Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, one of the 10 Republicans to back impeachment, retiring after 18 terms

Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, who was one of the 10 Republicans that voted to impeach Donald Trump last year, announced Tuesday that he would not seek a 19th term this fall. Upton emailed his supporters that he believed “it is time to pass the torch,” though the person who will most likely be claiming that beacon in the new 4th Congressional District is his colleague and would-be primary foe, Trump-backed Rep. Bill Huizenga.

While it’s possible that Upton’s departure will entice someone else to run against Huizenga in the August GOP primary, they’d need to collect at least 1,000 valid signatures by the April 19 filing deadline. No notable Democrats have entered the race so far for the new version of the 4th, a southwestern Michigan seat Trump would have carried 51-47 in 2020.

Huizenga announced back in December right after the state’s new congressional maps were completed that he’d be seeking re-election in the new 4th, and he earned an endorsement from Trump last month. Upton, by contrast, spent months keeping the political world guessing whether he’d go up against Huizenga in the primary or retire, though until Tuesday, he’d sounded likely to run again. Upton in February even launched a $400,000 ad campaign where he told viewers, “If you want a rubber stamp as your congressman, I'm the wrong guy. But if you want someone committed to solving problems, putting policy over politics, then I'm asking for your support.”

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Upton, though, said he was still undecided about 2022, and his retirement announcement proves he wasn’t just playing coy. On Tuesday, he insisted that redistricting mattered more to him than any backlash from his impeachment vote, saying, “My district was cut like Zorro—three different ways.” However, it was Huizenga who, at least on paper, was more disadvantaged by the new map: While about two-thirds of the residents of the new 4th are currently Upton’s constituents, Huizenga represents only about one-quarter of the seat he’s now the frontrunner to claim.

Upton’s decision ends a long career in politics that began in the late 1970s when he started working for local Rep. David Stockman, and he remained on his staff when Stockman became Ronald Reagan’s first director of the Office of Management and Budget. Upton decided to seek elected office himself in 1986 when he launched a primary challenge to Rep. Mark Siljander, who had succeeded Stockman in the House in 1981, in an earlier version of the 4th District.

Siljander was an ardent social conservative well to the right of even Reagan: Among other things, he’d unsuccessfully tried to torpedo Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1981 because he didn’t feel she was sufficiently conservative, and he even threatened to vote against the White House’s properties to try and stop O’Connor. Siljander, though, had taken just 58% of the vote in his 1984 primary, which showed that a significant number of primary voters were unhappy with him.

Upton argued that, while both he and Siljander were “conservative Republican[s],” the incumbent had ignored his constituents to focus on international issues. Upton, by contrast, argued that he’d work better with the party’s leadership and seek committee assignments that would allow him to direct his energies to domestic concerns. The race took a truly nasty turn late in the campaign when audio leaked of Siljander telling local clergy members to aid him in order to “break the back of Satan,” arguing that his loss “would send a shock wave across America that Christians can be defeated in Congress by impugning their integrity and smear tactics.”

Upton ended up dispatching the congressman 55-45, a wide result both sides attributed to Siljander’s comments. Upton’s team, while denying that the outcome represented a loss for the religious right, predicted, “Fred’s tactics will be much more moderate and more reasonable.” Upton easily prevailed in the general election and had no trouble winning for decades: Siljander, for his part, was last in the news in late 2020 when Trump pardoned what an angry Upton described as “a series of federal crimes including obstruction of justice, money laundering and lobbying for an international terrorist group with ties to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban.”

Upton in 2002 easily turned back a primary challenge from state Sen. Dale Shugars 66-32 in what was now numbered the 6th District, but he was more vulnerable to an intra-party challenge in 2010 when the burgeoning tea party turned its wrath on the longtime establishment figure. His opponent was former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, who had badly failed to unseat Democratic Sen. Carl Levin two years before but argued that Upton was insufficiently conservative. The congressman outspent Hoogendyk by an 18-to-1 margin but prevailed only 57-43, which enticed Hoogendyk to try again in 2012.

However, while the anti-tax Club for Growth ran commercials this time against Upton, who by now was ​​chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the incumbent worked hard to emphasize his opposition to the Obama administration and won by a larger 67-33 margin. That was the last time he faced a serious primary challenge at the ballot box, but in 2014 he went through his first expensive general election campaign when a law professor Larry Lessig directed his Mayday PAC, which he called his “super PAC to end super PACs,” against Upton.

Mayday spent over $2 million to aid a previously-unheralded Democrat named Paul Clements, and while Upton didn’t come close to losing in that red wave year, Democrats hoped his 56-40 showing meant he could be beaten in a better political climate. Clements sought a rematch in 2016, but Upton won by a 59-36 spread.

In 2018, though, he faced a considerably tougher battle against physician Matt Longjohn at a time when the GOP was on the defensive nationwide. Upton got some surprising help during that campaign when Joe Biden delivered a speech in his district that was paid in part by an Upton family foundation; Biden, who was apparently motivated to praise Upton because of the congressman's work on a bill called the 21st Century Cures Act, declared the congressman was "one of the finest guys I've ever worked with" and "the reason we're going to beat cancer." Ultimately, the congressman prevailed 50-46 in what was by far the closest race of his career.

Democrats hoped they could finally take him down in 2020, but Upton returned to form and beat state Rep. Jon Hoadley 56-40 as Trump was carrying his seat 51-47. Two months later, Upton responded to the Jan. 6 attack by voting for impeachment, a vote that arguably did more than anything else to close out his lengthy time in Congress.

Trump cheers Upton exit: ‘4 down and 6 to go’

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday celebrated the news that another Republican that voted for his impeachment — this time Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan — is opting against seeking reelection.

"UPTON QUITS!" Mr. Trump said in a statement. "4 down and 6 to go. Others losing badly, who's next?"

...
Posted in Uncategorized

GOP Rep. Fred Upton to retire

Rep. Fred Upton, one of the longest-tenured Republicans in the House of Representatives, has decided to retire rather than seek reelection in 2022.

Upton was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump in January 2021, saying in a statement that “our country cannot and will not tolerate any effort by any president to impede the peaceful transfer of power.” Now, Upton is the fourth of those 10 to retire, joining Reps. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) in exiting Congress.

Upton announced his retirement in a speech on the House floor Tuesday morning. Speaking to reporters afterward, Upton pointed to redistricting as a key factor in his decision to retire, rather than backlash he faced over his impeachment vote.

“My district was cut like Zorro — three different ways,” the Michigan Republican told reporters. “So I’ve been here 36 years. When I first ran, I thought I'd be here 10.”

“I got a lot of unfinished business that I'm going to be working on now. ... But no, this was our decision, independent of what I did with Trump,” added Upton, who was first elected in 1986.

Trump endorsed a Republican primary challenger against Upton, state Rep. Steve Carra. And redistricting also put Upton on a collision course with fellow GOP Rep. Bill Huizenga for the newly drawn district, had he decided to run for reelection.

For a time, it appeared that was Upton's plan. He turned in a big fundraising quarter to end 2021, and he spent more than $400,000 in early 2022 to air a TV ad in which he declared, "I'm not afraid to take on anyone when they're wrong and work with anyone who's right."

"If you want a rubber stamp as your congressman, I'm the wrong guy," Upton continued in the ad, which touted his work in Congress on taxes, law enforcement and fighting diseases.

Upton, who previously chaired the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, leaves behind a record of bipartisan legislation. He cited the 21st Century Cures Act as his biggest accomplishment, which he said survived a Senate filibuster and paved the way for the FDA to approve vaccines for Covid.

“That's probably our biggest achievement,” Upton said.

He was accompanied by his close friend, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), on the House floor while delivering his speech, as he pointed to his next chapter with his family.

“Debbie was my first call,” said Upton. “She didn't answer.”

“I didn’t want to get the news,” she replied.

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The Supreme Court can’t be untouchable. Congress needs to investigate Thomas

The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman is absolutely right: “The controversy over Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, Clarence Thomas, and the Jan. 6 insurrection is demonstrating one profound difference between Democrats and Republicans: how they view the value of making a stink.”

Three years on, the ridiculous and entirely made-up Hunter Biden story is still a thing, more a thing than Donald Trump extorting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to try to get “dirt” on Biden. Because Republicans keep feeding it—because they know it will work.

Meanwhile, the spouse of a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice was involved up to her eyebrows in the effort to overthrow the Congress and keep Donald Trump in office. The Donald Trump who was doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding in trying to withhold arms from Ukraine. Arms that Ukraine has desperately needed in its defense against Russia. That’s a pretty big thing! All definitely worth making a stink about. But thus far, Democratic leadership in Congress is not. The most they’ve done so far is say they think Thomas should recuse himself from any Jan. 6-related cases. Ineffectively.

That’s why Daily Kos and 16 other organizations have signed on to this Take Back the Court letter, demanding that Congress open a formal investigation into Clarence Thomas’ misconduct. We’ve written to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, “to request that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees open a formal investigation into Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ misconduct in his handling of cases regarding the January 6 insurrection, the 2020 presidential election, and other cases involving his wife’s political activities.”

“Justice Thomas’ unethical conduct from the bench is within the purview of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and we urge the committees to investigate that conduct fully, in cooperation with the January 6 Select Committee as needed,” the groups write.

Even though Supreme Court justices have chosen not to abide by the same code of ethics that other all federal judges must adhere to, they are bound by a federal statute that bars them from hearing cases in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” or in which their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

Thomas has already violated that statute. He’s ruled in multiple cases surrounding the 2020 election and the insurrection—including being the lone dissenting vote requiring Trump to provide records to the Jan. 6 committee, records that may very well include communications from Ginni Thomas. “Justice Thomas clearly violated this provision when he refused to recuse himself from a case directly implicating his wife’s activities in support of the January 6 insurrection, and it is incumbent on Congress to respond,” the groups write.

Thomas’ rulings on cases in which his wife was directly involved go back at least two decades. In December 2000, the court heard Bush v. Gore, the only time in history in which the Supreme Court selected a president. While the case was pending, Ginni Thomas was collecting résumés for potential Bush administration positions. Twelve years later, he heard the challenge against the Affordable Care Act, NFIB v. Sibelius. Ginni was then heading up a group called Liberty Central, which was agitating for the law to be declared unconstitutional. Back then, a group of 74 members of Congress asked Thomas to recuse from the case. He did not. He heard the case and voted in dissent when the court upheld the law.

So we know how polite requests for recusal are going to pan out. Thomas is not going to recuse out of any sense of propriety or ethics. That’s abundantly clear. There’s only one way it happens and that would require a formal investigation.

It’s not just his refusal to recuse from cases, either, that raises ethics concerns aboutThomas. “Justice Thomas has repeatedly failed to disclose employers who paid his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars, as required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978,” Take Back the Court points out. “This raises serious questions about what, if anything, Justice Thomas is trying to hide, whether any other undisclosed payments exist, and what possible judicial outcomes such hidden details relate to.”

“Allowing Justice Thomas to avoid scrutiny will surely cause the American people’s faith in our judicial system to deteriorate further—perhaps beyond repair. Americans know that Justice Thomas cannot act impartially in cases related to his wife’s political activities,” the groups write. “It’s up to your committees to ensure that he is held accountable for abusing his power and pretending otherwise.”

Nothing is going to happen to Thomas without Democrats kicking up a stink. An investigation into Thomas will sure stink for the Supreme Court, and for Chief Justice John Roberts, who seems to care about his legacy as much as anything else. Yes, it needs to happen.

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Let’s talk about the Trump White House call logs from Jan. 6

Let’s talk about these call logs. 

At the top of this week, The Washington Post and CBS News reported that upon review of official phone logs from the Trump White House given to the Jan. 6 committee, a gap of over seven hours was discovered in then-President Donald Trump’s official daily diary and switchboard record from that day. 

In contrast, on Thursday, CNN reported that “an official review” of those logs—based on anonymous sources familiar with the matter, including a former Obama White House staffer—determined the records were “complete.”

The earlier reported gaps, the source told CNN, were likely due to Trump’s “typical” practice of having staff place calls for him on White House landline phones or using White House-provided cell phones or personal phones. Neither would be traced through the White House switchboard, meaning they would not appear on the log provided to the committee. 

So, what to make of all this? Are the Jan. 6 call logs complete or incomplete? What information is missing? Was there a cover-up?

In this heap of anonymously sourced reporting and analysis tied to the call logs, at least one fact can be safely established today, Friday, the 450th day since the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election: There is a huge amount of information about Trump’s exact conduct during the bloodshed and chaos of Jan. 6 that remains unknown and is in dire need of additional context.

The records published by The Washington Post and CBS cover 11 pages. Six of those pages are the “Presidential Call Log” while five comprise the “Daily Diary of President Donald J. Trump.”

White House Call Log Jan 6 2021 Obtained by WaPo and CBS by Daily Kos on Scribd

The diary will record a president’s movements on a given day. The call log shows call records incoming and outgoing from the White House switchboard or from aides. It will also list the length of a call and a small notation, perhaps, but scant else. 

Under law, both the logs and the diary must be preserved. 

The Trump administration was notoriously bad at maintaining records, and Trump’s penchant for using his cell phone or a staffer’s phone to make or take calls, regardless of how sensitive the subject matter was, is well documented

Recreating the timeline of Jan. 6 has been made more difficult by this, and the gaps in these particular logs raise major questions when compared against the record of Trump’s communication with high-ranking officials or allies before and during the attack.

For example, the logs omit a critical phone call that took place between Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence that morning. There are also missing records of calls that happened between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as other Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

Those calls happened, and they have been corroborated through court records, committee testimony, or public statements made by those directly involved. To wit, Pence’s National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg testified to the committee that he heard Trump speak to Pence on the phone from the Oval Office on the morning of Jan. 6.

Kellogg said he heard Trump pressure the vice president to go along with the scheme to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Ivanka Trump was also present for that call.

Kellogg’s testimony was corroborated by other witnesses who appeared before the committee and heard the call as well. But there’s no record of that call on the switchboard, a fact that now raises questions over what device Trump used in that moment and why.  

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee requests a meeting with Ivanka Trump

Handwritten notes attached to Trump’s private schedule for Jan. 6 show him having a call with “VPOTUS” at 11:20 AM. The presidential diary for the day meanwhile notes Trump called an “unidentified person” at 11:17 AM on Jan. 6, but the diary fails to mention the 11:20 AM call from his private schedule. And as noted by CNN, neither call was reflected in the White House call log.

McCarthy admitted openly he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6 when he was interviewed by Fox News last April, and he admitted the same to fellow Republican Rep. Jamie Herrera-Beutler months before when Trump was facing impeachment for incitement of insurrection. 

McCarthy said he spoke to Trump in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 6 as the violence was playing out at the Capitol. The California Republican recalled being under siege and frantically calling Trump for help. He begged the president to “forcefully” call off his supporters. 

But just like the Pence call, there’s no record of the McCarthy call on the official log either. 

RELATED STORY: Kevin ‘Who the F— Do You Think You Are Talking To’ McCarthy may be next on Jan. 6 request list

Trump called Lee during the attack at 2:26 PM, something Lee admitted during Trump’s second impeachment inquiry. Lee said Trump intended to reach Tuberville but dialed the wrong number, so Lee passed his phone off to Tuberville.

When the Alabama senator picked up, he told the president Pence had been removed from Senate chambers just as rioters had stormed the complex.

That call record is missing from the logs, too.

It may seem a small detail now, but as The Guardian has reported, “two sources familiar with the matter” said Lee was called by Trump from a number listed as (202) 395-0000. 

That is a “placeholder number that shows when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones,” the sources said. 

Since the Lee call is missing from the log, the specter of tampering is now raised. 

An entry not omitted from the logs spurs even more questions: Trump’s 10-minute phone call with Rep. Jim Jordan.

Jordan has been a fierce ally to the ex-president, defending him at every turn and patently refusing to cooperate with the probe. Jordan has also been completely unable or unwilling to keep his story straight about his contact with Trump on the day of the assault.

Last July, when pressed by Fox News host Bret Baier about how many times he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6, Jordan said his chats with Trump happened so often, he couldn’t “remember all the days I talked to the president.”

Within 24 hours Jordan changed his story, this time telling a different reporter he couldn’t recall if he and Trump spoke in the morning or not.

When Jordan appeared for a meeting before the House Rules Committee in October, he told Chairman Jim McGovern he couldn’t recall how many times he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6, but Jordan sputtered: “I talked to the president after the attack.”

According to the traceable call log made public this week, Trump and Jordan spoke for exactly 10 minutes on Jan. 6 starting at 9:24 AM.

If they spoke after the attack, like Jordan said last October, then this particular log does not show it. 

RELATED STORY: White House call log confirms what Jim Jordan couldn’t—or wouldn’t

Assessment of these logs as “complete” may very well be technically accurate if that assessment does not account for the ways Trump bypassed the traceable system or abused procedure. 

The Select Intelligence Committee for the U.S. Senate noted in its 2020 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that Trump often relied on his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, when he wanted to call Republican operative Roger Stone. Trump, the report stated, would use Schiller’s phone to chat with Stone because he did not want his advisers to know they were speaking.

Sources told the Post and CBS Trump may have used a disposable or “burner” phone on Jan. 6 to evade scrutiny. Trump has denied knowing what a burner phone is, let alone using one.

Yet his former National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters Trump knows exactly what the devices are, and that would track with reporting by Rolling Stone from November that Team Trump was no stranger to the hard-to-trace devices.

Sources told the magazine that March for Trump and Women for America First organizers used burner phones at length for “crucial planning conversations” about the rally at the Ellipse. The officials, including Kylie and Amy Kremer, allegedly communicated with Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, but also with the president’s son and daughter-in-law, Eric and Lara Trump, on the phones.

In its contempt of Congress report for Meadows, the Jan. 6 committee established there was prevalent use of personal devices and encrypted apps by Meadows in service of the president.  

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 organizers used burner phones for calls with Mark Meadows, Trump family

So far the committee has interviewed and taken depositions from 800 people, including many of those figures who appeared in the Jan. 6 call logs, like Steve Bannon, John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani. 

The logs show Trump spoke to Bannon at 8:37 AM on Jan. 6 and then with Giuliani, his attorney, not long after at 8:45 AM. Within 10 minutes, Trump called Meadows and then tried to call Pence. 

Pence was unavailable, so Trump left a message with the vice president’s office.

Bannon reportedly asked Trump if Pence was going to attend a breakfast meeting because the men wanted to get Pence on board with their plan to delay or stop the certification. 

Trump also spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity and right-wing commentator William Bennett. He called then-Sen. David Perdue of Georgia as well, and he also spoke to Kurt Olsen early that morning. Olsen was a champion of Trump’s bogus election fraud conspiracy theories. 

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got a call from Trump too, as did Sen. Josh Hawley. McConnell told the Post he declined Trump’s call on Jan. 6, and Hawley has said he missed the call altogether and that he never spoke to Trump on Jan. 6. 

Stephen Miller haunts the public call logs too; he and Trump spoke for almost half an hour on Jan. 6 from 9:52 AM to 10:18 AM.

After the seven-hour gap of time where no official calls are recorded on Jan. 6, the next bit of action didn’t occur until 6:54 PM when Trump rang up Dan Scavino, his trusted aide and communications director. Scavino has refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 probe and, along with trade adviser Peter Navarro, was found in contempt of Congress by the Jan. 6 committee. 

A full vote by the House to find them in contempt will be held on April 4.

Report: Border Agents Are Bracing For ‘Disaster,’ Expect 170,000 Illegal Immigrants In Just One Month

Border agents and officials are reportedly concerned about a looming “disaster” of an influx of illegal immigrants once Title 42 is lifted by the Biden administration.

Title 42 is a pandemic-era order that allows border authorities to immediately expel illegal immigrants who attempt to cross the border on public health grounds.

Multiple outlets have indicated the Biden administration is seeking to wind down the policy by May 23 following a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) review.

The New York Post reports that authorities are anticipating a “disaster” at the southern border should that happen.

“Last year, we were calling it a crisis. This year, it will be a disaster. This is the calm before the storm,” warned Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez.

The outlet notes that once Title 42 is lifted, “officials are bracing for an influx of up to 170,000 migrants and up to 13,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border in May alone.”

RELATED: NY Rep. Calls For Biden To Be Impeached After Police Video Shows Feds Flying Illegal Immigrants Into NY

Title 42 Repeal Set to Create a Border Disaster

Perhaps more alarming is a thread provided by Fox News reporter Hillary Vaughn who cites a source from the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

That source claims the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “is bracing for as many as 500,000 migrants in the six weeks following Title 42 being lifted.”

That is an alarming number by any administration measuring stick.

The source, according to Vaughn, indicates DHS is struggling to find a solution to provide COVID vaccines to illegal immigrants as has been promised by the administration.

“DHS has been providing the COVID-19 vaccines to noncitizens in ICE custody since summer 2021,” a department spokesperson said, adding that they would be “expanding these efforts.”

But the White House is struggling to attain funding for these vaccines, having urgently requested $22.5 billion “to sustain our nation’s COVID-19 response.”

RELATED: Newly Released Police Video Shows Federal Contractors Flying Illegal Immigrants Into New York Airport

Taking Away From Veterans?

Vaughn Reports that her CBP source has indicated the administration is considering pulling medical resources from veterans to aid in the effort.

“We’re going to take medical services away from people that really deserve that. Who went to combat … to give free medical attention to illegal migrants,” the source allegedly told her, though no further evidence was provided.

The CBP source tells Vaughn the Biden administration is preparing for double the number of migrants that came in 2021 in a year-long timeframe after Title 42 is lifted.

“I would say its conservative to say double what came in last year,” she quotes them as saying.

No matter how you view the crisis, these reports represent a staggering number of illegal immigrants and would be unprecedented in U.S. history, making last year’s record-breaking border crisis look like the good ole days.

The numbers tell the story:

Earlier this year, Republican Representative Claudia Tenney of New York called for President Biden’s impeachment due to the border crisis.

Tenney’s demands came following the release of a police video showing illegal immigrants being flown by federal contractors into an airport in New York in the dead of night.

“This is a complete, aggravated dereliction of duty, which is why last night on Twitter I called for Joe Biden to be impeached and removed,” Tenney demanded.

“His primary obligation as the commander-in-chief and president of the United States is to enforce our laws, to live up to his oath, to enforce our border security and to tell the truth to the American people,” she added.

Instead, he’s going to lift Title 42 and create a “disaster” at the border some had already assumed had reached a critical tipping point.

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