Nashville Hot Potato

With Tennessee Republicans splitting his Nashville-area congressional district into three, long-time Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper is retiring from the House after more than three decades of serving the people.

 

Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee announced Tuesday that he will not run for reelection, becoming the latest House Democrat to head for the exits as the party faces an uphill battle to retain control of the chamber in the 2022 midterms. 

"Today I am announcing that I will not run for re-election to Congress. After 32 years in office, I will be leaving Congress next year," Cooper tweeted.  

"I cannot thank the people of Nashville enough. You backed me more than almost anyone in Tennessee history," he said. 

The Tennessee Democrat is a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition and serves on the House Committee on Armed Services as well as the committees on Oversight and Reform and Budget. 

Cooper represents the state's Fifth Congressional District, which covers the city of Nashville as well as other counties and outlying areas. 

CNN reported in July that Republicans were considering breaking up Cooper's district, which could help them gain another crucial seat in the House. 

In an interview at the time, Cooper acknowledged that Republicans could effectively decide his political fate and warned that they may weaken Nashville's influence in Washington. 

"They couldn't beat me fairly," Cooper told CNN. "So, now they're trying to beat me by gerrymandering." 

In a longer statement released on Tuesday, Cooper said, "Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville." 

But, he continued on to say, "there's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."

 

Cooper is just the latest career Democratic elected to be driven out by gerrymandering, and while Democrats are actually coming out slightly ahead in 2020 overall, a lot of long-time Dems like Cooper, especially in Southern urban districts, are being eliminated. 

We'll see who wins those seats.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

A panel of three federal judges has tossed Alabama's GOP congressional map for eliminating one of the state's two majority Black congressional districts in favor of creating another Republican district, declaring it a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act.

A three-judge federal panel late Monday blocked Alabama's new congressional district map from going into effect, ruling that challengers were "substantially likely" to prevail in their arguments that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In a 225-page decision, the judges found that Black Alabamians had "less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect the candidates of their choice to Congress." The congressional map as approved preserves a nearly 30-year plan of having a single majority-minority congressional district, the 7th in west Alabama.

"Both sets of plaintiffs ... suggest, and we agree, that as a practical reality, the evidence of racially polarized voting adduced during the preliminary injunction proceedings suggests that any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it," the three-judge panel wrote in its opinion.

In a statement Monday evening, the Alabama Attorney General's Office said it "strongly disagreed" with the court's decision and would file an appeal in the coming days.

Evan Milligan, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement Monday that the map approved by the Legislature "fails Alabama's voters of color."

"We deserve to be heard in our electoral process, rather than have our votes diluted using a map that purposefully cracks and packs Black communities," the statement said. "Today, the court recognized this harm and has ordered our elected officials to do better."

The case consolidated three separate lawsuits. All three argued that the single district constituted a racial gerrymander that prevented Black voters living outside the 7th congressional district from forming alliances with like-minded white voters and electing candidates of their choice.

"Alabama’s steadfast refusal to provide Black voters with adequate representation in Congress is a product of intentional discrimination and directly linked to the state’s history and present conditions of discrimination against Black people," said the brief in Milligan v. Merrill, one of the three cases. "The state’s intentional policy of disempowerment and discrimination has resulted in the denial of equal opportunity for Black people to participate in the political process in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the VRA."

 

So the state GOP will go back to the drawing board in order to create a new map with a second Black majority district, which will almost certainly elect a Democratic candidate and a Black one at that. Even as broken and as gutted as the VRA is in the Roberts Court era, even it was enough to convince three judges to say that Alabama Republicans were harming Black voters and diluting Black voting power in the state, which tells you just how blatantly racist the map is.

 

Democrats are starting to win the overall 2022 redistricting battle, and it's a good thing. They are playing enough hardball in states like Ohio, NC, and California that Republicans aren't actually going to come out ahead as a lot of us feared they would in the House.

That's a good thing.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Pentagon is putting as many as 8,500 troops on alert for possibly deployment to Europe as Russia-Ukraine border tensions are growing more dangerous by the day.

As many as 8,500 US troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment to Eastern Europe as Russian troops mass on Ukraine's border, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday. 

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued the prepare to deploy orders at the direction of President Joe Biden, the latest step the US has taken to prepare for a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine that officials have warned could be imminent. 

Kirby said that the "bulk of" US troops placed on heightened alert were intended to bolster NATO's quick response force, but added they would be "postured to be ready for any other contingencies as well." 

As of Monday afternoon, no final decision to deploy the troops had been made, Kirby emphasized. 

"The United States has taken steps to heighten the readiness of its forces at home and abroad, so they are prepared to respond to a range of contingencies, including support to the NATO response force if it is activated," Kirby said. He noted the NATO Response Force "comprises around 40,000 multinational troops." 

Earlier on Monday CNN reported the Biden administration was in in the final stages of identifying specific military units it wants to send to Eastern Europe, according to multiple US and defense officials. 

Biden discussed options for bolstering US troop levels in the Baltics and Eastern Europe with his top military officials during a briefing at Camp David on Saturday, according to a senior official. 

The goal of sending military reinforcements to Eastern Europe would be to provide deterrence and to reassure allies, and there's been no suggestion US combat troops would deploy to Ukraine or take part in any combat roles. Kirby noted the US does have military advisers in Ukraine. 

Kirby would not say where the US troops might deploy, but said the US has "made it clear to the Eastern flank allies that we're prepared to bolster their capabilities if they need it." 

"In the event of NATO's activation of the NRF or a deteriorating security environment, the United States would be in a position to rapidly deploy additional brigade combat teams, logistics, medical, aviation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, transportation and additional capabilities into Europe," Kirby said.

 

"We're bolstering NATO rapid reaction forces" is a polite way of saying that "We're not sending troops to Ukraine, but..." 

 

Putin surely will see this as a direct provocation, or will pretend it is one, and act accordingly I suspect. Still, for all the drumbeats of war definitely echoing across Europe right now, Putin still hasn't actually invaded Ukraine yet.

 

He would have by now if that was the sole point, so as I've said earlier this week, he wants something, and Biden needs to figure out what it is. 

Former US intelligence officer and Russia expert Fiona Hill has a pretty good idea of what Putin actually does want, and it's "the whole bowl of borscht".

As I have seen over two decades of observing Mr. Putin, and analyzing his moves, his actions are purposeful and his choice of this moment to throw down the gauntlet in Ukraine and Europe is very intentional. He has a personal obsession with history and anniversaries. December 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia lost its dominant position in Europe. Mr. Putin wants to give the United States a taste of the same bitter medicine Russia had to swallow in the 1990s. He believes that the United States is currently in the same predicament as Russia was after the Soviet collapse: grievously weakened at home and in retreat abroad. He also thinks NATO is nothing more than an extension of the United States. Russian officials and commentators routinely deny any agency or independent strategic thought to other NATO members. So, when it comes to the alliance, all of Moscow’s moves are directed against Washington.

In the 1990s, the United States and NATO forced Russia to withdraw the remnants of the Soviet military from their bases in Eastern Europe, Germany and the Baltic States. Mr. Putin wants the United States to suffer in a similar way. From Russia’s perspective, America’s domestic travails after four years of Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency, as well as the rifts he created with U.S. allies and then America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, signal weakness. If Russia presses hard enough, Mr. Putin hopes he can strike a new security deal with NATO and Europe to avoid an open-ended conflict, and then it will be America’s turn to leave, taking its troops and missiles with it.

Ukraine is both Russia’s target and a source of leverage against the United States. Over the last several months Mr. Putin has bogged the Biden administration down in endless tactical games that put the United States on the defensive. Russia moves forces to Ukraine’s borders, launches war games and ramps up the visceral commentary. In recent official documents, it demanded ironclad guarantees that Ukraine (and other former republics of the U.S.S.R.) will never become a member of NATO, that NATO pull back from positions taken after 1997, and also that America withdraw its own forces and weapons, including its nuclear missiles. Russian representatives assert that Moscow doesn’t “need peace at any cost” in Europe. Some Russian politicians even suggest the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against NATO targets to make sure that we know they are serious, and that we should meet Moscow’s demands.

For weeks, American officials have huddled to make sense of the official documents with Russia’s demands and the contradictory commentary, pondered how to deter Mr. Putin in Ukraine and scrambled to talk on his timeline.

All the while, Mr. Putin and his proxies have ratcheted up their statements. Kremlin officials have not just challenged the legitimacy of America’s position in Europe, they have raised questions about America’s bases in Japan and its role in the Asia-Pacific region. They have also intimated that they may ship hypersonic missiles to America’s back door in Cuba and Venezuela to revive what the Russians call the Caribbean Crisis of the 1960s.

Mr. Putin is a master of coercive inducement. He manufactures a crisis in such a way that he can win no matter what anyone else does. Threats and promises are essentially one and the same. Mr. Putin can invade Ukraine yet again, or he can leave things where they are and just consolidate the territory Russia effectively controls in Crimea and Donbas. He can stir up trouble in Japan and send hypersonic missiles to Cuba and Venezuela, or not, if things go his way in Europe.

Mr. Putin plays a longer, strategic game and knows how to prevail in the tactical scrum. He has the United States right where he wants it. His posturing and threats have set the agenda in European security debates, and have drawn our full attention. Unlike President Biden, Mr. Putin doesn’t have to worry about midterm elections or pushback from his own party or the opposition. Mr. Putin has no concerns about bad press or poor poll ratings. He isn’t part of a political party and he has crushed the Russian opposition. The Kremlin has largely silenced the local, independent press. Mr. Putin is up for re-election in 2024, but his only viable opponent, Aleksei Navalny, is locked in a penal colony outside of Moscow.

So Mr. Putin can act as he chooses, when he chooses. Barring ill health, the United States will have to contend with him for years to come. Right now, all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union. Getting out of the current crisis requires acting, not reacting. The United States needs to shape the diplomatic response and engage Russia on the West’s terms, not just Moscow’s.

 

Putin wants the old Soviet Empire back.  He just needs NATO neutralized. He figures he can outlast Biden and whomever comes after.

I sure hope he's wrong.

It's Still About Suppression, Con't

Arizona Republicans found no election fraud whatsoever, but that won't stop them from passing some of the toughest new voting restrictions in the country anyway.

Arizona Republicans have put forth two dozen bills this month that would significantly change the state's electoral processes after the GOP's unorthodox review of millions of ballots affirmed President Joe Biden's victory and turned up no proof of fraud.

Proposals introduced in the state House or the Senate would add an additional layer to the state's voter ID requirement, such as fingerprints, and stipulate the hand counting of all ballots by default. Other legislation would require that paper ballots be printed with holograms and watermarks.

Republican legislators argue that the proposals, part an ongoing surge of GOP-led election changes enacted or under consideration across the country, are necessary to enhance election security and prevent fraud.

Official counts, audits and accuracy tests have confirmed the election results in Arizona and elsewhere without finding evidence of widespread fraud, and states with Republican and Democratic leaders have certified the results as accurate. Former President Donald Trump, who continues to promote the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, was unable to prove any of the claims in court. A coalition of federal agencies involved in election security, alongside representatives of election officials from each state, said the election was "the most secure in American history."

The Legislature began its 2022 session on Jan. 12, and many of the bills have already been referred to committees for consideration. They face uncertain fates, as Republicans hold narrow majorities in the Senate, and a Republican, state Sen. Paul Boyer, said he would block bills he saw as unnecessary or problematic.

Some of the bills appear to be tied to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that were elevated in the widely criticized ballot review state Senate Republicans orchestrated last year. Election experts said Cyber Ninjas, the company the legislators hired to examine millions of ballots in Maricopa County, had little to no experience with handling ballots, appeared to be looking for proof of conspiracy theories and misrepresented normal election processes in its final report as suggestive of fraud. Cyber Ninjas is accruing $50,000 a day in fines for refusing to respond to a court order requiring it to turn over documents related to its work.

Other bills, like one that would ban automatic voter registration from being implemented, appear to be designed to pre-empt provisions in national Democrats' election overhaul legislation, which has stalled in the Senate.

A Republican who has advanced false claims about the election, state Rep. Mark Finchem, who was outside the U.S. Capitol when rioters stormed it on Jan. 6, 2021, introduced and co-sponsored several bills, one of which would require that all ballots cast for primary and general elections be hand counted by default — a method that election experts say is unreliable and time-consuming. The state's millions of dollars' worth of ballot tabulation machines would be used only to verify hand counts.Finchem is running for state secretary of state, the office that oversees elections.

Another bill would spend $5 million create a special bureau to investigate voter fraud; still another would require voters to show voter ID cards and verify the cards with two of three methods — signatures, security codes or fingerprints.

 

So now Republicans want to make sure you need fingerprints to vote, which will of course create a public database of voters with biometric information that certainly would never be abused, hacked, or would never be prone to human error of course, and then require default hand-ballot counting, which would mean election results would take weeks to tabulate.

It gets worse, some of the requirements for paper ballot security technology simply doesn't exist.

 

Jeff Ellington, the CEO of the ballot vendor Runbeck Election Services, said he was also having trouble pricing out the proposed changes, although it was clear it would be expensive.

Runbeck supplied about 20 percent of U.S. mail ballots in 2020, Ellington said, printing 35 million ballots for jurisdictions in 22 states, including Arizona's largest county, Maricopa.

Ellington said that he had to Google some of the bill's requirements and that even some of his suppliers were befuddled by some of its requirements; he said it wasn't yet clear whether the proposed ballot design was even possible.

"Nobody's got that technology," he said of election vendors. "It's not readily available technology, because it's bank-level, Treasury-level stuff."

 

And all of this will end up costing Arizona taxpayers millions of dollars to prevent fraud that doesn't actually happen and could be caught by existing security measures.

 

The whole point of course is to make conducting elections as difficult as possible. Imagine if you had to give a retina scan at an ATM every time you made a withdrawal. Sure, it will protect your account from fraud if someone stole your card and they knew your PIN, but it would get obnoxious and burdensome quickly.

 

Now imagine having to get fingerprinted to vote.  The only thing they are doing is scaring off voters, which is the point. It's still about suppression.

Retribution Execution, Con't

 Remeber that the entire GOP is now dedicated to furthering Donald Trump's petty vengeance, and the incoming Republican administration of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia is no exception.

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry.

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

“This is purely payback for Jan. 6 — there is no other reason that makes any sense,” said Scott Surovell, a top Democrat in the Virginia State Senate, who said that he knew of no other similar example in recent history where a new attorney general had immediately removed a school’s top lawyer. “In our state, we normally leave those decisions to the school’s board of visitors and president.”

Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for Mr. Miyares, said: “The decision had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 committee or their investigations.”

In Virginia, the attorney general oversees a range of lawyers across the state, including the top lawyers at the colleges and universities that make up the vast public higher education system. The posts are typically held by career lawyers who are rarely replaced when new attorneys general take over.

In addition to dismissing Mr. Heaphy, Mr. Miyares also had the top lawyer at George Mason University removed.

Mr. Heaphy, a Democrat who has made political donations to Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr., had been the top lawyer at the University of Virginia since 2018. He served as a United States attorney in Virginia during the Obama administration and is married to the daughter of Eric K. Shinseki, the retired chief of staff of the Army who served as President Barack Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs. In 2017, on behalf of the City of Charlottesville, he completed a highly critical report of how the police handled the white nationalist rally that turned violent and led to the death of one woman and injured dozens.

In a written statement, the University of Virginia sidestepped the issue of whether his dismissal had been motivated by politics, but made clear that it had no role in it.

“University leaders are grateful to Tim for his outstanding service to our community and disappointed to see it come to an end,” said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the university. “If you have further questions about this matter, I would check with the attorney general’s office, as this was their decision to make.”

Mr. Heaphy — who attended undergraduate and law school at the University of Virginia, who has long lived in Charlottesville and whose son attends the school — declined to address why he was dismissed, saying that he was “disappointed” that his time at the university had come to an end and that he was confident that the school would continue “to thrive in the days to come.”

In two statements released on Sunday, the attorney general’s office said the firing was unrelated to the Jan. 6 inquiry. In the first, to The Associated Press, Ms. LaCivita said that Mr. Heaphy had been a “controversial” hire and that the “decision was made after reviewing the legal decisions made over the last couple of years.”

“The attorney general wants the university counsel to return to giving legal advice based on law, and not the philosophy of a university,” she added.

In a subsequent statement, Ms. LaCivita said: “It is common practice for an incoming administration to appoint new staff that share the philosophical and legal approach of the attorney general. Every counsel serves at the pleasure of the attorney general.”

Of course it was retribution. Let's also remember that Miyares fired nearly the state's entire Civil Rights division when he took office this month too, all over the Charlottesville white supremacist riots and Trump's "very fine" people.

They're not pretending anymore. When Newt Gingrich says things like the January 6th Committee is "risking jail" once Republicans get back into power, he's not joking.

Retribution in the name of Dear Leader Trump is all that matters to them now.

Daughter Of Darkness, Done

It's looking more and more like GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's political career in Wyoming is in dire straits, as her Trump-backed primary challenger, Harriet Hageman, is gaining momentum heading into this spring's primary.

Harriet Hageman, the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate seeking to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney, won big Saturday in a straw poll of House candidates held by the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee.

The secret ballot of party activists awarded Hageman 59 votes, Cheney six, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, two and Denton Knapp one. The vote comes eight months before the GOP primary.

“I think it’s a good sign. It’s not an endorsement, but these are the county activists” Hageman told the Star-Tribune after the vote.

The state party itself is not statutorily allowed to endorse a candidate in the primary.

The state central committee consists of three representatives from each county and members of the state party, for a total of 74 votes. Only 71, including three of Hageman’s family members, voted Saturday. The bearing of the vote on the outcome of the August primary is uncertain: There are 196,179 registered Republican voters in Wyoming as of January.

The straw poll is a indication of current party leadership’s views, not the state as a whole. Straw polls, even with a far higher number of voters, do not have an accurate track record in Wyoming in recent years.

Then candidate Cynthia Lummis lost to Sheridan County GOP Chairman Bryan Miller by a double-digit margin in a straw poll of Senate candidates held at the Wyoming Republican Party’s 2020 convention. Between 300 and 400 people voted in that poll.

Lummis went on to beat Miller in the primary by almost 50 points in the primary less than two months later.

Still, the vote highlights the hostility that many in the Wyoming Republican Party’s leadership feel toward Cheney since her much publicized break with Trump. Cheney, for her part, has called party leaders radical.

At Saturday’s meeting, Hageman’s high vote count was announced first and met with a round of applause. When Cheney’s tally was announced, a couple members in the room audibly scoffed.

“The only elections that matter are in August and November,” Jeremy Adler, a spokesperson for the Cheney campaign, said in response to the vote.

There was division in the room over the intention of the straw poll.

“This smells like an endorsement to me, said Natrona County Committeeman Joe Mcginley, who had publicly disagreed with party leaders before. “Whether that is the true intention of the state ... or not, that’s what it appears to be.”

Karl Allred, the Uinta County GOP chairman, saw it differently.

“This is not an endorsement,” he said. “This is merely asking for the opinion of the body at this time.”

 

It's certainly possible that  Cheney could survive the primary challenge and be reelected, but a December poll found Hageman ahead of Cheney 38-18% with more than a quarter of GOP primary voters undecided.  Anything's possible.

Me, I'm rooting for the Democrat if they can, you know, find one.

Sunday Long Read: Going Off The Sauce

Author Danielle Tcholakian sobered up in 2021, facing the pandemic and her own mortality, and the choice to seek help and stop drinking saved her life as she recounts in this weeks Sunday Long Read.

2021 was, objectively, not a great year for most people living on this planet. It also happened to be the first full calendar year of my life that I spent sober, having realized in 2020 that I had a problem. It was not a year I would’ve expected to get through rawdogging reality, as it were, or even really to get through at all.

The truth is that most of my drinking and using had one primary purpose: to allow me to feel less. To be less aware. To not have to live in my own brain or settle for the reality of living in the world as myself. To hide from how overwhelmed I was by seemingly everything.

So it’s a little unbelievable that a year in which I was forced to feel things all the time, to be aware of all of it, and to, the whole time, be stuck being me—what seemed like a truly disgusting option—was, in the rearview, better than any of the years in which I’d been able to hide.

It pains me even to write or talk like this now, and that’s a huge part of it. I hated myself—really despised this bitch—for so much of my life, and I don’t anymore. This isn’t a bad brain! It’s a goofy, loving, often uncooperative, mess of a brain in a goofy, loving, messy, still-figuring-a-lot-of-really-elementary-stuff-out person that I mostly don’t mind being anymore. That I often actually enjoy being.

My life before sobriety wasn’t all bad. But most days, for at least five years, I fought with a panicked, angry voice in my head that said I needed to die. The end of 2019 saw me in a Medicaid clinic with a medical resident younger than me patiently going over a list of questions he was required to ask of depressed patients. I explained that yes, I wanted to kill myself, but it was just logical. I was a burden—on people, on systems. I had drained my own resources attempting to resolve a depression that had ultimately been deemed “treatment resistant,” and now here I was, on Medicaid and unable to work. I can’t work so I should die was a deeply American logic I had internalized, and in my frustration at his obtuse refusal to agree that I was simply being practical, I began to cry.

At first, the resident said, “But you know that’s just your depression, right? That’s the only reason you think that.” And I snapped, no—the depression was the physical heaviness, the brain fog, the constant hunger for sleep, the excruciating fucking unending psychological pain. I believed the knowledge that I was better off dead was just that: knowledge; reason.

He looked at me differently, then paused and said something like, “I’m sorry you’re feeling that. I hope you can believe me when I say that it isn’t true. And you shouldn’t feel this way. We will find you resources.” I sobbed then, cracked open by the discovery that the only thing that hurt worse than the pain I’d been in was getting precisely what I didn’t realize I’d been craving: human kindness, and hope. I stopped drinking and using soon after.

 

The times I've been this low, I was lucky and got help that to this day I still don't think I was worthy of, but it saved me nonetheless. I can relate to feeling like a burden and black hole to toss resources down with no hope of escape or redemption.

 

Luckily I know what that voice sounds like now, and not to listen to it.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

 The big US bugout from Ukraine is getting underway.

The US Embassy in Kyiv has requested that the State Department authorize the departure of all nonessential staff and their families, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. 

A State Department spokesperson said they have "nothing to announce at this time," adding, "We conduct rigorous contingency planning, as we always do, in the event the security situation deteriorates." A spokesperson for the embassy declined to confirm and referred CNN to the State Department in Washington. 

A source close to the Ukrainian government told CNN that the US has informed Ukraine that it is "likely to start evacuations as early as next week" of the families of diplomats from the embassy in Kyiv. The source said President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the matter and told him that if the United States took such a dramatic step, it would be an "overreaction." CNN has asked the Ukrainian government for comment. 

A State Department official said the department would not comment on private discussions, adding that decisions about overseas staff are based on a single criterion: the safety and security of Americans. 

The embassy's request marks an escalation from CNN's report last month that the US was working on contingency planning to evacuate Americans from Ukraine, as Russia has continued to mass troops near the border and spark fears of a renewed invasion. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry's latest intelligence assessment, shared with CNN this week, assessed that Russia has now deployed more than 127,000 troops in the region. 

The State Department has already issued the highest-level travel advisory for Ukraine, telling Americans not to travel to the country and to be aware of reports that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine. 

 

Yes, the Biden administration is definitely going to take the side of caution after Afghanistan, and I don't blame them at all. Things could be extremely bad in Ukraine by the end of the month, if not sooner. 

The Ukrainians themselves are taking it all in stride.

With 100,000 Russian guns pointed at their heads, Ukrainians seem to take a stoical pride in not seeming rattled. They appear ready for what could be a savage war. Their main worry is that the United States and its allies will get so nervous they will yield to Russian pressure.

Driving through Maidan Square in a light snow on Friday afternoon, with traffic snarled and the lights of the city blazing, you could almost think this was normal life, on the eve of what could be a Russian invasion. Some people with money are buying dollars and property abroad. But the restaurants are full, and Ukrainians appeared to get the jitters only when President Volodymyr Zelensky told them this past week not to panic.

Over several days of intense conversation here, I heard the same message of resistance. Russian President Vladimir Putin might imagine that Ukrainians share his almost mystical conviction that Russia and Ukraine are the same country, but if so, he’s wildly mistaken. Putin’s eight years of war against Ukraine, beginning with his seizure of Crimea in 2014, have made him nothing but enemies here. Polls say that even a large majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians oppose him.

“Don’t trust Putin. Don’t fear Putin,” said former president Petro Poroshenko on Friday during a conversation with a group organized by the German Marshall Fund. (I’m a trustee of GMF but came here as a journalist, along with Sylvie Kauffmann of the French newspaper Le Monde and a half-dozen others, including two German parliamentarians and analysts from NATO and the European Union.)

It was partly bravado, but a defiant Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the national security and defense council, told our group: “Since 2014, we have been in a state of war with Russia. There are no people other than us who will defend us. Even if we don’t receive weapons [from the West], we will strangle them with our bare hands.”

 

We'll see where all this going, but my guess is that Putin might not yet invade. It depends on what he really wants and what Biden is willing to do.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

CNN's Kirsten Powers argues that Biden is doing pretty well given the fact we're in some of the worst multiple messes in history right now.

Here's an apparently unpopular opinion: Joe Biden is not failing or flailing. His presidency is not in peril.

It's hard to see this through the blizzard of over-the-top headlines such as, "Biden Can Still Rescue His Presidency," "How the Biden Administration Lost Its Way" and "Biden's Epic Failures."

Everyone needs to take a breath: It's been one year. These headlines could just as easily read, "Joe Biden Fails to Fix Every Problem in the World in 365 days."

What drives much of the "presidency in peril" coverage is Biden's approval ratings. CNN's poll of polls, released Thursday, found that 41% of Americans approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job while 54% disapprove.

Low approval ratings are used as a proxy by various political and ideological factions to argue that the president needs to do more of what they want and if he doesn't, he won't get reelected. (Spoiler alert: nobody will cast their vote in three years based on how they feel today about Biden). Progressives argue ratings are low because Biden is not progressive enough and moderates and "Never Trump" Republicans argue it's because Biden is too liberal. It's become conventional wisdom in the media that Biden's approval ratings started dropping because of how he handled the Afghanistan withdrawal. But Gallup's senior editor Jeff Jones told Politico in November that his declining poll numbers began before that, during the Delta Covid-19 variant surge.

The fact is, approval ratings are most closely tied to how people feel about their day-to-day lives. Americans are understandably fatigued as we enter the third year of the pandemic and, until the US gets back to some semblance of normal, we should expect Biden's approval ratings to reflect that frustration. Moreover, gas prices are high and research has shown that presidential approval ratings often track with gas prices, even though the president's power over these prices is limited. The economic news is mostly good for Biden -- unemployment is down and wages are up -- but inflation is high and rising. Taken together, this means the day-to-day life of many Americans feels really hard.
It doesn't help that the media reinforce the idea that Biden is somehow failing because he hasn't solved issues that have bedeviled his predecessors over longer periods of time. The New York Times dinged Biden this week, noting that, "The president has not yet succeeded in meeting his own goals for combating climate change,...[hasn't] delivered on his broader promise for a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans" and has failed "on the central promise he made during the 2020 campaign -- to 'shut down' the pandemic..."

This is bananas, but it's a fairly typical roundup of the disconnected-from-reality analysis of Biden's first year.

No president has been able to achieve a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, including presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who were not able to accomplish immigration reform over an eight-year period each. Biden should not be expected to do what they couldn't, in a single year, in the middle of a global pandemic.

She's right. Biden is doing pretty well given the circumstances, with an entire political party and six Supreme Court justices determined to sabotage his every move. 

 

Give him a break, folks.

The Big Lie, Con't

The Trump regime was deeply involved in the plot to send false slates of electors from seven states that he lost in order to justify stealing the 2020 presidential election, and the orders to create those fraudulent slates came from the very top.

Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme. 

The sources said members of former President Donald Trump's campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden's victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6. 

Giuliani and his allies coordinated the nuts-and-bolts of the process on a state-by-state level, the sources told CNN. One source said there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and that Giuliani participated in at least one call. 

The source also said the Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that were ultimately sent to the National Archives. 

Trump and some of his top advisers publicly encouraged the "alternate electors" scheme in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico. But behind the scenes, Giuliani and Trump campaign officials actively choreographed the process, the sources said.

One fake elector from Michigan boasted at a recent event hosted by a local Republican organization that the Trump campaign directed the entire operation. 

"We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that," Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said at a public event last week that was organized by the conservative group Stand Up Michigan, according to a recording obtained by CNN. 

Maddock was also one of the 16 Trump supporters from Michigan who served as fake electors and signed the illegitimate certificate that was sent to the National Archives. 

"It was Rudy and these misfit characters who started calling the shots," a former Trump campaign staffer said. "The campaign was throwing enough sh*t at the wall to see what would stick."

Hey look at that, a big ol' conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States, with Rudy and Trump at the helm. These guys have to go to jail just because it's so ridiculously obvious they tried to steal the election.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Fulton County Georgia investigation into Donald Trump's phone conversation with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the 2020 elections in that state has now hit the Special Grand Jury phase.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

In a Thursday letter to Christopher S. Brasher, chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court, Willis said the move was needed because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”

She cited comments Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made during an October 2021 interview with NBC News, in which he said “if (Willis) wants to interview me, there’s a process for that.”

So-called special purpose grand juries are rarely used in Georgia. But they could be a valuable tool for Willis as she takes the extraordinary step of investigating the conduct of a president while he was in office, legal experts say.

“I think it makes sense,” said Melissa Redmon, a former Fulton County deputy DA who’s now an assistant clinical professor at the University of Georgia’s law school. “Having a jury that’s already familiar with the investigation just saves everyone a lot of time.”

Willis’ probe, launched in February, is centered on the Jan. 2 phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger, in which he urged the Republican to “find” the 11,780 votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in November 2020. But it could also include other actions from Trump’s allies who sowed doubts about the election results, including testimony his attorney Rudy Giuliani gave at a state legislative hearing.

In her letter to Brasher, Willis said the DA’s office “has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”

Special grand juries, which typically have 16 to 23 members, can’t issue indictments. But they can subpoena witnesses, compel the production of documents and information, and enter into certain offices for the purposes of an investigation.

They were previously used to investigate several metro Atlanta politicians for public corruption, including former Gwinnett County Commissioner Kevin Kenerly, ex-Clayton Sheriff Victor Hill and ex-DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis.

Willis said a special grand jury would be beneficial for the Trump probe because jurors can be impaneled for as long as prosecutors need, would be focused on the one investigation and have “an investigatory focus appropriate to the complexity of the facts and circumstances involved.”

A regular Fulton County grand jury is seated for two months. Jurors typically hear hundreds of felony cases before their service ends.

So on top of Trump's legal troubles this week in New York and on the Supreme Court, now things get worse for him in Georgia, too.

That hard rain is falling, folks, and it doesn't appear that it's going to be letting up anytime soon, 

The Vax Of Life, Con't

While most Fortune 500 companies are keeping vaccine mandates despite last week's SCOTUS ruling scrapping the Biden Administration's OSHA mandate requirements, some very big American corporations are now dropping COVID vaccine mandates altogether, starting with one of America's biggest employers: Starbucks.

In a memo to employees first reported by the Associated Press, Starbucks said it is no longer requiring employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 after the Supreme Court’s rejection of Biden’s plan to require vaccines or weekly testing at companies with more than 100 workers.

Starbucks Chief Operating Officer John Culver wrote in the memo “we respect the court’s ruling and will comply,” but added the company continues to “believe strongly in the spirit and intent of the mandate,” and encouraged employees to get the vaccine.

Some companies across various industries are holding firm to their plans to require vaccines: Carhartt faced calls for both support and boycotts after a leaked letter surfaced detailing the workwear brand’s plans to keep its vaccine policy in effect.

Major banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup told Forbes they will continue their vaccine mandates in light of the decision, and Wells Fargo said it will continue its testing program as part of its vaccine-or-test policy.

United Airlines and Tyson Foods have also adopted vaccine mandates for their workers while a number of companies require vaccines to work from the office, including American Express, Deloitte, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Salesforce and Uber.

General Electric announced last week it would be rolling back its vaccine and testing plans, and additional companies could follow, as a Willis Towers poll conducted in November found 32% of companies planned to require vaccinations only if Biden’s mandate took effect.

The Big Number: 200,000. That’s how many employees Starbucks has in the U.S., the New York Times reports.

Like many companies, Starbucks had announced it would require all employees to be vaccinated by February 9, or they would be required to complete a weekly Covid test. Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers faced a lengthy legal battle after he signed the executive order in November. A federal appeals court blocked the mandate later in November, which led to arguments at the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 decision last week, the court ruled to temporarily halt the vaccine-or-test mandate, writing the mandate is a “significant encroachment” into employees’ lives and health, and the decision should have been left to Congress. The case has been handed down to lower courts to decide if it will be permanently upheld or struck down.

A majority of Americans still want employer vaccine mandates, even after the Supreme Court ruling, according to a Morning Consult poll: 56% of respondents said they believe employers should require Covid-19 vaccinations, while 33% said they were opposed.

So expect about a third of big corporations to drop vaccine mandates in the days ahead, or to cancel plans to have mandates go into effect on February 9th. It'll mean tens of millions of unvaccinated workers will stay unvaccinated, and thousands will die as a direct result.

Last Call For A Supreme Orange Meltdown

Amazingly enough, the Supreme Court ruled today against Donald Trump and refused to block Trump's National Archive WH documents from being subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee.

The Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for the release of presidential records from the Trump White House to a congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

The court's order means that more than 700 documents will be transferred to Congress that could shed light on the events leading up to the insurrection when hundreds of rioters converged on the Capitol attempting to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election results. 

Only Justice Clarence Thomas said publicly that he would have granted former President Donald Trump's request to block the document handover from the National Archives to the House select committee. No other justices made an objection public. 

The Biden White House supports releasing the records to the committee, after determining the disclosure is in the nation's best interest and declining to assert executive privilege.

The select committee is seeking more than 700 pages of disputed documents as it explores Trump's role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That includes his appearance at a January 6 rally in which he directed followers to go to the US Capitol where lawmakers were set to certify the election results and "fight" for their county. 

The documents include activity logs, schedules, speech notes and three pages of handwritten notes from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows -- paperwork that could reveal goings-on inside the West Wing as Trump supporters gathered in Washington and then overran the Capitol, disrupting the certification of the 2020 vote. 

Trump is also seeking to keep secret a draft proclamation honoring two police officers who died in the siege and memos and other documents about supposed election fraud and efforts to overturn Trump's loss of the presidency, the National Archives has said in court documents. 

The House committee, the White House, the National Archives and lawyers for Trump have not responded to CNN inquiries about the Supreme Court's order. 

The move effectively moots former Trump's pending appeal in the case that centered on keeping the documents secret. Lawyers for Trump say the documents are sensitive and privileged records.

 

Trump has effectively lost this battle and the January 6th Committee will have the documents.  What those documents will mean, I can't ultimately tell you, but the investigation will continue.

Trump's Taxing Explanation, Con't

A new court filing from NY Attorney General Tish James makes it abundantly clear that Donald Trump's adult children are targets in the ongoing state fraud investigation into the Trump Organization, and that the cooperation James is trying to compel from the Trumps is nothing even close to a "request" at this point.

New York Attorney General Letitia James disclosed new details Tuesday night about her civil investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business, saying the probe has uncovered evidence suggesting the company put a fraudulent value on multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit.

James, who launched her probe in 2019, also said in the court filing that the former president “had ultimate authority over a wide swath of conduct by the Trump Organization" that involved fraudulent misstatements to financial institutions, the Internal Revenue Service, and other parties.

She specifically mentioned the responsibility of two of the former president’s adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.

“Since 2017, Donald Trump, Jr. has had authority over numerous financial statements containing misleading asset valuations,” James wrote in the court filing.

Ivanka Trump, a former White House adviser, “was a primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank. In connection with this work, Ms. Trump caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government,” James wrote.

“Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit,” James said in a statement Tuesday. “The Trumps must comply with our lawful subpoenas for documents and testimony because no one in this country can pick and choose if and how the law applies to them.”

Her office added that it "has not yet reached a final decision regarding whether this evidence merits legal action."

James is conducting a civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization committed fraud in reporting the value of certain properties to banks and tax authorities.

Banks and other lenders need to know the precise financial condition of loan applicants before they make loans. If a company overstates its financial condition in order to get a loan, making its finances seem rosier than they really are, that can be considered fraud. The filing says that Trump's financial statements "were generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump’s net worth was higher than it otherwise would have appeared."

Tuesday’s filing is in response to legal efforts by the former president to quash a series of subpoenas against him, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. James is seeking an order to compel all three to appear for sworn testimony.

The filing says there have been problems with valuations in statements that have not been explained by the Trump Organization.

In financial statements, the value of the former president’s New York City apartment in Trump Tower was based on an assertion that the space was 30,000 square feet, when documents show the apartment was 10,996 square feet, the attorney general’s office said.

Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg conceded in a deposition that that resulted in an overstatement of around $200 million, the filing stated.

James’ office also said evidence indicates the value of land donations in Los Angeles and Westchester County, New York, were overstated, resulting in several million dollars in deductions.

NBC News has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment on the allegations against the company, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. Attorneys for Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and the former president did not immediately respond to overnight requests for comment.

Not only does James have the goods, but if she doesn't get the Trump family's cooperation with these subpoenas, think are going to go very badly for not just Donald, but Junior and Ivanka as well.

This is James saying "play ball or else".

There's nothing Trump can do here, either.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

West Virginia Dem Sen. Joe Manchin is at this point openly daring Democrats to do anything about him blocking Biden's agenda, and that he firmly believes that he is in 100% control of the country.

Joe Manchin made clear that his party’s push to isolate him and fellow centrist Kyrsten Sinema won’t force his hand on rules changes, once again rejecting Democrats' proposed reforms to the Senate’s filibuster rules.

The West Virginia Democrat actually seems to welcome the isolation. He told reporters ahead of a Democratic Caucus meeting he would not go along with instituting a talking filibuster, which could be used to evade the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, nor would he entertain a rules change by a simple majority.

Asked about his party's priorities, Manchin said people are most worried about inflation and coronavirus right now. He added that he’d welcome a primary challenge over his filibuster position if he runs again for reelection: "I've been primaried my entire life. That would not be anything new for me.”

“The majority of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus have changed their minds. I respect that. They have a right to change their minds. I haven’t. I hope they respect that too. I’ve never changed my mind on the filibuster,” Manchin said.

Though all 50 Senate Democrats support the voting and elections bill before the Senate, the Democratic caucus is pressing forward with laying blame on Manchin and Sinema (D-Ariz.) for the party's failure to advance sweeping elections reform, thanks to their resistance to weakening the filibuster. The move carries considerable risk, given that Sinema and Manchin will be essential to any further success the party can muster this year — particularly on any resuscitation of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

Manchin said he doesn’t “take anything personally” as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer presses forward with a vote on weakening the filibuster. Schumer confirmed to reporters after the meeting that he would propose a talking filibuster only covering the package of bills currently in front of the Senate and dismissed Manchin and Sinema’s positions as out of step with the rest of the caucus.

“The vast majority of our caucus strongly disagree with Sens. Manchin and Sinema on rules changes. The overwhelming majority of our caucus knows that if you’re going to try to rely on Republican votes, you will get zero progress on voting rights,” Schumer said.

Schumer also would not say if he would support Manchin and Sinema in future Democratic primaries: “I'm not getting into the politics. This is a substantive, serious issue.” Sinema in particular could face a tough intra-party challenge in 2024.

The Senate Democratic caucus huddled on Tuesday evening to discuss the coming confrontation over changing chamber rules to help shore up the Voting Rights Act and enact federal election standards. During the meeting, Manchin “expressed disagreement” with the justification his party is using to change Senate rules, according to one attendee.


Under the talking filibuster proposed by Schumer, the voting and elections package would only require a simple majority to advance toward final passage, preceded by a lengthy debate. No further bills would get the same treatment; the Senate took up the election reform bill Tuesday and is expected to begin the rules debate on Wednesday.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has been speaking to Manchin on rules changes, said Democrats have tried to come up with a proposal that's consistent with his and Sinema's positions and that they aren't worried the vote will alienate the two centrists.

"I was not a negotiator of the infrastructure bill — I was so happy they were, and I praised them for it, and I voted for it, and it's going to be great," Kaine said. "This voting bill is as important or more to many of us than the infrastructure bill. The time is nigh for a decision."

 

Last year, Manchin said he was open to the talking filibuster. Now he is 100% against it. And he's going to get away with blocking it, because the alternative is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and everyone knows it. Both Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats continue to give him all of the power, and until that situation changes, nothing's going to pass.