her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, for the final seat the party needs to maintain its 50-50 Senate majority.
All eyes will be on Clark County, home to Las Vegas, which is a Democratic stronghold. Ms. Cortez Masto has led mail ballots tabulated after Election Day there by nearly two to one, a margin that would be more than enough to overtake Mr. Laxalt if the trend continues among the approximately 25,000 mail ballots that remain to be counted.
The bulk of the remaining mail ballots in Clark County are expected to be reported on Saturday (though the deadline to have all ballots counted is not until Tuesday). That could be enough to allow news organizations to project a winner, depending on the number of ballots counted and the size of Ms. Cortez Masto’s lead.
Most news organizations, including The Associated Press, are reluctant to call races when the leading candidate is ahead by less than half a percentage point, or about 5,000 votes in this case.
Even so, Ms. Cortez Masto would build a lead of more than 5,000 votes if she fares as well in the final Clark mail ballots as she has in those counted so far. She is also expected to have an advantage in the remaining mail ballots from Washoe County, as well as the more than 10,000 mail ballots that voters can “cure” after being initially rejected for a bad signature match.
Only a few thousand mail votes remain from the state’s rural, Republican counties.
From The Washington Post last night: Congressional Republicans panic as they watch their lead dwindle.
With control of the House and Senate still undecided, angry Republicans mounted public challenges to their leaders in both chambers Friday as they confronted the possibility of falling short of the majority, eager to drag Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) down from their top posts as consequence.
The narrowing path for Republican victory has stunned lawmakers from both parties, freezing plans for legislation and leadership maneuvers as they wait to see who takes control and learn the margins that will dictate which ideological factions wield power. Regardless of the outcome, the lack of a “red wave” marks a devastating outcome for Republicans, who believed they would cruise to a large governing majority in the House and possibly flip the Senate.
By Isabelle Breyer
The GOP faces a small but real prospect that it may not reclaim the House majority despite high pre-election hopes based on the disapproval of President Biden, record inflation and traditional losses for the party that holds the White House. Late Friday, Democrats moved one Senate seat closer to retaining their majority in the chamber as Sen. Mark Kelly won reelection in Arizona. Winning either in Nevada — which was still counting votes — or in Georgia, where a runoff is set for Dec. 6, would allow them to stay in power.
House Democrats also were closely watching uncalled races in those states, as well races as Maine, Oregon, Washington and California, to determine whether they have a pathway to keep the majority. Even if they don’t, as many Democratic aides expect, there is a recognition from both parties that Democratic votes will be critical in a narrow House GOP majority.
“It’s an unworkable majority. Nothing meaningful will get passed,” a dejected aide to a senior House Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss internal tensions….
Outgoing Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) told The Washington Post he knew the evening of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that the GOP would have a difficult time proving to voters they should be in the majority in two years.
“By midnight on January 6, it was obvious that if we continued to sleepwalk down the path of crazy we’d face a rude awakening,” he said. “Instead of facing those facts, the GOP spent the last two years heading in the same direction and actively avoiding any internal reckoning. After Tuesday, we have no choice but to heed voters when they say that ‘the grass is green, the sky is blue, and by the way, you just got your ass handed to you.’ But waking up to that reality is going to be rough.”
Meijer lost in the Michigan primary after he voted to impeach Trump.
More good news for democracy: election-denying candidates lost bigtime. Last night Mark Finchem in Arizona went down to defeat. NBC News: Election denier Mark Finchem loses secretary of state race in Arizona.
Republican Mark Finchem, a prominent election denier, has lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes in the race for Arizona secretary of state race, NBC News projects.
Fontes, a former top elections official for Maricopa County, will succeed Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor.
Finchem was among a host of GOP candidates for statewide office who have repeatedly cast doubt over Joe Biden’s presidential victory or falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump in Arizona.
Last year, Trump backed Finchem’s candidacy and highlighted his record of defending the stolen election claims. “Mark was willing to say what few others had the courage to say” about the 2020 election, Trump said in offering his public support….
With his loss, Finchem joins numerous other election deniers who fell short on Election Day. In Michigan, election deniers lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general. Republican Doug Mastriano, a prominent election denier in Pennsylvania who was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, lost his bid for governor, along with similar GOP gubernatorial candidates in Minnesota and New Mexico.
Other prominent election deniers in Arizona, including attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh and Kari Lake, the party’s pick for governor, are still locked in tight races with their opponents several days after the election.
Katie Hobbes still has a chance to win the governor’s race.
By Sandra Bierman
Republicans are angry with Trump for backing crazy, incompetent, far-right candidates. Liz Goodwin writes at The Washington Post: A red wave of criticism crashes into Donald Trump after midterm losses.
As Republicans grapple with their lackluster performance in Tuesday’s midterm elections, one man has begun to take on an unusual amount of criticism from his fellow partisans: Donald Trump.
The former president, who boosted some inexperienced Senate candidates in their primaries who underperformed on Tuesday, declared before the midterms that he wanted “all the credit” if Republicans won. “If they lose, I should not be blamed at all,” he told NewsNation.
But now that Republicans are facing the prospect of being in the minority in the Senate and are still waiting to see whether they will officially nab an uncomfortably narrow majority in the House, some unexpected voices within the party are beginning to question Trump’s influence.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican who strongly supported Trump, said the poor performance of some of his endorsed candidates is a sign he should step aside.
“It turns out that those he did not endorse on the same ticket did better than the ones he did endorse,” she said. “That gives you a clue that the voters want to move on. And a true leader knows when they have become a liability to the mission.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) — who cruised to victory as the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Don Bolduc lost by a large margin — told SiriusXM on Friday that Trump could “muck up” the opportunity for GOP Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker to win if he announces his run before a December runoff in the state.
“What the former president doesn’t understand is if he announces … he’s not going to keep anyone else out of the race,” Sununu said, calling it an “awkward” thing to do. “I don’t think they’ve started out very well.”
The volume of open criticism illustrates a rare moment of weakness for Trump among Republicans just as he prepares to announce his 2024 presidential bid next week. Exit polls showed his favorability as even lower than President Biden’s on Tuesday, and polls of Republican voters suggest he is losing ground to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in hypothetical presidential matchups.
Brian Klaas, an expert on authoritarian leaders, doesn’t think Republicans will abandon Trump: Will Republicans Defy Trump’s Authoritarian Cult of Personality?
On Tuesday, Donald Trump had a bad night. He leveraged his cult leader-style sway over the Republican base to shoehorn terrible candidates through GOP primaries. These were cartoon caricatures, figures so absurd they seemed to have responded to a casting call for unelectable villainy. A quack doctor who lamented the rising cost of crudité faced a long drive home to New Jersey after losing a winnable seat in Pennsylvania. An outspokenly pro-life candidate in Georgia has paid for a seemingly limitless number of abortions, thinks climate change means that China is sending America “bad air,” and allegedly has a penchant for threatening people with guns. In Arizona, the Republican candidate was a venture capitalist who enjoyed military cosplay was running against a literal astronaut. And don’t get me started on Doug Mastriano, who apparently loves dressing up as a Confederate soldier and wants to charge women who get abortions with murder.
By Elena Shlegel, 1965
The Trump candidates were authoritarian extremists. They mostly lost.
The conventional wisdom, which you’ll now hear repeated over and over by pundits and insiders is that Trump is toast. Let the DeSantis coronation begin. Republicans will fire Trump “like a dog,” as Trump was so fond of saying when getting rid of Rex Tillerson or some other forgotten Trumpian trivia question who may, if we’re lucky, never infect another brain cell of our thoughts ever again.
There’s good reason for Republicans to ditch Trump. Since 2016, he has been an electoral liability. The right way to think about Trump’s strategic “genius” is that the guy had two strokes of genuine political genius: he realized that immigration was an electrifying third rail in US politics and understood that a significant chunk of his party’s voters were latent authoritarians, meaning that the only reason they weren’t voting for a strongman was because one hadn’t been offered to them on the ballot. Those insights propelled him to the presidency. Once he got there, he shot himself in the foot repeatedly, a level of savvy political skills that culminated most deliciously in the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, a fitting coda to a disastrous, slapstick presidency.
But here’s the bad news: Trump isn’t going anywhere. To understand why, you need a frame of reference for US politics that isn’t learned in glitzy political consulting firms, one they don’t teach you if you graduate from the Ronald Reagan school of political history, even if you have read every biography of Lincoln and JFK that’s ever been published.
Read the rest at the above link.
I hope you’re all having a nice long weekend. Let’s hope we’ll get more good news from Arizona and Nevada by tonight. The good news is that democracy has survived for the time being.
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Happy Caturday!!
For weeks, Democratic and Republican senators have been watching the House with growing alarm as Speaker Kevin McCarthy has struggled to cobble together the votes to pass a short-term spending bill along party lines – all as he has resisted calls to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open until a longer-term deal can be reached. The initial plan: Let McCarthy get the votes to pass a bill first before the Senate changes it and sends it back to the House for a final round of votes and negotiations.
Fingerprints belonging to the driver of co-defendant Fred Daibes were found on at least one of the envelopes, as well as his DNA and his return address, prosecutors said. “Thank you,” Nadine Menendez texted Daibes around Jan. 24, 2022, according to the indictment. “Christmas in January.”
“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” Biden 
“Mark Milley, who led perhaps the most embarrassing moment in American history with his grossly incompetent implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, costing many lives, leaving behind hundreds of American citizens, and handing over BILLIONS of dollars of the finest military equipment ever made, will be leaving the military next week,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media site, created when he was banned from several others. “This will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate!”
Whiting’s precise role on Smith’s team is unclear. A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment, and Whiting did not immediately return requests for comment. The prosecutors’ office in the Hague and Harvard University also did not respond to requests for comment about Whiting’s current employment status.
In hindsight, that phenomenon may be eclipsed by another one: Republicans deserting their party precisely because of Trump, forming a demographic now familiarly known as “Never Trump Republicans.” Whether it was his xenophobic 
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