Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 140
October 14, 2023
October 14, 2023
The nights I post a picture are often harder for me than the nights I write. I am not a visual artist, and so I struggle for way too long over what picture to post and then struggle even longer over how to caption the image I choose.
But tonight’s picture and its caption were easy.
I learned this information last Sunday, and it was just about the best birthday present ever.
And writing the caption was a breeze. It reads:
Thank you. Thank you all for helping me to write this book, and for helping me make sense of the chaos we've been enduring now for far too long. And, above all, thank you for helping me keep the faith, no matter how bonkers things have gotten.
I am honored to be part of this community, and I am eager to see where we go from here.
October 13, 2023
Today marks ten days since the United States House of Representatives voted to toss out the speaker, leaving the House unable to conduct business. This situation is unprecedented. And yet the Republicans cannot manage to elect a new speaker from among their ranks, and the party’s leadership refuses to work with the Democrats, who remain united behind House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Jeffries has repeatedly offered to work with the Republicans.
Now the House has recessed for the weekend.
With a war in Europe and a war in the Middle East and government funding running out on November 17, not to mention all the other work that falls to Congress, the House did not hold a single floor vote this week.
Essentially, the Republican extremists have paralyzed the government in the midst of an unusually dangerous time. While President Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to demonstrate that democracy works better than authoritarianism, they seem bent on undermining that idea.
Here’s how the day played out: After Louisiana representative Steve Scalise withdrew from the contest yesterday, Ohio representative Jim Jordan was the only one running until a relatively unknown representative, Austin Scott of Georgia, threw his hat in the ring as an anti-Jordan candidate. Scott, who had previously taken a stand against the extremists, said: “We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people.” When the conference voted, Scott won 81 votes to Jordan’s 124, with 16 of the members not showing up for the vote.
When the conference held another secret vote to count how many people would support Jordan in a floor vote, only 152 said they would. Fifty-five said no, and one voted present. Jordan remains a long way from the 217 votes he needs to win the chair if all members are present, and his allies’ threats to vulnerable members that if they did not support him they could expect to face primary challenges did not endear him to the holdouts.
Some Republicans are now calling for acting speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC) to have more powers than simply arranging for the election of a new speaker. But since the Constitution specifies that “[t]he House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker” and McHenry was tapped by former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) alone to replace him in case of an emergency, that’s likely going to be a hard sell.
Others are hoping to reelect McCarthy himself. While McCarthy says he is backing Jordan, he is also spending time in front of the television cameras acting like a leader. Being begged to reclaim the speakership would undoubtedly give him more power than he had before the extremists toppled him.
It remains astonishing that the Republicans would consider making Jordan speaker. The hallmarks of that position are an ability to negotiate and to shepherd legislation through Congress (think of all former speaker Nancy Pelosi got done with the same slim majority the Republicans have). Jordan has none of those qualities; he is a flamethrower who, in 16 years in the House, has not managed to get a single bill through the House, let alone into law. Jordan’s elevation would reflect that for many years now, Republicans have elevated those who disdain government and whose goal is to stop it from working.
Jordan is also a key Trump ally who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has been clear she opposes Jordan’s elevation to House speaker. Today she wrote:
“Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that [former vice president Mike] Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes. If R[epublican]s nominate Jordan to be Speaker, they will be abandoning the Constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.”
The Republicans plan to hold yet another conference on Monday and hope to elect a speaker on Tuesday. But it is not at all clear they can agree on a candidate. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) is one of those who is beginning to talk about bipartisanship as a matter of practicality. “A lot of folks are in denial but you're never gonna get eight or 10 folks on board. And so I think the bipartisan path is going to be the only way out,” he told Arthur Delany of HuffPost.
(Another limited letter tonight, just to mark events that are U.S.- and time-specific. I’ll catch up on other big stories in the next few days.)
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/13/house-speaker-vote/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-state-of-the-speaker-debacleship-going-into-the-weekend
Twitter (X):
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SamanthaJoRoth/status/1712923387649999231
Liz_Cheney/status/1712859704211194334
austinscottga08/status/1712865500978458641
October 13, 2023
October 12, 2023
We are in a bizarre moment.
If the U.S. government were operating within its normal parameters, my first story tonight would be about new federal charges that Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was acting as an agent of Egypt while chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Democratic rules in the Senate required Menendez to step down from that chair when he was charged with bribery in late September.
The new charges are serious indeed. As Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) said today, calling for Menendez to be expelled from the Senate: “We cannot have an alleged foreign agent in the United States Senate. This is not a close call.”
If the government were working as usual, I would also be writing about Congress’s response to the crisis in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, as well as the jockeying over the appropriations bills necessary to fund the government for 2024. But the House was in session for just two minutes today as the Republicans continued to struggle to get behind a new speaker, leaving Congress paralyzed.
That paralysis means that the House is not addressing these crises.
The crisis in Israel is uppermost in the United States. The news has been plagued with disinformation as the algorithms on social media have promoted fake stories, but President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been crystal clear in their condemnation of the attack on Israel by Hamas last Saturday and in their promise that the U.S. will stand with Israel.
They have also made it clear that Israel must operate according to the rules of war in order to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas does not observe those rules, and various U.S. officials have compared Hamas’s brutality to that of the terrorist group ISIS, while nonetheless reinforcing the importance of the rule of law. Israeli officials say that 1,300 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded in the initial attack; officials in Gaza say that Israeli airstrikes since have killed more than 1,500 people and wounded more than 6,600.
The airstrikes, consisting of 6,000 munitions in six days, have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, and Israel has cut food, fuel, and electricity to Gaza, saying the siege will not end until all the hostages Hamas took are returned.
Talks with Egypt about constructing humanitarian corridors out of Gaza have broken down, but talks about rushing humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt continue.
Secretary Blinken is in Israel and has expanded his trip to the troubled region, visiting not only Israel and Jordan, as originally announced, but also Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, where he will meet with senior officials. There, the State Department said, he will “reiterate his condemnation of the terrorist attacks in Israel in the strongest terms,” “reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with the government and people of Israel,” and “engage regional partners on efforts to help prevent the conflict from spreading, secure the immediate and safe release of hostages, and identify mechanisms for the protection of civilians.”
Meanwhile, a former Hamas leader has called for protests across the Muslim world tomorrow and for Israel’s neighbors to join the fight against Israel.
Starting tomorrow, the U.S. government will begin running charter flights to enable U.S. citizens and their immediate family members who have not been able to book commercial flights to leave Israel. Twenty-seven American citizens have been confirmed dead in the attack, and fourteen are unaccounted for.
Tonight the Israeli military told the United Nations that the 1.1 million people in northern Gaza must evacuate into the southern part within 24 hours as it prepares to go into Gaza, at least in part to target the extensive network of tunnels Hamas has constructed for its operations. U.N. officials said the U.N. “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The crisis in Ukraine has not ended while all eyes are on the crisis in the Middle East. The Institute for the Study of War concluded that Russian forces have launched “a significant and ongoing offensive effort” in the past two days but “have not secured any major breakthroughs,” as Ukraine’s forces are “inflicting relatively heavy losses.” Like Israel, Ukraine needs additional funding.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are further from reorganizing the House tonight than they were even a day ago. House majority leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who won the conference’s secret ballot over Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) yesterday, has given up hope of turning that victory into a win on the House floor and has withdrawn from the race. Former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) broke the secrecy of the conference to tell reporters that Scalise didn’t have the votes, a signal that McCarthy is not intending to fade into the background of this struggle.
Aaron Fritschner, the chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), noted today that since it’s mid-session, no new candidate for speaker has prime positions to offer in exchange for votes. Leadership positions have already been handed out, and legislative promises have already been made. That leaves a potential speaker with relatively little leverage to consolidate power.
Representative David Joyce (R-OH) revealed how badly the negotiations are going when he told Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News that he’s talking to Republicans and Democrats about giving acting speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC) more power for 30 to 60 days so that the House can pass a funding bill while the Republicans try to get their act together.
The Republican chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike McCaul of Texas, today told reporters, “Every day that goes by, it gets more dangerous.” He continued: “I see a lot of threats out there, but one of the biggest threats I see is in that room [pointing to where the Republicans were meeting], because we can’t unify as a conference and put a speaker in the chair together.”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) today said it is “urgently necessary” for the Republicans to “get their act together and elect a Speaker from within their own ranks, as it is the responsibility of the majority party to do, or have traditional Republicans break with the extremists within the House Republican Conference and partner with Democrats on a bipartisan path forward. We are ready, willing, and able to do so. I know there are traditional Republicans who are good women and men who want to see government function, but they are unable to do it within the ranks of their own conference, which is dominated by the extremist wing, and that’s why we continue to extend the hand of bipartisanship to them.”
Journalist Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, summed up the day when he wrote: “The fact that ALL Republicans would rather fight over Scalise (who attended a neo-Nazi event) or Jordan (who allegedly covered up rampant sexual abuse) rather than simply work with Democrats to elect a Speaker says it all.”
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/menendez-steps-down-foreign-relations-committee-00117622.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/elon-musk-x-fact-check-israel-misinformation-rcna119658
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/12/israel-gaza-war-updates-hamas/
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4252919-fetterman-senate-expel-menendez-indictment/
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-39/
Twitter:
jakesherman/status/1712530349022998577
BidenHQ/status/1712549715131380132
Fritschner/status/1712557223602516475
AndrewDesiderio/status/1712541163297857635
lrozen/status/1712525645626921176
MEPFuller/status/1712495928370737428
SeanCasten/status/1712503497340436747
MacFarlaneNews/status/1712505249200554245
RepJeffries/status/1712631598145818931
UriKeidar/status/1712118034351931465
BarakRavid/status/1712684262040670467
October 11, 2023
October 11, 2023
Tonight, a limited letter tied tightly to today’s news because I am wiped out from the hours I’ve been keeping. Hoping to have my batteries back into the green by the weekend.
In a secret vote by the House Republican Conference today, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) won the race to become the Republican candidate for speaker of the House of Representatives, beating out Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) by 113 to 99.
In the past, the conference as a whole would have stood behind the majority’s choice, but traditional rules no longer apply to today’s Republican Party. Three of Jordan’s supporters have already said they will not support Scalise, and Representative George Santos (R-NY) is complaining that Scalise hasn’t called him, convincing him to throw his vote to “ANYONE but Scalise and come hell or high water I won’t change my mind.”
To become speaker, Scalise needs 217 votes. Unless he can attract Democratic votes, he cannot lose more than 4 Republican votes. All 212 House Democrats remain united behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), meaning that he is closer to a majority than any of the Republican candidates.
Rather than hold a floor vote to elect a speaker today, the House recessed in order to let Scalise try to get his ducks in a row.
Both Scalise and Jordan are Trump supporters; both went along with the lie that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. Early in his career, Scalise compared himself to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage,” while Jordan is accused of overlooking sexual assault when he was an assistant wrestling coach and was a key player in the January 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It is astonishing that a major U.S. political party is considering either man to become the second in line for the presidency.
As the Republicans try to line up behind one of the two candidates—so far—the chaos is hobbling the government. Until the House is organized again under a new speaker, it cannot provide aid to Ukraine or Israel, or work toward reaching an agreement on next year’s budget before the continuing resolution funding the government at 2023 levels runs out in mid-November. Or do pretty much anything other than try to elect a speaker.
Senate Republicans are creating their own chaos. Joe Gould and Connor O’Brien of Politico reported today that in the Senate, Democrats are trying to push through the hold Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has placed on more than 300 military promotions as well as other senators’ holds on a number of diplomatic officers. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has called for a reform of the current nominations process, which permits a single senator to stop confirmations.
In light of the crisis in the Middle East, the holds reveal how easy it is for a senator or two to weaken the United States. Gould and O’Brien point out that Tuberville’s hold means that two of the senior military positions in the region are unconfirmed, as are State Department appointments including ambassadorships to Middle Eastern countries—among them both Egypt and Israel—and the department’s top counterterrorism position.
These are not controversial appointments in their own right. Republicans are using them as leverage for their own policy goals. Pentagon officials have warned senators that the holds are disrupting our national security and that of our allies and partners.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court today heard arguments in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, a gerrymandering case notable in part because the attorneys and justices all agree that the Republican-dominated South Carolina legislature constructed a district map rigged in favor of Republicans so dramatically that it is virtually impossible for Republicans to lose.
In the 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a state question rather than a federal one, making it impossible to challenge partisan gerrymanders in federal courts. But partisan gerrymanders quite often overlap with racial gerrymanders, and the question before the court in Alexander is whether the South Carolina map violated the law by being racially discriminatory. A federal three-judge panel agreed that it did, but if the Supreme Court disagrees, the process of carving up districts so politicians can pick their own voters will have gotten even easier.
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-israel-nominees-military-ambassadors-00120871
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/south-carolina-supreme-court-redistricting
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/us/politics/scalise-republicans-speaker-house.html
https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/north-carolina-partisan-gerrymandering-scotus/
https://www.lwv.org/blog/racial-gerrymandering-case-supreme-court-alexander-v-sc-state-conf-naacp
Twitter (X):
MrSantosNY/status/1712282775804318135
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):
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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.
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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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