Some senators want McConnell to be more transparent about his health issues as there are whispers in the Senate corridors about his fitness to serve.
McConnell froze up last week during a speaking engagement in northern Kentucky. He had a similar episode in late July. And there was also an issue in the spring. The latter appeared to be a problem with the Leader’s hearing aids.
Questions about McConnell have swirled since he misses several weeks after a fall where he suffered a concussion.
Republicans also find themselves in a bind: defending McConnell but wanting to raise questions about the health and age of President Biden.
It is unclear if McConnell will present customary opening remarks in the 3 pm et hour or offer any insight into his health.
Many Republicans are rallying around McConnell. However, it would only take five GOP members to demand a special meeting to consider McConnell’s leadership and potentially hold a secret ballot.
However, that scenario does not appear to be in the cards yet. And McConnell would likely prevail in any vote of no confidence.
Other issues before the Senate: government funding.
The government runs out of money on October 1. The House and Senate are nowhere near agreement on spending measure.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to move a series of spending measures over the next three weeks. But a temporary bill renewing all old funding appears to be the only way out of this cul-de-sac.
The House doesn’t return until next Tuesday. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is floating a one-month interim spending package. But conservatives are balking at that since it simply renews the old funding and does not cut. McCarthy could pass a bill to avert a shutdown. But he may need to do it with mostly-Democratic votes.
Back in the Senate, there is no movement in the impasse over the promotion of the nation’s top military leaders. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) refuses to budge from allowing the Senate to fast-track the mostly non-controverial promotions. Tuberville is protesting the Pentagon’s abortion policy. It would take nearly a month of the Senate working around the clock and considering nothing else to clear all the military promotions.
The White House is claiming that "lives are at stake" as it pushes Republicans to continue funding the government, warning that a potential government shutdown could affect efforts to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.
"Now, House Republicans have a stark choice to make: will they honor their word, meet their responsibility to avoid a shutdown, and act on life and death priorities like fighting the fentanyl crisis?" White House deputy press secretary and senior communications advisor Andrew Bates said in a memo.
The memo comes as Congress and the Biden administration face a looming government shutdown if the government is not funded beyond Sept. 30. President Biden and congressional leaders are eyeing a possible continuing resolution to keep the government open in the short term while larger spending budgets can be debated. However, the new push from the White House is part of an effort to highlight the damage that could be caused if certain funding dries up.
The White House announced a new tranche of $450 million in funding last week focused on treatment and prevention efforts within the U.S. to stop the opioid crisis — which is linked to 100,000 deaths in 2022. It has also requested approximately $800 million as part of the $40 billion supplemental budget request.
"President Biden is urging Congress to provide $800 million to fight fentanyl trafficking and counter the deadly substance being illegally imported from China," Bates said.
Illicit fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, can be fatal in tiny doses and is primarily created in Mexico using Chinese precursors before being moved across the U.S. land border. The drug is frequently pressed into fake pills, so users do not know what they are ingesting.
Republicans have linked the fentanyl crisis to what they see as a porous southern border and a migrant crisis they blame on the policies of the Biden administration. The administration has said it is taking an approach that both targets trafficking and treats addiction, an approach it says is showing results.
Some conservative Republicans in the House have opposed any "clean" continuing resolution to keep the government open past Sept. 30, seeing it as an extension of Democratic funding priorities passed under the last Congress. Instead, they want certain demands met, including a House-passed border security bill that Republicans say would also target the fentanyl crisis by securing the southern border.
Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has said she would not vote for any government funding if the House GOP leadership does not open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Greene has been attacked by name by the White House, including in the memo Tuesday.
"The White House is attacking me for demanding an impeachment inquiry before I’ll vote to fund one penny to our over bloated $32 TRILLION dollar in debt failing government," Greene wrote in a thread on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Bates’ memo highlighted past comments from Republicans in the caucus, who have called the fentanyl scourge an urgent and pressing crisis affecting the whole nation. It also pointed to polling showing that combating the spread of fentanyl was a top priority for many American voters.
"The DEA, Border Patrol, and Department of Homeland Security need the anti-fentanyl funding President Biden is seeking," Bates said. "Lives are at stake."
Texas state senators on Tuesday rejected a motion to dismiss Attorney General Ken Paxton's impeachment case, setting the stage for the trial of the embattled Republican accused of abusing his office.
We are in September now, which means the government-shutdown stopwatch is ticking. This congressional calendar is even more fraught than usual because there’s just so much that Congress needs to do—and yet, House Republican extremists remain intent on creating chaos. Making matters worse, the House remains on vacation this week, and has scheduled only 12 legislative days before the fiscal year ends and government funding expires on Oct. 1.
Government funding isn’t the only thing that’s supposed to be accomplished in the next three weeks. The end of September is also the deadline for the high-stakes farm bill and a reauthorization bill—the legislation that governs how funds are supposed to be spent by agencies—for the Federal Aviation Administration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of money and needs a cash infusion to keep responding to the recent disasters in Hawaii and Florida, much less what the remainder of hurricane and wildfire season may bring.
A few weeks ago, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floated a possible deal with Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to keep the government running while Congress continues to work on the regular appropriations bills. At least one hard-line Republican, Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has declared she won’t vote for it unless the House first votes to begin impeaching President Joe Biden.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is joining in, not necessarily on impeaching Biden as a condition of funding the government, but more so in opposition to having a functioning government. On Monday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn tweeted about the impending shutdown, obliquely chastising the House Republicans for being “universes” apart from Senate Republicans on funding government. Roy quickly responded by saying that Republicans shouldn’t fund “the things they campaign against - and then just shrug… border… DOJ weaponization… DOD wokeness… IRS abuse… COVID tyranny.”
That’s left McCarthy weakly arguing that if they shut down the government, then they won’t be able to keep investigating Biden. “If we shut down, all of government shuts down — investigation and everything else. It hurts the American public,” he said.
The White House has asked for a short-term continuing resolution, which is the only viable solution at this point to keep the government open. The Senate—Democrats and many Republicans—are on board. So now it all boils down to whether McCarthy will finally buck Republican extremists and work with Democrats on a stopgap bill to extend current levels of funding and likely add additional funding for disaster relief and Ukraine support.
The far-right justices on Wisconsin's Supreme Court just can't handle the fact that liberals now have the majority for the first time in 15 years, so they're in the throes of an ongoing meltdown—and their tears are delicious. On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard drink up all the schadenfreude they can handle as they puncture conservative claims that their progressive colleagues are "partisan hacks" (try looking in the mirror) or are breaking the law (try reading the state constitution). Elections do indeed have consequences!
In an era of bitter partisanship, the historic proceeding is a rare instance of a political party seeking to hold one of its own to account for allegations of wrongdoing.
Billionaires, burner phones, alleged bribes: The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going to test the will of Republicans senators to oust not only one of their own, but a firebrand who has helped drive the state's hard turn to the right for years.
The historic proceedings set to start in the state Senate Tuesday are the most serious threat yet to one of Texas' most powerful figures after nine years engulfed by criminal charges, scandal, and accusations of corruption. If convicted, Paxton—just the third official in Texas' nearly 200-year history to be impeached—could be removed from office.
Witnesses called to testify could include Paxton and a woman with whom he has acknowledged having an extramarital affair. Members of the public hoping to watch from the gallery will have to line up for passes. And conservative activists have already bought up TV airtime and billboards, pressuring senators to acquit one of former President Donald Trump's biggest defenders.
“It's a very serious event but it's a big-time show,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist and a friend of Paxton. “Any way you cut it, it's going to have the attention of anyone and everyone.”
The build-up to the trial has widened divisions among Texas Republicans that reflect the wider fissures roiling the party nationally heading into the 2024 election.
At the fore of recent Texas policies are hardline measures to stop migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, battles over what is taught in public schools, and restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights—many of which are championed loudest in the Senate, where Republicans hold a dominant 19-12 majority and have Paxton's fate in their hands.
The Senate has long been a welcoming place for Paxton. His wife, Angela, is a state senator, although she is barred from voting in the trial. Paxton also was a state senator before becoming attorney general in 2015 and still has entanglements in the chamber, including with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who will preside over the trial and loaned $125,000 to Paxton's reelection campaign.
If all 12 Democrats vote to convict Paxton, they would still need at least nine Republicans on their side. Or the Senate could vote by a simple majority to dismiss the charges altogether. But it was a GOP-dominated House that decided by an overwhelming majority that Paxton should be impeached.
“You’re seeing a fracture within the party right now,” said Matt Langston, a Republican political consultant in Texas. “This is going to impact the leadership and the party for a long time.”
The trial also appears to have heightened Paxton’s legal risks. The case against him largely centers on his relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer who was indicted this summer after being accused of making false statements to banks to secure $170 million in loans.
Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington kicked a long-running investigation of Paxton into a higher gear when they began using a grand jury in San Antonio to examine his dealings with Paul, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around grand jury proceedings. The grand jury’s role was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman.
Chris Toth, the former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, said Paxton has for years weathered scandals unique among top state lawyers. He said the outcome of the trial will send a message about what is acceptable to elected officials across the country.
Impeachment managers in the GOP-controlled Texas House filed nearly 4,000 pages of exhibits ahead of the trial, including accusations that Paxton hid the use of multiple cellphones and reveled in other perks of office.
“There’s very much a vile and insidious level of influence that Ken Paxton exerts through continuing to get away with his conduct,” Toth said.
Part of Paxton's political durability is his alignment with Trump, and this was never more apparent than when Paxton joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Like Trump, Paxton says he is a victim of politically motivated investigations.
But James Dickey, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, said the base of the GOP sees Paxton’s impeachment as different from legal troubles facing Trump.
“Exclusively, the actions against President Trump are from Democrat elected officials and so it can’t avoid having more of a partisan tone,” he said. “Therefore, Republican voters have more concern and frustration with it.”
Expected 3rd quarter economic growth, according to the average estimates by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and the Atlanta Fed: 3.1%
Rank of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama among states with the top homicide rates: #1, #2, #3
Percent by which Florida's murder rate was higher than New York's in 2021, according to The New York Times: 50%
Cases of Covid-19 reported daily in Maine in, respectively, July and August: 20-50, 50-150
Age of former Governor/diplomat Bill Richardson (D-NM) and singer/entrepreneur Jimmy Buffett (D-Margaritaville) when they died over the weekend: 75, 76
CHEERS to jobs, jobs, jobs. It wasn't the blockbuster employment report of the previous month, when 5.3 billion jobs were created across seven solar systems and the unemployment rate hit -49%. (Dammit, Dark Brandon, you've gotta learn to pace yourself.) But still, not bad. 178,000 new jobs, unemployment rate steady at 3.8 percent. Some added details from Sir Billy McBride at Calculated Risk:
The headline monthly jobs number was at consensus expectations; however, June and July payrolls were revised down by 110,000 combined. The unemployment rate increased as more people joined the labor force.
Job growth has slowed to a somewhat more normal pace, up at a 2.3 million annual rate over the last 6 months.
Job creation since 1989. But brainwashed Americans still give the credit to Republicans.
The 25 to 54 participation rate increased in August to 83.5% from 83.4% in July, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio was unchanged at 80.9% from 80.9% the previous month. Both are above the pre-pandemic levels and suggest all of the prime age workers have returned to the labor force.
Ugh. I'm so bored with all the winning. [Insert 5,000 smiley emojis and 1 American flag emoji here.]
CHEERS to putting on your best frowny face and getting down to business. Two more signs that summer vacation season has ended and folks are heading back to work: Congress is back in session this week and day cares are open again. There will be lots of crying and stamping of feet and screams of "Mine Mine Mine!" as a room full of whiny brats hurls childish insults and feasts on paste and magic marker fumes. And I bet the toddlers at daycare will be just as bad.
CHEERS to winning a war on terrorism. On September 5, 1996, Muslim extremist Ramzi Yousef and two other thugs who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (and planned to blow up some U.S. airliners), were sent to tiny, windowless cells for the rest of eternity. But...but...how could that be? I mean, using law-enforcement to crack the case and arrest the evildoers instead of using bunker busters and declaring World War III and opening a gulag at Gitmo for enemy combatants? I gotta lie down...this is blowing my tiny chickenhawk mind.
CHEERS to far-from-conventional conventions. 249 years ago today, back yonder in 1774, the First Continental Congress assembled at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia to push back against the monarchy of a mad narcissist:
It was held because the colonists were very upset about the Intolerable Acts and the taxes. The Intolerable Acts were punishments that King George III put on the colonies. He put them on so the colonists would feel sorry about dumping tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.
Of course, the opposite happened. We got royally pissed, revolted, formed our own country, and then thrived and prospered until we started coming apart at the seams and heading down the path to becoming a monarchy led by a mad narcissist thanks to the efforts of...the Tea Party. Oh George, you sneaky bastard.
JEERS to the dick in the dock. All eyes are on the apocalyptic hellscape (and producer of fine barbeque) known as Texas today as an impeachment trial gets underway that no one thought would actually happen. The now-suspended Attorney General with a Bond villain's lazy eye (and he'd like it back, please), Ken Paxton—under indictment since the 1940s, or so it seems—is facing members of his own party in the state legislature. Many of them want him gone because he's—get this—giving them a bad name:
Paxton, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, is alleged to have taken bribes and abused his office to help a pal and campaign donor, a flashy Austin real estate mogul named Nate Paul. Since then, Paxton has been suspended from office. If two thirds of the voting members of the Texas Senate find him guilty of any of the charges—they will consider sixteen of the twenty the House brought—he will be permanently removed from office.
Ken Paxton
In Texas, the case reflects the splintering of the Republican Party, with the far right, funded by the likes of [billionaire mega-donor Tim] Dunn and fellow oilman Farris Wilks, increasingly at odds with more-centrist conservatives funded by figures such as Houston billionaire Dick Weekley [Editor’s Note: Ha Ha Ha Ha he said Dick Weekley!!!! ] and his influential political action committee Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
Basically it's a battle of wacko billionaires versus slightly-less-wacko billionaires. The winner gets 50 percent off the purchase of candidate of their choice.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 5, 2013
JEERS to America the Wide-Eyed. Pretty shocking statistic: every night nine million Americans gobble sleeping pills to help them feel drowsy enough to fall asleep. And for hardcore insomniacs, doctors recommend watching old Romney campaign videos. (Side effects may include anxiety, confusion, nausea, vomiting, retroactive retirement, craving for cheesy grits, an unhealthy fixation on the height of trees, greed, cluelessness, polysyllabic tendencies, and pathological lying. But, man, will you sleep.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to yankin' 'n bankin'. The NSA has been keeping a close eye (and ear) on the Tooth Fairy, given her socialist/communist tendency to buy off children's' loyalty with free money in exchange for little more than nuggets of calcium and enamel. They've tabulated what kids get when they lose a tooth, and these days the Tooth Fairy leaves just a tad over six bucks. Meanwhile, when an adult loses a tooth the dentist leaves a bill just a tad over six Mercedes payments.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
It's always important to stay hydrated. After all, more than half of the human body is made of Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool water.
Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is bracing for his impeachment trial set to begin Tuesday, historically brought by state senators of his own political party.
The state Senate is taking up 16 articles of impeachment relating to allegations of bribery, dereliction of duty and disregard of official duty against Paxton, who will be just the third person to stand for an impeachment trial in the history of the Texas legislature.
A close ally to former President Donald Trump, Paxton spearheaded several lawsuits in December 2020 challenging the presidential election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin showing a victory for Joe Biden. Paxton also spoke during Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the Ellipse, the park south of the White House, before the eventual riot at the U.S. Capitol.
But the impeachment trial centers around Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate developer Nate Paul. Paxton, who has decried the trial as a "political motivated sham," and an effort to disenfranchise his voters, won a third term in 2022 despite long-pending state criminal charges and an FBI investigation.
The GOP-led state House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton in May, largely based on his former deputies' claims that the attorney general used his power to help a wealthy donor who reciprocated with favors including hiring a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair.
Paxton faces trial by a jury — the 31 state senators — stacked with his ideological allies and a "judge," Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who loaned $125,000 to his last reelection campaign. His wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, will attend the trial but cannot participate or vote.
Two other senators play a role in the allegations against Paxton. A two-thirds majority — or 21 senators — is required for conviction, meaning that if all 12 Senate Democrats vote against Paxton, they still need at least nine of the 19 Republicans to join them.
The trial will likely bring forth new evidence, but the outline of the allegations against Paxton has been public since 2020, when eight of his top deputies told the FBI that the attorney general was breaking the law to help Paul. The deputies — largely conservatives whom Paxton handpicked for their jobs — told investigators that Paxton had gone against their advice and hired an outside lawyer to probe Paul's allegations of wrongdoing by the FBI in its investigation of the developer.
They also said Paxton pressured his staff to take other actions that helped Paul.
Federal prosecutors continue to examine Paul and Paxton's relationship, so the evidence presented during his impeachment trial poses a legal as well as a political risk to the attorney general. Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges based on allegations that he made false statements to banks to secure more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty and has broadly denied wrongdoing in his dealings with Paxton.
The two men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial. The Senate is not taking up, at least initially, three impeachment articles about the alleged securities fraud and a fourth related to Paxton's ethics filings.
After going to the FBI, all eight of Paxton's deputies quit or were fired. Four of the deputies later sued Paxton under the state whistleblower act. The bipartisan group of lawmakers who led Paxton's impeachment in the House said it was him seeking $3.3 million in taxpayer funds to settle with the group that prompted them to investigate his dealings.
We began today with Yuriko Schumacher and James Barragán of the Texas Tribune as an indictment-drenched summer continues with headlines moving today from Atlanta to Austin as the impeachment trial of suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton begins.
The Senate gallery will be open to the public daily, beginning at 8 a.m., with tickets distributed for the morning session on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 7:30 a.m. on the Capitol’s third floor. Tickets for the afternoon session will be distributed 45 minutes before the gallery reopens. The trial also will be livestreamed on the Texas Senate’s website and at texastribune.org.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will act as judge. Senators, serving as jurors, will consider 16 of 20 articles of impeachment. The Senate previously voted to delay consideration of the other four. Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, will sit as a member of the court but will not vote on any decisions or participate in private deliberations.
The trial will begin with the court clerk reading aloud the 16 articles. Paxton, who was ordered to appear in person, or his lawyer will plead guilty or not guilty to each article. On the first day of the trial, some witnesses are also ordered to appear outside the front door of the Senate chamber at 11 a.m.
Jim Henson of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin did some comprehensive polling of Paxton’s favorability that shows that even given the “parallels” between the legal circumstances of Paxton and Trump, Paxton is nowhere near as popular as Number 45 with Texas Republicans.
2. Erosion in public assessments of Paxton is evident in his job approval ratings, including among groups that are relatively more supportive of his position in the impeachment and trial.We delved in depth into this topic in the post accompanying the release of the poll. Paxton’s net job approval ratings (the difference between shares approving and disapproving) among all voters fell from an already low -11 in June to -19 in August. Among Republicans, it fell from +32 in June (51% approve/19% disapprove) to + 23 in August (46/23), and among conservatives, from +23 in June (50/27) to +14 in August (46/32). Among rural voters, his net approval plummeted from net +25 in December 2022 (53/28) to net +3 in June 2023 (36/33), then to net -1 in August (35/36). [...]
5. While there exists a history of political connections between Paxton and former President Donald Trump and even parallels between the pair’s legal and ethical jeopardy, support for Paxton among his Republican constituents lacks the persistence of the incredibly durable support Republicans maintain for Trump. Paxton does not enjoy the unwavering support in Texas that has been a hallmark of the space Trump occupies among his following in Texas. An look the trend in Paxton’s job approval ratings among Texas Republicans, and in Trump's job approval numbers during his turbulent presidency as well as his favorability ratings since his reluctant exit from the White House illustrate how sharply Paxton’s ratings have suffered from his impeachment in late May (from 73% in December 2022 to 46% in August 2023), while Trump’s numbers have remained remarkably consistent, despite some evidence of erosion in his favorability ratings between June 2021 and August 2023 (from 86% to 79%).
Chris Smith of Vanity Fair thinks that in spite of the latest pundit buzz (and President Joe Biden’s Labor Day speech in Philadelphia yesterday), Biden will continue, by and large, to not attack Trump’s legal woes.
For Biden, the attempt to stay above the fray is a relatively easy choice. His brand is all about returning Washington to functioning normally, and the contrast he wants to draw is that he, unlike Trump, is a believer in the nonpartisan dispensing of justice. “I think the president has been clear on the issues that underlie all of these indictments, like the issues of democracy, of the rule of law, of having an independent justice department,” a Biden insider says. “The irony of people being like, Why won’t the president comment on the indictments? Part of what Trump is indicted for is weaponizing the Justice Department! And people want us, in some sense, to do the same thing? Why would we do that? Our guy stands for the opposite of that.” The ongoing federal investigation of the president’s son is also a disincentive: Biden commenting on the cases against Trump while Hunter Bidenis still under scrutiny by a special counsel would give oxygen to Republican what-about-ism.
Beyond the White House, though, the prevailing silence is more nuanced and somewhat harder to understand. Six Senate Democrats have a solid reason: Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), and Jon Tester (Montana) are running for reelection in states Trump won in 2020; Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Bob Casey (Pennsylvania), and Jacky Rosen (Nevada) are running in states Trump barely lost. Bashing the former president could be counterproductive for them; better to focus their campaigns on local issues as they try to win over independents. But then there’s Hakeem Jeffries, House Democrats’ leader, whose job in the minority could arguably be entirely centered on attacking Trump’s candidacy and legal troubles. He, too, has been careful in his comments. “The Trump indictment and the facts that will continue to emerge from the legal process speak for themselves,” Jeffries told CNN in June. [...]
In both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, impatient Democrats and pundits worried that Biden was waiting too long to get his act together or that he was emphasizing the wrong messages. Yet selling “the soul of America” worked for Biden three years ago and talking about the general threat to democracy resonated with voters last fall, as Democrats exceeded dismal expectations. “He was widely criticized for not focusing on the economy, for talking about democracy and reproductive rights,” the Biden insider says of the midterms. “And he was proven right.”
In 2008, Barack Obama was elected POTUS primarily because the American electorate trusted him with the mandate of getting us out of Iraq and restoring a good economy.
In 2020, Joe Biden’s mandate was that he not be Donald Trump.
Basically, be a good steward of the country and, more importantly, do what you were elected to office to do.
Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker reminds us not to repeat the mistakes of President Gerald Ford, this time in a matter I just learned of today.
In early August, 1975, President Gerald Ford granted amnesty to a polarizing figure whose actions had posed a grave threat to American democracy. The man in question was not Richard Nixon, whom Ford had pardoned eleven months earlier, but General Robert E. Lee. After the Civil War, the prospect of prosecution had loomed over former members of the Confederacy. In 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation that absolved most of them but excluded, among others, Confederate leaders and those who held property worth more than twenty thousand dollars. Three years later, Johnson, who felt that it was simply time to move on, issued another proclamation, which expanded the pardon to include the men, such as Lee, who had organized and led the rebellion. Still, having renounced their U.S. citizenship and taken up arms against the government, they were required to swear an oath of allegiance and make a formal request to regain their rights. Lee’s application was lost—one theory holds that Secretary of State William H. Seward gave Lee’s paperwork to a friend as a souvenir—and he died, in 1870, a man without a country.
When Ford reinstated Lee as an American citizen, albeit a dead one, he stretched the truth to the point of prevarication. Lee’s character, Ford remarked, had been “an example to succeeding generations” and the reinstatement was therefore “an event in which every American can take pride.” Nixon’s pardon was far more controversial, but it followed a similar logic. Speaking to Bob Woodward, in the late nineties, Ford explained that Watergate had become such a debacle that there was no hope of making progress on any domestic or foreign-policy issue until it was resolved. He was, in his telling, motivated by concern for the nation’s fate, not Nixon’s. Despite the scale and the destructiveness of his predecessor’s actions, he argued, it was time for the nation to move on.
Late last month, Donald Trump, the twice-impeached, serially indicted former President of the United States, arrived at a courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, to face charges stemming from his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. By then, the spectacle of a former President being indicted had gone from unprecedented to old hat. In addition to the sprawling Georgia case, grand juries have returned indictments against Trump in a business-fraud case brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in New York, and in two federal cases brought by Jack Smith, a special counsel for the Department of Justice: the first, in Florida, relates to the mishandling of classified materials, and the second, in Washington, D.C., to election interference. (Trump has pleaded not guilty in all of them.) The most damning charges appear in the election cases, which concern Trump’s attempts to retain the Presidency after being voted out of office. Those attempts, of course, culminated in the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol—the most significant threat to the peaceful transition of power since the conflict at the center of Robert E. Lee’s forfeited citizenship.
To be completely fair to President Ford, the measure to restore Robert E. Lee’s citizenship was also passed in a joint resolution by Congress. General Ulysses S. Grant did endorse Lee’s request.
Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News wonders whatever happened to relatively quiet summer months on the political front.
By tradition, business would largely halt for what Thomas Jefferson dubbed the “sickly months” of late summer in a capital city supposedly (but not actually) built on a swamp. “No good legislation ever comes out of Washington after June,” quipped Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president John Nance Garner.
And the August of an off-off year like this one — when there’s neither a presidential nor a midterm election in the fall — should have been as quiet as politics gets. But even the quiet moments of American politics these days can be cacophonous. [...]
“It used to be that even the most addled political junkies got to dry out in August,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former GOP campaign operative. “But between the new season of Law & Order: MAGA and Trump’s would-be challengers desperate to gain traction via the debate stage, this year offers even less of a respite than usual.”
Cathy Young of The Bulwark offers some interesting and informed speculation about what the death (?) of Yevgeny Prigozhin reveals about Putin’s Russia.
Prigozhin’s rebellion brought with it new revelations. Among other things, it showed how weak Putin’s vaunted domestic support in Russia really was. No one took to the streets in defense of the government when it faced a serious enough threat to make the president and other top officials flee Moscow. When Prigozhin and his men took over Rostov-on-Don, the locals cheered. The Wagner rebels’ sojourn in Rostov also left a visual that provides a striking metaphor for the state of Russia in 2023: a tank stuck in the entrance gates of a circus.
Another unexpected truth bomb came from Putin himself. The Kremlin autocrat was evidently so piqued by his “chef’s” betrayal that he publicly confirmedsomething investigative reporters such as those at Bellingcat had long said and Russian officialdom had long denied: that the Wagner group was not a “private military company” but an outfit fully funded by the state, to the tune of nearly $1 billion in just the past year. (In other words, Wagner was the Kremlin’s instrument for what Bellingcat called “deniable black ops.”)
In turn, former Russian faux president and current deputy national security chief Dmitry Medvedev was sufficiently spooked by the rebellion not only to hightail it to Turkey but to also make a de facto admission that Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling was a bluff. “In the history of the human race there has never been a situation where the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons was controlled by bandits,” Medvedev told the Russian news agency TASS. “Such a crisis will obviously not be limited to a single country. The world will be brought to the brink of annihilation.” Never mind that Medvedev himself had been the Kremlin’s point man for threats of nuclear apocalypse if Russia were thwarted in its quest to destroy the “Nazi” regime in Kyiv. Indeed, he made such a threat again ten days after the rebellion. At that point, one could legitimately ask whether “bandits” were currently in charge of Russia’s nuclear arsenal—or whether Medvedev’s panicked outcry during the aborted coup shows that he knows the current Russian leadership won’t risk an apocalypse.
Edward Wong and Julian Barnes of The New York Times report that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will travel next month to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Putin wants Mr. Kim to agree to send Russia artillery shells and antitank missiles, and Mr. Kim would like Russia to provide North Korea with advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines, the officials said. Mr. Kim is also seeking food aid for his impoverished nation.
Both leaders would be on the campus of Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok to attend the Eastern Economic Forum, which is scheduled to run Sept. 10 to 13, according to the officials. Mr. Kim also plans to visit Pier 33, where naval ships from Russia’s Pacific fleet dock, they said. North Korea celebrates the anniversary of its founding on Sept. 9.
On Wednesday, the White House warned that Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim had exchanged letters discussing a possible arms deal, citing declassified intelligence. A White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, said high-level talks on military cooperation between the two nations were “actively advancing.” U.S. officials declined to give more details on the state of personal ties between the leaders, who are considered adversaries of the United States.
Finally today, Annabelle Dickson and Eleni Correa of POLITICO Europe report that Britain’s Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has moved the Labour Party back to the center in anticipation of next year’s general election.
The Labour Party chief sent the soft-left wing of his party into full retreat on Monday with a dramatic shadow Cabinet reshuffle that rewarded a string of MPs on his party’s right flank.
It marked the final stage of a three-year project which has seen Starmer take ruthless grip of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing party and drag it steadily back to the center ground, echoing the 1990s modernization led by Tony Blair and pal Peter Mandelson. [...]
With Labour commanding an 18-point poll lead over the ruling Conservatives ahead of next year’s general election, Starmer’s picks for his top team are a clear indication of who will hold high office if he wins power.
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