#Senate Intelligence Committee Report

[xtruss]

More Than 10 Years Later, The Senate Torture Report Is Still Secret

I Filed A Lawsuit To Obtain The 6,700-Page Report with “Excruciating Detail” About The CIA’s Abuses.

— Shawn Musgrave | June 27 2024

The Control Tower is seen through the razor wire inside the Camp VI Detention Facility in Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, in 2019. AP

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page “torture report” about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release.

The document “includes comprehensive and excruciating detail” about the CIA’s “program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques,” the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary.

For years, there have been calls to release the full report, including from human rights watchdogs, one of its authors, and even Feinstein and some high-ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee.

“The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has fought to obtain CIA records. “We need to know our real history so we don’t repeat its crimes.”

So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director’s objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 — 12 years after Obama left office.

The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017.

The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies’ copies. In 2017, the Supreme Court declined to consider a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union. A law professor’s attempt to obtain the report under FOIA is currently pending before the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, following oral argument last fall.

In 2021, my lawyer, Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors, tried a different tack. We sued the Senate intelligence committee itself and its current chair, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., for a copy of the full torture report.

FOIA explicitly does not apply to Congress. Instead, McClanahan argued that the public is entitled to the committee’s copy of the torture report under the common law right of access, a doctrine that is well developed when it comes to court records but less so regarding the records of Congress.

“It is high time that this critical piece of American history is made public,” McClanahan said.

The district court rejected this argument in 2022, ruling that it had no jurisdiction to order the committee to disclose the report because of the U.S. Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from being sued for legislative activities. Last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

“In sum, we conclude that the report is a legislative document, and that the Speech or Debate Clause therefore protects it from compelled disclosure,” wrote Judge Cornelia Pillard for the unanimous panel.

If courts continue declining to wade into the matter, Congress could also take steps to make the torture report available before 2029. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who still sits on the intelligence committee, has previously called for it to be declassified.

“I’m not holding my breath,” Blanton said.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Artificial intelligence is worse than humans in every way at summarising documents and might actually create additional work for people, a government trial of the technology has found. Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence. The test involved testing generative AI models before selecting one to ingest five submissions from a parliamentary inquiry into audit and consultancy firms. The most promising model, Meta’s open source model Llama2-70B, was prompted to summarise the submissions with a focus on ASIC mentions, recommendations, references to more regulation, and to include the page references and context. Ten ASIC staff, of varying levels of seniority, were also given the same task with similar prompts. Then, a group of reviewers blindly assessed the summaries produced by both humans and AI for coherency, length, ASIC references, regulation references and for identifying recommendations. They were unaware that this exercise involved AI at all. These reviewers overwhelmingly found that the human summaries beat out their AI competitors on every criteria and on every submission, scoring an 81% on an internal rubric compared with the machine’s 47%.  Human summaries ran up the score by significantly outperforming on identifying references to ASIC documents in the long document, a type of task that the report notes is a “notoriously hard task” for this type of AI. But humans still beat the technology across the board. Reviewers told the report’s authors that AI summaries often missed emphasis, nuance and context; included incorrect information or missed relevant information; and sometimes focused on auxiliary points or introduced irrelevant information. Three of the five reviewers said they guessed that they were reviewing AI content. The reviewers’ overall feedback was that they felt AI summaries may be counterproductive and create further work because of the need to fact-check and refer to original submissions which communicated the message better and more concisely. 

3 September 2024

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday after a journalist revealed he was inadvertently added to a text chain discussing U.S. war plans. The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by HuffPost, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in. On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added him to a Signal group chat with more than a dozen Trump administration officials and aides including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he was also in the Signal chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would not admit whether she was a participant, though Goldberg reported she was; instead, she said the matter was “still under review.” As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred. He is also “responsible for initiating an investigation through the Attorney General for the recovery of records or other redress,” the lawsuit said. Goldberg’s article only shared a portion of the messages he received over two days. Most of the texts were “procedural” and “policy” talk, he wrote, but that changed on March 15.

Good to see that scumbag Pete Hegseth got sued for his role in the Signal chat leaks. DUI Hire Hegseth must go!

[my-midlife-crisis]

MAGA says Kamala Harris had done nothing as VICE PRESIDENT and is inexperienced.

But I'm sure they just weren't paying attention.

Anyways, here are the things she HAS DONE:

Legislative and Policy Leadership

Set a new record for the most tie-breaking Senate votes cast by a VP in history

Expanded the Child Tax Credit to cut child poverty in half

Provided $450 billion in relief to 6 million small businesses

Sponsored legislation to expand and strengthen Social Security

Led the push for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, federal worker unionization, and overtime pay for farm workers

Healthcare and Public Health

Led the White House Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis

Created the first-ever federal health and safety requirements for maternal emergency services in hospitals

Extended postpartum Medicaid coverage from 2 to 12 months to provide lifesaving coverage in 46 states

Connected 38,000 people to free 24/7 support with the new National Maternal Mental Health Hotline

Shut down scam healthcare websites

Sued drug companies for unlawful drug pricing and marketing tactics

Allowed Medicare to negotiate lower drug costs, expected to save taxpayers $6 billion

Capped the cost of insulin to $35/month for seniors

Voted against Trump’s budget cuts to Medicare and Medicaid

Reproductive Rights

Stood up for reproductive rights during Trump’s Supreme Court nominees’ confirmation hearings

Launched a national reproductive rights tour, becoming the first VP to visit a reproductive health clinic

Climate and Energy

Invested $370 billion to combat climate change and expand energy production

Economic Justice and Consumer Protection

Won $20 billion settlement for homeowners during the foreclosure crisis

Took on for-profit colleges that scammed Americans

Took on big corporations that took advantage of working people

Introduced a student loan forgiveness program for mental health professionals

Won settlements from companies that underpaid workers and violated labor laws

Announced administration’s plans to remove medical debt from credit reports

Protected seniors from fraud and abuse

Gun Violence Prevention

Oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention

Stopped nearly 30,000 firearms sales to convicted domestic abusers

Closed the gun show loophole to ensure sellers conduct background checks

Led the fight to pass a red flag law

Global Leadership and Diplomacy

Strengthened global alliances by meeting with more than 150 world leaders

Kept Americans safe while serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Judiciary and Legal Leadership

Oversaw the country’s largest state justice department

Prosecuted transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers

Presided over the vote to confirm Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Voted to confirm more women and people of color to make the judiciary look more like America

Officiated some of the nation’s first same-sex marriages

Well MAGA, what have you done lately?

[otherkinnews]

Russia proposes banning quadrobics and furry fandom

[This article was originally posted on the main blog for Otherkin News, on DreamWidth: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/95252.html Orion Scribner @frameacloud wrote it on December 8, 2024.]

The Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League is an organization for censoring the internet in Russia and educating the public about risks they may encounter there. The State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children helped establish the organization in 2011. The League’s Ombudsman is Irina Volynets. In the spring of 2024, Volynets said that the furry fandom and quadrobics are both dangerous hobbies. She said that furries dress as pigs and eat from troughs. (Later, a furry explained to the news that they don’t do that.) Soon afterward, Volynets claimed to have received death threats from quadrobists, which she said shows they’re generally hostile. The League doesn’t plan to ban cartoons for having furry characters. Instead, they want to ban quadrobics and furry fans for encouraging “crazy” behavior and having direct connections with LGBT. Russia bans LGBT for allegedly being an extremist movement.

At the end of the summer of 2024, Russian pop singer Mia Boyka humiliated a small child for expressing an interest in quadrobics. Boyka derided the cat-masked child to tears on the concert stage in front of a booing audience. Boyka then posted a video clip of that to her TikTok, asking her followers what they thought of quadrobics. The child’s parents filed a police report, because they hadn’t consented to Boyka doing any of this. The child had been brought on stage because she had gotten lost at the concert so her parents could come find her. Other celebrities and authorities scolded Boyka for her cruelty. Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, wrote to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation that she thought that what Boyka did was unacceptable treatment of a child, even though she didn’t support quadrobics either.

In September, soon after Boyka’s video clip went viral, Russian Senator Natalia Kosikhina proposed banning quadrobics. The Senator claimed that the sport was dangerous because supposedly, quadrobist teens attack and bite people who visit parks. So far, I haven’t found names, dates, or proof that those sorts of attacks actually happened. State Duma deputy Svetlana Bessarab says the ban is unnecessary, because the Code of Administrative Offenses would cover any bad behavior that could develop in connection with the hobby, whereas the hobby itself is a healthy form of play.

Something consistent across the articles that I read about this is that they describe quadrobics as a fashionable hobby among children and teens, derived from normal ways that smaller children play, and connected with the furry fandom. They don’t mention therianthropes.

About the author: Orion Scribner is a moderator on the Otherkin News blog. I used machine translation to get the gist of the Russian-language sources, which isn't a real translation, so I welcome corrections to that from fluent speakers. However, I never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on this blog.

Annotated List of Sources

Fliskaya, Anna, and Lomeiko, Alexandra (Анна Флиская, Александра Ломейко) (September 11, 2024). “Больше запретов — выше интерес. Кому и чем не угодили квадроберы.” (“More bans, more interest. Who and what did not please the quadrobists.”) 360.ru. https://360.ru/news/obschestvo/bolshe-zapretov-vyshe-interes-komu-i-chem-ne-ugodili-kvadrobery/ Archived September 27, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240927163837/https://360.ru/news/obschestvo/bolshe-zapretov-vyshe-interes-komu-i-chem-ne-ugodili-kvadrobery/

Bessarab’s interview with 360.ru, where he said the ban isn’t necessary. 360.ru is the news site counterpart of the TV satellite channel called "360°," which has 24-hour news. It's owned by the Russian government, and I noticed in one of the other articles from them that they had distorted the facts of events.

Kedr.Media (September 12, 2024). “«Может привести к трагическим последствиям». В Совфеде заявили о необходимости запрета квадробинга — детского подражания животным.” (“‘It could lead to tragic consequences.’ The Federation Council has declared the need to ban quad-racing — children's imitation of animals.”) Kedr.Media.https://kedr.media/news/mozhet-privesti-k-tragicheskim-posledstviyam-v-sovfede-zayavili-o-neobhodimosti-zapreta-kvadrobinga-detskogo-podrazhaniya-zhivotnym/ Archived December 4, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241204123625/https://kedr.media/news/mozhet-privesti-k-tragicheskim-posledstviyam-v-sovfede-zayavili-o-neobhodimosti-zapreta-kvadrobinga-detskogo-podrazhaniya-zhivotnym/

About the proposed ban, and how psychologists and authorities don’t support the ban and think it’s okay for children to be quadrobists. Kedr.Media is an independent social media blog that usually covers news about the environment.

Kholodov, Vlad (Влад Холодов) (April 26, 2024). “Психиатр Федорович: Увлечение «фурри» может нарушить психику ребенка.” (“Psychiatrist Fedorovich: The furry fandom can violate the psyche of the child.”) Общественной службе новостей (Public News Source). https://www.osnmedia.ru/obshhestvo/psihiatr-fedorovich-uvlechenie-furri-mozhet-narushit-psihiku-rebenka/ Archived May 26, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240526235959/https://www.osnmedia.ru/obshhestvo/psihiatr-fedorovich-uvlechenie-furri-mozhet-narushit-psihiku-rebenka/

This is the original interview with the children’s psychiatrist Alexander Fedorovich about the furry fandom. Despite the clickbait headline, Federovich says that the furry fandom isn’t inherently bad for children, but parents should supervise and pull children out of it if they get into age-inappropriate risks. That seems reasonable, but he does make a strange claim that role-play can interfere with a child’s developing sense of identity, and that it would be healthy only if they do not have an animal character all the time.

Kosolapova, Tatiana (Татьяна Косолапова) (September 12, 2024). “Психолог рассказала, как вести себя при встрече с агрессивными квадроберами” (“The psychologist told how to behave when meeting with aggressive quadrobist.”) Vzglyad. https://vz.ru/news/2024/9/12/1286730.html Archived November 8, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241108083139/https://vz.ru/news/2024/9/12/1286730.html In Russian.

An interview with a psychotherapist from Moscow State University, Vera Sukhikh, about what she thinks of quadrobics. She praises their athleticism as they play outside, and doesn’t think it’s inherently any harm. The journalist claims that quadrobists attack and bite people. The psychotherapist doesn’t actually agree that that happens, but advises that if they do attack you, they’re only children, so you should just explain to them that’s not appropriate behavior. Media Bias Fact Check rates this newspaper as a questionable source with propaganda and many failed fact checks.

Lutsenko, Nadezhda, and Petrov, Anatoly (Надежда Луценко, Анатолий Петров). (September 5, 2024). “«Замаскированная форма экстремизма». В России призвали запретить движение квадроберов.” (“‘A Disguised Form of Extremism’: Russia Calls for Banning Quadrobics Movement.”) 360.ru.https://360.ru/tekst/obschestvo/zamaskirovannaja-forma-ekstremizma-v-rossii-prizvali-zapretit-dvizhenie-kvadroberov/ Archived October 8, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008065407/https://360.ru/tekst/obschestvo/zamaskirovannaja-forma-ekstremizma-v-rossii-prizvali-zapretit-dvizhenie-kvadroberov/

Political scientist Alexei Yaroshenko has an interview with 360.ru about what he thinks of quadrobics. He says Russia should recognize quadrobics as an extremist movement and banned. He says quadrobists attack passersby because when people imitate animal behavior, they are no longer guided by human morals. He says it’s the same as how people can be transgender in the West. He compares it with the “Blue Whale Challenge,” and says that quadrobics is also a deadly game. (Orion’s note: the Blue Whale Challenge is an urban legend. It was a moral panic in 2016 where people were afraid that millions of youth were committing suicide as the climax of a specific series of dares being given to them by administrators on social media.) He says that if children play on all fours, then next they will want to cross the street at the wrong place, as animals do. Everything he said was out of touch with reality. This is also the only source I read that claimed that the pop singer hadn’t really insulted the little child, that she had told her she was beautiful without her mask. That’s a distortion of facts, because independent news sources and Kremlin-aligned ones had all agreed that the pop star had gone too far in mistreating the child.

Moscow Times Reporter (September 13, 2024). “What Is Quadrobics, Russia’s Viral But Divisive Youth Subculture?” The Moscow Times. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/09/13/what-is-quadrobics-russias-viral-but-divisive-youth-subculture-a86370 Archived October 8, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008073201/https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/09/13/what-is-quadrobics-russias-viral-but-divisive-youth-subculture-a86370

Media Bias Fact Check rates this as a high credibility source with a left-center bias. This is the English-language source where I first heard about this. Hat tip to Mord for having posted a link to it in the Discord server for the Otherkin Wiki. Many of the other sources that I’m listing here, I learned about them from this article.

Mustafa, Samer (Самер Мустафа) (September 11, 2024). “В России предложили запретить квадроберов.” (“Russia proposes banning quadrobics.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2024/09/11/23896279.shtml?updated

Media Bias Fact Check says this is “one of Russia’s leading online newspapers,” but rates the newspaper as a questionable source, lacking in transparency. This article is a secondary source. It says RIA Novosti is the primary source for this news. That one is elsewhere in my list of sources.

Nekasrov, Ivan (Иван Некрасов) (September 3, 2024). “«Позор тебе и твоим фанатам»: Миа Бойка унизила ребенка со сцены — теперь ее требуют отменить.” (“‘Shame on you and your fans:’ Mia Boyka humiliated the child from the stage – now they demand to cancel it.”) Chita.ru. https://www.chita.ru/text/culture/2024/09/03/74039252/ Archived September 9, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240909054834/https://www.chita.ru/text/culture/2024/09/03/74039252/ In Russian.

This magazine article goes into the most depth about the pop singer publicly humiliating a small child for liking quadrobics.

RIA Novosti (November 9, 2024). “В Совфеде предложили запретить субкультуру квадроберов.” (“The Federation Council proposed banning the quadrobics subculture.”) RIA Novosti. https://ria.ru/20240911/kvadrobery-1971964812.html Archived October 8, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008010414/https://ria.ru/20240911/kvadrobery-1971964812.html

About the Senator’s proposal to ban quadrobics. I think this article may be the primary source for her proposal. It sounds like she said it directly to this newspaper. If there’s a legal source for the proposed ban itself, I don’t know where to look for it. Media Bias Fact Check rates this Russian government owned newspaper as a questionable source with state propaganda and many failed fact checks.

Titorenko, Danila (Данила Титоренко) (April 23, 2024). “В Татарстане рассказали о новой вредоносной субкультуре с Запада.” (“Tatarstan talks about a new harmful subculture from the West.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/04/23/22855358.shtml

Volynets says she will fight the furry fandom because it is from the West. She says that furries engage in psychologically destructive behavior, such as– she claims– eating out of troughs like pigs.

Vesnina, Alexandra (Александра Веснина) (April 27, 2024). “«Размытие границ»: Волынец увидела в квадробике расчеловечивание.” (“‘Blurring the Lines’: Volynets Sees Dehumanization in the Quadrobists.”) Национальная служба новостей (National News Service). https://nsn.fm/society/razmytie-granits-volynets-uvidela-v-kvadrobike-raschelovechivanie Archived November 1, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241101212302/https://nsn.fm/society/razmytie-granits-volynets-uvidela-v-kvadrobike-raschelovechivanie

Volynets announced in Russia's National News Service press center that after she spoke against quadrobists, she received death threats.

Vesnina, Alexandra (Александра Веснина) (April 27, 2024). “«Дурачество!»: Милонов предрек исчезновение квадробики через полгода.” (“‘Stupidity!’: Milonov predicts quadrobics will disappear in six months.”) Национальная служба новостей (National News Service)https://nsn.fm/society/durost-milonov-predrek-ischeznovenie-kvadrobiki-cherez-polgoda Archived April 27, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240427112916/https://nsn.fm/society/durost-milonov-predrek-ischeznovenie-kvadrobiki-cherez-polgoda

Vitaly Milnov is the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family Protection, Paternity, Motherhood and Childhood. He says that the furry fandom and quadrobics are foolish teen fads that come from Japan and Korea. He says everyone will forget about it later this year.

Zakarian, Ekaterina (April 23, 2024). “Фурри заявили Ирине Волынец, что не подражают свиньям и не едят из корыта.” (“Furry told Irina Volynets that they do not imitate pigs and do not eat from troughs.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/04/23/22856132.shtml?updated

An anonymous administrator of a furry fandom community on the social media network VKontakte spoke up about how Volynets is spreading misinformation about furry fans. He says they don’t imitate animal behavior or eat from troughs, as Volynets claimed. Instead, they appreciate cartoon animals that behave like humans, including those from Soviet cartoons, not just from the West.

Zamanova, Rosalia (Розалия Заманова) (April 26, 2024). “Психиатр заявил об опасности субкультуры фурри для психики ребенка.” (“Psychiatrist warns about the dangers of a furry subculture for the psyche of the child.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/04/26/22877533.shtml

This is a secondary source reporting on the Public News Source’s interview with the children’s psychiatrist Alexander Federovich, which I have elsewhere in this list of sources.

Zamanova, Rosalia (Розалия Заманова) (May 2, 2024). “Волынец заявила об угрозах от представителей квадробика.” (“Volynets reported threats from representatives of quadrobics.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/05/02/22918993.shtml

Volynets claims that after she started writing on social media that quadrobists are dangerous, she received death threats from them.

Zamanova, Rosalia (Розалия Заманова) (September 12, 2024). “В Госдуме не поддержали идею запретить квадроберов в России.” (“Duma did not support banning quadrobics in Russia.”) Gazeta.ru. https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/09/12/23906437.shtml

This is a secondary source about the interview with 360.ru.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 16, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 17, 2025

In his final address to the nation last night, President Joe Biden issued a warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

It is not exactly news that there is dramatic economic inequality in the United States. Economists call the period from 1933 to 1981 the “Great Compression,” for it marked a time when business regulation, progressive taxation, strong unions, and a basic social safety net compressed both wealth and income levels in the United States. Every income group in the U.S. improved its economic standing.

That period ended in 1981, when the U.S. entered a period economists have dubbed the “Great Divergence.” Between 1981 and 2021, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the offshoring of manufacturing, and the weakening of unions moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Biden tried to address this growing inequality by bringing back manufacturing, fostering competition, increasing oversight of business, and shoring up the safety net by getting Congress to pass a law—the Inflation Reduction Act—that enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors with the pharmaceutical industry, capping insulin at $35 for seniors, for example. His policies worked, primarily by creating full employment which enabled those at the bottom of the economy to move to higher-paying jobs. During Biden’s term, the gap between the 90th income percentile and the 10th income percentile fell by 25%.

But Donald Trump convinced voters hurt by the inflation that stalked the country after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown that he would bring prices down and protect ordinary Americans from the Democratic “elite” that he said didn’t care about them. Then, as soon as he was elected, he turned for advice and support to one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, who had invested more than $250 million in Trump’s campaign.

Musk’s investment has paid off: Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported that he made more than $170 billion in the weeks between the election and December 15.

Musk promptly became the face of the incoming administration, appearing everywhere with Trump, who put him and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, where Musk vowed to cut $2 trillion out of the U.S. budget even if it inflicted “hardship” on the American people.

News broke earlier this week that Musk, who holds government contracts worth billions of dollars, is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. And the world’s two other richest men will be with Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who together are worth almost a trillion dollars, will be joined by other tech moguls, including the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance today, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, billionaire Scott Bessent, said that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts was "the single most important economic issue of the day." But he said he did not support raising the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 since 2009 although 30 states and dozens of cities have raised the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.

There have been signs lately that the American people are unhappy about the increasing inequality in the U.S. On December 4, 2024, a young man shot the chief executive officer of the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, which has been sued for turning its claims department over to an artificial intelligence program with an error rate of 90% and which a Federal Trade Commission report earlier this week found overcharged cancer patients by more than 1,000% for life-saving drugs. Americans championed the alleged killer.

It is a truism in American history that those interested in garnering wealth and power use culture wars to obscure class struggles. But in key moments, Americans recognized that the rise of a small group of people—usually men—who were commandeering the United States government was a perversion of democracy.

In the 1850s, the expansion of the past two decades into the new lands of the Southeast had permitted the rise of a group of spectacularly wealthy men. Abraham Lincoln helped to organize westerners against a government takeover by elite southern enslavers who argued that society advanced most efficiently when the capital produced by workers flowed to the top of society, where a few men would use it to develop the country for everyone. Lincoln warned that “crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings” would crush independent men, and he created a government that worked for ordinary men, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

A generation later, when industrialization disrupted the country as westward expansion had before, the so-called robber barons bent the government to their own purposes. Men like steel baron Andrew Carnegie explained that “[t]he best interests of the race are promoted” by an industrial system, “which inevitably gives wealth to the few.” But President Grover Cleveland warned: “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.”

Republican president Theodore Roosevelt tried to soften the hard edges of industrialization by urging robber barons to moderate their behavior. When they ignored him, he turned finally to calling out the “malefactors of great wealth,” noting that “there is no individual and no corporation so powerful that he or it stands above the possibility of punishment under the law. Our aim is to try to do something effective; our purpose is to stamp out the evil; we shall seek to find the most effective device for this purpose; and we shall then use it, whether the device can be found in existing law or must be supplied by legislation. Moreover, when we thus take action against the wealth which works iniquity, we are acting in the interest of every man of property who acts decently and fairly by his fellows.”

Theodore Roosevelt helped to launch the Progressive Era.

But that moment passed, and in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, too, contended with wealthy men determined to retain control over the federal government. Running for reelection in 1936, he told a crowd at Madison Square Garden: “For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves…. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he said. “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Last night, after President Biden’s warning, Google searches for the meaning of the word “oligarchy” spiked.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-us-are-studying-outcome-talks-ukraine-riyadh-kremlin-says-2025-03-25/

[rederiswrites]

Heather Cox Richardson's writeup of the meeting between Trump, JD Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky:

February 28, 2025 (Friday)

Today, President Donald Trump ambushed Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in an attack that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russia in its war on Ukraine. Vice President J.D. Vance joined Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office—his attendance at such an event was unusual—in front of reporters. Those reporters included one from Russian state media, but no one from the Associated Press or Reuters, who were not granted access.

In front of the cameras, Trump and Vance engaged in what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called a “mob hit,” spouting Russian propaganda and trying to bully Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire and signing over rights to Ukrainian rare-earth minerals without guarantees of security. Vance, especially, seemed determined to provoke a fight in front of the cameras, accusing Zelensky, who has been lavish in his thanks to the U.S. and lawmakers including Trump, of being ungrateful. When that didn’t land, Vance said it was “disrespectful” of Zelensky to “try to litigate this in front of the American media,” when it was the White House that set up the event in front of reporters.

Zelensky maintained his composure and did not rise to the bait, but he did not accept their pro-Russian version of the war. He insisted that it was in fact Russia that invaded Ukraine and is still bombing and killing on a daily basis. His refusal to sit silent and submit meekly to their attack seemed to infuriate them.

Trump appeared to become unhinged when Zelensky suggested that the U.S. would in the future feel problems, apparently alluding to the new U.S. relationship with Russia. “You don’t know that. You don’t know that,” Trump erupted. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.”

Zelensky answered that he was just answering the questions Vance was showering on him. “You are in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel,” Trump said. “We’re going to feel very good.”

Zelensky answered: “You will feel influenced.”

Trump disagreed. “We are going to feel very good and very strong.”

“I am telling you,” Zelensky said. “You will feel influenced.”

Trump appeared to lose control at that point, ranting at Zelensky that Ukraine was losing and that he must accept a ceasefire, but also complaining about former president Joe Biden and Barack Obama and echoing Putin’s talking points. When he could get a word in, Zelensky reiterated that he would not accept a ceasefire without guarantees of security and pointed out that Putin had broken a ceasefire agreement in the past.

Later, when a reporter picked up on that question and asked what would happen if Russia broke a ceasefire agreement, Trump became enraged. Among other things, he said: “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt….” Trump referred to what he calls the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” that Russia had worked to elect him in 2016. That effort, though, was not a hoax: the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 released an exhaustive report detailing that effort.

One of the things Russian operatives believed Trump’s team had agreed to, the report said, was Russia’s annexation of the parts of eastern Ukraine it is now trying to grab through military occupation.

Then Trump continued to rant at the reporter, rehashing his version of the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop at some length, tying in former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) in a larger stew that brought up Trump’s history with both Russia and Ukraine and their roles in his quest to hold power. Clinton ran against Trump in 2016, when Russia worked to elect him, and Zelensky came across Trump’s radar screen when, in July 2019, Trump tried to force Zelensky to say he was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden in order to smear Biden’s father Joe Biden before the 2020 election. Only after such an announcement, Trump said, would he deliver to Ukraine the money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s 2014 invasion.

Zelensky did not make the announcement. A whistleblower reported Trump’s phone call, leading to a congressional investigation that in turn led to Trump’s first impeachment. Schiff led the House’s impeachment team.

After unloading on the reporter, Trump abruptly ended today’s meeting, saying it was “going to be great television.” Shortly afterward, he asked Zelensky and his team to leave the White House.

This afternoon, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) posted: “Generations of American patriots, from our revolution onward, have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend. But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine. History will remember this day—when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.”

[usafphantom2]

SR-71 RSO recalls when he proposed NY ANG to convert from C-5 to Blackbird to save the SR-71 program

The Blackbird

Trying to save the Blackbird program

NY ANG from C-5 to SR-71

The Blackbird

The SR-71, unofficially known as the “Blackbird,” is a long-range, advanced, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft. The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., in January 1966.

Throughout its nearly 24-year career, the SR-71 remained the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour. On Jul. 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class — an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 mph and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet.

The US Air Force retired its fleet of SR-71s on Jan. 26, 1990.

SR-71 RSO recalls when he proposed NY ANG to convert from C-5 to Blackbird to save the SR-71 program

CLICK HERE to see The Aviation Geek Club contributor Linda Sheffield’s T-shirt designs! Linda has a personal relationship with the SR-71 because her father Butch Sheffield flew the Blackbird from test flight in 1965 until 1973. Butch’s Granddaughter’s Lisa Burroughs and Susan Miller are graphic designers. They designed most of the merchandise that is for sale on Threadless. A percentage of the profits go to Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. This nonprofit charity is personal to the Sheffield family because they are raising money to house SR-71, #955. This was the first Blackbird that Butch Sheffield flew on Oct. 4, 1965.

Trying to save the Blackbird program

My father, Blackbird Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO) Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield worked for the Skunk Works from 1985 to 1989 starting in 1990. He worked directly for and reported to Ben Rich then after that to Sherm Mullins and Jack Gordon, all three Skunk Works presidents.

They were trying to save the SR-71s from being prematurely retired, as my father explains in his soon to be published book From the SR 71 to the Skunk Works (the life and career of Colonel Richard “Butch” Sheffield);

SR-71 RSO recalls when his Blackbird had to divert to South Korea after Photographing all of the SA-2 SAM Sites in North Korea in One Mission

SR-71 RSO Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield

“During the late 1980s and the early 1990s Ben and I wined and dined just about everyone in Washington who could help save the SR. This included the then-current Vice President of the United States Cheney, many Senators, and Representatives—most of the people from the intelligence community leaders of the Department of Defense, and officials.

“What people didn’t understand about Ben and his ‘close relationship was this. I found out what programs Ben Rich was cleared for he had been cleared on overhead programs (intelligence satellites) I took him into the only secure vault at the Skunk Works where we could talk about these programs then I went to the chalkboard and drew a diagram explaining the entire overhead complex what they did who they supported and what their shortcomings were. I explained to him how things worked in Washington DC; I learned all this while working at the Pentagon and later for the House Ways and Means Committee for Congress after that Ben wanted me near him to advise him.”

Rich and my father were in a car in the Washington DC area with the highest-ranking member of the New York Air National Guard. This was late 1989 1990-time frame.

NY ANG from C-5 to SR-71

FRED pilot explains why in the 1980s empty C-5 airlifters had to carry a rock in their cargo bay

This print is available in multiple sizes from AircraftProfilePrints.com – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS. C-5M Super Galaxy 60th Air Mobility Wing, 349th Air Mobility Wing, 22nd Airlift Squadron, 07-0042 – Travis AFB, CA.

My father recalls;

“I was trying to save the SR with my knowledge of the program and my access to high-level persons in Washington. One of them was the commander of the New York Air National Guard. At the time this guard unit was flying the Lockheed C-5. They were having trouble keeping them flying because of funds for spare parts. I took him to the right people on Capitol Hill to help fix the problem. As we got to know each other better I asked him if his guard unit would like the SR-71s. He almost jumped out of the car. Of course, he wanted them.

“This was in 1990. We almost pulled it off, giving the SR’s away. The Air Guard Commander (a three-star General) called the New York guard commander into his office in Washington and chewed him out. The chief of staff Larry Welch had forbidden this action. He was afraid the SR-71 would continue to show up the Air Force at Air Shows!”

@Habubrats71 via X

[saywhat-politics]

Trump Officials Defend Dumbest Group Text, Hypocrisy Runs Wild & Vance Disagrees with Daddy Donald

Team Trump is under scrutiny after a reporter from the Atlantic was added to a group chat discussing a planned military strike in Yemen, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is busy blaming the reporter, they fired up the fair and balanced right wing news media to cover their tracks, several of the parties who were on the chat got grilled by Democrats this morning during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Trump claims he is perfectly OK with it and not planning to fire anyone, JD Vance apparently did not agree with Trump’s plan, Daddy Donald decided to send JD ‘s wife Usha to Greenland, Marjorie Taylor Greene is hard at work on issues people really care about, and we celebrate Women’s History Month with help from Donald Trump.

[mariacallous]

Back in March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard delivered a view of Iran to the House Intelligence Committee that was in line with Trump-administration policy: hostile toward Tehran, but also skeptical of the need for American intervention. Unfortunately for her, though, things have changed in the past three months.

“Iran continues to seek to expand its influence in the Middle East,” Gabbard said. Nevertheless, she said, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear-weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” (Presumably she was referring to Ali Khamenei and not his long-dead predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini.)

That may have been President Donald Trump’s view in March too, but this week, Trump told reporters that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear bomb. When asked about Gabbard’s testimony, Trump dismissed it. “I don’t care what she said,” he said. “I think they were very close to having one.”

This kind of harsh dismissal of American intelligence was a hallmark of Trump’s first term in office. Shortly before his inauguration, he compared intelligence agencies to Nazis, and somehow things got worse from there. He infamously sided with Russia’s Vladimir Putin rather than the intelligence community on the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election, accused former officials of treason, and reportedly clashed with DNI Dan Coats over his unwillingness to take his side in political conflicts.

That problem was supposed to be solved in his second term. Rather than choose someone like Coats, a former senator who had experience with intelligence, or his successor, John Ratcliffe, who claimed he did, Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress who had endorsed him for president. (Ratcliffe, having proved his loyalty to Trump in the first term, was named CIA director.)

Gabbard shared a few things with Trump: an odd affinity for Putin’s government, and a public stance of opposing American intervention. But above all, her qualification for the job was that she, like Trump, bore a huge grudge against the intelligence agencies, making her an ideal pick in his Cabinet of retribution.

Now the limits of this approach to appointments are coming into view.

Gabbard’s beef with the IC was her sense that it was too belligerent and interventionist, especially with regard to her pals in places such as Syria and Russia; she was also angry because she had reportedly been briefly placed on a government watch list for flying. Gabbard opposes foreign wars, and it appears that she doesn’t want intelligence to implicate her friends overseas. But when the intelligence points against American intervention, as it does with Iran, she is happy to stand behind it despite her skepticism of the analysts.

Trump, by contrast, doesn’t want the intelligence to complicate his choices at all. The president was fine with the IC assessment from earlier this year, when his line was that he opposed wars and would keep the United States out. But now that he has made a quick shift from trying to restrain Israel from striking Iran to demanding Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”—a baffling demand of a country with which the U.S. is not at war—and contemplating American attacks, the conclusion that Iran isn’t that close to a bomb is a real hindrance.

Politico reports that Trump was annoyed by a video Gabbard posted earlier this month in which she warned about “political elite and warmongers” risking nuclear war, and she was reportedly excluded from a Camp David meeting. (The White House has insisted that all principals are on the same page, though Trump’s dismissive comments about Gabbard earlier this week are telling.) Cutting out the DNI at a crucial moment like this is an unusual choice, though the role has never been well defined: Although it was created to sit atop the U.S. intelligence agencies and coordinate among them, officials such as the director of the CIA have often wielded more power.

Trump’s saber-rattling has created rifts within the MAGA coalition, as my colleagues Jonathan Lemire and Isaac Stanley-Becker reported yesterday. In reality, Trump was never the dove that he made himself out to be. He has consistently backed American involvement overseas. During the 2016 election, he claimed that he had been against the Iraq War from the start, placing the idea at the center of his campaign even though there is no evidence for it. As president, he escalated U.S. involvement in Syria, backed the Saudi war in Yemen and vetoed Congress’s attempt to curtail it, and—in one of his major foreign-policy successes—assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Throughout his first term, he treated the troops as a political prop.

These tendencies have become more pronounced in his second term, though Trump’s favorite places to send troops remain within national borders: in the streets of Los Angeles or parading through Washington, D.C. He launched a series of major strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, despite the misgivings of his dovish vice president, and then abruptly stopped them when it became clear that no easy victory was forthcoming. This is the crux of the matter with Iran too. Although he may be hesitant about American involvement overseas, Trump loves displays of strength. He sees one in Israel’s attacks on Iran, and he wants in on the action.

Whether the MAGA doves believed Trump really was one of them or simply hoped they could persuade him in the moment is something only they can answer. But his actions this week show that his real resentment was not toward intervention or even intelligence itself. It was toward anything and anyone who might restrain his caprices.

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Senator Edwin Johnson to Secretary of State Dean Acheson Urging the United States’ Recognition of the People's Republic of China

Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of StateSeries: Central Decimal FilesFile Unit: 893.01/10-249 to 11-649 [1/3]

United States Senate

Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce

October 26, 1949

Hon. Dean Acheson

Secretary of State

Washington, D. C.

My dear Secretary Acheson:

I have watched with great interest the developments in China and the sincere efforts of our State Department to react in an intelligent, realistic and constructive manner to that dynamic situation.

I have sincerely believed that the former policy of military and other support for the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai Shek has been in error since available evidence has demonstrated the completely corrupt and irresponsible character of that government.

It seems to me we must recognize that after centuries of cruel military and tyrannical oppression, the mass of Chinese people have lost hope and are now turning to a government which paints pretty pictures and might possibly give them needed social and economic change and the peace they want so badly.

It is reported to me that our missionaries whose experience in China is many generations old are unanimously of the opinion that the new government in China should be promptly recognized. It is their experience that this government might possibly cooperate in a forthright manner and might possibly create conditions which will mean progress in their work.

I am informed by various shipping lines, cotton exporters, and other American businessmen who have transacted business in China for 40 years that the new government is eager to conduct normal trade with American businessmen. More than this, these businessmen are fearful that a continued policy of non-recognition may lose to us the Chinese market for many years. Since the British Government and British businessmen plan to make this market the exclusive province of British shipping, it seems desirable that our State Department should promptly take those steps which would protect the interests of American business in China. [complete transcript at link]

[misfitwashere]

Rejected Cabinet Nominees

Some historical guidance

TIMOTHY SNYDER

JAN 16

Historically, nominees for cabinet positions have been rejected by the Senate or have withdrawn their candidacies in order to prevent that outcome. It is not common, but nor is it abnormal. The power of "advice and consent" granted to the Senate by the Constitution has been exercised in practice. 

A number of Trump's appointments are simply outrageous by historical, ethical, strategic, or any other standards. The ongoing confirmation hearings tend to normalize the bizarre (although Democrats and a couple of Republicans have asked meaningful questions.)

So a few examples of failed nominations might serve as one tool among others to keep the events of the moment in perspective.

Secretary of Defense

John Tower was the first George H.W. Bush nominee for secretary of defense. He has served in the Senate for more than twenty years, and had chaired its Armed Services Committee. He was an author of the Tower Commission report on the Iran-Contra Affair. He was questioned by Senators about his past alcohol use and womanizing.

Pete Hegseth, unlike Tower, has zero knowledge, experience, or qualifications for the of running the Department of Defense. His program, judging from his books, is to ignore foreign enemies, politicize the armed forces, and carry out a "Holy War" against Americans. Pete Hegseth's womanizing and alcohol use, by his own account, far exceed Tower's. Unlike Tower, Hegseth paid off a woman who filed a police report accusing him of sexual assault in circumstances that, by her account, strongly suggest the use of a rape drug. Hegseth had to resign from both of the advocacy groups he ran because of incompetence and drunkenness. He regularly had to be physically carried away from events because he was too drunk to stand. In once case he had to be prevented from joining strippers on a stage. He also displayed total financial and budgetary incompetence. In this connection it is worth mentioning that the Department of Defense has the largest budget of any government in history.

There is a disturbing tendency to forgive Hegseth everything because he is a veteran. This seems unfair to veterans who do not display his failures of character. But it also contains within itself the troubling idea that soldiers can do no wrong: an idea that Hegseth himself seems to hold. That way lies military dictatorship. In any event: Tower served in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War and was in the reserve for decades.

The Senate rejected Tower.

Director of National Intelligence.

This position was created relatively recently and elevated to cabinet rank still more recently. It is meant to oversee the work of all American intelligence agencies. So a relevant historical comparison will be to the position of director of central intelligence.

Anthony Lake was second-term Bill Clinton's nominee for the position of director of central intelligence. Lake was eminently qualified. He is one of the most accomplished American diplomats of the post-1945 period. Among many other positions he was Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under Carter, and National Security Advisor during Clinton's first term. His nomination ran into trouble because of two occasions when his deputies on the National Security Council failed to inform him of discussions with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee about donor access to the White House.

Tulsi Gabbard has no qualifications to be Director of National Intelligence. A very long list of Americans with national security experience regard her as a danger to the safety of Americans. She is known abroad as a supporter of two of the world's most violent dictators, Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. As a congresswomen she consistently made excuses for Assad, whose regime killed something like half a million people before it was overthrown. She proposed that the Russo-Ukrainian war could be ended "in the spirit of aloha" and repeats Russian propaganda tropes. Russian media refer to Gabbard as "comrade" and "girlfriend" and "our agent."

Under Senate pressure, Lake withdrew his candidacy.

Attorney General

Zoe Baird was nominated by Bill Clinton for attorney general at the beginning of his first term in 1993. She was eminently qualified professionally for the job. She had however hired undocumented immigrants in her household and had not paid Social Security taxes for them.

Pam Bondi is Donald Trump's nominee for the same position. As part of Donald Trump's legal team, she sought to justify his attempt to overturn the results of an election. As Florida attorney general, she accepted luxurious perks from relevant parties in cases she was considering. In that capacity she also failed to pursue a case against Trump University after a political group supporting received a check, an illegal donation, from Trump's foundation signed by Trump. As a lobbyist she represented a Russian money manager convicted in Kuwait and served as a public relations representative for the government of Qatar. She was paid more than $100,000 a month just for that assignment, which she left in order to defend Trump from conviction after his first impeachment. Then she went back to working for Qatar.

Under Senate pressure, Baird withdrew her candidacy.

Succeeding events created the closest thing we have to a historical standard for rejecting cabinet nominees by Republican Senators: the employment of undocumented workers.

After Baird withdrew, Clinton nominated Kimba Wood. She too was eminently qualified to serve as attorney general. It emerged that she too had hired an undocumented worker as a nanny. Wood did so at a time when this was legal, and she paid the appropriate taxes. Nevertheless, the mere fact that she had employed one undocumented person, entirely legally, stopped her candidacy. in 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Linda Chavez to be secretary of labor. She then withdrew her candidacy after it emerged that she had paid an undocumented person to work in her household.

So one might move beyond the obvious point that Bondi's scandals dwarf Baird's (and Hegseth's those of Tower, and Gabbard's those of Lake) and propose a pragmatic line of questioning that would apply to Trump's other nominees. Have they or their companies employed undocumented workers? It seems a reasonable question to ask, especially of the billionaires. Given the coming administration's oft-declared hard line on illegal immigration, this would seem to be a minimum standard for its cabinet nominees.

The Senate has a constitutional role, and in the past has exercised it. Some of the nominees presented to them this month are wildly inappropriate to the point of risking the integrity of American national security and calling into question basic principles of the rule of law. The history of failed nominations reminds us just how far some of these people fall below any reasonable standard.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

[fandom-frenzy]

Hey, here's another script to call your senators. Remember that calling tends to hold more weight than email -but maybe you'll be lucky like me and your senator's voicemail inbox will be full and you'll be forced to email instead. And either is better than not contacting anyone at all!

Are you also horrified by the things elon is doing in government like getting access to social security data and classified intelligence reports?

call your senators. please. you'll basically always be directed to a voicemail and won't have to talk to anyone, and if you call on an evening or weekend you'll have an even better chance! let them know this is SO SO WRONG.

I've tailored this personal message to a republican so I'm trying to keep it even in tone, marginally respectful, and focusing on checks and balances, the role of congress, all those things GOP says they care about so that I have a better chance of being heard. but you can change this however you want.

-------------

Hi, my name is [name] and I’m a voter in [state]. I’m calling to urge Senator [person] to speak out and take action against the recent actions taken by the Department of Governmental Efficiency. As a group created by an executive order with no oversight by congress or leadership confirmed by congress, this committee’s actions show overreach and no regard for the system of checks and balances.

Classified information, personal information, and certainly the way funds are paid - explicit power of Congress - should not be in the hands of a committee with no oversight and no legal authority to act without the support of Congress. I urge you to ensure government stays strong by staying distinct.

[schraubd]

Will Matt Gaetz Finally Cause the Senate GOP To Stand Up To Trump? My Money's On No!

I really thought I'd laid the bar on the floor, but somehow Donald Trump has already burrowed under it by announcing (former*) Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general. I had the pleasure of sharing this news with several of my law school colleagues, where it literally provoked a laugh-out-loud howl of incredulity. It wasn't just my people though. Senate Republicans also seem rather blindsided by the pick: The selection of Mr. Gaetz blindsided many of Mr. Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill. The announcement was met with immediate and unvarnished skepticism by Republicans in the Senate who will vote on his nomination. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the pick — and predicted a difficult confirmation process. [....] Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, when asked about Mr. Gaetz’s selection, said, “I don’t know the man other than his public persona.” Mr. Cornyn said he could not comment on the chances that Mr. Gaetz, or Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, would be confirmed: “I don’t know — we’ll find out.” “He’s got his work cut out for him,” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said as other senators dodged questions from reporters. Representative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, told reporters that many members of the G.O.P. conference were shocked at the choice of Mr. Gaetz for attorney general, but mostly thrilled at the prospect that he might no longer be a member of the chamber. The House, Mr. Miller added, would be a more functional place without Mr. Gaetz. He predicted a bruising confirmation fight, adding that if the process revealed evidence to corroborate the allegations of sex trafficking against Mr. Gaetz, he would not be surprised if the House moved to expel him, as it did with Representative George Santos. Mr. Santos lost his seat after the Ethics Committee documented violations of the chamber’s rules and evidence of extensive campaign fraud.   But things aren't all bad. You'll never guessed who raced ahead of the pack to greet Trump's failson pick with open arms: One of the few lawmakers to offer a positive assessment was a staunch Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called Mr. Gaetz “smart” and “clever” but predicted tough confirmation hearings. So, how long will it take for the Senate GOP caucus to fall in line? I'm guessing it'll happen before the first confirmation hearing. (That is, if we have confirmation hearings). Oh, and speaking of organizations that have put their dignity in a lockbox, we did finally learn what bridge is too far for the ADL, which blistered the Gaetz selection because of his "long history of trafficking in antisemitism," including "defending the Great Replacement Theory." How he's distinguished from the ADL's glowingly-praised Elise Stefanik, who also promoted Great Replacement Theory, was left unsaid. * Gaetz hastily resigned his seat following the announcement, also getting ahead of a planned House Ethics Committee report that was set to issue findings on Gaetz's myriad, er, "controversies" -- including allegations of sex trafficking minors. Score one for QAnon! via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/WqtsjKg