One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump’s advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided.
He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it. He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
“This is what he wanted to happen,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who is scheduled to lead the questioning Thursday along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), said in an interview this week. “You might have earlier on said, ‘Was he incompetent? Was he someone who freezes in a moment when they can’t react to something? Or was it exactly what he wanted to have happened?’ And after all of this, I’m convinced that this is exactly what he wanted to have happen.”
Season One Finale Friday Reads
Posted: July 22, 2022 Filed under: Domestic terrorism, Donald Trump, January 6 Committee Public Hearings, U.S. Politics 15 Comments
My friend John’s take on Josh Hawley today.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
We learned from last night’s January 6 Committee Hearing that we’ve got at least three new installments coming in September. I’m hoping the DOJ uses that time wisely to check on the Secret Service and all the other co-conspirators to Trump’s planned sedition and coup. Let’s wrap up the Season One Finale and examine some more exciting side stories accompanying it.
First up, from USA Today, Security footage shows Senator Josh Hawley hauling ass to escape Trump’s mob as it invaded the Capitol. These were the folks he egged on earlier at the Trump Rally to do just that! Looks like Josh probably needed a change of pants too! Although I’m not confident that my friend Peter meant quite that when he wrote “A Stain On Our History” last night.
From Peter’s Blog:
Lawyers love timelines even lapsed ones like me. The committee has done a masterful job assembling a coherent and convincing timeline of what happened at the White House on the day of the Dipshit Insurrection and the day after.
The committee established that Trump did more than just sit there watching teevee during the now infamous 187-minute gap. He made calls, cheered on the rioters, refused to denounce the violence, and continued plotting with Rudy Giuliani and various senators including the running man: Josh Hawley.
Peter also points out Trump’s troubles with his “Just Go Home” recording. There was a lot of meat in yesterday’s hearing, but the tick-tock of the lost One Hour and Eight-Seven Minutes was all it promised. This is from NPR: “January 6 panel sheds light on the 187 minutes Trump went dark during Capitol siege,” by Barbara Sprunt.
The Democrat-led committee shed light on the much-talked about but still murky 187 minutes that stretched from his speech to his supporters at 1:10 p.m. ET to his 4:17 p.m. ET video statement asking them to return home.
The hearing, led by military veterans Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., used witness testimony to piece together Trump’s actions the afternoon of Jan. 6, as there was not an official call log from the White House that afternoon and nothing included in the presidential daily diary.
“The chief White House photographer wanted to take pictures because it was, in her words, ‘very important for his archives and for history.’ But she was told: ‘no photographs’,” Luria said.
White House counsel and White House officials testified that Trump did not make any calls to the secretary of defense, the attorney general or the secretary of homeland security during the siege.
Although the White House call logs are empty, Trump lawyer and ally Rudy Giuliani’s call logs show at least two calls between him and the president that day. The committee also noted that other Trump calls that day are known, including several to Republican senators to urge them to delay the certification of Biden’s win.
A major theme from the hearing was how much television the former president consumed as the chaos and violence unfolded.
“President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television while his senior-most staff closest advisers and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president,” Luria said. “When lives and our democracy hung in the balance, President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power.”
The committee played video clips of news coverage from Fox News, to show what Trump watched in real time as he tuned in from his dining room, just off from the Oval Office. He watched as his supporters, donning red caps and chanting his name, overwhelmed and outnumbered police as they flooded the Capitol grounds and attempted to breach the Capitol.
As I mentioned, there was also additional action around the hearings themselves. This is from The Daily Beast “DC Trucker Protesters Claim It Was One of Their People Heckling the Cop Beaten by January 6 Mob.” Those watching the hearings know that the audience includes many of the Capitol Police most affected by the mob.
A former D.C. police officer who nearly died after the angry mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was harassed by protesters with the far-right 1776 Restoration Movement (formerly The People’s Convoy) as he came to the Thursday night primetime hearing. Michael Fanone, who survived a heart attack suffered during the riot, was called “a toxic loser” and other names as he walked near the Capitol. Fanone, a commenter for CNN, had testified in the trial of one of his attackers earlier Thursday, during which he told the judge he hoped the man suffered in prison. Video from the scene showed what appeared to be a dust-up between people harassing Fanone and a man with a banner defending the insurrection hearings. One member of the anti-COVID-19 vaccine 1776 Restoration Movement admitted on a Friday morning livestream that the individual that hounded Fanone was one of their own. The group formerly called The People’s Convoy remains camped out on the National Mall, despite their top livestreamers jumping ship and many members contracting COVID-19.
Donald Trump attracts the worst of humanity. It looks like many pieces of shit were harvested by him in the Secret Service. Again, no wonder Major was biting a bunch of them. This will undoubtedly be on Season Two of the Committee hearings. This is from The New York Times: “Watchdog Informs Secret Service of Criminal Inquiry Into Missing Texts. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general told the Secret Service to halt its internal investigation into how phone records from around January 6 were purged.”
The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security directed the Secret Service to halt its internal search for purged texts sent by agents around the time of Jan. 6 so that it does not “interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation,” according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.
“To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the U.S.S.S. must not engage in any further investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence referenced above,” the Homeland Security Department’s deputy inspector general, Gladys Ayala, wrote to James M. Murray, the director of the Secret Service. “This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking any other action that would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.”
The mention of a potential criminal investigation into the deleted texts of Secret Service personnel sought by Congress and the inspector general suggested the growing seriousness of the scrutiny into the agency’s handling of records from around the time of the attack on the Capitol.
Damon Linker–writing for Eyes on the RIght–– asks the question everyone is asking these days. “What the Hell Is Going On at the Secret Service? It sure doesn’t look good”.
In what follows, I am not proposing or alleging that the U.S. Secret Service actively conspired with Donald Trump to advance his extra-legal plans to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. What I’m suggesting is that there were and are enough troubling things going on in and around the agency that an extensive investigation at the highest levels is amply warranted.
What We Know
For those who haven’t been paying attention, here is the background:
- The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol asked the Secret Service to provide it with text messages among 24 agents in the month prior to and including January 6, 2021. On Tuesday of this week, the agency informed the committee that it had no text messages to share, because they were unintentionally deleted as the result of a message-system migration that began in late January 2021. (The Secret Service has since provided the committee with a single text message. You heard that right: one message.)
- This deletion took place despite the fact that on January 16, 2021, eleven days before the system migration began, Congress specifically instructed the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, not to delete anything related to the events of January 6.
- People well-informed about the technical issues involved find the claim that the Secret Service accidentally deleted or lost all of the relevant text messages as part of a system migration highly implausible.
- Per reporting in the Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, a watchdog agency, prepared a public alert in October 2021 about Secret Service stonewalling with regard to requests for records and texts having to do with the January 6 attack. The alert was never issued. Then, in February 2022, this same office “learned … that the Secret Service had purged nearly all cellphone texts from around the time of the [attack] but chose not to alert Congress.” We know of both of these non-alerts only because “two whistleblowers who have worked with [DHS] Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari” have disclosed them to investigators.
- The current director of the Secret Service, James Murray, was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019. Trump originally wanted to appoint Secret Service agent Tony Ornato to be agency director, but Ornato was at that time serving as White House deputy chief of staff. That crossover from the Secret Service to senior White House operations was highly unusual. (Ornato was a central organizer of the violent removal of protesters from Lafayette Square in June 2020 so President Trump could undertake a photo-op holding a Bible.) Instead of accepting an appointment to head the agency, Ornato apparently recommended Murray for the job.
- Oh, and way back on December 31, 2020, six days before the events of January 6, Slate ran a short article, based on reporting in the Washington Post, titled, “Secret Service Shakes Up Presidential Detail Amid Fears Some Agents Aligned with Trump.” This reporting showed that prior to the Capitol Hill insurrection, the incoming administration made arrangements to have the president-elect protected by agents Biden knew personally from his time as vice president for fear that agents currently assigned to the presidential detail might remain loyal to the outgoing president.
That sure looks bad, doesn’t it? I can imagine that’s what started the Criminal probe announced yesterday by the Homeland Security IG.
The critical thing the public hearing did yesterday was that it brought other eyewitnesses to the table which could back up the incredible, earlier testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson. This is from MSNBC and MaddowBlog. It’s written by Steve Benen. “Testimony bolsters Hutchinson claims on Trump’s January 6 meltdown. The right pushed back against Cassidy Hutchinson’s recent testimony, but other witnesses now bolstered much of her assertions.”
Cassidy Hutchinson’s recent testimony to the Jan. 6 committee covered a lot of ground, but there was one story that generated a lot of conversation. The former West Wing staffer described a scene, which had been described to her by Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official at the time, in which Donald Trump went a little berserk after his Secret Service agents told him he was being taken back to the White House after his speech at the Ellipse, instead of being taken to the Capitol.
The comments drew plenty of pushback from the right, but nearly a month later, as The New York Times noted, the basic elements of the anecdote appear sound.
One of the most significant disclosures from Ms. Hutchinson was that there was an angry dispute between Mr. Trump and his security detail in his car when the detail refused to drive him to the Capitol to join his supporters. Testimony played on Thursday from an anonymous White House security official and a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department who was driving in Mr. Trump’s motorcade corroborated that claim.
“The only description I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol,” Sergeant Mark Robinson said in deposition testimony. “And there was a heated discussion about that.”
Politico noted a second witness — a person with a national security background given anonymity because of “fear of retribution” — who told the committee that Ornato said the president was “irate” at not being able to the go to the Capitol.
Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democratic member of the committee, said investigators also have “evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV.”
This came on the heels of a recent CNN report that quoted two Secret Service sources who confirmed that Trump “demanded to go to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and berated his protective detail when he didn’t get his way.”
To be sure, some of the provocative details have not yet been definitively proven. Hutchinson, for example, was told about a moment in which Trump allegedly tried to grab the steering wheel of the Suburban he was riding in, and others have not confirmed that aspect of the story.
I imagine we’ll hear more about this as the press and others dig into the stories. nother thing I’m waiting for is the judge’s verdict on Steve Bannon, whose trial was sent to the jury today after the closing hearings. o, we are on verdict watch. You may want to read this in Mother’s Jones by Dan Friedman published 10 days ago. “ Leaked Audio: Before Election Day, Bannon Said Trump Planned to Falsely Claim Victory. “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”
Hmmmmmm.
So, those are my suggested reads today. What’s on your reading and blogging list?
My hopes for little Stevie Bannon for some background music!
Thursday Reads: Jan. 6 Committee Hearing Tonight
Posted: July 21, 2022 Filed under: January 6, January 6 Committee Public Hearings, Joe Biden, morning reads, Treason and Sedition Republican Style | Tags: Covid-19, Donald Trump, Joseph Cuffari, Matthew Pottinger, Rep. Andrew Clyde, Sarah Matthews, Secret Service 17 CommentsGood Morning!!
Tonight is the final January 6 Committee hearing, at least for this month. It should be a blockbuster. There are plenty of predictions about what will happen tonight. There is also more news about the Secret Service deleting text messages from January 5 and 6. I’ll get to those stories in a minute, but first some breaking news.
Despite his advanced age, Biden appears to be healthy and fit. Here’s hoping his symptoms stay mild.
Tonight’s January 6 Committee Hearing
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attack.
The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Matthew Pottinger
Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.
The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show….
The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.
Two insider witnesses, “former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews,” will testify in the hearing.
The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat….
The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas [described in testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson” about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.
Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.
The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.
Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Humiliate MAGA Lawmakers Who Cowered During Capitol Attack.
The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday-night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s planning.
“They have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms,” one source tells Rolling Stone. “If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated.” [….]
The committee has at times switched plans at the last minute, and it remains unclear which specific lawmakers the committee could call out. But at least some Republicans have already had their attempts to downplay or justify the attempted coup undone by footage from the day of the attack. When Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) claimed the insurrection “a normal tourist visit,” social media users quickly located photos of the Georgia Republican gasping in terror and hiding behind an armed Capitol police officer pointing a handgun at a barricaded entrance to the Senate floor.
https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1394670227628171265?s=20&t=s2PoA7SQaC58YWCCbk_awg
In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash it through a series of contradictory talking points. Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “a peaceful protest,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” or federal informants at the Capitol, or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.
Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar have gone so far as to cast alleged rioters held in pretrial detention as unjustly accused political prisoners.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
The Washington Post: Even a day after Jan. 6, Trump balked at condemning the violence.
CNN: Trump had ‘extreme difficulty’ with his speech on the day after January 6.
The Secret Service and the Missing Text Messages
This shocking story broke last night. Carol Leonig and Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post: Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: July 19, 2022 Filed under: just because 18 Comments
Summertime, 1894, by Mary Cassatt
Good Afternoon!!
Down in New Orleans, Dakinikat has been dealing with day after day of 90 degree weather for most of the summer. Now New England is going to heat up. So far we’ve had a relatively cool summer here in the Boston area, but today we begin an extended heat wave. WBUR: An extended heat wave begins in Boston on Tuesday.
Boston so far this year has seen two days hit 90 degrees or higher (June 26 and July 1), but that’s about to change. Hot air comes to the region Tuesday, and the heat will be here for an extended stay.
It’s likely the city will be coping with a six-day-long heat wave. That’s nearly a week of temperatures reaching 90 degrees or higher.
Typically, Boston averages about 15 days a year with such highs. In 2021, Boston recorded four heat waves, the longest of which occurred between June 5-9. We also saw 24 days at 90 degrees or higher last year, including a day in which the city hit 100 degrees.
Over 100 years ago, back in 1912, Boston endured its longest stretch of consecutive 90-degree days in history: nine in a row.
The heat is really bad in Europe too. From The Washington Post Capitol Weather Gang:
A historic and deadly heat wave has been scorching western Europe, killing hundreds in Spain and Portugal. Temperatures spiked to 115 degrees on the Iberian Peninsula amid bone-dry conditions, fueling wildfires and displacing thousands of people in France. The mercury topped 100 degrees (38 Celsius) in Britain on Monday and is expected to surge higher Tuesday.
For the first time, the U.K. Met Office has issued a red warning for heat, its most extreme alert. The warning, in effect through Tuesday, includes Birmingham, Oxford, Nottingham and London.
Wales already established its highest temperature on record Monday, and England could be next Tuesday, with temperatures as high as 104 degrees (40 Celsius).
Sitting in the Shade, by Roelof Rossouw
At the same time, another heat wave is brewing across the pond in the United States — one that produced a tie for Salt Lake City’s highest temperature Sunday and could bring readings as high as 113 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday.
A third heat wave is simmering in Central Asia.
These heat waves fit into a pattern of increasingly frequent, intense and prolonged events catalyzed by climate change. Human activities are pushing already high-end heat into record territory.
You can see maps of the high temperatures around the world at the WaPo link.
From AP News: UK breaks record for highest temperature as Europe sizzles.
Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe — and the national weather forecaster predicted it would get hotter still in a country ill prepared for such extremes.
The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames racing toward a French beach and Britons sweltering — even at the seaside — have driven home concerns about climate change.
The U.K. Met Office registered a provisional reading of 40.2 degrees Celsius (104.4 degrees Fahrenheit) at Heathrow Airport in early afternoon — breaking the record set just an hour earlier and with hours of intense sunshine still to go. Before Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), set in 2019.
As the nation watched the mercury rise with a combination of horror and fascination, the forecaster warned temperatures could go higher still.
The sweltering weather has disrupted travel, health care and schools in a country not prepared for such extremes. Many homes, small businesses and even public buildings, including hospitals, don’t even have air conditioning, a reflection of how unusual such heat is in the country better known for rain and mild temperatures.
Summer Day by Berthe Morisot
Unfortunately, Joe Manchin, along with the Republicans in the Senate, refuses to vote for legislation to deal with climate change. Now Biden is considering executive action. The Washington Post: Biden could declare climate emergency as soon as this week, sources say.
President Biden is considering declaring a national climate emergency as soon as this week as he seeks to salvage his environmental agenda in the wake of stalled talks on Capitol Hill, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
The potential move comes days after Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told Democratic leaders that he does not support his party’s efforts to advance a sprawling economic package this month that includes billions of dollars to address global warming. If an emergency is invoked, it could empower the Biden administration in its efforts to reduce carbon emissions and foster cleaner energy.
In anticipation of a potential announcement, Biden is set to travel to Somerset, Mass., to deliver a speech on climate change on Wednesday. The president intends to speak on “tackling the climate crisis and seizing the opportunity of a clean energy future to create jobs and lower costs for families,” the White House announced Tuesday morning.
Two of the individuals with knowledge of the discussions said also they expect the president to announce a slew of additional actions aimed at curbing planet-warming emissions. The exact scope and timing of any announcements remain in flux.
Boats in the Harbour at Collioure, 1905 (oil on canvas), Andre Derain
“The president made clear that if the Senate doesn’t act to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, he will,” a White House official, who requested anonymity to describe the deliberations, said in a statement late Monday. “We are considering all options and no decision has been made.”
Jared Bernstein, a top White House economic adviser, emphasized to reporters at a news briefing earlier in the day that Biden would work “aggressively fight to attack climate change.”
“I think realistically there is a lot he can do and there is a lot he will do,” Bernstein said.
The prime time January 6 hearing is coming up on Thursday at 8PM. Unfortunately, Chairman Bennie Thompson has tested positive for Covid and won’t be able to preside. As of now, the hearing will go ahead as planned. I sure hope he didn’t pass the virus on to other committee members at recent in-person meetings.
The Guardian: Primetime January 6 hearing to go ahead despite chairman’s positive Covid test.
The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters has contracted Covid – but Thursday’s primetime hearing will proceed, according to a statement from the chairman, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson.
“While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his Covid diagnosis, he has instructed the select committee to proceed with Thursday evening’s hearing. Committee members and staff wish the chairman a speedy recovery,” committee spokesperson Tim Mulvey said….
Meanwhile, two former White House aides are expected to testify at the hearing as the panel examines what then president Donald Trump was doing as his supporters stormed the US Capitol, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide, are expected to testify, according to the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and requested anonymity.
Mrs. Monet and a friend in the garden. Two women sitting in the shade of a tree, by Claude Monet
Pottinger and Matthews resigned immediately after the January 6 insurrection, which interrupted the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the election.
Lawmakers on the nine-member panel have said the hearing will offer the most compelling evidence yet of Trump’s “dereliction of duty” that day, with witnesses detailing his failure to stem the angry mob.
“We have filled in the blanks,” Illinois Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger said on Sunday. “This is going to open people’s eyes in a big way.”
He added: “The president didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this timeframe.”
Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu at Politico: ‘Sprint through the finish’: Why the Jan. 6 committee isn’t nearly done.
The Jan. 6 select committee once envisioned a single month packed with hearings. Then a fire hose of evidence came its way — and now its members have no interest in shutting or even slowing the spigot.
As its summer hearings show some signs of chipping at Donald Trump’s electoral appeal, select panel members describe Thursday’s hearing as only the last in a series. Committee members, aides and allies are emboldened by the public reaction to the information they’re unearthing about the former president’s actions and say their full sprint will continue, even past November.
The only hard deadline, they say, is Jan. 3, 2023, when Republicans likely take over the House.
Sea Watchers, 1952, by Edward Hopper.
Thursday’s hearing will focus on Trump’s hours of inaction on Jan. 6, 2021, while a mob ransacked the Capitol and supporters, aides and family members begged him to speak out. But beyond that, the committee is pursuing multiple new avenues of inquiry created by its investigation of Trump’s scheme to seize a second term he didn’t win, from questions about the Secret Service’s internal communications as well as leads provided by high-level witnesses from his White House.
“It’s been amazing to see, kind of, the flurry of people coming forward,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the panel’s two Republican members. “So it’s not the time to wind it down.” [….]
A major reason to continue, for many select panel members, is the public discussion they’ve driven about what they see as an ongoing threat to democracy posed by Trump and his allies. With every new hearing, particularly as White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described an enraged Trump directing armed supporters to the Capitol and trying to join them there, the panel has seemed to get further under the skin of the former president as he contemplates a third bid for the White House.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Monday Reads: The Miseducation Agenda
Posted: July 18, 2022 Filed under: religious extremists, Religious Freedom, Reproductive Justice, Republican Code Words and Concepts, Republican politics, Revisionism 22 Comments
The public library in Council Bluffs opened in 1866.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
There is nothing more telling about the state of discourse in our country than the move to censor and replace materials in libraries and public schools with pure nonsense and propaganda. As a child, I spent a great deal of the summer in the old Council Bluffs, Iowa Library doing the children’s reading club. My mother took us to the local library at least once a week.
I don’t know if you can see the inscription on top, but it reads “Free Public Library.” The city built a new library, but the Carnegie-funded library is now standing as a Union Pacific Railroad Museum. I currently use another Carnegie-funded library in my neighborhood in New Orleans which features a Drag Queen storybook hour for kids. People come from out of the Parish to protest that, but everyone here is thankful for the creative time to read books together and discuss the one thing kids like to do which is play ‘dress-up.’
The Public Library–now closed–in Vinton, Iowa.
The public library in Council Bluffs when a subscription library was established for males over the age of 12. Libraries now strive to be more inclusive unless their town goes all Fahrenheit 451 on them. This is from CNN: “Iowa library temporarily closes after full-time staff leaves following complaints about ‘liberal agenda’ in book selection.” Rather than shrugging off stuff they don’t like and simply choosing not to read it, the Trumperz Thought Brownshirts would rather close the place down.
A small-town library in Iowa is scrambling to reopen after community complaints about its book selection prompted full-time staff members to resign.
The controversy started over complaints about books on display for children with information on the LGBTQ community, according to Jimmy Kelly, board chair of the Vinton Public Library.
“They would like balance that for every book that talks about LGBTQ issues, that there also be a book describing traditional gender expression,” Kelly told CNN Thursday.
“The people basically accused the library of having a liberal agenda,” he added.
…
“A reconsideration policy allows you to object to materials or programming in which the library is joined. Libraries have this, it’s very common,” she added. “It protects the library staff, it protects the library board as well as the person who is making the complaint. It is a wonderful process.”
The content complaints followed complaints last year the library had a children’s book about Vice President Kamala Harris and one written by first lady Jill Biden, but no children’s books about former President Donald Trump, according to Kelly. It resulted in McMahon’s resignation, he said.
Since resigning last year, McMahon took a job as the library director in DeWitt, about 90 miles away. She says the controversy leading to her decision to leave the Vinton community was unfortunate.
“It was very sad. I really liked working with the city department heads I worked with,” she said. “I had a great staff and there were a few people on the library board who I thought were fantastic, but it was just the atmosphere, and we all will choose a location of where we live or where we work by what matches our personalities and I just did not feel that I needed that extra stress in my life.”
McMahon said she also heard complaints there were no books about former President Donald Trump in the display.
“These were children’s books, these were picture books, and I did my due diligence. Did I miss someone? Did someone write a nice book about the former president? The answer at that point was no. I don’t know if there’s something now, I don’t know,” McMahon told CNN.
The Alvar Library in New Orleans, Lousiana
So, my first thought is just about every book in a collection is about traditional expressions of gender. It shouldn’t need to be singled out in a diatribe. My second thought was is there no wonder that no respectable children’s book author doesn’t want to write a book describing a corrupt, twice-impeached traitor with a wife that did soft porn? I mean seriously, how is that something a small child should be reading about?
But even more seriously, what is Governor Rick DeSantis doing to the Civics Curriculum in Florida? If this isn’t lies and propaganda being pushed into Public Schools what is? I have slave owners in my family tree. Many of them signed the Declaration of Independence. Two Signed the Constitution. One of the buggers that signed the US Constituion of the US was an ever not so great Uncle from South Carolina who was the Governor at one point and wrote the Fugitive Slave Act. My own Uncle helped pen and argued for the Japanese Internment Laws before SCOTUS during Wolrd War Two. The last one particularly hits home to me because my mother-in-law was Japanese so my ex-husband, daughters, and granddaughters are of Japanese descent.
I imagine that most of my relatives–including me–lived on land stolen from Indigenous people. Why hide where they fucked up? My mother took me around the country showing me where all this happened in the hopes that my knowledge would make sure it never happened again. Those dead people never had an ounce of an impact on me. However, my mother, local librarians, and public school teachers sure did. Some in ways they intended, others in ways they did not. The further I got in education, the more I learned that all of our history is not pleasant, it happened, but it should not happen again. It need not be covered up. I trust our education to determine how and when to elucidate the impact of slavery, of the Indigenous relocation pogroms and reeducations schools, Japanese internment, and the system of immigration that favors some races over others. Then, we work to tear down the remanents that harm our modern society and correct them.
From NPR: “Florida Gov. DeSantis takes aim at what he sees as indoctrination in schools” It’s always the same with these guys. Projection! Slavery and Indigenous relocation and massacre are at the heart of our history and considered women to be property until after 1849. That’s not part of the past that should be glossed-over or celebrated with some pantomimes with kind pilgrims, dancing slaves, and always happy mothers.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it clear how he views public schools and what they’re teaching children: He doesn’t trust them.
At a recent news conference, he returned to a familiar theme.
“Following woke indoctrination in our schools, that is a road to ruin for this country,” he said. “And we’re not going to let it happen in Florida.”
Since becoming governor in 2019, DeSantis has become known for taking combative positions on controversial issues, including education. He recently signed a number of measures aimed at preventing the sort of “indoctrination” he and his Republican supporters fear is taking place.
His “Stop Woke” act sets limits on how issues involving race may be taught. And it allows parents to sue teachers and school districts that violate it.
Another measure, the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, bans any instruction involving sexual orientation or gender identity in the earliest grades and says beyond that it must be “age appropriate.”
In a June interview with the Christian fundamentalist group, Focus on the Family, DeSantis said he believes there’s a “concerted effort to inject … gender ideology and sexuality into the discussions with the very youngest kids.”
You know something is wrong when he’s being guided by Child Beating advocates Focus on the Family.
As first reported by the Miami Herald, the training materials were prepared for the state by groups including the Bill of Rights Institute, founded by Charles Koch and Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan that is influential in developing conservative education policies.
Segal, a teacher with 18 years in the classroom, says DeSantis is pushing a false narrative that schools are promoting a “woke” progressive agenda.
“I hate to say this,” she says, “but I feel that maybe, possibly he’s pandering to a base for re-election and that’s very hurtful.”
DeSantis is running for re-election as governor in November but is also widely seen as a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
All this comes as Florida is facing a critical teacher shortage with more than 9,500 vacant jobs statewide.
In Brevard County, school board member Jennifer Jenkins says teachers are demoralized. Many have retired or found jobs in other fields. In her district, she says there are 20 vacancies at a single school that only has 40 staff members.
“I don’t know how we’re going to continue to live in this hostile environment, how we’re going to encourage educators to enter the field and stick around,” Jenkin says. “It’s really, really scary.”
School board members have become a particular target. Jenkins has had protesters outside her home, vandalism, and threats of violence stemming for her support for a school face mask mandate.
Ending tenure at Universities is another way Republicans are seeking to stack public education facilities with whatever. From the Advocate here in Louisana: “Mark Ballard: Conservatives want to clip tenure protections for outspoken college professors.”
Louisiana began down what one legislator calls the “slippery slope” toward eliminating job-protecting tenure for college professors who mouth off in unapproved ways.
Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, Friday received designees for the Task Force on Tenure in Postsecondary Education, putting Louisiana on the path already tread by other Republican-majority states seeking to remove what some professors call protection for academic free thought and what some conservatives say is a license to indoctrinate youth with extremist thought.
“The caricature for tenure has been weaponized on the national level for political pursuits,” University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson testified May 11 as legislators considered creating the task force. “I encourage you that the conversation around this is around the merits and not about the politics.”
The Darby Free Library in Darby, Pennsylvania is the country’s oldest library. It was founded as the Darby Library Company in 1743 .
There’s a good list there with all states trying to pass some form of the same effort. So far, none of these efforts have passed but, just like voter suppression efforts, Republicans are hot to quash public education and send tax payer money to places with religious indoctrination agendas. One of DeSantis’ civics changes includes this doozy via Axios: “Florida training program: “Misconception” that founders wanted separation of church and state”.
Driving the news: That and other content in a state-sponsored training course has raised eyebrows among some who have participated and felt it was omitting unflattering information about the country’s founders, pushing inaccuracies and centering religious ideas, per the Post.
- The Constitution explicitly bars the government from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Scholars interpret the passage to require a separation of church and state, per the Post.
- In another example, the training states that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were against slavery, while omitting the fact that each owned enslaved people.
It’s obvious that the Republican Party likes their base stupid. They also want us to be just as stupid and uninformed. Fox News Channel and AM radio shows do just that. Whatever can we do to stop all of this?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: July 16, 2022 Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: abortion, cat art, caturday, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, Grace Paley, January 6 Committee, Mark Meadows, Mike Roman, Rep. Mike Kelly 25 Comments
Jacques Hnizdovsky, born Pylypcze, Ukraine 1915-died New York City 1985
Good Afternoon!!
There’s quite a bit of January 6 investigation news today, but before I get to that I want to call your attention to two long reads on abortion. Some of us here are old enough to remember the days before Roe v. Wade declared that women had a right to make decisions about our own bodies. Now that right has been taken away.
This is a very good essay by short story author and poet Grace Paley about the days when abortion was a crime and getting access to birth control was extremely difficult, republished in 2017 at The Literary Hub: Women Died All the Time: Grace Paley on Illegal Abortions.
It was the late 30s, and we all knew that birth control existed, but we also knew it was impossible to get. You had to be older and married. You couldn’t get anything in drugstores, unless you were terribly sick and had to buy a diaphragm because your womb was falling out. The general embarrassment and misery around getting birth control were real.
There was Margaret Sanger at that time, and she had a clinic right here in Manhattan in a beautiful house on Sixteenth Street; I still walk past and look at it. As brave as the Margaret Sanger people were, they were under very tough strictures. It was scary to go there. I was 18, and it was 1940 when I tiptoed in to get a diaphragm. I said I was married….
Most of my friends married early. I married when I was 19; then my husband went overseas during the Second World War. I would have loved it if I had had a child when he went overseas, but we had decided against it.
When he came back, I was in my late 20s, and in the next couple of years, I had two children. When the children were one and a half and three, I got pregnant again. I don’t remember if my birth control failed . . . I wasn’t the most careful person in the world. Something in me did want to have more children, but since I had never gotten pregnant until I really wanted to—I was 26 and a half when I had my first child—I had assumed that the general mode would continue.
I knew I couldn’t have another child. I was exhausted with these two tiny little kids; it was just about all I could do to take care of them. As a child, I had been sick a lot, and people were always thinking I was anemic . . . I was having bouts of that kind. I was just very tired, all the time. I knew something was wrong because my whole idea in my heart had always been to have five, six children—I loved the idea of having children—but I knew I couldn’t have this kid.
Please go read the rest. It’s well worth your time. I also recommend this series of reactions to the loss of abortion rights at the London Review of Books: Prejudice Rules LRB contributors on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I haven’t read them all yet, but I plan to.
More abortion stories:
Dr. Caitlin Bernard testified last year, in a case involving abortion restrictions in Indiana, that she was forced to stop providing first-trimester abortions at a clinic in South Bend. She stopped the procedures after she was alerted by Planned Parenthood – who in turn had been alerted by the FBI – that a kidnapping threat had been made against her daughter.
The Black Cat Stretch, by chocolatefrizz89 at deviant art
The Guardian reported in January that the names of six abortion providers, as well as their educational backgrounds and places of work, were listed on the website of an extreme anti-abortion group called Right to Life Michiana, in a section of the website titled “Local Abortion Threat”. Bernard was among the list of doctors named on the extremist website.
Barrett, who voted to overturn Roe v Wade last month, signed a two-page advertisement published by the group in 2006, while she was working as a professor at Notre Dame. It stated that those who signed “oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death”. The second page of the ad called Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, “barbaric”. The advertisement was published in the South Bend Tribune by St Joseph County Right to Life, which merged with Right to Life Michiana in 2020.
Bernard said in sworn testimony that she had started to travel to South Bend once a month – beginning in 2020 – in order to perform first trimester abortions, but stopped making the 2.5-hour trip once she learned of the threat against her daughter.
It’s time for Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from cases involving abortion.
The Washington Post: Confusion post-Roe spurs delays, denials for some lifesaving pregnancy care.
A woman with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy sought emergency care at the University of Michigan Hospital after a doctor in her home state worried that the presence of a fetal heartbeat meant treatingher might run afoul of new restrictions on abortion.
At one Kansas City, Mo., hospital,administrators temporarily required “pharmacist approval” before dispensing medications used to stop postpartum hemorrhages, because they can also be also used for abortions.
And in Wisconsin, a woman bled formore than 10 days from an incomplete miscarriage after emergency room staffwould not remove the fetal tissueamid a confusing legal landscape that has roiled obstetric care.
Robert Smithson, American, b. Passaic, New Jersey, 1938–1973
In the three weeks of turmoil since the Supreme Court overturnedthe constitutional right to abortion, many physicians and patients have been navigating a new reality in which the standard of care for incomplete miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other common complications is being scrutinized, delayed — even denied — jeopardizing maternal health, according to the accounts of doctors in multiple states where new laws have gone into effect.
While state abortion bans typically carve out exceptions when a woman’s life is endangered, the laws can be murky, prompting some obstetricians to consult lawyers and hospital ethics committees on decisions around routine care.
And it’s going to get a lot worse. We’re going back to the dark ages. See also this piece at The Texas Tribune: Texas hospitals are putting pregnant patients at risk by denying care out of fear of abortion laws, medical group says.
Now for some January 6 investigation news:
The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Steps Up Jan. 6 Probe of Those in Trump’s Orbit.
The Justice Department is adding prosecutors and resources to its investigation into the actions of former President Donald Trump’s allies to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter, as the related congressional hearings have turbocharged interest in Mr. Trump’s own role in that effort.
A Justice Department team focusing on elements of the investigation beyond the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has in recent weeks been given more personnel, office space and an expanded mandate, the people said….
As the Justice Department began in late 2021 to develop cases alleging complex conspiracies and investigate sources of funding, it assigned an experienced prosecutor from Maryland, Thomas Windom, to focus on those efforts.
Mr. Windom previously met with some skepticism within the department when he pushed to explore the activities of several members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, the people said, with some officials believing prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue those paths. But the hearings have revealed new details of Mr. Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, that legal experts have said could put the former president in greater legal jeopardy for charges such as fraud, inciting a riot or obstructing the election’s certification.
The Cat, by Pablo Picasso
The testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in particular—including her allegation that Mr. Trump knew some of the protesters were armed but wanted them at his rally and at the Capitol anyway—has broadened some Justice Department officials’ view of the potential scope of the probe, the people said, though officials said the testimony didn’t prompt any change in investigative strategy.
Ms. Hutchinson told the committee on June 28 that Mr. Trump was concerned that magnetometers were keeping supporters from attending his speech at the Ellipse earlier in the day on Jan. 6. She said she overheard him saying something to the effect of, “I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the mags away. Let the people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.”
Former prosecutors have identified that testimony as the first to speak to Mr. Trump’s intent as tension escalated that day, and said it suggests he knew some of the protesters were armed and urged them toward the Capitol anyway as lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Prosecutors would need to prove that Mr. Trump knew his actions would result in violence to pursue a related criminal case against the former president.
Read more at the WSJ. I didn’t encounter a paywall when I click on the link at Memeorandum.
Politico: Trump campaign operative who delivered Jan. 6 false elector lists is identified.
A little-known Donald Trump campaign operative delivered lists of false electors to Capitol Hill in a bid to get them to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two people familiar with the episode.
Mike Roman, then Trump’s 2020 director of Election Day operations, delivered those false elector certificates — signed by pro-Trump activists in Michigan and Wisconsin — to Rep. Mike Kelly’s (R-Pa.) chief of staff at the time, both people told POLITICO. Kelly was a Trump ally in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and his then-top aide received the documents from Roman before deputizing a colleague to disseminate copies on Capitol Hill, according to both people.
Cat Gathering (Night) by Inagaki Tomoo, 1957, color woodcut
Roman’s role in the effort to deliver those slates of electors directly to Pence has not previously been reported. The onetime Trump White House researcher and former aide to the conservative Koch network, who was subpoenaed in February by the Jan. 6 select committee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The origin of the false elector lists, which never got to Pence before he presided over certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, has become an enduring subplot in the select panel’s investigation of the Capitol attack designed to disrupt that day. After the committee revealed the role of a top aide to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in the episode during a hearing last month, Johnson said the false elector lists came from Kelly — who has repeatedly denied any involvement by his office in their distribution.
More at the link.
Politico: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Secret Service amid text message controversy.
The Jan. 6 select committee has subpoenaed the Secret Service following a string of conflicts with the agency and revelations that a large swath of text messages sent by agents on the day of the Capitol attack have been erased.
The move marks the first time the select committee has publicly announced the subpoena of an Executive Branch agency and comes the same day the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general privately briefed committee members on the discovery of the missing text messages.
The subpoena, directed at agency director James Murray — who is retiring later this month — demands the production of records by July 19.
“The Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson said in a letter accompanying the subpoena.
Committee members emerging from the DHS briefing said they were awaiting details about whether the inspector general will be able to obtain any of the missing messages.
“We’re interested in getting the texts from the Secret Service that happened on the fifth and sixth and we want to get the IG’s perspective on what he thought was going on,” Thompson told reporters Friday.
One more from Politico: Justice Dept. backs House over Jan. 6 subpoena to Meadows.
The Justice Department declared Friday that the Jan. 6 select committee has adequately justified its subpoena for testimony and documents from Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in Donald Trump’s White House.
A Cat Named Sam, Andy Warhol
That conclusion came as part of a landmark filing taking a position for the first time that former advisers to presidents who have left office are not “absolutely immune” from congressional subpoenas.
DOJ filed the brief Friday evening in a civil suit Meadows filed in December against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the committee’s members in a bid to quash subpoenas the former Trump aide received from the House panel.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols asked the Justice Department to weigh in on what immunity, if any, Meadows is entitled to in the dispute.
“When a congressional committee demands testimony from an immediate presidential adviser after the President’s term of office has ended, the relevant constitutional concerns are lessened. Accordingly, the Department does not believe that the absolute testimonial immunity applicable to such an adviser continues after the President leaves office. But the constitutional concerns continue to have force,” the department argues in the new brief, signed by DOJ Civil Division attorney Elizabeth Shapiro and endorsed by other top officials.
Finally, a preview of Thursday’s prime-time January 6 Committee hearing by Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel to Dissect Trump’s 187 Minutes of Inaction During Riot.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is planning to return to prime time on Thursday for what could be the finale of its summer hearing schedule: a session focused on former President Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of inaction as a mob of his supporters assaulted Congress.
The hearing, scheduled for 8 p.m. on July 21, is expected to give a detailed account of how Mr. Trump resisted multiple entreaties from staffers, lawyers and even his own family to call off the attack, which raged for hours in the early afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.
Representatives Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, are expected to play leading roles in the hearing.
One witness the panel could hear from is Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide who resigned in the aftermath of Jan. 6. She has told the committee that a tweet Mr. Trump sent attacking Vice President Mike Pence while the riot was underway was like “pouring gasoline on the fire.” [….]
The committee is also likely to play clips of the testimony of other witnesses who attempted to intervene with Mr. Trump during those more than three hours, including Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. The committee has also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser, about Mr. Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the mob engulfed the Capitol.
Mr. Kellogg said Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, urged her father at least twice to call off the violence, as did Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s it for me today. What are your thoughts? What stories are you following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments