#Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

[kevinmmiller]

"A League of Their Own"

Part of My Forthcoming Political Memoir “Time of My Life” (tentative) Baseball which was something that I enjoyed as a kid. And a sport that I still enthusiastically incorporate into my life. Had, by the fourth grade, become something which I knew could carry the day. And, eventually propel me into the local, and national media’s spotlight. In Tampa, Florida. And the surrounding area. One of the…

[filosofablogger]

Tearing It Down, Not Making It Great ...

Tearing It Down, Not Making It Great …

We’ve become so used to hearing the term ‘maga’ that perhaps we’ve forgotten what those four letters were originally intended to stand for (though they never did): “make America great again”.  It was the campaign slogan for the former guy back in 2015-2016 and should have gone into the dung heap thereafter, for he did nothing to make anything great.  However, the media kept applying the term to…

[qqueenofhades]

Idk man, 2022 didn't fuck around?

The Queen dies;

Jair Bolsonaro loses in Brazil, and decides to go away WITHOUT trying a coup (this was not a given)

Putin gets his ass kicked in Ukraine, the world comes together to oppose him;

The GOP's much hyped "Red Wave" in the American midterms is a Big Lol; now they have to contend with the Talented Mr. Santos and the constant clown show that will be a Republican House and Kevin McCarthy trying DESPERATELY to get elected speaker;

The Democrats kept the Senate and even added a seat, while capping off a year of big and meaningful legislative accomplishments; hence if certain unnamed SCOTUS justices snuff it in the next two years, they can fill that seat;

The Tories, after an absolutely laugh-so-you-don't cry year of absolutely surreal comedic incompetence inflicted on the people of Britain, are an average of 26 points behind in general opinion polls;

Sex trafficker and all around miserable misogynist Andrew Tate tries to pick a fight with Greta Thunberg, self owns to an amazing degree, is now being held in a Romanian prison for another month after stupidly giving his location away via pizza box;

Former Pope Benedict XVI, aka a decades-long enforcer of sexual abuse coverups in the Catholic Church as well as various other reprehensible moral positions, kicks the bucket (on the last day of the year)

A new climate deal was made;

And so on.

I mean, various other bad things very much still did happen, and it was a tough year for a lot of us on a personal level, but this is the first year since probably 2016 where it feels like there's actually a bit of hope for the future on a big structural level, and I appreciate that.

[marisatomay]

not from the us, whats going on with the speaker?

So back in January when the new Congress was sworn in it the republicans had a very slight majority in the House so by majority votes they get to confirm the Speaker—who is the leader of the House of Representatives and third in the Presidential line of succession—but a small-ish faction of those Rs are wacko nutjob conspiracy theorists because of course (those will be the wackos you see bloviating on TV) and they wanted their own idiot in charge or at least to get assurances from R leadership that they would bend to their will and they wouldn’t give it in so many words so it took the (now former) Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy FIFTEEN (15) votes for people to fall in line and finally confirm him as Speaker (deeply embarrassing—usually it takes 2 votes at most to confirm a Speaker).

Anyway his Speakership lasted for pretty much exactly 9 months until yesterday when, in a bunch of things coming to head—McCarthy’s refusal to impeach Biden for some reason at the request of the wackos, the currently-delayed shutdown of the government over a refusal to pass a new budget, his former ass-kissing to Trump even at the near-cost of his own life, his general unpleasantness—one of the wacko republicans (who may or may not be a sex trafficker but that’s for another time) put forth a motion to remove McCarthy as Speaker which, for the reasons listed above, found enough votes on both sides of the aisle to pass.

So, currently, we have an Acting Speaker of the House (which essentially means the person in charge only exists to bring order to the chamber and can’t be counted in the line of succession or anything), we still don’t have a new government budget, Biden is NOT being impeached but the wackos don’t seem to understand that, and the wackos ALSO don’t seem to understand that as much as we all hate McCarthy they have just shot themselves in the foot for no reason. But, on the bright side, Kevin McCarthy—an absolutely odious, slimy man who spent the Obama years doing racist dog whistles and the Trump years kissing his ass until it, quite literally, almost got him killed upon which he had a brief moment of moral fiber before once again bending to Trump’s demands despite, again, almost being murdered by an angry mob that stormed the Capitol—had the shortest Speakership since 1876. A fetus spends more time in the womb than Kevin McCarthy spent as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He has been completely humiliated. You can see it in his eyes. Delicious.

[wilwheaton]

For his part, Kevin McCarthy got on the phone with Trump weeks after the ordeal, and listened as the former president listed his reasons for not calling Gaetz off. Per The Washington Post, which broke the news of the McCarthy-Trump summit: During the call, Trump lambasted McCarthy for not expunging his two impeachments and not endorsing him in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the conversation. When he recounted this call to sources who spoke to the Post, McCarthy claimed he responded with bravado: “F— you,” he claimed he told the former president. McCarthy endorsed Trump early last month.

House Leadership Memoryholes Speaker Chaos, Shuffles Into Line Behind Trump

[deadpresidents]

Is there a chance that many of these cabinet picks don't get confirmed?

Don't forget that this country not only gave the Republicans control of the White House, but they also gave them a Senate majority and most likely will end up keeping them in charge of the House of Representatives, so they don't need a single Democrat to confirm ANY of these awful Cabinet appointments. The best possible hope is for some of the handful of Senate Republicans who are moderate-ish or still have a few ounces of integrity to oppose some of the crazier appointees. And there are going to be even less of those Senators left after January 3rd.

But this country, in its infinite fucking wisdom, gave Trump and the GOP a mandate, so they can pretty much do what they are planning on doing. That's why we spent the past couple of years reminding people how important the 2024 election was going to be for the rest of our lives. It's not like we can turn to the courts for help; Trump has locked down the judiciary for decades, as well, especially the Supreme Court.

And, here's the thing: I'm sure Trump realizes that it's pretty unlikely that Gaetz can get confirmed as Attorney General because he's enormously unpopular with his own colleagues in the GOP. A lot of Congressional Republicans despise him, and it's not even like with how most people in Congress hate Ted Cruz but grudgingly point out that he's effective at his job and actually a pretty smart dude. With Gaetz, they just think he's a clown and are happy to be rid of him. You can bet that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going to put all of his efforts into defeating a possible confirmation of Gaetz as AG, and McCarthy still has significant influence in Congress because of his record as a major fundraiser for candidates in both chambers.

I bet Trump is throwing a couple of nominees out there that he knows can't get confirmed -- like Gaetz -- to make it easier to get potentially hesitant Republicans to confirm other controversial nominees, like Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary (!). It's like when Pablo Escobar would import a bunch of cocaine into the United States that he knew was going to get seized in order to sneak tons of it through sneakier means. They are decoy douchebags to distract from the other douchebags he's also putting into the Cabinet.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Richard Luscombe at The Guardian:

Alarm over Donald Trump’s suggestion he would be willing to serve an unconstitutional third term as president, made during his meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, has prompted a Democratic lawmaker to seek a formal resolution rejecting the idea. The president-elect drew laughter from the Republican caucus for his remarks about the possibility of remaining in the White House beyond January 2029, which would be prohibited by the 22nd amendment limiting a commander-in-chief to two four-year terms of office. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out’,” said Trump, who incited the deadly January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 to try to cling on to power at the end of his first administration. On Wednesday Dan Goldman, the New York Democratic congressman, said he plans to file a motion this week specifically mentioning Trump and reiterating the two-term clause from an amendment approved by Congress in 1947, two years after Franklin D Roosevelt’s four-term, 12-year presidency before and during the second world war ended with his death.

A lengthy ratification process was completed in 1951 when 36 of the then 48 states gave their consent to the prohibition of any person who had been elected to the presidency twice from standing again. Goldman’s motion, according to NBC News, which saw a copy, features language highlighting the amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate as president of the United States” and reaffirms that it “applies to President-elect Trump”. The initiative, first reported by the New York Times, is unlikely to receive a scheduled vote in the House, which was projected on Wednesday to remain in Republican hands under the speakership of Mike Johnson, a vocal ally of the 78-year-old president-elect. But the Democrat could seek to introduce it as a privileged motion, which would guarantee it floor time, a procedural tool previously used to force votes on the ousting of Republican former speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, as well as the expulsion from the House of his fabulist former colleague George Santos.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) is set to file a motion to make sure the two term limit set by the 22nd Amendment is strictly enforced, whether consecutive or non-consecutive, to prevent Donald Trump from gaining any funny ideas about running for a 3rd term.

[mariacallous]

Nearly half a year has passed since the White House asked Congress for another round of American aid for Ukraine. Since that time, at least three different legislative efforts to provide weapons, ammunition, and support for the Ukrainian army have failed.

Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, was supposed to make sure that the money was made available. But in the course of trying, he lost his job.

The Senate negotiated a border compromise (including measures border guards said were urgently needed) that was supposed to pass alongside aid to Ukraine. But Senate Republicans who had supported that effort suddenly changed their minds and blocked the legislation.

Finally, the Senate passed another bill, including aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the civilians of Gaza, and sent it to the House. But in order to avoid having to vote on that legislation, the current House speaker, Mike Johnson, sent the House on vacation for two weeks. That bill still hangs in limbo. A majority is prepared to pass it, and would do so if a vote were held. Johnson is maneuvering to prevent that from happening.

Maybe the extraordinary nature of the current moment is hard to see from inside the United States, where so many other stories are competing for attention. But from the outside—from Warsaw, where I live part-time; from Munich, where I attended a major annual security conference earlier this month; from London, Berlin, and other allied capitals—nobody doubts that these circumstances are unprecedented. Donald Trump, who is not the president, is using a minority of Republicans to block aid to Ukraine, to undermine the actual president’s foreign policy, and to weaken American power and credibility.

For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand. In the week that the border compromise failed, I happened to meet a senior European Union official visiting Washington. He asked me if congressional Republicans realized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would discredit the United States, weaken American alliances in Europe and Asia, embolden China, encourage Iran, and increase the likelihood of invasions of South Korea or Taiwan. Don’t they realize? Yes, I told him, they realize. Johnson himself said, in February 2022, that a failure to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine “empowers other dictators, other terrorists and tyrants around the world … If they perceive that America is weak or unable to act decisively, then it invites aggression in many different ways.” But now the speaker is so frightened by Trump that he no longer cares. Or perhaps he is so afraid of losing his seat that he can’t afford to care. My European colleague shook his head, not because he didn’t believe me, but because it was so hard for him to hear.

Since then, I’ve had a version of that conversation with many other Europeans, in Munich and elsewhere, and indeed many Americans. Intellectually, they understand that the Republican minority is blocking this money on behalf of Trump. They watched first McCarthy, then Johnson, fly to Mar-a-Lago to take instructions. They know that Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent figure at the Munich Security Conference for decades, backed out abruptly this year after talking with Trump. They see that Donald Trump Jr. routinely attacks legislators who vote for aid to Ukraine, suggesting that they be primaried. The ex-president’s son has also said the U.S. should “cut off the money” to Ukrainians, because “it’s the only way to get them to the table.” In other words, it’s the only way to make Ukraine lose.

Many also understand that Trump is less interested in “fixing the border,” the project he forced the Senate to abandon, than he is in damaging Ukraine. He surely knows, as everybody does, that the Ukrainians are low on ammunition. He must also know that, right now, no one except the U.S. can help. Although European countries now collectively donate more money to Ukraine than we do (and the numbers are rising), they don’t yet have the industrial capacity to sustain the Ukrainian army. By the end of this year, European production will probably be sufficient to supply the Ukrainians, to help them outlast the Russians and win the war. But for the next nine months, U.S. military support is needed.

Yet Trump wants Congress to block it. Why? This is the part that nobody understands. Unlike his son, Trump himself rarely talks about Ukraine, because his position isn’t popular. Most Americans don’t want Russia to win.

Often, Trump’s motives are described as “isolationist,” but this is not quite right. The isolationists of the past were figures such as Senator Robert Taft, the son of an American president and the grandson of an American secretary of war. Taft, a loyal member of the Republican Party, opposed U.S. involvement in World War II because, as he once said, an “overambitious foreign policy” could “destroy our armies and prove a real threat to the liberty of the people of the United States.” But Trump is not concerned about our armies. He disdains our soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” I can’t imagine that he is terribly worried about the “liberty of the people of the United States” either, given that he has already tried once to overthrow the American electoral system, and might well do it again.

Trump and the people around him are clearly not isolationists in the old-fashioned sense. An isolationist wants to disengage from the world. Trump wants to remain engaged with the world, but on different terms. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants a “deal” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and maybe this is what he means: If Ukraine is partitioned, or if Ukraine loses the war, then Trump could twist that situation to his own advantage. Perhaps, some speculate, Trump wants to let Russia back into international oil markets and get something in return for that. But that explanation might be too complex: Maybe he just wants to damage President Joe Biden, or he thinks Putin will help him win the 2024 election. The Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was very beneficial to Trump in 2016; perhaps it could happen again.

Trump is already behaving like the autocrats he admires, pursuing transactional politics that will profoundly weaken the United States. But he doesn’t care. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans who understands the significance of this moment, describes the stakes like this: “We are at a turning point in the history not just of this nation, but of the world.” Once the U.S. is no longer the security guarantor for Europe, and once the U.S. is no longer trusted in Asia, then some nations will begin to hedge, to make their own deals with Russia and China. Others will seek their own nuclear shields. Companies in Europe and elsewhere that now spend billions on U.S. energy investments or U.S. weapons will make different kinds of contracts. The United States will lose the dominant role it has played in the democratic world since 1945.

All of this could happen even if Trump doesn’t win the election. Right now, even if he never regains the White House, he is already dictating U.S. foreign policy, shaping perceptions of America in the world. Even if the funding for Ukraine ultimately passes, the damage he has done to all of America’s relationships is real. Anton Hofreiter, a member of the German Parliament, told me in Munich that he fears Europe could someday be competing against three autocracies: “Russia, China, and the United States.” When he said that, it was my turn to shake my head, not because I didn’t believe him, but because it was so hard to hear.

[darkeagleruins]

FBI targeting of Conservatives is on purpose just like the House of Representatives who knew on day one that they would never impeach Joe Biden no matter what is also on purpose.

It all comes down to the Scope of Investigation.

The President of the United States determines the priority of investigations for Federal Enforcement Agencies.

The Speaker of the House sets the Scope of Investigations for the Oversight Committees.

Biden chose to set the FBI's Scope on "Domestic Terrorism" which is defined as Trump supporters under this administration.

The former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, set the Scope for Oversight Committees as informing the public only which means take no action. Speaker Johnson, the day he was elected as Speaker, with the gavel still in his hand, announced that there would be no changes to the Oversight Committees Scope of Investigation and left McCarthy's instructions in place.

All of it was preplanned by both Republicans and Democrats.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 22, 2023

The Senate has confirmed three top defense leaders. Last night it confirmed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he retires at the end of the month. Today, it confirmed General Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and General Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant.

The Senate filled the positions at the top of our military by working around the hold extremist senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put on more than 300 military promotions, allegedly because he objects to the government’s policy of providing leave and travel allowance for service members who have to travel to obtain abortions. 

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post focused on the House Republicans today, though, when she wrote: “The GOP completely gone off its rocker—incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You'd think the reporting would reflect it.”

Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Today, right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote over a Pentagon funding bill, keeping what is normally an easily passed bipartisan bill from even reaching the floor for debate. McCarthy acknowledged to reporters that he is frustrated. “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

The extremists do indeed appear unconcerned about the effects of their refusal to fund the government, and since they have the five or six votes they need to sink the measures McCarthy wants to pass with only Republican votes, this handful of representatives are the ones deciding whether the government will shut down. 

McCarthy could pass clean funding bills through the House whenever he wishes, but he refuses. To do so would mean working with Democrats, and that would spark a vote to throw him out of the speakership. And so, rather than keep the members in Washington, D.C., to work on the appropriations bills over the weekend, McCarthy recognized he did not have the votes he needs and sent them home.

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” 

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

Extremist leader Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) responded to Trump’s statement with his own: “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution” to fund the government,” he wrote. “Hold the line.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted: “House Republicans refuse to fund the government to protect Donald Trump.” 

Trump’s accusation that President Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department against him and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the opposite of what has really happened. Not only has Biden stayed scrupulously out of the Justice Department’s business—leaving in place the Trump-appointed leader of the investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, for example—but also we received more proof yesterday that it was Trump, not Biden, who weaponized the Justice Department against his enemies. 

Nora Dennehy, who abruptly resigned from former special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, explained in her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state supreme court yesterday that she quit because Trump’s Department of Justice was tainted by politics. Before joining the probe, she said, “I had been taught and spent my entire career at [the] Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner.” 

But Trump and his loyalists expected Durham’s investigation to prove that there was a “deep state” conspiracy against him, and then–attorney general William Barr seemed to be working to support that fantasy, even though there was no evidence of it (as shown by the fact the investigation ultimately fizzled). Barr was, she thought, violating DOJ guidelines in his public comments about the investigation and in his consideration of releasing an interim report before the 2020 election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it,” Dannehy said. “So I resigned.”

The resistance of the extremists to McCarthy’s leadership is spilling over into foreign affairs as well. Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., where he met with President Biden at the White House and with leaders at the Pentagon, and spoke to a closed-door session for the Senate. But he did not speak to the House of Representatives. While McCarthy met with him privately, the speaker maintained that “we just didn’t have time” for him to address the House. 

As part of their demands, House extremists want to cut funding for Ukraine’s defense. This would, of course, work to strengthen Russian president Vladimir Putin’s hand in his war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told MSNBC that it is “absolutely essential” to Putin that Trump win back the White House in 2024. “I think it is Putin's main lifeline in order to find some way to salvage what has been a debacle in Ukraine for him," Brennan said. "If Trump is able to return to the White House...Putin could have a like-minded individual that he can work with, detrimental to U.S. interests certainly and detrimental to Western interests overall.” The intelligence community assesses that Putin worked to help Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and is pushing pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine propaganda now.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assured Zelensky that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and work with allies and partners to make sure it has the weapons it needs. Lara Seligman of Politico reported today that the Pentagon will continue to fund Ukraine operations even if there is a government shutdown. Military activities deemed crucial to national security can be exempted from being shuttered during a government shutdown.

And finally, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances. 

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.”  Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote. 

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[inkandguns]

This is why even Republican voters hate the party

[mojave-pete]

Here Are The 22 Republicans Who Voted Against Jordan: 

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon voted for Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.

Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan voted for Florida Rep. Byron Donalds.

Colorado Rep. Ken Buck then voted for House Majority Whip Tom Emmer.

Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer voted for McCarthy.

New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito voted for New York GOP Gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin.

Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart voted for Scalise.

Texas Rep. Jake Ellzey voted for California Rep. Mike Garcia.

Georgia Rep. Drew Ferguson voted for Scalise

New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino voted for Zeldin.

Florida Rep. Carlos Giménez voted for McCarthy.

Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales voted for Scalise.

Texas Rep. Kay Granger voted for Scalise.

Michigan Rep. John James voted for former Michigan Rep. Candice Miller

Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly voted for former Speaker of the House John Boehner.

Virginia Rep. Jen Kiggans voted for McCarthy.

New York Rep. Nick LaLota voted for Zeldin.

New York Rep. Mike Lawler voted for McCarthy.

Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks ended up voting for Granger.

Florida Rep. John Rutherford voted for Scalise.

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson also voted for Scalise.

Minnesota Rep. Pete Stauber voted for Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman.

Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack voted for Scalise.

These RINOs (democRats) need to be un elected!

[odinsblog]

A super PAC funded by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass has spent more than half a million dollars in recent weeks urging Pennsylvania Democrats to support a primary challenger running against progressive House Democrat Summer Lee.

The Moderate PAC, which was formed in 2021, is airing ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District that attack Lee for what it calls her “extreme socialist agenda,” and calling on Democratic primary voters to choose Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel. The ads go after Lee for criticizing President Biden and the Democratic Party, and for voting against the debt ceiling bill negotiated between Biden and former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Lee is a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House Democrats that has stood apart from Democratic Party leaders on numerous policy issues, including most recently on U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The super PAC has spent at least $586,000 on running the ads since the middle of March, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The only donation that The Moderate PAC has ever reported receiving is $1 million from Yass that was given to the group in July 2022.

Yass is a billionaire investor who former President Trump recently said was “fantastic” after the pair connected at a donor retreat in Florida.

Yass has donated more than $62 million to conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, and $18 million to School Freedom Fund, a Club for Growth PAC that supports candidates who believe parents should receive taxpayer dollars to spend with private education companies of their choosing. Yass lives in Pennsylvania and has a net worth of about $27 billion, according to Forbes.

Yass has also donated heavily to congressional Republicans. Last year he gave $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, and in 2018 he gave $200,000 to its upper chamber equivalent the Senate Leadership Fund.

(continue reading)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos:

After months of House Speaker Mike Johnson dragging his feet, the House finally voted 316 to 94 to advance the foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Democrats made that happen—again. In fact, Democrats have been responsible for passing every key funding bill during Johnson’s tenure, a fact that continues to enrage the far-right Freedom Caucus. That, in turn, makes Johnson even more reliant on Democrats to keep his gavel.  The importance of this week’s success in the House is hard to overstate. For the first time in decades, the minority party bailed out the speaker in the Rules Committee—the most powerful committee in the House—to advance the aid bills to the floor. In fact, it’s called “The Speaker’s Committee” because it’s the vehicle the speaker uses to send their priorities—which are typically the priorities of the majority party—to the House floor. Three Republican extremists on the Rules Committee, the group former Speaker Kevin McCarthy installed in his negotiations to get the job last year, rebelled, leading all four Democrats on the committee—Reps. Jim McGovern, Mary Gay Scanlon, Joe Neguse, and Teresa Leger Fernández—to do the previously unthinkable and approve the package, sending it to the floor. 

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that Democrats were united—this time—in helping Johnson. “Once we made that decision, it was clear that we would do what was necessary to make sure that national security legislation was considered by the entire House,” he said. They did just that, ensuring that the legislation moved forward Friday morning with Democrats in the majority—165 Democrats and 151 Republicans in favor. Which means that, at least for the purposes of this critical package, Johnson shared control of the floor with Democrats—a quasi-coalition government, for the time being. That will be cemented Saturday, when the House votes on final passage for the individual components of the package, and Democrats will undoubtedly hold the majority again.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)'s job has been bailed out by the Democrats, infuriating the House Freedom Caucus nutters.

[mariacallous]

A Trump-appointed prosecutor dropped an unfalsifiable partisan bomb on President Joe Biden Thursday, playing into a years-long right-wing media campaign — and U.S. political journalists decided to treat it as a valid and impartial charge.

Biden, who has a 40-year record of public service in the U.S. Senate, as vice president, and in the Oval Office, is a self-described “gaffe machine” with a well-documented stutter. He is also, at 81, the oldest president in U.S. history.

The right has dedicated substantial time and resources since Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign to attributing his verbal miscues to his age. Republican political operatives surface out-of-context snippets of Biden’s misstatements and try to blow them up into national stories, and it is rarely-disputed canon in the right-wing media that the president is a mentally failing dementia patient. 

This argument blew up in their faces when Biden performed so well in a debate against then-President Donald Trump that the GOP resorted to accusing him of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and again in 2023, when his canny dealings with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy led McCarthy to describe him as “very smart” and Republicans to question how they’d been outmaneuvered by someone purportedly in mental decline. But undeterred by reality, the right has maintained the drumbeat over Biden’s mental status, driving up public concern over the president’s age.

Enter Robert Hur. Attorney General Merrick Garland presumably selected him as a special counsel to investigate Biden’s possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records because he thought he could quell potential complaints of political bias by putting in charge a former clerk to right-wing judges whom Trump appointed as a U.S. attorney with every incentive to do maximum political damage to the Democratic president. This is a regular pattern — Republican and Democratic administrations each appoint Republicans to investigate both Republicans and Democrats, though that never seems to halt the complaints from the right about the handling of those cases.

On Thursday, after a year-long investigation, Hur issued a 345-page report in which he concluded that “​​no criminal charges are warranted in this matter” and that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” But rather than stop there, he also levied an incendiary and gratuitous attack on Biden’s mental status, claiming that, “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur cited specific mental lapses he’d observed during their five hours of interviews — conducted at a time when Biden was responding to the international crisis caused by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel — including that his “memory appeared hazy” when discussing the intricacies of 15-year-old White House policy debates.

Hur’s argument that lawyers for the sitting president of the United States would argue in court that he shouldn’t be convicted of a crime because he is a senile old man is facially absurd. Indeed, Biden forcefully pushed back on the critique during a White House appearance Thursday night.

The special counsel’s actions drew sharp criticism from the legal community. Biden’s lawyers blasted claims about Biden’s memory in a draft report, saying, “We do not believe that the report's treatment of President Biden's memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.” On MSNBC, former FBI counsel Andrew Weissmann called the claims “wholly inappropriate,” “gratuitous,” and “exactly what you’re not supposed to do, which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions.” Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. solicitor general, likewise said that based on his tours in the Justice Department, Hur’s statements were “totally gratuitous” and a “too-clever-move-by-half by the special counsel to try and take some swipes at a sitting president.” And Ty Cobb, a former Trump lawyer, said on CNN that he had served on an independent counsel probe that declined to prosecute someone due to “health issues, but we didn’t tell the world that,” suggesting that such statements by Hur were inappropriate.

But by including those inappropriate and gratuitous statements, Hur put an official seal on a partisan attack. 

The right jumped on Hur’s claims, with Republican politicians and right-wing commentators falsely claiming that the special counsel had found that Biden “is not competent to stand trial” and “has dementia.” Some called for the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and remove him from office.

The mainstream political press, meanwhile, turned Hur’s insinuations about Biden’s mental health — and not his declination to prosecute — into the report’s big takeaway. Here’s a sampling of top headlines from major newspapers, political tipsheets, and digital outlets on Thursday and Friday.

New York Times: “Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024” Axios: “1 big thing: Report questions Biden’s memory” Semafor Flagship: “DoJ report questions Biden’s memory” Washington Post: “Special counsel report paints scathing picture of Biden’s memory” Wall Street Journal: “Biden’s Age Back in Spotlight After Special Counsel Report, Verbal Flubs” CNN: “Biden tries to lay to rest age concerns, but may have exacerbated them” ABC News: “Special counsel blows open debate over Biden age and memory” CBS News: “Biden disputes special counsel findings, insists his memory is fine” Politico: “Age isn’t just a number. It’s a profound and growing problem for Biden.

Stories about Biden’s mental state are clearly catnip for political journalists. They can demonstrate how “fair” they are by providing negative coverage of Biden to balance their treatment of his likely opponent Donald Trump, who is an unhinged authoritarian facing scores of federal and state criminal charges, including for attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential election. And they don’t need to bone up on policy nuances separating the candidates — “is the president addled” is an easy venue for hot takes.

The storyline is particularly toxic because no matter how many times it is repudiated by Biden’s public actions or the statements of people who have spoken to him privately, it cannot be falsified. The White House physician can release health summaries calling him “fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.” Democrats who have recently spoken to the president, like Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), and reporters who have recently interviewed him, like John Harwood, can attest to his mental acuity at the time of his special counsel interview. But Biden is still Biden, so he’s going to keep making gaffes, as he did Thursday night when he referred to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as “the president of Mexico,” leading journalists to downplay his newsmaking statements about the Israel-Hamas war and fixate instead on what the statement says about his mental health. 

The choice for reporters is how they respond to such misstatements. On NPR, Mara Liasson said that the White House is pushing back by pointing out that Biden’s foes, like Fox’s Sean Hannity and Trump, have had similar mix-ups.

“But the difference is that one of these missteps, one of these guys who forgets things, Biden, has become a viral meme, and it's become a big problem for him,” she said. “Trump's misstatements, for some reason, have not risen to that level.”

It’s true that Trump’s own verbal missteps have not coalesced into an overarching narrative about his mental fitness for office. But the reason why is obvious: Political journalists decided to treat Biden’s missteps as a big problem, and Trump’s as a small one. They’re setting the agenda, following the lead of the Republican Party, the right-wing media, and now, Hur.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Nov. 14, 2024

Donald Trump has demonstrated his lack of fitness for the presidency in countless ways, but one of the clearest is in the company he keeps, surrounding himself with fringe figures, conspiracy theorists and sycophants who put fealty to him above all else. This week, a series of cabinet nominations by Mr. Trump showed the potential dangers posed by his reliance on his inner circle in the starkest way possible.

For three of the nation’s highest-ranking and most vital positions, Mr. Trump said he would appoint loyalists with no discernible qualifications for their jobs, people manifestly inappropriate for crucial positions of leadership in law enforcement and national security.

The most irresponsible was his choice for attorney general. To fill the post of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the president-elect said he would nominate Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Yes, that Matt Gaetz.

The one who called for the abolishment of the F.B.I. and the entire Justice Department if they didn’t stop investigating Mr. Trump. The one who was among the loudest congressional voices in denying the results of the 2020 election, who said he was “proud of the work” that he and other deniers did on Jan. 6, 2021, and who praised the Capitol rioters as “patriotic Americans” who had no intention of committing violence. The one whose move to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 paralyzed his own party’s leadership of the House for nearly a month.

Mr. Gaetz, who submitted his letter of resignation from Congress on Wednesday after his nomination was announced, was the target of a yearslong federal sex-trafficking investigation that led to an 11-year prison term for one of his associates, though he denied any involvement. The Justice Department closed that investigation, but the House Ethics Committee is still looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, improper acceptance of gifts and obstruction of government investigations of his conduct. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, blamed Mr. Gaetz for his ouster, on the grounds that Mr. Gaetz “wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”

This is the man Mr. Trump has selected to lead the 115,000-person agency that he has called the most important in the federal government, a position whose enforcement role could cause the most trouble for any president with corrupt intent. Even for Mr. Trump, it was a stunning demonstration of his disregard for basic competence and government experience, and of his duty to lead the executive branch in a sober and patriotic way. It will now be up to the Senate to say he has gone too far and reject this nomination.

Mr. Trump’s list of appointments is just getting started but already includes two other unqualified nominations that he announced this week: former Representative Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense.

Ms. Gabbard, who previously represented Hawaii in the House and regularly appears on Fox News, is not only devoid of intelligence experience but has repeatedly taken positions in direct opposition to American foreign policy and national security interests. She has appeared on several occasions to side with strongmen like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Mr. Hegseth, a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” is perhaps even more unqualified, given the gravity — not to mention the budget — of the post he would assume. He enjoys some support from enlisted service members and veterans, but outside of serving two tours as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as time in Guantánamo Bay, Mr. Hegseth has no experience in government or national defense.

“He’s never run a big institution, much less one of the largest and most hidebound on the planet,” the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Wednesday. “He has no experience in government outside the military, and no small risk is that the bureaucracy will eat him alive.” The board went on to call Mr. Hegseth a “culture warrior” at a time when there are much bigger security issues for the Pentagon to be focused on.

It’s far from certain Mr. Hegseth could even obtain the security clearances required for the job. He has said he was one of a dozen National Guard members removed from service at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because of concerns that he was an extremist — possibly because of a tattoo he wears that is popular among white supremacists.

These are some of the most consequential roles in government, protecting the country from military and terrorist threats, investigating domestic criminal conspiracies, and prosecuting thousands of federal crimes every year. Yet to fill them Mr. Trump has resorted to people whose only eligibility for office is an apparent willingness to say yes to his every demand.

Mr. Gaetz in particular has joined Mr. Trump in expressing a commitment to exacting vengeance against anyone they believe has done them wrong. Mr. Trump began his campaign by saying “I am your retribution,” and Mr. Gaetz broadcasts nothing so much as that. He has no business leading an agency with the role of combating crime, fraud, violations of civil rights and threats to national security, among many other things.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, the department was protected by career prosecutors and other civil servants who understood that their primary obligation was to the dictates of the Constitution, not to the whims of the president. But Mr. Trump has promised to purge people like that from his second administration.

The possibility of extreme appointments like these was the reason the Constitution gives the Senate the right to refuse its consent to a president’s wishes. Last week, Republicans won control of the chamber. Now they will be confronted with an immediate test: Will they stand up for the legislative branch and for the American system of checks and balances? Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have already expressed strong skepticism of Mr. Gaetz’s nomination, and others have declined to express their support.

Mr. Trump clearly expects the Senate to simply roll over and ignore its responsibilities. He wants to turn the leaders of major important agencies into his deputies, remaking the federal government into a Trump Inc. organization chart entirely subordinate to him. He recently demanded that the Senate give him the ability to make recess appointments, a way of bypassing the Senate’s consent process when the chamber is adjourned for 10 days or more.

Even Republican senators refused to consent to that demand during his first term, to preserve their constitutional role, and on Wednesday Senate Republicans voted to reject as their leader Rick Scott of Florida, who said he would have no problem allowing recess appointments. Instead they chose John Thune of South Dakota, who is far more likely to uphold his chamber’s right to refuse consent of president nominations.

In Mr. Trump’s second term, senators will immediately be confronted with an extreme set of appointments even worse than those of the first term. That makes all the more important that they preserve the ability to say no.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/opinion/editorials/matt-gaetz-nomination-senate.html