Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 134
October 11, 2023
October 10, 2023
“[T]here are moments in this life…when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend.”
So began President Joe Biden’s speech today about the attacks in Israel at “[t]he bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas—a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews.”
“This was an act of sheer evil,” Biden said.
He described the slaughter in Israel in detail, noting that it looked much like “the worst rampages of ISIS,” as its fighters ravaged Iraq and Syria.
“But sadly, for the Jewish people, it’s not new,” he said. “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by…millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”
“So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear,” he said. “We stand with Israel…. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
Biden was careful to distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinians. “Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination,” Biden said. “Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people…. Hamas offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.”
Former ambassador of Israel to the United States Michael Oren wrote on social media: “President Biden’s speech was the most passionately pro-Israel in history. The president stood four square behind the Jewish state and the Jewish people and unequivocally against terror and anti-Semitism, and pledged the power of the US to our defense. Our people will always remember and cherish this speech and the man who delivered it.” Israeli president Isaac Herzog agreed: “On behalf of the entire people of Israel, thank you [President] Joe Biden.”
President of the Arab American Institute James Zogby told Barak Ravid of Axios that the speech "was expected, but it was disappointing…. What I would have hoped for today is a call for restraint and for ceasefire...and a U.S. effort to play a leadership role in bringing about an end to the violence and offering some hope—both to Palestinians and to Israelis—that their security mattered, that their futures mattered," he said.
But Biden’s speech did more than simply express moral support for Israel. It outlined increased U.S. military assistance to Israel, more U.S. intelligence, and more U.S. military force in the region “to strengthen our deterrence.”
That deterrence is undoubtedly a key part of the reason for this strong statement about the U.S. stance in the region, as leaders are eager to stop the crisis from expanding. “Let me say again—to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t,” Biden said. “Don’t. Our hearts may be broken, but our resolve is clear.”
That determination to limit the spread of the fighting by shoring up alliances and partnerships was behind the president’s working of the phones all weekend and was likely part of the more than three dozen meetings he and Vice President Kamala Harris have held with the national security team since the crisis began.
The effort to keep the violence from spreading will be at least part of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s role when he travels tomorrow to Israel and Jordan. The U.S. is talking to Israel and Egypt about establishing a humanitarian corridor between the Gaza Strip and Egypt that will enable Palestinians to evacuate.
The president’s speech was not without notice to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed fierce retribution against all the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the actions of Hamas. Biden said that in a recent phone call the two had discussed “how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law. Terrorists…purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war,” Biden said, laws that prohibit deliberate targeting of civilians and require proportionate responses. “It matters. There’s a difference.”
Monica Alba, Carol E. Lee, and Peter Nicholas of NBC News reported the conversation was stronger than Biden’s speech indicated, with Biden warning Netanyahu that the U.S. will be watching closely for blowback to excessive force, especially if such force kills civilians.
Biden also suggested that the forces at work in Israel today could threaten us here in the U.S. He noted that the police departments, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking steps to increase security around centers of Jewish life. “Let’s be real clear,” Biden said. “There is no place for hate in America—not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anybody…. [What] we reject is terrorism. We condemn the indiscriminate evil, just as we’ve always done.”
The speech undercut those Republicans who are threatening to withhold funds from Ukraine. The White House is also trying to get the Senate to confirm Jack Lew, Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel. This is a crucially important position in ordinary times, but even more so in such a crisis. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been holding up his nomination.
Meanwhile, Congress as a whole is in limbo as House Republicans appear to be no closer to uniting behind a speaker. Today, four of the former Ohio State University wrestlers who claim Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) covered for a sexual predator when he was an assistant coach there spoke up against his election as speaker. “Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” one said. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”
Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) entered the Republican candidate forum today wearing a white T-shirt with a red letter “A” on it, saying she was doing so because of the backlash she faced as “a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice.” Mace, one of the eight House Republicans who voted to get rid of former speaker Kevin McCarthy, said the A was her “scarlet letter,” an apparent reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel involving a woman forced to wear a scarlet A after giving birth to a child without identifying the father. MSNBC host Katie Phang called the stunt “performative nonsense,” and it does seem to indicate a preoccupation with media hits that appears to have taken over the party.
The Republicans had another setback today when a new indictment against New York Representative George Santos added 10 more charges against him, including lying about donations to jump-start his political career and then stealing money from donors to buy designer goods and pay his own debts.
The Democrats are united behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
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Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/biden-speech-condemn-hamas-palestine-war
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-top-diplomat-blinken-travel-israel-wednesday-2023-10-10/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/nancy-mace-wears-scarlet-letter-after-mccarthy-vote
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna119116
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/nyregion/george-santos-charges.html
Twitter (X):
sentdefender/status/1711948145737847227
DrMichaelOren/status/1711830229512049102?s=20
GaryGrumbach/status/1711850806503182435
October 10, 2023
October 9, 2023
The crisis in the Middle East has continued to escalate. Since I last wrote on Saturday, October 7, the contours of the attack on Israel by Hamas have become clearer. More than 900 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, and dozens more have been taken hostage and are now being held in Gaza, with Hamas threatening to execute them if Israelis target civilians without warning. At least 11 U.S. citizens were killed in the attack.
In retaliation, Israel has struck the Gaza Strip from the air and restricted food, electricity, and fuel. Around 680 people have been killed in Gaza, and more than 187,500 have been displaced. Thousands more have been wounded on both sides.
Rumors are flying about how deeply Iran backed the attack by Hamas, and whether Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew ahead of time about the attack, but there is little analysis yet that is verified. At the same time, the volume of disinformation spreading suggests that the crisis is being used to destabilize the U.S. by increasing the already strong feelings about the conflicts between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East.
And, over all, the conflict is deeply steeped in centuries of history both in the region and elsewhere as well as in longstanding cultural antisemitism, which had been on the rise and which is now, in some countries, at fever pitch.
For my part, while I am willing to try to keep people abreast of key players and events in the present crisis, I am trying to be cautious and not speculate in areas about which, as a scholar of the United States, I am not versed. The volume of hate mail about last Saturday’s letter, pretty evenly divided between those accusing me of backing one side and those accusing me of backing the other, is about the highest I’ve ever received, but I was trying simply to present the verified events of Saturday alone, with a focus on how they affected the United States.
While I can’t say much about the internal meaning of events in the Middle East, I can reflect on what is happening, on a day-to-day basis, in the U.S. in response to the crisis.
President Joe Biden has been in touch with Prime Minister Netanyahu throughout the last few days, and this morning met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall, and White House chief of staff Jeff Zientz about the situation, directing them to act with their Israeli counterparts on all parts of the crisis but focusing primarily on the missing hostages.
This afternoon, Biden called the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom to coordinate support for Israel. After the call, the leaders issued a rare joint statement, expressing “our steadfast and united support to the State of Israel, and our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.” They reiterated that “the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned. There is never any justification for terrorism. In recent days, the world has watched in horror as Hamas terrorists massacred families in their homes, slaughtered over 200 young people enjoying a music festival, and kidnapped elderly women, children, and entire families, who are now being held as hostages.”
They emphasized that their countries would support Israel against such atrocities, and again warned other countries against trying to exploit the chaos after the attack to gain an advantage.
At the same time, the statement continued, “All of us recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and support equal measures of justice and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike. But make no mistake: Hamas does not represent those aspirations, and it offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed.”
The U.S. is facing this crisis with a weakened diplomatic corps, a weakened military, and a weakened government.
Because of holds Republican senators have put on the nomination process, the U.S. does not have a Senate-confirmed ambassador to Israel or Egypt, the two countries that border the Gaza Strip. The nominees for U.S. ambassador to Oman and Kuwait are similarly waiting for confirmation, as is the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has held up several of the Middle East nominations, claiming that the “nominees keep lying to Congress and the American people, testifying publicly that they are committed to countering Iran and deepening the U.S.-Israel relationship then implementing the opposite policies in secret once confirmed.”
The military is also down critical leaders, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is refusing to lift his hold on more than 300 uncontroversial military promotions, a hold he says is to protest Pentagon policy of permitting military personnel time off to obtain abortion care.
And the House of Representatives is without a speaker, making it unclear what, if any, business other than electing a new speaker it can conduct. The two candidates in the race for speaker—Representatives Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH)—apparently hope to be elected from within the Republican conference, but neither has shown any sign of being able to find the necessary votes.
Scalise is saddled with his own declaration years ago that he was like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage,” and—in addition to old accusations of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of the Ohio State University wrestlers on the team of which he was the assistant coach between 1987 and 1995—Jordan is closely associated with the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Republicans from more moderate districts are likely to be reluctant to back either of them.
Today, former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested he would be willing to return to the speaker’s chair and noted that he had more votes than any other current Republican candidate when the extremists ousted him last week.
This evening, House Republicans met in private to discuss the speakership. They are expected to hold a candidate forum tomorrow and a private vote on a nominee Wednesday. They then hope to have a candidate to take forward for a floor vote.
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/08/europe/israel-hostages-hamas-what-we-know-intl/index.html
https://apnews.com/live/israel-hamas-war-live-updates
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/08/tuberville-blockade-israel-military-00120525
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1711528257017807294
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/09/joint-statement-on-israel/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/jordan-osu-wrestlers-strauss-invs/index.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4245857-mccarthy-speakership-israel-turmoil/
October 8, 2023
October 8, 2023
I took today off entirely to celebrate my sixty-first trip around the sun. Spent it with family and dear friends, and even snuck in some time on the water.
A really nice day.
Will be back at it tomorrow (although if the news would slow down just a tad, I wouldn’t be unhappy)....
October 7, 2023
October 7, 2023
Early this morning, Eastern Daylight Time, Hamas militants broke out of the Gaza Strip, where approximately 2 million Palestinians live, largely unable to leave because of the extensive restrictions Israel has imposed. They pushed as far as 15 miles (about 24 kilometers) into Israel, taking over at least 22 towns and firing at least 2,500 rockets. They have killed at least 250 Israelis, wounded more than 1,500 others, and taken hostages. The attack was a surprise, having an effect on Israelis that observers are comparing to the effect of 9-11 on people in the U.S.
Hamas is a group of Palestinian militants that make up one of the two major political parties in the Palestinian Territories, which consist of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas was established in 1987 and gained control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Since then, Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have periodically exchanged fire. In May 2021 that tension turned into an 11-day conflict that has simmered along the security fence between Israel and Gaza ever since.
In a video address to Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are at war and we will win it.” Israelis have killed at least 232 people and wounded more than 1,700 in retaliation for the attack. He promised the Israeli military will “take revenge for this black day” but that it “will take time.” He warned that Israel would turn “into ruins” the places where Hamas operates, and told residents of Gaza to “get out of there now,” although they have no way to leave.
There are serious questions about how the Netanyahu government did not see this attack coming. It was either a spectacular intelligence failure or a security failure or both, and it strikes at the heart of the Netanyahu government’s promise to keep the country safe. At the same time, the attack is making Israelis rally together. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been protesting Netanyahu’s strengthening hold on the government have said they would come together in this dangerous moment.
A number of countries, including the U.S., have designated Hamas a terrorist organization. It is backed by Iran, which provides money and weapons, and last month high-level Iranian officials apparently met with Hamas leaders in Lebanon. Today Iran praised Hamas for the attack. Iran has opposed the recent talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel about normalizing relations. Since the decline of Iraq as an independent power, Iran has viewed the combination of Israel, its main enemy, with Saudi Arabia, its main rival for power, as the greatest threat to its security in the region.
Iran and Russia are allies whose relationship has strengthened considerably as the Russian war against Ukraine has pushed the two increasingly isolated countries together to resist Western sanctions. Former Russian president and deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said the attack was “expected,” and used it to accuse the U.S.
The Middle East, rather than Ukraine, was “what Washington and its allies should be busy with,” he said. “But instead of actively working at Palestinian-Israeli settlement,” he went on, “these morons have interfered with us, and are providing the neo-Nazis with full-scale aid, pitting the two closely related peoples against each other. What can stop America’s manic obsession to incite conflicts all over the planet?”
Today’s assessment of the Russian offensive in Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War said: “The Kremlin is already [exploiting] and will likely continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several information operations intended to reduce US and Western support and attention to Ukraine.”
Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have contextualized the attack by calling out Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people but also are calling for restraint and for the violence to stop.
India, too, has expressed solidarity with Israel.
In the U.S., the administration suggested that it sees a larger hand behind this attack and is working with partners and allies to contain the violence. In a statement, President Biden said the United States “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel.” It went on with a warning—“The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation”—and a threat: “My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.”
Biden told reporters that he has been in contact with the King of Jordan, has spoken with members of Congress, and is in close touch with Netanyahu. He says he has directed the national security team to engage with their Israeli counterparts—“military to military, intelligence to intelligence,...diplomat to diplomat—to make sure Israel has what it needs.” He has also directed his team “to remain in constant contact with leaders throughout the region, including Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, the UAE, as well as with our European partners and the Palestinian Authority.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke today with the presidents of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, urging Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the attack and to work to restore calm. He also spoke with the foreign ministers of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Türkiye, as well as the European Union’s High Representative for foreign affairs. Blinken urged the EU, Türkiye, and the so-called Quint countries—France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S.—to continue to engage on the issue, and he promised to stay in close contact with all the parties he talked to today.
In the United States, Republicans used the moment to attack President Biden. In an echo of a similar lie from Trump, who falsely claimed the Obama administration had paid $150 billion to Iran for a nuclear agreement, they took to social media in a flood to say that the U.S. had funded the attack on Israel because it had recently “paid” $6 billion to Iran.
The statement was wrong across the board: the U.S did not pay Iran anything. It helped to ease restrictions on Iranian money that had been frozen in South Korea, enabling Qatar to take control of the money and use it for humanitarian aid. In any case, the money has not yet been transferred. Still, it was a surprising decision to attack the U.S. government at a time when the country would normally be united behind Israel.
Nonetheless, the attack has made the national implications of Republicans’ own troubles even more clear. In times of crisis, the executive branch briefs the so-called Gang of Eight on classified intelligence matters. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of each party in the House and the Senate, and the leaders of each party in each chamber’s intelligence committee. But without a House Speaker, this leading intelligence group is missing a key member. It is not clear if the acting speaker, Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was tapped by former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and not elected, can participate.
The lack of a speaker is a problem. Although House committees can still meet, the House can’t do much. McHenry is responsible mostly for overseeing the election of a new speaker; he does not have the authority to bring bills or even resolutions to the floor.
—
Notes:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/gaza-strip/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/07/hamas-and-israel-at-war-what-we-know-so-far
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4243414-medvedev-says-hamas-attacks-expected-development/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/politics/iran-money-explainer/index.html
https://apnews.com/article/iran-north-america-donald-trump-iran-nuclear-ap-fact-check-727282b
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/world/middleeast/israel-trump-classified-intelligence-russia.html
https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-call-with-european-counterparts/
https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-call-with-turkish-foreign-minister-fidan-7/
https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-call-with-palestinian-authority-president-abbas-5/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/07/iran-praises-hamas-attack-israel-middle-east-00120491
https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-hamas-attacks-against-israel-palestine-jerusalem/
https://twitter.com/UnderSecTFI/status/1710706779980464482
https://www.timesofisrael.com/world-reacts-in-shock-and-horror-to-attacks-on-israel/
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-7-2023
October 6, 2023
In a Washington Post op-ed today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered House Republicans a “path to a better place” than the “dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House.” Democrats have repeatedly offered both in public and in private to enter into a bipartisan governing coalition, he wrote, but under former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republicans have “categorically rejected making changes to the rules [in order] to…encourage bipartisan governance and undermine the ability of extremists to hold Congress hostage.”
Jeffries offered to work with willing Republicans “to reform the rules of the House in a manner that permits us to govern in a pragmatic fashion.” Stating up front his willingness to negotiate, Jeffries wrote that the House “should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support.” This would stop a few extremist Republicans from preventing “common-sense legislation from ever seeing the light of day.”
Jeffries called for “traditional Republicans” to “break with the MAGA extremism that has poisoned the House of Representatives since the violent insurrection on Jan[uary] 6, 2021, and its aftermath.”
“House Democrats remain committed to a bipartisan path forward,” he wrote, but “we simply need Republican partners willing to break with MAGA extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common good for the people.”
Jeffries is reaching out at a delicate moment for Republicans. While the minority leader’s appeal to what is best for the country is an important reminder of what is at stake here, there are also political currents running under the surface of the speaker crisis. The speaker vote will force Republicans to go on the record either for or against former president Trump, a declaration most have so far been able to avoid.
There is enormous pressure from pro-Trump MAGA Republicans to stick with the former president and elect his chosen candidate, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), as House speaker. But Jordan is a very close ally of Trump’s and can be expected to demand an end to investigations into the former president in exchange for doing even the most basic business—Trump, after all, demanded a government shutdown until the cases against him were abandoned. Throwing the speakership to him will mean facing the 2024 election with a fully committed Trump party and government dysfunction as the Republicans’ main argument for why voters should back them.
That might play well in the gerrymandered districts of the extremists, but there are 18 Republicans who won election in districts President Biden won in 2020, and they will not want to run on a ticket dominated by Trump and Jordan. But a vote for the other declared candidate, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), means being on record against Trump and for a man who once described himself as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage.”
The other calculation those wavering Republican members of Congress must make is what they expect for the future. A number of the state maps that gave Republicans their slim House majority have been found unconstitutional and are now being redrawn in ways that suggest the Democrats might well retake the House in 2024. If that happens, having forged a working relationship with the Democrats would be far more useful than standing with the hard right.
It would take as few as five Republican votes to elect Jeffries speaker, which is an unlikely outcome, but it would also take just a few Democrats to vote present and lower the number needed to enable the Republicans to elect someone more moderate than their current option. Jeffries might well be signaling that the Democrats are willing to enable that outcome, but only for a Republican who is not a bomb thrower.
Republicans who are not committed to Trump may also be paying attention to what increasingly feels like a shift in the country’s popular tide. Today’s news provided more evidence that Biden’s approach to the economy—using the government to invest in ordinary Americans—is working far better than the Republicans’ approach of slashing the government to enable capitalists to organize the economy ever did.
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released yet another very strong jobs report showing that the U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, almost twice what economists had predicted. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%. The biggest gains were in leisure and hospitality and in government. Average hourly wages went up 4.2% over the past 12 months; more than the inflation rate of 3.4%. The bureau also revised its employment statistics for July and August upward, showing that the employment in those months was up 199,000 more than the gains already reported.
The country’s shift away from concentrating wealth upward also showed today in positive movement toward a historic settlement between the United Auto Workers and automakers. UAW president Shawn Fain announced that General Motors has agreed to include workers at plants making batteries for electric vehicles in the UAW’s national labor agreement.
While the UAW wanted—and appears to be obtaining—higher wages, its leaders were especially concerned about what the transition to EVs would do to workers. Fain said that automakers had been planning to phase out the engine and transmission plants worked by union laborers and replace those jobs with lower-wage jobs in non-union battery plants. Until now, automakers had said it would be “impossible” to permit the battery plants to be covered by the union umbrella.
Fain called the agreement a “transformative win” and, in light of that agreement, announced that the UAW will not expand its strike into GM’s most profitable plant in Arlington, Texas. Fain said he expects that Ford and Stellantis, which includes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, will agree to the same deal, and labor scholars agree.
Trump visited a non-union plant in this dispute, where he attacked the transition to EVs as job killers for autoworkers. This new agreement makes it unlikely that autoworkers will back Trump over this issue.
Biden, on the other hand, weighed in on the fight by joining the UAW picket line.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/10/06/september-jobs-report-unemployment/
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/06/hakeem-jeffries-bipartisan-coalition-house-gop/
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2023/10/06/uaw-strike-update-gm-battery-plants/71085498007/
https://www.detroitnews.com/business/
https://newrepublic.com/article/175979/hakeem-jeffries-house-speaker-dare-say-it
October 6, 2023
October 5, 2023
Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, and Mike Levine of ABC News reported today that sources have told them that former president Trump shared information about U.S. nuclear subs with Anthony Pratt, an Australian billionaire who was a member of the Mar-a-Lago club. The sources say Pratt then shared that information with at least 45 others: more than a dozen foreign officials, his own employees, and a few journalists. Trump allegedly shared the exact number of nuclear warheads U.S. submarines carry, and exactly how close they can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.
Former defense secretary William Cohen explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper how information about nuclear submarines fit into the larger picture of what’s known as the nuclear triad, the land, sea, and air systems that protect the U.S. “Out of the triad,” he said, “the submarine is the one that is most secure for us because it's not targetable…. So they're special. And he is giving away special information on what is protecting us around the world.”
FBI agents and the team overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, looking into Trump’s mishandling of national security documents, have interviewed Pratt at least twice. About a year ago, on November 9, 2022, U.S. Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Dianna, were sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for conspiring to sell classified information about nuclear-powered warships to a foreign country.
“Naval nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe was entrusted with our nation’s critical secrets and, along with his wife Diana Toebbe, put the security of our country at risk for financial gain,” U.S. Attorney Cindy Chung for the Western District of Pennsylvania said at the time. “Their serious criminal conduct betrayed and endangered the Department of the Navy’s loyal and selfless service members. The seriousness of the offense in this case cannot be overstated.”
Trump today endorsed Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for the speakership. There is an important history to this endorsement. On January 11, 2021—five days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the attempt of some Republican lawmakers to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election—Trump awarded Jordan the Medal of Freedom without a real explanation of why he deserved it.
On January 6, 2021, then-Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) told Jordan to get away from her because “You f*ck*ng did this!”
Yesterday, in a speech at the University of Minnesota, Cheney explained: “Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election…. There was a handful of people, of which he was the leader, who knew what Donald Trump had planned. Now somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, ‘Why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned? You were in those meetings at the White House.’”
She concluded: “If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the Speaker of the House…there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are trying to get the indictments against him for trying to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election thrown out, arguing that a president has absolute immunity from prosecution for criminal as well as civil prosecutions. If this argument succeeded, it would mean that a president was above the law and could do anything they wanted without fear of prosecution. In her newsletter Civil Discourse, Joyce White Vance suggests this is likely an attempt to delay the trial at least until after the Republican National Convention nominates a presidential candidate and possibly until after the 2024 election itself.
Trump’s tangles with the law are not going well, and in a sudden flurry today, his lawyers tried to delay or get rid of them. In his coverage of Trump’s fraud trial in New York this week, Daily Beast political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery noted that Trump likely appeared in person because he had cited the trial as the reason he could not give a deposition in his $500 million lawsuit against his former fixer Michael Cohen for talking about him and thus breaking his fiduciary duty to act solely in Trump’s interest. That deposition was rescheduled for Monday. Today, Trump withdrew his case against Cohen, clearly suggesting he was afraid to testify.
In the New York fraud trial, a document introduced into evidence today undermined the argument that Trump wasn’t involved in the fraudulent valuations at the heart of the case. The Trump Organization’s 2014 statement of financial condition included a note from the organization’s comptroller saying: “DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW.”
Apparently concerned that Trump would try to move his assets around to hide them, Justice Arthur Engoron today ordered Trump, his older sons, and the two Trump Organization employees in the suit not to move money or open a new business without reporting it to the independent monitor overseeing the businesses. They must also provide a list of each of their businesses and anyone who shares ownership of those businesses.
Trump has also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to delay his trial for mishandling the national security documents he stashed at Mar-a-Lago until after the 2024 election.
—
Notes:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-drops-500-million-lawsuit-former-attorney-michael/story?id=103772572
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-sues-former-lawyer-michael-cohen-500/story?id=98536685
The Distinguished Carlson Lecture: An Evening with Liz Cheney, October 4, 2023, Humphrey School, UMN, on YouTube.
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance Not a quiet ThursdayA surprising number of things happened today for what should have been a quiet Thursday in October. That seems to be true more days than not with a former president, his party’s frontrunner presidential candidate, facing four criminal indictments and mid-trial in a civil fraud case that will end his ability to conduct a real estate business in the state…Read more8 hours ago · 232 likes · 30 comments · Joyce Vancehttps://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.74.0.pdf
https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-tries-to-stop-trump-from-hiding-his-money
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/05/trump-election-case-immunity-motion-00120225
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October 5, 2023
October 4, 2023
Yesterday, eight extremist members of the Republican congressional conference demonstrated that they could stop their party, and the government, from functioning. Indeed, that’s about all those members have ever managed to do. Political scientist Lindsey Cormack noted on social media that Representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have managed only to name a single facility each; Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT) have each sponsored no successful bills; and Bob Good (R-VA) has sent one thing to the president, who vetoed it.
They are not interested in governing; they are interested in stopping the government, apparently working with right-wing agitator Steve Bannon to sink the speakership of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Indeed, the only two significant legislative achievements the Republicans have made since they took control of the House in January 2023 were raising the debt ceiling and passing a continuing resolution to fund the government for 45 days. In both of those cases, the measures passed because Democrats provided more votes for them than the Republicans did.
The former House speaker was one of many Republicans who tried to turn this internal party debacle into the fault of the Democrats, although he apparently offered them no reason to come to his support and made it clear he would continue to boost the extremists.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “The idea that D[emocrat]s should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R[epublican] bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and D[emocrat]s managing the consequences of that behavior is a given.” Journalist James Fallows agreed that this understanding “is so deeply engrained in mainstream coverage and ‘framing’ of DC that it doesn’t need to be said out loud.”
Aaron Fritschner, the deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), was more specific, calling the idea the Democrats were refusing to support McCarthy out of spite “silly nonsense.” He noted that on Saturday, the House was preparing to shut down when McCarthy sprung on the Democrats a vote on the continuing resolution the Democrats had never seen. “My immediate read was he wanted and expected us to vote against [it] so we would be blamed for a shutdown,” Fritschner wrote. The Democrats instead lined up behind it.
Then, after it passed, McCarthy said to a reporter that the Democrats were to blame for the threatened shutdown in the first place. “People want us to give the guy credit for stopping a shutdown but it is still not clear to me right now sitting here writing this that he *intended* to do that,” Fritschner wrote.
Meanwhile, Fritschner continued, McCarthy was making it clear that he would “steer us directly back into the crazy cuts and abortion restrictions, the Freedom Caucus setting the agenda, breaking his deal with Biden, and driving us towards a shutdown in November,” refusing to make any reassurances that he would try to work with Democrats. As Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported: “Mccarthys allies say they will NOT negotiate with democrats. Even as some house Dems privately say they want to help the California Republican.”
“This came down to trust, and that's the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that,” Fritschner wrote.
Adam Cancryn, Jennifer Haberkorn, Lara Seligman, and Sam Stein of Politico confirmed that both McCarthy’s allies and opponents found him untrustworthy, noting that when negotiating with President Joe Biden on “a particularly sensitive matter,” the speaker privately told allies that he found the president “sharp and substantive in their conversations” while in public he made fun of Biden’s age and mental abilities. That contradiction “left a deep impression on the White House,” the reporters said.
But who will now be able to get the votes necessary to become House speaker?
It seems reasonable to believe that the Democrats will continue to vote as a bloc for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), leaving the Republicans back where they were in January, when it took them 15 ballots to agree on McCarthy. Now, though, they are even angrier at each other than they were then. "Frankly, one has to wonder whether the House is governable at all," Representative Dusty Johnson (R-SD) told Andrew Solender of Axios.
Two Republicans have thrown their hats into the ring: Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Both are significantly to the right of McCarthy, and both carry significant baggage. Jordan was involved in a major college molestation scandal and refused to answer a subpoena concerning his participation in the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Scalise has described himself as like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “but without the baggage.”
Republicans from less extreme districts, including the 18 who represent districts Biden won in 2020, are not going to want to go before voters in 2024 with the kinds of voting records Jordan or Scalise would force on them.
The fight over the speakership is unlikely to be quick, and there is urgent business to be done. Congress must fund the government—the continuing resolution that made Gaetz call for McCarthy’s ouster runs out shortly before Thanksgiving. Even more immediate is funding for Ukraine to help its military defend the country against Russia’s invasion. That funding is very popular with members of both parties in both the House and Senate, but Jordan has said he is against moving forward with that funding, believing the extremists’ wish list is more pressing.
Today news broke that Ukrainian attacks have forced Russia to withdraw most of its Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. This is a serious blow to Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. It is an unfortunate time for the U.S. to back away from Ukraine funding, and legislators are urging the House to pass that funding quickly.
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/04/white-house-mccarthy-downfall-00119933
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/04/house-republicans-kevin-mccarthy-removal-speaker
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/succession-wingnut-world-edition
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/us/politics/bannon-republicans-gaetz-mace.html
https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-colleagues-call-immediate
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/04/politics/ukraine-funding-house-speaker-race/index.html
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October 4, 2023
October 3, 2023
Wow.
Today, House Republicans made history by being the first to throw out their own Speaker of the House, while the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination made history by being the first candidate to be gagged by a judge after threatening one of the judge’s law clerks by posting a lie about her on social media.
Ever since Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a deal with the extremists in his conference to win the speakership after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, he has catered to those extremists in an apparent bid to hold on to his position. From the first, he gave them key positions on committees, permitted them to introduce extreme measures and load up bills with poison pills that meant the bills could never make it through Congress, and recently to open impeachment hearings against President Joe Biden.
But the extremists have continued to bully him, especially since they opposed a deal he cut with Biden before McCarthy would agree to raise the debt ceiling, threatening to make the United States default on its debt for the first time in U.S. history. When their refusal to pass either appropriations bills or a continuing resolution to buy more time to pass those bills meant the U.S. was hours away from a government shutdown, McCarthy finally had to rely on the Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution on Saturday.
A shutdown would have hurt the country and, in so doing, would have benefited former president Trump, to whom the extremists are loyal. Led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, they were vocal about their anger at McCarthy’s pivot to the Democrats to keep the government open,
Yesterday, Gaetz challenged McCarthy’s leadership, apparently with the expectation that the Democrats would step in to save McCarthy’s job, although it is traditionally the majority party that determines its leader. According to Paul Kane of the Washington Post, McCarthy did reach out to Democrats for votes to support his speakership. But Democrats pointed to McCarthy’s constant caving to the MAGA Republicans—as recently as Sunday, McCarthy blamed the threat of a shutdown on the Democrats—and were clear the problem was the Republicans’ alone.
“It is now the responsibility of the [Republican] members to end the House Republican Civil War. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote to the Democratic caucus.
And so, when the House considered blocking Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair, the measure failed by a vote of 208 to 218. Eleven Republicans voted against blocking it. And then, on the voting over the measure itself, 216 members voted to remove McCarthy while 210 voted to keep him in the speaker’s chair. Eight Republicans abandoned their party to toss him aside, making him the first speaker ever removed from office.
The result was a surprise to many Republicans, and there is no apparent plan for moving forward. House Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK), who released a statement supporting McCarthy, called the outcome “simply a vote for chaos.”
Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speakers in case of emergency, so the gavel has passed to Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has power only to recess, adjourn, and hold votes for a new speaker. McCarthy says he will not run for speaker again. The House has recessed for the rest of the week, putting off a new speaker fight.
Until then, Republicans seem to be turning their fury at their own debacle on the Democrats, blaming them for not stepping in to fix the Republicans’ mess. One of McHenry’s first official acts was to order former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to vacate her private Capitol office by tomorrow, announcing that he was having the room rekeyed. Pelosi was not even there for today’s votes; she is in California for the memorial services for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
McHenry’s action is unlikely to make the Democrats more eager to work with the Republicans; Pelosi noted that this “sharp departure from tradition” seemed a surprising first move “[w]ith all the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting….” Pelosi might have been sharp, but she is not wrong. The continuing resolution to fund the government runs out shortly before Thanksgiving, and funding for Ukraine has an even shorter time frame than that. The House cannot do business without a speaker, and each day this chaos continues is a victory for the extremists who are eager to stop a government that does anything other than what they want from functioning, even as it highlights the Republicans’ inability to govern.
Phew. But that was not the end of the day’s news.
Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, who is watching the New York trial of Trump, his two older sons, two of his associates, and the Trump Organization, wrote that New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron said today that he had warned Trump’s lawyer that Trump must not continue his attacks on the justice system. Rather than heed the warning, Trump today went after Engoron’s own law clerk, posting a lie about her with a photo on social media. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” Engoron said.
Engoron ordered Trump to delete the post, and the former president did so. Engoron forbade “all parties from posting, emailing, or speaking publicly about any members of my staff” and warned there would be “serious sanctions” for those who did so.
The New York case strikes close to Trump’s identity as a successful businessman by showing that he lied about the actual value of his properties, and by dissolving a number of his businesses by canceling their licenses. Adding to Trump’s troubles today is that he fell off Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, a status that in the past he has cared deeply about.
In the midst of the Republican chaos, the Biden administration announced that the manufacturers of all the ten drugs selected for negotiation with Medicare to lower prices have agreed to participate in the program, although they are pursuing lawsuits to stop it. Several of the pharmaceutical companies have complained of being “essentially forced” to sign on; one says it is participating “under protest” but feels it has no choice given the penalties their products would bear if they are unwilling to negotiate prices.
According to the White House, the ten drugs selected for negotiation accounted for a total of $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for an estimated 9 million Medicare enrollees in 2022. The negotiations were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed without any Republican votes.
The Department of Justice announced eight indictments against China-based companies and their employees for crimes relating to street fentanyl and methamphetamine production, distribution of synthetic opioids, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals used to make street fentanyl. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) administrator Anne Milgram noted that the supply chain that brings street fentanyl to the U.S. starts in China, from which chemical companies ship fentanyl precursors and analogues into our country and into Mexico, where the chemicals “are used to make fentanyl and make it especially deadly.” Milgram promised that the “DEA will not stop until we defeat this threat.”
Finally, while the Republicans were making history on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, the Democrats were making history on the Senate side. Vice President Kamala Harris swore into office Senator Laphonza Butler to complete the term of Senator Dianne Feinstein, which ends next year. Before her nomination, Butler was the president of EMILYs List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic female candidates who back reproductive rights to office, and has advised a number of high-profile political campaigns, including that of Harris in 2020.
Butler is the first Black lesbian in the Senate. She and her wife, Nenike, have a daughter.
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/politics/drugmakers-medicare-price-negotiations/index.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-net-worth-forbes-400-2023/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-democrats-vote-speaker-house/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/politics/mccarthy-gaetz-vote-motion-to-vacate/index.html
https://cole.house.gov/media/press-releases/cole-supports-mccarthy
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laphonza-butler-senate-california-gavin-newsom-dianne-feinstein-seat/
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October 2, 2023
October 2, 2023
The trial of former president Trump, his oldest sons, two associates, and the Trump Organization began today in Manhattan. Jose Pagliery, political investigations reporter for The Daily Beast, noted that the presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, started with a reference to Friday’s rainstorm that flooded New York City, saying: "Weeks ago, I said we would start today 'come hell or high water.’ Meteorologically speaking, we’ve had the high water."
New York Attorney General Letitia James launched the investigation in 2019 after Trump fixer Michael Cohen testified before Congress that Trump had been engaging in fraud by inflating the value of his property. Last week, Justice Engoron issued a partial decision establishing that the organization and its executives committed fraud. Engoron canceled the licenses under which the organization’s New York businesses operated, provided for those businesses to be dissolved, and provided for an independent monitor to oversee the company.
With that major point already established, the trial that began today will establish how much of the ill-gotten money must be given up, or “disgorged,” by the defendants and whether they falsified records or engaged in insurance fraud in the process of committing fraud. James has asked for a minimum of $250 million in disgorgement, along with a ruling permanently prohibiting Trump and his older sons from doing business in New York, and a five-year ban on commercial real estate transactions for Trump and the organization.
Trump is attending the trial in person, likely because, as Pagliery noted, he cited this trial as the reason he couldn’t show up for two days of depositions in his federal case against Michael Cohen. If he didn’t show up, he would be in contempt of court. So he is there, but his goal in all his legal cases seems to be to play to the public, where his displays of victimization and dominance have always served him.
He has already said it is “unfair” that he isn’t getting a jury trial in New York, but his lawyers explicitly said they did not want one, possibly because a bench trial gives Trump a single judge to attack rather than a jury. Today, his lawyer Alina Habba, who along with her law firm and Trump has been fined close to $1 million by a federal judge for filing a frivolous lawsuit, gave a fiery opening statement aimed at “the American people” rather than the judge. When the court broke for lunch, Trump went straight to reporters to rail at the prosecutors holding him to account.
Historian Lawrence Glickman noted that the press is emphasizing Trump’s anger at the proceedings as if a defendant’s anger matters, but it is starting to feel as if bullying and bluster to get away with breaking the rules is not as effective as it used to be. Legal analyst Lisa Rubin notes that this case is a form of “corporate death penalty” that strikes at his wealth and image, both of which are central to his identity and to his political power.
And it is not just Trump; another case announced on Friday suggests the era of real estate crime is ending. The Department of Justice announced that a California real estate executive had pleaded guilty the previous day to a multi-year scheme that looked a lot like the one Trump’s organization is charged with: fraudulently inflating the value of real estate holdings of a Michigan company in order to defraud lenders.
“My office will not hesitate to prosecute those who lie in order to engage in financial crimes, regardless of the titles they may have,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Dawn N. Ison.
The drive for the impartial application of the rule of law is showing up among the Democrats, as they seek to illustrate the difference between them and the Republicans. New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez is insisting that the federal indictment against him and his wife for bribery, fraud, and extortion in exchange for helping Egypt is a political smear campaign, but more than half of Democratic senators have called on him to resign.
Trump is increasingly being held to account by former staff, as well. In the wake of his attacks on former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Trump’s former chief of staff Marine Corps General John Kelly went on the record today with Jake Tapper of CNN, confirming a number of the damning stories that emerged during Trump’s presidency about his denigration of wounded, captured, or killed military personnel as “suckers” and “losers,” with whom he didn’t want to be seen.
Kelly called Trump: “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason—in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law…. There is nothing more that can be said,” he added. “God help us.”
The confirmation of Trump’s attacks on wounded or killed military personnel will not help his political support. After reading Kelly’s remarks, retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, a key advocate for veteran voting, released a video he recorded more than two years ago when he first heard the stories about Trump’s attack on the military. “Who could vote for this traitor Trump?” he asked on social media. In the video, Eaton urges veterans to “vote Democratic,” because “our country’s honor depends on it.”
That Trump is concerned about his ebbing popularity showed tonight when his campaign released a statement demanding that the Republican National Committee cancel all future debates and focus on Trump’s evidence-free allegations that the Democrats are going to steal the 2024 election. If it refuses, the statement says, it will just show that national Republicans are “more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”
Popular pressure against the extremism of the Republican Party showed up today when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recused himself from participating in a case related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was a staunch supporter of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and in the past, Thomas had voted on related cases nonetheless. Today’s case involved John Eastman, formerly one of Thomas’s law clerks.
There were interesting signs today that the tide seems to be turning against the MAGA Republicans elsewhere, too. In an op-ed in the New York Times, former South Carolina representative Bob Inglis told his “Fellow Republicans: It’s Time to Grow Up.” He expressed regret for his votes in 1995 to shut down the government and in 1998 to impeach President Bill Clinton, and for his opposition to addressing climate change on the grounds that if Al Gore was for it, Republicans should be against it.
But he had come to realize that “the fight wasn’t against Al Gore; it was against climate change. Just as the challenge of funding the government isn’t a referendum on Speaker McCarthy; it’s a challenge of making one out of many—E pluribus unum—and of bringing the country together to do basic things.” He called on Republicans to remember that we must face the huge challenges in our future together: language that echoes President Joe Biden, who has been making that pitch since he took office.
The fight over funding the government has contributed to growing pressure on the extremists. The chaos in the Republican Party as the factions fought each other with no plan to fund the government until McCarthy finally had to rely on the Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution was a sign that the extremists’ power is at risk.
Today, there was much chafing over the threats of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to challenge Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, and he actually did it this evening, although it is not clear that he has the votes either to remove McCarthy or to prevent his reelection as speaker. What is clear is that Gaetz is forcing a showdown between the extremists and the rest of the party, and while such a showdown is sure to garner media attention, it is unlikely to leave the extremists in a stronger position.
Indeed, when he left the floor after making the motion to vacate the chair, some Democrats laughed.
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/02/trump-fraud-trial-ny/
Public NoticeHow Trump's fraudulent business practices finally came back to bite himRead more4 days ago · 253 likes · 10 comments · Aaron Rupar and Lisa Needhamhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/20/donald-trump-fine-court-clinton/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/02/trump-fraud-trial-ny-2/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/nyregion/trump-james-fraud-trial.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-house-republicans-shutdown.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/02/kevin-mccarthy-matt-gaetz/
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23989449-menendez-indictment
https://abcnews.go.com/US/york-ag-letitia-james-files-250m-lawsuit-trump/story?id=90240332
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991865-trump-ny-fraud-ruling
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October 1, 2023
October 1, 2023
On Friday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley spoke in Arlington, Virginia, at a farewell ceremony before his retirement after four years in the position to which former president Trump appointed him. Milley’s position as the highest-ranking and most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces and the nation’s top military advisor during a stretch of U.S. history in which a president tried to overturn the results of a presidential election and undermine our democracy made his tenure perhaps more difficult than any of his predecessors’.
Milley had been at Trump’s side at the start of the former president’s march across Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, to threaten Black Lives Matter protesters, although Milley peeled off when he recognized what was happening and later said he thought they were going to review National Guard troops. Since then, Milley has spoken out against strongman rule and vocally defended the U.S. Constitution.
The day after the debacle, Milley wrote a message to the joint force reminding every member that they swore an oath to the Constitution. “This document is founded on the essential principle that all men and women are born free and equal, and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly…. As members of the Joint Force—comprised of all races, colors, and creeds—you embody the ideals of our Constitution,” he wrote. “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America,” he wrote by hand on the memo. “We will stay true to that oath and the American people.”
Trump and his loyalists turned on Milley, and that fury has only increased. On September 22, 2023, former president Trump suggested that Milley, who has served in the military for more than 40 years, had committed what some would call treason when he reassured his Chinese counterpart that the U.S. would not attack in the last days of the Trump administration—an assurance administration officials signed off on—in the face of Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior. Milley has told associates that if Trump is reelected, he expects to be thrown into prison.
Milley responded to Trump’s attempted intimidation in his farewell address. He began by thanking President Biden for his “unwavering leadership.” “I’ve seen you in the breach, I’ve seen you on the watch,” Milley told the president, “and I know firsthand that you’re a man of incredible integrity and character.”
After thanks to the president and vice president and to his colleagues, friends, wife, and children, and after good wishes for the incoming chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force general Charles Q. “CQ” Brown, Milley went on to explain his principles for the nation. His speech did not mention any names, but it was nonetheless a sharp rebuke to former president Trump and those who would abandon our democracy in favor of a dictator:
“Today is not about anyone up here on this stage…. It’s about something much larger than all of us,” Milley said.
“It’s about our democracy. It’s about our republic…. It’s about the ideas and values that make up this great experiment in liberty. Those values and ideas are contained within the Constitution of the United States of America, which is the moral North Star for all of us who have the privilege of wearing the cloth of our nation.
“It is that document…that gives purpose to our service. It is that document that gives purpose to our lives. It is that document that all of us in uniform swear to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
“That has been true across generations, and we in uniform are willing to die to pass that document off to the next generation. So it is that document that gives ultimate purpose to our death. The motto of our country is “E Pluribus Unum,” from the many, come one. We are one nation under God. We are indivisible, with liberty for all. And the motto of our army, for over 200 years…has been “This We’ll Defend,” and the “this” refers to the Constitution….
“You see, we in uniform are unique…among the world's armies. We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual.
“We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.…
“Those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of freedom in the last two and a half centuries of this country must not have done so in vain. The millions wounded in our nation’s wars did not sacrifice their limbs and shed their blood to see this great experiment in democracy perish from this earth. No. We the United States military will always be true to those that came before us. We will never, under any circumstances, turn our back on our duty….
“From the earliest days, before we were even a nation, our military stood…in the breach, has suffered the crucible of combat, and has stood the watch and defended liberty for all Americans. Each of us signs a blank check to this country to protect our freedom. The blood we spill pays for our freedom of speech. Our blood pays for the right to assemble, our due process, our freedom of the press, our right to vote, and all the other rights and privileges that come with being an American….
“We the American people, we the American military, must never turn our back on those that came before us. And we will never turn our back on the Constitution. That is our North Star, that is who we are, and that is why we fight.”
It was a pointed statement, coming as it did from the highest-ranking military officer of the U.S. as he voluntarily stepped down from his position.
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Notes:
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