Fare Thee Well, by Elisheva Nesis
Democrats, meanwhile, are devising their own ways to get around the blockade, and are hoping the GOP frustration they see will push Republicans to support their idea.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: November 4, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, cat art, Cats, caturday, just because, LGBTQIA+ | Tags: Brian Karam, conversion therapy, House Speaker Mike Johnson, israel, Mark Meadows, Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project, Michael T. James, Mike Johnson's adopted son, military promotions, people accused of witchcraft, Tommy Tuberville, Ukraine 4 Comments
By Daniel Ryan
Happy Caturday!!
It’s the weekend, and I don’t feel like getting down in the weeds about all the bad stuff that’s happening; so I’m going to share a mixed bag of recent stories that caught my fancy. Since it’s Caturday, I’m going to begin with a story about cats.
Margaret Osborne at Smithsonian Magazine: Cats Make Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions.
…[R]esearchers have discovered that cats use nearly 300 distinct facial expressions to communicate with one another, according to a study published in October in the journal Behavioral Processes.
“Many people still consider cats—erroneously—to be a largely nonsocial species,” Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Lincoln who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Christa Lesté-Lasserre. “There is clearly a lot going on that we are not aware of.”
To collect data on these furry subjects, researcher Lauren Scott of the University of Kansas Medical Center frequented a cat cafe located in Los Angeles for about a year and recorded video footage of interactions between 53 cats. All were adult domestic shorthairs, and the group included males and females, per the study.
In total, Scott gathered 194 minutes of feline footage that contained 186 interactions. With the help of her co-author, evolutionary psychologist Brittany N. Florkiewicz of Lyon College, she analyzed the cats’ facial signals.
By Michael Bridges
The pair discovered 276 expressions made up of a combination of 26 facial movements, including shifts in ear position, blinks, nose licks and whisker and mouth movements. (In comparison, humans make about 44 facial movements, and dogs have 27.) Of all expressions, about 45 percent—or 126—were categorized as friendly, 37 percent were aggressive and 18 percent were ambiguous, writes Jennifer Nalewicki for Live Science.
“These findings show it is good to look at a cat’s ears, eyes and whiskers to understand if they are feeling friendly,” Florkiewicz tells Earth.com’sAndrei Ionescu. “Their mouth provides a lot of information about whether a cat fight is likely. People may think that cats’ facial expressions are all about warning other cats and people off, but this shows just how social and tolerant pet cats can actually be.”
The team also identified a “common play face” among cats, which was characterized by a dropped jaw and drawn back corners of the mouth, per Live Science. People, dogs and monkeys share similar expressions in playful scenarios.
There’s a bit more at the link.
NBC News published an interesting AP story from Massachusetts: Group seeks to clear names of all accused, convicted or executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts.
In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.
Nearly four centuries later, the state and region are still working to come to grips with the scope of its witch trial legacy.
The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.
The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group’s leader.
Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.
While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those caught up in witch trials throughout the 1600s have largely been ignored, including five women hanged for witchcraft in Boston between 1648 and 1688.
“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. “We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”
For now, the group has been collecting signatures for a petition but hopes to take their case to the Statehouse.Among those accused of witchcraft in Boston was Ann Hibbins, sister-in-law to Massachusetts Gov. Richard Bellingham, who was executed in 1656. A character based on Hibbins would later appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” published in 1850.
Another accused Boston witch, known as Goodwife Ann Glover or Goody Glover, was hanged in the city in 1688. A plaque dedicated to her is located on the front of a Catholic church in the city’s North End neighborhood, describing her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.” It’s one of the few physical reminders of the city’s witch trial history.
The group has also encouraged Connecticut to clear the names of accused witches in their state. Read more at the NBC News link.
Mark Meadows is in more trouble–his book publisher is suing him. The Daily Beast: Mark Meadows’ Publisher Sues Him for Millions Over Election Lies in Book.
The publisher of Mark Meadows’ book The Chief’s Chief has filed suit against the former White House chief of staff, seeking millions in damages after he reportedly copped to lying in the book about the 2020 election being “rigged” and “stolen.”
Meadows reportedly met repeatedly with Jack Smith’s team in its investigation into election interference and had admitted the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history—contradicting much of what he’d claimed in his book and allegedly breaking his agreement with the publisher.
“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff [sic] and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze,” the lawsuit from All Seasons Press states.
ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that Meadows negotiated an immunity agreement with the special counsel’s office and in the process admitted to his lies about the 2020 election. Meadows’ lawyer later disputed the accuracy of the report….
The lawsuit claims that Meadows agreed that “all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy,” and that he claimed to have “not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work.”
The book weighs heavily on Meadows’ claims that the election was “rigged” —debunked claims that All Seasons Press was happy to run at the time, but that now come under renewed scrutiny with Meadows’ reported admission that he propagated falsehoods.
More details at the link.
Some Senate Republicans have finally had it with Tommy Tuberville’s antics. Politico: Republicans, fed up with Tuberville, plot ways to bust his military blockade.
Republicans have had it with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s nine-month blockade of military promotions. And after publicly putting pressure on the Alabama Republican to lift his hold on hundreds of officers, GOP senators are plotting new ways to break the impasse.
During a special meeting planned for next week, some will ask Tuberville to focus his obstruction on only the Pentagon’s civilian nominees and not uniformed officers who have nothing to do with the policy he’s protesting. Others want to shift the fight to the courts to challenge the policy at the center of the hold, which reimburses troops who have to travel to obtain abortions and other reproductive services.
The deadlock reached a dramatic and very public phase when a cadre of GOP senators confronted Tuberville on the Senate floor Wednesday night, blaming the Alabama lawmaker’s blanket hold for weakening the military at a precarious moment for the world.
The four-hour-plus event, which forced Tuberville to object to votes on 61 nominees, marked a pivotal moment for Republicans as their private frustrations with the freshman lawmaker spilled over onto live TV for all to see.
“I think what it says about where things are is Tommy’s losing support,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said of the Republican-on-Republican fight. “And you’re seeing the frustration build up because the consequences are building up.”
And while the attempt was doomed — those Republicans knew Tuberville wouldn’t budge — it’s also made some Senate Democrats optimistic that enough GOP members will join their push to confirm most of the promotions in one big bloc.
What an idiot. Alabama should be ashamed. Tuberville doesn’t even live there. He’s reportedly lived in Florida for decades.
Rolling Stone’s Cameron Joseph on Tuberville: Is Tommy Tuberville the Most Ignorant Man in D.C.?
Tommy Tuberville’s Republican colleagues had finally had it with him.
For months, the Alabama senator and former college football coach has blocked the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers because he’s mad about a Pentagon policy that ensures soldiers have abortion access.
The group of anti-abortion Republicans had worked with him since February to try to find a solution. They’d flattered his ego. They’d mostly defended him in public as his game of chicken stretched nine months, punishing hundreds of senior service members who have no say over the policy and hurting U.S. military readiness at a time of global chaos.
But on Wednesday, their patience had worn out.
Five of Tuberville’s GOP colleagues took to the Senate floor to lambast his positions, begging him to relent and forcing him to object over and over again to allow a vote on more than 60 nominations that he’s blocked. The senators read off the sterling biographies of dozens of service members with increasing frustration.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine reserves who served as assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, was particularly irate.
“Xi Jinping is watching this right now,” Sullivan, at times yelling, declared on the Senate floor as Tuberville looked on from his desk. “He’s loving this. So is Putin. They’re loving this! How dumb can we be, man?”
“We’re going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” Sullivan exclaimed later on during the hours-long standoff. He later mocked Tuberville’s repeated claim that his holds weren’t hurting the military’s preparedness: “That this is not impacting readiness is patently absurd.”
On Tuberville’s history:
Tuberville spent most of his career coaching football — most notably at Auburn University, which made him a household name in the state he now represents. He still prefers being called “coach” instead of by his current job title — his official Senate website calls him “Coach Tommy Tuberville.” But his old nickname from his sideline days may be more appropriate: “The Riverboat Gambler.”
Back then, Tuberville was known to ignore the odds and pick the most aggressive play. It’s a habit that’s stuck now that he’s in the Senate.
That policy that triggered Tuberville’s anger was put in place by the Biden administration after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion. Fifteen states, including Tuberville’s Alabama, have banned the procedure. Enlisted service members don’t get to choose where they and their families live — they’re stationed wherever they’re needed, many of them in ruby-red states where abortion access no longer exists and other reproductive care is severely limited. The Pentagon’s fix was to offer soldiers and their families time off and funds to travel to states where abortion remains legal.
Tuberville was irate when he found out about the workaround. His obstructionist response has hamstrung the Pentagon and forced officers who have nothing to do with the policy to serve as pawns in his policy fight….
There’s some irony that Tuberville, who frequently says he ran for office so he could give back to America in the same way his own father did with his years of military service, has almost single-handedly paralyzed the entire leadership of the U.S military — in a time of global conflagration, no less. (Tuberville reiterated that he won’t budge even after Hamas attacked Israel.)
In some ways, Tuberville is a mustache away from being the bizzarro Ted Lasso of the Senate — a folksy and affable former college football coach who makes a radical career change, then makes things up as he goes along while blithely ignoring the status quo. But instead of an aw-shucks success story, he’s a testament and a cautionary tale for those who wing it.
There’s still more at the link.
Speaking of idiots, a couple of stories on the new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Andrew Kaczynski at CNN: Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.
Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
Hug Needed, by Anita Zotkina
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
Sigh . . .
The New York Post got the goods on Johnson’s so-called “adopted son.”: Mike Johnson’s adopted son says he’s thankful to the House Speaker’s family after his troubled past is revealed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s adopted son has had a string of run-ins with law enforcement for crimes ranging from drug possession to theft since leaving the care of the Louisiana Republican congressman and his wife Kelly, records show, but he’s since turned his life around.
The Johnsons met Michael T. James, now 40, when he was a teenager while the couple were doing charity work for a Christian ministry in Baton Rouge, La., in 1996.
The newlyweds took the troubled then-14-year-old into their home and filed court papers to become his legal guardians in 1999 after James became homeless.
However, once the Johnsons moved from Baton Rouge to Mike’s hometown of Shreveport in 2002, James stayed behind and struck out on his own, as he was then legally an adult.
Since 2003, James has been arrested more than a dozen times, according to records reviewed by The Post.
Charges against him in Florida ranged from marijuana and cocaine possession, theft, possession of a concealed weapon, violating a protective order, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
On two occasions he was sentenced to prison time, serving 37 days on the cocaine possession rap in 2003 and a 30-day term in 2007 on a retail theft charge.
He was also ordered by a court to take an anger management class in 2017.
James is understood to have moved around to a number of places during this time period, at times living with his biological mother and older brother, moving to both Florida and Texas.
Additional court documents seen by The Post indicated James was indicted on a theft charge in 2003 while living in Houston.
One more read before I wrap this up. This is the best thing I read this week.
Brian Karam at Salon: Far-right MAGA theocrats: Most dangerous threat to America.
The world inches closer to a war that only psychopaths want to see.
On Tuesday the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza. In the White House briefing later that day, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “Has the White House considered the possibility that a terrorist could be in the country right now after crossing the southern border?”
Obviously they have, or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning. The question remains, however, what our government response would be to such an attack. That has already been discussed at the highest levels in our government, and the public has a right to know what that reaction would be.
So, although I wasn’t called on, as Kirby left the stage I interrupted to ask the only question I thought mattered: “John, wait a minute. Before you leave: If Hamas terrorists attack the U.S., would the U.S. put boots on the ground in the Middle East?”
Cat Messenger, by Elisheva Nesis
Kirby stopped his retreat from the stage, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre let him answer. Kirby was succinct: “I won’t speculate about that, Brian. We’ll obviously do what we have to do to protect our troops and our people.”
On that same day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer showed up at the White House with a bipartisan group — Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., Mike Rounds, R-S.D. and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. — to talk to President Biden and help steer a congressional response to the threat posed by SKYNET … sorry, I mean AI. It’s a bipartisan effort, but there are both Republicans and Democrats who remain opposed.
Bipartisanship, once seen as a laudable goal on many issues, is now sneered at by most remaining members of the Republican Party. Working with Democrats, for them, is like choosing death over a slice of cake. (Apologies to Eddie Izzard.)
Most Republicans are so dismayed at the prospect of working with Democrats that they want to scuttle efforts to fund the war in Ukraine, virtually isolating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who seems to be nearly alone on an island calling for aid to continue. It’s a rare display of common sense from the 81-year-old Kentuckian, whose primary focus is on political power.
“No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine,” McConnell said. “We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it’s wonderful that they’re defending themselves — and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They’ve done almost $90 billion, they’re housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.”
Few Democrats have said it any better, and it spelled out exactly what the stakes are for the U.S. in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Remember that Vlad “The Impaler” Putin has clearly suggested that he wants to get the old Soviet Union band back together — Ukraine is just the first stop in a quest for global hegemony.
Karam on Mike Johnson:
Fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that McConnell was “out of touch” with his party’s base while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley chided McConnell for siding with Democrats — and that was before Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas gave Hawley a tongue-lashing on border issues later that afternoon. It looks like Putin still has a few fans in the GOP.
In the House, those would likely include newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (and that still sounds like a Bart Simpson prank call to Moe’s Bar), who took on McConnell directly, pushing to unlink aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine.
While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — which seems to have swallowed the evangelical movement while also embracing it (a T-1000 morphing into Sarah Connor is just about the right image) — is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul.
I’m waiting for Mel Brooks to break out into song: “Let all those who wish to confess their evil ways and accept and embrace the true church convert now or forever burn in hell — for now begins the Inquisition!”
The House of Representatives, now run by Johnson, offers a discount version of the apocalyptic orgasm the holy rollers have dreamed of for years. They’ve renewed the Inquisition and seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it.
Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it. Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”? Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning.
I know I’ve quoted too much, but there’s still a lot more to read at the link.
That’s my contribution for today. Let me know what you think. And have a great weekend!!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: October 21, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, cat art, Cats, caturday, just because | Tags: Donald Trump, Douglas MacKinnon, Fox News, House speaker search, Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Saudi Arabia agreement, Jack Smith, Jim Jordan, Joe Biden, Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Stanley Woodward, Ukraine, Walt Nauta 3 Comments
Margaryta Yermolayeva, Cats of the Corn
Happy Caturday!!
It’s another rainy weekend in Boston, and I overslept because it was so dark. They were predicting a nor’easter. I don’t know if this qualifies, but it’s very dark and raining hard, with high winds expected later on. This feels like about the 20th rainy weekend in a row here.
Yesterday, House Republicans rejected Jim Jordan as Speaker after he lost more votes on a third ballot. Members then held a secret ballot to see if he should keep trying, and this time he got only 86 votes of the 217 he would need to be elected.
Politico: ‘It’s astonishing’: GOP ditches Jordan as speaker pick.
In a shocking turn, Jim Jordan on Friday lost an internal GOP vote that was intended to show confidence in him remaining as his party’s speaker designee.
The Ohio Republican is now no longer his party’s pick to lead the House, a demise sealed by a GOP secret ballot just after his third failed floor vote as a speaker hopeful.
It was an unexpectedly fast end to the Ohio conservative’s candidacy to lead the chaos-ridden Republican conference — and a sign that the flailing party is fed up on its 17th day without a speaker. Lawmakers now plan to leave Washington for the weekend as the next round of ambitious Republicans decide whether to mount their own speaker bids.
But most Republicans acknowledge that even with new faces to consider, they still have no clear path to uniting their splintered conference. They have already rejected two speaker candidates — Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise — as well as former Speaker Kevin McCarthy during this month alone.
McCarthy gave voice to a sentiment that’s growing within the GOP: The party’s inability to run the half of Congress that it narrowly won doesn’t bode well for its broader future.
“I’m concerned about where we go from here,” said McCarthy, who had been backing Jordan. “It’s astonishing to me, and we are in a very bad position as a party.”
Jordan’s loss of the speaker nod from his party came as something of a surprise, since he had sought the internal vote with allies preparing to cite it as a show of continued support for his candidacy. Instead, the secret ballot revealed that while Jordan’s public opposition never topped 25 votes, scores more House Republicans wanted to see him out of the race.
The next race to replace him is expected to get crowded, even as Congress faces no shortage of pressing business that it’s unable to conduct while the House stays shut. At the top of that list: a government shutdown deadline that’s less than a month away and a $100 million-plus emergency funding request from the Biden administration, encompassing aid to both Israel and Ukraine.
I don’t know why Politico didn’t expect this. It had become clear that semi-normal Republicans weren’t responding well to being bombarded with death threats by MAGA Jordan supporters.
From Clare Foran at CNN: House remains paralyzed with no end in sight for speakership battle after Jordan’s exit.
There is still no end in sight for the high-stakes speakership battle after House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two weeks ago.
The search is on for a new GOP speaker nominee after Rep. Jim Jordan on Friday became the latest exit from the race, and it’s already shaping up to be a crowded candidate field.
It will be our secret, by Margaryta Yermolayevay
Frustrations and divisions have only intensified within the conference as Republicans search for a way to resolve the impasse. That, along with the GOP’s narrow majority, has made it increasingly unclear whether any candidate will be able to secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor.
The House, meanwhile, remains in a state of paralysis as Republicans struggle to coalesce around a speaker candidate, with the chamber effectively frozen amid the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolding abroad.
House Republicans are expected to hold a candidate forum Monday evening and more candidates are likely to throw their names into the running before then….
Here are some of the candidates now vying to become the next GOP speaker nominee:
- Rep. Tom Emmer, who serves as majority whip, said in a letter to his colleagues shared on Saturday that he was seeking the speakership with the goal of delivering “historic change.”McCarthy is backing Emmer for speaker, sources tell CNN, delivering an early boost for his candidacy.
- Rep. Kevin Hern told CNN on Friday that “yes” he plans to run for speaker. When asked how he plans to get 217 votes, Hern said he’ll work “hard” to get people on his side.
- Rep. Jack Bergman is running for the speaker role, his spokesman told CNN.
- Rep. Austin Scott, who launched a last-minute bid against Jordan last week, but quickly dropped out and then supported Jordan, is now running for speaker again now that the field is wide open, his spokesperson told CNN.
- Rep. Byron Donalds, a Freedom Caucus member, announced on X that he’s seeking the speakership to advance a “conservative vision for the House of Representatives and the American people.”
- Rep. Mike Johnson, the House Republican conference vice chairman, also announced a run for speaker in a letter to his Republican colleagues Saturday, saying “after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”
Meanwhile, in the midst of this Republican chaos, the first thing I saw this morning–at the top of the Memeorandum news feed–was this opinion piece by a Republican named Douglas MacKinnon, who argues that both Biden and Harris should step down. LOL!
The Hill: Leading Democrats need to go to the White House to ask Biden and Harris to step aside.
Playtime is over. We have to put the toys away and have the adults in the room re-exert their authority.
It’s one thing when the issues of the day are identity politics; “green” energy; organized looting; cashless bail; Trump’s legal exposure; political corruption; or who’s really in charge of the border, when having a president and vice president in power who even countless Democrats no longer have faith in. It’s quite another when the world is teetering on the edge of massive violent conflict or outright nuclear war and that leadership looks demonstrably lost and feeble.
Beware of magic cats, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The barbaric attack by Hamas upon men, women and children in Israel, coupled with the war in Ukraine inching us ever closer to a nuclear conflict, should serve as stark reminders that real and resolute leadership does matter and is needed before it is too late.
Unfortunately, history reminds us that it is not uncommon for presidents — or vice presidents — to find themselves in untenable or overwhelming positions in which they can no longer cope or effectively govern. They often can’t see the proper course forward because they are either standing too close to the problem or are shielded from the negative fallout by overprotective aides or a partisan media.
Such a case came during the summer of 1974. It was becoming obvious to all that the Watergate break-in and the subsequent widespread coverup had politically and legally ensnared President Richard Nixon in a trap from which there was no viable escape.
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently nee
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently needed.
We all know the story, which is not at all analogous to anything happening with Biden/Harris. Who are these “adults” that MacKinnon refers to?
We need Biden — and Harris — to rise above that nonsense while turning the eyes of our nation toward the true threats that could destroy us. We need a president who is actually “presidential.”
We need a Thomas Jefferson, an Abraham Lincoln, a John F. Kennedy, or a Bill Clinton. This is not a partisan point. It is one about mutual survival….
I can’t find a Democrat I know who wants either one on the ticket for 2024. Be it for age reasons; cognitive-health concerns; potential Hunter Biden corruption issues; plain competency fears; or record-low polling numbers, a second act of Biden-Harris comes across as political kryptonite for many Democrats hoping to retain the White House in 2024….
That stated, where are the “adult in the room” Democratic powerbrokers willing to emulate the 1974 Republicans and travel down to the White House to tell Biden and Harris that they are “in over their heads” and that their “time has come and gone”?
MacKinnon would do better to ask where the Republican “adults” are.
This weird perception of Biden is so mysterious to me. He has just traveled all over the world and returned to give an oval office speech last night. He doesn’t seem tired or confused to me.
Variety: President Biden’s Oval Office Address Delivers 20.3 Million Total Viewers.
With viewing taking place across 10 networks, President Biden‘s Thursday night address from the oval office has reached a total audience of 20.326 million total viewers, according to Live+Same Day figures from Nielsen.
First trick or treat, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
Coverage of the 15-minute speech lasted from approximately 8 pm to 8:22 pm ET, varying by network with nearly 65% of the 20.3 million viewers tuning in to the president’s speech on broadcast networks, Nielsen reports. 35% of the audience watched on cable networks. People ages 55 and up make up the majority of the audience at 15.94 million and averaged an audience rating of 15.7. Notably, the adults 18-34 key demo made up only 4% of the Thursday night audience.
Biden addressed the nation on the U.S.’s response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, telling his constituents why it’s necessary to show continued support for America’s partners in Israel and Ukraine.
“The security package I’m asking congress to do is an unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen their qualitative military edge which we’ve committed to,” Biden said. “At the same time, President Netanyahu and I discussed the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat. The people of Gaza urgently need food, water, and medicine. Yesterday, in discussions with the leaders of Israel and Egypt, I secured an agreement for the first shipment of humanitarian assistance from the United Nations to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
“As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution,” the President said.
Stephen Collinson at CNN: The number one takeaway from Biden’s address.
President Joe Biden’s task, as he looked America in the eye from the Oval Office, was to explain why a nation wearied by its own foreign quagmires and political estrangements should send $100 billion to help other people fight their wars.
His answer was that Israel and Ukraine were fighting existential struggles and that their wars were not just their own but were critical to the security of each American watching his primetime speech on Thursday.
But the most profound takeaway from what was only his second Oval Office address was this: While Biden scheduled the appearance to discuss two nations fighting for their survival against outside attack, his real topic was America itself – and perceived threats to its foundational values in a volatile political age.
He implored his country to honor the global role that has cemented a stable world order since World War II and to reject the appeasement of terrorists and tyrants. And in remarks that foreshadowed a reelection bid that will help decide the character of America and its place in the world for years to come, he sought to inspire it to reject intolerance as bitter politics rage at home.
Biden delivered his speech hours after returning from Israel and meeting victims of the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,400 civilians, and months after his daring trip to another war zone in Ukraine. Even as he spoke, the first signs of an expected Israeli incursion into Gaza began to unfold, suggesting a crisis he sought to contain with his trip on Wednesday is about to get far worse.
“I know these conflicts can seem far away, and it’s natural to ask – why does this matter to America?” Biden said. “So let me share with you why making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America’s national security.”
The president beseeched Americans to understand that if the “pure unadulterated evil” of Hamas and the attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to “erase” Ukraine’s independence prevailed, terrorism emanating from the Middle East would threaten Americans again and Russia would imperil global peace.
Biden’s address is likely to be seen by historians as a signature moment in his presidency because of the messages he sent to American allies and foes abroad and how he sketched his vision for his own deeply divided nation.
Read more analysis at the CNN link.
One more story about the Israel-Hamas conflict from Politico: Biden says Hamas attacks aimed to halt Israel-Saudi Arabia agreement.
President Joe Biden said that Hamas’ attacks on Israel were intended in part to scuttle the potential normalization of the U.S. ally’s relations with Saudi Arabia.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden said at a campaign event Friday night, according to pool reports. “Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel,” the president added.
Less than a month ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also expressed optimism about the potential detente, telling Biden that a “historic peace” between the two countries seemed attainable.
Invitation, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The normalization push began under former President Donald Trump’s administration and was branded as the Abraham Accords.
But Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and sustained retaliation from the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza have pushed the possibility of normalization between Israel and neighboring Arab countries farther from reach.
On Saturday, the first 20 trucks carrying about 3,000 tons of aid passed through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Saturday, bringing humanitarian assistance to Gazans, who have been rationing food and water and relying on dwindling medical supplies amid the barrage of Israeli airstrikes.
In his speech at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser, Biden emphasized his administration’s commitment to supporting the longevity of the Israeli state.
“I am convinced with every fiber of my being: If there were no Israel, there’s not a Jew safe in the world — not in the entire world … including the United States,” Biden said.
Likening the conflict to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as he did in his Oval Office speech Thursday night, Biden underscored America’s role in providing aid to both allies, once more invoking former secretary of state Madeleine Albright in calling the U.S. the “essential nation.”
From Reuters, a story about Russian world-wide election interference: US intelligence report alleging Russia election interference shared with 100 countries.
The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.
“This is a global phenomenon,” said the assessment. “Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective.”
A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Russia was encouraged to intensify its election influence operations by its success in amplifying disinformation about the 2020 U.S. election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Success breeds more, and we definitely see the U.S. elections as a catalyst,” the official said.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The release of the assessment comes amid serious tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow’s war against Ukraine and a raft of other issues.
The assessment was sent in a State Department cable dated Wednesday to more than 100 U.S. embassies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa for distribution to their host governments, he said.
Washington was privately briefing recipient governments and shared the assessment “to get ahead of elections that are over the horizon over the next year,” the official said.
The report represents Washington’s latest move to combat what it says are Moscow’s efforts “to sow instability” in democratic countries by portraying elections as “dysfunctional, and resulting governments as illegitimate.”
Washington “recognizes its own vulnerability to this threat,” said the report, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies found that “Russian actors spread and amplified information to undermine public confidence in the U.S. 2020 election.”
Finally, here are a few interesting stories about Trump’s many problems.
CNN: Back-to-back plea deals pose grave legal threat to Donald Trump.
Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The witch is coming, by Margaryta Yerrmolayeva
The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
The pleas are a stark display of the reality that the Georgia case against Trump and his co-defendants is getting stronger. While Trump has vowed to fight until the bitter end, these newly inked plea deals force his co-defendants to confront the same difficult choice: cut a deal or roll the dice at trial.
or two prominent Trump co-defendants – Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro – the looming five-month trial, potentially resulting in a yearslong prison sentence, appears to have spurred them into flipping.
Their decisions to transform from Trump diehards to key witness against him have likely shattered any sense of invincibility that the former president or others charged may be feeling – perhaps for the first time.
What can these two testify about?
Chesebro directly implicated Trump in a criminal conspiracy, and his plea establishes for the first time that the fake electors plot was illegal. Notably, Chesebro has now admitted that “the purpose” of the fake electors conspiracy was to “disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” which is a key element of the federal charges Trump is facing.
As part of the plea, Chesebro established that the fake electors plot was part of “an attempt… to violate” the US Constitution and federal law, by subverting the Electoral College proceedings. This dovetails with the allegations against Trump in Smith’s federal indictment.
On Thursday, former Trump campaign lawyer Powell pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a separate, but complementary, effort to interfere with the 2020 election by breaching Georgia voting systems.
While Powell’s guilty plea only covers charges related to the breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, her deal with prosecutors opens the door for testimony about first-hand interactions with Trump and other key co-defendants.
For example, if called to the stand in a future trial, Powell could face questions about White House meetings she attended where Trump considered taking extreme steps to overturn the 2020 results, like ordering the Pentagon to seize voting machines.
Also from CNN, on the stolen documents case in Florida: Trump aide Walt Nauta dismisses concerns over potential conflicts of interest in classified documents case.
After a mini-saga in the classified documents case against Donald Trump, both of the former president’s co-defendants have waived concerns that their attorneys have represented witnesses in the case.
During Friday’s hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida, Trump’s personal aide Walt Nauta told federal Judge Aileen Cannon he had no concerns that his attorney, Stanley Woodward, has represented several witnesses in the case.
Moonlight Tea, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
“I still choose Mr. Woodward as my lawyer,” Nauta told the judge after she went through the potential conflicts in detail.
Last week, Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, also waived potential conflict of interest concerns raised by prosecutors who noted that his attorney also represented witnesses in the case, too.
Woodward and prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith have gone back and forth in court filings and before Cannon over the potential conflicts. In court Friday, Woodward agreed that he would not cross-examine witnesses he has represented or is currently representing.
One of those witnesses, Yuscil Taveras – an IT director at Mar-a-Lago – cut an agreement with prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation in the case after switching attorneys from Woodward.
Nauta is completely screwed. He’s going to prison unless Judge Cannon somehow protects him. I wonder if he knows that?
Brandi Buchman at Mediaite: Jack Smith uses Brett Kavanaugh law review article and Trump’s own impeachment arguments to slap down Jan. 6 ‘presidential immunity’ claims.
In a double serving of what could arguably be described as doses of one’s own medicine, special counsel Jack Smith plucked apart Donald Trump‘s latest efforts to throw out criminal conspiracy charges against him in Washington, D.C., by citing two arguments the former president would seem hard pressed to deny — one from the U.S. Supreme Court justice he appointed, Brett Kavanaugh, and the other from Trump’s own mouth when he was impeached for the second time.
The pointed response from federal prosecutors is found in a 52-page filing directed at Trump’s early October motion when he urged U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the election subversion indictment against him on the grounds that as former president, he held “absolute presidential immunity” from prosecution.
While Trump argued his public proclamations of rampant voter fraud and efforts to advance slates of false electors, among other things, fell squarely within the parameters of his duties as president, special counsel argued those schemes were largely rooted in “fraud,” “conspiracy,” “exploitation” and “deceit.”
Discussion of the nature of the crimes themselves aside, Smith contends that an inability to prosecute a former president for his crimes alleged or otherwise as Trump would have it is antithetical to the very premise of the office of the presidency, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and longstanding legal precedent on similarly aligned subjects throughout years of case law.
“Indeed no sound policy supports granting a former president blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for a time he or she served as president,” Smith wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
One more from Zachary Petrizzo at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Bitter Standoff with Fox News Is Only Getting Worse.
Fox News was essential to Donald Trump’s success in both of his last presidential runs. Now, as the former president navigates another campaign through a tidal wave of indictments and legal problems, he’s facing a much frostier relationship with the cable giant—and that could be bad news for both of them.
Jokers, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
In recent months, Trump’s inner circle has become convinced that Fox News is essentially sidelining the former president by restricting live appearances on the network.
“Trump is not allowed live on Fox,” a Trump operative told The Daily Beast, chalking it up to “fear” that Trump could level a baseless allegation that could leave the network in a legal mess.
A Trump adviser told The Daily Beast a similar story—that the former president isn’t allowed live on air anymore, and that Fox News prefers to have Trump in a pre-recorded setting.
“Fox sent down word from the top that they don’t want to ‘platform’ Trump like they did before,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “I find it hilarious. For one, it sounds like something MSNBC would do.”
After a lengthy hiatus last year, Trump re-emerged on Fox News in March, but in a diminished capacity in a string of interviews with Fox hosts and anchors including Sean Hannity, Bret Baier, and Larry Kudlow. Gone are the days when Trump could simply call in live and share his stream of consciousness.
According to a search by The Daily Beast and Media Matters for America, Trump last phoned in live to a Fox News program in April of 2022. And Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, told The Daily Beast the live freeze-out is no accident.
“Fox News’ record defamation settlement stemmed in part from its on-air Trump fanatics refusing to correct their guests’ election-denial conspiracy theories live, even when they knew their claims were lies,” Gertz said. “It’s wildly implausible to imagine the likes of Sean Hannity pushing back on Trump’s rigged-election fantasies, so it looks like Fox’s lawyers may have engineered a solution that doesn’t require its propagandists to perform journalism.”
One Trump confidant contrasted the apparent ban on Trump’s live appearances to earlier Fox News coverage, when they “used to go live at every single one of his rallies!”
As Trump would say, “Sad.”
So . . . that’s all the news I have for today. What stories have you been following?
Friday Reads
Posted: September 8, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Elon Musk, just because | Tags: Climate change, extreme heat, floating barriers, Georgia special grand jury report, Greg Abbott, IRS, Lindsey Graham, Russia, Starlink internet, Ukraine, Walter Isaacson 3 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
We in the Boston area are finally getting a taste of the extreme heat that much of the rest of the country has been experiencing. Yesterday and today, there were heat emergencies declared, and many schools sent kids home early because of the heat and no air conditioning. Obviously, we aren’t used to 100 degree heat indexes in September in this part of the country. I don’t know how Dakinikat has survived months of this heat. Republicans need to wake up and realize that their children and grandchildren are going to suffer from climate change, whether their ancestors believed in it or not.
From Scientific American: Half the World’s Population Faced Extreme Heat for at Least 30 Days This Summer.
It has been a grueling summer, with relentless heat breaking multiple records in many places around the world. In fact, June through August was the planet’s hottest documented three-month period, with July ranking as the hottest month ever recorded. A new analysis by the nonprofit organization Climate Central finds that more than 3.8 billion people were exposed to extreme heat that was worsened by human-caused climate change from June through August, and at least 1.5 billion experienced such heat every day of that period. Nearly every person on Earth saw high temperatures that were made at least twice as likely by global warming.
People cool off in fountains in Rome to deal with the heat.
It has been a grueling summer, with relentless heat breaking multiple records in many places around the world. In fact, June through August was the planet’s hottest documented three-month period, with July ranking as the hottest month ever recorded. A new analysis by the nonprofit organization Climate Central finds that more than 3.8 billion people were exposed to extreme heat that was worsened by human-caused climate change from June through August, and at least 1.5 billion experienced such heat every day of that period. Nearly every person on Earth saw high temperatures that were made at least twice as likely by global warming.
“It really is everywhere,” says Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice president for science. “On a single day, the fact that more than half the people on the planet were experiencing climate-altered heat—that’s just really, really remarkable to me.”
More frequent, longer-lasting and more intense heat waves are among the clearest outcomes of rising global temperatures driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Numerous studies have found the fingerprints of climate change in heat waves from the Pacific Northwest to Europe. A study released by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group in July had already found that the heat waves in North America, Europe and China that month were made hotter—and many times more likely—by climate change. In fact, the North American and European events likely would not have occurred without climate change.
The new analysis was produced using Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI) attribution system, which estimates how much climate change has shifted the local odds of events such as extreme heat. The system, which is based on peer-reviewed science, scores global warming’s influence using the ratio of how often a given temperature occurs in the current climate, compared with a world without climate change. A CSI of 1 means there is a discernable influence from climate change, and CSIs between 2 and 5 mean it made those conditions two to five times more likely.
The organization’s worldwide temperature analysis during this year’s Northern Hemisphere summer found 48 percent of the world’s population experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat that was made at least three times more likely by climate change, and at least 1.5 billion people experienced heat at that level or higher for the entire summer. Many of those people were in areas closer to the equator, such as the Caribbean, northern Africa and Southeast Asia.
Read more at the link.
That asshole Greg Abbott won a temporary stay on his murderous barriers. CNN: Federal appeals court says Texas’ floating barriers can remain in Rio Grande for now.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay Thursday night allowing the state of Texas to keep floating barriers in the Rio Grande.
A lower court judge had ordered Texas to take down the barriers by September 15 at its own expense. The panel’s decision Thursday puts that order on hold while the appeals court considers the case. It means that Texas does not have to start the process of removing the barriers, for now.
A worker helps deploy a string of large buoys to be used as a border barrier at the center of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
The swift ruling by the 5th Circuit comes a day after US District Judge David Ezra wrote that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott needed permission to install the barriers, as dictated by law – a win for the Biden administration.
“Governor Abbott announced that he was not ‘asking for permission’ for Operation Lone Star, the anti-immigration program under which Texas constructed the floating barrier. Unfortunately for Texas, permission is exactly what federal law requires before installing obstructions in the nation’s navigable waters,” Ezra wrote in his ruling. The judge also found Texas’ self-defense argument – that the barriers have been placed in the face of invasion – “unconvincing.”
The controversial border buoys were deployed in the Rio Grande as part Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s border security initiative. In July, the Justice Department sued the state of Texas claiming that the buoys were installed unlawfully and asking the judge to force the state to remove them.
Let’s hope the stay is just so the judges can get up to speed on the issues. Those barriers are utterly monstrous and inhumane.
The report from the Fulton County, Georgia special grand jury has been released. This was the jury that was just investigative. They recommended people who should be charged, and the official grand jury issued final indictments.
CNN reports: Fulton County special grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The special grand jury in Fulton County investigating the 2020 presidential election in Georgia recommended charges against Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, according to the special counsel grand jury report released Friday.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not charge the lawmakers when she returned an indictment last month against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in the sprawling racketeering case. It was up to the district attorney to decide how closely to stick to the special grand jury’s recommendations….
Graham, who appeared before the special grand jury last year after a court battle over his testimony, spoke with Georgia election officials after the 2020 election. His phone calls with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff related to the possibility of finding enough fraud in the state that it could’ve tipped the election to Trump.
Raffensperger testified to the House January 6 committee thahis phone call with Graham made him “uncomfortable” because some of Graham’s suggestions could have led to “disenfranchising voters.”
Graham repeatedly prodded Raffensperger and his colleagues on the phone about the signature-matching of ballots in the Atlanta area. Raffensperger told CNN in November 2020 that he believed Graham “implied” that he should try to “throw out” some ballots in the heavily Democratic county….
Perdue, who lost his Senate run-off election in January 2021 while Trump was pushing his false claims of fraud, personally urged Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the legislature to help Trump’s quest to overturn the election. Loeffler, who also lost her runoff election in January 2021, was also at the meeting….
Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments and instead serve as an investigative tool. This special grand jury began hearing evidence in June 2022, and Willis used it to investigate efforts to overturn the 2020 election, an investigation sparked by Trump’s January 2021 phone call with Raffensperger where Trump asked him to “find” the votes he needed to win the state. The panel ultimately heard from 75 witnesses.
News has broken about Elon Musk’s interference in Ukraine, based on a new biography by Walter Isaacson.
CNN Exclusive: ‘How am I in this war?’: New Musk biography offers fresh details about the billionaire’s Ukraine dilemma.
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.
Musk’s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials, according to Isaacson, whose new book is set to be released by Simon & Schuster on September 12.
Musk’s concerns over a “mini-Pearl Harbor” as he put it, did not come to pass in Crimea. But the episode reveals the unique position Musk found himself in as the war in Ukraine unfolded. Whether intended or not, he had become a power broker US officials couldn’t ignore.
Why is this monster still getting government money?
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk posted on X, the platform formally known as Twitter that he owns. Sevastopol is a port city in Crimea. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” [….]
A Ukrainian soldier disconnects a Starlink satellite dish near Kreminna, Ukraine. Credit…Clodagh KilcoyneReuters
After Russia disrupted Ukraine’s communications systems just before its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Musk agreed to provide Ukraine with millions of dollars of SpaceX-made Starlink satellite terminals, which became crucial to Ukraine’s military operations. Even as cellular phone and internet networks had been destroyed, the Starlink terminals allowed Ukraine to fight and stay connected.
But once Ukraine began to use Starlink terminals for offensive attacks against Russia, Musk started to second-guess that decision.
“How am I in this war?” Musk asks Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Musk was soon on the phone with President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, and the Russian ambassador to the US to address anxieties from Washington, DC, to Moscow, writes Isaacson.
Meanwhile, Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister of Ukraine, was pleading with Musk to restore connectivity for the submarine drones by telling Musk about their capabilities in a text message, according to Isaacson. “I just want you—the person who is changing the world through technology—to know this,” Fedorov told Musk.
Read more at CNN.
The New York Times: Elon Musk Acknowledges Withholding Satellite Service to Thwart Ukrainian Attack.
A top adviser to Ukraine’s president accused Elon Musk of enabling Russian aggression, after the billionaire entrepreneur acknowledged denying satellite internet service in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian naval fleet last year.
The Starlink satellite internet service, which is operated by Mr. Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, has been a digital lifeline in Ukraine since the early days of the war for both civilians and soldiers in areas where digital infrastructure has been wiped out.
On Thursday, CNN reported on an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography “Elon Musk,” later published by The Washington Post, that said the billionaire had ordered the deactivation of Starlink satellite service near the coast of Crimea last September to thwart the Ukrainian attack. The excerpt said that Mr. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict.
I remember when Musk claimed he had spoken directly with Putin.
Later on Thursday, Mr. Musk responded on his social media platform to say that he hadn’t disabled the service but had rather refused to comply with an emergency request from Ukrainian officials to enable Starlink connections to Sevastopol on the occupied Crimean peninsula. That was in effect an acknowledgment that he had made the decision to prevent a Ukrainian attack.
“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
That drew an angry response from Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Mr. Musk’s “interference,” he said, had allowed Russia’s naval fleet to continue firing cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities.
“As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” he wrote on X.
Elon Musk and Walter Isaacson
The account in the biography further confirms the ways in which Mr. Musk’s control over Starlink appears to be affecting Ukraine’s military. In July, The New York Times reported on Mr. Musk’s refusal to allow the service to work near Crimea, and the broader challenges Ukrainian officials were facing because of the country’s huge dependence on Starlink.
The more than 42,000 Starlink terminals are also in use by hospitals, businesses and aid organizations across Ukraine.
But Mr. Musk has repeatedly stoked controversy around access to Starlink, saying last October that he could not “indefinitely” finance Ukraine’s use of Starlink, then abruptly reversing course. The near-total control that he wields over connectivity in the war zone has prompted concern about his influence.
In February, Ukrainian officials were angered after a SpaceX executive said that Starlink had taken steps to curtail the Ukrainian military’s use of the technology to control drones, a week after Mr. Musk said the company was “not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes.” SpaceX has also used a process called geofencing to restrict where Starlink is available on the front lines.
Because Starlink is a commercial product rather than a traditional defense contractor, Mr. Musk is able to make decisions that may not be aligned with U.S. interests, analysts have said.
One more and then I’ll wrap this up. It appears that the IRS is actually going after superrich people.
The New York Times: I.R.S. Deploys Artificial Intelligence to Target Rich Partnerships.
The Internal Revenue Service has started using artificial intelligence to investigate tax evasion at multibillion-dollar partnerships as it looks for ways to better police hedge funds, private equity groups, real estate investors and large law firms.
The announcement on Friday demonstrated how a more muscular I.R.S. is using some of the $80 billion allocated through last year’s Inflation Reduction Act to target the wealthiest Americans and tackle the kinds of cases that had become too complex and cumbersome for the beleaguered agency to handle.
The agency’s new funding is intended to help the I.R.S. raise more federal revenue by cracking down on tax cheats and others who use sophisticated accounting maneuvers to avoid paying what they owe. But the allocation has been politically contentious, with Republicans claiming that the I.R.S. will use the funding to harass small businesses and middle-class taxpayers. Earlier this year, Republicans succeeded in clawing back $20 billion as part of an agreement to raise the nation’s borrowing cap.
That political fight has put the onus on Democrats and the Biden administration to show that the funding is primarily enabling the I.R.S. to target the rich.
“These are complex cases for I.R.S. teams to unpack,” Daniel Werfel, the I.R.S. commissioner, said in a briefing with reporters. “The I.R.S. has simply not had enough resources or staffing to address partnerships; in a real sense, we’ve been overwhelmed in this area for years.”
Mr. Werfel explained that artificial intelligence is helping the I.R.S. identify patterns and trends, giving the agency greater confidence that it can find where larger partnerships are shielding income. That is leading to the kinds of major audits that the I.R.S. might not have previously tackled.
The agency said it would open examinations of 75 of the nation’s largest partnerships, which were identified with the help of artificial intelligence, by the end of the month. The partnerships all have more than $10 billion in assets and will receive audit notices in the coming weeks.
Sounds good to me.
That’s all I have today. Have a great weekend everyone!!
Monday Reads: The One Year Anniversary of the Uvalde School Shooting (and Other News)
Posted: May 22, 2023 Filed under: Donald Trump, just because | Tags: debt ceiling crisis, Evan Corcoran, F-16 warplanes, Florida, Joe Biden, Kevin McCarthy, LULAC, NAACP, Ron DeSantis, stolen documents case, Ukraine, Uvalde school shooting 11 Comments
Frederick Childe Hassam, ‘The Breakfast Room’
Good Morning!!
I’m filling in for Dakinikat this morning, because she’s working down to the wire to get her final grades turned in today. Biden and McCarthy are still haggling over the debt ceiling, Ron DeSantis will soon announce his candidacy for president, and we’re still waiting for the next Trump indictment to drop. But I’m going to begin with stories marking the anniversary of the Uvalde school shooting which will be on Wednesday, May 24.
From Raw Story:
UVALDE — At 7 a.m. on a Monday in February, Jessica Treviño, with squinty eyes, goes into her sons’ bedroom and in a low, raspy voice tells them to wake up. Eleven-year-old David James rolls out of bed, but 9-year-old Austin, the youngest of the four Treviño children, doesn’t move from the lower bunk bed.
The siblings get ready for school. David James grabs the car keys and starts the family’s black Ram 1500 truck for his mother.
Austin, who is still in bed covered by a blanket, tells his mother he doesn’t want to go to school.
“I can’t leave you by yourself,” Jessica, 40, tells him, leaning over his body as their fat bulldog, Chubs, tries to jump on the bed. “You have to go to school.”
Austin doesn’t move. The night before, the sound of police sirens woke him.
“It’s ’cause there were cop sounds last night so he’s kinda scared,” David James tells his mother.
It’s not the first time one of the children won’t go to school because something spooked them. And Jessica knows it won’t be the last.
These kids survived the Uvalde mass shooting.
Three of the four Treviño children were students at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022, and were on campus for an awards ceremony as an 18-year-old with an AR-15 rifle approached the school.
That day, Jessica picked up David James, Austin and her now 12-year-old daughter, Illiaña, from the school about 11:30 a.m.
Jessica later found out that as she was driving off, the shooter had just walked into a classroom, killing two teachers and 19 students — including Illiaña’s best friend, a 10-year-old student in room 112, who was Illiaña’s defender when other children made fun of her.
A few days after the shooting, Jessica took Illiaña, whom she calls Nana, to Uvalde’s plaza to leave a teddy bear and flowers at a memorial for her friend. Suddenly, Illiaña’s heart began to race and she had trouble breathing. Jessica took her to the local hospital, which transferred her to an intensive care unit in San Antonio. The doctor there told Jessica that Illiaña was suffering cardiac arrest and her body shut down from acute stress. She was released after a week.
That’s severe PTSD. Read the rest and see photos at the Raw Story link.
Claude Monet – Anémones en pot 1885
Khloie Torres was the 10-year-old who repeatedly called 911 on the day of the Uvalde mass shooting. “Please hurry. There is a lot of dead bodies,” she told the dispatcher.
She took blood from some of the other students and smeared it all over herself to make it seem like she was already dead.
CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz spoke to Khloie’s mother who told him, “Knowing the police didn’t do anything, it’s just crazy. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does she ever ask you why the police took so long?” Prokupecz asked.
“She does. She’s like, Mom, why did it take police so long to come in here? I don’t even know what to say to her. She don’t (sic) trust any police now,” the mom, Jamie Torres, explained. “They let everybody in those conjoined rooms down. The families have changed forever because they were too weak to go in the room, but my 10-year-old sitting across the door was offering to open it. And they still didn’t want to go in.”
The mother told CNN to show the body camera footage of her daughter. The police are shown leading Khloie out, and the next footage shows her on the bus covered in blood. She’s trying to speak through tears. Sitting in the seat in front of her is her best friend, 9-year-old Kendall Olivarez, who was losing consciousness. She was shot twice, once in the left shoulder and in her back. In the video, first responders were shouting at her to stay with them. A wailing cry is then heard.
“Please help! I don’t want to die,” Khloie cried to the 911 dispatcher.
“It’s definitely stressed her out,” Jamie Torres explained. “PTSD, all of that. She has all of that. You know, she can’t walk into a restaurant or any kind of building without counting every exit of the door.”
“She counts exits?” Prokupecz asked.
“Yes, if we go to McDonald’s, she sits closest to the door that she can,” the mother said.
NBC News: An Uvalde victim’s family feels betrayed by officials withholding details from that day.
UVALDE, Texas — Javier Cazares is haunted by the 30 minutes or so that passed after his 9-year-old daughter, Jacklyn, was shot and before law enforcement officers finally confronted the gunman firing an AR-15 inside Robb Elementary School.
By Marc Chagall
“She wasn’t shot in the very beginning. She was shot somewhere in the middle. If they had gone in 30 minutes, 40 minutes” earlier, he said in an interview, “maybe she could still have been alive.”
A total of 73 minutes passed before law enforcement stopped the 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle.
The loss has been worsened, according to Cazares, by the refusal of people in power to take responsibility for their failures, to fill in the details for the grieving parents who need to know more about what happened each minute of that deadly day, to own up to fateful mistakes and remove those who made them, to make sure the families get the support they need when they need it, and to change gun laws.
“The first couple months, you know, it still seemed unreal,” he said. “And now, it’s like betrayal.”
A new CNN special on Sunday by Shimon Prokupecz revealed new video footage not previously made public of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.
After an hour of doing nothing, the shooter was finally dead, and police moved in.
The show opens with the sound of gunfire from the shooter and from the police. The next scene is a group of officers finally entering the classroom. What follows is a collection of body camera footage showing officers vomiting outside. Others were sobbing and holding each other. A different video showed an officer shaking while trying to clean blood off their hands.
Before that, the video that was released showed the police standing around, trying to figure out what to do.
Sorry, but the blood is still on their hands, and they’ll never be able to wash it off.
The footage that CNN showed was approved by the parents to reveal to the public. Prokupecz explained to viewers that the families hope that showing the footage in the special will help create more motivation to do something more to help stop the mass shootings.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told Prokupecz that they’ve fought for the information previously blocked from the public. In some cases, it’s only because of the media that any parents can access information about what happened that day.
Other News
Biden and McCarthy are meeting again today about the debt limit. The New York Times:
President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed on Sunday to meet on Monday afternoon to try to jump-start talks aimed at averting a default on the nation’s debt, capping a tumultuous stretch of negotiations that faltered over the weekend as the two sides clashed over Republicans’ demands to cut spending in exchange for raising the debt limit.
Henri Matisse – Femme lisant en Robe violette 1898
Mr. McCarthy announced the meeting — his third with Mr. Biden this month, scheduled for after the president’s return from the Group of 7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan — after he concluded a call with the president on Sunday sounding more sanguine than before about the prospects for a deal.
The speaker said House G.O.P. and White House negotiators would continue talks at the Capitol on Sunday to lay the groundwork. White House negotiators left the Capitol on Sunday night after a two-and-a-half-hour bargaining session with their Republican counterparts but said they intended to keep working before Monday’s session.
Mr. Biden “walked through some of the things that he’s still looking at, he’s hearing from his members; I walked through things I’m looking at,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I felt that part was productive. But look — there’s no agreement. We’re still apart.”
I sure hope that Biden isn’t going to back down like Obama did in 2011.
On Ukraine, The New York Times reports: Biden Announces More Aid for Ukraine as Group of 7 Powers Meet in Japan.
HIROSHIMA, Japan — President Biden and other leaders of the world’s major industrial democracies rallied around Ukraine on Sunday with vows of resolute support and promises of further weapons shipments even as Russian forces claimed to have seized full control of a bitterly contested city.
Mr. Biden and his counterparts figuratively and, in some cases, literally wrapped their arms around President Volodomyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who made an audacious journey halfway around the world from his ravaged homeland to Hiroshima, Japan, to solicit aid for the first time in person from the Group of 7 powers at their annual summit.
“Together with the entire G7, we have Ukraine’s back, and I promise we’re not going anywhere,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Zelensky while announcing another $375 million in artillery, ammunition and other arms for Ukraine. At a later news conference, Mr. Biden voiced defiance of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“I once more shared and assured President Zelensky, together with all G7 members and our allies and partners around the world, that we will not waver,” he said. “Putin will not break our resolve, as he thought he could.”
Zelensky got what he has long asked for.
Mr. Zelensky won the major prize he sought a day before arriving in Hiroshima when Mr. Biden reversed himself and agreed to make it possible for Ukraine to obtain F-16 warplanes. Mr. Biden on Sunday defended his long reluctance to allow such jets to be sent to Ukraine by saying the time had not yet been right and arguing that they would not have stopped Russia from taking Bakhmut in months of grinding ground combat.
“F-16s would not have helped in that regard at all,” he told reporters. “It was unnecessary. For example, let’s take just Bakhmut, for example. It would not have any additional added consequence.”
In authorizing the F-16 training now, Mr. Biden said he was preparing Ukraine for the day down the road when it would need to deter further Russian aggression.
Lilacs, by Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin (1861-1939), Russia
A new story from Hugh Lowell of The Guardian on the stolen Trump documents investigation: Trump was warned about retaining classified documents, notes reveal.
Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.
The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.
Last June, Corcoran found roughly 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property. That was later shown to be untrue, after the FBI later returned with a warrant and seized 101 additional classified documents.
Biden advisers believe they can hold up what the GOP governor calls his “Florida blueprint” as a warning to the country about what would happen if DeSantis or any other Republican wins the White House in 2024 – a human embodiment, essentially, of Biden’s argument that “MAGA extremism” goes beyond Donald Trump.
And along the way, they believe the Florida governor’s record may give them a chance at the state’s 30 electoral votes.
The Biden campaign has quietly started putting campaign cash and efforts into Florida – and will decide in the coming months whether to put more – as it gauges the president’s chances of reversing the reddening of a state he lost by a wider-than-expected margin in 2020.
It’s an insurance policy strategy for a campaign that has so far almost exclusively focused on Biden as the alternative to Trump, who continues to lead Republican primary polls and whom DeSantis has already spent months trying to knock out of the way.
And it comes as Biden advisers push back on ongoing criticism from Florida Democrats that they flubbed their chance last year to damage DeSantis early by not investing much energy or money against him as he ran for reelection, racking up a whopping 19-point victory and tens of millions in campaign funds, likely now headed to a supportive super PAC.
“They’ve realized the outcome of their negligence. [DeSantis] now has a lot of resources that he can use,” said former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who won a Miami-area House seat in the 2018 blue wave but lost it two years later as Trump carried the state. “You don’t want to lose your democracy? You want to stop fascism? Then do something about his reelection. We could have stopped [DeSantis] in 2022. No one did anything.”
That’s all I have for you today. This is an open thread–please feel free to discuss these stories or post your own suggested links on any topic.
Extra Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: April 29, 2023 Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Cats, caturday, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, ethics, SCOTUS | Tags: abortion, AR-15, Dobbs decision, Jane Roberts, John Roberts, mass shootings, nuclear weapons, Samuel Alito, stolen classified documents case, Texas, Trump fund-raising, Ukraine, Wire fraud 14 Comments
Happy Caturday!!
I’m getting a very slow start this morning. It feels like everything is kind of awful today, as it often is lately. The politics news is bad enough, but sadly there’s been another mass shooting and the perpetrator is still at large. Not surprisingly, it’s in Texas, and of course the weapon was an AR-15.
ABC News: 5 dead in Texas ‘execution-style’ shooting, suspect armed with AR-15 is on the loose.
Five people are dead after being shot in a Texas home by a suspect armed with an AR-15 style rifle in a horrific series of “execution style” shootings, police said.
A manhunt is currently underway for the suspect, identified by police as 39-year-old Francisco Oropeza, according to ABC station KTRK in Houston.
A judge has issued an arrest warrant for Oropeza and assigned a $5 million bond. Authorities believe Oropeza left by walking or on a bicycle and is currently within a two mile radius of the scene, KTRK reported.
Police said the incident occurred at 11:31 p.m. local time on Friday when officials from the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office received a call about harassment in the town of Cleveland, about 55 miles north of Houston.
When authorities arrived at the location, they found several victims shot at the property, police said. Three of the deceased were females and two were males, including the youngest, an 8-year-old boy.
Two female victims were discovered in the bedroom lying on top of two surviving children, authorities told ABC News.
Three minors were located uninjured, but covered in blood. They were transported to a local hospital.
Police said they believe the massacre occurred after neighbors asked the suspect to stop shooting his gun in the front yard because there was a baby trying to sleep.
“My understanding is that the victims, they came over to the fence and said ‘Hey could [you not do your] shooting out in the yard? We have a young baby that’s trying to go to sleep,” and he had been drinking and he says ‘I’ll do what I want to in my front yard,'” San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told KTRK.
WTF?! I’m at a complete loss for words. There’s more insanity at the link.
Yesterday we got more shocking news about our out-of-control Supreme Court.
Sammy Alito gave a pathetic, whiny interview to James Taranto and David Rivkin of The Wall Street Journal: Justice Samuel Alito: ‘This Made Us Targets of Assassination.’
Justice Samuel Alito was supposed to speak to law students at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., but when they showed up, he wasn’t there….
It wasn’t a lingering fear of Covid-19. In a mid-April interview in his chambers, Justice Alito fills us in on the May 12, 2022, event: “Our police conferred with the George Mason Police and the Arlington Police and they said, ‘It’s not a good idea. He shouldn’t come here. . . . The security problems will be severe.’ So I ended up giving the speech by Zoom,” he says. “Still, there were so many protesters and they were so loud that you could hear them.”
By now a noisy mob of law students may sound like any other school day, but last May also was a tumultuous time for the court. The preceding week, someone had leaked a draft of Justice Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a landmark abortion case that wouldn’t be decided until late June….
He now says that the leak “created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. We worked through it, and last year we got our work done. This year, I think, we’re trying to get back to normal operations as much as we can. . . . But it was damaging.”
It was damaging for millions of American women and for doctors too, but Sammy is oblivious to that. Alito also believes he knows who the leaker is.
“I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” he says. He’s certain about the motive: “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court. And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside—as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”
That campaign included unlawful assemblies outside justices’ homes, and that wasn’t the worst of it. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Justice Alito says. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.” On June 8, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the suspect was later charged with attempted assassination and has pleaded not guilty.
This man is delusional. No one suggested preventing the decision by murdering one of the justices. People peacefully demonstrated outside their homes. One crazy guy showed up outside Kavanaugh’s house and then turned himself into to police without doing anything.
He adds that “I don’t feel physically unsafe, because we now have a lot of protection.” He is “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force.” Deputy U.S. marshals guard the justices’ homes 24/7. (The U.S. Marshals Service, a bureau of the Justice Department, is distinct from the marshal of the court, who reports to the justices and oversees the Supreme Court Police.)
He’s a lot safer than women who are refused care after miscarriages until they are at death’s door, but Sammy couldn’t care less about them. He is also ignorant of the history of protests against Supreme Court justices.
Anyway, read the interview at the the WSJ if you can stomach it.
Yesterday, Insider’s Mattathias Schwartz broke a story about John Roberts ethical problems: Jane Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show.
Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.
Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. “There are many paths to the good life,” she said. “There are so many things to do if you’re open to change and opportunity.”
And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.
That eye-popping figure comes from records in a whistleblower complaint filed by a disgruntled former colleague of Roberts, who says that as the spouse of the most powerful judge in the United States, the income she earns from law firms who practice before the Court should be subject to public scrutiny.
“When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong,” the whistleblower, Kendal B. Price, who worked alongside Jane Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in an interview. “During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane’s clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It’s natural that they’d do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive.”
Roberts’ apparent $10.3 million in compensation puts her toward the top of the payscale for legal headhunters. Price’s disclosures, which were filed under federal whistleblower-protection laws and are now in the hands of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, add to the mounting questions about how Supreme Court justices and their families financially benefit from their special status, an area that Senate Democrats are vowing to investigate after a series of disclosure lapses by the justices themselves.
No wonder Roberts is resisting any serious ethics rules for his powerful court. Unfortunately he’s not alone. Even the liberal justices don’t want ethics rules. The three branches of government are supposed to be equal, but the Supremes are behaving as if their branch is more equal than the other two.
ABC News: All 9 Supreme Court justices push back on oversight: ‘Raises more questions,’ Senate chair says.
There’s no conservative-liberal divide on the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to calls for a new, enforceable ethics code.
All nine justices, in a rare step, on Tuesday released a joint statement reaffirming their voluntary adherence to a general code of conduct but rebutting proposals for independent oversight, mandatory compliance with ethics rules and greater transparency in cases of recusal.
The implication, though not expressly stated, is that the court unanimously rejects legislation proposed by Democrats seeking to impose on the justices the same ethics obligations applied to all other federal judges.
“The justices … consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues,” the members of the high court said in a document titled “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices.”
It appears to be the first time an entire court has publicly explained its approach to ethics issues and attested to specific parts of federal law governing their conduct.
The justices’ statement, appended to a letter from Chief Justice John Roberts to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., appears squarely aimed at answering critics’ concerns and demands from some for outside oversight.
“Without a formal code of conduct, without a way to receive ethics complaints and without a way to investigate them, the Supreme Court has set itself apart from all other federal institutions,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a left-leaning judicial watchdog group that has been lobbying Congress to mandate a high court code.
Durbin said Thursday in a statement that the justices’ explanation of their approach to ethics “raises more questions than it resolves.”
“Make no mistake,” he said, “Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not.”
I hope Durbin is prepared to keep pushing this.
Two stories on Trump’s crimes:
The New York Times: Prosecutors in Jan. 6 Case Step up Inquiry Into Trump Fund-Raising.
As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.
The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory.
In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity. An initial round of subpoenas, which started going out before Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in the 2024 race and Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November, focused on various Republican officials and vendors that had received payments from Save America.
But more recently, investigators have homed in on the activities of a joint fund-raising committee made up of staff members from the 2020 Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, among others. Some of the subpoenas have sought documents from around Election Day 2020 up the present.
Prosecutors have been heavily focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fund-raising, such as who was approving email solicitations that were blasted out to lists of possible small donors and what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims, according to the people familiar with their work. All three areas overlap, and could inform prosecutors’ thinking about whether to proceed with charges in an investigation in which witnesses are still being interviewed.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Dennis Aftergut at Justia: Trump’s Nonsensical Letter to Congress Attacking the DOJ’s Mar-a-Lago Case Shows He Has No Defense.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a desperate, 10-page letter to Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The punch line comes in its conclusion: “DOJ should be ordered to stand down” in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump for obstructing justice in his 18 months of stonewalling the return of classified documents improperly held at Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, Congress has no such power. Ironically, the letter achieved something completely unintended. It effectively confirmed that Trump has no viable defense against the likely Justice Department charges for Trump’s obstruction.
The letter also revealed for the first time that the classified documents recovered in the August 7, court-approved search of Trump’s country club home may include briefings of foreign leaders.
It’s hard to know what Trump was trying to achieve beyond “spin.” No crimes to see here, the letter lamely contends.
His lawyers assert that Trump didn’t knowingly possess or retain top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. His aides were just sloppy, the letter says, in the rushed process of leaving the White House, and Trump didn’t even know the classified documents were there. Even Vice Presidents Mike Pence and Joe Biden inadvertently took classified documents after their time in office.
If these contentions are a preview of Trump’s defenses to an indictment from Smith’s grand jury, Jack Smith can rest easy. The arguments are so abysmally weak that they leave any knowledgeable observer with a simple inference: Trump and his lawyers know an indictment is coming soon and there’s nothing they can do about it but offer smoke and mirrors.
Like asking Congressman Turner to investigate the need for legislation to address the lack of controls on classified documents that elected officials unintentionally take when leaving public service. Here’s the problem for the former president and his letter: Jack Smith has mountains of evidence that contradict Trump’s claim that his improper possession and retention of those classified documents was inadvertent.
Read more at the link.
I haven’t been following the war in Ukraine very closely, but this NYT headline caught my attention: U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts.
The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker.
In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscow’s culpability could be verified.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago, experts have worried about whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would use nuclear arms in combat for the first time since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The preparations, mentioned last month in a House hearing and detailed Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a federal agency that is part of the Energy Department, seem to constitute the hardest evidence to date that Washington is taking concrete steps to prepare for the worst possible outcomes of the invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s second largest nation.
The Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, a shadowy unit of atomic experts run by the security agency, is working with Ukraine to deploy the radiation sensors, train personnel, monitor data and warn of deadly radiation.
In a statement sent to The New York Times in response to a reporter’s question, the agency said the network of atomic sensors was being deployed “throughout the region” and would have the ability “to characterize the size, location and effects of any nuclear explosion.” Additionally, it said the deployed sensors would deny Russia “any opportunity to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine without attribution.”
Read more details at the NYT.
I’m going to end there. What else is happening? What stories have captured your interest today?
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