There’s an arctic blast over the country, bringing snow and freezing temps to levels that create hardships! I hope you and yours can stay warm, fed, and inside this weekend! I spent time winterizing the Kathouse to prepare for at least 4 days of below 30 degrees Fahrenheit weather! I’m a hothouse flower after nearly 30 years in tropical New Orleans.
The January 6th Committee’s final report was released last night if you’re in the mood to read a killer thriller over the winter weeks ahead. Analysis can be found at all media outlets all around the world. Here are some highlights from Just Security.
What follows are highlights of the January 6th Select Committee’s final report from our initial review. Our discussion includes but is not limited to the report’s findings and treatment of issues including:
Criminal misconduct in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Racism as a driver of efforts to overturn the popular vote in different parts of the country and in fueling some of the organized groups and individuals who attacked the Capitol.
The apparent intelligence and law enforcement failure and the Committee’s perspective on it.
The pressure campaign on state election officials to deviate from their legal obligations, and
The role of social media in propagating false claims about the election and serving as a mechanism to plan acts of violence.
With so much at stake for American democracy, the January 6th Report provides the public an opportunity to reflect on persistent threats to the rule of law, elections, racial justice, and freedom from political violence.
The Magpie by Claude Monet (1868-69)
This is an excellent place to figure out where to start reading the report. The section on the role of extremists and racists is frightening and compelling. The section on social media made me think about what it would have been like with the current ownership structure of Twitter.
Ronald Brownstein from The Atlantic wrote this. “The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report: Rather than conducting a large-scale dragnet, the committee zeroed in on the former president.”
The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But the committee zoomed in so tightly on the culpability of Trump and his inner circle that it largely cropped out the dozens of other state and federal Republican officials who supported or enabled the president’s multifaceted, months-long plot. The committee downplayed the involvement of the legion of local Republican officials who enlisted as fake electors and said almost nothing about the dozens of congressional Republicans who supported Trump’s efforts—even to the point, in one case, of urging him to declare “Marshall Law” to overturn the result.
With these choices, the committee likely increased the odds that Trump and his allies will face personal accountability—but diminished the prospect of a complete reckoning within the GOP.
The Sea of Ice, 1823–1824, by Caspar David Friedrich.
Politico goes straight for role of extremists in the J6 Insurrection. “Extremists at the vanguard of a siege: The Jan. 6 panel’s last word. The voluminous final report from the Capitol attack committee dug deep into the unspoken alliance between Trump allies and far-right groups that showed up to riot” The bylines here go to Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney.
Far-right extremists who believed they were answering Donald Trump’s call to stop the transfer of presidential power didn’t just join the Jan. 6 mob — they led it.
The first wave of rioters to enter the Capitol during the siege, according to the Jan. 6 select committee’s final report released Thursday night, was disproportionately comprised of members of the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, QAnon fanatics and so-called Groypers loyal to Nick Fuentes, the former president’s racist and antisemitic recent Mar-a-Lago dinner guest.
Among the central findings of the select panel’s report: Trump’s incendiary lies about the 2020 election activated an extraordinary coalition of far-right militants and conspiracy theorists who not only joined the mob but were its vanguard smashing through police lines. Those extremists chose Jan. 6, the report outlines, in large part because Trump told them to in a now-infamous tweet: “Be there. Will be wild.”
“The January 6th attack has often been described as a riot — and that is partly true. Some of those who trespassed on the Capitol’s grounds or entered the building did not plan to do so beforehand,” the committee found. “But it is also true that extremists, conspiracy theorists and others were prepared to fight. That is an insurrection.”
In other news, Politico reports that the “House prepares for passage of $1.7T spending bill. Roughly 40 percent of the chamber has voted by proxy this week, and still more members are expected to do so during Friday’s pre-holiday vote.
The House is on track for Friday approval of a colossal $1.7 trillion government funding package, as party leaders dash to avoid a shutdown and an intensifying winter storm — hours before Christmas.
The spending bill, which includes a pile of high-profile year-end priorities from Ukraine aid to an election law overhaul, will be Democrats’ final legislative act before surrendering their House majority to Republicans in January. And with their post-midterm leverage boost, GOP leaders successfully negotiated huge hikes to the bill’s military spending, adding billions of dollars beyond what President Joe Biden sought, to the consternation of many progressives.
Democrats, meanwhile, touted the funding measure’s highest-ever level for domestic spending — $800 billion, or a 9.3 percent increase from last year’s levels
“These investments support our communities with the urgency they need,” House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told members of the chamber’s Rules panel on Thursday night.
Like anything in this bitterly divided Congress, the path to passage of the spending package has been winding and slow. Resistance from conservatives held it up for days in the Senate, though Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ultimately reached a time agreement on Thursday that will prevent weekend House votes.
Kandinsky – Winter Landscape, 1911
Mitch McConnell is flexing his political muscle and rhetoric at Trump. Sahil Kapur of NBC News has this report. “McConnell calls out ‘diminished’ Trump, vows not to bow to his candidates in 2024. Exclusive: The Senate GOP leader says in an interview that Trump hurt the party in the 2022 elections by making swing voters see Republicans as “nasty” and attracted to “chaos.””
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deferred to former President Donald Trump’s handpicked candidates in competitive midterm races, culminating in jarring defeats and a larger Democratic majority that bucked the odds.
He promises not to let that happen again, insisting he will “actively look for quality candidates” to promote in the 2024 primaries.
In a rare and pointed criticism of the former president, who’s seeking a comeback in two years, McConnell said Trump’s power is on the wane and called on him to back off Senate primaries.
“Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished,” McConnell told NBC News on Wednesday in a wide-ranging interview in his Capitol Hill office.
The diminished standing has made McConnell — and by extension his allies, like the deep-pocketed Senate Leadership Fund super PAC — “less inclined to accept cards that may be dealt to us,” he said.
“We can do a better job with less potential interference,” he said. “The former president may have other things to do.”
McConnell also blamed Trump for tarnishing the party’s image among crucial independent and swing voters, who rejected GOP Senate contenders in the states that decided the majority. He said that the party underperformed in “every state” — including the red state of Ohio, which Republicans narrowly won — and that its performance was “fatal” in Arizona, New Hampshire and Georgia.
“We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party — largely made by the former president — that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos,” McConnell said. “And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters did not approve of President Biden, they didn’t have enough confidence in us in several instances to give us the majority we needed.”
So that’s it for me today. I’ll be back on Monday when it starts to warm up again!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Note Betty Garrett singing with Red Skelton. She was my mother’s cousin from St Joe, Missouri.
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This will be an abbreviated post, because I’m down with a bad chest cold–at least it isn’t Covid.
Top stories in the news today: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Congress last night, Trump’s taxes and the IRS, the January 6 Committee, and Republicans in disarray, including an incoming Congressman whose backstory seems to be completely fictional.
Reactions to Zelensky’s Speech
and here is Churchill and Roosevelt speaking in Washington, during Churchill's visit, Christmas 1941 https://t.co/yVwcPNWheV
This is the world that Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley, the Trump family and the many members of the cult of autocracy apparently wish we inhabited. Full description here: https://t.co/uMRWSC0Sg5
I am impressed with the January 6 Committee’s report. It reads like a prosecution memo. I see the fingerprints of committee counsel Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. Attorney, all over this. Some of the proposed charges were expected. Two others are intriguing. https://t.co/hrxk0JC8dI
Jeffries: House Republicans are attacking Senate Republicans. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting with Lauren Boebert and George Santos appears to be starring in the sequel to Catch Me If You Can and it’s not even January 3rd. pic.twitter.com/4aygy3pAF4
It's obvious that Republicans are terrified the #TrumpTaxReturns will end up making Trump look like #GeorgeSantos … Jim Jordan is threatening to retaliate by releasing @POTUS' returns, guess what Jim, he already released them…Republicans are in complete disarray meltdown mode pic.twitter.com/am7HYYG0gz
McCarthy threatening Republican Senators, Marge and fellow ‘Freedom Caucus’ members attacking each other, everyone attacking Ronna, Trump hiding out and raging in Palm Beach. Republicans in disarray. Who could see this coming with a Great Unifier like Trump leading the party? pic.twitter.com/0myNFHvtYi
I’m searching for some reads outside the realm of the current attention hogs. Let’s see what I can come up with!
The first one was shared by a friend that hit home with me. This is from the Washington Post. It’s a project I’ve been trying to do for a while, but I start and stop a lot. “We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking. ‘They’re more like friends than objects,’ one passionate bookseller says. What are we to do with our flooded shelves?”
Humorist and social critic Fran Lebowitz owns 12,000 books, mostly fiction, kept in 19th-century wooden cases with glass doorsin her New York apartment. “Constitutionally, I am unable to throw a book away. To me, it’s like seeing a baby thrown in a trash can,” she says. “I am a glutton for print. I love books in every way. I love them more than most human beings.” If there’s a book she doesn’t want, Lebowitz, 72, will spend months deciding whom to give it to.
“I kept accumulating books. My life was overflowing with books. I’d have to live to 150 to reread these books,” says Martha Frankel, a writer and director of the Woodstock Bookfest. She amassed 3,600 — and that was just in the office that she closed in 2018 — “but the idea of getting rid of these books made me nauseous.”
America is saturated with old books, congesting Ikea Billy cases, Jengaing atop floors, Babeling bedside tables. During months of quarantine, book lovers faced all those spines and opportunities for multiple seasons of spring cleaning. They adore these books, irrationally, unconditionally, but know that, ultimately, if they don’t decide which to keep, it will be left to others to unceremoniously dump them.
So, despite denial, grief, bargaining, anguish and even nausea, the Great Deaccession commenced.
When Dr. Daughter entered Kindergarten, she came home crying about an assignment. When asked what the assignment was, I realized the gargantuan task in front of her. Her father and I were massive book collectors. We had bookcases filled with books in just about every room of our 4 bedroom, a two-story house with a mostly finished basement. I calmed her down saying that I’d write a note explaining that there were literally hundreds of books all over the house and that she should focus on counting the books in her room. She already had plenty. Assignment completed! End of tears!
I had been thinking about all of this when I contemplated the recent portrait ceremony of Judge Robert L. Wilkins. Wilkins was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2014, where he sat alongside then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. On Oct. 14, his official portrait was hung at the court, in a ceremony typically representing one of the highlights of a judge’s tenure on the bench.
What struck me most about Wilkins’ speech was that he used it to detail a sometimes submerged narrative about the complicated meaning of freedom: He told the story of his own family’s long journey through U.S. constitutional history, a very different encounter with the Framers’ ideas about freedom and justice.
Excerpts from his remarks at that event are reprinted, with Wilkins’ permission, below.
My maternal grandmother, Marcella Hayes, was with us during my investiture to become a District Court Judge. She has now gone on to glory. She was a documenter of our family history, and I inherited that habit from her. Inspired by my Grannyma, I have traced the maternal side of my family back six generations, to my great-great-great-great grandmother, Edie Saulsbury. Edie was born sometime around 1810, when James Madison, considered by many the father of our Constitution, was President of these United States. She was born into slavery, and thus was not even considered a “person” within the meaning of Madison’s Constitution. She was impregnated by a white man at the tender age of 16, where the legal system did not even define the rape of a Black woman by a white man as a crime, did not allow a Black person to testify in court against the white person anyway, and made it a crime punishable by 30 lashes on the bare back for a Black person to raise a hand against a white person, even to defend oneself from being ravished. Edie gave birth to that child, a boy named Alexander, who would endure a life of slavery. She would later give birth to 12 more children, conceived with my fourth great grandfather, a man named David, who was enslaved and belonged to a neighboring family.
My father, John Wilkins, passed away almost 40 years ago. But he is here through me and my brother Larry, and through my many cousins and other relatives on the Wilkins side here today. I have also been able to trace my paternal side back six generations. My paternal grandfather’s name was Rev. George R. Wilkins. His maternal grandfather, my great-great grandfather, was named George Richardson. George Richardson was born in 1848, and, when asked, during the 1900 census, he reported to the census taker that he was born in South Carolina, his mother was born in South Carolina, but that his father was born “at sea.” Think about that: The most plausible explanation for this series of events is that George Richardson’s father, my great- great-great grandfather, was born aboard a slave ship. That would also mean that—six generations back—my fourth great grandmother delivered my third great grandfather in the filthy bowels of a slave vessel. I have not yet been able to determine my fourth great grandmother‘s name, but for the moment, let’s call her Nancy. George Richardson named one of his daughters Nancy, so perhaps he did so in honor of his grandma.
Consider for a moment the circumstances under which those two of my fourth-great grandmothers, Edie and Nancy, lived and brought children into this world. Circumstances of kidnapping, coercion, abuse and despair. And all that vile treatment was absolutely legal. All of it was condoned and facilitated by Madison’s Constitution.
I recommend reading all of it.
Politico has this lede today. “‘THE central issue’: How the fall of Roe v. Wade shook the 2022 election. More than 50 Democratic and Republican elected officials, campaign aides and consultants took POLITICO inside the first campaign after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling.” Authors Elena Schneider and Holly Otterbein argue that it’s the decision that handed so many elections to the Democratic Party and defied the historical trend of the out party sweeping elections on the off presidentional year.
On May 4, less than 48 hours after a draft opinion was published showing the Supreme Court was poised to end the federal right to abortion, a group of eight strangers gathered around a conference table in the Detroit suburbs to talk about the news.
They were all white women, mostly in their 30s to 50s and without college degrees. Their home county, Macomb, had voted for President Barack Obama twice and President Donald Trump twice. In the upcoming gubernatorial race, they were undecided, frustrated by how Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer had handled the pandemic.
But when it came to the possibility of abortion being illegal, there was no equivocation: The women were stunned — and enraged.
It was the kind of conversation women everywhere were having with their mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. But behind a glass window in that conference room and tuning in over Zoom, a half-dozen consultants and staffers from Whitmer’s reelection campaign and the pro-abortion rights group EMILY’s List listened to likely the first Democratic focus group conducted in the wake of the report.
The moderator peppered the women with questions about the draft opinion and the possibility it would trigger a 1931 law outlawing nearly all abortions in Michigan. Then she turned to a recent comment from a Republican candidate that the Whitmer team had considered relatively tame, compared to other GOP reactions. Businessman Kevin Rinke had said that when it came to pregnancy, “There are choices that go into our lives, and there’s cause and effect, so people maybe need to consider their choices.”
The remark “elicited a lot of, ‘Fuck this guy and fuck all the guys out there who think they know better than women,’” said Molly Murphy, the Democratic pollster who moderated the discussion in early May. “This was not just about rape and incest and ‘no exceptions,’ which is obviously all very important, but it said so much more about control, about politicians who think they know better than these women — it added a layer to this that none of us were expecting.”
One Republican Congressman elected to the House for the first time from New York State seems to have completely fabricated his work,education, and life history. This is from the New York Times. “Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction. Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But he seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.
George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others.
His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.
But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.
He also has a record of check fraud dating back to his days in Brazil. If you read their investigation, you’ll see that he’s a cipher. Nothing he told the public is true. This is a fascinating mystery.
At the same time, new revelations uncovered by The Times — including the omission of key information on Mr. Santos’s personal financial disclosures, and criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil — have the potential to create ethical and possibly legal challenges once he takes office.
Mr. Santos did not respond to repeated requests from The Times that he furnish either documents or a résumé with dates that would help to substantiate the claims he made on the campaign trail. He also declined to be interviewed, and neither his lawyer nor Big Dog Strategies, a Republican-oriented political consulting group that handles crisis management, responded to a detailed list of questions.
NBC News reports that the Jan. 6 committee is finalizing its report.
The House Jan. 6 committee met Sunday to finalize its plans to issue at least three criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump, NBC News has learned exclusively.
The committee, gathering publicly Monday, is expected to vote on referrals asking the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against Trump related to the Capitol riot: obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government and inciting or assisting an insurrection.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in part during the meeting overheard by NBC News that he believed referrals were “warranted.” A source familiar with the committee’s plans told NBC News about the meeting and its location in the Capitol complex.
The Jan. 6th committee will broadcast its final public meeting live today at noon est. This reporting is from CNN where you can get live updates once the meeting starts.
The committee will release an executive summary of the investigation’s report on Monday after the meeting, a committee aide said Sunday. The final report, to be released two days later, will provide justification from the panel’s investigation for recommending the charges.
Why now? Republicans are expected to dissolve the panel when they take over the House in January.
So, I did end on some Trumpy news but it didn’t involve much Trumpyisms so I hope that’s okay.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Late last night, after receiving widespread condemnation from the likes of the EU and the UN, Elon Musk restored the Twitter accounts of some of the journalists he had impulsively suspended on Thursday. Supposedly he did this based on an unscientific poll of Twitter users.
U.S. and international officials condemned Twitter and Elon Musk on Friday after the social media company abruptly suspended several U.S. journalists, expressing concern about retaliation and the potentially chilling effect on free speech.
The moves invited sharp rebuke from public officials at the European Commission and the United Nations, as well as criticism from a U.S. senator. Even some of Musk’s own supporters, who advocate a broad interpretation of free speech, appeared taken aback by the about turn….
Accounts that were suspended include @ElonJet, which tracks the location of Musk’s private plane through the use of publicly available data, as well as other accounts that track helicopter and plane locations. Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists on Thursday night, including from The Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN.
Musk later accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family — although he provided no evidence that any of the journalists had done so.
Also on Friday, the account of Linette Lopez, a journalist who has written critically of Musk and Tesla, also appeared to be suspended. It was not immediately clear what had prompted the suspension….
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted in defense of the reporters Friday, saying Musk’s actions “are a fast track to Twitter becoming obsolete.”
European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová, whose brief includes the rule of law and disinformation, tweeted that the “arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying.”
“EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” she wrote. “@elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Elon Musk has reinstated the accounts of the journalists he had suspended after claiming they had shared details about the location of his private jet.
The Twitter CEO launched a poll on the social media site on Thursday asking if the accounts of the journalists should be reinstated “now,” or in “7 days from now.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning he tweeted, “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”
More than 58 percent of the 3.8 million respondents voted for “now” in the poll….
Journalists including Insider columnist Linette Lopez, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steven Herman of VOA, as well as Aaron Rupar, Tony Webster, and Keith Olbermann, all found their Twitter accounts suspended with no warning….
While the accounts of Harwell, O’Sullivan, Binder, Lee, Herman, Rupar, Webster, and Mac were all reinstated, those of Olbermann and Lopez still appeared to be suspended as of Saturday morning.
The ElonJet account that has been dedicated to tweeting the location of Musk’s private jet also remained suspended….
Twitter also targeted rival, Mastodon, by blocking users from adding their Mastodon username to their Twitter profile.
There’s quite a bit of news about January 6 investigations. First, the House select committee will be wrapping up its work next week.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans on Monday to vote on issuing criminal referrals against former President Donald J. Trump for insurrection and at least two other charges, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it.
It had been widely expected the panel would recommend charges against Mr. Trump for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The panel’s members had already argued in federal court that they believed it was likely that he committed those two felonies. But the addition of an accusation of insurrection was a new development.
The House impeached Mr. Trump last year for incitement of insurrection, and the members of the panel have long argued Mr. Trump was the central figure who fomented an insurrection against the United States as he sought to cling to power. Politico earlier reported that a charge of insurrection would be considered.
By Vicky Mount
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Jan. 6 committee tasked with studying possible criminal referrals, was the lead impeachment manager against Mr. Trump on the count of incitement of insurrection.
Referrals against Mr. Trump, which the committee is slated to approve as part of its report, would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes….
The committee also was set to consider whether to issue criminal and civil referrals for some of Mr. Trump’s top allies during a meeting scheduled for Monday as it prepares to release a voluminous report laying out its findings about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Members also were expected to discuss the forthcoming report and recommendations for legislative changes.
A federal judge revealed Friday that earlier this year she granted Justice Department investigators access to emails between three Trump-connected attorneys and Rep. Scott Perry as part of the federal investigation into election subversion efforts by the former president and others.
At the request of DOJ, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed a June opinion in which she determined that 37 emails sent among Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative attorney John Eastman and Perry (R-Pa.) — another top Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Freedom Caucus — were not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Notably, Howell indicated in her opinion that investigators had prioritized accessing any emails sent to or from Perry’s account.
Howell also unsealed a second opinion, issued in September, in which she determined that 331 documents from Clark — whom Trump nearly installed as acting attorney general as part of his bid to seize a second term — were similarly not protected by attorney-client privilege.
The documents were largely versions of a potential autobiography Clark had outlined in mid-October 2021, writing that recounted a bizarre effort to have Trump install him as acting attorney general in order to get more traction to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The outline included a description of a pivotal Jan. 3, 2021, meeting between Trump and senior DOJ officials where almost the entire top echelon of the department threatened to resign if the then-president put Clark in charge.
Clark’s legal team waded into the fight over the apparent book outline. But Howell seemed to disapprove of aspects of the approach Clark’s lawyers took to the document dispute, describing their strategy at one point as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”
The information revealed in the opinions is the most significant insight yet into what prosecutors are doing with evidence they have obtained in their review of figures associated with Trump’s quest to remain in power despite losing reelection.
The House Ways and Means Committee is considering publicly releasing Trump’s tax returns next week.
The House Ways and Means Committee scheduled a closed-door meeting for Tuesday at which lawmakers are likely to review former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and may vote to release some of them.
The meeting notice sent to lawmakers Friday doesn’t specify what action the committee might take or which documents, reports or analysis, if any, it might make public. The panel has focused its efforts and its legal case on potential changes to the Internal Revenue Service program for annual audits of presidents, which is an agency policy not required by law.
Under the tax code, the Ways and Means Committee chairman—currently Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.)—has the authority to request anyone’s tax returns and records from the IRS. He can then review them, and so can agents he designates. The committee can consider them in a closed-door meeting and then vote to make those normally confidential records public as part of a report to the House.
Under the tax code, the committee has the authority, at its own discretion, to include otherwise confidential tax-return information in reports to the House, which are made public.
“God willing this is the final chapter in this saga,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D., N.J.), a senior Ways and Means member who has been a persistent advocate for obtaining the returns.
Read more at the WSJ. I didn’t encounter a paywall when I clicked a link at Memeorandum.
A man already being investigated for his role in the January 6 riots has been hit with additional charges after being accused of planning to kill the law enforcement officers who investigated his case, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday.
Tennessee resident Edward Kelley, 33, allegedly obtained a list of law enforcement officials and discussed plans, starting December 3, to kill these officials with Austin Carter, 26, and a witness who eventually reported their activities to authorities, the complaint says.
Kelley, who was one of the first people to enter the Capitol grounds on January 6, was previously charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, civil disorder, destruction of government property, and seven other charges for his role in the Capitol riot.
According to the complaint, a witness who was interviewed by the FBI said Kelley handed Carter an envelope with a document of the names, titles, and phone numbers of approximately 37 law enforcement officials who investigated him and were “present at arrest or home search” of Kelley on May 5, 2022.
The witness then met with Kelley and Carter on December 3 at a park in Maryville, Tennessee, where Kelley discussed plans with both Carter and the witness.
The witness said Kelley stated “with us being such a small group, we will mainly conduct recon missions and assassination missions,” with one of these missions being an attack on Federal agents. KellLaey also asked whether or not the witness owned firearms and said “we will do more long-distance things,” which the witness believed to be a reference to assassinations.
A new office at the Pentagon is scrutinizing hundreds of reports of unidentified objects in air, sea, space and beyond, senior U.S. defense officials said Friday, and while it has discovered no signs of alien life, the search is set to expand.
The issue has taken on increasing seriousness as a bipartisan group of lawmakers presses the Defense Department to investigate instances of unidentified phenomena and disclose publicly what they learn. Established in July, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is evaluating recent reports and soon could evaluate accounts that date back decades, officials said.
Black cat in snow, by Vicky Mount
The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Ronald Moultrie, told reporters during a news conference, the first to discuss the office and its ongoing work, that “At this time … we have nothing” to affirm the existence of space aliens.
The proliferation of drones, including those operated by foreign adversaries and amateur hobbyists, account for many of the reports, officials said.
“Some of these things almost collide with planes,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the new office, who spoke to the media alongside Moultrie on Friday. “We see that on a regular basis.”
The U.S. government employs sophisticated sensors around the globe to collect data, and the office analyzes it for relevant information, they said, declining to elaborate.
While most of the reports the Pentagon investigates are about aerial objects, defense officials are increasingly concerned about unusual activity below the surface of the ocean, in space and on land. For that reason, the Pentagon now uses the term unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, rather than previous descriptions such as “unidentified flying object.”
Moultrie said that, “Unidentified phenomena in all domains …pose potential threats to personal security and operational security, and they deserve our urgent attention.”
Unidentified “trans-medium” objects, he said, is a class of phenomena that would jump between domains, like from the air to the sea. None has been documented yet, Moultrie noted.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
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Le Désespéré , The Desperate Man, self portrait, 1843-184, Gustave Courbet
Good Day Sky Dancers!
This is one of those days that makes me want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Just about every headline is about some narcissist that should be in a padded cell somewhere. I will go down that road, but I am not about to obsess about the details or the people. I’m really sick of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Elon Musk is maniacally destroying himself, Tesla, and Twitter. He’s holed up in the Twitter building 24-7, drawing attention to himself, banning anyone that bothers him, and selling off Tesla stock to keep the lights on in his hidey-hole even if Tesla crashes and burns. Trump is holed up in Mar-a-Lago 24-7, drawing attention to himself, using his Truth Social to draw attention to himself, and watching the Trump Family Crime Syndicate crash and burn.
Twitter suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen journalists from CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets Thursday evening, as company owner Elon Musk accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family.
The Post has seen no evidence that any of the reporters did so.
The suspensions came without warning or initial explanation from Twitter. They took place a day after Twitter changed its policy on sharing “live location information” and suspended an account, @ElonJet, that had been using public flight data to share the location of Musk’s private plane.
Many of the journalists suspended Thursday, including Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell, had been covering that rule change, as well as Musk’s claims that he and his family had been endangered by location sharing.
Twitter did not directly respond to questions about the suspensions. But Musk suggested on Twitter, without evidence, that the journalists had revealed private information about his family, known as doxing. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he tweeted late Thursday.
“Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publications of his accurate reporting about Musk,” The Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement. “Our journalist should be reinstated immediately.”
At least eight other journalists were suspended the same evening, including New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Skull People, c 1827
CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan was suspended shortly after posting a tweet about Musk’s claim that a “crazy stalker” had chased his young son in Los Angeles, according to screenshots.
O’Sullivan said Thursday that all those journalists who were suspended with him were people who cover Musk.
“As we saw with the jet tracker last night, Musk seems to be just stamping out accounts that he doesn’t like,” O’Sullivan said on CNN.
A spokesperson for the network said the suspensions were “impulsive and unjustified” — but not surprising.
“Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter,” the network said in a statement. “We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response.”
Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The Washington Post, said Harwell’s suspension “directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”
Harwell was “banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk” and should be reinstated immediately, Buzbee said in a statement Thursday night.
A spokesperson for The New York Times, who called the suspensions questionable and unfortunate, said no explanation was provided to Mac or the newspaper about the ban.
Director of research for VerityData, Ben Silverman, wrote in an email to CNBC on Wednesday, “Musk’s prior sales going back to November 2021 were expertly timed, so Tesla shareholders need to pay attention to Musk’s actions and not his words – or lack thereof when it comes to his recent selling.”
However, he continued to sell portions of his sizable holdings in Tesla after agreeing to buy Twitter in a deal worth $44 billion. The acquisition closed in late October. Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX, a major defense contractor, immediately appointed himself chief executive of the social media company.
After Musk’s Twitter takeover, he told employees there that he sold Tesla shares to “save” their business.
Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tesla shares have been declining this year, and sliding even further since he took on that new responsibility.
Shares of Tesla closed down 2.6% on Wednesday at $156.80, dropping the company’s market capitalization to $495 billion. Tesla shares were down 55% year to date as of Wednesday’s close.
Now, some Tesla investors are calling for Musk to hand over the reins at one of his companies as the electric vehicle company’s stock plummets — raising concerns that the billionaire is stretched too thin. Tesla closed Wednesday at $156.80 per share, with an overall valuation of less than $500 billion, sharply down from when Musk signaled his interest in Twitter over the spring and Tesla was valued at over $1 trillion.
Contributing to the losses, Musk sold about $3.5 billion worth of Tesla stock in recent days, according to a financial filing Wednesday night. That added to another more than $3.9 billion in Tesla shares sold by Musk in early November, according to the filings.
Shares of Tesla rose less than 1 percent during trading Thursday as the broader markets fell.
“Wake up tesla [board] — what is the plan? Who is running tesla and when is Elon coming back?” tweeted Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor who supported Musk’s Twitter bid.
He added in a tweet late Wednesday that Tesla needed to buy back shares “to take advantage [of] the low share price Elon has created,” as investors anticipated a potential further blow to the company’s value on Thursday.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Tesla and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
It appears Musk can shut up when it’s an inconvenient question.
Funny, yes. But it is far, far worse than you think. And to understand why, we have to begin tracing the web of corporations involved in producing these worthless digital cards. They lead to some sleazy places.
Before we start down the rabbit hole of partnerships, corporations and other entities that lead to criminals and fraudsters, I need to address one question up front: What exactly are buyers of the Trump Trading Cards purchasing? Yes, they are NFTs, but unlike others of these digital art pieces, the people foolish enough to purchase a Trump Trading Card don’t actually own the things they paid for, at least not in the traditional sense. If any buyer decides to sell their Trump card in a secondary market, they don’t get all the proceeds. The fine print reveals that 10% of every secondary market sales goes right back to Trump and his fellow grifters. For more details, buyers are told to click the link to terms and conditions. Buyers have to confirm they read the terms and conditions but…the terms and conditions are nowhere to be found.
“The Flatterers” — Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1592
Makes me wonder what rubes bought these. Maybe Russians are having Trump do money laundering for them again?
Trump himself is not producing the cards, any more than he has developed any real estate projects since 2010. Instead, he has reached a licensing agreement with a company called NFT International LLC. All his licensing agreements, dating back decades (Real estate, Trump Steaks, Trump University etc.) have all had the same terms: The licensor pays Trump a bunch of cash up front, then he gets a share of the revenue produced by whatever the grifty product is. That number has ranged from 10% to 50%, and there is no reason to expect that this time it is any less – in fact, it is almost certainly more.
You may follow the link to go down the dark rabbit hole of NFT International LLC. Be sure to bring a flashlight.
Kevin McCarthy’s imperiled speakership bid is threatening to incapacitate Republicans during a crucial planning period, virtually guaranteeing a sluggish start for the new House majority.
The GOP leader on Thursday took the unusual step of punting conferencewide races for committee leadership slots until after his speaker election on Jan. 3, a maneuver that could help insulate him from disgruntled members who fall short in those contests and their allies.
But that delay will also mean days, if not weeks, of uncertainty for GOP committees as they begin their stint in the majority. Some of the most important panels, including those charged with tax-writing and border security, won’t be able to prepare bills, tee up hearings, or even hire staff. While some House committees already have uncontested leaders in place, those chairs won’t be able to choose their member lineup or potentially pay staff. The GOP’s subpoena power, too, will be frozen.
“Without question, delays in selecting chairmen and committee members put a lot of pressure on the agenda,” said retiring Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who led the influential House Ways and Means Committee the last time the GOP had the majority.
The decision to formally punt comes as little surprise to many lawmakers, who had speculated that McCarthy might delay contested fights as a point of leverage as he works to lock down support. Still, many Republicans say they’re concerned that limbo could have lingering effects — particularly if the speaker’s election gets ugly and drags on past Jan. 3.
“Youth Making A Face” — Adriaen Brouwer, 1632 – 1635
You can get a Trump v. Twitter twofer at the Washington Post: “Trump reinvents ‘rigged’ election myth around Twitter allegations. Republicans are now following Trump in claiming foul play in the 2020 election took the form of social media censorship, replacing debunked claims of fraudulent ballots.”
Instead, Trump was now advancing a new theory of how the election was “stolen” from him: a supposed scheme among social media companies, the FBI and the Democrats to suppress information that might have helped Trump’s campaign.The claim is fueled in part by new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s decision to release internal documents about the platform’s brief suppression of a 2020 news story about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son amid concerns it might be the result of disinformation efforts.
Well, alright then. It doesn’t get any more discombobulated than that!
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.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
When Dr. Daughter entered Kindergarten, she came home crying about an assignment. When asked what the assignment was, I realized the gargantuan task in front of her. Her father and I were massive book collectors. We had bookcases filled with books in just about every room of our 4 bedroom, a two-story house with a mostly finished basement. I calmed her down saying that I’d write a note explaining that there were literally hundreds of books all over the house and that she should focus on counting the books in her room. She already had plenty. Assignment completed! End of tears!
I recommend reading all of it.
One Republican Congressman elected to the House for the first time from New York State seems to have completely fabricated his work,education, and life history. 
He also has a record of check fraud dating back to his days in Brazil. If you read their investigation, you’ll see that he’s a cipher. Nothing he told the public is true. This is a fascinating mystery.
The Jan. 6th committee will broadcast its final public meeting live today at noon est. 
In the early hours of Saturday morning he tweeted, “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”
The documents were largely versions of a potential autobiography Clark had outlined in mid-October 2021, writing that recounted a bizarre effort to have Trump install him as acting attorney general in order to get more traction to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The outline included a description of a pivotal Jan. 3, 2021, 
Shocking new charges have been filed against Edward Kelley, a January 6 defendant, according to Insider: 
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