Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

As I mentioned last week, nothing good will come from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet government, and apparently that fact is going to be proven in near-record time with a planned emergency suspension of civil liberties for journalists across the country.

Israel's communications minister is proposing emergency regulations that would allow police to arrest citizens and journalists who publish content deemed to "harm national morale".

Under Shlomo Karhi's proposal, those restrictions could be placed upon publications that have been used as a "base for enemy propaganda".

Journalists and other citizens could have their homes searched, property seized and could be placed under arrest for speech the government deems undesirable.

The proposal comes on the ninth day of fighting between Israel and Palestinian groups, which has killed at least 2,450 Palestinians in Gaza, including 724 children and 458 women. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, 56 people have been killed by Israeli fire. Meanwhile, at least 1,300 people have been killed in Israel.

Earlier on Sunday, Karhi said he was seeking a possible closure of Al Jazeera's local bureau, accusing the Qatari news station of pro-Hamas incitement and of exposing Israeli soldiers to potential attack from Gaza.

The proposal to shut down Al Jazeera had been vetted by Israeli security officials and was being vetted by legal experts, Karhi said at the time, adding that he would bring it to the cabinet later in the day.

Al Jazeera and the government in Doha had no immediate comment.

"This is a station that incites, this is a station that films troops in assembly areas [outside Gaza]... that incites against the citizens of Israel - a propaganda mouthpiece," Karhi told Israel's Army Radio.

In the age of TikTok war correspondents, Instagram military analysis and Twitter/X/Whatever propaganda and disninformation, locking up journalists is bad enough, but locking up citizens for spread of information deemed "harmful" by Israel shouldn't surprise anyone. 

The folks who brought you "Hamas beheads babies!!!!" which of course turned out to be completely fabricated is a reminder that nobody does disinformation quite like the IDF. And when Al Jazeera called bullshit on that story this weekend, well, no wonder Israel wants to get rid of them.

The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

With a vote on Jim Jordan as Speaker expected to fail miserably, more than a few House Republicans and even some Democrats are coalescing around the idea that The Odious Patrick McHenry, Speaker Pro Tempore, might be the solution to this mess. Semafor's Kadia Goba:

With the House still paralyzed in the absence of a speaker, the idea of giving Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry more power to conduct normal business is picking up growing bipartisan support.

A number of Republicans have been pushing to let the North Carolina lawmaker bring bills to the floor in order to keep the chamber functioning while the party works through its infighting. Now at least a handful of moderate Democrats are getting behind the concept as well, especially as it becomes clear that the GOP’s latest speaker nominee, Jim Jordan, faces an uphill battle.

“I think they’re going to go down in flames on that [vote] because there’s just no way that Jim Jordan, with Donald Trump’s support, gets to 217 or 218 votes in the House,” Rep. Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., told Semafor in an interview Sunday.

Wiley is backing a plan that would temporarily expand McHenry’s authority in the House for 15-day increments, and direct him to only bring legislation to the floor that would avoid a government shutdown in November, provide aid to Israel and Ukraine, and deal with the remaining 2024 appropriations bills. Wiley, along with three other Democratic members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, penned a letter to McHenry last week requesting a meeting to discuss the possibility.

They’re also asking McHenry be allowed to introduce so-called suspension bills — which are allowed to head straight to the House floor — “evenly distributed” between Democratic and Republican priorities, to avoid legislation being held up in the GOP-led Rules Committee. Some members have talked about using suspension bills as a route to push through key to-do list items such as the stalled National Defense Authorization Act.

The 10 members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of self-proclaimed “pragmatic” Democrats, also endorsed the proposal. Meanwhile, Republicans led by Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio are pushing their own resolution that would empower the interim speaker to advance legislation for a period of up to 90 days. Notably, ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed granting McHenry full powers of the speakership while the House looks for a permanent leader.

Of course, as Goba remarks, temporary things in the federal government have this habit of become permanent. 

Giving McHenry more power is being presented as a temporary fallback measure if Jordan can’t sew up a win this week. But it could also be a gateway to Speaker McHenry. Hear me out.

McCarthy’s ousting came as a surprise, even to those who have long anticipated it, because for all its manufactured chaos, Congress doesn’t do well with abrupt changes. So it wouldn’t surprise me if an incremental change in McHenry’s powers morphs into a longstanding position for the North Carolina Republican.

In fact, some New York Republicans are already floating the idea that Congress doesn’t need to vote and McHenry already has the powers.

“The authority and responsibility to do so is inherent in the title,” Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., told Semafor. “The position’s post-9/11 description, done in contemplation of continuity of government, makes this obvious to me and many others. You don’t need to have graduated from Hofstra Law to come to that conclusion.”

 

My view on McHenry, the now long-time Congressman from back home in Western NC, is evidenced by his sobriquet, one he earned 15 years ago for being a proto-MAGA crank. 

 

He'll fit right in here at the Clown Show.  I said that over a decade ago he was headed for big things, and here we are.

Honk. Honk.

Alabama's Bloody Tide

Alabama Republicans have been refusing federal Medicaid expansion money for years now, and like most non-expansion red states, more and more hospitals are reducing services or closing up entirely as a direct result. Three hospitals near Bimingham are shutting down their maternity wards over the next several weeks, leaving tens of thousands of women without a place to go to deliver babies by Thanksgiving.

 

By the end of the month, two Alabama hospitals will stop delivering babies. A third will follow suit a few weeks later.

That will leave two counties — Shelby and Monroe — without any birthing hospitals, and strip a predominantly Black neighborhood in Birmingham of a sought-after maternity unit.

After that, pregnant women in Shelby County will have to travel at least 17 miles farther to reach a hospital with an OB-GYN. And because the county, one of Alabama’s largest, is bordered by another whose hospital also lacks an obstetrics unit, some of those residents are also losing the closest place they could go to deliver their babies.

“There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties,” said Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama.

People in Monroe County, meanwhile, could face drives between 35 to 100 miles to a labor and delivery department.

Trekking that far to give birth is not unheard of in Alabama, in which more than a third of the counties are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes — meaning they have no hospital with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.

The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country; only three others had higher rates between 2018 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alabama also had the nation’s third-highest infant mortality rate in 2021, the latest data available.

Physicians currently or formerly affiliated with the Alabama maternity units about to close fear the consequences for pregnant women and babies, especially if people are not able to reach birthing hospitals quickly enough in emergencies.

“People are going to show up delivering in the ER, and you’re going to have bad outcomes,” said Dr. Jesanna Cooper, an OB-GYN who formerly worked at Princeton Baptist Medical Center, the Birmingham hospital closing its maternity services. “If you show up with a very premature baby and deliver in the ER, and you don’t have a NICU and you don’t have an obstetrics team, things aren’t going to go well.”

 

And of course the real kicker:

The closures come as the need for obstetrics care in Alabama is anticipated to rise as a result of its abortion laws. The state has banned almost all abortions since June 2022.

 

At this point, one would have to believe that the state Republican party, having banned abortion, and the same party letting hospitals die on the vine like this, really don't want those people to have sex at all without potentially ruinous consequences.  

When we talk about Alabama having a similar socioeconomic profile to say, Albania, understand that a poor exploitable populace is what the ruling government wants, and has wanted, for generations.

Last Call For Louisiana Blues For The Blue Team

Democrats have done pretty well in 2023's special elections, but as we're now only a few weeks away from Election Day, political gravity is reasserting itself in a painful way in red states like Louisiana.

 

Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.

The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.

“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”

By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.

The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic.”

Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions. More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.

Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over President Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

 

People forget that while Bobby Jindal is now a national punchline and the ultimate has-been who never was in Republican politics, the guy did outright win the state's jungle primary for governor twice, and he won easily. 

Current Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has been the only thing stopping Louisiana from becoming as red as a boiled crawfish, and that's going to be a painful experience for the poorer parts of the state in the years ahead, especially in NOLA and Baton Rouge.

Hopefully we'll have a better outcome here in Kentucky next month.

New Zealand Goes Right, Away

And on the same weekend where Australian voters resoundingly rejected codified rights for Indigenous people, neighboring New Zealand has seen voters sending the ruling Labour Party to the bench and have elected a right-wing conservative nationalist coalition that is promising to cut taxes, inflation, and oh yes, immigration.

 

New Zealand’s next prime minister will be Christopher Luxon, a former chief executive of Air New Zealand, whose center-right National Party will lead a coalition with Act, a smaller libertarian party.

Addressing a euphoric crowd at his party’s victory event on Auckland’s waterfront, Mr. Luxon thanked supporters and promised a better and more stable future for the country.

“Our government will deliver for every New Zealander,” he said, to whoops and cheers. “We will rebuild the economy and deliver tax relief.”

The rightward drift ended six years of the Labour government that was dominated by Ms. Ardern, who stepped down early this year.

“She’s probably the most consequential prime minister we’ve had since David Lange,” the Labour leader who came to power in 1984, “and, from an international point of view, most charismatic,” said Bernard Hickey, an economic and political commentator in Auckland, New Zealand. “But this election is the landmark of her failure.”

For many voters, Ms. Ardern and her successor, Chris Hipkins, failed to deliver on the Labour Party’s promise of transformational change. In the weeks leading up to the election, New Zealanders, buffeted by the currents of global inflation and its larger Asia Pacific neighbors’ economic woes, overwhelmingly cited cost of living as the primary concern driving their vote.

The coalition is a return to form for New Zealand, which since moving to a system of proportional representation in 1993 has had only one single-party government — the Labour government elected in 2020 under Ms. Ardern. But it is the first time National, which last governed alone in the early 1980s, has been in coalition with a more conservative partner.

With most of the vote counted, support for the Labour Party, which won 50 percent of the vote in 2020, buoyed by the country’s strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, has collapsed to 27 percent.

The National Party won 39 percent of the vote, up from 26 percent in 2020. Among the smaller parties, the Green Party took 11 percent of the vote, and Act won 9 percent. But those results could shift slightly after “special” votes were counted, including those of overseas New Zealanders. That could potentially force Act and National into coalition with New Zealand First, a longtime kingmaker that played a role in Ms. Ardern’s ascent, to push the right-wing coalition over the halfway mark.

Addressing party members in Wellington, Mr. Hipkins said he had conceded the election to Mr. Luxon and celebrated Labour’s accomplishments on alleviating child poverty and navigating New Zealand through the coronavirus pandemic, the Christchurch massacres and the White Island volcano eruption.

“We will keep fighting for working people, because that is our history and our future,” he said.

 

And yes, the rights for New Zealand's Maori population are now expected to be put to a vote.

The new National-led government, despite being more conservative, was unlikely to make significant changes on many social issues, said Ben Thomas, a former press secretary for the National Party.

“Nobody wants to re-litigate abortion or homosexual marriage,” he said. “Unlike the States, where there’s a constant battle to try and roll back progressive legislation, the conservative tradition in New Zealand is ‘We’ve always gone just about far enough.’”

But Act may seek to push policy priorities of its own, including a referendum to reconsider the role New Zealand’s Indigenous Maori people play in policymaking.

“What they actually want is a referendum which defines away any kind of standing or rights guaranteed to Maori by the Treaty,” Mr. Thomas said, referring to an 1840 agreement that governs New Zealand legislation to this day.

He added: “What you might broadly call racial tensions — over race and policy, Maori policy, Treaty policy — are greater than at any point since 2005.”

 

Putting rights of a minority group to a vote never seems to end well in any country. I don't expect New Zealand to be any different.

Sunday Long Read: Black Lives Still Matter

Black Lives Matter in America, but I can't blame Black folk for leaving a country that never wanted us as anything more than slaves while we wait for the end of the Civil Rights era. Our Sunday Long Read icomes from the LA Times, where the Blaxit is happening, Black folks leaving a country that has wanted us gone all our lives. Some of us are gone for good, moving to other countries where we're Black folk are treated like -- wait for it -- actual human beings.

 

Filmmaker Jameelah Nuriddin was locked down in Los Angeles during the pandemic, watching as the nation convulsed in protest over the murder of George Floyd, when she had an epiphany: “America does not deserve me.”

As a Black woman, Nuriddin always tried to work twice as hard as those around her, thinking: “If I’m smart enough, pretty enough, successful enough ... then finally people will treat me as a human being.”

But as she grieved yet another unarmed Black man killed by police, she decided she was done trying to prove herself to a society that she felt would never really love her back.

So Nuriddin, 39, packed her bags and left.

She ended up in Costa Rica, in an idyllic beach town on the Caribbean coast that has become a hub for hundreds of Black expatriates fed up with life in the United States.

She now spends her days working for U.S. clients from chic cafes, leading healing ceremonies at a local waterfall and trying to figure out who she is, exactly, outside of an American context.

“It’s like leaving an abusive relationship,” she said of exiting the United States.

The expats forging new lives in Puerto Viejo are part of a wider exodus of Black Americans from the U.S. in recent years, with many leaving for reasons that are explicitly political.

Exhausted by anti-Black discrimination and violence back home, they are building communities in countries such as Portugal, Ghana, Colombia and Mexico.

Often referred to as “Blaxit,” which combines the words “Black” and “exit,” the movement has been boosted by social media, where influencers share inspirational posts about their odysseys abroad and challenge others to join them.

It is also aided by a new industry of businesses that provide relocation services specifically for African Americans, and by Facebook and WhatsApp groups such as “Black in Bali,” “Black in Tulum” and “Brothas & Sistas in Mexico City,” whose members share tips on everything from how to pay local bills to where to find good hairstylists.

There are no official statistics on how many have left the country. But academics say it may be one of the most significant emigrations of African Americans since the first half of last century, when many Black artists decamped to Europe.

The late writer James Baldwin, who was part of that earlier wave, said he moved to France in 1948 “with the theory that nothing worse would happen to me there than had already happened to me here.”

Seven decades later, the U.S. is still grappling with racism, with Black people twice as likely as white people to be killed by police and Black workers earning less on the dollar than their white counterparts. In Florida, a new law forces teachers to downplay the impact of slavery, and across the country, far-right activists are seeking bans on books touching on Black history.

Americans of all races have been leaving the U.S. thanks to the pandemic shift to remote work. But for Black Americans, many of whom were distraught over the political and racial divisions the pandemic years highlighted, the decision to move abroad is about more than just saving money or having an adventure.

“It gave people time to question,” said Chrishan Wright, who launched a podcast in 2020 that documented her move to Lisbon. She now works as a relocation consultant and is helping about a dozen families restart in Portugal. They are mostly Black professionals with children, she said, in search of “a better quality of life without the emotional and psychological strain.”

 

Why stay in an abusive relationship with a country that has been trying to kill us for 400 years? I don't have an answer for that. But for more and more of us, the search for that answer is taking us outside America, and frankly I don't find anything wrong with that. "Nobody loves America like Black folk" the saying goes, "But America never loved us back."

 

When you fall out of love, there's increasingly little reason to stay.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.  Even ex-pats.

Last Call For Trump Cards

 For a guy constantly complaining about "rigged elections" it seems Donald Trump is doing everything he can to ensure total victory in GOP primary races, with multiple states changing their primary rules in order to, well, rig the elections for Trump's win next spring.

Not long after the new chairman of the Republican Party in Hawaii was elected in May, he received a voicemail from none other than Donald J. Trump.

“It’s your all-time favorite president,” Mr. Trump told the chairman, Tim Dalhouse. “I just called to congratulate you.”

The head of the Kansas G.O.P. received a similar message after he became chairman. The Nebraska chairman had a couple of minutes and a photo arranged with the former president during an Iowa stop. And the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael McDonald, who had served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, was among a group of state party officials who were treated to an hourslong Mar-a-Lago meal in March that ended in ice cream sundaes.

Months later, Mr. McDonald’s party in Nevada dramatically transformed the state’s influential early contest. The party enacted new rules that distinctively disadvantage Mr. Trump’s chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively blocking the super PAC he relies upon from participating in the state’s new caucus.

Mr. McDonald has tilted the rules so significantly that some of Mr. Trump’s opponents have accused the party of manipulating the election for him — and have mostly pulled up stakes in the state entirely.

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The maneuvering is the type of old-school party politics that Mr. Trump, who cut his teeth in the machine politics of 1970s and 1980s New York, relishes and knows best: personal calls and chits, glad-handing, relationships and reprisals. Advisers say that in contrast to some tasks, getting him to make those calls is a breeze. Plus, the seemingly arcane issue of delegate accumulation — tallying up formal support in the states to secure the nomination at the party convention next summer — is deeply personal to Mr. Trump after he was outflanked in exactly this fight in 2016.

Then, a better-organized Senator Ted Cruz of Texas worked Trump-skeptical state parties to win more delegates even in some places where he had lost at the ballot box. Mr. Cuccinelli was one of Mr. Cruz’s top delegate hunters at the time. Now, surrounded by a more experienced team and the authority of a former president with loyalists entrenched nationwide, Mr. Trump is doing to Mr. DeSantis exactly what he once accused Hillary Clinton of doing to Bernie Sanders: bending the system in his favor.

Mr. Trump’s backroom campaign reveals the extent to which he has become the establishment of the Republican Party.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s not talked about in the news,” said Scott Golden, the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, who was invited to speak briefly in private with Mr. Trump when the former president visited his state this spring. “This is important stuff. It is ultimately about making sure your person is the nominee.”

The primary rules in the early states leading up to Super Tuesday, and the biggest sSuper Tuesday prize of them all -- California -- have put entire bodies on the scales in Trump's favor, to the point where his opponents are literally refusing to spend money in those states at all anymore.

Short of Trump having a massive health issue in the next three months, the 2024 GOP primary is already over. 

Down Under Disappointment

Australian voters have overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to give Indigenous people rights as a recognized group, because that would be racist against anyone who isn't a member of that class, you see.

Australia has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater rights to Indigenous people in a referendum.

All six states voted no to a proposal to change the constitution to recognise Indigenous citizens and create an advisory body to the government.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said defeat was hard: "When you aim high, sometimes you fall short. We understand and respect that we have."

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the result was "good for our country".

The referendum, dubbed "The Voice", was Australia's first in more than a quarter of a century. With almost 70% of the vote counted, the "No" vote led "Yes" 60% to 40%.

Its rejection followed a fraught and often ill-tempered campaign.

Supporters said that entrenching the Indigenous peoples into the constitution would unite Australia and usher in a new era.

No leaders said that the idea was divisive, would create special "classes" of citizens where some were more equal than others, and the new advisory body would slow government decision-making.

They were criticised over their appeal to undecided voters with a "Don't know? Vote no" message, and accused of running a campaign based on misinformation about the effects of the plan.

The result leaves Mr Albanese searching for a way forward with his vision for the country, and a resurgent opposition keen to capitalise on its victory.

 

So, Indigenous Australians will continue to not actually be Australians under the country's legal system, with fewer rights than other Australians, and that's what the 95% of Australians who are non-Indigenous voted for.

You don't have to work as hard as Republicans here in America have for the last 60 years to reverse the civil rights era if like Australia, you never actually have one. After all, we still have most Native American on reservations, and that's not going to change in my lifetime either.

There's no debating the racism in America or Australia (or the UK, Canad or New Zealand), the debate is over whether or not it's a bad thing, and for most folks in these coutries, the answer is no.

For those who actually are harmed by it, well, too bad, the majority has spoken.

Democracy!

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Perennial loser Kari Lake is trying to win Arizona's three-way US Senate race by promising she won't support a national abortion ban, and that's not going over well with the Republicans who are expected to give her an easy primary win. She's not alone by any means in backstabbing her MAGA base when it comes to an untenable position against abortion in the general election stage, either.

Kari Lake campaigned for governor of Arizona last year as a fierce ally of former President Donald J. Trump who was in lock step with her party’s right-wing base, calling abortion the “ultimate sin” and supporting the state’s Civil War-era restrictions on the procedure.

This week, she made a remarkable shift on the issue as she opened her bid for the U.S. Senate: She declared her opposition to a federal ban.

“Republicans allowed Democrats to define them on abortion,” Ms. Lake said in a statement to The New York Times about her break from the policy prescription favored by many anti-abortion groups and most of her party’s presidential contenders. She added that she supported additional resources for pregnant women, and that “just like President Trump, I believe this issue of abortion should be left to the states.”

The maneuvering by Ms. Lake, along with similar adjustments by Republican Senate candidates in Pennsylvania and Michigan, is part of a broader strategic effort in her party to recalibrate on an issue that has become a political albatross in battleground states and beyond.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, eliminating federal protections for abortion rights and handing Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation, voters have turned out repeatedly to support abortion rights, even in red states.

The campaign arm for Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is now coaching candidates to take the same tack as Ms. Lake — that is, clearly state their opposition to a national abortion ban, according to people familiar with the new strategy.

The group has also urged candidates to state their support for “reasonable limits” on late-term abortions with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, the people said. Rather than trying to avoid the topic, like many candidates did last year, it is advising Republicans to go on offense.

Senate Republicans were briefed last month on detailed research commissioned by One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, showing that many Americans equated the term “pro-life” — traditionally used by Republicans — with support for a total ban on abortion without any exceptions.

The research also showed that while voters opposed the idea of a total ban, there was wider support for restrictions after 12 to 15 weeks of pregnancy, particularly with exceptions for rape, incest and the life or health of the mother.

The nonprofit has suggested that Republicans communicate their views on abortion with empathy and compassion. Steven Law, who is the president of One Nation, is also the president of the Senate Leadership Fund, which has spent more than $1 billion on federal campaigns since 2016.

Whether or not Republican candidates for Congress — and the White House — can persuade voters that they have become more moderate on abortion promises to be one of the central questions of the 2024 elections.

“Voters have repeatedly rejected Republican politicians for supporting dangerous policies that deny a woman’s right to access abortion,” Sarah Guggenheimer, the spokesperson for the Senate Majority political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic candidates. “This cynical effort by Mitch McConnell and Republican candidates to mask their positions won’t change that.”

 

The problem of course is that the MAGA chuds aren't going to accept anything less than a permanent national abortion ban that jails half the population, including doctors, nurses and activists. The even bigger problem is even the "compromise" position still gives control of wombs and the folks that have them to the state. 

Democrats are right that this is a cynical ploy, and fewer and fewer voters are going to buy it.

Last Call For Meet The New Ringmaster, Again

With Steve Scalise out. the House GOP is now turning to Trump-endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan as a Speaker candidate, and it looks like Jordan has even less support than Scalise did.

The House GOP has entered an angrier and more bewildered phase in its leadership crisis.

The fractious Republican conference has rejected a second speaker hopeful in eight days — this time, Kevin McCarthy’s longtime heir apparent, Steve Scalise. While Republicans appear to be turning next to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), some are already airing open doubts that Jordan can pull off what the majority leader couldn’t.

The lesson Republicans have learned in the frenetic week since McCarthy’s fall: They have no clear choice for leader who can unite their ranks — no matter how long this drags out and their chamber of Congress is paralyzed.

It’s not just GOP centrists sparring with the hard right. It’s not just McCarthy loyalists secretly fuming at Scalise or his allies. There’s mounting anger across the entire conference that no GOP speaker candidate, including Jordan, appears able to prevail under the current margins.

“We need to all recognize that this is much bigger than just one person or any single person’s petty feelings,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), who had voted for Jordan but publicly backed Scalise after he won the internal election.

It won’t be easy for any candidate to get past the internal spats that have only worsened as the GOP’s speaker fight drags on with no end in sight.

“Personally, I think it may end up being a compromise candidate,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said. While Murphy said there was “no doubt” Jordan would run, he acknowledged that getting the needed 217 GOP votes is “going to be hard.”

At some point, I would expect the Democrats to make a move here, with more backchannel routes and somebody Hakeem Jeffries can support. In a logical world, that would mean peeling off a half-dozen Republican to vote for Jeffries himself.

Of course, in a logical world, Jeffries would have been Speaker already. 

Orange Meltldown, Con't

The Trump Organization fraud trial in Manhattan continued as formed CFO Allen Weisselberg took the stand for a second day, but that testimony was cut short as NY AG Tish James's office confirmed they were looking into a Forbes Magazine report from Thursday claiming that Weisselberg committed perjury Tuesday when testifying about the value of Trump's properties in the state.

The Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s testimony reached an abrupt and unexpected end on Thursday afternoon, just hours after Forbes magazine accused the convicted tax cheat of perjuring himself during an earlier stint as a witness.

Weisselberg insisted on Tuesday from the witness stand that he “never focused” on calculating the square footage of the former president’s Trump Tower triplex, a three-floor penthouse in his namesake skyscraper.

Two days later, on Thursday, Forbes reported that emails not currently in the attorney general’s possession show otherwise.

A source close to New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed that her office is looking into the latest Forbes report.

Hours after the publication of that story, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron convened a sidebar with attorneys for the state and defense, but the subject of their private huddle remains unknown. Weisselberg was excused for the day shortly after that conversation, as attorneys for both sides reserved the right to call him back.

I'm not lawyer, but this seems really bad for both Weisselberg and for Trump's defense in the case.

Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander wrote that his old emails and reporter notes contradict those denials, pointing out in his story that "Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was."

"Given the fact that these discussions continued for years, and that Weisselberg took a very detailed approach in reviewing Trump’s assets with Forbes, it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court," Alexander added.

Earlier this week, Trump attacked Alexander by name on Truth Social, labeling him a “psycho” and his news organization a “rag" after it dropped the former president from its world billionaires list for the second time in three years. 

Those Trump social media comments were also posted hours after James entered a series of Forbes’ fact-checking emails with Weisselberg and other executives into evidence. Alexander, whose byline appeared on the story knocking Trump off Forbes’ billionaires list, was one of the staffers who sent those emails.

Considering Trump's overinflation of the value of his properties is at the heart of this fraud case, I'm betting Trump wish Weisselberg had kept his mouth shut, or at least taken the 5th because he definitely screwed up here.

We'll see what the results are, but at this point if there was any shred of hope that Trump would prevail, that hope died screaming as it was shot into the sun. 

Last Call For The GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

It's quite obvious that Rep. Steve Scalise doesn't have the votes for Speaker, and he's turning to House GOP Armed Services committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers to make an overture to House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to play Let's Make A Deal! again.

 

“They put us in this ditch along with eight traitors,” Rogers said, referring to hardline GOP dissidents who toppled Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week. “We’re still the majority party, we’re willing to work with them, but they gotta tell us what they need.”

Rogers said the Republicans’ speaker nominee, Steve Scalise, is in the same situation McCarthy was in struggling to get the 217 votes needed for election. A lot of Republicans, Rogers said, would never vote for conservative firebrand Jim Jordan, who narrowly lost to Scalise on a secret ballot vote Wednesday.

“To limit ourselves to just getting 217 out of our conference I think is not a wise path forward,” Rogers said.

Rogers said the disarray in the House is endangering US national security and preventing approval for aid to Israel in its war with Hamas.

“It is perilous what’s happening in Israel right now. It could get much worse,” Rogers said. “And we’re paralyzed right now.”

 

Jeffries has Scalise, Rogers, and the GOP Clown Show over a barrel, and it's the worst-kept secret in Washington.  The October 7th attack by Hamas has suddenly made it very necessary for the Speaker fight to be ended.

Democrats are ready to form a bipartisan coalition to lead the House, Jeffries said.

“The House of Representatives has been broken by chaos, dysfunction and extremism,” Jeffries said. “The only way out is to enter into an enlightened bipartisan coalition of the willing in order to get things back on track.”

The leadership vacuum in the US House has rendered Congress unable to act on legislation.

Another Republican, David Joyce of Ohio, told reporters he’s contacted Democrats about expanding the authority of acting Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry of North Carolina so that the House can act on legislation. Joyce said he has proposed granting McHenry such powers for a limited period of time — perhaps 30 or 60 days — and Democrats have been amenable to that approach to act on issues like Israel.

Steve Womack, a senior Republican appropriator, supports that idea. The “only other option,” he said, is for Democrats to enable election of a Republican speaker nominee by voting “present,” lowering the threshold needed for victory.

Jeffries has offered discussions on a bipartisan path forward. But Rogers said Democrats should make a specific offer that could provide a basis for opening negotiations.

“They haven’t offered jack,” Rogers said.

 

It's not on Hakeem Jeffries or the Democrats to offer the Clown Show anything. You'd think someone would tell Rogers his negotiation position is the equivalent of a man standing on a burning bridge. Besides, McCarthy made it clear he wouldn't negotiate in good faith, and it looks like Rogers is going down this same path.

We'll see what backchannel offers can be brought up, but my guess is that Jeffries has had plenty of time to name his price to help Scalise, and who knows if the Clown Show will agree to anything.

[UPDATE] No, they won't. Scalise has withdrawn his name from the race for Speaker.

The Clown Show rolls on.

Orange Meltdown, Israel Edition

Donald Trump may be a blithering chaos elemental, but he does tend to follow a couple of rules in general, which explains him turning on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night.

 

Donald Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling a crowd of Florida supporters that the countries' intelligence failed, and its enemies were ''very smart."

"I'll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down," Trump told a group of supporters Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Fla. "That was a very terrible thing."

Trump discussed the operation that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in early 2020. The former president said Israel now has to strengthen itself as it fights Hamas and other militant groups, including perhaps Iran.

Supporters of Israel said on social media said that the Soleimani operation was aided by Israeli intelligence, while others criticized Trump for criticizing Israel's government in the midst of a crisis.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running against Trump for the Republican nomination, zeroed in on Trump's description of Hezbollah leaders as "very smart."

Noting that at least 1,200 Israelis and 22 Americans have been killed in recent days, DeSantis said on the X website that "it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as 'very smart.' As President, I will stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum that they are."

During what was otherwise a campaign speech, Trump claimed that an unnamed U.S. official described Israel as being vulnerable from the north, and that kind of information would be helpful to adversaries.

"You know, Hezbollah is very smart - they're all very smart," Trump said at one point.

 

Many of you have already sussed out these rules, and they follow a pattern that explains Trump's modus operandi here.

 

First, Trump doesn't like "losers". He's seen Netanyahu come under attack for critical intelligence failures at best on the Hamas attack and at worst, being warned and letting it happen anyway. 

Mounting questions over Israel’s massive intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for a surprise Hamas assault were compounded Monday when an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big” — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister.

The Egyptian official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating.

He said Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is made up of supporters of West Bank settlers who have demanded a security crackdown there in the face of a rising tide of violence over the last 18 months.

“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the content of sensitive intelligence discussions with the media, told The Associated Press.

Netanyahu denied receiving any such advance warning, saying in the course of an address to the nation Monday night that the story was “fake news.”

 

The problem for Bibi is that House Republicans are backing this intel. 

Egyptian intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts of a a possible terror attack days before Hamas slaughtered at least 1,300 people, according to the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — who said Wednesday he doesn’t know how Israel and the US missed the signs.

“We know the Egyptian intelligence service handed this off days before the terrorist invasion, if you will, or attack,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told CNN following a closed-door intelligence briefing. “So, there’s a lot of questions about that.”

 

Second, more than a few pundits and pols have accused Trump of being complicit in the Hamas attack with his failed foreign policy, the loudest voice being Trump's own former VP, Mike Pence.

Former Vice President Mike Pence tore into Donald Trump and pointed to isolationism in the Republican Party as complicit in the sweeping Hamas attack on Israel, decrying American “retreat on the world stage.”

In a scathing rebuke, Pence faulted “voices of appeasement like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis that I believe have run contrary to the tradition in our party that America is the leader of the free world.”

Pence’s comments in Iowa represented the first ripple in the Republican primary from the violence that erupted on Saturday — and effectively threw down a challenge to Republicans he said have “embraced the language of isolationism and appeasement.”

The role of the United States in maintaining global security is one of the most important points of friction between the Republican presidential candidates — one that could now erupt in a new way because of the violence in Israel. Pence’s criticism of Trump was uncharacteristically pointed. But it was even more remarkable for the break it represented in their previously lockstep approach to Israel. Once a signature priority of the Trump-Pence administration, the U.S.-Israel relationship Saturday was suddenly becoming a wedge issue between them.

Faulting President Joe Biden for “projecting weakness on the world stage,” Pence also pointed an accusatory finger rightward at an event here near the Nebraska border.

“This is also what happens when you have leaders in the Republican Party signaling retreat on the world stage,” Pence said.

 

Third, the Biden administration is backing Netanyahu and his war council, which means Trump will do the opposite. 

As Israel prepares to launch a likely ground invasion into Gaza, the Biden Administration and leading members of Congress are crafting an American aid package of roughly $2 billion in supplementary funding to support the nation’s war effort against Hamas, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell TIME.

The funding would go toward replenishing Israel’s stockpile of interceptors for its Iron Dome missile-defense system, artillery shells, and other munitions. If approved, the assistance would come at a crucial time for Israel, as it gears for a lengthy and devastating offensive against the terror group that brutally massacred more than 1,200 Israelis in Saturday’s surprise attack.

“We’re heading into a war for many, many weeks, maybe several months, in which the objective is to dismantle Hamas,” Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, told TIME shortly after attending a briefing from White House officials on the situation. “It will be perhaps the highest casualty war Israel has faced since the War of Independence,” he added, referring to the 1948 blitz that five Arab nations waged against Israel shortly after its establishment. “But Israel didn’t ask for this.”

 

Finally, Trump never passes on an opportunity to be a raging antisemite and an Islamophobe if he can do both at the same time. 

Dumping Bibi under the bus accomplishes Trump's agenda on all four of those points. Expect a harder line against Israel's nearly assured Gaza invasion in the weeks and months to come.

Meet The New Ringmaster Of The GOP Clown Show

As expected, a majority of the House Republican caucus decided on Rep. Steve Scalise as their candidate for House Speaker rather than Rep. Jim Jordan, a direct repudiation of Trump's endorsement (everything he touches still turns to shit though). But the concept of Scalise getting 218 votes however still looks very elusive.

 

House Republicans on Wednesday nominated Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to be the next Speaker, sending his candidacy to the House floor following Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) stunning ouster last week, multiple lawmakers told The Hill.

Scalise secured the nomination 113-99 in a closed-door GOP conference meeting, defeating House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a close race that did not have a clear front-runner heading into the internal vote.

Scalise will now take his candidacy to the House floor, where he will be up against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who Democrats nominated for Speaker on Tuesday night.

The floor fight could get messy. Candidates need the support of a majority of the chamber to take control of the gavel and Republicans hold a razor-thin majority. McCarthy required 15 rounds of voting to secure the gavel.

Multiple Republicans have already said they won’t vote for Scalise on the floor and others remained non-committal.

Jordan, however, said he offered to deliver a nominating speech on Scalise’s behalf.

Scalise’s nomination marks the pinnacle of his congressional career, which began in 2008 and has spanned more than nine years in leadership, including stints as Republican whip and, most recently, majority leader.

Throughout the week-long race for the top spot, Scalise branded himself as the Republican who could unite the conference following McCarthy’s ouster, which bitterly divided the GOP and inflamed tensions within the party.

“I’ve got a long history of bringing people together, uniting Republicans, focusing on the issues that we’ve got to do to address the issues we came here to do to get our country back on track,” Scalise told Fox Business in an interview Tuesday.

 

Yeah, let's have a little chat about Steve, shall we?  Remember how he spoke at a white supremacist hoedown with fellow Louisiana trash beast David Duke in 2014? ZVTS remembers, as does CNN.

The story has all the traits of a career-ending political scandal:

A congressman who recently snagged a top position in party leadership faces accusations that he addressed a hate group run by a notorious white supremacist. And all of that, just a week before his party is set to take the reigns of power in Congress.

But the fast rising career of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, who was tapped as House Majority Whip this summer, may not be in the ditches just yet. There’s a lot to keep track of. Here’s what you need to know:

So what happened?

It turns out Scalise addressed an anti-Semitic, white supremacist group back in 2002 run by none other than David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan who is well-known in Scalise’s home state of Louisiana because of several statewide campaigns for governor and senator.

A liberal Louisiana politics blogger revealed the encounter with the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) after finding an account of Scalise’s speech to the group on a white supremacist forum.

The group is bad news for Scalise: it’s been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which details the group’s anti-semitic, racist views.

The next day, reporters in D.C. were asking Scalise’s office about the meeting and after aides first said it was “probable” and then “likely” the congressman spoke to the group, Scalise broke his silence in an interview with his local paper, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

He said he didn’t remember specifically addressing EURO, but said that at the time he “went and spoke to any group that called” in 2002 when he was trying to drum up support in opposing a state tax plan.

And then Scalise released the ultimate mea culpa statement Tuesday afternoon, calling his appearance at the event “a mistake I regret.”

“One of the many groups that I spoke to regarding this critical legislation was a group whose views I wholeheartedly condemn. It was a mistake I regret,” Scalise said.

 

That should have been the end of his career 9 years ago and now he's failed upward all the way to House Speaker, despite paling around with avowed racists and antisemites as Israel takes the American foreign policy stage. I bet there's going to be some fun phone calls this week between here and Tel Aviv. 

In hindsight, a Republican in Congress who was chasing the neo-Nazi vote in 2014 was simply ahead of the curve for the rest of the party, and now he's going to get rewarded for it.

Well, eventually. Who knows how many votes it will take to get him elected?

Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

Looks like Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will not only stay in power, but now he will lead a war cabinet emergency government that will almost certainly suspend civil liberties while bombing Gaza to rubble and glass.

 

An emergency government was formed on Wednesday afternoon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Unity leader Benny Gantz met in the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv earlier in the morning.

The meeting lasted half an hour after which lawyers representing the Likud and National Unity stayed behind to finalize the details.

As part of the deal, Gantz and fellow party members Gadi Eisenkot, Gideon Sa'ar, and two others will be sworn in as ministers for the duration of the war.

Gantz will join a war cabinet with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Eisenkot and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer will be observers. A spot will be kept open for opposition leader Yair Lapid should he join the emergency government.

The agreement also states that throughout the war, no legislation that is unrelated to the war will be done in Knesset.

 

Anyone older enough to remember the PATRIOT Act will recognize the sheer size of this loophole, which Israel will drive multiple tank brigades though.

There has been a widespread call for an emergency government in Israel since Netanyahu declared war on Hamas on Saturday following their massive attack on Israel that morning.

Gantz was immediately joined by opposition leader Yair Lapid and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman in saying that they would be willing to join an emergency government. Coalition members also expressed support for the move.

Netanyahu and Gantz have held multiple meetings over the past few days to discuss the details of the emergency government, but it took five days to come together.

 

So all the gang is here: Bibi, Gantz, and Liberman, and everyone's going to get their piece of the pie, along with several thousand dead Gaza residents.

Already Gaza has been cut off without power, water, and food, with no escape until further notice. An Israeli ground offensive is imminent. A lot of people are going to be killed over the next week or so on both sides, because Hamas isn't going to sit still, they're continuing to fire rockets into Israeli cities.

It's going to get a lot worse.