I thought politics had become so ridiculous during the Trump years that it couldn’t possibly get any worse. But I was wrong. It can always get worse. We’re living in the days of George Santos (or whatever his real name is) dominating the news, and Kevin McCarthy selling out whatever decency he may have had left to get the House Speaker’s gavel. He won’t get rid of Santos because he needs his vote. On top of that McCarthy has turned over the most important House committees to the insurrection caucus.
The 21 House Republicans who initially blocked Rep. Kevin McCarthy from winning the speakership had demanded big changes to House rules, but they also wanted more influence on the congressional committees that will set the GOP agenda over the next two years.
While not every holdout got exactly what he or she had asked for, some won plum committee assignments from McCarthy, R-Calif., and his allies after they helped him secure the speaker’s gavel, a process that took 15 rounds of voting.
Some highlights–you can click the link to read the rest of the list:
Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a former head of the Freedom Caucus and one of the five so-called Never Kevins, will keep his spots on the powerful Judiciary and Oversight committees. He changed his vote to “present” on the final ballot for speaker, helping push McCarthy over the finish line….
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a vocal McCarthy critic who voted “present” on the 14th and 15th ballots, was awarded a seat on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, which plans to launch numerous investigations into the Biden administration. She will continue to serve on the Natural Resources panel, on which she served in the previous Congress.
Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, another lawmaker who flipped to McCarthy on the 12th ballot, will serve for the first time on Appropriations.
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who was nominated to run against McCarthy for speaker and flipped to him on the 12th ballot, was named by McCarthy as the “speaker’s designee” on the influential Steering Committee, which decides which lawmakers get committee gavels and seats. Donalds also won a coveted spot on the Financial Services Committee, a top panel known on Capitol Hill as an “A” committee.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, perhaps the most vocal McCarthy foe during the speaker fight, who flipped to “present” in the 14th round, will continue to serve on the Judiciary panel….
Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who flipped to McCarthy on the 12th ballot, was reinstated by Republicans on two committees —Oversight and Natural Resources panels — after Democrats removed him two years ago for posting threats to lawmakers on social media….
Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus who brokered a deal between conservatives and McCarthy, will remain on the Foreign Affairs Committee. A subject of Jan. 6 investigations, Perry won a new seat on the Oversight committee….
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who along with Perry helped negotiate a deal with McCarthy, will keep his seat on the Judiciary panel.
Those are the best known names. See the rest at the link.
In addition, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been assigned to the Homeland Security and Oversight committees.
Republicans are rolling out the red carpet for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and placing her on powerful House committees. pic.twitter.com/vlEvM6oXbU
Embattled freshman Rep. George Santos has been awarded seats on two low-level committees after House Republicans debated where to put the New York congressman, who is facing mounting legal issues and growing calls to resign for extensively lying about his resume.
Several GOP sources told CNN that the House Republican Steering Committee, controlled by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his top allies, tapped Santos to serve on two House panels: the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Santos had privately lobbied GOP leaders to serve on two more high-profile committees, one overseeing the financial sector and another on foreign policy, but top Republicans rejected that pitch as some chairmen balked at adding him to their panels.
Still, Republican leaders for now have decided to treat Santos like any other member of the House, even as questions grow over his past and as some have raised security concerns about allowing him to have access to classified briefings.
Unreal. Read more at CNN.
The Washington Post reacts:
The stark irony of George Santos’s and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committees https://t.co/vvQUWwzkdW
The new Republican House majority apparently felt it had to put Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and George Santos (R-N.Y.) on some committees. And in picking which ones, it apparently aimed for (depending on your viewpoint) maximum irony or maximum trolling.
We learned the committee assignments for both members late Tuesday. Greene, who was removed from her committees by all Democrats and 11 House Republicans in 2021, will sit on the Homeland Security Committee, as well as the Oversight Committee. Santos will serve on the Small Business Committee, as well as the Science Committee.
The choice for Greene is particularly remarkable given her penchant not just for conspiracy theories, but conspiracy theories specifically involving homeland security. Indeed, her making such claims was cited as among the very reasons for her removal from committees. Greene has also spread conspiracy theories about and even advocated the use of political violence, including at the U.S. Capitol itself.
The WaPo list of insane remarks by Greene:
In 2018, Greene echoed conspiracy theories doubting that an airplane actually hit the Pentagon on 9/11. She cited “the so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon,” and added: “It’s odd there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon.” In fact, video of the plane hitting the Pentagon was released in 2006. (When Greene’s comments were unearthed in 2020, she conceded in a tweet, “Some people claimed a missile hit the Pentagon. I now know that is not correct.”)
That same year, Greene “liked” a Facebook comment that began by saying 9/11 “was done by our own gov[ernment],” before it launched into various other conspiracy theories. She also replied by saying, “That is all true,” according to a screenshot by the liberal watchdog Media Matters. (In her 2020 tweets, Greene said, “I’ve seen plenty of evidence that Islamic radicals hijacked four planes, attacked our country, and killed thousands of Americans on 9/11/01.”)
Earlier that year, she repeatedly agreed with the idea that mass shootings were false flags intended to crack down on people’s Second Amendment rights.
Also in 2018, Greene floated the idea that wildfires in California were caused by a laser from space linked to investment banks controlled by the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family that is often the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Even some GOP colleagues such as Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) have recently ribbed Greene over the “Jewish space laser” conspiracy theory, when they were on opposite sides of the contentious speakership votes.
Santos’s appointment on the Small Business Committee might rival Greene’s installment on Homeland Security in terms of audacity (including because of things we learned just hours after it was announced).
To Wit:
The local news outlet Patch reported late Tuesday that a disabled veteran is accusing Santos of effectively bilking him of $3,000 that was raised for a surgery needed to save his service dog’s life. Santos has denied the accusation, but there is evidence that his pet charity was not the legitimate, tax-exempt organization he claimed it was. Neither the IRS nor the states of New York or New Jersey has records of such a charity. And a New Jersey animal rescue group previously said Santos never gave it the proceeds from a 2017 fundraiser.
Santos in 2010 reportedly admitted to check fraud in Brazil, but authorities were unable to find him to resolve the case. The case has been resurrected in recent weeks. Santos has denied having broken the law.
Santos in recent years worked for Harbor City Capital, which the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” that defrauded investors of millions of dollars. Santos has not personally been accused of wrongdoing and has denied knowledge of such a scheme.
Perhaps the biggest question surrounding Santos involves how he was able to self-fund his 2022 campaign to the tune of about $700,000, despite having reported little income during his 2020 run. Santos has cited a windfall from his business, the Devolder Organization, which he claims linked wealthy individuals to items they wanted to purchase. But there’s little evidence that the business was so successful, and the watchdog Campaign Legal Center has suggested that Santos might have used his business in an illegal straw-donor operation.
This is going to be a clown show to rival all previous clown shows, especially if Santos sticks around. Yesterday we learned something new about his years in Brazil.
NEW: I just spoke by phone with Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio. She said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach. pic.twitter.com/1MeeDR1O2O
Eula Rochard and George Santos met when she was already a well-known drag queen in Niterói, a city next to Rio de Janeiro where Santos also lived at the time. She says people often seek out her friendship because she’s “highly respected in town,” and she remembers becoming friends with Santos, who at the time went by Anthony (one of his many aliases) or Kitara, his drag name. “I think I met him when he was around 16 or 17-years-old,” she said. “He used to hang out in my house while his mom was playing Bingo.”
So when she saw Santos on Brazilian TV the other day, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She messaged some friends who were around during the time she knew Santos to say she thought it was him, but they all doubted her. So she dug up an old photo and posted it to her Instagram.
“The picture was taken in 2008 at the Pride Parade at Icaraí Beach in Niterói,” she says. “George had disappeared for a little while, and then returned to Brazil with a lot of money, and that was about the same time when the picture was taken.”
Eula also shared this video from a past Niterói pride parade. She’s in pink around the 2:00 minute mark, and she says Santos is the person interviewed around the 4:19 mark.
Eula says Santos was never a professional drag performer, but did it for fun and enjoyed dressing up. “He did not have what it takes to be a professional. George did not have the glamour for that.”
Santos’ complicated relationship with the truth is nothing new, she says. “George always lied about everything. He used to create stories, usually involving money—like that his dad was rich. But then people wondered why his mom was a cleaning lady. There’s nothing wrong with being a cleaning lady, but if his dad was rich, then why?”
See a video at the link.
Kabos report is backed up by Reuters.
U.S. Representative George Santos competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants 15 years ago, two acquaintances told @Reuters, adding to contrasts that have drawn criticism of the openly gay Republican congressman's staunchly conservative views https://t.co/D4DBR09FLXpic.twitter.com/lVQQwZ7Y58
U.S. Representative George Santos competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants 15 years ago, two acquaintances told Reuters on Wednesday, adding to contrasts that have drawn criticism of the openly gay Republican congressman’s staunchly conservative views….
A 58-year-old Brazilian performer, who uses the drag name Eula Rochard, said she befriended the now-congressman when he was cross-dressing in 2005 at the first gay pride parade in Niteroi, a Rio de Janeiro suburb. Three years later, Santos competed in a drag beauty pageant in Rio, Rochard said.
Another person from Niteroi who knew the 34-year-old congressman but asked not to be named said he participated in drag queen beauty pageants and aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro.
The congressman said on Twitter on Thursday that claims “that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen” are “categorically false,” adding: “I will not be distracted nor fazed by this.”
Sure George, if that is in fact your name.
In more catastrophic news involving McCarthy’s clowns, the U.S. officially hit the debt ceiling today.
Breaking News: The U.S. has hit its debt limit, raising economic fears and setting the stage for months of entrenched partisan warfare. https://t.co/sON0RNKBsR
The United States hit its debt limit on Thursday, prompting the Treasury Department to begin using a series of accounting maneuvers to ensure the federal government can keep paying its bills.
In a letter to Congress, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the government would begin using what’s known as “extraordinary measures” to prevent the nation from breaching its statutory debt limit and asked lawmakers to raise or suspend the cap so that the government can continue meeting its financial obligations.
“The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. Government months into the future,” Ms. Yellen said. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”
The milestone of hitting the country’s $31.4 trillion debt cap is the product of decades of tax cuts and increased government spending by both Republicans and Democrats. But at a moment of heightened partisanship and divided government, it is also a warning of the entrenched partisan battles that are set to dominate Washington in the months to come, and that could end in economic shock.
Newly empowered Republicans in the House have vowed that they will not raise the borrowing limit again unless President Biden agrees to steep cuts in federal spending. Mr. Biden has said he will not negotiate conditions for a debt-limit increase, arguing that lawmakers should lift the cap with no strings attached to cover spending that previous Congresses authorized.
Treasury officials estimate the measures that they began using on Thursday will enable the government to keep paying federal workers, Medicare providers, investors who hold U.S. debt and other recipients of federal dollars at least until early June.
U.S. begins ‘extraordinary’ measures to avert first-ever federal default https://t.co/PpYhz1O0MK
The Biden administration began “extraordinary measures” Thursday to prevent the federal government from breaching its debt limit and hurtling toward default, a grim scenario with the potential to destabilize markets and devastate the economy.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers that officials will alter certain federal investments to preserve the nation’s credit until summer — largely through technical moves that will buy lawmakers time to reach an agreement on how much the government is allowed to borrow.
Treasury’s moves should give lawmakers time to pass legislation that raises the amount the country can borrow, or suspends that limit, which is currently capped at $31.4 trillion, Yellen wrote to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday. But she said there’s “considerable uncertainty” about how much room the measures will provide.
“I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Yellen wrote.
Newly emboldened House Republicans are trying to leverage the standoff to extract major spending cuts, insisting that previous Congresses and administrations have spent too much on social programs. Some GOP lawmakers have even raised the prospect they might seek changes to entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. But the White House has said it will not negotiate on the debt ceiling, and Biden has pledged to oppose any attempt to cut entitlements.
Note to Biden. Social Security and Medicare are not “entitlements.” We pay for them from our wages.
House Republicans are running a clown show, but it isn’t at all funny.
That’s it for me today. What other stories have you been following?
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I’m getting a very late start today, because I’m still struggling with the aftermath of what I thought was bronchitis. The coughing has almost stopped, but I had several days of what felt like a stomach virus, and now I’m just really tired all the time and can hardly stay awake. It almost makes me wonder if I really had Covid, but I did test myself twice and the result was negative. There is a lot of Covid and other illnesses going around in my mostly elderly apartment building. They even cancelled the monthly tenant meeting. At least I heard yesterday it might be slowing down a bit. Here in Massachusetts we have mostly that new Covid variant XBB 1.5. Oh well, I’ll never know now. I’m just trying to eat healthy stuff and pace myself.
I wish I could find some good news to report, but it’s just the same old stuff today. Here’s what’s happening:
Albuquerque police on Monday arrested the man they say is the “mastermind” behind a recent string of shootings targeting Democratic lawmakers’ homes.
The suspect, Solomon Pena, is a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for office in November, has made repeated claims that the election was rigged and appears to have attended the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington, D.C.
Around 3 p.m. APD’s SWAT team swarmed a condominium complex near the ABQ BioPark Zoo to execute a search warrant. They made announcements for Pena — who they said may be armed with a firearm — to surrender as drones flew overhead.
Within an hour officers had arrested Pena, who is accused of paying four men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, Police Chief Harold Medina announced Monday evening. Investigators also believe Pena was present for at least one of the shootings.
Solomon Pena arrest
One of the four men Pena is accused of hiring, Jose Trujillo, is being prosecuted federally on drug trafficking and firearm charges but the names of the other suspects were not immediately released.
Pena ran unsuccessfully in the House District 14 race and claimed on social media he should have won the election. He also visited three of the targeted officials’ homes unannounced in November complaining the election was fraudulent and should not be certified.
“APD essentially discovered what we had all feared and what we had suspected — that these shootings were indeed politically motivated,” Mayor Tim Keller said at a news conference. “They were dangerous attacks not only to these individuals … but, fundamentally, also to democracy.”
Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department said at a news conference that the former candidate, Solomon Peña, was “the mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators.
Mr. Peña, 39, lost the election on Nov. 8 in a landslide to an incumbent Democrat, Miguel P. Garcia. Days later, Mr. Peña went on Twitter to express support for former President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and to say that he had not conceded his own State House race.
Chief Medina said that a SWAT team took Mr. Peña into custody on Monday. The police said they planned to charge him with “several state crimes.” It was unclear if Mr. Peña had a lawyer. Carter B. Harrison, an Albuquerque lawyer who represented Mr. Peña last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday night.
The police said in a statement that Mr. Peña had paid four men cash and “sent text messages with addresses where he wanted them to shoot at the homes.”
Mr. Peña accompanied the men to the house of State Senator Linda Lopez on Jan. 3 and “attempted to shoot,” but the automatic rifle he was using malfunctioned, the police said. Another man shot more than a dozen rounds from a handgun, the police said, including into the bedroom of Ms. Lopez’s daughter.
Shell casings found at Ms. Lopez’s home matched a handgun that was confiscated after a traffic stop just 40 minutes after the shooting, the police said. The driver, Jose Trujillo, had an unrelated felony arrest warrant, the police said. The car, they said, was registered to Mr. Peña.
That is seriously scary stuff. Republicans have allowed violent extremists to take over their party.
There are a couple of interesting January 6 stories today:
Here’s what the Jan. 6 committee left out about social media’s role in the Capitol attack https://t.co/SPngCq3PbP
The Jan. 6 committee spent months gathering stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online extremism and calls for violence that precededthe Capitol riot.
The evidence they collected was written up in a 122-page memo that was circulated among the committee, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post. But in the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in their final report, reluctant to dig into the roots of domestic extremism taking hold in the Republican Party beyond former president Donald Trump and concerned about the risks of a public battle with powerful tech companies, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the panel’s sensitive deliberations.
Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals.The draft report details how most platforms did not take “dramatic” steps to rein in extremist content until after the attack on the Capitol, despite clear red flags across the internet.
“The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin,” the staffers wrote in their memo. “These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.”
But little of the evidence supporting those findings surfaced during the public phase of the committee’s probe, including its 845-page report that focused almost exclusively on Trump’s actions that day and in the weeks just before.
That focus on Trump meant the report missed an opportunity to hold social media companies accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, even though the platforms had been the subject of intense scrutiny since Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, the people familiar with the matter said.
Read more at the WaPo.
Trump spent his time in office fighting the release of his White House visitor logs. Then the Jan. 6 committee released visitor details from seven key days.
We combed through the records and turned them into a searchable database 🧵https://t.co/Vhn6U4qYfQ
Donald Trump spent his time in office fighting the release of his White House visitor logs. Then came the Jan. 6 select committee.
In late December, the committee uploaded hundreds of documents as it wrapped up its exhaustive investigation into the attacks on the Capitol. Tucked into that release was an excel spreadsheet detailing seven full days of Trump’s White House visitor manifests.
Those logs capture key moments pertaining to the Jan. 6 probe, such as the Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, in which outside advisers, including Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, discussed the prospect of seizing voting machines. They also offer a glimpse into dozens of other guests Trump was hosting during the final chaotic stretch of his presidency, from a Dec. 14 holiday reception featuring governors, Fox News personalities and donors, to a Dec. 18 Oval Office visit by country music singer/songwriter Lee Greenwood — whose music was a staple at Trump rallies — and his family.
The logs are not exhaustive. They only deal with a small period of the Trump presidency and do not include the specific purposes of the visit or details to identify the visitor beyond his or her name. For example, many people are listed as having met with Trump on Dec. 14 in the White House residence, though it’s likely they were in attendance at a larger holiday party….
The visitor logs include the dates: Dec. 12, 2020; Dec. 14, 2020; Dec. 18, 2020; Dec. 21, 2020; Jan. 3, 2021; Jan. 4, 2021; and Jan. 5, 2021.
Interesting, but there’s no analysis in the article. Let’s hope more will follow.
Speaking of visitor logs, Republicans are pretending to be outraged because there are no visitor logs for Biden’s home in Delaware.
House Republicans wants visitor logs for Biden's house—but not for Mar-a-Lago https://t.co/xa0KopFXme
House Republicans are eager to investigate the mishandling of classified documents—some classified documents, anyway.
On Sunday, James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, appeared on CNN and released a letter demanding visitor logs for Joe Biden’s Wilmington home, where classified material from Biden’s time as vice president was recently discovered. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, wrote to White House chief of staff Ron Klain.
The letter followed a White House announcement Saturday that five pages with “classification markings” were found adjacent to Biden’s Wilmington garage on Thursday, a day after one page with a classification marking was found. Personal lawyers for Biden had previously found classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in Washington on November 2 and in Biden’s garage in Wilmington in December.
The discovery of classified material in nonsecure locations has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump’s taking of hundreds of documents, including highly sensitive material, from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida….
But the similarities are limited. No evidence has emerged that shows the material at Biden’s office or home was moved there in deliberate violation of the law. And Biden’s lawyers appear to have proactively contacted the Justice Department about their discovery and immediately returned the material to the National Archives after finding it.
But the Secret Service doesn’t keep visitor logs for presidents’ private residences–including Mar-a-Lago.
If you stayed silent about this, I really don't give a damn what you have to say about anything related to Joe Biden's house in Wilmington. https://t.co/szqTSs48gV
There are no visitor logs or other system of tracking those who visited President Donald Trump at his winter retreat known as Mar-a-Lago, a Secret Service official confirmed Wednesday.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Special Agent Kim Campbell said that her agency had a smattering of records regarding some foreign dignitaries and law enforcement officers who met Trump earlier this year during his stays at the Palm Beach resort he owns.
However, Campbell acknowledged the lack of a comprehensive or even a routine process for tracking such visitors, such as the one used for the White House.
“The…search and review of records confirmed that there is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago, as there is at the White House Complex,” wrote Campbell, head of the Secret Service’s Liaison Divison. “Specifically, it was determined that there is no grouping, listing or set of records that would reflect Presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago.”
Reports spread on Monday afternoon that the White House doesn’t keep visitor logs for the private homes of presidents like President Joe Biden. The same is true for former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and all of those that came before them. The one discrepancy, however, appears to be the revelation from former President Donald Trump that he has those logs.
Politico confirmed that there are no Secret Service logs of visitors to Mar-a-ago, despite Trump calling it “The Winter White House.”
Taking to his social media account to attack Biden, Trump posted, ” Mar-a-Lago is a highly secured facility, with Security Cameras all over the place, and watched over by staff & our great Secret Service. I have INFO on everyone!”
The Secret Service called this a lie, though not directly.
“The…search and review of records confirmed that there is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago, as there is at the White House Complex,” wrote Special Agent Kim Campbell, head of the Secret Service’s Liaison Divison. “Specifically, it was determined that there is no grouping, listing or set of records that would reflect Presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago.”
It’s unclear who is telling the truth or if Trump is saying that while the Secret Service didn’t keep logs, he personally did through his country club’s records.
Come on…everyone knows that Trump never tells the truth.
The White House wants McCarthy to reveal the secret deals he made with the right wing nuts in the House.
White House officials are calling on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to “come clean” about secretive deals he made with hardline members that helped him eventually land the top job. https://t.co/CjUp0fysOR
The White House is escalating its fight with newly empowered congressional Republicans, with officials Tuesday calling on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to “come clean” about secretive deals he made with hardline members that helped him eventually land the top job.
“An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this month’s chaotic elections and claim the gavel,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement shared first with POLITICO. “It is well past time for Speaker McCarthy and the ultra MAGA Republican House members to come out of the dark and tell the American people, in-full, what they decided in secret.”
While McCarthy has insisted he made no formal agreements in exchange for getting conservative holdouts to vote for him, conservative members have said they received certain promises from the new speaker. They have also pointed to action on their priority legislation as a direct result of the recent House leadership negotiations….
President Joe Biden has tried to turn the policy implications of Republicans’ priority bills, including legislation to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace more progressive income taxes with a national sales tax, into a political cudgel. White House officials also said the Republican leadership talks laid the groundwork for the House to vote on a national abortion ban and argue the GOP will use the debt limit standoff to try to force cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
“The few agreements we know about would fundamentally reshape our economy in a devastating way for working families and criminalize women for making their own health care decisions,” Bates said. “They’re also planning to plunge the economy into chaos and take millions of American jobs and 401k plans hostage unless they can cut Medicare.”
The debt limit has been raised 78 times since 1960: -49 times under GOP presidents -29 times under DEM presidents
The Republican-controlled House has planted the seeds for a debt-ceiling showdown, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy endorsing a push by his hard-liners to demand spending cuts as part of any extension of the country’s borrowing authority….
Ultraconservative lawmakers insist they don’t want the country to default, but their conditions for raising the debt limit are unlikely to be accepted by the Democratic-led Senate or President Joe Biden.
Republicans are on a collision course with the White House, which is demanding that Congress raise the debt limit without conditions.
If they fail to resolve their differences and cause a default, the range of consequences includes a stock market crash, a recession, higher interest rates for consumers, a weaker dollar, a U.S. credit downgrade and a government unable to meet all its obligations, from funding the military to providing Social Security benefits….
Conservative lawmakers say that as part of their negotiations to allow McCarthy the speakership, it secured assurances to include major spending cuts to balance the federal budget in any debt limit increase. And to enforce that, they’ve secured other rule changes that give a small group of members the power to remove McCarthy.
But Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, are unlikely to accept those cuts. They are also opposed to granting policy concessions to lift the debt ceiling, particularly after a 2011 showdown, during Barack Obama’s presidency, when a GOP House brought the U.S. to within days of economic disaster and caused a rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s for the first time.
The House’s new rules, adopted by Republicans last week, require an explicit vote to increase U.S. borrowing authority, eliminating an end run that Congress has previously used to fast-track it.
That’s all I have for you today–sorry this isn’t much of a post.
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There’s a line in an old song that goes, “Lawyers dwell on small details.” It’s true. The law is all about details. From one perspective, two cases may appear similar, but depending on the details, they can be very different.”
So far, the stories look similar. Neither Biden nor Trump should have been in possession of classified documents after they left office. These are the people’s documents, not theirs.
But because the law concerns itself with details, not headlines, the similarities mostly stop there.
As a former president, Trump might be indicted, but perhaps the most important reason Biden is unlikely to face indictment or criminal prosecution is he’s currently president. As we know all too well from the four years of the Trump administration, the Justice Department has a policy against indicting sitting presidents. An opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, a division of the Justice Department, provides that charging the president with a crime would “unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
…
The GOP now controls the House of Representatives, and we know members of that party have been raring to go to investigate and possibly impeach Biden. But impeaching Biden for possessing classified documents would be improper for two reasons. First, there is a good argument to be made that people can only be impeached for misconduct committed while in office. Biden’s retention of classified documents occurred after he left the vice presidency and before he assumed the presidency. Second, impeachment is only available when the subject of the impeachment has engaged in “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
After a Trump attorney’s false assertion to the Justice Department that all the requested documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence had been returned, the Justice Department was ultimately forced to obtain and execute a search warrant.
For reasons discussed below, Biden’s conduct is unlikely to be characterized as criminal, even if he weren’t the sitting president. There is also plenty of reason to believe that Trump will or at least ought to be. Consider what each did after being alerted that he might be in possession of classified documents.
Trump reportedly ignored multiple requests from the National Archives for those documents, and after a Trump attorney’s false assertion to the Justice Department that all the requested documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence had been returned, the Justice Department was ultimately forced to obtain and execute a search warrant. Prosecutors have also argued that Trump’s team tried to hide the documents found at Mar-a-Lago before and after the subpoena was issued.
Reportedly, in Biden’s case, the White House counsel alerted the National Archives as soon as classified documents were found at Biden’s former office in November. The National Archives didn’t ask; Biden’s team offered.
Then that team searched for any additional documents that belonged to the government. It found additional files at Biden’s residence in December and more last week, before the White House announced Saturday that additional documents had been found Thursday. The Biden story is one of cooperation, not obstruction.
The contrast was muddied this weekend in the Sunday Shows. There’s an outline of what various Congressional Representatives said at Politico written by Eugene Daniels. “POLITICO Playbook: Three storylines to watch in Biden’s document drama.” Evidently, some Republicans still believe that someone that obviously obstructed the return of stolen documents deserves the same treatment as one that immediately notified the Archives of their existence and fully cooperated.
GOP investigations are inevitable, and they will be ferocious. Rep. JAMES COMER (R-Ky.), the newly minted chair of the House Oversight Committee, released a statement yesterday hammering Biden and promising an investigation.
“Many questions need to be answered but one thing is certain: oversight is coming,” Comer said. “The Biden White House’s secrecy in this matter is alarming. Equally alarming is the fact that Biden aides were combing through documents knowing there would be a Special Counsel appointed.”
Comer is now requesting additional documents and communications “related to the searches of President Joe Biden’s homes and other locations by Biden aides for classified documents, as well as the visitor log of the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, home from January 20, 2021 to present,” per CNN’s Daniella Diaz.
The exchange of the morning came as Comer appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, which offered a preview of how Republicans will approach the issue, especially vis-a-vis Trump.
Tapper: “Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when Democrats do the mishandling?”
Comer: “Absolutely not. … At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is there’s such a discrepancy between how President Trump was treated … versus Joe Biden.” Watch the video
George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.
Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.
The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year.
Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond.
And speaking of “business dealings,” this is from DAWN. “U.S.: Investigate New Evidence of President Trump’s Business Dealings with MBS . Multimillion-dollar payments from LIV Golf, Reportedly 93% owned by MBS-Controlled Fund, to Trump Golf Resorts Raise Serious Questions about Conflict of Interest, Threats to National Security.”
The U.S. Department of Justice and Congress should investigate the disturbing facts and circumstances surrounding payments by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF), via its wholly-owned LIV Golf company, to businesses owned by former President Donald Trump, said Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
On January 13, 2023, Elliot Peters, a name partner at Keker, a prominent San Francisco law firm, who is lead counsel to the PGA in the players’ lawsuit, inadvertently revealed in a court proceeding that PIF owns 93% of LIV Golf, pays for all of its events, and holds all of the entity’s financial risk. PIF’s chairman is Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), who has absolute and final decision-making control over the fund. LIV Golf is a newly established golf tournament franchise that has emerged as a rival to PGA Golf. It has paid Trump-owned golf resorts unknown millions of dollars to hold its events there, and former President Trump has publicly championed the new league, made prominent appearances at its events, and urged PGA players to sign on with LIV Golf.
“The revelation that a fund controlled by Crown Prince MBS actually owns almost all of LIV Golf means that MBS has been paying Donald Trump unknown millions for the past two years, via their mutual corporate covers,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN. “The national security implications of payments from a grotesquely abusive foreign dictator to a president of the United States who provided extraordinary favors to him are as dangerous as they are shocking.”
The information about LIV Golf was otherwise kept sealed in the secret shareholder agreement between PIF and LIV Golf, although LIV Golf had previously disclosed that the PIF was its majority shareholder. There has been no independent verification of the ownership percentages reportedly revealed in court. It is not known who owns the other seven percent of LIV Golf. LIV Golf Players and LIV Golf have sued PGA for suspending PGA players who have signed contracts with LIV Golf, and PGA has sued LIV Golf and the PIF for interfering with its players’ contracts. MBS is the chairman of PIF and has absolute decision-making power over its investments.
There is little doubt that MBS controls the PIF with as much absolute power as he controls the rest of the country, with final decision-making on all of PIF’s investments. When PIF’s advisory panel objected to PIF’s $2 billion investment in Trump’s son-in-law’s newly established fund, Affinity Partners, MBS reportedly vetoed the objections to proceed with the controversial investment as the only investor in a start-up fund that had no track record. Following DAWN’s demand for Congress to investigate this investment, as well as the $1 billion PIF investment in Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin’s newly established fund, Senator Warren announced she would commence an investigation into conflict of interest breaches and ethics law violations that bar solicitation of foreign government officials while in office.
“Former President Trump made no secret of the endless favors he granted MBS and Saudi Arabia during his term in office, from his first state visit to the country, to vetoing legislation that would have banned arms sales to the country, to protecting MBS by hiding the CIA’s report concluding MBS ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s murder,” said Whitson. “It now appears that like his son-in-law and treasury secretary, Trump is cashing in his chits with MBS for all these favors.”
DAWN stands for Democracy for the Arab World Now. It’s an advocacy group founded by Jamal Khashoggi, an American Journalist brutally murdered at the request of MBS in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
Florida Judge John C. Cooper has upheld a lawsuit filed in his personal capacity by a Democratic state Senator from the south of the state challenging the legal framework GOP Governor Ron DeSantis used for transports last year of migrants from Texas to a community in Massachusetts.
The trip, which was evidently facilitated without any prior notice to local leaders or members of the community where the migrants arrived, although residents quickly mobilized to help those involved, mirrored high-profile efforts by other Republican governors. That list includes Greg Abbott of Texas, whose administration was responsible for a trip that saw migrants arrive in temperatures below freezing outside the D.C. residence of the vice president on Christmas Eve. With the trip for which DeSantis was responsible and other ventures, concerns have also circulated about potential deception targeting those the organizers were trying to cajole into joining the voluntary trips, including about basic facts like the eventual destination.
In Florida, the case from Democrat Jason Pizzo challenges the process by which the state set aside $12 million for the transport of migrants. Also at issue in general has been that the transports designated for support by those funds originate in Florida, but the migrants the DeSantis team ferried to Massachusetts started their trek in Texas, although the venture made a brief stop of under an hour in Florida itself. Pizzo argues a new initiative of the substance seen in something like the funds for transports for migrants requires a separate legislative effort rather than mere inclusion in routine budgeting.
The Miami Herald noted the state team argued the budgetary provisions were actually just expanding on a law imposing restrictions on state partnerships with individuals transporting certain migrants into Florida unless detaining or removing those individuals from Florida or the United States. The thing is — that other law was signed after the budget, so no argument about the two building off each other would inherently solve the fact that such isn’t how time works.
Cooper scheduled the trial in Pizzo’s case to start at the end of this month, on January 30. The DeSantis team specifically — and unsuccessfully — sought the case’s dismissal. Separately, the Florida governor has already faced a raft of other scrutiny over the endeavor, including confirmation from the oversight official known as an inspector general at the federal Treasury Department that they would be looking at DeSantis’s usage of interest derived from federal relief funds connected to COVID-19 for the flights. That official spoke to the situation after an inquiry from members of the Congressional delegation from Massachusetts.
Nothing like a bit of sunshine on a cloudy day.
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After looking around at today’s news, I’d like to go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend none of the madness is actually happening. But I’ll try to pull myself together and post some stories worth reading today.
The most serious news today is that we are rapidly approaching the debt limit and House Republicans are threatening to force a default on the country’s debt, which would crash the U.S. economy–and likely the global economy.
Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has notified Congress that the US is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday, 19 January, and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders on Friday, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4tn borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time.
She urged lawmakers to act quickly to raise the debt ceiling to “protect the full faith and credit of the United States”.
“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” she said.
Republicans now in control of the House have threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to demand spending cuts from Democrats and the Biden administration. This has raised concerns in Washington and on Wall Street about a bruising fight over the debt ceiling this year that could be at least as disruptive as the protracted battle of 2011, which prompted the brief downgrade of the US credit rating and years of forced domestic and military spending cuts….
The White House said on Friday after Yellen’s letter that it will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling.
“This should be done without conditions,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “There’s going to be no negotiation over it.”
House Republicans are preparing a plan telling the Treasury Department what to do if Congress and the White House don’t agree to lift the nation’s debt limit later this year, underscoring the brinkmanship newly empowered conservatives will bring to the high-stakes negotiations over averting a U.S. default, according to six people aware of the internal discussions.
By Kim Roberti
The plan, which was previously unreported, was part of the private deal reached this month to resolve the standoff between House conservatives and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over the election of a House speaker. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a leading conservative who helped broker the deal, told The Washington Post that McCarthy agreed to pass a payment prioritization plan by the end of the first quarter of the year.
The emerging contingency plan shows how Republicans are preparing to threaten to not lift the nation’s debt ceiling without major spending cuts from the Biden administration. Congress must pass a law raising the current limit of $31.4 trillion or the Treasury Department can’t borrow anymore, even to pay for spending lawmakers have already authorized. Economists warn that not raising the debt limit could cause the United States to default, sparking a major panic on Wall Street and leading to millions of job losses.
In the preliminary stages of being drafted, the GOP proposal would call on the Biden administration to make only the most critical federal payments if the Treasury Department comes up against the statutory limit on what it can legally borrow. For instance, the plan is almost certain to call on the department to keep making interest payments on the debt, according to four people familiar with the internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. House Republicans’ payment prioritization plan may also stipulate that the Treasury Department should continue making payments on Social Security, Medicare and veterans benefits, as well as funding the military, two of the people said.
Such a move would be unprecedented and hugely controversial, and even releasing the plan could turn into a major political liability for the GOP. A hypothetical proposal that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and the military would still leave out huge swaths of critical federal expenditures on things such as Medicaid, food safety inspections, border control and air traffic control, to name just a handful of thousands of programs. Democrats are also likely to accuse Republicans of prioritizing payments to U.S. bondholders — which include Chinese banks — over American citizens.
Read more details on the GOP’s idiotic “plan” at the link.
The other big story is the ongoing attempts of Republicans and some in the media to draw comparisons between Trump’s theft of hundreds of government documents and refusal to return them to the recent discovery of a small number of classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as Vice President in an old office and at his home in Delaware.
The approximately 10 documents marked classified and discovered at the Penn Biden Center included top-secret material, according to a federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
Top secret is the highest of the three basic levels of classification: confidential, secret and top secret. A leak of top secret information could cause “exceptionally grave damage.”
Fewer than 10 documents marked classified were found at the Biden residence in Wilmington, Del., and none were marked top secret.
In all, the source said, the total number of known documents marked classified is roughly 20,between the two locations.
President Biden is facing a Department of Justice investigation after his lawyers found classified documents at his Delaware residence and an office in Washington, D.C.
“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said Thursday.
The announcement comes three days after news broke that classified documents had been found at Biden’s private office in November less than a week before the midterm elections – a discovery that led the DOJ to launch an initial inquiry.
Details on the documents and where they were located:
Early last November, Biden’s personal lawyers were packing files from his one-time office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank founded in 2018 by the University of Pennsylvania where Biden served as a fellow and professor before he became president.
There, in a “locked closet,” the White House says, they discovered some files that were marked as classified, even though the office had not been authorized for the storage of classified documents. The documents were quickly turned over to the National Archives.
Then, on Nov. 4, the National Archives inspector general informed the Department of Justice of the discovery. In mid-November, Garland tapped John Lausch, a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Chicago, to begin an initial investigation.
In December, after a review that began after the November discovery, Biden’s personal counsel Robert Bauer informed Lausch that another set of documents had been found in the garage of Biden’s private home in Wilmington, Del. Those documents were soon secured by the FBI.
Finally, on Wednesday night, Biden’s team discovered one more classified document at Biden’s Wilmington home.
As far as we know, Biden’s retention of the documents was unintentional, but the news has provided a golden opportunity for Trump’s dishonest allies.
The sweet spot for Donald Trump’s allies has always been when they can justify his abuses and crimes through misdirected comparisons rather than direct defense. Did Trump extort Ukraine into smearing his opponent? Well, Ted Kennedy once did something kind of like this. Did Trump try to stay in office after losing the election? Maybe so, but let us tell you about the time a Democrat registered an objection to the Electoral College count in Congress.
The key aspect of these arguments is exaggeration, not fabrication. They seize on real events, often genuinely bad things done by other politicians, then use them as pretext to dismiss actions by Trump of a vastly greater order of magnitude.
By Belinda Del Pesco
As many people have very neutrally pointed out, the news that President Biden held on to classified documents is pure manna for Trump’s defenders. It gives them a set of facts to work with that, if examined without any of the important context, can be spun to the willfully credulous as evidence that these men have committed similar crimes.
“There’s no good case for putting a President in prison — much less making two Presidents into cellmates — for improperly retaining materials from recent public office,” intonesThe Wall StreetJournal. “When Mr. Trump was out on a limb by himself, this point was less obvious to some of our media competitors. Now that Mr. Biden faces a similar inquiry, perhaps they see how ridiculous it is.”
But Trump is not potentially facing charges because he improperly took classified documents. It’s because when the government found out about the documents, he refused to give them back and — allegedly — took steps to hide them from the FBI. This is not a small twist on the same crime. It is the crime….
This is how he has operated for his entire career. He cheats, lies, and steals in the expectation that he can brazen out any consequences. He can simply refuse to let Black people rent an apartment or pay contractors what he promised them or lie to his lenders about his worth, and whatever cost he faces will be worth it. The reason his document theft rose to the level of a federal crime was that he applied this method to behavior that is covered by the federal criminal code and handled by prosecutors he can’t necessarily bully or bribe into submission.
As we discovered during the Watergate scandal, it’s the cover-up that gets people in trouble. If Trump had just returned all the documents immediately, as Biden did, he (Trump) wouldn’t be facing the possibility of prosecution for obstruction of justice.
We will all need to be patient now that former Maryland US attorney Robert Hur has been appointed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland as the special counsel in charge of the investigation into the classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and private office from his time as vice president.
But giving Hur the time to dig into the legitimate questions he must ask does not mean we should compare Biden’s legal exposure to that of Donald Trump.
Based on what we know now, Biden is unlikely ever to face charges, whereas Trump is at high risk because of his obstructive conduct and other factors absent from the Biden case. The cases have special counsels and classified documents in common — but little else.
Hur, who was nominated by then-President Trump for the US attorney role in Maryland in 2018, will now attempt to determine how the batches of classified documents got to Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware and to his private office in Washington, DC; who was involved; and who may have seen them.
Still Life with Dillan, Alison Friend
He will seek to make sure that there are no more anywhere else on Biden’s personal property (a bone of contention in the Trump investigation) and liaise as necessary with national security officials to assess the risk to national security. And he undoubtedly will look at the logistics of the search; for example, if the first batch of documents was discovered in November 2022, why the review that unearthed the new documents was not completed until this Wednesday….
The bottom line is that so far this appears to be a very different case, and the discovery of the second small tranche of documents and the appointment of the special counsel doesn’t change that. If these preliminary indications bear out, it appears unlikely Biden will face charges at the end of Hur’s investigation (whenever that may be).
Just as Hur must decide the Biden case on its facts, special counsel Jack Smith, who is looking at the Trump documents case, should not be influenced in any way in making his determinations about charging Trump based upon this separate and very different case involving Biden.
After two years of relative quiet, the Washington press corps mounted familiar battle stations this week as a Biden administration scandal took shape.
“You’re not going to answer the questions, but we’re going to ask them because that’s our job,” Ed O’Keefe, a correspondent for CBS News, told White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during a press briefing Wednesday in which she repeatedly refused to provide new information about classified documents that had been found improperly stored in the president’s former office space.
It triggered a back-and-forth that led Jean-Pierre to plead, “You don’t need to be contentious with me here.”
Yet for all the pent-up vigor with which they launched into the facts of the case, journalists also labored to contextualize a matter made all the more complex by the shadow of former president Donald Trump’s own ongoing classified-documents scandal. And they girded against partisan criticism that they are going too hard or too soft on the story.
Less than 48 hours after CBS News first broke the story Monday evening, some conservatives were quick to insist that “the media” was somehow downplaying it….
In reality, every network was covering the news that President Biden’s attorneys had voluntarily handed over classified documents on Nov. 2, the same day they discovered them found improperly stored in his private office.
The story was the lead piece on ABC’s and CBS’s evening news shows Monday and the second piece on NBC’s “Nightly News.” CNN devoted 1 hour and 47 minutes to the Biden documents that night compared with 14 minutes spent by MSNBC and 29 minutes on Fox News, according to Media Matters, a liberal group tracking media.
Read the whole discussion at the link if you’re interested. Personally, I expect the media to work hard to try to equate the two scandals. I just hope Biden doesn’t give them any more ammunition.
Woman with book and orange cat, Carol Keiser
Yesterday, the judge in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit against Trump released the transcript of Trump’s deposition, and it is just as disgusting as I expected.
Donald Trump used a sworn deposition in a case brought by his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll to continue calling her a liar and to claim she is mentally ill — denying that he sexually assaulted her even as he falsely claimed Carroll said in a CNN interview that she enjoyed being raped.
In rambling and combative testimony during an October session at Mar-a-Lago, Trump reiterated past claims he didn’t know Carroll, except as an adversary in what he termed “hoax” litigation, and said she was a “nut job”who was fabricating the story altogether.
“I know nothing about her,” he said in response to questions from Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, according to court documents unsealed Friday. “I think she’s sick. Mentally sick.”
The former president twisted Carroll’s comments from a June 2019 interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, in which shesaid she shied away from calling her alleged encounter with Trump a “rape” because the word “has so many sexual connotations” and is a “fantasy” for many.
“I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” she told Cooper, according to a transcript of the interview, explaining that she instead thinks of her alleged attack as a “fight.”
Trump cited the interview in telling Kaplan that Carroll “loved” sexual assault.
“She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay?” Trump said in the deposition. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped.”
Kaplan then asked: “So, sir, I just want to confirm: It’s your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?”
And Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place.”
That sounds like an admission that the rape actually happened.
The news appears to be all over the place today. I’ll see if I can sort through it. Meanwhile, it’s Fanart Friday and Friday the 13th, and I’m still stressed by the headlines and life circumstances. It’s always good to curl up with a good horror movie. Enjoy these fan takes on Jason Vorhees from the franchise and the slasher that never seems to die.
My mother was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and I consider the city my second hometown. We spent most weekends there or in small neighboring Kansas towns with my grandparents. It was the place I always wanted to live because “Everything is up-to-date in Kansas City.” I’d prefer to stay on the Kansas Side of State Line Road today, where most of my cousins have settled. Missouri has lost its mind.
The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives used its session’s opening day Wednesday to tighten the dress code for female legislators, while leaving the men’s dress code alone.
The changes were spearheaded by state Rep. Ann Kelley (R), a co-sponsor who was among the Republicans seeking to require women to wear a blazer when in the chamber. She was met by swift opposition from Democrats who called it “ridiculous.”
The state House eventually approved a modified version of Kelley’s proposal, which allows for cardigans as well as jackets, but still requires women’s arms to be concealed. Missouri Democrats tore into Republicans for pushing the new restrictions on what women in the chamber could wear.
“We are fighting — again — for a woman’s right to choose for something. This time, it’s how she covers herself — and the interpretation of someone who has no background in fashion,” state Rep. Raychel Proudie (D) said in a speech on the floor. “I spent $1,200 on a suit, and I can’t wear it in the People’s House because someone who doesn’t have the range tells me that it’s inappropriate.”
While previous rules said that “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots” were allowed to be worn by female lawmakers, Kelley, one of the co-sponsors of H.R. 11, said Wednesday that women needed to wear jackets on the floor as “it is essential to always maintain a formal and professional atmosphere.”
Yep, the caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of others is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (specifically how to cover their arms) to show respect here.
Paging Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kyrsten Sinema, and Lauren Boebert! Any fashion tips? I remember being forced to wear nude hose, low heels, and a suited skirt through much of the 80s and 90s. I couldn’t even wear pants to school until 8th grade. Do we really need to be monitored, and for what reason?
Former president Donald J. Trump’s family real estate business was ordered on Friday to pay a $1.6 million criminal penalty for its conviction on felony tax fraud and other charges, a stinging rebuke and the maximum possible punishment.
The sentence, handed down by a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, caps a lengthy legal ordeal for Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which was convicted in December of doling out off-the-books perks to some of its top executives. One of the executives who orchestrated the scheme, Allen H. Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and testified at the company’s trial. He was sentenced on Tuesday to serve five months at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
The financial penalty is a pittance to the company, and the former president, who collected hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year while in office. But the verdict branded the company a lawbreaker, exposed a culture that nurtured illegality for years and handed political ammunition to Mr. Trump’s opponents. Prosecutors also continue to press a criminal investigation against the man himself.
The Trump Organization’s lawyers on Friday sought a smaller penalty, pinning the blame on an outside accounting firm, Mazars USA, which they said should have halted the wrongdoing. They also blamed Mr. Weisselberg, who they say carried out the scheme without intending to benefit the Trump Organization. But Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, argued that the company carried out “a multidimensional scheme to defraud the tax authorities.”
“To avoid detection, they simply falsified the records,” he explained. “This conduct can only be described as egregious,” adding that although the maximum fines may have limited impact on the corporation, “this court should nonetheless impose such fines.”
The judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, agreed, imposing the maximum $1.61 million.
“These are arguments that were made throughout the trial,” Justice Merchan said about the defense’s contention that Mazars and Mr. Weisselberg were to blame. “This is not what the evidence has shown, and it is certainly not what the jury found.”
Jason Voorhees, 2017 by Kid-Eternity
This story hits home for me and other cancer survivors and their friends and family. It’s from the BBC. “US cancer death rate drops by 30% since 1991 .” There some interesting sidenotes to these findings.
The research found that “at least 42% of the projected new cancers are potentially avoidable”, noting that 19% of cancers are caused by smoking and 18% of cancers are “caused by a combination of excess body weight, drinking alcohol, poor nutrition, and physical inactivity”.
The report also examined racial and economic disparities in cancer outcomes.
The Covid-19 pandemic added to already existing difficulties for marginalised groups to get cancer screenings and treatment.
For nearly every type of cancer, white people have a higher survival rate than black people. Black women with breast cancer face a 41% higher death rate than white women.
One bright spot was that cancer death rates in children and adolescents have seen large declines. Since the 1970s, cancer death rates in children have declined by 71% and by 61% for those ages 15 to 19.
Cancer is the second most common cause of death, after accidents, for children one to 14 years old.
Some cancer progress in children has lagged behind adult research due to “lower enrolment in clinical trials, differences in tumour biology and treatment protocols, as well as treatment tolerance and compliance,” according to the report.
Republican Rep. George Santos, said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Once the company, where he worked, came under federal scrutiny, Santos claimed publicly that he was unaware of accusations of fraud at the firm, a CNN KFile review of Santos’ social media and statements found.
Santos, the embattled freshman Republican, faces growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. Santos admitted to “embellishing” his resume, but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”
Santos worked at Harbor City Capital Corp. in 2020 and 2021, a company the SEC saidwas a “classic Ponzi scheme” in an April 2021 complaint against the firm. A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud where existing investors are paid with funds from new investors, often promising artificially high rates of return with little risk. Santos was not named in the SEC complaint.
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.
I’m getting a very late start today, because I’m still struggling with the aftermath of what I thought was bronchitis. The coughing has almost stopped, but I had several days of what felt like a stomach virus, and now I’m just really tired all the time and can hardly stay awake. It almost makes me wonder if I really had Covid, but I did test myself twice and the result was negative. There is a lot of Covid and other illnesses going around in my mostly elderly apartment building. They even cancelled the monthly tenant meeting. At least I heard yesterday it might be slowing down a bit. Here in Massachusetts we have mostly that new Covid variant XBB 1.5. Oh well, I’ll never know now. I’m just trying to eat healthy stuff and pace myself.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The contrast was muddied this weekend in the Sunday Shows. There’s an outline of what various Congressional Representatives said at Politico written by Eugene Daniels.
The Washington Post has an exclusive today. 
And speaking of “business dealings,” this is from DAWN. “
Further down the Republican food chain, we have this headline by Caleb Newton writing for 
New York Representative George Santos just keeps giving the Trump Family Criminal Syndicate in the Grift business. This is from CNN:
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