Month: January 2022

House Intel’s next top Republican prepares a sharp turn from the Trump years

Posted on (Updated by By Olivia Beavers and Andrew Desiderio

Rep. Mike Turner, the new top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, wants to turn the page on the panel’s partisan past. He’s got his work cut out for him.

For four years, the committee was a chaotic microcosm of the partisanship that dominated Donald Trump’s presidency, in part due to ex-Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-Calif.) pro-Trump sycophancy. Now that Nunes has left Congress and the intelligence panel, lawmakers in both parties are hoping the bitter fights can cease with the GOP side led by Turner — who’s occasionally broken from the ex-president and is generally more independent-minded than the man he’s succeeding.

But that won’t be easy for Turner, who has to contend with lingering Trump-era tensions both inside and outside of the committee’s secure basement workspace at the Capitol.

The Ohioan hopes to repair cross-aisle relationships tattered by the panel’s politically charged investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and its subsequent prominence in Trump’s first impeachment. Reorienting the panel toward its original mission of empowering the intelligence community, however, requires Republicans to reckon with the lightning-rod status that current Chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) maintains on the right.

It’s an atmosphere that Turner himself has contributed to. Turner signed onto a 2019 letter calling for Schiff’s removal, but repeatedly declined to endorse an ouster of the California Democrat in an interview this week — a possible sign of a detente.

“Obviously, Adam Schiff is not going to change fundamentally who he is. And that certainly is going to be a complicating factor,” Turner told POLITICO. “But on national security, I have a strong record of being able to work across the aisle and to try to advance what’s important to our country. And I’m going to continue in that vein.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy picked Turner to replace Nunes, who resigned from Congress earlier this week to take a job as the CEO of Trump’s new media venture.

Turner, 61, generally shuns the press but is known for his occasionally combative witness questioning — as well as his tendency to reaffirm the neoconservative foreign-policy doctrines that Trump’s allies sought to eviscerate and replace with a populist, isolationist worldview. When Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested in November that the U.S. shouldn’t be taking Ukraine’s side in its territorial disputes with Russia, Turner tangled live on the air with the conservative icon.

“Apparently you need a little education on Ukraine,” Turner told Carlson. “Ukraine is a democracy. Russia is an authoritarian regime that is seeking to impose its will upon a validly elected democracy in Ukraine. And we're on the side of democracy.”

The exchange underscored that, on the substance, Turner’s ascension represents at least a partial departure from the committee's tumultuous Trump years.

“I think it’ll be clear as to who on the committee is committed to making a transition to national security, and those who are more committed to the partisan culture that Schiff has promoted,” Turner told POLITICO this week, turning his focus to overseas threats from Iran to North Korea. “There are real adversaries, and we need to focus on those.”

Turner lauded Nunes for his work running point on the Russia probe for the GOP. Even so, he signaled an eagerness to move beyond a period that often found Republicans dismissing or avoiding questions about Trump’s more erratic tendencies as well as his campaign’s repeated contacts with Russian nationals.

“I’m coming in at a time where the biggest threat to our country is our external adversaries, and making certain that as a country, we focus on those and rise to those occasions," Turner said, adding that Nunes was pushing back on “narratives that were absolutely false” about Trump.

Schiff's communications director, Lauren French, said: "Even amidst the necessity of investigating the former president, the Committee continued to meet its immense responsibility of overseeing the intelligence agencies and keeping the country safe."

“Our work will go on with the new ranking member, and we hope it will be productive,” French added. “We will not allow false personal attacks to distract us from conducting the important business of the committee.”

Nunes was a loyal foot soldier for the Trump cause on Capitol Hill and a trusted confidant of the ex-president. During his final months in Congress, though, Nunes grew disengaged from the committee, skipping hearings and briefings while preventing the passage of a bipartisan intelligence authorization bill that the panel has long prioritized.

Democrats and Republicans alike say they expect Turner to be much more active than Nunes, given his interest in the committee’s core duties — chiefly, oversight of the intelligence community.

“I think this year is a good chance for Mike and Adam Schiff to reset the relationship,” said former Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a former member of the committee who retired from Congress in 2021.

“I have a lot of respect for Mike Turner,” said Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the panel whom some Republicans see as a potential successor to Schiff. “He gets into the substance of national security in a way that I think is really … good. And I know he’s committed to it. I’ve been sad to see [Nunes] sort of pull away.”

Turner’s new position is unlike any other panel leadership role; the Ohio Republican will join the so-called Gang of Eight, the group of senior lawmakers privy to the most sensitive classified information. The group includes party leaders in the House and Senate, as well as the top Democrat and Republican on both chambers’ intelligence committees.

Inside the committee room, however, Republicans believe the hard work of restoring the panel’s bipartisan nature likely will require a full leadership shakeup that replaces Schiff as well as Nunes. Discussions have occurred within the GOP about potentially removing Schiff from the intelligence committee if Democrats lose the House majority this fall, despite Turner's unwillingness to entertain that prospect.

While Republicans seem to be more serious about yanking another member from the panel — Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), another popular bogeyman for his political opponents — Schiff is not off the table if he again assumes this committee role. But making any move against panel Democrats after the midterms would undoubtedly risk throwing the committee back into partisan war footing.

And that's not how Turner, first elected in 2002 with a background as a mayor and trial lawyer, tends to play his hands. GOP colleagues see him as poised to try to rebuild the panel's bipartisan reputation, with or without Schiff leading its Democrats.

His flashes of independence from Trump will help him there: The Ohioan condemned the then-president’s infamous 2019 phone call with Ukraine’s president, which sparked impeachment proceedings. Earlier that year, Turner blasted Trump for “racist” tweets about four female lawmakers of color, in which he said they should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.”

After their combative interview, Carlson went after Turner on Twitter for voting against Trump’s bid to defy Congress by redirecting funds for a southern border wall that were initially appropriated for military construction projects.

While he's willing to buck prominent conservatives, Turner is also prepared to singe Democrats. During a more recent appearance on Fox News, Turner slammed Schiff as “largely discredited” and accused him of pushing the “Russia hoax” — a favorite phrase of Nunes' — for political purposes.

Turner said the California Democrat had “transformed the committee from its focus which is protecting our national security and the intelligence community, to being a vendetta against the Trump family and even the Trump campaign.”

That Nunes-like language aside, those who have worked with Turner believe he'll take a sharp turn toward the previous legacy of the panel.

“That committee is really important and really powerful, and has a lot to do with why we live the way that we live,” said former Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), who served on the intelligence committee with Turner. “And I think that it's just better served to go back to being a special committee that works well together.”

Posted in Uncategorized

Latino lawmakers recall Jan. 6 terror: ‘I’m not white, I’m going to be a target’

Posted on by Gabe Ortiz

California Rep. Jimmy Gomez said the halls of Congress had already been hostile before the previous president incited his white insurrectionist supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election one year ago today.

The Oversight and Reform vice-chair told Newsweek that the House was amid a vote on the Build Back Better bill last November when he was verbally accosted in an elevator by an unmasked Republican legislator. "You people are ruining the fucking country,” he said Texas Rep. Roger Williams told him. “Gomez, who is Mexican-American, was taken aback,” Newsweek reported. Williams would later vote to overturn democracy and against the impeachment of the disgraced former president.

“Every member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) inside the building during the attack who spoke with Newsweek thought it would be the last day of their life,” the report said leading into the one-year anniversary of the insurrection. Gomez said that even as he considered ways to look like less of a target to the insurrectionists—such as removing his Congressional pin and jacket—he could not allow himself to just run away. “So he began helping lawmakers who were older and couldn't move as quickly as he could,” the report continued.

California’s Nanette Baragán told Newsweek that she had similar intuition to hide her pin. But other things could not be so easily hidden.

"The part that is not often spoken of is the fear members of Congress of color had," she said in the report. "When you're a person of color and a member of Congress, the thought on that day was ‘hide your pin, I'm not white, I'm going to be a target.’ That was something that was really real."

It wasn’t just members of the Hispanic Caucus, either. “One year after Jan. 6, Sarah Groh, Representative Ayanna Pressley’s chief of staff, still does not know what happened to the panic buttons torn from their office,” Boston Globe’s Jazmine Ulloa tweeted earlier this week. “It’s one of many details still under investigation, and a memory that continues to haunt her.”

Ulloa writes in her piece that the U.S. Capitol is also a workplace for janitors and food service workers. Some of these workers, notably Black janitors, had to clean up the mess created by white insurrectionists.

For Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar, the insurrection brought back terrible memories of the white supremacist mass shooting that shook El Paso in 2019. In tweets immediately after the insurrection, she wrote that the terrorists “not only breached the Capitol and got into Statuary Hall, but they were banging on the locked doors of the House Chamber as we were told by Capitol Police to get down on our knees.” 

In his House testimony last July, U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell recalled how he also had his life threatened by racist insurrectionists.

“I was at the front line and apparently, even through my mask, they saw my skin color and said, ‘You’re not even an American,’” the Latino U.S. military veteran told legislators. Naturalized as an American citizen more than two decades ago, Gonell said insurrectionists “called me traitor, a disgrace and that I, an Army veteran and a police officer, should be executed.”

"This wasn't a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection,” President Biden said during stirring remarks on Thursday. “They weren't looking to uphold an election. They were here to overturn one."

In a statement Thursday, Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego said that “if we want to keep our democracy intact, then we must bring to justice those responsible for Jan. 6th, including everyone from those who laid siege to the building to those who sat idle in the White House or in Congress as their plans came to fruition. He urged the passage of pro-democracy legislation including the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. “To do so is not a partisan or political issue—it is the bare minimum we must do if we want to keep our democracy.”

On first anniversary, President Biden puts blame for Jan. 6 squarely on Trump

Posted on by Brandi Buchman

For the first anniversary of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks from Statuary Hall, emphasizing that the United States will not become a haven for autocrats or tinpot dictators. 

Without naming him specifically, President Biden ripped into former President Donald Trump over the course of his more than 25-minute long speech, asking Americans to reject the lies of widespread election fraud that still dominate so many corners of the Republican party and are endlessly propped up by Trump’s sycophants still in Congress. 

“The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free,” Biden said. “We know the truth…. close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see? Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag representing a cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War that never, ever happened but it happened here in 2021.” 

Those who ransacked the halls, terrorized those inside, broke windows, kicked down doors, used American flags as weapons; those who erected a gallows for then-Vice President Mike Pence, defecated in the halls—these are no patriots, Biden said. 

Police officers were engaged in “medieval” battle and as Biden recalled, some officers were “more afraid that day than fighting in Iraq.” More than 140 police officers were injured. 

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“They were not looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution,” he said. “This isn’t about being bogged down in the past, this is about making sure the past isn’t buried. That’s the only way forward.” 

A year after the assault, Trump’s propaganda about the 2020 election has given rise to continued extremism in America and this has occurred despite the fact that Trump’s own attorney general, judges he appointed during his term and election officials in battleground states have widely and resoundingly found zero evidence of widespread fraud. 

Trump, and those who have aligned themselves with his war of disinformation, have “placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy, he added. 

“The Big Lie being told by the former president and Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection took place on Election Day,” Biden said. “Is that what you thought you were doing or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?”

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The president also warned that the United States is at an “inflection point.” 

“We’re engaged anew in our struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few, between the people’s right to self-determination and a self-seeking autocrat,” he said. 

American adversaries like China or Russia are depending on democracy in the west to falter, the president added. 

“They’ve told me democracy is too slow, too bogged down in division to succeed in today’s rapidly changing complicated world and they’re betting America will become more like them and less like us,” Biden said. “I do not believe that and that is not who we are and not who we will ever be.” 

Though the House is officially out of session until Jan. 10, as the anniversary unfolds Thursday, lawmakers will deliver speeches throughout the day and a prayer vigil will be held on the steps of the Capitol this evening.

Senators, on the other hand, are in session though there has been some hesitation on keeping legislators and staff on hand, according to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican. Collins, who voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection last January. She told The New York Times earlier this week that Jan. 6 was a “sad” and “terrible day” but bringing a lot of attention to it may not be a “great idea.” 

“For some staffers, for some of the Capitol Police officers, it brings back a lot of trauma and I just think it would be better if we aren’t here,” she said. 

Collins did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday after Biden’s remarks. 

When Biden left the Capitol Thursday after his speech, he fielded questions from reporters who asked him why he did not call Trump out by name. 

Biden re-emphasized that to rectify what happened on Jan. 6, or even try to reconcile it in the national psyche, there must be the realization that it’s not about any one person. 

“It’s not about me, it’s not about whether I’m president or she’s vice president,’ Biden said of his second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris. “It’s about the system. That somebody decides to put himself above everything. I did not want to turn it into a contemporary political battle between me and the president. It’s way beyond that, way beyond it.” 

The select committee investigating the assault remains busy at work and is preparing to commence public hearings. 

Numerous questions still swirl around that day, especially over what former President Donald Trump was doing or saying in the 187 minutes that he effectively went silent and allowed his supporters to ransack the citadel of American democracy before finally releasing a statement. Records and evidence obtained by the committee so far have suggested that Trump sat idly by, watching the bloodshed on television from the security of the White House. 

Trump administration officials, like former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, reportedly engaged with Trump during this time and were a critical part of the planning and preparation of the attempted coup. Meadows initially agreed to cooperate with the committee but backtracked halfway through, citing claims of executive privilege.  That conduct earned him a criminal contempt of congress referral from the House of Representatives. The next move belongs to the Department of Justice. 

If Meadows is indicted—which will be a tall order given the difficulty in irrefutably proving contempt—he will be the first former White House chief of staff in many years to see this fate. 

Just yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland worked on assuaging concerns about the progress being made on its sweeping probe into the Capitol attack. 

“The Justice Department remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under the law, whether they were present that day or otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts,” Garland said. 

A year later, reflecting on the attack of the U.S. Capitol, it often feels like you are peering through the looking glass. 

Minutes after Biden’s remarks with Vice President Harris, Trump issued a statement calling the speech “political theater” and a “distraction.” 

Later Thursday, Trump’s lapdogs, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia will speak about Jan. 6 in a propaganda-fueled press conference. 

From Statuary Hall this morning, Biden addressed legislators who have turned their back on not only reason but on the will of more than 80 million Americans who did not vote for Trump. 

“While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else,” Biden said.  

Despite Republicans widespread revisionist history, Biden emphasized that he would continue to work with those in the GOP who still have a “shared interest in democracy.” 

Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat who was the first lawmaker to call for Trump’s impeachment the first time around, reflected on the attack Thursday. 

“Last year’s dastardly assault on American democracy remains a painful, open wound, and if left untreated, will infect the heart of the body politic. The degree of hate and violence displayed in the citadel of our nation’s democracy was chilling and put countless lives in grave danger. For our nation to unite and move forward from this horrific attack, the truth of what happened that day must be known and never forgotten. We cannot allow such a devastating assault to occur again,” Green said.

Over in the Senate, the majority whip and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin, announced Thursday that he will lead a public hearing on the threat that domestic terrorism poses to the United States. 

“We must condemn violence in all of its forms, but the intel community has made clear: the most significant & most lethal threat comes from violent white supremacists & militia violent extremists,” Durbin tweeted.

Today marks a year since the tragedy of Jan. 6. We have been working diligently to bring justice to this matter. pic.twitter.com/ffVcDesI0f

— Bennie G. Thompson (@BennieGThompson) January 6, 2022

An extensive report published by the Atlantic Council unpacked how domestic extremists have “adapted and evolved” in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault. Hate groups that were in force in Washington on Jan. 6, like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, for example, have learned how to adapt after their defeat at the Capitol, glomming onto more conservative causes and using them opportunistically. That astroturfing has been vast and has included the group throwing its support behind the anti-vaccine movement. 

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alexander Mayorkas on Jan. 5 told reporters that the federal government was “not aware of any specific or credible threat” posed on Thursday's anniversary. He did say, however, that DHS is operating at a “heightened level of threat” because the danger posed  by domestic extremists is “very grave.”

Mayorkas said Tuesday that the Homeland Security agency is distributing $180 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to nonprofit groups to address targeted violence they may experience. 

Combatting domestic extremism has become a renewed priority since Biden took office. In March, after Biden issued an executive order demanding agencies beef up their efforts to combat homegrown terrorism, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment stating that militia groups and white supremacists pose some of the nation’s greatest threats. 

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: One year later

Posted on (Updated by Chitown Kev

The thirty-ninth President of the United States and worldwide observer of democratic elections, Jimmy Carter, writes for The New York Times about why he fears for the future of American democracy and proposes steps to halt that downward trajectory.

After I left the White House and founded the Carter Center, we worked to promote free, fair and orderly elections across the globe. I led dozens of election observation missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, starting with Panama in 1989, where I put a simple question to administrators: “Are you honest officials or thieves?” At each election, my wife, Rosalynn, and I were moved by the courage and commitment of thousands of citizens walking miles and waiting in line from dusk to dawn to cast their first ballots in free elections, renewing hope for themselves and their nations and taking their first steps to self-governance. But I have also seen how new democratic systems — and sometimes even established ones — can fall to military juntas or power-hungry despots. Sudan and Myanmar are two recent examples.

For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct.

First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law. Citizens should be able to participate easily in transparent, safe and secure electoral processes. Claims of election irregularities should be submitted in good faith for adjudication by the courts, with all participants agreeing to accept the findings. And the election process should be conducted peacefully, free of intimidation and violence.

Lynn Schmidt of the St. Louis Post Dispatch asserts that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a big eff’ing deal.

Many on the right suggest that Jan. 6 was no big deal. There were no guns and few lives lost. The U.S. Capitol had been attacked before. Since the building was finished in 1800, there have been several dangerous incidents, including when the British set fire to it in 1814 during the War of 1812.

It is not what physically happened to the Capitol on Jan. 6 or the people working inside it that makes it a big deal in my opinion; it’s the justifications cited by nefarious actors that motivated the insurrection. The emergency comes from the idea that the express will of the people could be completely disregarded.
If a person voted and then that vote was unjustifiably not counted or thrown out, why would the person ever vote again in the future? A core tenet of our democracy is the belief and trust that our votes will be counted. The Trump administration and many in the GOP have injected doubt and cynicism into our electoral process. By subverting the system by which votes are cast and counted, they ensure there can no longer be accountability to voters. That is a very big deal for the survival of American democracy.

“The people working inside” the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was a big deal to me; after all, as I wrote in the pundit round-up of Jan. 7, 2021, I used to be one of those people.

And I’m still “sad and damned angry” about it.

Wes Moore writes for the Washington Post writes that while American democracy is far from perfect, it’s worth taking democratic actions to keep it.

On this first anniversary of what was unquestionably a concerted assault on the very principles that have enabled the Great American Experiment during the course of these past 245 years, we must determine who was ultimately responsible, and how it came to be that our system of government and the processes that are supposed to safeguard its continuance nearly failed — and still might.

Democracy, it’s been said, is not so much a noun as it is a verb. It’s what we do each and every day to make representative government possible and truly reflective of the needs and aspirations of citizens. It depends on adhering to the laws that govern our society broadly and interactions individually. And it means holding accountable anyone who would flout those laws in ways that undermine public confidence in offices and officeholders for self-serving purposes. It’s about safeguarding the pursuit of the common good and the just application of consequences for those who choose not to.

This system of government that we revere has at times failed the very people it promises to protect and defend. As we know and must reckon with, it’s been slow in granting the full measure of rights and privileges to all it claims to represent. It is, as we have seen, also fragile and subject to the darker agendas of those who would subvert its founding principles for personal aims and partisan ends.

Our painful history of failing to live up to the principles of democracy is not, however, an indictment of the principles themselves.

Renée Graham of the Boston Globe reminds us that there were two insurrections on Jan. 6, 2021.

Never let it be forgotten that there were two insurrections on Jan. 6. The first was the violent breaching of the Capitol that left five people dead and injured about 140 police officers. The second came hours later, also in the same hallowed space, when 147 Republicans voted to overturn the election. That, too, was an attempted breach of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.

Republicans could have repudiated the Big Lie; instead, it’s become a GOP version of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” A recent national University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found 71 percent of Republicans still denounce the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. They also blame Democrats, Antifa, and the Capitol Police for the insurrection. And, of course, they want investigations into the lead-up to Jan. 6 to stop. In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, one third of Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans, said violence against the government is sometimes justifiable.

Meanwhile, the GOP is doing what has happened so often in American history — burying the truth in unmarked graves. That continues with how this planned anti-democratic assault is being discussed as a riot. It was bad enough last May when Republican Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia compared the insurrection to a “normal tourist visit.” But Mike Pence, the former vice president targeted for assassination by those who built a gallows and chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” continues to portray anything about Jan. 6 as some kind of vengeful partisan folly by Democrats.

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian announces the creation of a database, The Insurrection Index, that tracks elected officials involved in attempts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

The Insurrection Index seeks to identify all those who supported Trump in his bid to hold on to power despite losing the election, in the hope that they can be held accountable and prevented from inflicting further damage to the democratic infrastructure of the country.

All of the more than 1,000 people recorded on the index have been invested with the public’s trust, having been entrusted with official positions and funded with taxpayer dollars. Many are current or former government employees at federal, state or local levels.

Among them are 213 incumbents in elected office and 29 who are running as candidates for positions of power in upcoming elections. There are also 59 military veterans, 31 current or former law enforcement officials, and seven who sit on local school boards.

When the index goes live on Thursday, it will contain a total of 1,404 records of those who played a role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. In addition to the 1,011 individuals, it lists 393 organizations deemed to have played a part in subverting democracy.

Matt Fuller of the Daily Beast chronicles his memories of a long day at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the aftermath of Jan. 6, most of the media still hasn’t really figured out how to cover Republicans. I’d include myself in that statement. We mostly just pretend Jan. 6 didn’t happen, as if it’s totally normal to let Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) pontificate about gas prices or inflation while we ignore the lies he continues to spew about who’s actually responsible for the attack—or the role he played in undermining our democracy and endangering those of us who were at the Capitol that day.

It’s difficult to write a story in which you stop in every paragraph to note whether the particular Republican you’re mentioning returned to their chamber the night of Jan. 6, with blood still drying in the hallways, and voted to overturn the will of the people. But maybe we should.

I certainly look at those Republicans differently. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma—the old John Boehner ally who’d post up in Capitol hallways and deliver colorful quotes about House conservatives—isn’t so funny to me anymore. [...]

Many of these Republicans would have proudly overruled the voters. They are people who not only downplay the violence and the seriousness of the attack but celebrate rioters, who lionize the insurrectionists who paid the ultimate price for believing their lies.

Jean Guerrero of the Los Angeles Times points out that some antecedents to the actions taken on Jan. 6 and since can be found in the run-up to the passage of California’s Proposition 187 in 1994.

What force could make a vast swath of Americans want to hurt others and end our hallmark peaceful transitions of power? The answer is predictable: About 75% of pro-insurrection adults, according to the study, have the delusion that Democrats are importing “Third World” immigrants to “replace” them.

This racist and largely antisemitic conspiracy theory is not relegated to the dark cellars of 8Chan and Telegram. It’s openly promoted by leading conservatives, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson. And it’s a theory that has violence at its core, inspiring white terrorist massacres.

That’s not a new play for Republican leaders. They opened the Pandora’s box of “replacement” paranoia in California in the 1990s with scaremongering about a decline in the state’s white population and an imagined Mexican “reconquista.” Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, for one, grew up in California during that time.

That nativist craze took many forms, including border vigilantism and unfounded voter fraud claims — precursors to Trump’s Big Lie. During the 1988 elections, uniformed guards were hired by local Republicans to patrol mostly Latino neighborhoods, where some held up signs saying “Non-citizens can’t vote.” In 1990, ousted San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock peddled voter fraud hysteria on his talk show.

I’m not rushing to Jan. 6th without first acknowledging the significance of Jan. 5th. The determination, organizing & resilience of Black voters in Georgia resulted in the election of the first Black Senator since Reconstruction & the first Jewish statewide elected official ever. pic.twitter.com/583ok1fi4I

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) January 5, 2022

Joan Walsh/The Nation

The anniversary of the landmark January 5 Georgia victories, which elected a Black minister and a Jewish activist to the United States Senate, reminds us that Democrats have the majority of voters on their side, across the whole country—at least when they’re able to vote. The anniversary of January 6 reminds us that the minority has most of the racists, the violent people, and those who want to topple not just Democrats but democracy. Also, and maybe most important: It reminds us, or should remind us, of those who insist that they’re not about any of those things but who defend Trump and his insurrectionists nonetheless. Those people, who include almost all Republican leaders, might be the most culpable of all.

Democratic congressional leaders are planning an array of events to commemorate the January 6 tragedy. But Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is orchestrating the most fitting memorial: He plans to introduce voting rights legislation this week.

“Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness—an effort to delegitimize our election process, and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration—they will be the new norm,” Schumer wrote in a letter to senators on Monday, in which he laid out his plans to move on democracy reforms and voting rights.

Gregory D. Stevens of STATnews notes that one difference between the reactions of the United Kingdom and the United States to the appearance of the Omicron variant is the willingness of citizens of the U.K. to “protect the NHS.”

In the U.K., for example, which began seeing the effects of Omicron ahead of the U.S., officials from England’s prime minister to managers of top soccer clubs have called on the public to “protect the NHS.” The NHS, or National Health Service, is the U.K’s taxpayer-funded, government-run health system. Although it is impossible to attribute success to a single message, England has been vaccinating people at a rate three to four times greater than the U.S since mid-December.

That loyalty is what makes a message like “protect the NHS” ring true. The system is nearly universally seen as a public good, and in need of protecting. Most people in the U.K. understand that getting vaccinated benefits the NHS precisely because the public has an equal stake in its success. An unvaccinated person who ends up in the hospital takes resources such as beds, doctors, and nurses away from others.

[...]

In the U.S., we like our doctors but are not loyal to the health care system. Many Americans valorize the doctors and nurses working on the frontlines of Covid-19, but you would be hard pressed to find someone who wants to protect the medical groups, HMOs, and other complex insurance convolutions undergirding our system. In fact, just 19% of the public believes the health care system works at least “pretty well,” less than in every other country studied.

I’m not going to argue the merits or demerits of any health care system like single-payer in this space.

I will say that it would take a long time for any system that’s adapted anywhere to become a “national institution” like the U.K.’s National Health Service.

John Cassidy of The New Yorker says that the economy should rebound further in 2022 but beware of the “known unknowns.”

The first known unknown is the virus. Most economic forecasters are assuming that the Omicron wave, like the Delta wave, will recede before too long, leaving behind little lasting damage to the economy. “Omicron could slow economic reopening, but we expect only a modest drag on service spending because domestic virus-control policy and economic activity have become significantly less sensitive to virus spread,” the economic team at Goldman Sachs said, in unveiling its 2022 predictions. That assessment could well turn out to be accurate—let’s hope it is—but it’s too soon to say. Over the weekend, the seven-day average of new covid cases set a record of more than four hundred thousand. Since Christmas Eve, bad weather and Omicron have caused the cancellation of more than fifteen thousand commercial flights. In the last week of December, the number of people eating at restaurants was about thirty per cent below the same period last year, according to data from OpenTable.

Even if the U.S. economy does get through the Omicron wave relatively unscathed, with few or no lockdowns, the new variant could affect production in the Chinese economy, which supplies many components and finished goods to the U.S. China just recorded the largest number of weekly cases since suppressing the initial wave of the pandemic. The spread of Omicron represents the biggest challenge yet to Beijing’s “zero covid” policy. A decision to lock down large parts of China’s economy could exacerbate problems in the supply chain. In a globalized economy, no country—even one as big and powerful as the U.S.—exists in isolation.

Charles Blow of The New York Times writes that “critical race theory” has become the new “Shariah law” of conservatives.

The truth is that critical race theory is generally not taught in grade school, but that was never the point, in the same way that in the 2010s conservative lawmakers were never really concerned about what they called the threat of Shariah law in the United States when they introduced bills to ban it in American courts; what they wanted was to advance a racist, Islamophobic agenda.

As a 2019 report born of a partnership between USA Today, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity pointed out, conservative lawmakers had drawn on the same basic rubric for these bills, a model perfected and touted by a network of far-right activists and organizations like the Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded in the 1980s by Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official “who pushes conspiracy theories alleging radical Muslims have infiltrated the government.”

The report detailed how “at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.”

Critical race theory is the new Shariah law, a boogeyman the right can use to activate and harness the racist anti-otherness that is endemic to American conservatism.

Finally today, Jeffrey Barg, The Grammarian writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer about a new and controversial addition to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary has just added cultural Marxism to its records. And that’s a big victory for a lot of people who fearmonger about cultural Marxism but probably don’t even understand what it is. Not because they can now look up the term — rather, the term’s addition to the dictionary means it has gained enough cultural currency that it warrants a definition. People who are worried about cultural Marxism washing over vulnerable, patriotic capitalists talked about it enough that dictionary editors finally took notice.

What is cultural Marxism, and why now, more than 80 years after the term first appeared in print?

The OED’s primary definition is worth reading in full: “Used depreciatively, chiefly among right-wing commentators: a political agenda advocating radical social reform, said to be promoted within western cultural institutions by liberal or left-wing ideologues intent on eroding traditional social values and imposing a dogmatic form of progressivism on society. Later also more generally: a perceived left-wing bias in social or cultural institutions, characterized as doctrinaire and pernicious.”

Those qualifiers speak volumes: “Used depreciatively,” “said to be promoted,” “perceived left-wing bias,” “characterized as.” The OED isn’t saying that cultural Marxism is all of these things, but rather that it’s perceived and presented as such. In other words, the people using this term probably have an agenda, so watch out.

Everyone have a great day!

Jan. 6, in their own words: Members of Congress look back and forward

Posted on by By POLITICO Staff

As told to Anthony Adragna, Olivia Beavers, Sarah Ferris and Marianne LeVine.

Every denizen of the Capitol faced an attack one year ago — but 523 of them returned to session hours later. We spoke one-on-one with 13 of those lawmakers about the day's effects. Excerpts from those interviews follow, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

… on when the reality of the attack sank in
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.)

I still remember looking on that TV and watching the people run up the steps. Thinking, when they hit the steps — I knew we were in trouble.


Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

During that impeachment trial, when we saw it all knit together — in terms of the maps and the videos and the footage and saw the whole thing taking place at once — it was shocking.


Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.)

It was already a hard day for me. It was the one-year anniversary of my brother's passing [former Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.)]. My whole family was gathered at my parents’ house. I wasn’t there. And they're texting me, as I'm sitting on the floor watching the proceedings occur, saying, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m thinking, ‘They’re asking me, am I OK for the one-year mark.’ I didn't realize they were watching television, watching the Capitol get stormed. No idea.

That was the case for a lot of us. We were getting pinged before we had any clue.


Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.)

Rep. Ann Kuster was one of four lawmakers less than 50 feet from a group of rioters as they were evacuated from the House gallery: The full story has not come out on the House side. On the Senate side, we saw the video of Mitt Romney. … That for me is a part of the story that I need to convey, because I was a part of that. Every second counted.

The front of the mob was coming toward us in that hallway. You could hear them. I didn't see them because I was fussing [with my gas mask].

A group of them had come up that staircase and come down that hallway. … That eight-and-a-half minutes, with all my colleagues still stuck inside the chamber, pinned down, calling their families to say goodbye.

I'm trying to convey how close this came in the House.

… on trying to stay safe, physically and emotionally, one year later


Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

I don't go anywhere in Connecticut without police protection when I'm doing my official duties. That was not the case prior to Jan. 6. The level of harassment directed at my family is more significant than it was. The job is different now. These people are not well, and they come after us in a very, very different, very personal way.


Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.)

Rep. Rodney Davis was there when a gunman attacked a GOP Congressional Baseball Game practice in 2017: I've seen the vitriol before. I mean, I had to run from bullets on a baseball field with my friends a couple of years ago.


Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.)

We need to figure out a way to do security in the people’s House. … I want everybody who's here to be safe. But I don't want to use your safety as an excuse not to get this place back to where people can come see it. And there's a way to do both.”


Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)

I always felt safe going into the Capitol. The only times I have not felt safe were on 9/11 and on Jan. 6. I feel safe going now, but I’ll always have that tiny little question mark in my mind.

Kuster, who’s helped develop a support group for the dozens of Democrats who were in the gallery that day: We have this text chain. And sometimes the text is, ‘Who's bringing the wine?’ or teasing [Rep.] Jason Crow (D-Colo.) about bringing pie. And then sometimes it's, ‘I'm really having a hard time.’ ‘Here's a book about trauma that might help you.’

It's an incredibly powerful support system. I'd say that at this point, we love each other. We care for each other. And it's not so much that the story is about us. The story is about this place that we love that is so important to our country and to our future.

… on how the riot has affected relationships between the parties

Tester: I think it would be really easy to say ‘I’m never working with these guys again.’ But ultimately, in the end, I’m here to get things done and I’m here to try to move the ball forward.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)

Especially in the House, there seems to be more evidence of [Jan. 6 affecting relationships].

Kuster: Well, [on Jan. 7], I was getting a Covid vaccine. The scene was surreal. It's like out of a movie. I was sitting in those seats with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and two southern Republican men.

And the two of them are sitting there, Thursday morning, bragging about how many busloads of supporters they had brought to Washington, like that they had paid for, presumably. Maybe their campaign funds. And they're literally bragging about that, sitting right next to me.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.)

I will not vote for a bill that comes to the floor that's sponsored by people who voted to overturn the election results, unless they’ve acknowledged the error of their ways. Which so far consists of [Rep.] Tom Rice (R-S.C.), and that's it. I wouldn't go so far as to say not work with people, because good ideas come from all corners.

Davis, one of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s original picks for the House Select Committee on Jan. 6: Nobody's failing to work with the Democrat committee chairmen who voted to not certify George W. Bush's election in 2004. I don't see a push to not work with [Rep.] Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) because he was debating whether or not to certify results that came in for President Trump on the House floor in 2017.

Armstrong, another of McCarthy’s original picks for the Jan. 6 panel: I think amongst the rank-and-file, it has thawed some. I think from ideological ends, it hasn't.

Fitzpatrick, who co-chairs the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus: If we implode on each other, if we start to erode our institutions, lose faith in our institutions, that will be the end of democracy. And I don't think people realize how fragile democracy is, how young it is, and how susceptible it is to that.

So any time I see my colleagues attack each other on the House floor, I don't care which party they're from, I will tell them you're making your adversaries very happy right now. Mind the weight of your words because they have consequences.

… on how they see the violence now

Murray: We physically had to go back into that Capitol that same night [to finish certifying the election]. And I thought that was a very important moment that said that we were not going to allow this to happen. … I think what I’m concerned about is the fragility of that moment. Everybody stood together — or pretty much everybody except for a few stood together — at that moment. I hope none of us ever forget that.

Casten: I'm not angry anymore. I'm just trying to figure out what do you do when you have been entrusted with responsibility as a member of the United States Congress — and a significant faction of your colleagues stood down when somebody tried to kill you.


Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.)

I think about it frequently. To me, it's a day like 9/11. That's a day like when John Kennedy was assassinated. You're too young to know that date, but that date is in my mind. Both of those events had a lasting impact on me. Jan. 6 has had a lasting impact on me.

Murkowski: I was scared. And then I got really angry. And now it's almost more of a sense of disappointment in acknowledging that, for some, they have chosen to either move the events to the back of their mind — just forget about them — or have kind of re-imagined the facts that we live through.


Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)

Rep. Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee on Jan. 6: Whether or not we tell the truth about it, and whether or not we hold people accountable, and make sure it never happens again — it really is the moral question of our time.

… on moving forward

Armstrong: I tried not to do it before, but I've made a conscious effort to fight about ideas and not send the snarky tweet that you think is gonna get a bunch of clicks — and you think you're happy — and then you look back at it 48 hours later, and you're like, ‘Really, is that really worth it?’ … When you exaggerate something, you lose the element of the argument. And both sides do that. I wish we would do it less.

Tester: After the 6th, I think it showed the institutions are solid and they're holding up. … When the institutions can’t be screwed up by any one person or group of people, that’s a very positive thing.

Thune: As we look to the future, the more that we get out there and talk about ideas, principles, and identify and relate to people where they’re at … the better chance we’ll have of being an electable governing majority for the future. And the more we dwell on what happened in the past, people are going to find a ceiling.

Casten: It's, in many ways, redoubled my commitment to public service. Because I find myself incessantly thinking about that line of Lincoln's, that ‘there was always just enough virtue in this nation to save it; sometimes none to spare, but always just enough.’

Murkowski: I had a decision to make on whether or not to run again. And for a host of different reasons … the easier thing to do would have been to say that I will not run. But I chose the harder path, I think. And I did so because I think this place is worth saving.


Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)

We don't pick the times that we live in. They're here. We each individually make a decision about how we're going to live in those times.

Photos: Associated Press


Posted in Uncategorized

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump. Some then fell silent while others spoke up

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that Donald Trump both inspired and declined to stop, 10 House Republicans chose to cast their votes to impeach the GOP commander in chief.

Many political journalists seem to believe those Republicans made the wrong political bet in a moment when it appeared Republican leadership might actually be up to the task of breaking with Trump. A recent New York Times article suggested the group made a "fundamental miscalculation about the direction of their party."

For some, that may be true, but many in the small cadre likely took a vote of conscience and concluded they couldn't look at the themselves in the mirror if they had done otherwise.

One of them, former rising GOP star Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, called Jan. 6 a "line-in-the-sand moment."

"I don’t believe he can ever be president again,” Gonzalez said in a September interview announcing he would not seek reelection. “Most of my political energy will be spent working on that exact goal."

Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, some have decided not to run for reelection, others have grown outspokenly defiant, and still others are laying low in hopes the storm will blow over by the time November rolls around. But it's fair to say everyone in the small clique has trod an unusually thorny path over the past year.

So far, Trump has endorsed primary opponents for at least five of them, including Gonzalez (who's retiring), Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, and Peter Meijer and Fred Upton of Michigan, who serve neighboring districts on the west side of the state.

Though Michigan's redistricting has left Upton's GOP challengers in flux, the 35-year House veteran doesn't appear to be relishing the current environment on the Hill.

“You’ve got metal detectors now going on the House floor. We get really nasty threats at home. The tone gets, you know, tougher and tougher, and it’s a pretty toxic place,” he told CNN last month. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Meijer, a freshman congressman, thinks that if anyone miscalculated, it's the GOP members who believed the party was moving beyond Trump when they took the easy way out and gave him a pass.

“The view among some was that this would be essentially a self-correcting issue,” Meijer said of Trump. “I think that’s proven overly optimistic.”

Four of them, according to the Times, have fallen unmistakably silent, including Reps. John Katko of New York, Dan Newhouse of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina, and David Valadao of California.

And it's surely no secret at this point that two of them have doubled down, serving on the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 while making it their mission to reclaim the party from Trump.

"The 2020 election was not stolen,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said in a video message Wednesday marking the anniversary of Jan. 6. “Joe Biden won, and Donald Trump lost. We have to admit it. But the leadership of the Republican Party won’t. They lied to the American people and continue to push the big lie and echo the conspiracy theories that line their pockets, keeping them in power."

Kinzinger, who was redistricted out of a seat, included a link to country1st.com, a new PAC with the stated mission to "Defeat Toxic Tribalism."

And finally there's Cheney, who has been the least squeamish of all of them about laying the current threat plaguing the country at the feet of Republicans alone.

“Our party has to choose,” Cheney told the Times. “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump, or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both. And right now, there are far too many Republicans who are trying to enable the former president, embrace the former president, look the other way and hope that the former president goes away.”

Anniversary of Capitol attack brings a dilemma for teachers in Republican areas

Posted on by Laura Clawson

On Jan. 6, 2021, we saw history being made as the U.S. Capitol came under attack by insurrectionists intent on overturning a presidential election. On Jan. 6, 2022, after a year in which many Republicans have decided that those events were just fine, actually, teachers across the country will have to decide whether or how to engage with that recent history.

For teachers in heavily Republican areas where the political pressure is to deny the reality of what happened, it could be a tricky day.

Liz Wagner, an eighth- and ninth-grade social studies teacher in Iowa, told the Associated Press that last year, administrators warned teachers to be careful in discussing the attack, and students pushed back against her use of the (accurate) term “insurrection.” At the time, she turned to the dictionary definition of the word—but this year, she’ll be more cautious, instead having students watch video of the attack and write about what they saw.

“This is kind of what I have to do to ensure that I’m not upsetting anybody,” she said. “Last year I was on the front line of the COVID war, trying to dodge COVID, and now I’m on the front line of the culture war, and I don’t want to be there.”

Anton Schulzki, the president of the National Council for the Social Studies and a teacher in Colorado, will be teaching about Jan. 6, secure in a contract with academic freedom protections despite the recent election of right-wing school board members in his district. 

“I do feel,” he told the AP, “that there may be some teachers who are going to feel the best thing for me to do is to ignore this because I don’t want to put myself in jeopardy, because I have my own bills to pay, my own house to take care of, my own kids to take back and forth to school.”

And no wonder, with Republican-controlled states passing law after law targeting the teaching of race in schools, but often throwing in broad language prohibiting the teaching of basically anything any (white) parent decides to complain about. “On the face of it, if you read the laws, they’re quite vague and, you know, hard to know actually what’s permissible and what isn’t,” Abby Weiss, who develops teaching tools for the nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves, said.

One thing teachers could bring to their classrooms to frame discussion of the insurrection might be the words of some prominent Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, say.

“Jan. 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President,” McConnell said on Feb. 13, 2021. “They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth—because he was angry he’d lost an election.”

Or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who on Jan. 13, 2021, said, “Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There’s absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say it. ... Most Americans want neither inaction nor retribution. They want durable, bipartisan justice. That path is still available, but it is not the path we are on today. That doesn’t mean the president is free from fault. The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

McCarthy, has, of course, changed his tune since in response to pressure from his conference and from Donald Trump. But he said that.

The Republican effort to sweep U.S. history under the rug has been most focused on the long ugly history of racism in this country. Unfortunately, though, the tools they’ve developed to keep teachers from teaching that set of truths will work just as well to keep teachers from teaching the truth about what Donald Trump supporters did just a year ago. Teachers in districts with right-wing school board members or in states with laws targeting critical race theory are right to be nervous—that’s the whole point. 

Biden Disapproval Rating Reaches New High

Posted on by The Center Square

By Casey Harper (The Center Square)

President Joe Biden is kicking off his second year in office with his highest disapproval rating to date.

A new CNBC/Change Research poll found 56% of voters disapprove of Biden’s job as president, the worst disapproval numbers the president has seen since taking office.

The economy and COVID-19 are major factors in voters’ sentiments, with 60% disapproving of Biden’s job on the economy and 55% disapproving of his work on COVID-19. Biden had previously seen poor economic numbers but better approval numbers on his handling of the pandemic.

The drop in COVID-related ratings comes amid a flurry of vaccine mandates and a surge in omicron cases around the nation. This week, the U.S. is reporting one million new cases of COVID-19 daily.

RELATED: Ted Cruz: Biden Impeachment Likely If Republicans Win Back The House

Polling from December showed voters do not approve of Biden’s vaccine mandates.

Convention of States Action, in conjunction with Trafalgar group, released polling data last month reporting that the majority of Americans oppose new vaccine mandates to counter omicron.

The poll found 69.4% of Americans said “no new mandates or restrictions are required” in response to the COVID variant, while 30.6% said the opposite.

“Unlike government health officials in Washington, DC, Americans have already figured out that mandates and lockdowns are not the way we will beat the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States Action.

RELATED: Poll: Voters Unhappy With Biden Administration’s Handling Of Supply Chain Crisis

“As we’ve seen in our polls repeatedly, the American people are tired of all this and are ready to get on with their lives. The U.S. Senate finally recognized this reality … with the bipartisan passage of the bill to block President Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate, and we’re going to see more of this as we get closer to 2022 and elected officials fight to save their jobs.”

Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.

The post Biden Disapproval Rating Reaches New High appeared first on The Political Insider.