Republicans Let The Mask Slip Again...

 ...and we see them for who they really are.

Sen. Susan Collins, one of a handful of GOP senators working to garner support in her party for a bill to codify gay marriage, said the Democrats’ surprise embrace of a tax and climate change bill made her job much harder.

“I just think the timing could not have been worse and it came totally out of the blue,” the Maine senator told HuffPost Thursday about Senate Democrats’ unveiling of their bill to raise taxes on some companies, boost IRS enforcement and spend the resulting money to fund anti-climate change efforts.

 

The news that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) had arrived at an agreement broke like a thunderclap over official Washington early Wednesday night. The bill still faces hurdles, including ensuring all Senate Democrats are on board and will be available to vote on it when it comes to the floor. But if Democrats pull it off, it could be a big political victory for the party and the White House.

Still, Collins warned that the manner in which that victory was secured, where it appeared Democrats kept Manchin and Schumer’s negotiations under wraps until a separate bipartisan computer chip production incentive bill was passed by the Senate, hurt the effort to gather support among Republicans to bring the gay marriage bill to the floor.

“After we just had worked together successfully on gun safety legislation, on the CHIPs bill, it was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way,” she said.

 

Republican made it clear yesterday that they now will destroy every piece of legislation that comes up for the rest of the year over this, starting with legislation to care for sick veterans exposed to toxic chemicals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An effort to give millions of veterans easier access to health and disability benefits suffered another surprising setback Wednesday on the Senate floor when supporters couldn’t muster the 60 votes needed to limit debate.

The 55-42 procedural vote on cloture derailed, at least temporarily, a sweeping expansion of veterans benefits that appeared to be heading to President Joe Biden’s desk this week.

The vote marked the second time the bipartisan legislation hit an unexpected snag. The bill had to be revised — and receive a second vote in both chambers — to remove an obscure tax provision that raised a constitutional concern in the House. The House passed the revised version two weeks ago on a 342-88 vote and the Senate planned to pass it this week.

A nearly identical bill, without the tax tweak, passed the Senate on a lopsided 84-14 vote last month with strong bipartisan support. But Republicans mounted an 11th-hour challenge to the legislation and decided not to let the revised bill advance Wednesday.

Some conservatives have raised objections to the bill because it would reclassify nearly $400 billion in current-law VA spending from discretionary to mandatory accounts, thereby potentially freeing up more budget authority to increase discretionary spending on other domestic programs.

“It’s about a budget gimmick that’s designed to allow hundreds of billions of dollars in additional unrelated spending, having nothing to do with veterans,” said Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., who voted against the cloture motion.

 

And now, Collins is signaling that the same-sex marriage bill will be blocked by Republican bigots in the Senate just to hurt Obama coalition voters. 

Republicans have no problem going after veterans and gay marriage to hurt people when they don't get their way, folks.

Might want to remember that this fall. They're still the bad guys.

Last Call For Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

Ed Kilgore depressingly reminds us that a lot can and probably still will go wrong with the Democratic budget reconciliation process over the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democrats are understandably excited by the unexpected reemergence of the left-for-dead FY 2022 budget reconciliation bill (formerly Build Back Better, now known as the Inflation Reduction Act). Just when it looked like holdout Joe Manchin was going to object to anything other than a very narrow health-care bill, if even that, he and Chuck Schumer suddenly unveiled a bigger package including energy investments and tax provisions in addition to the expected Medicare prescription-drug-price negotiation powers and a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies. Looks like Senate Democrats wrong-footed Mitch McConnell for once, giving the White House an unexpected and much-needed win and providing a tonic for dispirited Democratic troops in the home stretch of the midterm election cycle.

Or not.

Before anyone can take the Manchin-Schumer deal to the bank, there are some other fractious Democrats beyond the West Virginian who will need to sign off. First and foremost is Manchin’s long-time partner in obstruction, the senior senator from Arizona. As Axios puts it: “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has spent the summer out of the spotlight. That’s now going to change.” And while Manchin’s little red wagons in the yearlong struggle over reconciliation have been anti-inflation measures and propitiating fossil-fuel interests, Sinema has had other priorities:

“We do not have a comment, as she will need to review the text,” a Sinema spokesperson said in the hours after news broke of Manchin’s stunning reversal.

One of the first signs Sinema wasn’t consulted on the Schumer-Manchin agreement was that it included some $14 billion in new revenue from taxing carried interest, which she has indicated she opposes

Between the lines: Sinema was on record last December supporting the 15% corporate tax rate, which will raise an estimated $313 billion to fund the Democrats’ climate priorities.

But that was before inflation took off and the constant chatter about a potential recession subsumed Washington.

 

While Sinema may not want to personally kill this heaven-sent deal herself, it would be surprising if she doesn’t take at least a pound of flesh in concessions to show her corporate friends she is still a major player.

 

Kilgore also notes that Democratic Blue Dog Rep. Josh Gottheimer and his merry crew could kill the bill too over SALT deduction talks, that COVID could prevent all 50 Dems from being present to clear the Senate (or all House Dems from being present), and who knows what Manchin or The Squad may end up doing...or god forbid, Joe Biden. He does get a say too, you know.

No, this bill has a long road, and while I think it will pass, I also think it's going to have tens of billions in cuts from where we are now.

Whether enough remains to get it over the finish line is anyone's guess.  This one is still up in the air, folks. Keep that in Mind until Biden signs it.

Climate Of Emergency, Local Edition

Here in Kentucky, massive flash flooding over the last 24 hours has trapped hundreds of residents in the eastern part of the state as emergency crews are working to rescue people from rapidly rising floodwaters.

Several people in Southeastern Kentucky reported being trapped inside their homes early Thursday by rising waters as “catastrophic” flash flooding hit the region. “We are dealing with a catastrophic and historic flash flooding situation in parts of the region,” WYMT anchor Steve Hensley said on Twitter.

“I’ve never seen water come off the hill behind my house like this. There are people trapped and homes and roads flooded. A flash flood emergency continues for several counties. I pray nobody has lost their life. I’m afraid the devastation we will see after daybreak will be significant.” 

There is flooding reported in several southeastern Kentucky counties, including Breathitt, Floyd, Perry, Knott, Leslie, Pike and Magoffin.

Gov. Andy Beshear signed a state of emergency Thursday morning in response to severe flooding late Wednesday and early Thursday in Eastern Kentucky.

Beshear called last night and early this morning “one of the worst, most devastating flooding events in Kentucky‘s history.” At a 9:30 a.m. presser he called the situation “dynamic,” and said that in most places the rising waters had not even crested yet. Beshear said that the administration expects loss of life to occur because of the flooding. ‘

Todd Depriest, mayor of Jenkins in Letcher County, said the water came up quickly in and around town Thursday morning, preventing people from getting out.

At 10 a.m. Thursday, there were still people trapped in the upper floors of their houses in an area just outside the city, he said. ”I’ve never seen it do this,” said DePriest, who has lived in Jenkins for 54 years. “Been a rough one.” 

DePriest said he had not heard of any injuries or deaths in the Jenkins area, though he had heard a report of a car being swept away with someone in it.

Kentucky's has a number of extreme weather events, ice storms, tornadoes, and now flash flooding, in just the last six months. Expect more of this, more often, as the era of climate change continues. Even if Democrats pass the climate change funding provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer came to an agreement on yesterday, we're still trillions behind in carbon reduction.

Extreme weather that destroys lives will be a function of the rest of our lifetimes.

Forawrd Off The Cliff

America has a long history of third parties handing elections over to Republicans, with Ralph Nader getting enough votes in Florida in 2000 to cost Al Gore the state and the country, and Jill Stein, the Russian operative Green Party candidate and her successful sabotage of Hillary Clinton in enough states to give Trump the win in 2016. Here and now, it's time for a new generation of Horseshoe Theory "alternatives" to prepare for dirty tricks against Dems in 2024, and they're getting a head start in 2022 with names like Andrew Yang, and Christie Todd Whitman.

Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America's dysfunctional two-party system.

The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters.

Party leaders will hold a series of events in two dozen cities this autumn to roll out its platform and attract support. They will host an official launch in Houston on Sept. 24 and the party's first national convention in a major U.S. city next summer.

The new party is being formed by a merger of three political groups that have emerged in recent years as a reaction to America's increasingly polarized and gridlocked political system. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.

The merger involves the Renew America Movement, formed in 2021 by dozens of former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump; the Forward Party, founded by Yang, who left the Democratic Party in 2021 and became an independent; and the Serve America Movement, a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents whose executive director is former Republican congressman David Jolly.

Two pillars of the new party's platform are to "reinvigorate a fair, flourishing economy" and to "give Americans more choices in elections, more confidence in a government that works, and more say in our future."

The party, which is centrist, has no specific policies yet. It will say at its Thursday launch: "How will we solve the big issues facing America? Not Left. Not Right. Forward."

 

No actual policies yet, other than putting a Republican fascist in the White House, that is. I'm hoping these idiots will run out of money before they can peel enough support away from Biden to assure even a Trump win, never mind DeSantis or another competent fascist getting the nod. 

Sadly, I'm betting there will be billions of bucks thrown down the pit over the next couple of years to drive a wedge in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas to ensure that Democratic votes are split, allowing a plurality (and not a majority!) of Republicans to win those states in 2024.

Trump may not have to try to steal the Electoral College this time in order to win thanks to these assholes.

Last Call For The Manchin, King Of The Hill, Con't

I've spent a good year plus slagging WV Dem Sen. Joe Manchin over his constant games, screwing Democrats over at every damn turn as his games consistently killed climate change and environmental legislation in President Biden's Build Back Better plan. Manchin was willing to play his 50th Dem vote at every turn, and he kept getting away with it.

That was until earlier this month when he finally stuck a pitchfork in the chest of the legislation and finally became the bad guy in the story.  The reaction from Democrats and the press was that Manchin would be remembered as one of the great villains in history, the man that killed climate change legislation and handed the planet over to Big Energy to cook all of us alive.

I've said before that Manchin, for whatever reason, didn't want his legacy to be nothing more than a back-country coal baron who screwed the planet over. But it didn't seem like he cared anymore.

And today, Manchin finally drove the knife in.

He drove it into Mitch McConnell's back for once.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday reached a deal with Democratic leaders on a spending package that aims to lower health-care costs, combat climate change and reduce the federal deficit, marking a massive potential breakthrough for President Biden’s long-stalled economic agenda.

The new agreement, brokered between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), opens the door for party lawmakers to try to advance the measure next week. It caps off months of fierce debate, delay and acrimony, a level of infighting that some Democrats saw as detrimental to their political fate ahead of this fall’s critical elections.

Under the deal, Schumer secured Manchin’s support for roughly $433 billion in new spending, most of which is focused on climate change and clean energy production. It is the largest such investment in U.S. history, and a marked departure from Manchin’s position only days earlier. The Democrats coupled the spending with provisions that aim to lower health-care costs for Americans, chiefly by allowing Medicare to begin negotiating the price of select prescription drugs on behalf of seniors.

To pay for the package, Manchin and Schumer also settled on a flurry of changes to tax law that would raise $739 billion over the next decade — enough to offset the cost of the bill while securing more than $300 billion for cutting the deficit, a priority for Manchin. Democrats sourced the funds from a series of changes to tax law, including a new minimum tax on corporations and fresh investments in the Internal Revenue Service that will help it pursue tax cheats.

Taken together, the package represents more than some Democrats once thought they might win from Manchin, who repeatedly has raised fiscal concerns with his own party’s ambitions. Only two weeks ago, the moderate from West Virginia, a coal-heavy state, signaled his opposition to new climate investments out of a fear that spending increases — funded in part by tax hikes — could harm the economy and worsen inflation.

“This is the most significant action we’ve taken on climate, that we will take on climate and clean energy, ever,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who led Democrats on a plan that would have punished polluters in the electricity sector before Manchin blocked it.

But the new agreement still totals significantly less than Democrats had hoped to achieve through the more sweeping, roughly $2 trillion initiative known as the Build Back Better Act. Manchin angered many colleagues when he scuttled his party’s proposed overhaul to the country’s health care, education, climate, immigration and tax laws last December, a version of which passed in the House. Manchin described that since-abandoned plan in defiant terms Wednesday.

“For too long, the reconciliation debate in Washington has been defined by how it can help advance Democrats’ political agenda called Build Back Better,” Manchin said in a lengthy statement, referring to Democrats’ initial, larger spending package that bore Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan.

“Build Back Better is dead, and instead we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together,” Manchin said.

Biden, meanwhile, described the legislation as “historic,” stressing in a statement: “This is the action the American people have been waiting for.” The White House had issued its own ultimatum earlier this month, stressing that if Congress didn’t act on climate change, then Biden would issue executive orders to address the issue.

“This addresses the problems of today — high health care costs and overall inflation — as well as investments in our energy security for the future,” Biden said.

With an agreement in hand, Schumer soon set about briefing members of his party on the bill, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. It came as a surprise to many Democratic lawmakers, illustrating the tumultuous and secretive negotiations between Schumer and Manchin, which have spanned months.

From here, Schumer aims to finalize the proposal and advance it through the process known as reconciliation. The tactic allows Democrats to move their spending bill through the narrowly divided Senate using their 50 votes and Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking power, sidestepping Republicans’ opposition and filibuster. Late Wednesday, Schumer said the hope is to “vote on this transformative legislation next week," though it is not yet clear if his entire caucus supports the scaled-back plan.

 

You see, Manchin and Schumer sat n this deal for weeks, maybe months.  Because Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, who thought the plan was dead,  looked the other way on Schumer's big piece of legislation, the CHIPS act.

The Senate voted Wednesday to pass a long-awaited bill aimed at boosting US semiconductor production in a bid to increase American competitiveness.

It passed with broad bipartisan support, 64 to 33.

The measure now goes to the House for approval before it can be sent to President Joe Biden for his expected signature.

The legislation is aimed at addressing a semiconductor chip shortage and making the US less reliant on other countries such as China for manufacturing. Supporters say the measure is important not only for US technological innovation, but for national security as well.

It sets up incentives for domestic semiconductor manufacturing as well as research and development and includes more than $50 billion in funding for that aim. It includes a number of provisions aimed at bolstering scientific research, including authorizing billions of dollars for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has praised the bill as a major bipartisan achievement and touted it as highly consequential.

 

McConnell's threat was to sink the CHIPS act in the Senate if Democrats tried to pass any climate provisions at all through reconciliation. Confident that Manchin had killed the deal for good last month, McConnell and the GOP passed Schumer's bill.

 

And then Manchin hit Mitch in the back of the head with the new Inflation Reduction Act.

 

Schumer outsmarted Mitch, and Manchin did the right thing in the end.

 

Republicans got tricked, they got backstabbed, and quite possibly bamboozled.

 

And for once, the good guys won by giving the GOP a taste of their own medicine.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Looks like the Biden administration wants to go ahead with a prisoner swap to free Americans Paul Whelan and Britney Griner from Russian imprisonment in exchange for a Russian arms dealer doing a 25-year stint in the federal pen.

 

After months of internal debate, the Biden administration has offered to exchange Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker serving a 25-year US prison sentence, as part of a potential deal to secure the release of two Americans held by Russia, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, according to people briefed on the matter. 

These sources told CNN that the plan to trade Bout for Whelan and Griner received the backing of President Joe Biden after being under discussion since earlier this year. Biden's support for the swap overrides opposition from the Department of Justice, which is generally against prisoner trades. 

"We communicated a substantial offer that we believe could be successful based on a history of conversations with the Russians," a senior administration official told CNN Wednesday. "We communicated that a number of weeks ago, in June." 

The official declined to comment on the specifics of the "substantial offer." They said it was in Russia's "court to be responsive to it, yet at the same time that does not leave us passive, as we continue to communicate the offer at very senior levels." 

"It takes two to tango. We start all negotiations to bring home Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained with a bad actor on the other side. We start all of these with somebody who has taken a human being American and treated them as a bargaining chip," the official said. "So in some ways, it's not surprising, even if it's disheartening, when those same actors don't necessarily respond directly to our offers, don't engage constructively in negotiations." 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that the US presented a "substantial proposal" to Moscow "weeks ago" for Whelan and Griner, who are classified as wrongfully detained. The top US diplomat said he intended to discuss the matter on an expected call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week. 

The families of Whelan, who has been held by Russia for alleged espionage since 2018, and WNBA star Griner, jailed in Moscow for drug possession since February, have urged the White House to secure their release, including via a prisoner exchange if necessary. 

Griner, who pleaded guilty in early July but said she unintentionally brought cannabis into Russia, testified in a Russian courtroom Wednesday as part of her ongoing trial on drug charges, for which she faces up to 10 years in prison. It is understood that her trial will have to conclude prior to a deal being finalized, according to US officials familiar with the Russian judicial process and the inner workings of US-Russia negotiations. 

During months of internal discussions between US agencies, the Justice Department opposed trading Bout, people briefed on the matter say. However, Justice officials eventually accepted that a Bout trade has the support of top officials at the State Department and White House, including Biden himself, sources say. 

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So the question is what else does ol' Vlad want in exchange for an American crooked cop turned corporate security director turned spy, and a WNBA superstar?

We'll find out shortly, I guess.  Realpolitik and all that.

Georgia On My Mind, Con't

The races for Governor and Senator in Georgia are shaping up to have no small amount of ticket-splitting, if the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll is any indication.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock is slightly ahead of Republican Herschel Walker in the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of a race that could decide control of the Senate, while Gov. Brian Kemp has an apparent lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch for Georgia’s top office.

The AJC poll is the latest that suggests a split-ticket dynamic may be emerging in Georgia’s two marquee races, with a small but crucial bloc of voters indicating they’re willing to cross party lines to cast ballots for both the incumbents in the nationally watched contests.

In his second election against Abrams, Kemp leads the Democrat 48% to 43% with an additional 7% of likely voters who haven’t made up their minds. A statistically insignificant number of voters back Libertarian Shane Hazel and Al Bartell, an independent candidate.

Warnock edges Walker 46% to 43% in his bid for a full six-year term, with about 3% of voters indicating they’ll support Libertarian Chase Oliver. About 8% say they’re still undecided about the race, which is likely to be among the costliest in the nation.

“Both of these races are very close statistically,” said Trey Hood, a University of Georgia political scientist who conducted the poll.

“There’s a long way to go before the general election, but a trend is emerging with recent polls: Kemp is consistently polling ahead of Abrams and Warnock is polling ahead of Walker.”

 

And yes, one out of six Democrats in the state are willing to keep Republican Brad Raffensperger as Secretary of State over Democrat Bee Nguyen. So there's plenty of evidence that individual races matter, at least in Georgia, and that there's not monolithic, straight party ticket voting going on.

 

Vote like your country matters, folks.

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds, Con't

The Trump regime knew their conspiracy to try to defraud the United States with fake electors was illegal and wouldn't work, so they cooked up an insurrection to get Mike Pence and stop the electoral vote count. We know this because they kept taking notes on a criminal fuckin' conspiracy.

 

 

Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the increasingly desperate and often slapdash efforts by advisers to President Donald J. Trump to reverse his election defeat in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack, including acknowledgments that a key element of their plan was of dubious legality and lived up to its billing as “fake.”

The dozens of emails among people connected to the Trump campaign, outside advisers and close associates of Mr. Trump show a particular focus on assembling lists of people who would claim — with no basis — to be Electoral College electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost.

In emails reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who had worked with the Trump campaign at the time, one lawyer involved in the detailed discussions repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome. And lawyers working on the proposal made clear they knew that the pro-Trump electors they were putting forward might not hold up to legal scrutiny.

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, wrote in a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign.

In a follow-up email, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” adding a smiley face emoji.

The emails provide new details of how a wing of the Trump campaign worked with outside lawyers and advisers to organize the elector plan and pursue a range of other options, often with little thought to their practicality. One email showed that many of Mr. Trump’s top advisers were informed of problems naming Trump electors in Michigan — a state he had lost — because pandemic rules had closed the state Capitol building where the so-called electors had to gather.

The emails show that participants in the discussions reported details of their activities to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, and in at least one case to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Around the same time, according to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, Mr. Meadows emailed another campaign adviser saying, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”

Many of the emails went to Mr. Epshteyn, who was acting as a coordinator for people inside and outside the Trump campaign and the White House and remains a close aide to Mr. Trump

Mr. Epshteyn, the emails show, was a regular point of contact for John Eastman, the lawyer whose plan for derailing congressional certification of the Electoral College result on Jan. 6, 2021, was embraced by Mr. Trump.

 

Season Two of the January 6th hearings will be a showstopper. 

 

Watch. 

And as I've said, the entire point of the January 6th hearings was to make the case for Trump's prosecution by the Justice Department. This evening, we've learned that Donald Trump is indeed being investigated by the Justice Department.

The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.

In addition, Justice Department investigators in April received phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort is another indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject.

The Washington Post and other news organizations have previously written that the Justice Department is examining the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump’s orbit. But the degree of prosecutors’ interest in Trump’s actions has not been previously reported, nor has the review of senior Trump aides’ phone records.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesman and a lawyer for Meadows both declined to comment.

 

Trump is now a target of the investigation, as I told everyone he would be. The question of actual charges remains. But Trump himself being a grand jury target means that Merrick Garland's very plain actions indicating that the DoJ's policy on investigating sensitive political actions only if it is warranted not only remains in place, but that the evidence against Trump warrants that investigation. 

We'll see now what, if any, charges are leveled against these conspirators...including Trump.

Courting Supreme Disaster, Con't

CNN's Joan Biskupic gives us the strongest evidence yet that the Supreme Court Dobbs decision leak from earlier this year was done on purpose by the right in order to prevent Chief Justice John Roberts from trying to save abortion rights.

 

Chief Justice John Roberts privately lobbied fellow conservatives to save the constitutional right to abortion down to the bitter end, but May's unprecedented leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade made the effort all but impossible, multiple sources familiar with negotiations told CNN. 

It appears unlikely that Roberts' best prospect -- Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- was ever close to switching his earlier vote, despite Roberts' attempts that continued through the final weeks of the session. 

New details obtained by CNN provide insight into the high-stakes internal abortion-rights drama that intensified in late April when justices first learned the draft opinion would soon be published. Serious conflicts over the fate of the 1973 Roe were then accompanied by tensions over an investigation into the source of the leak that included obtaining cell phone data from law clerks and some permanent court employees. 

In the past, Roberts himself has switched his vote, or persuaded others to do so, toward middle-ground, institutionalist outcomes, such as saving the Affordable Care Act. It's a pattern that has generated suspicion among some right-wing justices and conservatives outside the court. 

Multiple sources told CNN that Roberts' overtures this spring, particularly to Kavanaugh, raised fears among conservatives and hope among liberals that the chief could change the outcome in the most closely watched case in decades. Once the draft was published by Politico, conservatives pressed their colleagues to try to hasten release of the final decision, lest anything suddenly threaten their majority. 

Roberts' persuasive efforts, difficult even from the start, were thwarted by the sudden public nature of the state of play. He can usually work in private, seeking and offering concessions, without anyone beyond the court knowing how he or other individual justices have voted or what they may be writing.

Kavanaugh had indicated during December oral arguments that he wanted to overturn Roe and CNN learned that he voted that way in a private justices' conference session soon afterward. But the 2018 appointee of former President Donald Trump who had been confirmed by the Senate only after expressing respect for Roe has wavered in the past and been open to Roberts' persuasion. 

 

Again, all the evidence points to Ginni Thomas, and I'd bet money on it. The leak was done on purpose in order to sandbag CJ Roberts. It was done to kick off the beginning of the end of the civil rights era, and everyone knows it.

 

Count on it.

 

 

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Aggregate slime mold colony Steve Bannon is calling for armed, violent insurrection against the Biden administration again.

Fresh from a double contempt of Congress conviction linked to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Steve Bannon is now calling on “4,000 shock troops” to “deconstruct” the federal government “brick by brick.”


He wants to see people “stepping forward, say[ing], ’Hey, I want to be one of those 4,000 shock troops,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast Monday. “This is taking on and defeating and deconstructing the administrative state,” he added.

“Shock troops” are assault forces that lead an attack.

“Suck on it,” said Bannon. “We’re destroying this illegitimate regime.”

Bannon’s incendiary comments evoked his ominous call the day before the U.S. Capitol riot, when he told supporters of then-President Donald Trump on his podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. We’re on ... the point of attack ... strap in.”

Bannon was responding to an Axios report last week that Trump and his allies are already plotting to replace all federal officials and civil service workers with those whose key qualification would be slavish devotion to Trump if he retakes the White House in the 2024 election.

Bannon hailed the radical plot for Trump to take control of the nation. Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes vowed on the podcast that Trump’s “next” term would be “far more consequential” than his last one. Both men were clearly familiar with the game plan.

Bannon had also called for “shock troops” to “immediately” seize control of the nation a month before the 2020 election, when he expected Trump to win reelection — or seize control of the vote results. “Pre-trained teams” need to be “ready to jump into federal agencies,” Bannon told NBC News then.

Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein wrote Monday that “contempt for the rule of law” appeared to be a key qualification for workers in Trump’s future world in office, to fulfill his aim to “blow up the Constitution.”

Bannon was convicted Friday of two counts of contempt of Congress for blowing off a subpoena to provide documents and be interviewed by members of the House select committee about his activities linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — including plotting with Trump to overthrow presidential election results.

 

As I've said before, the country won't survive another Republican trifecta. Voting like your country depends on it, because it does, is your duty.

Last Call For Still Full Court Pressed, Con't

As David Freedlander points out in New York Magazine, Republican candidates in 2022 increasingly have decided that they no longer need a free press, and that the far friendlier confines of right wing talk radio, podcasts, viral social media and FOX News are all they need to reach in order to get enough votes to win in November.

When Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared last week at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa — an annual cattle call for Republican would-be presidential contenders — he insisted that he was a not a candidate, but he had advice for what GOP voters should look for in one: “You need to be really wary of candidates who care what the New York Times thinks,” he said. Singling out former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who, after the murder of George Floyd, tweeted that his death was “personal and painful,” Carlson accused the likely presidential candidate of pandering to the wrong audience.

“You’re trying to please the people whose opinions you actually care about — at the New York Times,” he said, mocking Haley.

This view — that approval from the mainstream press isn’t just unnecessary but actually suspect — is one that has come to dominate GOP politics in the Trump era. And while railing against the so-called liberal media has long been a part of the Republican playbook, more than a dozen GOP campaign operatives, senior Hill aides, and political reporters from major news outlets say the past few years have brought something new: actively courting the media’s scorn while avoiding anything that may be viewed as consorting with the enemy.

At this point in the political cycle six years ago, Rand Paul was on the cover of Time magazine. “The Most Interesting Man in Politics,” the headline said of the junior senator from Kentucky and 2016 presidential aspirant. He was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine too, billed as a “Major Threat” (with a design riffing off the visual language of the punk band Minor Threat).

In both instances, Paul spent lots of time with the reporters, posing for pictures, and his views were given at least a fair, if not flattering, airing. And if Paul was a sympathetic figure for the media in his pre-2016 days — a civil libertarian who opposed military escalation abroad and seemed to hate the Republican Establishment as much as Democrats did — he wasn’t alone in receiving and participating in coverage from the elite media. Ted Cruz was profiled in The New Yorker, pictured in his cowboy boots before a painting of Ronald Reagan. He was portrayed as an archconservative, but a swashbuckling one, with his father and various employers, friends, and former college professors speaking to his intelligence. Marco Rubio was also in the magazine and was compared to a Republican Kennedy.

It wasn’t just Paul, Cruz, and Rubio. Take a look at any of the prestige- and Establishment-media outlets from around this time (including this one), and all of their pages were graced with the Jeb Bushes, Chris Christies, John Kasichs, and other contenders who were making up an already overstuffed presidential-primary field.

We are at the same point now in the 2024 election cycle, and again two fistfuls of Republicans are making noises about running for president. But that kind of long look at the life and career of the contenders has been all but absent so far this election cycle. Save for a recent Time profile of Glenn Youngkin, still considered a long shot for a 2024 run, the closest we’ve seen to what used to be a staple of political journalism is a long New Yorker profile of Florida governor Ron DeSantis — one in which the subject didn’t participate, a previously almost unheard-of press strategy for a presidential aspirant. And it is not just the prepresidential campaign profile that is suffering from a lack of Republican engagement. Increasingly, even simple news stories from national newspapers and wire services will feature a direct quote from a Democrat but just a tweet or a line from a speech by a Republican, typically a sign the latter declined to respond to the reporter.

“I just don’t even see what the point is anymore,” said an adviser to one likely GOP presidential aspirant, who requested anonymity to discuss press strategy. “We know reporters always disagreed with the Republican Party, but it used to be you thought you could get a fair shake. Now every reporter, and every outlet, is just chasing resistance rage-clicks.”

 

After years of Trump declaring the media "enemies of the people", the modern GOP simply no longer feels it needs to engage with or even have a free press anymore.  This is despite networks like CBS falling all over themselves to hire former Trump regime sycophants in order to maintain access to a Republican-controlled Congress that they now believe is a sure thing.

And waiting in the wings is Justice Clarence Thomas, who is all but begging for a SCOTUS case in order to strip newspapers, networks, and websites of First Amendment protections.

America doesn't come back from a 2024 GOP trifecta, folks. None of it survives, and that includes a free press.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov finally admitting what Moscow's plan for Ukraine always was, not "liberating the Donbas" or "freeing ethnic Russians" in the country, but full-on regime change in order to re-create Soviet-era satellite states.

Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime,” expressing the Kremlin’s war aims in some of the bluntest terms yet as its forces pummel the country with artillery barrages and airstrikes.

The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.

Speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, Lavrov accused Kyiv and its Western allies of spouting propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.”

“We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime,” he said. Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”

Lavrov’s comments followed his warning last week that Russia plans to retain control over broader areas beyond eastern Ukraine, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south, and will make more gains elsewhere.

 

So yeah, Putin finds other former Soviet states not bowing to him as "unacceptable regimes" and they will be removed by force. If you think the Russians are going to stop at Ukraine, well.

 

We all know how this turns out.  Ask the Poles.

Abbott, Elementary Con't

First-term Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott, busy reducing women to second-class citizens, running a third-world power grid, covering up for a fourth-grade police force, giving kids a fifth-rate education and with his sixth sense on immigration an absolute failure, is all shaping up to give Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke a seventh heaven of a chance in November.

One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country’s worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid, which failed during bitter cold, now straining under soaring heat.

The unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Gov. Greg Abbott and making the race for governor perhaps the most competitive since Democrats last held that office in the 1990s.

Polls have shown a tightening, single-digit contest between Mr. Abbott, the two-term incumbent, and his ubiquitous Democratic challenger, the former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Mr. O’Rourke is now raising more campaign cash than Mr. Abbott — $27.6 million to $24.9 million in the last filing — in a race that is likely to be among the most expensive of 2022.

Suddenly, improbably, perhaps unwisely, Texas Democrats are again daring to think — as they have in many recent election years — that maybe this could be the year.

“It seems like some the worst things that are happening in this country have their roots in Texas,” said James Talarico, a Democratic state representative from north of Austin. “We’re seeing a renewed fighting spirit.”

At the same time, the winds of national discontent are whipping hard in the other direction, against Democrats. Texans, like many Americans, have felt the strain of rising inflation and have a low opinion of President Biden. Unlike four years ago, when Mr. O’Rourke challenged Senator Ted Cruz and nearly won during a midterm referendum on President Donald J. Trump that lifted Democrats, now it is Republicans who are animated by animus toward the White House and poised to make gains in state races.

But in recent weeks there has been a perceptible shift in Texas, as registered in several public polls and some internal campaign surveys, after the school shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that brought back into force a 1925 law banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is at risk.

“Dobbs at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. Uvalde at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. The grid has hurt Republicans in Texas,” said Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University who helped conduct one recent poll. “Biden and inflation have been their saving grace.”

Most voters polled did not rank guns or abortion among their top issues in the recent survey, by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, but many of Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters did, suggesting the issues could help to energize his voters, Mr. Jones said.

And the issue of gun control was a top concern among another group that Republicans have been fighting hard to win away from Democrats: Hispanic women.

A separate poll, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and released this month, showed 59 percent of respondents thought Texas was on the “wrong track,” the highest number in more than a decade of asking that question. Another, from Quinnipiac University, found Mr. O’Rourke within 5 percentage points of the governor.

 

I think Abbott has fouled up so badly that Beto has a real chance, and I think this race is only going to get closer.

 

We'll see.

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Last Call For The Devil's Daughter Gets Her Due

On CNN's State of the Union earlier today, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney all but admitted defeat in her re-election bid for Wyoming's House seat in the Republican primary next month and facing a 20-point deficit against Trump-endorsed state Sen. Harriet Hagedorn, Cheney has decided that she should be treated as a hero in her coming political annihilation.

Ensuring that Americans know the truth about former President Donald Trump and protecting American democracy is a higher priority than maintaining a seat in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

Driving the news: Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, is facing a tough election in Wyoming's Republican primary on Aug. 16, where she is polling significantly behind her Trump-endorsed primary opponent for the state's at-large House seat.

What they're saying: "I am working hard here in Wyoming to earn every vote, but I will also say this: I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to say things that aren't true about the election. My opponents are doing that, certainly, simply for the purpose of getting elected," Cheney said."If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I'm going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day," she added. 

"I'm fighting hard, no matter what happens on August 16th, I'm going to wake up on August 17th and continue to fight hard to ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again." 

Asked by host Jake Tapper whether, if she loses her primary her work on the Jan. 6 committee will have been worth it, Cheney replied that "there's no question. I believe that my work on this committee is the single most important thing I've ever done professionally."

The big picture: Cheney has long been a fierce critic of Trump and her criticism of the former president has made her a pariah within the House GOP — where she once was the highest-ranking female Republican — and in Wyoming, a state where her family has long been considered political nobility, Axios' Alayna Treene writes.

Cheney bet her political career against Donald Trump and is going to lose everything. At this point Democrats helping her out is pure idiocy, because voting with Trump a whopping 93% of the during his four years and against Biden 83% of the time in his 18 months, there's not any real functional difference between her votes and the Wyoming Q-Ball nutcase replacing her.

Once again, I assure you that Cheney will land on her feet in January and will work on her 2024 bid to implement 93% of Trump's racist, bigoted, evil policies and to help the Republican party take over the country.  She's even thinking really hard about allowing the January 6th Committee to maybe possibly subpoena Ginni Thomas someday!

I will tell people not to feel bad about Liz Cheney for even a heartbeat nor will I praise her. She took a sucker's bet for her own nicket and now she gets to ride the log flume into oblivion. 

Anyone sticking with the GOP in 2022 is a racist, bigoted asshole.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

We know Republicans love to consider themselves the victims whenever possible, because that imagined victimization justifies that violent, lethal responses they wish to use against those who "victimized" them: the Boogeyman versions of the "woke", Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the people who support them that all only exist in their delusions of fear and fantasies of power. The problem is of course that in 2022, more and more Republicans are running on a platform of turning those deadly power fantasies into reality.

Days before Maryland’s July 19 primary, Michael Peroutka stood up at an Italian restaurant in Rockville and imagined how a foreign enemy might attack America.

“We would expect them to make our borders porous,” Peroutka told the crowd, which had come to hear the Republicans running for state attorney general. “We would expect them to make our cities unsafe places to live. We would expect them to try to ruin our economy.” The country was “at war,” he explained, “and the enemy has co-opted members and agencies and agents of our government.”

On Tuesday, Peroutka easily dispatched a more moderate Republican to win the nomination. State Del. Dan Cox, who won Donald Trump’s endorsement after supporting the former president’s effort to subvert the 2020 election, also dispatched a Republican endorsed by the state’s popular governor, Larry Hogan.

Both candidates described a country that was not merely in trouble, but being destroyed by leaders who despise most Americans — effectively part of a civil war. In both swing states and safe seats, many Republicans say that liberals hate them personally and may turn rioters or a police state on people who disobey them.

Referring to the coronavirus and 2020 protests over police brutality, Cox told supporters at a rally last month, “We were told 14 days to bend the curve, and yet antifa was allowed to burn our police cars in the streets.” He continued: “Do you really think, with what we’re seeing — with the riots that have happened — that we should not have something to defend our families with? This is why we have the Second Amendment.”

The rhetoric is bracing, if not entirely new. Liberal commentators made liberal use of the word “fascism” to describe Trump’s presidency. The baseless theory that President Barack Obama was undermining American power as a foreign agent was popular with some Republicans, including Trump, who succeeded Obama in the White House.

Many Democrats saw the backlash to Obama as specific to his race, and saw Biden as unlikely to inspire mass opposition to Trump in the presidential election. But many Republicans also portray Biden as a malevolent figure — a vessel for a hateful leftist campaign to weaken America.

“It’s purposeful,” said former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who is running in next month’s special election for the state’s sole House seat, in an interview with former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon. “It’s all about the fundamental transformation of America. You only fundamentally transform something for which you have disdain.”

That argument has been dramatized in ads that, for instance, show one armed candidate appearing to charge into the home of a political enemy, and another warning of “the mob” that threatens ordinary Americans. In many cases the candidates are brandishing firearms while threatening harm to liberals or other enemies.

In central Florida, U.S. Army veteran Cory Mills has run ads about his company selling tear gas that was used to quell riots in 2020. “You may have seen some of our work,” he says, introducing a montage of what are labeled “antifa,” “radical left” and “Black Lives Matter” protesters running from the gas.

In northwest Ohio, a campaign video for Republican congressional nominee J.R. Majewski shows him walking through a dilapidated factory, holding a semiautomatic weapon, warning that Democrats will “destroy our economy” with purposefully bad policies.

“Their agenda is bringing America to its knees, and I am willing to do whatever it takes,” says Majewski, who’s seeking a House seat in a district around Toledo that has been redrawn to make Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) beatable. “If I have to kick down doors, that’s just what patriots do.”

In Missouri, Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens has issued two ads this summer in which he holds or fires weapons, vowing to go “RINO hunting” — for “Republicans in name only” — in one ad and targeting the “political establishment” in the second.

Dreading deep losses in November, some Democrats have spent money to help Republican candidates who talk this way under the theory that they will be easier to beat in November. The Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1.1 million on positive ads for Cox, as he was telling voters that they might one day have to battle antifa with their own weapons.

Candidates like Majewski, however, have won with no assistance from Democrats, aided instead by high turnout and grass-roots energy. The idea that the Biden administration’s policies are designed to fail — to raise gas prices, or increase the cost of food — is a popular campaign theme.

Pollsters have found that Americans are worried about the country sticking together; a YouGov poll released last month had a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agreeing that America would one day “cease to be a democracy.”

Republican wins since 2020, including a sweep in Virginia’s state elections and victory in a special election in June between two Hispanic candidates in South Texas, haven’t lightened the GOP mood. Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist who works with Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, said that last year’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large companies was a turning point in views of the Biden administration, even after it was blocked by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

“It’s the number one thing that caused people to go from ‘maybe this is incompetence’ to ‘there’s something else going on here,’ ” Surabian said. “Like, do these people actually want a Chinese-style social credit system?”

More and more Republican voters already believe we are actively in a civil war, one that needs to be fought in the streets against Democrats and their voters if Republicans don't take control of the country in November. Republicans are running on violence and fear and the message is clear: 

If we don't win with ballots, we must turn to winning with bullets, and you and your family need to be ready to take action.

Confessions, projections, and warnings: this is what 2022 Republicans are saying as loudly as they can.

We need to listen, and we need to vote.