Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Disgraced

We begin today with Josh Marshall—again—of Talking Points Memo, excoriating legacy media for falling for the now-discredited Hunter Biden Laptop story.

For years I’ve continued saying, against what seems like the unified thinking of every reporter, editorialist and credentialed smart person, that the fabled “Hunter Biden Laptop” was obviously the product of a Russian influence operation. The story was absurd on its face. Somehow Hunter Biden decided in a drugged-up fugue that he needed to take his laptop to a computer repair shop. He then forgot about it. The legally blind owner of the repair shop decided to crack it open and look at the files (as one does, of course) and then somehow managed to get the contents to Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.

And yet basically everybody and I mean everybody ended up falling for this. Indeed, the very brief efforts to remain wary of the laptop story in the final days of the 2020 election have evolved into an object case of the dangers of censorship and even liberal media election meddling. It’s a decision — albeit one lasting only a few days — that everyone now agrees “we got wrong.” It was the centerpiece of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” nonsense. But Elon Musk going in for it isn’t the point. He’s a clown. All the serious people ended up doing exactly the same. This has always been bullshit. Media organizations at first wouldn’t touch the story because they’d spent the previous four years kicking themselves for allowing themselves to become the promoters of a Russian election interference and disinformation campaign with the purloined DNC emails back in 2016. Since the Hunter Biden laptop stories had all the hallmarks of exactly the same thing somehow happening to pop up in the final days of the 2020, of course they were suspicious. 

[...]

The real issue, as I note above, is the reporters, editorialists and commentators, who vouched for and credited this whole edifice of lies and bullshit…

[...] 

This entire thing has been based on Russian plants and intelligence operations from the start. Every bit of it. It’s been obvious. And yet, well … they’re all dupes. Somehow almost a decade after this whole thing started we’re shocked to see, wow, Weiss’s office was being led around by another cat’s paw of the Russian intelligence services. We’re shocked. But why are we shocked? Every last person among the serious people of the nation’s capital and the sprawling thing called elite received opinion has egg on their face. And it’s not even clear they fully realize it yet.

Aidan Quigley of Roll Call says that Congress will have very little time when it returns next week to pass spending bills in order to avoid a government shutdown.

The Senate returns Monday, only to face impeachment articles the House adopted seeking removal of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from office. The chamber could quickly dismiss the charges or hold a longer trial as some conservatives are demanding; either way, it’s a constitutional prerogative that must be dealt with first.

The House, meanwhile, isn’t back until Wednesday. That means the latest congressional leaders could theoretically release the text and still adhere to House rules requiring the legislation to be publicly available in advance is Monday.

But even assuming the House can pass the spending package as soon as Wednesday — possibly under suspension of the rules — that leaves little time for the Senate to process it by the end of the day Friday. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and other Senate hard-liners have shown a willingness to delay must-pass bills on several occasions, even if it’s clear they don’t have the votes to block them.

All of these factors have led to speculation that lawmakers may be forced to punt final action for a week with a short-term stopgap measure, lining up the first package of bills currently expiring March 1 with the remaining eight bills that lapse March 8.

Charles Blow of The New York Times says that with the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling about IVF and frozen embryos, this country careens even closer to a theocracy.

There have been cases before in which embryos were destroyed as a result of negligence, but the Alabama decision significantly ups the ante. It essentially turns cryopreservation tanks into frozen nurseries.

The idea is absurd and unscientific. It is instead tied to a religious crusade to downgrade the personhood of women by conferring personhood on frozen embryos.  

[...]

Control of women’s bodies is the endgame. And some religious conservatives won’t stop until that goal is achieved. For that reason, intervening victories — like the overturning of Roe v. Wade — will never be seen as enough; they will only intensify a blinding sense of righteousness.

[...]

The only thing that seems to be temporarily stopping congressional Republicans from pushing for a national abortion ban — after years of arguing that their goal was merely to allow individual states to make their own laws — is that the issue of reproductive choice is an electoral loser for their party.

Mark Joseph Stern of Slate notes that public defenders are good for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wednesday’s case, McElrath v. Georgia, involves a tragic set of facts. Damian McElrath spent several years slipping into schizophrenia before, in a fit of delusional paranoia, he stabbed his mother to death, convinced she was poisoning his food. Georgia prosecutors charged him with malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. At trial, McElrath pleaded insanity, presenting a persuasive case that he could not distinguish right from wrong at the time of his crime. The jury partially agreed and returned a split verdict. On the charge of malice murder, the jury found McElrath “not guilty by reason of insanity”—an acquittal, but one that committed him to a mental hospital indefinitely. On the two other charges, the jury found him “guilty but mentally ill”—a conviction that subjected him to prison time, with the possibility of mental health treatment. The trial judge accepted the verdict and sentenced McElrath to life in prison.

After a complicated appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court declared that the jury’s split verdicts on malice murder (acquitted) and felony murder (convicted) were “repugnant” under state law. The court insisted that it was impossible for McElrath to have had different mental states at the same time, so the verdicts could not be reconciled. Thus, the court vacated both verdicts, effectively allowing the state to retry McElrath for malice murder despite the jury’s acquittal. McElrath argued that this retrial would violate double jeopardy, but the court disagreed, reasoning that the two verdicts were “valueless,” indistinguishable from a mistrial due to a hung jury.

Could it really be that easy to evade the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against double jeopardy? Can a court just proclaim that an acquittal doesn’t count because it doesn’t make sense? No, Jackson reasoned in her opinion on Wednesday: The Georgia Supreme Court got it wrong. To explain why, the justice went back to first principles. The Fifth Amendment states that no person may “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” That means that “a verdict of acquittal is final” and serves as “a bar to a subsequent prosecution for the same offense.” An acquittal encompasses “any ruling that the prosecution’s proof is insufficient to establish criminal liability for an offense.” A jury’s acquittal is “inviolate” and cannot be reviewed, let alone overturned, by a higher court. This “bright-line rule” preserves the jury’s duty “to stand between the accused and a potentially arbitrary or abusive government that is in command of the criminal sanction.”

Lauren Weber of The Washington Post discusses nonprofits that made a lot of money through the trafficking of COVID-19 misinformation.

Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone — eight times what it collected the year before the pandemic began — allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. Another influential anti-vaccine group, Informed Consent Action Network, nearly quadrupled its revenue during that time to about $13.4 million in 2022, giving it the resources to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements as Americans’ faith in vaccines drops.

Two other groups, Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors, went from receiving $1 million combined when they formed in 2020 to collecting more than $21 millioncombined in 2022, according to the latest tax filings available for the groups.

The four groups routinely buck scientific consensus. Children’s Health Defense and Informed Consent Action Network raise doubts about the safety of vaccines despite assurances from federal regulators. “Vaccines have never been safer than they are today,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its webpage outlining vaccine safety.

Elizabeth Wellington of The Philadelphia Inquirer caught the shoe salesman stealing again.

What unsettles me is the former president’s golden sneaker is a clear nod — albeit gaudy — to hip-hop culture, a culture he’s spent years vilifying. Yeah, I know. Why can’t Trump’s Sneaker Con appearance be about him connecting with his homies over footwear. Why are you making it about race?

The truth is, if it wasn’t for hip-hop culture, sneaker culture wouldn’t exist. And if it wasn’t for Black American culture, hip-hop wouldn’t exist.

Trump is a friend to neither, period. In fact, Trump and many of his Republican supporters are actively trying to wipe Black culture off the American landscape, most egregiously through continued attempts at voter suppression and banning books. Black people benefitted from slavery, so many say. Black history is not American history, they argue.

But sneaker culture is ripe for the taking?

The hypocrisy is astonishing.

Or, is it? Trump’s colonization of sneaker culture is totally on brand. All 1,000 of the limited edition Trump sneaker, made [by] CIC Ventures LLC, have sold out, netting the company at least $400,000. According to the website, the sneakers are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals. But Trump reported owning CIC Ventures in his 2023 financial disclosure.

Wellington is right regarding the connection of sneaker culture to hip-hop culture but I do remember that in the early 1970s, Converse Chuck Taylors were very popular. My little self wanted a pair soooooo badly. They went out of style when NBA players stopped wearing them in the late 1970s. And I do remember wanting a pair of those knock-off-Chucks called Bata Bullets, too.

I didn’t know that Chuck Taylors dated back to the 1920s, though.

So ...I would mark “sneaker culture” as “beginning” in the mid to late 1970s, perhaps; a little bit before hip-hop. In any event, sneaker culture was well under way by the time this song came out.

David Smith of The Guardian notes that former British Prime Minister Liz Truss showed up here. In the United States. At CPAC. And gave a speech. And blamed her downfall on “the deep state.”

In Wednesday’s opening session, an “international summit”, the ex-PM sat side by side with Nigel Farage, former leader of the Brexit party, both with small Union flags on the table in front of them.

[...]

Not for the first time Truss, whose premiership last only 50 days, sought to portray herself as the victim of bureaucratic forces. “I ran for office in 2022 because Britain wasn’t growing, the state wasn’t delivering, [and] we needed to do more,” she said. “I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. What I did face was a huge establishment backlash and a lot of it actually came from the state itself.”

She continued: “What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies.”

Truss was interrupted and asked to explain the meaning of “quango”. She replied: “A quango is a quasi non-governmental organisation. In America you call it the administrative state or the deep state. But we have more than 500 of these quangos in Britain and they run everything.”

Lettuce Liz is talking about “the establishment” in the original sense that former UK Spectator and Washington Post columnist Henry Fairlie used the word.

Mariko Oi of BBC News reports that Japan’s main stock index, the Nikkei 225, has hit a record high; just above its previous high of 35 years ago. But the Japanese economy is still suffering and has slipped into recession.

The Nikkei 225 rose 2.19% on Thursday to end the trading day at 39,098.68.

That topped the previous record closing high of 38,915.87 set on 29 December 1989, the last day of trading that decade.

Asian technology shares were boosted after US chip giant Nvidia revealed strong earnings, driven by demand for its artificial intelligence processors.

Global investors are returning to the benchmark index thanks to strong company earnings, even as the country's economy has fallen into a recession.

[...]

The country's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by a worse-than-expected 0.4% in the last three months of 2023, compared to a year earlier.

It came after the economy shrank by 3.3% in the previous quarter.

The figures from Japan's Cabinet Office also indicate that the country has lost its position as the world's third-largest economy to Germany.

Lilia Yapparova of the Russian independent media outlet Meduza interviews one of Bellingcat’s lead investigative journalists, Christo Grozev, about the beginnings of his investigation into the death of Russian activist Alexei Navalny.

In early 2021, when Alexey Navalny was getting ready to return to Russia just five months after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, Christo Grozev asked Navalny’s wife Yulia whether she realized that her husband would face certain arrest when his plane landed in Moscow.

“In response, she just smiled and said, ‘Christo, you’re so naive. They won’t just arrest him. They’ll keep him in torture chambers for years. And they might also kill him,’” Grozev told Meduza.

[...]

“I’ve already gotten warnings from my sources that there could be an entire new wave of repressions and murders — that Putin has ‘special plans’ for Russian opposition leaders,” he told Meduza. If these reports are true, he noted, jailed opposition figures such as Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza will be “especially vulnerable” to Putin’s whims ...

[...]

On Sunday, two days after Navalny’s death, Novaya Gazeta reported that Navalny’s body was in a morgue in the town of Salekhard, the capital of the region where he died, and that it has bruises suggesting he was physically restrained while convulsing.

According to Grozev, convulsions are a “typical symptom” of poisoning by high doses of organophosphates, nerve agents expressly prohibited by the U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia is a party.

Finally today, Renée Graham of The Boston Globe reminds us that when it comes to the job of defending civil rights and democracy, the “job’s not finished” simply because a charismatic leader dies. Never.

In a widely circulated clip from “Navalny,” the Academy Award-winning documentary about Alexei Navalny — often called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “most formidable opponent” — he was asked what message he would want to leave for his fellow Russians if he were killed by his political enemies.

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you — you’re not allowed to give up,” he said, speaking in Russian. “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember that we are a huge power that is being oppressed by bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”

More than a poignant epitaph for Navalny, who died last week under suspicious circumstances in a Russian penal colony, his words were also a pointed directive to his many followers. He not only echoed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stance that the “appalling silence of the good people” is as destructive as “the hateful words and actions of the bad people” but also the civil rights leader’s last speech delivered the day before he was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis.

Try to have the best possible day, everyone!

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A weak Donald Trump tries to deal with the world

Dan Pfeiffer/”The Message Box” on Substack:

The Real Reason Trump Bows Down to Putin

Trump’s comments about NATO and his silence on Navalny have made his relationship with Russia a major issue (again)

Speculating about Trump’s friendship with Putin has been a cottage industry since his 2016 win. Were Trump and Putin in cahoots to defeat Hillary Clinton? Is Trump a Russian sleeper agent? Is this all a play to get a Trump Tower Moscow built? Or, my personal favorite theory, Trump is just worried that Putin will one day release the infamous “pee tape.”

All of these may have elements of truth (especially the “pee tape”), however, I think the correct answer is much simpler. Trump bows down to Putin for the same reasons he bows down to other dictators: he is a weak man. A coward who is scared of confrontation. He would rather preemptively surrender to protect himself than fight to protect others.

He’s the exact opposite of Navalny.

To sum up: RUS/Putin have invaded their neighbor, assassinated the biggest domestic political threat, coopted one of the right's biggest media stars, and seeded a fabricated story about the US President that was echoed by GOP congressional leadership & rightwing media en masse.

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) February 21, 2024

That there is what you call Russian interference.  Or, as Trump puts it, a “hoax”. But I do not think think that word means what he thinks it means.

And I think the voters will care about it when the time comes.

Brian Beutler/Off Message:

Trump's Huge Fraud Verdict Is A Watershed Moment for Accountability—And New Corruption

Democrats and the media need to pay close attention to what happens next.

Democrats, meanwhile, barely talk about Trump’s legal woes at all. The Biden campaign’s Twitter account, a generally spirited rapid-response operation, didn’t mention either verdict.

But the corruption I’m talking about, that I hope Democrats finally take pains to scrutinize aggressively, isn’t the retrospective corruption of a fraudulent businessman who believes he can assault women with impunity.

It’s the corruption he will engage in going forward to avoid the consequences of these verdicts.

Oliver Darcy/CNN:

The Burisma Beginnings: The Burisma bribery narrative pushed by right-wing media against President Joe Biden took an alarming twist on Tuesday after it imploded in spectacular fashion last week. The informant at the center of the narrative, who was charged last week for allegedly lying to the FBI, admitted during an interview with law enforcement that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing" along dirt about Hunter Biden. That's according to documents Special Counsel David Weiss filed in court Tuesday. As Todd Zwillich put it on X: "Just so everyone's clear: This would mean that Russia successfully used [Chuck] Grassley[James] Comer, Fox News and others to damage the President of the United States and make fake info about him an article of faith on the right." In the court filing, Weiss also underscored the weight of Alexander Smirnov's alleged lies: "The false information he provided was not trivial. It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States," Weiss wrote. "The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day." CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz has more here.

This impeachment inquiry is uncovering a scandal but I don’t think it’s the one they were hoping for.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) February 21, 2024

David Cay Johnston/DC Report:

Trump’s Next Legal Move: Personal Bankruptcy

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones did it two years ago. Rudolph Giuliani did it just before Christmas. Now there’s a very good chance that before March 12, Donald Trump will join them in filing personal bankruptcy.

Trump would do so for the same reason as Jones and Giuliani — to delay paying court-ordered awards for defamation.

Trump has never filed personal bankruptcy, as I will show below. Doing so now might seem at first blush to ruin his brand, his polished image as a multi-billionaire, a modern Midas who turns to gold all that he touches.

But spinning a bankruptcy filing to his advantage would be easy. Trump will tell his cultish believers that he is as rich as ever, but he was forced to seek refuge in Bankruptcy Court by the Marxist-Fascist-Corrupt-Deep State-Liberal-Radical cabal he blames for his legal woes.

Speaking of weak politicians, here’s Berny Belvedere/The UnPopulist on Tim Scott:

Tim Scott Offers His Honor For a Shot at Trump’s Veepstakes

He is the most disappointing politician in America at the moment

A couple of weeks ago, Trump brought Scott on stage with him during his New Hampshire victory party to undergo a humiliation ritual in which he publicly mused about how much Scott “must hate” Haley since he’s chosen to endorse Trump and not her even though she appointed him to the Senate. It wasn’t a secret that Scott’s decision to endorse Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary, the most critically important contest for Haley’s chances of overcoming Trump, was meant to assist Trump’s plot to cut her down to size. But instead of mitigating the personal fallout between the two that Scott’s endorsement would inevitably create, Trump deliberately stoked it with his remarks.

We know Trump is like this. But far more significant was Scott’s unprompted response (since Trump’s question was more rhetorical than anything): Instead of grimacing in distaste or looking crestfallen, he moved forward toward the lectern and indicated he wanted to say something. Then, turning to look at Trump face to face, and with uncomfortably deep meaning in his eyes and a broad smile, he said, “I just love you.”

Scott has learned to love Trump—a significantly different posture than appreciating things Trump has done (like appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court) but through gritted teeth the way we might characterize Haley’s stance. No, this now is love. Scott no longer merely shares a party with Trump, but an agenda.

What happens in a red state never stays in a red state. This should be a five alarm fire. https://t.co/7wC5pPX04o

— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) February 18, 2024

Dahlia Lithwick/Slate:

The Real Way to Think About Biden’s Age This Run

We’re in a Biden-Trump rematch. And the media is focusing on this?

So now Americans face the problem that Biden is old, while Trump is an authoritarian who wants to “create a private red-state army under the president’s command.” The purpose of this army, per Stephen Miller, is to deport as many as 10 million “foreign-national invaders” who he claims have entered the country under Biden, and the plan, as Ron Brownstein describes it, is to “go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids.” Then, he would build “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” to serve as internment camps for migrants designated for deportation.

One can certainly see why the two stories would weigh the same.

Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers.

Well, there’s that.

Can confirm https://t.co/LkeQMEDDCk

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) February 18, 2024

POLITICO:

Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, president of The Center for Renewing America, part of a conservative consortium preparing for Trump’s return to power.

The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”

[…]

While speaking in September at American Moment’s “ Theology of American Statecraft: The Christian Case for Immigration Restriction” on Capitol Hill in September, Vought defended the widely-criticized practice of family separation at the border during the Trump years, telling the audience “the decision to defend the rule of law necessitates the separation of families.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 offers more visibility into what policy agenda a future Trump administration might pursue. It says policies that support LGBTQ+ rights, subsidize “single-motherhood” and penalize marriage should be repealed because subjective notions of “gender identity” threaten “Americans’ fundamental liberties.”

At a time when White Christians are falling toward 40% of US population & white evangelicals are down to about 1/7 per @PRRIpoll, religious conservatives are escalating efforts to write their values & grievances into law across the red states on a widening array of issues https://t.co/atVPHLeGSP

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) February 20, 2024

Dan Shafer/”The Recombobulation Area” on Substack:

'It’s a new day in Wisconsin.' Your votes made that happen.

RIP to The Gerrymander.

This is a victory not for any one political party, but a victory for Wisconsin, for democracy, and for fair representation. The Gerrymander has divided Wisconsin for so many years. It has greatly limited competition in state legislative districts, making it tremendously difficult to hold legislators accountable by way of the ballot box. That part is over now.

I distinctly believe that the end of The Gerrymander in Wisconsin will make for a healthier political process in this state. That legislators having to compete and earn our votes instead of having them handed to them through an unfairly tilted map will bring about better representation across the political spectrum. That this will make legislators more responsive to their constituents, to majority public opinion on key issues, and more respectful and cooperative with each other as lawmakers. That this will bring about a genuine change to our truly toxic legislative branch.

And yet, many of the same people will still be there in the state legislature, of course, so this “new day” will still have many of the same old faces. Many of the same intractable problems will continue to exist. Fixing the deeply broken institution of the Wisconsin State Legislature after more than a decade under the control of Robin Vos and this group of state Republicans is going to take some time.

Celebrate, Badger State! Your activism made it happen. And/but everything is a multi-step process, from reviving Wisconsin Democrats, to electing a fair-minded Wisconsin Supreme Court, to proposing and signing the new maps.

The electoral side of the Resistance (Indivisible, Run for Something, Moms Demand Action) keeps grinding and winning, too. The performative stuff faded but these voters cram into any available polling booth. Ask Tom Souzzi! https://t.co/k1PnTz9Lgp

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) February 19, 2024

For an argument against incrementalism, here’s David Rothkopf and Alon Pinkas/The New Republic:

How One Error May Haunt Biden’s Foreign Policy Legacy

The president’s foolish trust in Netanyahu was a terrible mistake. It’s not too late to correct—barely—but tough medicine is required.

Netanyahu is untrustworthy. He has a proven record of manipulation, deceit, and mendacity. He is a sworn enemy of peace in the region. He has treated Palestinians with disdain and disrespect ever since he entered politics. And the extremists in his coalition are even worse—rabid theocratic nationalists who believe that Israeli lives are infinitely more valuable than those of their closest neighbors.

The secondary error that the Biden team is now making is that, after the catastrophic consequences of its policy have become painfully clear, it is seeking to fix the mistake not by undoing it but by augmenting its policy with incremental measures. You can’t fine-tune a massive error into being a success. That is a lesson the United States learned in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan.

Cliff Schecter highlights Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Trump trials take the spotlight this week

The New York Times

Judge Sets Trial Date in Trump’s Manhattan Criminal Case

Ruling that the case against Donald J. Trump can proceed, Justice Juan M. Merchan said he planned to begin the trial on March 25.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

In fiery testimony, Willis defends herself against accusations of misconduct

Ex-employee claims relationship began earlier than acknowledged

Add to this the expectation that Judge Arthur Engoron will make public his judgment in the real estate fraud case, and the possibility of a SCOTUS decision on an immunity challenge. 

Philip Bump/Washington Post:

Remember the ‘Biden bribe’ allegation? DOJ now says it was made up.

It is hard to overstate how much energy Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media invested in the idea that this was credible. When he announced the launch of an impeachment probe of Biden in September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) invoked the Smirnov allegation…

Fox News has mentioned Biden in the context of “bribe” or “bribery” more than 2,600 times over the past 12 months. A Media Matters review of host Sean Hannity’s efforts to bolster the Republican impeachment effort tallied at least 85 segments focused on the allegation and the FBI form that documented it — despite the complete dearth of evidence supporting the idea.

On Sept. 7, Comer was asked by a Fox Business host about the lack of movement on the bribery allegation. Comer suggested there had been a “coverup” by the government.

It appears that Comer was wrong.

The Taylor Swift effect was real for this year's recording-breaking Super Bowl: • Female viewership ages 12-17 up +11% • Female viewership ages 18-24 up +24% Women also represented 47.5% of the total audience for this year's Super Bowl — an all-time high. (h/t @paulsen_smw) pic.twitter.com/koBzRiao5n

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) February 14, 2024

Jake Sherman/X:

THE DISASTER THAT IS HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP

Just this week, @SpeakerJohnson has:

  • Seen Democrats win a special election in New York, narrowing the already minuscule GOP majority to two votes.
  • Lost a sixth rule vote on the House floor — a measure that would’ve allowed an increase in the state-and-local tax (SALT) deduction — when 18 Republicans bucked their own leadership and voted no. This Republican majority has lost more rule votes than any other majority in five decades, a stunning sign of weakness.
  • → Abruptly pulled a bill to overhaul FISA due to Republican infighting. The GOP leadership said the House would vote on the bill before locking down the votes, despite some senior Republicans raising internal objections. This is the second time Johnson had to pull a FISA bill this Congress.
  • → Seen another committee chair announce his resignation. @RepMarkGreen, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, is leaving Congress after only six years. The 59-year-old Green — the fourth committee chair to retire — just led the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
  • → Decided against putting a bill on the floor to provide billions of dollars in new aid to Israel without offsets. Just a week ago, Johnson allowed a vote on Israel aid that he knew was going to fail.
  • → Provided absolutely no insight to rank-and-file lawmakers on how he’ll handle the Senate’s bipartisan $95 billion foreign aid package. Johnson said the bill isn’t a priority because the federal government is scheduled to shut down in a few weeks.
  • → Witnessed the House Intelligence Committee chair issue a dire public warning about a “serious national security threat” to the country, only to have Senate Intelligence Committee leaders and the White House downplay the issue.

Rep. Carlos Giminez, a Florida Republican, says he supports Ukraine aid and won’t rule out sidestepping Speaker Johnson to pass it: “It’s necessary that we fund Ukraine,” he tells reporters — adding a bill doesn’t need border provisions. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

— Haley Byrd Wilt 🌻 (@byrdinator) February 15, 2024

Paul Waldman/”The Cross Section” on Substack:

Why everyone refuses to believe what voters are telling them about immigration

Republicans keep losing on the issue, yet Democrats are supposed to be the ones who don't get it.

Republicans just lost yet another election in which they figured fear-mongering on immigration was all they needed to succeed. Now they’re embarking on a farcical impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for imaginary crimes and misdemeanors, because just as they believe that khaki-clad trips to the southern border are public relations gold, they think impeaching Mayorkas will help Donald Trump win November’s election and secure their razor-thin House majority, simply by keeping the issue of immigration in the news.

Despite the GOP’s record of repeated failure to turn immigration into electoral results, the vast majority of the political class in Washington — including Republicans, Democrats, and journalists — remains convinced that the losing Republican strategy is actually brilliant, and it’s the Democrats who need to change their ways. The issue of immigration, they assume, is a kind of electoral magic weapon whose unstoppable power will slay all Democrats who stand before it.

But they’re just wrong. The voters keep telling them so, and they refuse to accept it.

This is a terrific podcast interview of Tom Suozzi’s pollster by Greg Sargent, fresh off Suozzi’s Tuesday special election win.

Among the things discussed: how the campaign approached the immigration issue (order and fairness), how persuasion mattered (getting Republicans and independents to vote for Suozzi), and the salience of abortion (very).

Very good interview with a very good pollster, Mike Bocian, who led Suozzi's polling team. This point about abortion rights is massive. The issue didn't mobilize Dems in NY3 in '22. By emphasizing the threat of a national ban in this race, they changed that. https://t.co/J2BW7F7h7K

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) February 15, 2024

It may not be predictive of a November win, but it’s something of a roadmap for how to get there. It’s well worth your time.

Fox's talk shows have been obsessed with the allegation of a "Biden bribe." Now the so-called "informant" has been arrested and charged with lying. The # of times this bombshell was mentioned by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity tonight: Zero.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 16, 2024

Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:

Whatever Donald Wants, Donald Gets

Trump’s march through the GOP is leaving it in ruins.

Right now, Trump has far too much control over Republicans who should know better, using a disconcerting but effective combination of brute force and sinister charm.

He’s rampaging through U.S. politics like a modern-day William T. Sherman on his Atlanta-to-Savannah March to the Sea. Gen. Sherman’s goal was to foster fear, inflict pain, and get Georgians to ditch the Confederate cause. Trump has adopted his own fear-and-pain approach on his march toward ever-greater domination of the GOP House, the Republican National Committee (he wants it run by an election denier and his daughter-in-law, nothing to see here), and, of course, the Republican presidential primary season and 2024 nomination.

"I'm not telling you I won't [vote for Biden], I'm just telling you I'm not there yet. The only thing that I have decided firmly is that I will not vote for Trump under any circumstances." - @GovChristie Full interview: https://t.co/jiB0jYnwPm#PodSaveAmerica #CrookedMedia pic.twitter.com/hrxqMbIpsW

— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) February 15, 2024

He’ll get there before Nikki Haley, methinks.

From a ⁦@tarapalmeri⁩ newsletter, on “normie” Republicans retiring from the House: pic.twitter.com/Jdhb6zmJD4

— Steve Inskeep (@NPRinskeep) February 16, 2024

Joe Perticone/The Bulwark:

The Biden Impeachment Has Been Great for Joe Biden

But this week, the House Oversight Committee deposed [Hunter Biden associate Tony] Bobulinski as part of its ongoing haphazard impeachment inquiry into the president. What happened the moment the deposition concluded felt quite familiar to those who have followed the inquiry:

  • Oversight Chairman James Comer issued a declarative statement, unencumbered by evidence or specific details, that President Biden is corrupt.

  • Fox News reporter Brooke Singman published EXCLUSIVE bombshell reports recounting Bobulinski’s story that Biden “enabled” the sale of access to “dangerous adversaries” and that Biden is “the big guy,” along with other words in liability-limiting “scare quotes.”

  • What Bobulinski actually offered Oversight members inside the room turned out to be more of what he’s been trying to sell lawmakers and journalists for years: more conjecture and underwhelming, questionable testimony. The result is as familiar as the process: The impeachment inquiry, though shaking and whirring loudly, remains stuck in the hyperpartisan muck.

From Cliff Schecter:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A lose-lose for Republicans in the Senate

Washington Post:

Senate votes to advance Ukraine-Israel package after border deal fails

GOP senators have been deeply divided on how to proceed on the foreign aid package, with some critics arguing that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) led them into a political box canyon where Democrats have claimed the political edge on border security after they voted down the border deal they initially demanded. A vocal faction of McConnell critics have grown louder over the past week, with a handful even calling for his ouster, as Senate Republicans have gathered in meeting after meeting and argued about the uncomfortable political situation they find themselves in.

“The Republicans wanted something and then decided that they didn’t want that thing," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), referring to border security provisions. “Now, some of them want it again, and I think the adults are just moving on.”

But ultimately McConnell was joined by 17 fellow Republicans to advance the deal...

So what did all the drama over the border bill get the GOP? Bipartisan reprobation from their colleagues, international scorn, bad press, and in the end the bill Democrats wanted.

“They reacted to it like it was a poison,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut of Senate Republicans who had previously signaled they were supportive. “I think it’s unforgiveable what they did to James.” @MCJalonick @stephengroves https://t.co/S2qgqITeNP

— Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) February 8, 2024

Associated Press:

Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone

As the Republican quietly watched from a floor above, briefly the outsider after defending his legislation in a last Senate floor speech, fellow negotiator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was down on the floor excoriating the Republicans who had abandoned Lankfordone by one, after insisting on a border deal and asking him to negotiate a compromise on one of the country’s most intractable issues.

“Less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues changed their minds,” said Sinema, a former Democrat turned Independent. “Turns out they want all talk and no action. It turns out border security is not a risk to our national security. It’s just a talking point for the election.”

Lankford voted no on the Ukraine-Israel bill that advanced.

Poland’s Prime Minister:

Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) February 8, 2024

Rick Hasen/Slate:

A Grand Bargain Is Emerging in the Supreme Court’s Trump Cases, But Chaos May Be Ahead

After oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson, a grand bargain that appears to make practical sense as a compromise is beginning to come into view: The Supreme Court unanimously, or nearly so, holds that Colorado does not have the power to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, but in a separate case it rejects his immunity argument and makes Trump go on trial this spring or summer on federal election subversion charges. Depending upon how the court writes its opinion, however, it could leave the door open for chaos in January, if Donald Trump appears to win the 2024 election and a Democratic Congress rejects Electoral College votes for him on grounds he’s disqualified. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, may have seen this danger and found a way around it. If the court’s going to side with Trump in the disqualification case, it should embrace Justice Jackson’s rationale, even if it is not the most legally sound one.

I’ll take that bargain.

"My memory is fine." President Joe Biden slams a special counsel’s report for raising questions about his mental acuity and age https://t.co/wBLRZa9cjB pic.twitter.com/xpl0rc4MZn

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) February 9, 2024

Kevin Lind/Columbia Journalism Review:

Q&A: Dahlia Lithwick on the Colorado case, the election, and the press

I don’t think this is the vehicle that the Supreme Court will use to decide the outcome of the 2024 election. My sense is that this is both an intensely political case about the branches checking each other, and there are legitimate claims that the underlying process in the Colorado courts didn’t afford due process to Trump. In other words, if you’re going to do something that is the death penalty for a presidential election, you can’t do it with this little process. My instinct is that there are five votes on the current Supreme Court, at least, who do not want to see Donald Trump as the president in 2024—if he legitimately hasn’t won—and I don’t think this is the vehicle that they would choose to do it. It is the biggest, most dramatic intervention, and it would have the biggest fallout.

GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said it was unclear who could trust the GOP to negotiate after they scuttled the bipartisan border bill. She told me: “I’ve gone through the multile stages of grief. Today I’m just pissed off.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 7, 2024

New York Times:

Johnson Stumbles, Deepening Republican Disarray and His Own Challenges

Little more than 100 days into his tenure, the speaker who was handed an impossible job has only made it more difficult for himself, baffling his colleagues.

The back-to-back defeats highlighted the litany of problems Mr. Johnson inherited the day he was elected speaker and his inexperience in the position, roughly 100 days after being catapulted from the rank and file to the top job in the House. Saddled with a razor-thin margin of control, and a deeply divided conference that has proved repeatedly to be a majority in name only, he has struggled to corral his unruly colleagues and made a series of decisions that only added to his own challenges.

Nancy Pelosi thought bubble: count the votes, and then bring it to the floor for a vote, not the other way around. 

Due largely to an unexpected surge in immigration, the U.S. economy will be about $7 trillion larger - & federal revenues about $1T bigger - the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 7, 2024

Washington Post:

GOP leaders face unrest amid chaotic, bungled votes

Former president Donald Trump has used his perch as the GOP front-runner to bend Congress to his political whims

Moments before pandemonium broke out on the House floor on Tuesday evening, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer approached Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who had assumed a leisurely slouch in a rickety wooden chair in the back of the House chamber, for what appeared to be a quick chat.

...

“Speaker Johnson never called me,” Buck said. “[Former speaker Kevin McCarthy] would have yelled — Mike knows me well enough not to yell. And [former speaker John A.] Boehner would have broken my arm. It’s gotten easier as I’ve been here.”

NEWS—Biden issues national security memorandum on “safeguards and accountability” for U.S. military aid Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) tells us this is in keeping w/his amendment to the foreign aid bill that would require recipients of U.S. aid to comply w/int’l humanitarian law

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) February 9, 2024

This goes along with Biden remarks at his brief press conference last evening about Israel going ‘over the top’.

David Bier/The UnPopulist:

Secretary Mayorkas Is Being Impeached for Following the Law on Border Enforcement

Republicans are the ones making unconstitutional demands

Mayorkas would have been the first government official to be impeached for actually staying within the bounds of the Constitution. In fact, it is the Republicans who are making unconstitutional demands.

In the impeachment articles they drafted, they alleged that Mayorkas failed to block immigrants entering not just illegally but also legally and detain them—in inhumane and unconstitutional conditions—rather than release them. Even more absurd than the allegations is the fact that in the process of making them, Republicans repeatedly misstated the law, quoted overturned court decisions, and, hilariously, confused DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ actions with those of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others.

All of this proves just how Orwellian our political discourse on immigration has become.

Let’s go through their allegations.

And just for fun, this from Walter Shapiro/Roll Call was from late January:

Will voters punish total incompetence? House Republicans are about to find out Evidence is scant that voters would punish blundering ineptitude

So what if Johnson is poised to reject the first serious effort in years to control the chaos on our southern border? So what if Johnson is willing to let aid to Ukraine go down the tubes as part of a package deal on immigration?

The House Republicans are living in a fairy tale world. Alas, the fairy tale is taken from the Grimm Brothers and the Republicans are emulating Rumpelstiltskin, stomping their feet through the ground when they don’t get their way.

Reality check: There is no coherent strategy for House Republicans to prevail, with their fragile three-vote majority, when the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. That may explain why they are banking on divine intervention in the form of a second Trump presidency.

Cliff Schecter with a musical/political interlude:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Trump v. Anderson

We begin today with Ann E. Marimow of The Washington Post and her primer on Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado Supreme Court case involving Number 45’s disqualification from the Colorado presidential ballot, which will have oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court later this morning.

The justices will decide whether Colorado’s top court was correct to apply a post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to order Trump off the ballot after concluding his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to insurrection. Primary voting is already underway in some states. Colorado’s ballots for the March 5 primary were printed last week and include Trump’s name. But his status as a candidate will depend on what the Supreme Court decides.

Unlike Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the court’s decision handed the election to George W. Bush, the case challenging Trump’s qualifications for a second term comes at a time when a large swath of the country views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens and a significant percentage still believes false claims that the last presidential election was rigged. [...]

But election law experts have implored the justices to definitively decide the key question of whether Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, settling the issue nationwide so that other states with similar challenges to Trump’s candidacy follow along.

They warn of political instability not seen since the Civil War if the court was to overturn Colorado’s ruling but leave open the possibility that Congress could try to disqualify Trump later in the process, including after the general election.

Oral arguments for Trump v. Anderson begin at 10 AM ET and can be followed through a number of available audio feeds.

Donald K. Sherman writes for Slate that Trump v. Anderson is, in many ways, this generation’s Brown v. Board of Education.

Now the Supreme Court is facing another inflection point to consider democratic protections. On Thursday, the justices will hear arguments in Trump v. Anderson, to consider whether to uphold Donald Trump’s disqualification from office given the Colorado Supreme Court’s finding that he engaged in an insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. As the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which famously litigated Brown, argued in a friend of the court brief filed in Anderson, the “Reconstruction Amendments were enacted to ensure that the worst abuses in our nation’s history are not repeated and to achieve the fullest ideals of our democracy. But those Amendments are effective only when those responsible for applying them have the courage to do so.”

Of course, millions of Americans would be disappointed or even infuriated if Trump is removed from the ballot. Some may even turn to violence. But that threat is obvious given the former president’s incitement of violence after his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s supporters continue to threaten violence in his name, and without condemnation by the candidate. In his briefs before the Supreme Court, Trump has threatened “bedlam” if he is kept off the ballot, but the bedlam he provoked on Jan. 6 is how we got here—and why he is disqualified by the Constitution from serving as president again. [...]

If the Supreme Court allowed concerns about civil unrest or violence to deter enforcement of the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, then Black Americans and millions of others would never have secured the rights enshrined after the Civil War. Brown provoked immediate backlash from many white Americans, including violence, riots, and the founding of segregation academies throughout the South—with effects still seen today. Because the court did not cower in the face of this resistance, our country continued forward on the path toward a more just and democratic society.

The amicus curiae brief filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund for Trump v. Anderson (linked in the excerpt) is a great read and a short read.

For example, the footnote at the bottom of page 7 reminds us that part of the insurrection scheme was designed “to undermine the voting rights and full citizenship of Black voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and other federal laws.”

Kevin Lind of Columbia Journalism Review interviews Slate’s senior editor Dahila Lithwick about Trump v. Anderson and, more generally, about how the media covers the courts.

[LIND]: You gave a talk at Columbia Journalism School’s graduation last year (I was among the graduating class) and discussed how reporters from other beats broke major stories about the Supreme Court—particularly around undisclosed gifts from wealthy interests to justices—as opposed to court reporters doing it. What led to that happening, and what can journalists learn from that experience?

[LITHWICK]: I think that the Supreme Court press corps had a narrow aperture for what its responsibility was. There was a sense that its job was to cover the cases—What’s happened in oral argument; here’s what the decision held. We had this pristine beat, covering the law itself. The justices who produced it are nameless, faceless actors in a sausage-making factory, and we just write about the sausage. It became clear that there wasn’t a beat that was asking, Who are these justices, how do they get on the court, how do they decide cases? and Who’s paying for what, why is it never disclosed, and why are we constantly told that probing these things is somehow destabilizing to the rule of law? We were so busy guarding the henhouse that it took us years to realize nobody was covering the foxes.

We’ve really seen a change both in investigative journalists being sicced on the court and the raft of important stories that have subsequently come out. Stuff is starting to happen, but the critique was another version of what I said before, which is that we’re so busy covering this structure, we forgot to cover all of the systems and subterranean money. We failed to cover it, or we covered it incidentally. It is incredibly boring to write about how a handful of dark-money groups essentially captured the Supreme Court. But the fact that the press didn’t think that was a front-page story day after day, as it happened, for decades? That’s on us.

David A. Graham of The Atlantic looks at the week of Congressional Republicans in disarray (and the week isn’t even finished!).

Underlying the drama was a banal truth: Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t have a grip on his caucus. Maybe no one could manage such a thin majority, but his task will be even harder after yesterday’s failure. (Johnson vowed to try again on the Mayorkas impeachment. We’ll see.) The inexperienced Johnson is speaker thanks to Trump, who cheered on conservative rebels against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and refused to save him. Johnson’s rise was due in part to his starring role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. (An irony: If McCarthy hadn’t resigned after his ouster, Republicans might have had the votes yesterday.)

Things are barely going better for the Senate Republican caucus. Over recent months, that group hatched what seemed like a clever plan to entrap Democrats. Rather than pass a bill with aid to Ukraine and Israel, which the White House as well as many GOP members wanted, it would tie those issues to tighter security at the southern border. That would force Democrats to support policies that the GOP wanted, or else to vote against them and face political blowback on immigration, Trump’s favorite campaign issue. [...]

“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of a field in a thunderstorm holding up a metal stick,” Lankford lamented last week, before lightning struck. “The reason we’ve been talking about the border is because they wanted to, the persistent critics,” McConnell told Politico. “You can’t pass a bill without dealing with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.”

McConnell is right, but no one in his caucus wants to hear it. As for Lankford, his mistake was believing his colleagues when they said they wanted a bill that would tighten the border, and then trying to write one. But the Trump wing of the Republican Party isn’t interested in policy—it’s interested in sending signals. The MAGA crowd would rather impeach Mayorkas, even if they know he won’t be convicted and it won’t change anything, than enact a law that actually affects the border. The point is expression, not legislation.

Bill McKibben of the Guardian has nothing but good things to say about the Biden Administration’s decision to say no to big oil in one respect.

Ten days ago Joe Biden did something remarkable, and almost without precedent – he actually said no to big oil.

His administration halted the granting of new permits for building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, something Washington had been handing out like M&Ms on Halloween for nearly a decade. It’s a provisional “no” – Department of Energy experts will spend the coming months figuring out a new formula for granting the licenses that takes the latest science and economics into account – but you can tell what a big deal it is because of the howls of rage coming from the petroleum industry and its gaggle of politicians.

And you can tell something else too: just how threadbare their arguments have become over time. Biden has called their bluff, and it’s beautiful to watch.

Charles Blow of The New York Times reminds us of a previous schism between Jewish Americans and African Americans over the Six-Day War of 1967 and says that It still has lessons to offer us today.

Despite the fact that Jewish American sentiments don’t necessarily align with sentiments in Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state, or with the policies of Israel’s government, there are parallels between the perceived split years ago and the current cleavage: Many Black Americans, especially younger, politically engaged Black Americans, oppose Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with particular concern about the death toll among Palestinian civilians.

Many Jewish Americans support Israel’s right to conduct the war and American support for Israel’s war effort in order to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas — and some feel disappointed or even betrayed that many Black people seem to have more sympathy for the Palestinian perspective than the Israeli perspective.

The issues involved feel irreconcilable, because many of those engaged in the debate believe that their positions represent the moral high ground. And nuanced views are sometimes characterized as weak. But there has to be room for nuance.

David Gilbert of WIRED has exclusive reporting about a Russian disinformation campaign involving the border “crisis.”

The disinformation campaign began in earnest in late January, and expanded after Russian politicians spoke out when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with President Joe Biden’s administration to rule that US Border Patrol officers were allowed to take down razor-wire fencing erected by the Texas National Guard. Days later, when Texas governor Greg Abbott refused to stand down, former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, claimed that the Texas border dispute is “another vivid example of the US hegemony getting weaker.” [...]

After these comments, state media, influencers, and bloggers quickly got involved. Over the past two weeks, state-run media outlets like Sputnik and RT have called the dispute between the Texas governor and the Biden administration a “constitutional crisis” and an “unmitigated disaster,” while one Sputnik correspondent posed a video on the outlet’s X account, stating: “There’s a big convoy of truck drivers going down there. So, it can very easily get out of hand. It can genuinely lead to an actual civil war, where the US Army is fighting against US citizens.”

On Telegram, there were clear signs of a coordinated effort to boost conversations around the Texas crisis, according to analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by Logically, a company using artificial intelligence to track disinformation campaigns.

Finally today, Alex Burness of Bolts writes about a new initiative by a Montgomery County, PA county commissioner to create mobile units designed to go into neighborhoods to help voters “cure” their ballots.

Having won his election last November, [Neil] Makhija is now in a position to secure voting rights from the inside. County commissions in most of Pennsylvania double as boards of elections, with broad discretion over election procedures, handing Makhija power to help shape how voting is conducted in the third most populous county of this pivotal swing state. And he’s intent on getting creative.

Makhija tells Bolts he intends to propose that Montgomery County set up a mobile unit that’d go into neighborhoods to help people resolve mistakes they’ve made on their mail ballots.

He likens his proposal, which election experts say does not currently exist anywhere in Pennsylvania, to an ice cream truck for voting.

“Imagine if voting was as efficient and accessible as getting an Amazon delivery or calling an Uber,” Makhija told Bolts. “Exercising fundamental rights shouldn’t be more burdensome.”

Try to have the best possible day everyone!

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Citizen Trump loses in court, judges unanimous he is not above the law

ABC News:

Appeals court rejects Trump's immunity claim in federal election interference case

Trump had wanted the case dismissed based on his claim of "absolute immunity."

"We cannot accept former President Trump's claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power -- the recognition and implementation of election results," wrote the judges. "Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count."

"At bottom, former President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches," they wrote

Happy "no blanket presidential immunity" day for those who celebrate. As Joe Biden probably said to his staff, this is a BFD. Trump has until Monday to appeal.

See also SCOTUSBlog for a cert explainer, since that’s where this is headed.

PBS/NPR/Marist poll suggests the public agrees with the decision:

Trump should not get immunity, 2 out of 3 Americans say

About two-thirds of U.S. adults do not think former President Donald Trump should have immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took while president, according to a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll to be released Wednesday. The majority of Americans are aligned with a new federal appeals court ruling that found Trump can stand trial on charges tied to a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Yes. It was a complicated, multi-faceted issue that required thorough analysis, which is more likely to be allowed to stand by the Supreme Court than not. It also has important influence on proceedings in Georgia. A job well done is better than a job… done. https://t.co/4Ay1JmQrDG

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) February 6, 2024

On the immigration issue, Catherine Rampell/Washington Post writes:

The GOP dog caught the car. Again.

Unlike the Obamacare repeal debacle, the passage of the Senate border bill would not be so terrible. I maintain serious concerns about its Title 42-like powers, as well as some other provisions relating to asylum. But much of the bill would make useful changes that should, theoretically, receive robust bipartisan support.

For example, it would invest much-needed resources in the border. It would give our Afghan allies — people who’ve already been vetted and are here in the United States but stuck in legal limbo — a pathway to permanent legal status. And for the first time, it would mandate that vulnerable, unaccompanied children seeking asylum receive legal counsel.

The White House and the bill’s Senate negotiators are now trying to defend it against myriad falsehoods about open borders and the like. But the burden of proving — or disproving — the merits of this hard-fought deal should be on the speaker: What, exactly, is Johnson’s objection to doing so many things his party ran for office to do?

Biden says if border bill fails, he'll remind American voters every day until the election that the reason the border isn't secure is because of Trump

— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) February 6, 2024

Michael Tomasky/The New Republic:

The GOP Owns the Border Now. Here’s How Democrats Make Sure of It.

Hard-right Republicans killed the Senate immigration deal out of fealty to Trump. That’s the perfect opening for Biden to go on the attack.

Last week, momentarily and evidently naïvely, I was actually impressed that some number of Republican senators, apparently a majority of them, was going to stand up to Trump and defy his wishes by voting for this bill. That was how it looked last Thursday. I almost devoted my newsletter last Friday to the topic, telling readers to take note of this moment, because it may signal a new willingness on the part of some prominent Republicans to stand up to Trump.

Some reflex deep inside me counseled that I might live to regret putting the words “Republicans” and “principles” in the same sentence. The angel on my shoulder knew better.

Passing a border bill would convey to MAGA voters that 1) the government can work, and be bipartisan; and 2) the “existential threat” is being dealt with. Both of these are Kryptonite for a would-be authoritarian: Trump needs his supporters to be disillusioned and afraid

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 6, 2024

Marc Jacob/”Stop the Presses” on Substack:

A dozen reasons Trump’s dictator threat is real

The short-attention-span media need to dwell on the danger

The news media aren’t talking enough about Donald Trump’s dictatorial ambitions. Sure, they quote his praise of despots and his dreams of “retribution,” but they need to make his stated intentions a major theme of campaign coverage.

In virtually every story about the campaign, they need to include at least a background sentence or two to remind people that he aims to be an autocrat if he wins. Repetition matters, as the right has long known and mainstream media often forget.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel resigning. Federal Appeals Court denies Donald Trump “immunity” for his role in January 6th. Republican majority House vote fails in attempt to impeach Secretary Mayorkas. Republican vote to provide aide to Israel fails. Yikes. What a day for the GOP.

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) February 7, 2024

Brian Beutler/Off Message:

The Mainstream Media Should Be Honest About Trump’s Border Sabotage

And Joe Biden should bully them into it

One of my first pieces for Off Message encouraged President Biden to (as we say in the business) “work the media refs” more consistently. Their doom-laden coverage of his Afghanistan withdrawal and the economy’s recovery from the pandemic left Americans badly misinformed and, relatedly, helped tank his public approval. A bit of grabbing the bull by the horns was thus in order and badly needed.

Well, it still is, and the House GOP’s seemingly successful effort to sabotage the Senate’s bipartisan border security and foreign aid bill presents another great opportunity: Everyone knows House Republicans took orders from Donald Trump, and Trump’s been quite clear that he wants to kill the Senate bill so that the border remains overwhelmed, and he can blame the disorder on Biden during the campaign.

But Trump’s self-interested angle on this bill is often omitted from or buried in news reports, when it’s really the whole story. And unless this pattern of subterfuge is widely understood, Trump’s plan could work

Back-to-back embarrassing failures for House GOP leadership tonight • Mayorkas impeachment vote fails — of the various impeachments they’re eying, he was seen as the easiest • Israel aid bill, facing bipartisan opposition, flops after leadership tried to fast-track it

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 7, 2024

The House Republican Conference faceplanted tonight. Even if they take up impeaching Mayorkas tomorrow, they will have this humiliation. It also makes impeaching Joe Biden even less likely. via @independent https://t.co/EVxyjPAZFh

— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) February 7, 2024

And now for a musical interlude...

Jonathan Weiler/”Jonathan’s Quality Kvetching Newsletter” on Substack:

Why has Taylor Swift driven the rightwing crazy on the eve of the Super Bowl? A modest proposal :)

Enter Taylor Swift. For a quick refresher, she began dating KC tight end, Travis Kelce, during the 2023 season. Kelce is Mahomes’ favorite receiving target and is widely regarded as one of the best pass catching tight ends of all time, a key cog in the Chiefs’ two Super Bowl victories in the past four seasons. All of this was true and uncontroversial before last fall. But once his relationship with the planet's biggest pop star became public, and that pop star began regularly attending Kansas City games, the hype machines around both Swift and the NFL kicked into overdrive.1

That was a source of deep resentment for rightwing media even before last week. Swift has been a bane on the right for years now, especially since she endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. And Kelce has served as a pitchman for Pfizer's Covid vaccine which, you know….

John Fugelsang/X via Threadreader on the heels of Tracy Chapman’s Grammy duet with Luke Combs:

I can name TONS of great Tracy Chapman songs. (a somewhat outraged thread) (1) -"Baby Can I Hold You" was covered by everybody from Pavarotti to George Michael to Neil Diamond to Nicki Minaj -Clapton covered "Gimme One Reason" -Neil Young played on Tracy Chapman's 2nd album

Do we induct people into the rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame because of their sexuality? I thought it was about the music they produced. Can you name three Tracy Chapman songs? If you do… You googled it.

— Bill Miller (@MelaninDeficien) February 6, 2024

Read the whole thread, or just watch this:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Bidenomics, baby. It’s what makes the economy hum

USA Today:

For President Biden, the economy goes from election liability to a potential strength in 2024

The recession that many economists predicted hasn't happened.

Consumer confidence is surging.

The stock market has soared to all-time highs.

And on Friday came a robust jobs report, with the U.S. economy adding 353,000 jobs in January, according to the Labor Department − nearly twice what was projected.

Here are some headlines on the good news:

Past 24 hours. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/qo3HcEup12

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) February 2, 2024

The New York Times

January Jobs Report

U.S. Job Growth Surges

The labor market added 353,000 jobs in January, far more than expected, in a sign that economic growth remains vigorous.

The Wall Street Journal:

Jobs Growth of 353,000 Blasts Past Expectations as Labor Market Stays Hot

Unemployment was 3.7% as labor market defies predictions of significant slowdown

The Washington Post:

Labor market grew 353,000 in January, soaring past expectations

The unemployment rate has now been below 4 percent for two years -- the longest stretch since the 1960s

The economy is undeniably good. Want more proof? Look at this guy:

Kudlow on Fox Business: "We had a blowout jobs report ... I know many of my conservative friends are trying to drill holes in this report. But you know what, folks? It is what it is. It's a very strong report. Not every economic stat should be viewed through a political lens." pic.twitter.com/0w3oq51NM6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2024

Or her:

Fox News Host Warns Republicans: Don't Run on the Economy — 'It's Good' https://t.co/ALhwViTenA

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) February 2, 2024

Meanwhile …

POLITICO Magazine:

30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed

Drone armies, expanded overtime pay and over-the-counter birth control pills are just some of the new things Biden has ushered in as president that you might not have heard about.

Most of the work of government doesn’t go viral on social media or become fodder for TV talking heads. Every president’s administration makes changes both significant and trivial that largely escape the public’s attention — yet many have long-lasting impact.

So we asked POLITICO’s newsroom, including the reporters who track the minutiae of government policy, to tell us about the major but under-the-radar changes made so far during Biden’s tenure that most of us might have missed. And there was a lot, from building drone armies to making birth control pills available in drug stores to lowering overdraft fees and loosening restrictions on marijuana. His administration even made a big decision on the colors for Air Force One, the president’s official aircraft.

Here’s what they said. (And if you’re curious, here’s a similar list we compiled for Donald Trump’s presidency.)

Is Biden's economy creating too many jobs?

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) February 2, 2024

The Daily Mail:

Mayorkas impeachment in doubt as outgoing Republican Ken Buck says he will vote AGAINST it: GOP facing disaster if one more member rejects probe over border chaos

  • 'It's maladministration. He's terrible, the border is a disaster, but that's not impeachable,' Buck told reporters
  • 'The people that I'm talking to on the outside, constitutional experts, former members, agree that this just isn't an impeachable offense,' Buck said

CNN:

House GOP skeptical Biden inquiry leads to impeachment as election draws near

A growing number of senior House Republicans are coming to terms with a stark realization: It is unlikely that their monthslong investigation into Joe Biden will actually lead to impeaching the president.

Top Republicans are not expected to make an official decision on whether to pursue impeachment articles until after a pair of high-stakes depositions later this month with Hunter Biden and the president’s brother, James. But serious doubts are growing inside the GOP that they will be able to convince their razor-thin majority to back the politically perilous impeachment effort in an election-year, according to interviews with over a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides, including some who are close to the probe.

While no formal whip count ahas been conducted, one GOP lawmaker estimated there are around 20 House Republicans who are not convinced there is evidence for impeachment, and Republicans can only lose two votes in the current House margins.

Charlie Sykes/The Bulwark:

The GOP’s Sop to Cerberus

Grassley’s comment wasn’t a gaffe.

Even as the resident senior citizen around here, I find myself wishing that I could write off Iowa Senator Chuck Grasley’s latest gaucherie as the result of senility. But no such luck.

When Grassley raised doubts about a bipartisan tax cut bill because it would make President Biden “look good,” and make it harder for Donald Trump to regain the White House, the remark hardly qualified as a gaffe in today’s GOP.

To be sure, the octogenarian seemed confused about some of the details. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be re-elected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” Grassley said. There are, however, no checks in this bill. It’s a tax credit. For children.1 The bill is also packed with goodies for businesses, making it exactly the sort of thing that Republicans from the Before Times would have enthusiastically embraced.

The legislation is so popular that it passed a bitterly divided House by a huge margin — 357-70. Now it goes to the Senate where it faces Grassley. And Trump.

At this point, the details of the bill aren’t really that important here. What Grassley was saying was that helping Trump is more important than that passing any legislation. And, despite the House vote, he reflected the central dynamic of the GOP in 2024.

  • It’s why Republicans will likely kill a border bill that includes almost everything they want.

  • It’s why they have tanked proposals to aid Ukraine and Israel.

  • It’s why they consistently opt for chaos over the more mundane business of actual governing.

It’s just the GOP’s latest sop to Cerberus.

Cliff Schecter reviews how to do a proper interview:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The shape of the Republican primary, which is over but not done

Brian Beutler/Off Message:

This Is Why Trump Is So Desperate To End The GOP Primary

He's winning handily, but he's in for a ton of bad news before Haley's last stand in South Carolina

The jury awarded Carroll a mere high-eight figures in damages. But Judge Arthur Engoron’s verdict in Trump’s civil fraud case is still due imminently, as is a DC Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision rejecting Trump’s claim to immunity for all crimes he committed as president. Trump will appeal all of these, but they each give Haley real fodder to confront Republican voters with the immense risk they’d be taking by nominating Trump for a third time: He’s impulsively crooked and consequences will catch up with him before the election.

Haley still won’t put it as bluntly as possible, still won’t warn Republicans that Trump, as a crook, could end up justifiably imprisoned later this year. But she’s moving in that direction.

“I absolutely trust the jury,” she told Meet the Press on Sunday. “And I think that they made their decision based on the evidence.” It’s not a hoax; it’s not a witch hunt.

Brian Beutler/Off Message:

Taylor Swift Exposed The GOP Freakshow By Being Normal

Maybe Republicans should wonder why all the attractive, likable people hate them?

There’s nothing terribly interesting underlying this bizarre freakout. Swift has millions of devoted fans and is also a liberal who endorsed Biden in 2020. Since this year’s election is shaping up as a 2020 rematch, she’s likely to endorse Biden again. If that’s interesting for any reason it’s because it exposes the intentionality behind the Big Lie: The same propagandists who apparently fear Swift’s mobilizing powers also claim Trump won in 2020—if their “rigged election” conspiracy theories were sincerely held, they wouldn’t fear that Swift’s endorsement might make Biden unbeatable.

Republicans haven’t misread American society this badly since Terri Schaivo https://t.co/sfBsq3q6wg

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 30, 2024

David Rothkopf/Daily beast:

A Gaza Ceasefire Deal Is the Only Way to Avoid a Wider War

If the war between Israel and Hamas rages on indefinitely, the conflict will spread. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Republicans calling for massive attacks against Iran and its proxies—like Sens. Tom Cotton, Roger Wicker, Lindsey Graham, and John Cornynargue that this attack was just one among over 160 that have targeted U.S. personnel stationed in the region, arguing that U.S. deterrence strategies have been unsuccessful.

That said, calls for direct attacks against Iran, long a goal of Iran hawks, must be weighed not against past grievances, but against the consequences those attacks would have.

Such attacks could trigger a full-scale region-wide war that would put thousands of U.S. forces at risk and could necessitate deployments that would put even more members of the U.S. armed services in harm’s way. The U.S. and our allies must also be cognizant of the fact that an ill-considered or badly timed response could cause Iran to seek to derail talks between its proxy, Hamas, the Israelis, the U.S,. and intermediaries like Qatar.

Because the war in Gaza is the proximate cause of much of the heightened tension in the region (although admittedly far from all of it) and, therefore, because producing a ceasefire or moving toward a longer-term settlement in that war is one of the best ways of reducing risks to U.S. troops and facilities—as well as those of our allies—and because we appear to be at a very delicate point in negotiations to release Israeli hostages that might produce at least a ceasefire of some meaningful duration, the wrong kind of response could produce the opposite of the effect we seek.

On the domestic front, you can read the details here on the sham impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas from David J Bier, but this will give you the gist of it:

Mayorkas has made many mistakes, but it is nothing like the slew of illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral actions taken during the 4 years of the Trump admin, which resulted in the total destruction of the immigration system. This case is a joke.

— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) January 30, 2024

Jamelle Bouie/New York Times:

If It Walks Like an Insurrection and Talks Like an Insurrection …

I’ve argued, relying on evidence drawn from an amicus brief to the Colorado Supreme Court, that the former president’s actions make him an insurrectionist by any reasonable definition of the term and certainly as it was envisioned by the drafters of the 14th Amendment, who experienced insurrection firsthand. If that isn’t persuasive, consider the evidence marshaled by the legal scholars Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar in a more recent amicus brief. They argue that top of mind for the drafters of the 14th Amendment were the actions of John B. Floyd, the secretary of war during the secession crisis of November 1860 to March 1861.

During the crucial weeks after the election of Abraham Lincoln, as pro-slavery radicals organized secession conventions throughout the South, Floyd, “an unapologetic Virginia slaveholder,” Amar and Amar write, used his authority to, in the words of Ulysses S. Grant, distribute “the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them.” When it became clear that President James Buchanan would not surrender Fort Sumter to South Carolina, in late December, Floyd resigned to join the Confederacy.

What’s more, the Amars note, “the insurrectionary betrayals perpetrated by Floyd and other top officials in the lame-duck Buchanan administration went far beyond the abandonment of Southern forts. They also involved, through both actions and inactions of Floyd and his allies, efforts to prevent President-elect Lincoln from lawfully assuming power at his inauguration.”

Adam Bass/Third Party Crashers:

No champions for No Labels means yes problems

How a lack of eager candidates is threatening the political organizations chances of making an impact in the 2024 election

[Nikki] Haley and her former 2024 rival, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), have quashed the idea of joining No Labels once Trump becomes the nominee. While Christie's reason for not joining the organization is unknown, it is likely that Haley sees another opening in 2028 as the next generation of Republican leadership after Trump. While this scenario is unlikely due to the GOP becoming more Trump-like by the day, Haley's reasoning has some merit, as she is almost certain she will become the runner-up in the primaries.

No Labels's problem also extends to non-presidential candidates.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney (R) and former Governor of Utah Jon Huntsman (R) have also declined to run on the presumptive ticket. Huntsman, a supporter of No Labels who joined Senator Joe Manchin for a listening session in New Hampshire last year, told Deseret News that it was "unlikely" he would run for office again, even on a No Labels ticket.

Considering that most of No Labels's supporters are Republicans disillusioned with their party, the number of politicians saying they would not be interested in running on the unity ticket is startling.

So why is this happening?

After giving their workers a raise too https://t.co/Qao3sytpLw

— kleinman.bsky.social (@BobbyBigWheel) January 30, 2024

Michael Harriot/The Grio:

The lazy, stupid analysis of the ‘Black vote’ obscures the most important political issue of our time

OPINION: If the future of American democracy is really on the ballot, why aren’t we discussing the one issue hovering over the upcoming election?

Let’s get this out of the way: Black people are not going to vote for a Republican. It ain’t gonna happen.

Nearly a century has passed since a Republican presidential nominee even came close to winning a majority of the Black vote (Herbert Hoover in 1928 was the last). It is asinine, bordering on malpractice, for a journalist to publicly suggest that one of the most vociferously anti-Black candidates could achieve what no Republican has done in the last 96 years. Setting aside the media’s lazy, inexplicably stupid exercise in speculative fiction, one wonders why the mainstream media narrative seems to intentionally avoid the one topic that — when it comes to presidential elections — is more important and more mathematically relevant.

What about the white voters?

I haven’t seen the insurrection polling data or the turnout from Trump rallies but judging from the hyperbolic handwringing on cable news, you’d almost think that Black people make up the majority of voters in this country. The same organization (Pew Research) that said that thing about the “important role” of Black voters in 2024 knows that 55% of non-Hispanic whites voted for Trump in 2020, while 92% of Black voters, 59% of Hispanics and 7% of Asians voted for his opponent. Political scientists concede that white voters of both parties are more likely to switch parties when the candidate is Black. The New York Times article about Black voters drifting to the GOP didn’t even mention white people!

Republicans gamble on border politics

Democrats, meanwhile, see political opportunity in Republicans’ divisions whether or not the bill passes.

Maybe Trump’s opposition to a deal leads Republicans to walk away from it. If that happens: “I think we know who to blame,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who represents a crucial swing state. “The person that orchestrates it and then the individuals that follow him.”

  • “It puts the Republicans in a really, really bad position if they’re saying, ‘We’re not going to do a deal here because we want to play election-year politics because we think it’s going to help Donald Trump,’” said Ian Russell, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee political director who is now a consultant. “That has the potential to really blow up in their face.”

On the other hand, if Congress manages to pass a border bill that President Biden signs into law, Biden and House and Senate Democrats can run on the accomplishment in November.

Matt McNeill and Cliff Schecter discuss Republicans kissing Trump’s ring:

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: New Hampshire Republican primary poll numbers remain steady

We begin today with Steven Shepard of POLITICO and the latest poll numbers from this coming Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican primary race.

Former President Donald Trump leads former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by 17 percentage points in the latest New Hampshire tracking data from Suffolk University, The Boston Globe and WBTS, the NBC affiliate in Boston.

In interviews conducted Thursday and Friday, Trump leads Haley, 53 percent to 36 percent, the poll shows.

Since the Iowa caucuses, the race in New Hampshire has remained remarkably stable. In each of the four days the tracking poll has been released, Trump has been at or above 50 percent, and his lead over Haley has ranged between 14 and 17 points.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in a distant third place, with 7 percent. Another 5 percent prefer another candidate, are undecided or refused to answer.

Moving right along...

Heather Cox Richardson writes for her “Letters from an American” Substack about the reasons that Number 45 has been sounding off about “debank-ing” as of late.

His statement looks like word salad if you’re not steeped in MAGA world, but there are two stories behind Trump’s torrent of words. The first is that Trump always blurts out whatever is uppermost in his mind, suggesting he is worried by the fact that large banks will no longer lend to him. The Trump Organization’s auditor said during a fraud trial in 2022 that the past 10 years of the company’s financial statements could not be relied on, and Trump was forced to turn to smaller banks, likely on much worse terms. Now the legal case currently underway in Manhattan will likely make that financial problem larger. The judge has already decided that the Trump Organization, Trump, his two older sons, and two employees committed fraud, for which the judge is currently deciding appropriate penalties.

The second story behind his statement, though, is much larger than Trump.

Since 2023, right-wing organizations, backed by Republican state attorneys general, have argued that banks are discriminating against them on religious and political grounds. In March 2023, JPMorgan Chase closed an account opened by the National Committee for Religious Freedom after the organization did not provide information the bank needed to comply with regulatory requirements. Immediately, Republican officials claimed religious discrimination and demanded the bank explain its position on issues important to the right wing. JPMorgan Chase denied discrimination, noting that it serves 50,000 accounts with religious affiliations and saying, “We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation.”  

But the attack on banks stuck among MAGA Republicans, especially as other financial platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe have declined to accept business from right-wing figures who spout hate speech, thus cutting off their ability to raise money from their followers.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution examines the personnel turnover of senior Biden Administration officials.

2023 was another challenging year for the president — tepid approval ratings, narrow margins in Congress, calls for impeachment, new and continuing military conflict abroad, and an economy struggling to regain its footing. Despite these challenges, relative stability in White House staffing continued to be a Biden administration hallmark, particularly when compared to the tumult in the Trump administration. In year three, the men and women who work at the most senior levels of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) continued their efforts with less turnover than in 2022, dropping from 35% (23 individuals) in 2022 to 23% (15 individuals) in 2023. Overall, three years of top staff departures stand at 65%, which ranks President Biden fourth among the seven presidents going back to Ronald Reagan and including George H.W. Bush, William Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. [...]

Though one can only speculate on the causes of the 15 departures, one reason may be the increased (and inevitable) focus on reelection when, some former White House staff members contend, reelection politics trumps policymaking. Ever since President Nixon established an independent reelection organization (CREEP, The Committee for the Reelection of the President), the national party’s role in reelection planning has declined, and the White House has become more involved in campaign planning. Referring to the 1992 reelection campaign, Marlin Fitzwater, President George H.W. Bush’s press secretary, explained, “Within the White House there is less emphasis on issues, fewer decisions coming to the president. The President was distracted by the campaign…lots of travel…Maybe we should’ve abandoned the process of governing earlier. The reality is the White House pretty much comes to a stop.” “Shutting down” governing for the reelection campaign does not necessarily create an inviting climate for those happily immersed in the details of legislation or policy analysis. Also, “burnout” in the White House is real: Many of the 15 departing staff began working grueling hours when they joined the Biden campaign in spring of 2019. In short, some of the senior staff members departing in year three were reaching their fifth year with Team Biden.

Another key segment of senior presidential appointees includes the Cabinet secretaries in the 15 departments that are in the line of presidential succession. Whatever the fluctuations among the “A Team” in the EOP, the Biden Cabinet has experienced record-level stability compared to the six most recent administrations. George Condon of the National Journal recently reported that one had to go back 171 years, to the nation’s 14th president, Franklin Pierce, to find a more stable Cabinet. Only one Biden Cabinet member has departed, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. (Note that my analysis of turnover relies on a strict definition of “Cabinet,” including only the 15 Cabinet secretaries in the line of presidential succession.)

It’s interesting that Republican administrations, by and large, experience the most Cabinet-level turnover (and the Shrub’s Administration should have experienced more turnover….which it did during it’s second term)

Melissa Hellman of the Guardian says that the right-wing strategy utilized to force former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation will continue to be used as long as it works.

The strategy behind Gay’s ousting wasn’t new, and has been used to advance conservative agendas, influence school curriculum and demonize Black people throughout history. What was different this time was the quick efficacy of the takedown, which, according to some political scientists, historians and lawyers, emboldened conservative activists and could have dangerous implications for the future of education. [...]

Weeks prior to Gay’s resignation, the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo publicized the plan to remove her from office: “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” In an interview with Politico after Gay vacated her post, Rufo described his successful strategy as a three-pronged approach of “narrative, financial and political pressure”.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, noted the effectiveness of the plan, and warned of what it could portend considering that these actors have “seen the impact that they can have when they are able to marshal pressure from the media, donors and others”.

Of course, many on the Left have internalized the centuries-long propaganda about Black people. That’s why this method of attack remains so effective.

Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun-Times writes about how the decision and desire of seniors to remain in their homes for various reasons are affecting the housing market.

What does aging in place mean?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes it “as the ability to live in one's own home and community safely, independently and comfortably regardless of age, income or ability level.”

According to a 2021 AARP survey, “More than three-quarters of adults 50 and older said they wanted to stay in their homes or communities as they age.”

That means most seniors don't want to move to a retirement community or an assisted-living facility or nursing home.

I'm sure there are plenty of quality facilities in the Chicago metro area aimed at seniors, but I've been in enough bad ones to know that's not where I want to spend my last days. [...]

Seniors’ decisions to not move have affected the housing market, according to Construction Coverage, a company that specializes in researching construction software, insurance and related services.

The headline on an email it sent that landed in my inbox leaped out: “Boomers own 35.6% of Chicago homes amid a housing shortage.”

Katrin Kuntz (with photographs by Dmitrij Leltschuk) of Der Spiegel looks into the efforts of survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival to overcome the trauma.

The Nova festival in the Negev Desert of southern Israel was a popular event for electronic trance music. Around 4,000 people gathered there for several days of partying – just five kilometers from the border to the Gaza Strip. On October 7, around 50 terrorists attacked the party and killed 364 people. Dozens more were abducted and taken back to Gaza. [...]

On October 7, young people once again found themselves the targets of a terror attack – just as they have been in the past. In 2015, the terror organization Islamic State killed 90 people in the Paris concert venue Bataclan, many of them in their thirties. The right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 69 people, most of them teenagers, on the Norwegian island of Utøya in 2017. Films, novels and Netflix series have appeared in the wake of such attacks, and many of those directly affected by the assaults have never been able to find their way back to normal lives. It remains to be seen what the consequences of the attack on the Nova festival might be.

Therapists fear that the trauma inflicted on the Nova festivalgoers is likely to be even worse than that caused by previous wars in Israel. One reason is that the survivors are so young, averaging 27 years of age, but also because the attack was so unexpected and because Israel failed to protect them. And because many were high on hallucinogenic drugs at the time. Their experiences have also been magnified by the horrific video clips that can be found on the internet. Some survivors saw themselves in those videos, fighting for survival. In a number of cases, festivalgoers themselves filmed with their mobile phones.

The government is paying for at least 12 hours of therapy for survivors, but not all Nova guests qualify. Experts believe the time allotted to be absurdly inadequate and have also complained about the slow pace of financing. It’s like promising a cancer patient just a single cycle of chemotherapy, says one Israeli scientist.

Sui-Wee Lee of The New York Times previews another of the upcoming elections in 2024, this time in Indonesia.

...Prabowo Subianto has spent the past two decades trying his hand at democratic politics, donning different personas in multiple attempts to become Indonesia’s leader.

Now, a month before the next election, nearly every poll shows Mr. Prabowo, 72, leading in the first round of voting. His rise, with the help of a running mate who is the son of the popular departing president, Joko Widodo, has alarmed millions of Indonesians who still remember the brutal and kleptocratic rule of Suharto, Mr. Prabowo’s former boss and father-in-law.

A victory for Mr. Prabowo, his critics warn, would revive a dark past.

“What will happen is the death of democracy,” said Hendardi, the director of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace. Like many Indonesians, he goes by one name. “We have long been against Prabowo,” he added, “and with our limited power, we were still able to prevent him from moving forward. But now he has gained this support.”

Finally today, Rafael Clemente of El País in English explains the complexities of landing on the Moon.

Japan’s recent lunar landing, becoming the fifth nation to complete a soft landing after India last August, showcased the challenges of returning to the moon. The moon lacks air, of course, making parachute deployment impossible. Only rocket engines can be used, requiring precise adjustments to achieve a near-zero speed touchdown. Landing on the moon is a complex task that requires radar and laser measurements to monitor altitude and carefully manage fuel consumption. The objective is to avoid premature depletion while ensuring a safe landing without any horizontal displacement. And the delicate onboard instruments must be protected from potential damage upon impact.

The challenge is such that NASA has chosen to delay the Artemis program, pushing back its crewed lunar landing until at least 2026. Uncrewed landers have also met with frequent failure. In the past decade, no privately-funded attempts have succeeded, with only China and India making successful soft landings.

Try to have the best possible day everyone!

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The argument for sweeping presidential immunity hits rough seas

Greg Sargent/The New Republic:

How Trump’s Unhinged Immunity Demand Could Unleash a Second-Term Crime Spree

If the courts decide that insurrection merits immunity, and Trump wins back the presidency, what might he feel emboldened to do in term two?

This has been widely depicted as a Hail Mary effort to scuttle special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding of Congress’s count of presidential electors—otherwise known for nearly 250 years in this country as the peaceful transfer of power.

But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next. If he wins on this front, he’d be largely unshackled in a second presidential term, free to pursue all manner of corrupt designs with little fear of legal consequences after leaving office again.

That Trump might attempt such moves is not idle speculation. He’s telling us so himself. He is openly threatening a range of second-term actions—such as prosecuting political enemies with zero basis in evidence—that would almost certainly strain the boundaries of the law in ugly new ways.

2024 is the "better angels" election. And it's pass-fail. 🙏

— Jill Lawrence (@JillDLawrence) January 9, 2024

Let’s hear from some law professors on this, starting with Randall Eliason/Sidebars:

D.C. Circuit Skeptical of Trump's Immunity Claims

Judges highlight the extreme consequences of Trump's argument

Early in Sauer’s argument, Judge Pan hit him with a great series of questions that highlighted the extreme consequences of his position. Trump is arguing that the impeachment judgment clause in the Constitution means that a former president may only be criminally prosecuted if he or she was impeached and convicted for the same or similar conduct.

The impeachment judgment clause provides:

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Trump’s argument is that because this clause refers only to the “party convicted” at impeachment being subject to later prosecution, that means, by negative implication, that a party who is not convicted after impeachment cannot be prosecuted.

If you're just tuning in, the Trump argument today in federal court is that a President can order the murder of opponents and political rivals - but cannot be prosecuted for those crimes - unless Congress first impeaches and convicts for that conduct.

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) January 9, 2024

Lee Kovarsky/X via Threadreader:

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S DC CIRCUIT (CADC) ARGUMENTS ON PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY (PI) (LAYPERSON FRIENDLY). Today, CADC heard oral arguments on whether DJT has PI for 1/6, in specific reference to Jack Smith’s prosecution in DC. Trump almost certainly lost 3-0.

The judges were Henderson (R-appointed), Childs (Biden), and Pan (Biden). The major issues were as follows.

CBS News' latest poll asked Americans whether they think that "Donald Trump should have immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took while he was president pic.twitter.com/Gn1Cokk4X3

— Maggie Jordan 91 criminal charges, 4 jurisdictions (@MaggieJordanACN) January 9, 2024

Jonathan V Last/The Bulwark:

This Might Be the High-Water Mark of Trumpism

An argument for why Trump’s numbers can’t get much better and Biden’s numbers are likely to improve.

[Mark] Halperin then says that Biden’s three big problems are:

  1. That he’s playing from behind as an incumbent, which sets a media narrative against him.

  2. That Republicans have quickly and decisively rallied to Trump.

  3. That parts of the Obama coalition—black, Hispanic, and young voters—have not (yet?) rallied to Biden.

I slightly disagree with Halperin on the importance of #1 and what he calls the Dominant Media. My own view is that journalists tend to overdetermine the influence of the media in electoral politics.

But however much weight you want to give this factor, Halperin is directionally correct: Because Biden is trailing Trump, the media slant is always something like, “Unemployment is 3.9%; Here’s Why That’s Bad for Biden.”

And the only way that’s going to flip is if Biden moves ahead in the polling.

As for #2 and #3, those are vectors along which Biden can reasonably hope to improve and Trump probably cannot.

For instance: I would posit to you that, over the next month, we will be approaching the high-water mark for Trump’s poll numbers.

I’ve now spoken to three folks at this Haley event - most decidedly supporting her - who voted for Trump both times but are now looking for new leadership. I asked what their turning point was. For all of them, it was Election denialism and January 6th.

— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) January 9, 2024

Brian Beutler/Off Message:

We Can't Afford Weak-Kneed Liberalism In The Trump Era Sincere objections to disqualifying Trump from the ballot are reasoned backward from misplaced fear

The glaring weakness here is that Republicans are real adults, making decisions for themselves, with a mix of real and fake information, and the fact that their leader engaged in insurrection and might thus be disqualified from office was not hidden from them at any point. They called it an insurrection. They acknowledged Trump’s culpability. Then they decided to reanoint him as their leader. This strikes me as Their Problem, not Our Problem.

2 new New Hampshire polls, with very different margins CNN Trump 39 Haley 32 USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk Trump 46 Haley 26

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 9, 2024

Marc Jacob/”Stop The Presses” on Substack:

Media play dumb and amplify Jan. 6 lies

When journalists sidestep the truth, MAGA disinformation wins

On Thursday, the Associated Press wrote this both-sides headline: “One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry.

On Sunday, USA Today chimed in with this outrageous lead: “For Donald Trump, Jan. 6, 2021, was ‘a beautiful day.’ For Joe Biden, it was the day ‘we nearly lost America.’” And then USA Today proceeded with a story that acted as if it didn’t know which view was more valid.

In between those two examples of performative ignorance, the New York Times weighed in with its own “dueling realities” spin:

These news outlets know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. But they’re afraid to tell the public directly. In the Times’ case, its headline got roasted on social media (including by me), and was later rewritten:

Here are your dueling New Hampshire polls:

Where they generally agree: DeSantis is in single digits. The CNN poll actually DeSantis him at 5% -- behind Ramaswamy.

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 9, 2024

Ron Desantis is tanking in the polls. But, of course, the only polls that matter are on election day. Losers always say that before they lose.