Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley stepped into the hallway after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday to supporters asking for selfies and autographs — and, from others, a less friendly greeting.
“We love Trump, we love Trump!” a crowd around her started chanting. Some Haley supporters shouted her name back as the former U.N. ambassador escaped with staff to an elevator.
Svetlana Novikova, Black Cat
The dust-up showed the risks of taking the primary fight to what has clearly become Trump’s home turf. Though CPAC has long been seen as a big-tent forum for the conservative movement and a mandatory cattle call for presidential hopefuls, the annual conference has increasingly grown into a stomping ground for the 45th president and his “Make America Great Again” wing of the GOP. Trump will speak at the event Saturday.
“Remember, you’re not at CPAC, you’re at TPAC,” John Fredericks, a pro-Trump talk radio host broadcasting from the sidelines here, said in an interview Wednesday. He said potential 2024 rivals opted to skip the conference rather than risk getting booed or losing the straw poll. “We own this thing, it’s ours,” he said. “No Trump, no CPAC.”
This year’s lineup was heavy with Trump family members and acolytes — such as Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr., former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, losing 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — to the near-total exclusion of the party’s other voices.
Mostly Monday Reads: Some Cherry Reads
Posted: March 6, 2023 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Afternoon Reads, Right Wing Angst | Tags: Cherry Blossom Festival, Culture Wars, DOJ Investigation January 6, Sakura, The Salty Tears of CPAC 9 Comments
Hana no Yube or Flowers (Image of Evening) was made in 1938 by Funada Gyokuju. The power of this sizeable folding screen painting is in the scale of the cherry blossom tree.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
So far, things are going well here at the KatHouse. Keeley has not had a seizure since last Monday and is resigned to her pill regime. I hope we can continue on this path!
I’m sharing some Japanese paintings and block prints of the upcoming Cherry Blossom Season. My late mother-in-law was born and raised in Kyoto during World War 2. The season is vital to Japan and Washington D.C., where everyone recognizes the beautiful sakura blooming on the mall. I love it because it always starts on the Spring Equinox, which occurred the day Doctor Daughter was born. It starts on March 20 this year, and it’s another Monday, so I may give you some more Sakura artwork.
Our National Cherry Blossom Festival and the trees were a gift from Japan. It’s certainly good they’re located in the National Mall, part of our National Park System. The last glum lady in the White House didn’t do positive things to the gardens there. The First Lady that helped plant these trees was Helen Herron Taft.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual spring celebration in the capital, commemorates the gift of 3,020 Japanese cherry trees given by former Toyko Mayor Yukio Ozaki to the U.S. in 1912, which were planted in Washington, D.C.
The Sakura tree does not actually produce cherries. They give us these brilliant pink blossoms when we need to remove the winter darkness from our national psyche. So, that’s one symbol of rebirth we can enjoy coming from Washington, D.C. I’m keeping that in mind as I read the news today.
Erik Wemple–reporting for the New York Times–has an exciting Op-Ed today on Faux News and the Dominion Law Suit. “What is Fox News hiding in the Dominion lawsuit?”
Yet the filing is filled with frustrating dead ends, the result of the network’s aggressive effort to prevent disclosure of many of the internal communications that came out of discovery in the case, Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News. The black passages in the document raise the questions: What is Fox News hiding? And will those passages ever be unredacted?
As the Dominion filing makes clear, Fox News executives panicked in the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election. The network had called Arizona on election night for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, a move regarded as treason by the network’s MAGA crowd, which declared viewers would flee to the competition, especially conservative cable news outlet Newsmax.
So, Fox News tried playing both sides — a little conspiracy-mongering here, a little factual injection there. Anything to hang on to its ratings preeminence.
One way the network competed with Newsmax was to host election-denying attorney Sidney Powell and her extravagant claims. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, who appeared multiple times in the Dominion filing, apparently commented on the situation, though the public, for now, doesn’t have the goods:
Impenetrable black expanses in the filing thwart a complete understanding of what was happening as Fox News faced down a ratings collapse. We do know what happened when White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a stolen election claim made by Trump: Host Tucker Carlson advocated for her firing. Similar tensions arose when anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference at which Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, was inveighing against the election. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto said on air. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”
Sakura, © Meiji Hashimoto, Sakura, 1970s
Pictures of the redacted bits and more examples are included in the media critic’s take at the link. David Folkenflik at NPR has this piece today. “Fox News stands in legal peril. It says defamation loss would harm all media”. Faux is uniquely a propaganda outlet. I’m not sure its demise will be significant for other media other than to create more room to breathe. Can you imagine not having to offset the Fox Lies daily? An entire group of comedians may become unemployed, but that’s like Faux, which is a self-serving entertainment and propaganda outlet.
Outside legal observers say the Fox News Channel finds itself in real legal jeopardy in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by an election tech company over lies broadcast about the 2020 presidential race.
The amount and weight of evidence is perhaps without equal among other major, recent defamation cases.
“How often do you get ‘smoking gun’ emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?” says Rutgers University law professor Ronald Chen, an authority on constitutional and media law.
Fox News has endured one humiliation after another from the rolling revelations in the case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Private communications made public in legal filings demonstrate the network’s producers, stars and executives — even controlling owner Rupert Murdoch — knew the claims they were broadcasting were false, and at times unhinged. A trial in the case is slated for next month.
Fox’s legal team is grounding much of its defense in a claim that it was merely reporting allegations by the most newsworthy public official of all, then-President Donald Trump.
“We err on the side of speech because the more and more speech you have, the better chance of having people actually getting the opportunity to point out what’s right and what’s wrong,” attorney Erin Murphy, one of the senior figures on Fox’s defense team, tells NPR in an interview. “And that’s why we don’t suppress the speech that we don’t think is right.”
A loss for Fox would make it harder for all journalists to serve the public, she says.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to hinder the ultimate objective of the First Amendment, of getting to the truth,” Murphy argues.
The case may serve as a test for the elasticity of that argument.
Cherry Blossom Flurry, 1903, Kayburagi Kiyokata. The Smithsonian.
It also tests the elasticity of calling nearly anyone at Faux an actual reporter rather than a propaganda spewer or hate-mongering shouter of conspiracy theories. I suppose I should be more excited about the possibility of a less Trumpy network and Republican Party, but those waiting in the right wing are just as, if not more, scary. It’s also still well-funded by freak families like the Mercers. They die off and come back like Koch zombies.
Here’s Tim Miller of The Bulwark writing on what used to be the influential CPAC event. “CPAC: Taste the Sadness. Go ahead and laugh. They deserve it.”
As I pulled into Matt Schlapp’s preferred Gaylord Hotel in suburban Washington for the latest rendition of CPAC, ghosts of past selves flashed through my head. I remembered 2015, my last time at the gathering. It was an early inflection point in Jeb!’s campaign. As Bush was interviewed on stage by an obsequious Sean Hannity, a Revolutionary War cosplayer in a tricorne hat led a walkout. I was backstage managing an impending Breitbart News story about how Jeb’s new spokesman (moi) and campaign manager were hostile to homophobes.
It’s been quite the journey since then.
For all the familiar flashbacks, this year’s CPAC felt . . . different and a little sad. You might even say, low energy. Rick Wilson put it well on Charlie’s podcast this weekend, comparing the event to a “collapsing neutron star . . . it’s smaller. It’s hotter. It’s more intensely crazy.” A reporter at the event had a different sad-sack metaphor, describing the energy in the building as “what it feels like when the Apple Store leaves a dying mall.”
It’s funny, in a laugh-out-loud sort of way. Because we’re not laughing with CPAC. We’re laughing at it. But cheap laughs aside, there are some consequential questions about CPAC’s decline.
What does it signal for the direction of conservative politics and for the belle of the ball, Donald Trump? Were the ballrooms barren because some of the faithful decided to at long last change the channel from the Trump show? Or did they just figure they didn’t want to contribute to the legal defense fund of a dude who pummeled another dude’s dick against his will (allegedly).
Or is the reality simply that the entire Republican party is CPAC now, so there’s no real need for it anymore? Especially when there’s a younger, more dynamic offering for culture warriors looking for fellowship in Turning Point USA?
It’s probably a bit of each. What we do know is that Trump won the straw poll, again, with Tiny D finishing a distant second. But whether that matters . . . whether it’s a precursor of primaries to come or more of a Fat Elvis-meets-Ron Paul demonstration of fading niche power is something we can speculate about, but won’t actuallyknow until next year’s CPAC.
Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869); 1859-1861; colour woodcut; RV-1353-290a
High-ranking prostitute parading under cherry blossoms
Another piece at the Washington Post has totally given me a bad case of the sads as a former History teacher at public schools. “‘Slavery was wrong’ and 5 other things some educators won’t teach anymore. To mollify parents and obey new state laws, teachers are cutting all sorts of lessons.” This is written by Hannah Natanson.
Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.
These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.
“I felt very bleak,” said Lisa Childers, an Arkansas teacher who was forced by an assistant principal, for reasons never stated, into yanking Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 polemic from her high school English class in 2021.
The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.
In response, teachers are changing how they teach.
A study published by the Rand Corp. in January found that nearly one-quarter of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 English, math and science teachers reported revising their instructional materials to limit or eliminate discussions of race and gender. Educators most commonly blamed parents and families for the shift, according to the Rand study.
The piece continues with a list of how 20 educators nationwide have changed and eliminated teaching “certain” subjects. Jose Pagliery writes this in today’s The Daily Beast. “How a New DOJ Memo Sets Up Two Potential Trump Indictments. What seemed like a narrow decision could have far-reaching implications.”
When the Department of Justice took the position this week that former President Donald Trump acted improperly by urging his followers to attack Congress in 2021, prosecutors did more than open the door to a potential flood of civil lawsuits from police officers who were injured on Jan. 6.
What they actually did, according to legal scholars, is lay the groundwork for a potential criminal indictment against Trump for inciting the insurrection.
“If they took the position that the president was absolutely immune, then they wouldn’t be able to bring a criminal prosecution,” said one person familiar with the DOJ’s ongoing investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Legal scholars have come to the same conclusion.
“Had DOJ concluded that incitement unprotected by the First Amendment could nevertheless be within the president’s official functions, that could conceivably have impacted criminal charging decisions related to the same speech,” said Mary B. McCord, a former federal prosecutor now teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.
At the behest of the District of Columbia’s federal appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo weighing in on a civil dispute by injured police officers. The department clarified that Trump’s speech, full of vitriol and fury, was not protected by presidential immunity, nor was it protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment.
“Such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States,” the DOJ wrote.
The department went out of its way to say it doesn’t necessarily support officer lawsuits against Trump, noting that it “expresses no view on that conclusion, or on the truth of the allegations in plaintiffs’ complaints.” But by making clear that Trump’s speech was outside the norms of his office, it stripped the former president of virtually any defense he could make.
“If they’re saying it’s outside the scope of immunity of civil suits, and outside the scope of protected speech, there really isn’t anything else out there protecting Trump,” said one attorney, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid rattling DOJ leadership.
The two indictments Trump could face are for his incitement of the Jan. 6 riot—a federal crime—and his attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, a state case there.
So far, the Justice Department has not indicated its legal analysis of the looming federal case against Trump, which concerns the effort his campaign led to undermine the electoral vote by Congress. However, its new legal memo draws a clear red line on his actions during the lead up to the actual attack on Congress.
Now, I’m contemplating the difference between the rebirth of life in spring and unwanted zombies in your Government and Media. Well, that will be another rabbit hole for me to enter, and rabbits are an elemental totem of spring.
Have yourselves a good, peaceful week, and start looking for the signs of spring!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And don’t laugh, but I can actually play Sakura on the koto. It’s like the first thing kids learn!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: March 4, 2023 Filed under: cat art, caturday, just because | Tags: CPAC, Dominion lawsuit, Fox News, George Conway, gossip, Joe Biden, Kellyanne Conway, Merrick Garland, Michael Beschloss, odds and ends, Ron De Santis, Rupert Murdoch, Sergei Lavrov, Ukraine 23 Comments
Claudia Olivos, Cats in Love
Happy Caturday!!
I’m not finding a lot of exciting stories today, which is actually fine with me, because I’m going through one of my periods of being burned out on political news. So once again, I’m offering a mixed bag of odds and ends that I found interesting. Here goes…
CPAC is still in the news and, as Dakinikat indicated yesterday, it’s even more bizarre than ever before.
Steve Reilly and Maggie Severns with a long read at Grid: Why does CPAC seem extra weird this year? How CPAC went from launching the Reagan era to “Schlapp Inc. and the Trump grifters.”
Its sponsors include multiple organizations founded by convicted criminals. Key speaking slots are filled with prominent election deniers. Many top Republicans are keeping their distance.
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the most troubled parts of the conservative movement were on full display.
“It has transformed itself into a Donald Trump-supporting group fully engaged with election deniers, culture wars and indicted guests,” said Al Cardenas, who led the American Conservative Union (ACU), which produces the event, from 2011 to 2014.
“It’s Schlapp, Inc. and Trump grifters,” said GOP strategist Dennis Lennox, who has attended CPAC since 2007, referring to CPAC and Matt Schlapp, the current head of the ACU, who faces his own legal problems.
Sponsors in years past have included blue chip companies like Google and pillars of the conservative movement like the Heritage Foundation, the National Review and the Washington Times.
Among this year’s CPAC sponsors: America’s Frontline Doctors, whose founder Simone Gold was sentenced to 60 days in prison after pleading guilty to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the #WalkAway Foundation, whose leader Brandon Straka was sentenced to three years’ probation after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct and admitting he recorded himself telling Capitol rioters to “go go go.”
Other sponsors include New Federal State of China, a lobbying group cofounded by former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was convicted in July 2022 of contempt of Congress. Real America’s Voice, a network that broadcasts Bannon’s “War Room” program on which 2020 election falsehoods continue to prevail, is also a sponsor, with a large booth for broadcasting outfitted in red, white and blue signage.
Reilly and Severns trace the history of CPAC beginning in the 1970s and describe how it has devolved over the years.
Isaac Arsdorf and Meryl Kornfield at The Washington Post: Haley heckled as Trump movement asserts its dominance at shrunken CPAC.
It’s a mystery to me what these people see in Trump. He has only sunk deeper into dementia over the past two years, but he symbolizes something for these strange people–maybe it’s just that he gives them permission to hate.
Daniel Dale at CNN: Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.
Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.
And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.
Head over to CNN to read the detailed list of lies with corrections.
Fallout continues from the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News.
The Hollywood Reporter: Rupert Murdoch, Fox Corp. Sued For Sharing Biden’s Presidential Ads Before They Aired.
A complaint has been filed against Fox Corp. and chairman Rupert Murdoch over allegations that the network chief gave confidential information in 2020 to former president Donald Trump’s campaign.
In a suit filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, progressive watchdog group Media Matters claims that Fox made an illegal contribution to Trump’s political action committee when Murdoch shared then-candidate Joe Biden’s campaign advertisements with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. The liberal nonprofit seeks the maximum fine allowable for violations of campaign contribution laws and “appropriate remedial action” against Fox, Murdoch and the Make America Great Again PAC for a “nefarious attempt by people in power to operate a press entity as a political organization.”
Randall Spangler, Fish Juggler
A filing in Dominion Voting System’s defamation suit against Fox included claims that Murdoch gave Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public. It cited a deposition from Murdoch and internal company communications.
The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibits campaign contributions from corporations, including direct or indirect gits of money or services. The FEC considers information about advertising, messaging and other campaign strategy a contribution, according to the complaint.
While there are press exemptions for violations of the FEC Act, the suit alleges that Fox wasn’t acting as a press entity. It stresses that the ads hadn’t aired at the time Murdoch provided the information to Kushner and that the ads were covertly shared to hide the alleged misconduct.\
“This ‘distribution’ is diametrically opposed to Fox Corporation’s regular press activity broadcasting news programming through television and radio outlets and online publications,” writes Angelo Carusone, a lawyer for Media Matters in the suit. “Murdoch’s secret conveyance of the Biden advertisement is even less like press activity than a cablecasting company sending campaign flyers in its bills – and neither can be protected by the press Exemption.”
Politico: Dems want to cut Fox off after lawsuit revelations.
The thunderclap of stories showing Fox News’ role in pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies and aiding Donald Trump’s campaign has intensified calls among Democrats to black out the network.
The revelations, made public as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, showed that some network hosts and executives endorsed lies about Trump’s loss, hosted conspiracy theorists whom they thought were unhinged, and overtly prioritized the company’s profit over truth. A related deposition of the media empire’s chair, Rupert Murdoch, revealed that he shared private intel about Joe Biden’s campaign TV ads and provided debate strategy with top Trump advisers.
For years, Democrats have been engaged in a debate over whether the party should shun the cable news giant or grudgingly use its airwaves to run counterprogramming. But in the midst of the latest saga, a newer type of reaction has emerged: that they should sever all ties, including any money spent advertising on the network.
“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”
There is no indication, at this juncture, that major Democratic entities are ready to halt their ad buys on Fox News, let alone its many affiliates. But that is partially because few Democratic campaigns or causes are currently spending ad money. In the interim, the Dominion lawsuit revelations have led to louder calls for the party to make a firm break from any involvement with the cable channel, whom they view as functionally a campaign arm for Republicans. Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum have even started calling on the White House Correspondents’ Association — the group of news reporters advocating for press access — to boot Fox News reporters from the briefing room.
I’m skeptical that the wimpy Democrats will actually follow through on any of this, but I’d love to be surprised.
Politico: The Trump world-Fox News war gets nasty.
In his first minute onstage at CPAC on Friday, Steve Bannon identified one of his top targets of the moment, an entity he claimed is opposing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at its own peril: Fox News.
The host of the popular War Room podcast and longtime Trump hand started by ripping the conservative channel for announcing that Joe Biden had won Arizona on election night in 2020.
By Richard Adams
“Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition, and not Donald J. Trump,” the Trump adviser-turned-talk show host told the crowd in National Harbor, Maryland, an audience full of diehard MAGA supporters.
Ten minutes in, Bannon went after the network again, rousing the audience to their feet as he called out Fox for not having Trump on since he announced his campaign in November. He called out Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. founder who sits atop the media empire.
“Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president,” Bannon continued as the crowd roared with applause. “But we deem that you’re not going to have a network, because we’re going to fight you every step of the way.”
Far from random broadsides, Bannon’s screed against Fox News was the latest in what has become a hot war between MAGA world and the longtime conservative channel. Trump himself has gone off on Fox News before, often for coverage he has deemed unfair. But the current state of affairs — coming at the start of what promises to be a deeply contested GOP primary — is as strained as it has ever been.
Some news out of Ukraine
The New York Times: The U.S. attorney general meets with Zelensky during a surprise visit to Ukraine.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Friday to reaffirm America’s commitment to help hold Russia responsible for war crimes, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
Mr. Garland held several meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and foreign law enforcement officials in Lviv, while attending the United for Justice Conference, the department said in an email.
During the conference, Mr. Garland “reaffirmed our determination to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed in its unjust and unprovoked invasion against its sovereign neighbor,” the email said.
Mr. Zelensky, in his nightly address, said the thrust of the conference was to hold Russia’s leadership to account for atrocities committed by its army, a position he has hammered home repeatedly over the last year of war. “The main issue of all these meetings and the Lviv conference is accountability,” he said.
Mr. Garland’s visit, which was not public in advance for security concerns, comes on the heels of President Biden’s trip to Kyiv last month — and two days after Mr. Garland told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was determined to hold Russians accountable for war crimes they are committing in Ukraine.
Mr. Garland, a former federal judge whose family escaped the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, singled out Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Moscow-allied Wagner paramilitary group.
“Mr. Prigozhin, who runs this thing, is in my view a war criminal — and maybe that’s inappropriate for me to say as a judge before getting all the evidence,” Mr. Garland told the committee.
Mr. Garland added that he believes the group “is responsible for the attacks on Ukrainians in the Donbas” and accused them of using prisoners from Russia “as cannon fodder” in Ukraine.
A few gossipy odds and ends
NPR: Russia’s foreign minister gets laughed at over Ukraine remarks at a global conference.
Ever since Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, it has become rare for major international conferences to invite Russian officials. So, when an Indian think tank welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to speak, it made for some awkward exchanges.
This week, India’s Observer Research Foundation gathered academics, business executives and diplomats from the G-20, or Group of 20 economies, for a conference in Delhi known as the Raisina Dialogue.
On Friday, Lavrov took center stage of a Q&A session, where he voiced Moscow’s views on the war in Ukraine.
In one exchange, Lavrov received loud applause for accusing the West of having a double standard, noting its heavy criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite Western powers having invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. In another, the reaction was less positive.
“The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukrainian people,” he said.
Before Lavrov could finish his sentence, the audience laughed and groaned — loud enough for the foreign minister to pause and stumble on his words.
“Of course it influenced the policy of Russia, including the energy policy. And the blunt way to describe what is the change, what changed, we would not anymore rely on any partners in the West,” Lavrov added.
Page Six: Kellyanne Conway and George Conway to divorce after 22 years of marriage.
Page Six hears that Kellyanne Conway, the longtime advisor to President Donald Trump, and George Conway, the longtime tormentor of President Trump, have decided to divorce after 22 years of marriage.
Beltway insiders tell us that they’ve both lawyered up and that the two sides are hashing out the details of the split.
During the 2016 elections, Kellyanne served first as a campaign advisor to candidate Trump and then as his campaign manager, while her husband co-founded the Lincoln Project with the express purpose of keeping Trump out of the White House.
After the inauguration, she became senior counselor to the president, while George continued to lambast Trump at every opportunity on social media.
In 2022, Vanity Fair wrote that, “One of the greatest mysteries of the 21st century is the marriage of Kellyanne Conway and her husband, George — specifically, if they hate each other as much as their public commentary would suggest, or if the whole thing is some kind of three-dimensional chess designed to further their own interests.” [….]
The pair wed in 2001 and share four children, but their political differences during the Trump administration took a toll on their relationship.
In her 2022 memoir “Here’s the Deal,” Kellyanne said that she considered George’s steady barrage of criticism of the then-president a betrayal of their marriage, calling it “cheating by tweeting.” She also said that Ivanka Trump had suggested couples therapy.
Read the rest at the link.
The Washington Post: White House physician says small lesion removed from Biden’s chest was cancerous.
President Biden had one cancerous skin lesion removed from his chest on Feb. 16, his longtime doctor Kevin C. O’Connor said in a letter Friday. O’Connor said that all cancerous tissue was successfully removed, and no further treatment is needed.
The headline is a bit misleading, as Beschloss didn’t actually call Trump a cockroach; he just compared Trump’s ability to survive with cockroaches.
CNN Politics: DeSantis appointee to new Disney oversight board suggested tap water could turn people gay.
An appointee to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new oversight board in control of Disney’s special tax district called homosexuality “evil” last year and shared a baseless conspiracy theory that tap water could be making more people gay.
On Monday, the Republican governor appointed Ron Peri, an Orlando-based former pastor and the CEO of The Gathering – a Christian ministry focused on outreach to men – as one of five people who will now oversee the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century.
DeSantis signed a bill in February that allowed him to replace the district’s existing board – mostly people with ties to Disney – with a five-member body that he hand-picked. The move to remove power from Disney comes nearly a year after the company spoke out against a Florida bill – which DeSantis later signed into law – to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
A CNN KFile review of Peri’s past comments found that he frequently made derogatory remarks about the LGBTQ community.
“So why are there homosexuals today? There are any number of reasons, you know, that are given. Some would say the increase in estrogen in our societies. You know, there’s estrogen in the water from birth control pills. They can’t get it out,” Peri baselessly said in a January 2022 Zoom discussion, later put on YouTube. “The level of testosterone in men broadly in America has declined by 50 points in the past 10 years. You know, and so, maybe that’s a part of it.”
“But the big part I would suggest to you, based upon what it’s saying here, is the removal of constraint,” he continued. “So our society provided the constraint. And so, which is the responsibility of a society to constrain people from doing evil? Well, you remove the constraints, and then evil occurs.”
Read more at CNN.
That’s it for me today. What stories are you following?
Finally Friday Reads: Republican Freak Show Edition
Posted: March 3, 2023 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, republican craycray 10 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’ve gotten some of the tests results back on Keely Kitty. She doesn’t have any viruses, and she’s slightly anemic. The vet thinks she has some inflammation somewhere in her brain of undetermined cause. She’s on phenobarbital and doing better taking her pill from me. She’s getting some chicken-flavored anti-inflammatory liquid that will serve as her nightcap. They’re compounding it now. She hasn’t had a seizure since the two she had on Monday, so we’re taking this as a good sign. A few more blood tests coming, and then we’ll see what happens next. At least I can sleep through the night, making me not so churlish.
CPAC is incredibly gross this year, as it appears to be a parade of perverts and insane people. Attendance is sparse and CBS reports that many usual suspects have stayed home. It appears that most folks in attendance are Trump Dead-Enders. Writing about this is going to require a post-blog shower. The elected officials that came are all pretty gross. Trump’s former Vice President is one noticeable MIA. The tweet below has more names.
This is from US News and World Report. “Trump Set to Headline Diminished Gathering of Conservatives. The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once one of the premier gatherings on the GOP campaign calendar.”
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once one of the premier gatherings on the GOP campaign calendar — a must-stop for serious contenders testing the waters on presidential runs.
No longer.
Many of the party’s best-known likely candidates — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former Vice President Mike Pence — are skipping the marquee event kicking off Wednesday as the group grapples with controversy and questions over its place in a movement that remains deeply split over its allegiance to former President Donald Trump.
Adding to the turmoil: A lawsuit filed by an unnamed Republican campaign staffer against Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference. The suit accuses Schlapp of groping the staffer during a car ride in Georgia before the November election.
Schlapp, who has denied the staffer’s account, did not address the allegations against him as CPAC programming began Thursday, but did make a nod to the notable absences.
The media is not ignoring the sexual battery charges facing Schlapp. The Guardian has some analysis at the link. However, the main stage show is the worst of the worst of the Republican Congressional baboons.
I will change topics to several interesting reads at various Substack blogs. It helps to get out of the mainstream media, which will cover a group of tin hat crazies in detail but ignore serious news.
First up, from America, America, “The Recklessness of Rupert Murdoch. The Fox owner knew Donald Trump was lying and chose ratings over responsibility. What will it take to stop the dangerous propaganda?” This is the Substack of Steven Beschloss.
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham (to name just three) continue to spew their poison into the political bloodstream, despite their knowledge that they are feeding their millions of viewers lies.
Keep in mind Carlson’s texted response to Hannity after learning that a Fox reporter had fact-checked Trump’s election lies: “Please get her fired. Seriously What the fuck? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.” We have no reason to assume they’re going to change their money-obsessed tune without the demand of their ultimate boss, who still has shown no sign of stemming the pollution.
How about $12 billion or $14 billion?
“What should the consequences be when Fox News executives knowingly allow lies to be broadcast?” Dominion lawyers asked Rupert in their deposition, parts of which were made public on Monday.
“They should be reprimanded,” Murdoch replied. “They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.”
Dominion: “You are aware now that Fox did more than simply host these guests and give them a platform; correct?”
Murdoch: “I think you’ve shown me some material in support of that.”
Yet, asked about Fox endorsing Trump’s lies, he was quick to differentiate Fox the corporation from its “commentators.”
Dominion: “In fact, you are now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election?”
Murdoch: “Not Fox. No. Not Fox.”
Murdoch was asked about hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity.
Dominion: “All were in that document; correct?”
Murdoch: “Yes, they were.”
Dominion: “About Fox endorsing the narrative of a stolen election; correct?”
Murdoch: “No. Some of our commentators were endorsing it.”
Dominion: “About their endorsement of a stolen election?”
Murdoch: “Yes. They endorsed.”
Asked his own opinion, Fox’s owner didn’t hesitate admitting the facts. “Oh, yes,” he replied when asked if he “seriously doubted” any claim of massive election fraud. From the beginning? “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up. I think that was shown when we announced Arizona.” He even acknowledged in the deposition that some of Trump’s election lies were “bullshit and damaging.”
I will say that the CPAC circus of perverted clowns certainly draws attention away from these topics that we should be following closely. I want to point out another story that should have some huge legs. This is from Murray Waas’ Rule of Law. “EXCLUSIVE: After he left office, Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff to leak classified information to the press about an FBI agent and other adversaries. Experts believe that may be a felony. The ex-president may now face even greater legal jeopardy than previously known.”
Months after he had left office, former president Donald Trump, directed his former chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows to leak highly classified government records regarding Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, to the press. In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows had removed the classified files from the White House, which Trump and Meadows believed would discredit Strzok.
The explosive ramifications of such a knowing and willful leak of classified information by Trump, or by someone on his behalf, at his direction, after he left office, is that Trump would have potentially committed a felony.
As president, Trump enjoyed a virtually absolute and unfettered constitutional authority to declassify virtually almost any government secrets he so wished. But once gone from office, Trump no longer had any legal authority or power beyond that of an ordinary citizen to declassify government papers or; much less leak classified records. Any provision of classified information at that time would be a crime.
Brad Moss, an attorney specializing in national security law, explained to me: “Anything Trump had in his possession that was still classified and that he gave to a reporter or anyone else unauthorized to receive it, after 12:01 pm on January 21, 2021, was unlawful as a legal matter.”
Richard Immerman, an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration told me: “Once a president’s tenure in office has ended, he or she has no authority to declassify documents. If he does, he’s breaking the law.”
This new issue arises just as special counsel Jack Smith is already conducting a federal criminal investigation to determine whether Trump broke the law by taking hundreds of pages of other classified papers from the White House to his home in Mar-a-Largo when his presidency was over. The Justice Department has also previously alleged in federal court that Trump “likely concealed and removed” classified documents from one place he was keeping them, to another less likely place where they would be found by federal prosecutors and the FBI, with a purpose to “obstruct” their investigation. Smith has also taken charge of the investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice.
As I have previously reported, Smith has questioned a small number of witnesses about Trump’s and Meadows’ mishandling of classified documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. But the issue does not appear, at least for now, to be a major focus for the special counsel.
There’s plenty out there to wade through, but we must know what the folks are selling their cult. I’d still say following News on DeSantis and what he’s trying in Florida is more important than the Trump Rumpers, even though they are in Congress. Here are more samples of why. Both BB and I are committed to keeping up with his fascist governance. This is from the Washington Post. “DeSantis cannonballs into America’s deep blue states for war on ‘woke’ ahead of 2024. The Florida governor has used his trips to highlight his state’s accomplishments — citing statistics that sometimes mask far more complicated debates.” This is reported by Maeve Reston and Hannah Knowles.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a comfort zone as he moves closer to launching a campaign for president: America’s bluest states, where he is brawling with liberal governors and mingling with donors as he tiptoes around a direct conflict with Donald Trump.
DeSantis will travel this weekend to California, where the Republican has already drawn the renewed ire of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent critic taunting him ahead of his visit. “Welcome to the real freedom state,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement to The Washington Post, predicting his GOP counterpart is “going to get smoked by Trump” in the Republican primary. DeSantis aides did not respond to a request for comment.
DeSantis has used his blue state trips to contrast them with Florida — using statistics that sometimes mask far more complicated debates — and present himself as a combatant against the “woke” left. The arguments he has advanced serve as a foundation for the presidential campaign many expect him to launch later this year, though DeSantis has not said publicly if he is running.
So, this stuff, like everything BB shared with us yesterday, is disturbing and the wet dreams of authoritarians. I’m reading and watching the news as much as possible, but it’s a hard job.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: March 2, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, FBI, SCOTUS | Tags: Chris Christie, Christopher Wray, domestic terrorism, Georgia election interference, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Kellyanne Conway, Peter Strzok, Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss, stolen classified documents, student loan forgiveness 13 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Oskar Bergman, Spring Birches and Red Cottages by the Sea
You probably saw the incredible story that The Washington Post broke yesterday about FBI agents living in fear of Donald Trump. Some were so scared that they wanted to treat Trump with kid gloves, even after he stole hundreds of classified documents from the government and refused to return them. So it’s not just elected Republicans who are scared of Trump–even some in law enforcement want to let him get away with serious crimes in order to protect their own careers.
The Washington Post: Showdown before the raid: FBI agents and prosecutors argued over Trump.
Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.
Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute, one of several previously unreported clashes in a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department over how aggressively to pursue a criminal investigation of a former president. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.
Starting in May, FBI agents in the Washington field office had sought to slow the probe, urging caution given itsextraordinary sensitivity, the people said.
Some of those field agents wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether in early June, after Trump’s legal team asserted a diligent search had beenconducted and all classified records had been turned over, according to somepeople with knowledge of the discussions.
This sounds familiar. Back in 2016, James Comey kept the investigation of Trump and Russia secret, while making public statements about the much less significant investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails; because FBI agents in the New York office had it in for Hillary and supported Trump. WTF is going on with the FBI? Here’s what Peter Strzok, who lost his job at the FBI because of pressure from Trump, had to say about this news:
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1630919361564164096?s=20
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1630920732753494016?s=20
Back to the WaPo article:
The disagreements stemmed in large part from worries among officials that whatever steps they took in investigating a former president would face intense scrutiny and second-guessing by people inside and outside the government. However, the agents, who typically perform the bulk of the investigative work in cases, and the prosecutors, who guide agents’ work and decide on criminal charges, ultimately focused on very different pitfalls, according to people familiar with their discussions.
On one side, federal prosecutors in the department’s national security division advocated aggressive ways to secure some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets, which they feared Trump was intentionally hiding at Mar-a-Lago; on the other, FBI agents in the Washington field office urged more caution with such a high-profile matter, recommending they take a cooperative rather than confrontational approach.
Both sides were mindful of the intense scrutiny the case was drawing and felt they had to be above reproach while investigating a former president then expected to run for reelection. While trying to follow the Justice Department playbook for classified records probes, investigators on both sides braced for Trump to follow his own playbook of publicly attacking the integrity of their investigation, according to people with knowledge of their discussions.
The FBI agents’ caution also was rooted in the fact that mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton and Trump had proved damaging to the FBI, and the cases subjected the bureau to sustained public attacks from partisans, the people said.
Prosecutors countered that the FBI failing to treat Trump as it had other government employees who were not truthful about classified records could threaten the nation’s security. As evidence surfaced suggesting that Trump or his team was holding back sensitive records, the prosecutors pushed for quick action to recover them, according to the people familiar with the discussions.
It’s a very long piece–head over to the WaPo to read the rest.
Paul Cézanne, Melting Snow
I have to ask: why does Christopher Wray still have a job? From Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: Christopher Wray is getting away with doing a lousy job.
The MAGA right thinks FBI Director Christopher A. Wray is some sort of patsy for Democrats. But the problem is not that Wray, a Trump appointee, is showing favoritism to a Democratic administration. It’s that he is not doing his job when it comes to threats from right-wing authoritarianism.
The extent to which the FBI was aware of credible threats but did not prepare is breathtaking:In the weeks preceding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the FBI obtained information across other sources indicating potential threats. Through human source reporting, investigations, and observed activity, the FBI identified the increasing threat of violence at high profile special events, such as the 2020 election and 2021 presidential inauguration. FBI officials we spoke with said that from December 29, 2020, through January 6, 2021, they tracked domestic terrorism subjects that were traveling to Washington, D.C., and developed reports related to January 6 events. As of January 6, 2021, FBI officials noted that the Washington Field Office was tracking 18 domestic terrorism subjects as potential travelers to the D.C. area.Other information came directly from social media platforms. From October 1, 2020, through January 5, 2021, officials from the FBI we spoke with said they obtained and reviewed 73 potential domestic terrorism related referrals from one social media platform, and obtained one referral on January 4, 2021, related to potential violence in Washington, D.C. on January 6. In addition, the FBI received information from another social media platform from late November 2020 through January 6, 2021, regarding potential violence at January 6 events.Once the FBI had that information, it did not act upon it with the urgency required. “FBI personnel did not follow policies for processing some tips, resulting in them not being developed into reports that could have been shared with partners. Specifically, the FBI did not process all relevant information related to potential violence on January 6.”
The conclusion: “While the FBI identified and shared threat information, it did not process certain referrals from social media platforms according to policies and procedures and, as a result, it failed to share critical information with all relevant partners.”
Worse, the bureau has not undertaken the kind of systematic self-evaluation needed to correct glaring inadequacies. “The ongoing FBI review of its actions during the weeks preceding January 6, 2021, has not included an assessment of how it processed information. Assessing this process will help determine if the mistakes we identified are isolated or due to a systemic cause.” (Emphasis added.)
Click the link to read the rest.
In other news, Chris Christie thinks Trump will be indicted by this summer. The Independent: Chris Christie explains why he believes Trump will be indicted.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has said that he thinks former President Donald Trump will be indicted in connection to at least one of the numerous investigations he’s the subject of, as the former president campaigns for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Gabriele Münter, Still Life on the Tram (After Shopping)
Mr Christie, who ran against Mr Trump and more than a dozen others in the 2016 Republican primary, spoke to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, saying that he believes Mr Trump’s attorneys wouldn’t be able to reject the case of the grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, even after the jury foreperson made a series of media appearances, prompting criticism towards some of her conduct….
“This is a very difficult case to make off the phone call,” Mr Christie said of the phone conversation between Mr Raffensperger and Mr Trump. “Now I don’t know what their other evidence is. That’s supposed to be the beauty of the grand jury system. And it is so far in this case that you don’t know what all the specific other evidence may be. But based upon what I know publicly, I think it’s a tough case to bring against the former president based upon the information we now know.”
Mr Christie added that Mr Trump appears to be legally vulnerable in connection to the lead-up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and obstruction of Congress.
“I think the most likely place it will happen is New York. And I think it’s the least harmful matter to him,” he told Mr Hewitt. “If in fact, all they’re looking at is the Stormy Daniels payments….
“I think in terms of the likelihood of indictment, I’d put New York first, the special counsel second, Georgia third. But in terms of the seriousness of the peril for the president, I’d put the special counsel above either of those,” Mr Christie said.
“So in brief, do you expect an indictment by July?” the host asked the ex-governor.
“I expect that New York probably would act. I don’t know whether the special counsel will act by that time, but my guess is that New York would act by that time,” he said.
The New York Times broke some news yesterday on that New York case: Kellyanne Conway Meets With Prosecutors as Trump Inquiry Escalates.
Kellyanne Conway, who managed the final months of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign, met with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Wednesday, the latest sign that the office is ramping up its criminal investigation into the former president.
The prosecutors are scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s role in a hush money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who has said she had an affair with him. The $130,000 payment was made by Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, and Mr. Trump ultimately reimbursed him.
Mr. Cohen has said that Ms. Conway played a small yet notable role in the payment: she was the person Mr. Cohen alerted after making the payment, he wrote in his 2020 memoir.
“I called Trump to confirm that the transaction was completed, and the documentation all in place, but he didn’t take my call — obviously a very bad sign, in hindsight,” he wrote. Instead, he wrote, Ms. Conway “called and said she’d pass along the good news.”
Ms. Conway, who was seen walking into the district attorney’s office shortly before 2 p.m. on Wednesday, is the latest in a string of witnesses to meet with prosecutors in the last month or so. Since the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, impaneled a grand jury in January to hear evidence about Mr. Trump’s role in paying the hush money, at least five witnesses have testified: Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, employees of Mr. Trump’s company; David Pecker and Dylan Howard, two former leaders of The National Enquirer, which helped arrange the hush money deal; and Keith Davidson, a former lawyer for Ms. Daniels.
The decision to question those central players in the hush money saga before the grand jury suggests that Mr. Bragg is nearing a decision on whether to seek an indictment of the former president.
Weasels Playing, Franz Marc
Another possibility for Trump to face some accountability is through a lawsuit by Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The Daily Beast: Georgia Poll Workers Pick Up Where Jan. 6 Committee Left Off.
Two Georgia poll workers who were attacked by 2020 election conspiracy theorists are picking up where the Jan. 6 congressional investigation left off—by trying to independently examine the private communications between two of the men behind the firestorm: Rudy Giuliani and former President Donald Trump.
Giuliani, who played a central role in the Republican attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election as Trump’s lawyer, refused to tell congressional investigators about their conversations, citing attorney-client privilege.
But now, a mother and daughter still reeling from the MAGA harassment are trying to pierce that veil.
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of Fulton County, Georgia, are turning their defamation lawsuit against Giuliani into a no-limits, fact-finding mission, according to an undisclosed letter from their attorneys reviewed exclusively by The Daily Beast.
In their Jan. 13 letter, the pair’s attorneys tell Giuliani’s defense lawyer that his objections to the Jan. 6 Committee’s questions about interactions with Trump “were improper,” warning that they intend to bulldoze right over them.
“Mr. Giuliani invoked privilege during January 6 testimony with respect to certain topics we expect to broach during his… deposition,” said the letter, which was written in anticipation of a closed-door questioning session.
Giuliani was deposed on Wednesday inside a midtown Manhattan skyscraper that serves as the headquarters of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the high-end international law firm representing the women.
Lawyers for Freeman and Moss said they want to know more about Giuliani’s interactions with Trump, as well as his “correspondence” with the Department of Justice regarding Trump’s mission to overturn the 2020 election, conservative state legislators who were coaxed into publicly doubting the ballot results that year, and fake Republican electors who tried to band together as alternate electoral college votes to supplant the real ones that went for Joe Biden.
There’s much more at the link.
On Tuesday, I posted about the Supreme Court hearing on Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. According to this story at CNBC, the odds may have shifted toward the Biden administration winning the case: Biden administration lawyer may have saved student loan forgiveness plan at Supreme Court, experts say.
The government’s top Supreme Court lawyer may have saved President Joe Biden’s $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan from what experts considered all but certain defeat.
Experts lobbed praise on Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the lawyer who represented the Biden administration in front of the nine justices Tuesday.
“The Biden administration now seems more likely than not to win the cases,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
“Her preparation, poise and power were impressive,” Kantrowitz said.
Wassily Kandinsky, Tree of Life
In contrast, the attorneys for plaintiffs opposed to the program were less than stellar, Kantrowitz said. “It was like the difference between a star quarterback and two tiddlywinks players,” he said.
University of Illinois Chicago law professor Steven Schwinn agreed: “Prelogar knocked it out of the park.”
“I do think she could have influenced or even changed the thinking of two justices, maybe more,” he added.
On Wednesday, Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman tweeted that he remains “struck by SG Elizabeth Prelogar’s brilliant performance.”
“She may have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat,” Shugerman wrote.
The nine justices considered two legal challenges to Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers. Six GOP-led states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina — had brought one of the lawsuits, and the other was backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative advocacy organization.
Prelogar argued that the president was acting squarely within the law to avoid borrower distress during national emergencies and that plaintiffs had not shown in any way that they’d be harmed by the policy, which is typically a requirement to establish so-called legal standing.
I hope these experts are right. We’ll have to wait a few months to find out.
This story out of Michigan is really scary. NBC News: ‘Heavily armed’ man who FBI said targeted Jewish Michigan officials was after state Attorney General Dana Nessel, she says.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel was targeted last month by a “heavily armed” man who threatened injury and death to Jewish members of the state government, she said Thursday morning.
Jack Eugene Carpenter III is accused of tweeting: “I’m heading back to Michigan now threatening to carry out the punishment of death to anyone that is jewish in the Michigan govt if they don’t leave, or confess, and now that kind of problem,” according to a criminal complaint filed Feb. 18.
“Because I can Legally do that, right?” he added, according to the FBI affidavit.
Carpenter’s mother confirmed to investigators that the tweets came from him and that to her knowledge, he was in possession of “three handguns, a 12 gauge shotgun, and two hunting rifles, one of which is an MIA, military-style weapon,” the complaint said.
Nessel, a Democrat, said Thursday in a tweet that the FBI confirmed she had been one of the officials targeted by “the heavily armed defendant in this matter.”
“It is my sincere hope that the federal authorities take this offense just as seriously as my Hate Crimes & Domestic Terrorism Unit takes plots to murder elected officials,” she said.
That’s all the news I have for you today. Please share your thoughts in the comment thread and post any other stories that interest you.
Tuesday Reads: A Mixed Bag of News
Posted: February 28, 2023 Filed under: just because 11 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
I have a mixed bag of articles for you today. There doesn’t seem to be a great overarching story in the news, although there is quite a bit happening.
Right now the Supreme Court is hearing challenges to President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
The New York Times has a live blog if you’re interested in following the arguments: Live Updates: Supreme Court Hears Challenges to Student Loan Forgiveness.
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday over the legality of one of the most ambitious and expensive executive actions in the nation’s history: the Biden administration’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The justices began hearing arguments on Tuesday morning in two cases. Each will receive at least one hour of arguments but is expected to run well over that. The court does not allow cameras, but audio of the arguments is being streamed live.
Both cases grapple with two questions. One is whether the challengers have legal standing to bring their lawsuits. The other is whether the program exceeds the authority that Congress granted to the Education Department and whether it followed legally required procedures in devising the plan. Read about how arguments typically unfold.
The Trump administration initially paused student loan repayments in March 2020 because of the pandemic. The Biden administration kept the pause until August 2022, then decided to forgive $10,000 in debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per household, and $20,000 for those who received Pell grants for low-income families. The court challenge has left millions of borrowers in limbo.
A central point of the case is a 2003 law, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, which gives the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” to protect borrowers affected by a war or “national emergency.”
Lawyers for each side will first present their point of view and then answer the justices’ questions in an unstructured format. It is expected to be several months before decisions are announced.
There’s lots of discussion on Twitter too.
There’s quite a bit of news coming out of the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News.
The New York Times reports:
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed.
“They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, while also disclosing that he was always dubious of Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
Asked whether he doubted Mr. Trump, Mr. Murdoch responded: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.” At the same time, he rejected the accusation that Fox News as a whole had endorsed the stolen election narrative. “Not Fox,” he said. “No. Not Fox.”
Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.
Proof to that effect would help Dominion clear the high legal bar set by the Supreme Court for defamation cases. To prevail, Dominion must show not only that Fox broadcast false information, but that it did so knowingly. A judge in Delaware state court has scheduled a monthlong trial beginning in April.
The new documents and a similar batch released this month provide a dramatic account from inside the network, depicting a frantic scramble as Fox tried to woo back its large conservative audience after ratings collapsed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss. Fox had been the first network to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden on election night — essentially declaring him the next president. When Mr. Trump refused to concede and started attacking Fox as disloyal and dishonest, viewers began to change the channel.
From Politico:
Fox News executive chair Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that some Fox News hosts endorsed President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, potentially undermining the network’s assertion that it was neutrally relaying dubious arguments from Trump and his allies, a court filing released Monday said.
The admission from Murdoch came in a libel suit voting equipment maker that Dominion Voting Systems is pressing against the TV network over its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
However, the ongoing lawsuit is also opening a unique window into Fox’s internal deliberations, particularly in the tense period after Election Day, as the network struggled to hang on to a viewer base heavily invested in Trump’s claims of victory even as senior Fox officials were privately convinced Trump’s claims were bogus and he had lost.
Dominion’s court filing released Monday, a response to Fox’s own recent submission in the case, portrays senior executives at the network as widely in agreement that their network shouldn’t help Trump spread the false narrative. Yet, they repeatedly wrestled with how firmly to disavow it without risking their Trump-friendly audience.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Murdoch conceded during his sworn deposition, appearing to insist that Fox hosts did not speak for the network. “Yes. They endorsed,” he said.
“It is fair to say you seriously doubted any claim of massive election fraud?” a Dominion lawyer asked the broadcasting mogul.
“Oh, yes,” Murdoch replied.
“And you seriously doubted it from the very beginning?” the attorney asked.
Read more details at Politico.
And more from The Washington Post:
From the article:
But Dominion’s filing shows Murdoch intimately involved in steering the network’s programming during the chaotic weeks after Election Day, as he tried to “straddle the issue” of election fraud in a way that would not anger viewers or the president.
In a particularly explosive part of the filing, Dominion alleges that Murdoch provided Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner with confidential network information about Joe Biden’s campaign ads as well as debate strategy, citing an exhibit that remains under seal.
More details on this from Raw Story:
Among the details revealed is that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch gave election assistance to Donald Trump’s campaign, but it wasn’t just about strategy. Fox got their hands on ads from Joe Biden’s campaign that hadn’t been released publicly. Campaigns submit their ads for commercial buys and typically release the videos publicly after they’re playing on the air. After getting the videos, Fox handed the ads over to the Trump campaign.
Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa questioned whether it could be considered an in-kind donation to a political campaign from a corporation directly to a candidate.
“An in-kind contribution is a non-monetary contribution. Goods or services offered free or at less than the usual charge result in an in-kind contribution,” the Federal Election Commission says on its website. “Similarly, when a person or entity pays for services on the committee’s behalf, the payment is an in-kind contribution. An expenditure made by any person or entity in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate’s campaign is also considered an in-kind contribution to the candidate.”
Ron DeSantis is also getting plenty of attention in the press as he looks more and more like a contender in 2024.
From the NYT:
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida will make his debut appearances in three early presidential primary states in the next several weeks, according to two people briefed on his plans, selling his performance in his own state as he lays the groundwork for an expected presidential campaign.
Mr. DeSantis is tentatively expected to appear in Iowa during the first half of March, making stops in Davenport and Des Moines, according to the people briefed on his schedule who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the plans publicly. Shortly after, he is expected to appear in Nevada, an early primary state, followed a few weeks later by an expected trip to Manchester, New Hampshire….
Hitting the traditional early primary states as he discusses his new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” allows Mr. DeSantis to unofficially test the waters and introduce himself nationally at a time when he’s seen as preparing for a presidential campaign.
Mr. DeSantis is also expected at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sunday, a place that has often been a launching pad for presidential candidacies. And there are stops expected in a handful of other states, including New York.
A chunk of the Republican electorate, some conservative thinkers and a number of major donors have already pinned their hopes on Mr. DeSantis as the future of the party at a time when they are hoping to move on from former President Donald J. Trump. They have praised his aggressive style and use of the powers of his office, and his willingness to dive into battles over cultural issues that have come to define the modern Republican Party.
From New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg:
Michelle Goldberg: Florida Could Start Looking a Lot Like Hungary.
In 2017, the government of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban passed a law intended to drive Central European University, a prestigious school founded by a Hungarian refugee, George Soros, out of the country. At the time, this was shocking; as many as 80,000 protesters rallied in Budapest and intellectuals worldwide rushed to declare their solidarity with the demonstrators. “The fate of the university was a test of whether liberalism had the tactical savvy and emotional fortitude to beat back its new ideological foe,” wrote Franklin Foer in The Atlantic.
Liberalism, sadly, did not: The university was forced to move to Vienna, part of Orban’s lamentably successful campaign to dismantle Hungary’s liberal democracy.
That campaign has included ever-greater ideological control over education, most intensely in grade school, but also in colleges and universities. Following a landslide 2018 re-election victory that Orban saw as a “mandate to build a new era,” his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women,” said his chief of staff. In 2021, Orban extended political command over Hungarian universities by putting some schools under the authority of “public trusts” full of regime allies.
Many on the American right admire the way Orban uses the power of the state against cultural liberalism, but few are imitating him as faithfully as the Florida governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. Last week, one of DeSantis’s legislative allies filed House Bill 999, which would, as The Tampa Bay Times reported, turn many of DeSantis’s “wide-ranging ideas on higher education into law.” Even by DeSantis’s standards, it is a shocking piece of legislation that takes a sledgehammer to academic freedom. Jeremy Young, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America, described it as “almost an apocalyptic bill for higher education,” one that is “orders of magnitude worse than anything we’ve seen, either in the recent or the distant past.”
Echoing Orban, House Bill 999 bars Florida’s public colleges and universities from offering gender studies majors or minors, as well as majors or minors in critical race theory or “intersectionality,” or in any subject that “engenders beliefs” in those concepts. The bill prohibits the promotion or support of any campus activities that “espouse diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory rhetoric.” This goes far beyond simply ending D.E.I. programming, and could make many campus speakers, as well as student organizations like Black student unions, verboten.
There’s much more at the link. I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already. Also see Don Moynihan at his Can We Still Govern Substack: The latest DeSantis attack on education is part of a broader attack on professional competence.
A minor addition to Donald Trump’s growing legal troubles was accidentally revealed by the FEC.
Roger Sollenberger writes:
When the Federal Elections Commission rejected a recent Freedom of Information Act request related to Donald Trump’s “recount” expenses after the 2020 election, the campaign watchdog had a conspicuous reason for turning down the petition: Trump’s political spending after he left the White House is currently the subject of an FEC enforcement matter.
According to agency records obtained by The Daily Beast, the FEC rejected a FOIA request—filed Dec. 20 by a nonpartisan research group that shared the documents on condition of anonymity—because those records may involve an active inquiry.
“To the extent that the records you requested concern an ongoing FEC enforcement matter, we can neither confirm nor deny that any such records exist,” the agency’s FOIA attorney wrote in the letter, which was shared with The Daily Beast.
The request asked the agency for documents and communications related to a major Trump vendor that has received millions in campaign “recount” funds for seemingly unrelated services—including document production for subpoenas from the congressional COVID subcommittee.
Dan Weiner, director of elections and government at the Brennan Center and a former attorney with the FEC, told The Daily Beast that while the response itself isn’t indicative of any stage of inquiry—“readers shouldn’t get excited”—the particular issue is serious.
“The FEC could be indicating one of many different scenarios,” Weiner said, explaining that the agency opens enforcement matters under a range of prompts, from publicly generated complaints to federal referrals to internal decisions. More often than not, enforcement matters resolve in a whimper—a conspicuously glaring pattern when it comes to Trump.
I’m going to end there. I’ll see you in the comment thread.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments