Tuesday Reads: Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial Begins Today
Posted: February 9, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: both-sidesing media, Donald Trump, GOP extremism, second impeachment trial, Trump defense arguments 10 Comments
Good Morning!!
Yesterday Dakinikat posted one of those typical Politico “both-sidesy” “Democrats in disarray” articles about second Trump impeachment trial, which begins today. Supposedly Democrats are torn about whether they should go all out to convict trump or just give up because the whole thing is a “lost cause.” Why call witnesses and make a big scene when Republicans hold all the cards anyway? Of course Politico ignores the fact that a clear majority of Americans support conviction. CBS News:
As former President Trump’s second impeachment trial begins, a 56%-majority of Americans would like the Senate to vote to convict him, and the same percentage say he encouraged violence at the Capitol — views that are still somewhat linked to Americans’ presidential votes in 2020, reflecting ongoing partisan division.
To those in favor of conviction, this trial is described as holding Mr. Trump “accountable” and “defending democracy.” To those Americans (mostly, Republicans) opposed to it, the trial is “unnecessary” and a “distraction.”
Media critic Eric Boehlert writes: Sorry Politico, impeachment’s not “lost cause” for Dems — it’s a home run.
As the impeachment curtain rises in the Senate today, with Trump being charged with “incitmdent of insurrection” for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the D.C. press once again seems to think the impeachment of a Republican president poses political problems…for Democrats. It’s a strange prism through which to view the historic proceedings, as Trump becomes the first president in 240 years to be impeached twice — and in the span of just 13 months….
Overall, the press seems much more focused on the fact that Democrats likely won’t win a conviction, than they are on the swelling movement nationwide in favor of conviction. Republicans are clearly out of step with the public, but it’s Democrats who are portrayed as being boxed in and “muzzled.”
As for Republicans and the political consequences impeachment poses for them? Politico wasn’t interested, and made no suggestion that the GOP stands at the crossroads regarding Trump and the murderous mob he inspired to ransack the U.S. Capitol. The GOP, apparently, faces no impeachment fallout, only Democrats.
This is the type of coverage we saw during Trump’s impeachment last year, when news outlets flipped common sense on its head and became wed to idea that an unpopular Republican president being impeached represented a political problem for his opponents. The Washington Post insisted “hand-wringing” Democrats were “bracing” for scores of impeachment defections in the House. In the end, exactly two Democrats defected. Meanwhile, adopting Republican talking points, the New York Times reported that the first impeachment was “a political plus” for Trump, and “risky” for Democrats.
Talk about turning the tables. Back when Democrat Bill Clinton was impeached in 1999, the overriding political story was how badly would the historic proceeding damage Democrats? That, despite the fact that polling showed Americans overwhelmingly opposed the impeachment of Clinton, whose approval rating swelled into the 70’s while being persecuted by the GOP. Yet last year when it was Democrats who were doing the impeaching, and when they had the support of the public, the press assumed they’d be the ones to pay a high price. Same is true again this year.
For Democrats, it’s heads you lose, tails you lose.
Read the whole thing at the link. As the trial plays out, we need to remember that there really is no liberal media. In fact, the “savvy” DC press always works hard to find a “both-sides” narrative, no matter how bad things get for Republicans.
At Yahoo News, Kendell Karson and Meg Cunningham write: GOP on defense as Democrats harness party’s ties to extremism.
As the GOP contends with its future and Trump’s role in it, Democrats are seizing on the deep divisions within the Republican ranks over its right wing and seeking to define the frontline of the party by its most extreme members.
House Democrats’ campaign apparatus deployed $500,000 for an advertising campaign tethering Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the minority leader, and seven vulnerable House Republicans in districts President Joe Biden won last year to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s extremist rhetoric and the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The opening shot by Democrats accuses the swing district Republicans of standing “with Q, not you.
“Washington Republicans have made their choice — they chose to cave to the murderous QAnon mob that has taken over their party,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They are “refusing to hold those responsible for the attack on the Capitol accountable, offering nothing but empty words after years of hyping up lies and conspiracy theories.”
Read more at the link.
Schumer and McConnell have reached an agreement for how the trial will proceed. The Hill:
The timeline would allow the trial to wrap up as early as next week, if both sides agree not to call witnesses.
Under the deal, the Senate will debate and vote on Tuesday on whether the trial is constitutional. The effort to declare the trial unconstitutional will fall short after Rand Paul (R-Ky.) forced a vote on the issue late last month. Forty-four GOP senators supported his effort.
Opening arguments will start on Wednesday. Under the deal, the House impeachment managers and Trump’s team will have 16 hours over two days each to present their case to the Senate….
The deal also leaves the door open to calling witnesses. The House impeachment managers previously invited Trump to testify under oath, an offer his attorneys rejected. They haven’t yet said if they will try to get the Senate to call other witnesses.
Today the Senators will debate the constitutionality of trying a president who has left office. Trump’s lawyers claim that is unconstitutional, but the expert they rely on for their arguments says they are misinterpreting his scholarship.
At NPR, Nina Totenberg interviews that expert: ‘I Said The Opposite’: Criticism Of Trump’s Impeachment Defense Intensifies.
A constitutional law professor whose work is cited extensively by former President Trump’s lawyers in their impeachment defense brief says his work has been seriously misrepresented.
In a 78-page brief filed in the U.S. Senate Monday, Trump’s lawyers rely heavily on the work of Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, author of the seminal article about impeachment of a former president. His work is cited 15 times in the Trump brief, often for the proposition that the Senate does not have the authority under the constitution to try an impeached ex-president.
The problem is that Kalt’s 2001 book-length law review article concluded that, on balance, the historical evidence is against Trump’s legal argument.
“The worst part is the three places where they said I said something when, in fact, I said the opposite,” Kalt said in an interview with NPR.
Trump’s lawyers argue that the Senate lacks jurisdiction because the president is already out of office, making an impeachment trial pointless. Kalt argues that impeachment is about more than removal; it’s about accountability and deterrence. “The framers worried about people abusing their power to keep themselves in office,” he adds. “The point is the timing of the conduct, not the timing of the legal proceeding.”
Read the rest at NPR.
David Corn at Mother Jones: Why the Second Impeachment of Donald Trump Is More Important Than the First.
[D]espite the the deja-vu-ness of this been-there/done-that impeachment and the absence of a possible political death sentence, the second Trump impeachment is far more important than the first, for it ultimately is about securing and protecting the defining ideal of the United States: that this nation is a democracy that honors principle not power….
The core issue is a president jeopardizing American democracy. For the first time since the republic was born, the United States did not experience a peaceful transfer of power following a presidential election. (Yes, there’s an asterisk for the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln that led six months later to the Civil War.) Trump spent weeks prior to the election plotting how to subvert it should he lose, and then he put his scheme in motion, pushing the big lie that massive fraud had occurred and a nefarious cabal had stolen his victory. He falsely declared victory before all the votes were counted. He and his allies refused to accept legitimate and certified results, filing frivolous lawsuits that were routinely tossed out and spreading baseless conspiracy theories. They lied—over and over—about vote tallies and supposed irregularities that did not exist. It was a psyop campaign, information warfare—similar to the covert attack waged against the 2016 election by Vladimir Putin. And evoking his infamous Ukraine phone conversation, Trump called Georgia state officials and pressured them to “find” him just enough votes to secure a victory in that state. Coercing local officials to falsify election results can be a crime.
This all happened before the seditious and murderous attack on the US Capitol on January 6. For months, Trump had waged war against the election and the American political system, seeking to discredit it so he could retain power, misleading millions of America, and exploiting paranoia, fear, and political division. His impeachable acts did not begin on the that dreadful day. “The full story is a crime story, a long crime story,” one of the House impeachment managers tells me. The attack on Congress—which aimed to overturn the election results—was the product of a lengthy stretch of disinformation and incitement.
More points of view on the trial:
Richard H. Pildes at The Atlantic: January 6 Was Just One Day in a Sustained Campaign.
Stephen Collinson at CNN: Trump’s trial set to rock Washington and echo through the ages.
Peter D. Keisler and Richard D. Bernstein: at The Atlantic: Freedom of Speech Doesn’t Mean What Trump’s Lawyers Want It to Mean.
Steve Coll at The New Yorker: Trump’s Impeachment Trial Offers a Chance to Seize the Initiative on the Future of Free Speech.
Michael Conway: How Republicans’ defense of Trump over his impeachment trial hurts him in the long run.
The Daily Beast: Trump Preps Nutty Impeachment Defense as D.C. Ducks.
Vanity Fair: Trump’s Impeachment Lawyers: He was Heartbroken by Capitol Violence, How Dare You Suggest Otherwise.
Will you be watching today’s arguments? If so, let us know what you think.
Monday Reads: House Floats and Senate Trials
Posted: February 8, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats 2021 7 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I was awakened last night by the blast of the emergency system tone really early this morning or late last night. A ten year old girl from New Iberia Parish had gone missing. Some one had seen her get into a car with a man who turned out to be a known sex offender. Fortunately, an alert sanitation worker in the next parish over recognized the car when his crew passed by it early today. The girl is now undergoing a medical examination and the police have the suspect in custody.
I was also greeted by my cat spilling my coffee all over my laptop. So far it appears to be doing okay but we’ll see how long that lasts. I scrambled to get it turn upside down immediately. I also have to finish grading a bunch of things. So, how’s your day going?
Today’s pictures are of the Mardi Gras House floats that have been popping up all over the city. It’s easy to guess which ones are uptown and which are downtown by me! I’m behind on mine because of this class I’ve been teaching and all the assorted headaches. I get my covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday afternoon and I still won’t have a day off until Friday so this week seems absolutely frazzled compared to the last year where sitting at home was de rigueur.
Another Republican Congress Critter has died from covid-19. Not sure if he was of the anti maskers but if not, his colleagues likely killed him with their anti masking antics.
Rep. Ron Wright (R-TX) has died. Wright tested positive for coronavirus several weeks ago. Wright had also battled lung cancer last fall. Wright was 67 years old. Wright succeeded fmr GOP TX Rep Joe Barton in 2019 after Barton retired.
However I have found some interesting tweets including a deathbed crusade to fully open schools. Since the debacle with the empty stockpile, we’ve had quite a few teachers unable to get their vaccines. Anecdotally, I know several who are now home with the virus. UNO is supposed to start opening campus in March. Fortunately, I’m pretty much zoom bound in this class but at least I should have both doses if I have to go back.
https://twitter.com/ApocalypticaNow/status/1358814359963721732
It’s really hard to imagine that Republicans are still pushing free range herd immunity but pictures in Tampa Bay after the Super Bowl seem to show that it’s a different world out there in places with Republicans in charge. Our Mayor is doing everything possible to keep people out of the Quarter including closing bars down. Last night, however there was still a convergence to the bars all over. I watched the parade to bars by young white couples while walking Temple and chatting with my neighbor who already got her double dose as she hit the 70 year mark last year. I just don’t get how anything is more important than keep you and your healthy but I guess I’m officially on old coot now.
The British variant of covid-19 is “Spreading Rapidly in U.S. A new study bolsters the prediction by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the so-called B.1.1.7 variant will dominate Covid-19 cases by March.” This is reported in the NYT.
A more contagious variant of the coronavirus first found in Britain is spreading rapidly in the United States, doubling roughly every 10 days, according to a new study.
Analyzing half a million coronavirus tests and hundreds of genomes, a team of researchers predicted that in a month this variant could become predominant in the United States, potentially bringing a surge of new cases and increased risk of death.
The new research offers the first nationwide look at the history of the variant, known as B.1.1.7, since it arrived in the United States in late 2020. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that B.1.1.7 could become predominant by March if it behaved the way it did in Britain. The new study confirms that projected path.
“Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it,” said Kristian Andersen, a co-author of the study and a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. “We should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”
So, will we get another huge surge? Dr Fauci did say we need to keep an eye on those variants and some of the vaccines do better than others with them.
Trump’s impeachment trial continues. Politico reports that “POLITICO Playbook: Democratic impeachment managers feeling muzzled”.
Democrats who’ve struggled for years to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable are at a crossroads again: Do they go all out to convict Trump by calling a parade of witnesses to testify to his misdeeds? Or do they concede it’s a lost cause, finish the trial ASAP — and get on with President JOE BIDEN’S agenda?
Several of the House impeachment managers wanted firsthand testimony to help prove their case that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, our sources tell us. But Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Biden administration officials have been eager for the process to move quickly, we’re told.
It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.
That’s why there had been talk among the managers about calling individuals who could change minds — if not the minds of 17 GOP senators needed to convict, then perhaps a slice of the GOP electorate that still supports Trump. Some of the ideas floated: having Capitol Police officers tell their stories about fighting the mob, or inviting Republican officials in Georgia who were pressured by Trump to overturn the state’s election tally.
There’s also been chatter about bringing in former White House officials who observed Trump on the day of the riots.
Schumer and other Senate Democrats argue, however, that they don’t necessarily need witnesses since Trump’s crimes were in plain sight and documented in videos and tweets. Privately, senior Democrats also note that 45 Senate Republicans have already decided they think the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, so why bother dragging this out?
Trump’s team continues to argue that the Senate cannot impeach a former President. However, a top Republican lawyer has disagreed publicly. From the NYT: “Breaking With G.O.P., Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial. Charles J. Cooper, a stalwart of the conservative legal establishment, said that Republicans were wrong to assert that it is unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for impeachable offenses.”
Many legal scholars disagree, and the Senate has previously held an impeachment trial of a former official — though never a former president. But 45 Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader who is said to believe that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses, voted last month to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional on those grounds.
Mr. Cooper said they were misreading the Constitution.
“The provision cuts against their interpretation,” he wrote. He argued that because the Constitution allows the Senate to bar officials convicted of impeachable offenses from holding public office again in the future, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”
Mr. Cooper’s decision to take on the argument was particularly significant because of his standing in conservative legal circles. He was a close confidant and adviser to Senate Republicans, like Ted Cruz of Texas when he ran for president, and represented House Republicans — including the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California — in a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also the lawyer for conservative stalwarts like John R. Bolton and Jeff Sessions, and over his career defended California’s same-sex marriage ban and had been a top outside lawyer for the National Rifle Association.
At this point I do not care who agrees that he can be impeached I just want to see his ass in place where he can never run for public office again. I’d also rather hear from the staffers who saw what he was saying and doing at the time. I never what to see his fat freaky face on TV again nor do I want to hear his icky voice.
The WSJ is reporting that Senate leaders are reaching an agreement on what the next schedule in the Trial will look like.
On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that in that speech Mr. Trump only used the word “fight” a “little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense,” and noted that he urged supporters to march peacefully and made no explicit mention of rioting. The lawyers said the president was exercising his rights under the First Amendment.
They also argued that news reports that law-enforcement officials had missed warnings about an attack on the Capitol indicated the riot had been planned in advance and “therefore had nothing to do with the president’s speech.”
The Senate trial begins on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are closing in on an agreement for a resolution that would outline the rules and schedule for the trial, according to the person familiar with the talks.
I can at least report that purging Trumpist policy is still on the Biden/Harris team platter. Chait has never been a favorite of mine but here is a bit of analysis that at least provides some hope.
Chait writes this about the ongoing deficit size fixation Obama inherited compared to Biden who inherits a new situation following Trump. I still personally expect the republicans to suddenly get deficit size religion again but here’s is argument.
The rise of Donald Trump is the largest single cause of the transformation. It was obvious to some of us all along that Republican claims to have a passionate concern for fiscal probity were insincere. Trump has made it impossible to ignore. The beliefs that sincerely animated reporters and officials in Washington during the Obama era — that the Tea Party was a reaction to debt levels, that Republican leaders were willing or able to deal with Obama — were turned into a running joke by a Republican president who won the nomination in part because he never fooled himself into believing any of these things. Trump’s ability to blow out the budget deficit and wantonly pick winners and losers without any shame or meaningful Republican blowback destroyed the whole premise.
Democrats in Congress also learned an important lesson from the Obama era. Many moderate Democrats shared a belief with the mainstream media that bipartisanship was both possible and necessary. Democrats in Congress squandered much of their time pursuing fruitless negotiations with Republicans, chasing a deal they were sure lay just around the corner. Only in retrospect did they realize that Republicans were stringing them along to allow opposition to build while they ran out the clock.
One of the biggest obstacles Obama faced in 2009 was the excessive confidence of his putative congressional allies that they could strike an agreement with Republicans. Biden’s congressional allies have fewer illusions about the incentives of their Republican counterparts.
Economic thinking itself has changed in important ways over the last decade. Economists previously feared that the federal government floating trillions of dollars in additional debt would cause interest rates to rise. (Indeed, this seems like a straightforward application of supply and demand.) Instead, interest rates have failed to budge, eliminating the austerity pressure that exerted such a powerful impact in the 1980s and 1990s.
This is the center piece of my House float. It’s a painting by a friend Rex. She does some nice work. All the people will have surgical masks and the assorted critters will have Mardi Gras masks. You have heard of the Mardi Gras Penguin? Right? Just have to get them all up.
I can say that the entire deficit fixation was more of a political fixation than economic thinking. Most main stream economists have know for some time that a deficit has a place in the policy box and that it’s necessary to run them up in desperate times. What the deficit chicken hawks showed was that even in good times deficits can be run up as long as it’s the name of tax cuts to businesses in the wealthy. This is anathema to any serious student of economics. But then, the proved what we though all along. Deficits are fine with they comport with Republican values like unnecessary. They’re just not to help regular Americans. That’s Roosevelt socialism!
Anyway, I’m off to grade and praying that my little laptop survives Dinah’s leap into my coffee cup disaster.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: February 6, 2021 Filed under: just because 14 Comments
Zelda Fitzgerald, author of Save Me the Waltz
Good Morning!!
It looks like some of us will be getting another stimulus check. Biden and Congressional Democrats aren’t fooling around. They are determined to inject some money into the economy, whether the Republicans like it or not. Also unhappy about it: Larry Summers, who has been wrong again and again, but still thinks he knows best and the usual “savvy” journalists.
The New York Times: House gives final approval to budget plan including Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus, fast tracking the process.
The House gave final approval on Friday to a budget blueprint that included President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, advancing it over unanimous Republican opposition as Democrats pressed forward with plans to begin drafting the aid package next week and speed it through the House by the end of the month.
“Our work to crush the coronavirus and deliver relief to the American people is urgent and of the highest priority,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats shortly before the bill passed by a 219-to-209 margin.
President Biden, speaking just before the House acted, cited a weak jobs report in justifying the use of a procedural device, called reconciliation, to ram through the measure if Senate Republicans oppose his effort to speed aid to families, businesses, health care providers and local governments.
“It is very clear our economy is still in trouble,” Mr. Biden said during remarks at the White House — amping up the pressure on an upper chamber bracing for former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial next week.
“I know some in Congress think we’ve already done enough to deal with the crisis in the country,” added Mr. Biden, who reiterated his commitment to fund $1,400 direct checks to low- and middle-income Americans. “That’s not what I see. I see enormous pain in this country. A lot of folks out of work. A lot of folks going hungry.” [….]
Hours earlier, as the sun rose over the Capitol dome, the Senate approved a fast-track budget measure, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting her first-ever tiebreaking vote after a grinding all-night session. The move, in theory, allows them to enact the package without any Republican votes.
Senate leaders could begin working on their own bill in hopes of delivering a final package to Mr. Biden’s desk before supplemental unemployment benefits are set to expire in mid-March.
Shirley Jackson, author of The Haunting of Hill House
But of course there are nay-sayers. Ryan Cooper at The Week: Savvy Washington insiders strike again.
Here’s the story. Late on Thursday, Summers published a ponderous op-ed in The Washington Post fretting that maybe the COVID relief package is too big. It might contain so much spending that it will push the economy above its potential full capacity, causing inflation and financial instability, he worried. Then the jokers at Politico’s Playbook newsletter (your best source for ill-disguised advertorials and tips on hiding political bribes) repeated his argument. Many “liberal wonks have been whispering about” Summers’ argument “for weeks,” worrying the package “could harm the economy next year, when Democrats will be defending narrow congressional majorities in the midterms,” they write. Politico claimed on Twitter that it was being circulated in the White House as well….
Let me first talk about the merits of the argument, because they shed light on the motivations here. In brief, these worries about “overshooting” the stimulus are completely ridiculous. Jobs data released Friday show the economy is basically stalled out — with unemployment at 6.3 percent, and the fraction of prime-age workers who are employed four points below where it was before the pandemic (just barely above the bottom of the Great Recession), the U.S. is something like 10 million jobs in the hole.
Moreover, as economist Paul Krugman points out, the pandemic relief package is mostly not stimulus per se — it is more aimed at keeping the economy on ice until everyone can be vaccinated. The boost to unemployment insurance and aid to state and local governments, for instance, will partly go unspent if we hit full employment rapidly. Indeed, we may need another round of real stimulus once the vaccines are out. And even if we were somehow to hit full capacity and inflation starts to spike, the Federal Reserve can easily raise interest rates to compensate — a fact Summers bizarrely skates over by limply suggesting they might not for some reason.
Head over to The Week to read the rest.
But how interested are White House insiders in what Summers thinks? Kara Voght at Mother Jones: The White House Doesn’t Want To Hear From Larry Summers.
Economist Larry Summers has been the kingpin of every economic calamity Democrats have weathered over the last three decades. But Barack Obama’s National Economic Council chair during the Great Recession finds himself as persona non grata this week after penning an op-ed undermining the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package President Joe Biden is trying to push through Congress.
Summers’ treatise spread from wonk to wonk in the White House with the contagion of a venereal disease—and was about as well-received. One aide characterized the response as “widespread disagreement.” White House economists had already been booked for media hits to discuss the January jobs report, airtime that permitted many administration voices to rebuke Summers in unison. “The president and the administration have a lot of respect for Professor Summers, but we disagree here,” Bharat Ramamurti, a deputy NEC director, told CBS Radio. Jared Bernstein, a progressive labor economist and member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors who served alongside Summers in the Obama administration, was less polite. “I think he’s wrong,” Bernstein told CNN on Friday morning. “I think he’s wrong in a pretty profound way.”
Daphne Du Maurier, author of Rebecca
Summers’ piece suggested that the proposed $1.9 trillion was far more than the economy required, pointing to a recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that suggested the amount is three times larger than the hole it needs to fill. But he also argued against it on political grounds: Passing such a massive relief bill would test the political tolerance for the jobs and infrastructure package Biden has promised to follow, even though poll after poll has shown broad bipartisan support among voters for Biden’s first proposal. Summers called that pending plan the “nation’s highest priority” as he raised concerns about the federal deficit—a factor Democrats have mostly purged from consideration in moments of economic crisis.
Summers also took jabs from Senate Democrats, who have almost uniformly backed the size of the White House’s proposal. During a meeting of Senate chiefs of staff on Friday morning, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) thanked everyone for maintaining the party line, acknowledging that some of their bosses believed the package was either too much or not enough, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “And then there’s Larry Summers,” the aide said, “who can’t decide if we’re doing too much or not enough—but knows that, whatever we’re doing, is wrong.”
Yesterday, Biden announced that Trump won’t be getting the top secret intelligence briefings that most former presidents receive. The New York Times: Biden Bars Trump From Receiving Intelligence Briefings, Citing ‘Erratic Behavior.’
President Biden said on Friday that he would bar his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, from receiving intelligence briefings traditionally given to former presidents, saying that Mr. Trump could not be trusted because of his “erratic behavior” even before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The move was the first time that a former president had been cut out of the briefings, which are provided partly as a courtesy and partly for the moments when a sitting president reaches out for advice. Currently, the briefings are offered on a regular basis to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Mr. Biden, speaking to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, said Mr. Trump’s behavior worried him “unrelated to the insurrection” that gave rise to the second impeachment of Mr. Trump.
“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Mr. Biden said.
“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?” Mr. Biden added. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Angela Carter, author of The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus
Trump’s second impeachment trial is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, but we still don’t know much about how it will be conducted. Here’s an explainer from the Associated Press, but as far as I can tell we still don’t know what the rules will be or whether there will be witnesses. It does seem clear that Democratic impeachment managers will introduce highly emotional descriptions of the events of January 6 and their effects on members of Congress. Also from the AP: Trump impeachment trial confronts memories of Capitol siege.
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump is more than an effort to convict the former president of inciting an insurrection. It’s a chance for a public accounting and remembrance of the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol in 200 years.
In the month since the Jan. 6 siege by a pro-Trump mob, encouraged by his call to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, defenders of the former president say it’s time to move on.
Trump is long gone, ensconced at his Mar-a-Lago club, and Democrat Joe Biden is the new president in the White House. With the trial set to begin Tuesday, and a supermajority of senators unlikely to convict him on the single charge, the question arises: Why bother?
Yet for many lawmakers who were witnesses, onlookers and survivors of that bloody day, it’s not over.
One by one, lawmakers have begun sharing personal accounts of their experiences of that harrowing afternoon. Some were in the Capitol fleeing for safety, while others watched in disbelief from adjacent offices. They tell of hiding behind doors, arming themselves with office supplies and fearing for their lives as the rioters stalked the halls, pursued political leaders and trashed the domed icon of democracy.
“I never imagined what was coming,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., recounted in a speech on the House floor.
Memory is a powerful tool, and their remembrances, alongside the impeachment proceedings, will preserve a public record of the attack for the Congressional Record. Five people died and more than 100 people have been arrested in a nationwide FBI roundup of alleged ringleaders and participants, a dragnet unlike many in recent times. While that is sufficient for some, assured the perpetrators will be brought to justice, others say the trial will force Congress, and the country, to consider accountability.
Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train
One more powerful read before I wrap this up. Yesterday at The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg wrote about Q-Anon and the continued demonization of Hillary Clinton: QAnon Believers Are Obsessed With Hillary Clinton. She Has Thoughts.
A clear indication that Marjorie Taylor Greene was more than a dabbler in QAnon was her 2018 endorsement of “Frazzledrip,” one of the most grotesque tendrils of the movement’s mythology. You “have to go down a number of rabbit holes to get that far,” said Mike Rothschild, whose book about QAnon, “The Storm Is Upon Us,” comes out later this year.
The lurid fantasy of Frazzledrip refers to an imaginary video said to show Hillary Clinton and her former aide, Huma Abedin, assaulting and disfiguring a young girl, and drinking her blood. It holds that several cops saw the video, and Clinton had them killed….
Contemplating Frazzledrip, it occurred to me that QAnon is the obscene apotheosis of three decades of Clinton demonization. It’s other things as well, including a repurposed version of the old anti-Semitic blood libel, which accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their rituals, and a cult lusting for mass public executions. According to the F.B.I., it’s a domestic terror threat.
But QAnon is also the terminal stage of the national derangement over Clinton that began as soon as she entered public life. “It’s my belief that QAnon really took off because it was based on Hillary Clinton,” said Rothschild. “It was based specifically on something that a lot of 4chan dwellers wanted to see happen, which was Hillary Clinton arrested and sort of dragged away in chains.”
I was curious what Clinton thinks about all this, and it turns out she’s been thinking about it a lot. “For me, it does go back to my earliest days in national politics, when it became clear to me that there was a bit of a market in trafficking in the most outlandish accusations and wild stories concerning me, my family, people that we knew, people close to us,” she told me….
For Clinton, these supernatural smears are part of an old story. “This is rooted in ancient scapegoating of women, of doing everything to undermine women in the public arena, women with their own voices, women who speak up against power and the patriarchy,” she said. “This is a Salem Witch Trials line of argument against independent, outspoken, pushy women. And it began to metastasize around me.” In this sense, Frazzledrip is just a particularly disgusting version of misogynist hatred she’s always contended with.
Read the whole story at the NYT link.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
Friday Reads: Many Americas, Two Realities
Posted: February 5, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Reality Based Politics 12 Comments
Picasso, Jacqueline with flowers, 1954
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Have you seen a list of headlines in the news lately and realized there are not two Americas, there are really lots of Americas but there do seem to be two sets of realities?
You can read about the struggling economy and lackluster jobs reports, or how the Biden Administration pushed through a budget bill including a Covid-19 rescue plan with the deciding vote caste by Kamala Harris, and just anything that seems regular goings on in a developed nation. That’s a total relief because if your an Indigenous American struggling to survive on a Reservation, or a Farmer in a hard hit middle of the country state, or any number of flavors of people struggling in big cities you can certainly breathe a sigh of relief to see things working in your direction.
You’re also seeing some clean up in aisle Congress and hoping some of this remaining Trump detritus goes away or at least has limited impact on those of us living in the reality of science and the warts of our democracy. This is certainly good news: House votes to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments.
1914 Man Balcony by Albert Gleizes
Or, you can continue down the rabbit hole and read what Trumpism has left us. It’s not going away. It’s festering and leaving us a group of people with a severe disconnect from the rest of us.
Here’s an interview I read this morning in Politico with an ex Trump National Security person who is also an evangelical Christian on what she sees as the growing radicalization of White Nationalist Evangelical Extremists. It’s a jolt to read this as you realize that the Q cult is spreading like wildfire in many churches. “It’s Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism. There’s a “strong authoritarian streak” that runs through parts of American evangelicalism, warns Elizabeth Neumann. What should be done about it? “
In March, even before the shutdowns, I had my staff look at the research we use for developing behavioral indicators of individuals who might mobilize to violence. If we go down this path of having to all stay home, does that increase stress factors? Does it increase risk factors known to be common in people who carry out attacks? The answer was yes.
You started hearing the anti-government conspiracies — which was totally predictable. Anybody who has spent any time in Republican or libertarian politics knows you’re going to have people unhappy about the government. That’s fine; you can predict that. The question then is that if you know that’s going to be a challenge, what can the government do to help individuals understand why it is issuing stay-at-home orders, why it’s necessary, why it’s legal and constitutional? If the government had done a better job at that, we would have seen slightly less anger, slightly less of that victim-persecution complex.
With the pandemic, you had what was perceived to be government overreach; you had social isolation, which is a known risk factor [for extremism]; you had some people with a lot more time on their hands because they were not commuting, not taking kids to ballgames and not going to happy hour after work; you had economic stress — another known risk factor — as people lost jobs or moved to part-time status; you had people who lost loved ones. There was this great sense that people had lost control; our lives as we knew them had been upended.
People who had a strong, healthy sense of self or community were able to mitigate their isolation. But for individuals already on the cusp, this made them vulnerable. We use that word, “vulnerable,” to describe people who are not necessarily radicalized yet, but have factors in their lives that make it easier for them to move on a pathway towards extreme radicalized thought — and then, for a smaller subset, mobilizes them to violence.
That’s what we saw in 2020. We saw any number of people spending more time online looking for answers. You had increases in militia movements. The Moonshot CVE Group, which studies radicalization, said that in states with stay-at-home orders that lasted 10 days or longer, [online] searches for white-supremacist content increased by 21 percent. In states where there either weren’t stay-at-home orders or they lasted nine days or fewer, that increase was only 1 percent. We weren’t sure how it was going to happen, but we predicted that we would see violence in some form or fashion. The militia that attempted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — that was horrible, but not really shocking. The violence at protests? Not surprising. And the fact that you had white-supremacist groups using the protests to commit accelerationist violence was also not surprising — even though the president thought it was Antifa. We knew we were going to see more radicalization and violence.
That’s a fairly scary number of people believing something totally off-the-wall and easily disprovable. It seriously is improvisational reality building as labelled in this NPR interview with Travis View.
The evolving movement has embraced new conspiracies, including that Trump will be sworn into office for a second presidential term on March 4.
View has posted screenshots showing exchanges between QAnon supporters as they discuss their delusional beliefs.
“They come to their conclusion first,” View says. “They decide what makes them feel best and then they construct conspiracy theories that help them convince themselves why that’s true.”
“It’s really kind of like an improvisational reality building,” he continues. “They don’t look to the outside world to try and figure out what is true and what is not, and as a consequence, sometimes have to face harsh truths such as the electoral victory of Joe Biden.
Last year, QAnon spread into the mainstream. As president, Trump repeatedly retweeted accounts tied to QAnon. Newly elected Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have spoken openly in support of QAnon.
John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1926.
Meanwhile, Trump and his Death Cult are planning to punish any Republicans who dared to question the reality he’s built for himself. Part of it’s playing out in Congress like this article describing the plans for Nebraska’s Senator: “Sen. Ben Sasse slams Nebraska GOP committee’s plans to censure him for criticizing Trump “. This week, they failed to remove Liz Cheney from leadership in the House. Her constituents are going to have the last say though. Here’s a WAPO headline “Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump prompts a voter rebellion in her home state”.
A star of the Republican Party widely seen as a potential future House speaker, Cheney has suddenly emerged as a vivid example of something completely different — a traditional Republican who may no longer have a home in a party dominated by Trump and the far right.
No matter that she voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, or that she occupies the lone Wyoming congressional seat that her father, the former vice president, held for 10 years. Few voters care that as the third-ranking Republican in the House she is well positioned to bring home federal spending.
In this city in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, her reputation has boiled down to a simple question: whether she is for Trump or against Trump. And, as far as many people here are concerned, with her Jan. 13 impeachment vote, Cheney staked her claim.
What is even more frightening is this headline from The Business Insider: “Trump is plotting a campaign revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after Senate impeachment trial.”
Donald Trump is plotting a comeback revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after his Senate impeachment trial. Trump is talking with aides about a road trip to campaign against Republicans who supported his removal.
We may only have to hear about these things but I truly fear that the targets will need lifelong secret service protection should the events happen.
This is from Raw Story.
The former president is planning a nationwide speaking tour intended to target the 10 Republicans who backed his impeachment and any GOP senators who speak out against him at next week’s trial, reported Insider.
“I’m sure he wants to get out a roulette wheel with all their faces on it,” said one Republican who speaks to Trump.
However, the former president is waiting until the trial ends and seems to understand Americans needed a break from his antics.
“Even he recognizes that we have Trump fatigue,” said the Republican source. “Even he knows that you can get overexposed, and he wore the electorate out, and that was part of the problem. He clearly wore the country out with his behavior between the election and the inauguration.”
John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1944
Is that the understatement of the year or what?
This article from Salon shows that crazy comes in at all income levels. “How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot. Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt ” Igor Derysh is the author.
While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers’ recent strategic investments in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege.
“The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution,” Bannon told The New Yorker in 2017. “Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs.” Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently. Rebekah Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the “chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that’s what it is.”
Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people and injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting of electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting to the results to back Trump’s “big lie” that the election was somehow stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5 million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the results. Brooks was later named by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said he has “no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is.”
Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers’ millions while working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group that received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of thousands of followers, according to CNBC.
So, that should give the FBI something to chew on for awhile.
Interior artwork from DC Universe Halloween Special 2009 vol. 1, Oct 2009 Art by Ibraim Roberson, pencils and inks, and Giovani Kososki, color
Abraham Lincoln has a lot of quotable phrases but the one that always sticks with me. The powerful warning was given in his House Divided speech and is a turn of phrase in several of the gospels.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
The quote seems appropriate at this time but in a quite abstracted way. The abhorrent institution of slavery and the so-called “southern way of life” stood as the rebel cause then. It was not complete devoid of reality. It was just completely devoid of morality even though it stood firmly on a Bible pointing out all the folks that had slaves back then.
This moment seems like a product of much of the same with the twist of there now being a lot more interactive visuals and playthings for Death Cults with apocalyptical visions. How do you connect reality with bizzaro world?
So, anyway, we can at least breathe when we watch the regular news or catch a glimpse of the headlines for the most part. We have a break. But, we and the FBI and the National Security Department need to be vigilant because it seems we’re going to have an insurgency and eventually, it really will start getting very ugly on Main Streets everywhere.
And with that spirit I leave you with this WAPO Op Ed by Eugene Robinson.
At the state level, the Republican Party is, if anything, even less tethered to reality. The Arizona state GOP actually censured former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late senator John McCain, for failing to blindly support Trump. A few Republican governors, such as Jim Justice of West Virginia, are doing well in the vaccination phase of the pandemic. Others, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, continue to put politics over public health.
Trump led the GOP’s base deep into the wilderness. Republican leadership in Washington lacks the skills and the guts to lead the party back to reality — and back to constructive participation in addressing the massive challenges we face. Don’t blame “both sides” for ruining the elegant, strategic, productive political competition we’d like to see. One party is trying to move the chess pieces. The other is trying to eat them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Democrats and The Greene Party
Posted: February 4, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Biden stimulus plan, Joe Biden, Kevin McCarthy, Liz Cheney, Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon 14 Comments
z;o Vittorio Matteo Corcos, Dreams / Sogni, 1896
Good Afternoon!!
I’ve never been a Joe Biden fan. Early on in the 2020 primaries, I even thought I might refuse to vote for him if he were the Democratic nominee. But as time went on, he grew on me. Now I think he probably is exactly what we needed. He’s a “normal” Democratic politician, he’s extremely knowledgeable and experienced in the ways of the Senate, and he comes across as a decent person. He’s the perfect antidote to Trump’s psychotic behavior, ignorance, and incompetence. And it turns out that most Americans support what Biden is doing as president.
AP: AP-NORC Poll: Americans open to Biden’s approach to crises.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks into a new administration, a majority of Americans say they have at least some confidence in President Joe Biden and his ability to manage the myriad crises facing the nation, including the raging coronavirus pandemic.
Overall, 61% approve of Biden’s handling of his job in his first days in office, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Though the bulk of Biden’s support is from fellow Democrats, about a quarter of Republicans say they approve of his early days in office.
Even at a moment of deep national divisions, those numbers suggest Biden, as with most of his recent predecessors, may enjoy something of a honeymoon period. Nearly all modern presidents have had approval ratings averaging 55% or higher over their first three months in office, according to Gallup polling. There was one exception: Donald Trump, whose approval rating never surpassed 50% in Gallup polls, even at the start of his presidency.
The Travelling Companions by Augustus Egg
Obviously Biden faces serious challenges, but so far the public as a whole is supportive.
Biden’s standing with the public will quickly face significant tests. He inherited from Trump a pandemic spiraling out of control, a sluggish rollout of crucial vaccines, deep economic uncertainty and the jarring fallout of the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. It’s a historic confluence of crises that historians have compared to what faced Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War or Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the depths of the Great Depression.
Biden’s advisers know that the new president will be quickly judged by Americans on his handling of the pandemic, which has killed more than 450,000 people in the U.S. He’s urgently pressing Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion relief package that would include funds for vaccine distribution, school reopening and state and local governments buckling under the strain of the pandemic.
“We have to go big, not small,” Biden told House Democrats on Tuesday. He’s signaled that he’s open to trimming his $1.9 trillion proposal but not as far as some Republicans are hoping. A group of GOP senators has put forward their own $618 billion package.
Lady on a Sofa, Harold Gilman, c 1910
At Axios, Mike Allen explains why Biden’s stimulus plan is probably going to get through Congress one way or another: Biden’s grand plan
President Biden toldRepublican senators he has “an open door and an open mind” on his $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan. But he already has the votes, and overwhelming support in the country.
Why it matters: Well, power matters. And Biden holds all of it.
Get used to this. Democrats are gleeful as they watch the media fixate on family feuds inside the GOP, while Biden pushes out executive orders and pushes through this bill on his terms.
- Biden embraces the reality that the two numbers that matter most to his presidency are coronavirus cases falling and economic growth rising.
Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president and longtime Biden confidant, was in the Oval this week for meetings with Republican and Democratic senators, and told me that the president “reaffirmed and deepened his explanation and commitment on the numbers and the substance” of the full package.
- Ricchetti said Biden made it clear that he welcomes “fine-tuning or amendments or recommendations,” but “underscored that he’s committed to his plan and to the elements he outlined” — and to moving quickly.
What we’re watching: Ricchetti said the president wants to have “a bipartisan and unifying dialogue in the country,” including conversations he’s already had with mayors and local elected officials, “so that this isn’t just about a dialogue with senators and members of Congress. It is a dialogue with the country.”
- Ricchetti said Biden treated a GOP counterproposal “with an open mind and with respect. He was also honest … in underscoring why he proposed what he did — that he was committed to every one of the elements in his package.”
The bottom line: Democrats will dismiss any whining about Biden’s stimulus as D.C. noise or Republican hypocrisy. They’ll be right on both fronts.
The Railway, Edouard Manet, 1873
Meanwhile, Republicans are mired in a conflict over Q Anon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Gree Kevin McCarthy has to be the most pathetic GOP leader ever–even worse than Paul Ryan or John Boehner. Yesterday, Republicans met to discuss the futures of Greene, a complete crackpot, and Liz Cheney, a relatively normal mainstream Republican who had the guts to vote for Trump’s impeachment. Both women have survived so far.
CBS News: Liz Cheney survives vote to remove her from GOP leadership.
House Republicans voted by a large margin Wednesday to allow Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney to stay on as the GOP conference chairwoman following an hours-long meeting where members aired their grievances over her vote to impeach former President Trump last month. Just 61 Republicans voted to remove Cheney from her post, while 145 voted for her to stay in a vote by secret ballot.
The vote came after Cheney told her Republican colleagues she would not apologize for her decision, according to a source familiar with the meeting. She later praised the result as a “terrific vote.”
“We’re not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership,” she said after the meeting. “It was very resounding acknowledgment that we need to go forward together and then we need to go forward in a way that helps us beat back the really dangerous and negative Democrat policies.”
歌川国芳 by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Greene’s situation is still somewhat up in the air, but she got a standing ovation after apologizing the her colleagues in a private meeting. From The New York Times: The G.O.P. Walks a Tightrope.
The extremist wing of the Republican Party has lived to fight another day. But G.O.P. leaders are in knots trying to prove that the party’s factions can all live in harmony.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, refused to strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee appointments yesterday, instead issuing a long statement that condemned her history of making extreme and violent statements but also threw a jab back at Democrats, accusing them of a “partisan power grab.”
But at a closed-door meeting yesterday, the party’s House delegation also voted overwhelmingly to keep Representative Liz Cheney — an anti-Trump, establishment figure who has drawn fire from the party’s right wing — in her spot as the No. 3 Republican in the chamber.
At the meeting, many House Republicans expressed dismay with Cheney for her vote to impeach Trump and her condemnation of his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Members of the far-right Freedom Caucus accused Cheney of “aiding the enemy” when she joined just nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump, according to people familiar with the discussion. But ultimately she held on to her leadership role easily.
McCarthy’s unwillingness to strip Greene of her appointments, as Democrats and many Republicans have called on him to do, indicates that the G.O.P. plans to address the division in its ranks through messaging more than disciplinary action, at least for now.
In his statement, McCarthy used strong and direct language to reject the conspiracy-minded views promulgated by Greene, but he effectively defended her right to have held them.
“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” McCarthy said. “I condemn those comments unequivocally.”
He said that he had met with her privately and explained “that as a member of Congress,” she would be held “to a higher standard than how she presented herself as a private citizen.”
Just a Couple of Girls by Harry Wilson Watrous, 1915
At Axios, Margaret Talev reports: Exclusive poll: Republicans favor Greene over Cheney.
Conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far more popular than Rep. Liz Cheney among Americans who align with the Republican Party, according to a new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: As the House GOP caucus is being torn over calls to yank Cheney from congressional leadership for backing Donald Trump’s second impeachment, and strip Greene from committee assignments for her baseless conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, these findings show how strongly Trumpism continues to define most Republicans.
- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is much more popular with Republicans than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the survey finds.
By the numbers: McCarthy enjoys the highest favorable versus unfavorable ratings (net favorability) of the four among Republicans, at 38%-16% (+22); followed by Greene, at 28%-18% (+10); McConnell, at 31%-46% (-15); and Cheney, at 14%-42% (-28).
- Greene is the least well known of the four, with 51% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying they don’t know enough to say whether their impression is favorable or not. Respondents have the most fully formed views of McConnell.
- Republican respondents are three times as likely to say their views align with Greene than with Cheney, but nearly one-third say they don’t align with either, and half say they don’t know enough to say.
- Republican respondents who voted for Trump in November gave McCarthy a high net favorable rating (+31) and McConnell a high net unfavorable rating (-18).
The intrigue: People who identify with Greene are disproportionately likely to have lost faith in democracy or believe despite evidence that voter fraud is rampant in their state.
How scary is that?
Democrats are moving forward on a plan to take away Greene’s committee assignments. CNN: House to vote on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments.
The House will vote Thursday on a measure to remove Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, a decisive step that comes in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements from the congresswoman that have triggered widespread backlash from Democrats and divided congressional Republicans.
House Democrats, who control the chamber, set up the vote after first attempting to pressure Republicans to strip the Georgia Republican of committee assignments on their own. House Republicans have not taken that action, however, and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday released a statement calling the push by Democrats to take away the congresswoman’s committee assignments a “partisan power grab.”
The measure the House will take up calls for Greene to be removed from the House Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee “in light of conduct she has exhibited.”
The move could set a risky precedent as Democrats target a sitting member of the opposing party in Congress over views expressed prior to her serving as an elected official — one that has the potential to someday be used against the party by Republicans.
Interesting stories to check out today:
Young Woman Reading an Illustrated Journal, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, c. 1880
Slate: How Georgia Newspapers Are Covering Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Atlantic: What QAnon Has in Common With the Birchers: Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted extremism. Now they’re not even trying.
Just Security: Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda. Scholars on the Nazis and anti-Semitism have seen this before.
Norm Eisen and Katherine Reisner at USA Today: Whatever legal or constitutional test you apply, Trump incited the violent Capitol attack.
The Washington Post: Mitt Romney unveils plan to provide $3,000 per child, giving bipartisan support to President Biden’s effort.
Slate: Biden Ousts All 10 of Trump’s Union Busters From Powerful Labor Panel.
NBC News: Biden administration weighs plan to directly send masks to all Americans.
Moe Tkacik at Slate: The Lousy Tippers of the Trump Administration. They were exhausting, impossible, stingy, and cruel, just like at their day jobs.
It has been quiet around here lately. I know I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, and I’m probably not alone. I’m realizing that Trump culture isn’t going to just magically go away. But I do hope you’ll check in and leave a comment or link when you can. We miss you when we don’t hear from you!
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments