Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 161
January 20, 2023
January 20, 2023 (Friday)
Tonight’s letter was supposed to be a photo, but then it turned into just a few things I didn’t want to miss, and now it’s a sort of roundup of a whole lot of stories. TGIF, I guess.
After last night’s sanction of almost a million dollars in a frivolous lawsuit, Trump dropped a similar lawsuit today against New York attorney general Letitia James. That lawsuit has been widely interpreted as his attempt to make James abandon the $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization. But it, like the one that yesterday cost him and his lawyer close to a million dollars, was assigned to Judge Donald Middlebrooks, and as MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin put it, Trump “folded. That decision was perhaps driven by lawyers who can’t afford a massive sanctions award either reputationally or financially. But it’s weird to see Trump basically concede.”
Trump also backed off on his previous threats to use the debt ceiling to extract concessions from Democrats. Yesterday, he released a video warning House Republicans not to cut Social Security or Medicare, although those are the main things Republicans have thrown on the table. Trump is clearly bowing to popular support for those programs, but he is abandoning House Republicans after pushing them to take this stand.
The troubles of the House Republicans continue to mount. Just as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced the House would end proxy voting, Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) fell 25 feet from a ladder at his home and is now in the hospital, cutting McCarthy’s already slim majority.
Representative George Santos (R-NY) is still in Congress, for the moment anyway, and he continues to embarrass the Republicans. After insisting that reports he was a drag queen in Brazil were lies, it turns out that Santos himself apparently posted that information on Wikipedia. The party that has spent months grabbing headlines by attacking drag queens is now represented by one in Congress.
In the same Wikipedia article, he appeared to claim he was an actor on the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana.
Representative Bill Foster (D-IL), an award-winning physicist who holds a PhD from Harvard, trolled Santos today in a way that powerfully demonstrated the current difference between the two parties. In response to the news that House speaker Kevin McCarthy has put Santos on the House Science Committee, Foster tweeted: “As the only recipient of the Wilson Prize for High-Energy Particle Accelerator Physics serving in Congress, it can get lonely. Not anymore!... I’m thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal—the top prize in Mathematics—for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers.”
Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) has celebrated his elevation to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee with a flurry of requests to the Department of Justice for information about the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the investigation of the events of January 6, 2021, in which Jordan himself was implicated. But a response today from the DOJ reminded Jordan that the department could not share information about ongoing investigations and that it would need clear information about what, exactly, he hoped to investigate rather than blanket demands. Then Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte assured him that the department “stands ready to provide expertise as the Committee considers potential legislation,” an apparent suggestion that Jordan recall what his constituents elected him to do.
“The Administration’s stonewalling must stop,” Jordan tweeted after receiving the letter, but it is notable that Jordan himself refused to answer a subpoena from the bipartisan House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. McCarthy ignored one too.
The White House today followed up on McCarthy’s posturing over the debt ceiling with a statement that while Biden “looks forward to meeting with Speaker McCarthy to discuss a range of issues,” “raising the raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos. Congress has always done it, and the President expects them to do their duty once again. That is not negotiable.”
It went on to say that while the president looked forward to learning more about the Republicans’ plans to cut Social Security and Medicare and impose a 30% national sales tax, he was interested in telling McCarthy and his allies about strengthening retirement plans, investing in key priorities, and funding it all by “making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.”
“We are going to have a clear debate on two different visions for the country—one that cuts Social Security, and one that protects it,” the White House said, “and the President is happy to discuss that with the Speaker.”
Finally, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in Africa for a ten-day visit during which she will urge greater connection between African countries and the U.S., hoping to build stronger ties with the continent than it develops with China or Russia. Africa has about 30% of the world’s reserves of minerals that are crucial to helping the modern world transition to green energy. So far, the Biden administration’s offer of partnership appears attractive, especially in the face of what appears to be a more exploitive model exercised by China and Russia. Both countries have sent representatives to travel around the continent while Yellen is there.
—
Notes:
Lisa Rubin @lawofrubyThis morning, Trump withdrew his Florida lawsuit against NY Attorney General Tish James, a move many saw as his Hail Mary bid to end the AG's $250 million civil lawsuit against the Trump organization and various individuals, including Trump himself. The question is why? 1/ 
3:34 PM ∙ Jan 20, 20236,639Likes1,188Retweets
Congressman Bill Foster @RepBillFosterI'm thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal - the top prize in Mathematics - for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers. 
axios.comRep. George Santos gets House committee seats despite blowback for major lies on resumeBoth Republicans and Democrats have called on Santos to resign.2:52 AM ∙ Jan 20, 202320,829Likes3,260Retweetshttps://www.axios.com/2023/01/19/attendance-house-republicans-proxy-voting-mccarthy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/18/greg-steube-injuries-fall/
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/19/janet-yellen-africa-speech-senegal
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/20/politics/justice-department-jim-jordan/index.html
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000185-d087-dde8-a9af-d4afeba70000
January 19, 2023
January 19, 2023
As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned would happen today, the U.S. hit the debt ceiling, although it can avoid default for a few months with what Yellen calls “extraordinary measures.” These consist primarily of suspending government pension investments, which will have to be made whole again when the ceiling has been increased or suspended.
Most of the media discussions of the crisis this morning focused on whether the Democrats would agree to negotiate with the hard-right Republicans, who want cuts to domestic spending before they will agree to raise the debt ceiling to access money that Congress has already appropriated.
It jumped out at me that virtually no one was talking about the fact that there are two ways to deal with unwanted deficits: cutting expenditures, yes, but also…raising revenue. Indeed, raising revenue to pay for appropriations has historically been the first option. And yet, since 1981, the Republicans have made cutting taxes the centerpiece of their economic policy, arguing that putting more money in the hands of the “makers,” rather than the “takers,” will enable those makers to invest in production and hire more workers, thus expanding the economy.
But forty years of so-called supply-side economics have demonstrated that this system does not, in fact, create extraordinary economic growth. Instead, it moves wealth upward, really quite dramatically, and creates deficits. Indeed, one of the reasons we need an increase in the debt ceiling is that the 2017 Trump tax cuts, especially the cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, dramatically increased the deficit without promoting growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2018 that the tax cuts would increase the deficit by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.
It seems like repealing those 2017 tax cuts, at least, would be factoring into discussions of addressing the deficit.
Today the Supreme Court released a statement about the investigation it was conducting into the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last May. That decision overturned Roe v. Wade, which recognized the constitutional right to abortion, and provoked a firestorm when it was published in Politico on May 2. The court vowed to find the leaker.
At the time, right-wing activists blamed their opponents for the leak, but pro-choice observers noted that the leak was more likely to have come from the right as part of an attempt to make sure the justices felt locked in to what was a more extreme position than some of them had indicated they wanted to take. Indeed, the final decision did not significantly change the leaked draft.
In November, news broke that the Reverend Rob Schenck, once an antiabortion activist, had told Chief Justice John Roberts that he learned in advance of another decision important to evangelicals, the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision denying that employee health plans had to include contraception. In that case, the information came to him after a colleague had dinner with Justice Samuel Alito and his wife. Alito wrote the Hobby Lobby decision. He also wrote the Dobbs decision.
That information suggests that any investigators eager to get to the bottom of the leak should have talked to the justices themselves, but it is unclear if anyone did. According to the statement, this investigation focused on “Court personnel—temporary (law clerks) and permanent employees—who had or may have had access to the draft opinion….” The report implies that the leak came from an employee, although employees voluntarily turned over their phones, which showed nothing relevant. An examination of their computer searches also turned up nothing “suspicious or relevant.” Each employee signed a sworn affidavit, under threat of perjury, that they did not leak the decision, although some admitted they had told their spouse what it said.
After 126 interviews with 97 employees, the report says, the investigation turned up no leads on who the leaker was, although it did establish that the leak did not come from an external hack of the court’s electronic systems.
Although the source of the leak remains unknown, right-wing figures continue to imply it came from an opponent of the decision. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeted, “Someone ought to resign for this,” and former president Trump called for throwing the reporter who published the story in jail until they identified the leaker. “Arrest the reporter, publisher, editor—you’ll get your answer fast.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded: “The freedom of the press is part of the bedrock of American democracy…. Calling for egregious abuses of power in order to suppress the Constitutional rights of reporters is an insult to the rule of law and undermines fundamental American values and traditions.”
Also today, Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida hammered Trump, his lawyer Alina Habba, and her law firm Habba Madaio & Associates with a bill of $937,989.39 for attorneys’ fees and costs after they filed a lawsuit the court found to be “completely frivolous” and a bad-faith use of the court system.
The lawsuit, filed last March over the “Russia Hoax,” alleged that Hillary Clinton and a number of the other people Trump generally attacked in his rallies had “orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hope of destroying his life, his political career, and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.”
The lawsuit was dismissed and the defendants filed for sanctions. “This case should never have been brought,” the judge wrote. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.” The judge laid out the “telltale signs” of Trump’s “playbook”: “Provocative and boastful rhetoric; a political narrative carried over from rallies; attacks on political opponents and the news media; disregard for legal principles and precedent; and fundraising and payments to lawyers from political action committees.”
Judge Middlebrooks wrote: “Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative. A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm.” The sanctions against Trump and Habba were intended to discourage similar behavior in the future.
Also today, in the ongoing saga of Representative George Santos (R-NY), a drag queen in Brazil has recently identified Santos as drag queen Kitara Ravache, who performed in Brazil about ten years ago. Although Brazilian drag queen Eula Rochard has provided pictures, Santos calls the allegations “categorically false…. The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results,” he said.
Finally, today, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced a constitutional amendment to the House to overturn the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates for dark money to swamp our elections. The proposed amendment protects freedom of the press but permits Congress and the states to impose nonpartisan regulations on political fundraising, support public campaign financing, and “distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.”
I am struck today by how language—its silences, obfuscations, truths, lies, and hopes—shapes our world.
—
Notes:
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Debt-Limit-Letter-to-Congress-20230119-McCarthy.pdf
Mueller, She Wrote @MuellerSheWroteThe extra fun part is that trump ALSO sued Tish James. Once again, he filed in Florida hoping to get Aileen Cannon. But once again, it was assigned to Middlebrooks! Once that frivolous suit is dismissed, I expect Tish James will file sanctions, too. 3/2:32 AM ∙ Jan 20, 20234,760Likes405Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html
https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/Dobbs_Public_Report_January_19_2023.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/14/trump-legacy-national-debt-increasee/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.302.0.pdf
https://abcnews.go.com/US/santos-lauded-floridas-dont-gay-bill-denies-claims/story?id=96534392
Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiffBREAKING: We've introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and the irresponsible SCOTUS decisions that came before it. Unrestricted dark money has no place in our elections or democracy. We need to return power to people. Once and for all. 
4:14 PM ∙ Jan 19, 202354,298Likes12,933Retweets
January 18, 2023
January 18, 2023
One of the promises House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made to the extremist members of the Republican conference to win his position was that he would let them bring the so-called Fair Tax Act to the House floor for a vote. On January 8, Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) introduced the measure into Congress.
The measure repeals all existing income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate and gift taxes, replacing them with a flat national sales tax of 30% on all purchased goods, rents, and services (which its advocates nonsensically call a 23% tax because, as Bloomberg opinion writer Matthew Yglesias explains their thinking: “if something sells for $100 plus $30 in tax, then it’s a 23% tax—because $30 is 23% of $130”). The measure abolishes the Internal Revenue Service, leaving it up to the states to administer the tax.
The bill says the measure will “promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity.” But a 30% sales tax on everything doesn’t seem to do much for fairness or economic opportunity for all, since it would, of course, hit Americans with less money to spend far harder than it would Americans with more money to spend. And the end of income, gift, and estate taxes would be a windfall for the wealthy.
Such a bill is not going to pass this Congress, and if it did, President Biden would not sign it. Two days after Carter introduced the measure, Biden said to the press: “National sales tax, that’s a great idea. It would raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.” He promised he would never agree to any such legislation.
But the measure is illuminating. It explicitly rejects the position, and the principles, of the original Republican Party.
Members of the Republican Party invented the U.S. income tax during the Civil War, and they created the precursor to the IRS to collect it. To find money to fight the war, they raised tariffs on common products but immediately turned to the novel idea of an income tax, and a graduated one at that, to make sure that “the burdens will be more equalized on all classes of the community, more especially on those who are able to bear them,” as Senator William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME) put it.
Justin Smith Morrill (R-VT) agreed. “The weight [of] taxation must be distributed equally,” he said, “Not upon each man an equal amount, but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.”
The Republicans then quite deliberately constructed a national system for collecting the new taxes. In the midst of the Civil War, they urged their colleagues to imagine what would happen if a disloyal state were permitted to manage the collection itself. A Democratic legislature could simply refuse, and the government might perish for lack of funds to support the troops. The government had a right to “demand” 99 percent of a man’s property for an urgent necessity, Morrill said. When the public required it, “the property of the people…belongs to the Government.”
Today’s Republicans are taking a position opposite to the one that the men who formed the Republican Party did during the Civil War. They want to get rid of the income tax and put state governments in charge of the nation’s revenue system. Wording in the measure suggests that this change is because state governments have expertise in sales taxes, but it is no accident that the plan dismantles the federal system that Civil War Republicans accurately noted gives Americans “a sense of personal responsibility in the safety and stability of the nation.”
This radical tax bill strikes a blow for states’ rights, much as the southern leaders the original Republicans stood against did in the 1860s. It is far easier for a minority to take over a state and impose its will on a majority there than it is to do the same at the national level. And Republicans are definitely working to cement their control in the states.
In The Nation yesterday, Joan Walsh pulled together some of the many stories of voter suppression that have come lately from Republican-dominated states. Former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler recently noted that her state’s 2021 law cutting way back on mail-in ballots helped elect Republicans: Walsh points out that mail-in ballots dropped by 81% between 2020 and 2022, and Black voter turnout dropped.
Robert Spindell, an election commissioner in Wisconsin who was one of Trump’s fake electors in 2020, wrote an email to about 1700 people saying that Republicans “can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.” Senator Ron Johnson won reelection in that race over Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes, who is from Milwaukee, by about 27,000 votes.
In Florida, Missouri, and Ohio, Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder for citizens to use ballot initiatives, as progressive policies like Medicaid expansion, the legalization of marijuana, hikes in the minimum wage, abortion rights, and redistricting by independent commissions have all turned out to be popular.
And on Monday, in New Mexico, Solomon Peña, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the state legislature last year, was arrested for allegedly hiring men to shoot at the homes of four Democratic elected officials.
By taking control of the states, Republicans can impose their will. Centering taxation there, rather than the federal government, is one more way to try to make people conform to their worldview.
Tucked inside the proposed tax measure is broad government oversight of a state’s poorer citizens. It provides an option for “qualified” families to get a rebate, but each member of the household must be registered annually with the state. Every member of the family over the age of 21 must certify in writing that all family members have been listed, that they are all legal residents of the U.S., and that none “were incarcerated on the family determination date.” Incarceration is defined as anyone “incarcerated in a local, State, or Federal jail, prison, mental hospital, or other institution.”
This measure will not pass in this Congress, but it is striking proof that the modern Republican Party has abandoned not only its original principles, but even its more recent philosophy of “freedom” from an intrusive government.
—
Notes:
https://www.wpr.org/election-results-wisconsin-senate-ron-johnson-mandela-barnes
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/georgia-republicans-kelly-loeffler/
https://buddycarter.house.gov/uploadedfiles/text_fairtax_act_118th.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/17/1149464953/new-mexico-shooting-politicians-solomon-pena
January 17, 2023
January 17, 2023
Today the bill for the elevation of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to House speaker began to come due. McCarthy promised the far-right members of his conference committee seats and far more power in Congress to persuade them to vote for him.
Now they are collecting.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was removed from committee assignments in the last Congress for her racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as her encouragement of violence against Democrats, has a spot on the Homeland Security Committee. Such spots are usually filled by those with experience in either the military or intelligence, neither of which she has. And security is an odd fit for her: voters in her district tried to get her disqualified from running in 2022 because of her participation in the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.
Greene has not just that plum assignment, but another on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. That committee manages investigations and has emerged as a coveted spot for the far right as its members prepare to go after figures in the Biden administration. It now includes right-wing figures Greene, Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Scott Perry (R-PA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Gary Palmer (R-AL), all of whom refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden’s 2020 election.
Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who was removed from committees two years ago after threatening Democratic lawmakers on social media, is now back on the Natural Resources committee. He also is now on the Oversight Committee.
The elevation of newer representatives over their more senior colleagues caused hard feelings. Tara Palmeri of Puck reported today that Vern Buchanan (R-FL), who was in line to become the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, confronted McCarthy for putting McCarthy ally Jason Smith (R-MO) in the spot instead. “You f*cked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me,” Buchanan told McCarthy.
There were rumors that Buchanan would consider resigning over the slight, and McCarthy cannot afford to lose any Republicans. His desperation is clear in his embrace of George Santos (R-NY), whom McCarthy appointed to two committees: the House Committee on Small Business and the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Santos is facing pressure to resign as his campaign lies appear to include shady financing.
But in an op-ed today at NBC News, Santos’s fellow New York representative Democrat Ritchie Torres noted: The presence of this man in Congress is a danger to our democracy and national security, a disgrace to this institution, and a major distraction from the pressing problems that are far more worthy of our time, energy and attention,” but the Republican Party will not disavow him because “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs every vote he can get, and he needs George Santos to remain in power.”
House Republicans also appear to be prepared to move forward with an impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. This is part of the Republican focus on applications for asylum at the southern border despite their recent refusal to consider updating legislation, as Mayorkas has repeatedly asked them to. Only once before has a Cabinet secretary been impeached—in 1876—and he was acquitted by the Senate. Two others resigned before impeachment votes were taken, the most recent in 1932.
Greene has her sights set even higher. She called today for the impeachment of President Biden, advising him on Twitter to “resign now.”
McCarthy also agreed that he would not agree to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress cuts $130 billion in spending for next year, a demand that amounts to taking the nation and the world economy hostage to overturn measures that Congress has already agreed to. Once again, the debt ceiling is not about future spending, it is about paying the debts Congress has already incurred. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling means the United States will default, wreaking havoc on international markets and our own global standing.
But the right wing appears willing to burn down the global economy and to destroy our place in it to impose their will on the country.
Emboldened, the far right is already insisting it will not raise the debt ceiling. Today, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who was involved in the planning for January 6, tweeted, “We cannot raise the debt ceiling. Democrats have carelessly spent our taxpayer money and devalued our currency. They’ve made their bed, so they must lie in it.”
In fact, the national debt skyrocketed under Republican president Donald Trump even before the pandemic, thanks to the big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated would increase deficits by almost $2 trillion over eleven years. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the debt had grown to $22 trillion. Trump called it a crisis, but his budget that year increased the debt to $23.2 trillion. The CBO warned that the U.S. had never seen deficits so large in a time of high employment.
And then the coronavirus hit, and the debt jumped to $27.75 trillion.
At 5.2% of GDP, the growth of the deficit under Trump was third largest in our history, behind only that under Presidents George W. Bush—who launched two unfunded wars after passing a tax cut and thus presided over deficit growth of 11.7%—and Abraham Lincoln, whose Treasury had to invent a way to pay for a civil war out of whole cloth, resulting in the deficit growing by 9.4% of GDP.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the Treasury will hit the debt ceiling on Thursday but can extend extraordinary measures to keep functioning until June. McCarthy has called for Democrats to talk with him about a plan that will permit an increase in the debt limit while cutting Medicare, Social Security, and federal agencies.
Biden and administration officials say they will not negotiate with the right-wing Republicans who are trying to get their way not through normal legislative channels, but by holding the government—and the global economy—hostage.
—
Notes:
Victor Shi @Victorshi2020NEW: House Republicans just assigned members to the Oversight Committee, which will oversee investigations. Get this: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Scott Perry, Byron Donalds, & Gary Palmer are on the Committee. They all denied the 2020 election results. Maddening.8:54 PM ∙ Jan 17, 202311,570Likes4,572Retweetshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/14/trump-legacy-national-debt-increasee/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/17/biden-house-republicans-debt-ceiling-00078166
https://puck.news/feeling-the-vern/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/21-mccarthy-holdouts-got-committee-assignments-rcna66152
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/17/george-santos-committee-assignments-congress
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/george-santos-new-york-colleague-congress-danger-rcna65794
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dem-lawmaker-mccarthy-is-well-aware-he-needs-george-santos
January 16, 2023
January 16, 2023
A quiet day today, and a quiet night tonight. Would love to predict a quiet week ahead, too, but that seems to me unlikely.
Still, let’s take our calm when we can get it.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
You hear sometimes that, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, America has no heroes left.
When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings, choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself, in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.
It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.
It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold print, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.
It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.
Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.
None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that, when they had to, they did what was right.
On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.
After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”
Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.
He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”
People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.
Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.
Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2023.
—
Notes:
Dr. King’s final speech:
January 14, 2023
January 14, 2023
Today is officially Ratification Day, the anniversary of the day in 1784 when members of the Confederation Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War and formally recognized the independence of the United States from Great Britain.
It almost didn’t happen.
On September 3, 1783, negotiators John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay for the United States, and David Hartley for Great Britain, had signed the document establishing the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.
British officer Lord Cornwallis’s surrender of 8,000 men to General George Washington on October 19, 1781, after the Battle of Yorktown had made it clear that Britain would have to agree to the independence of its former colonies, but the representatives of those colonies didn’t have a lot to bargain with to shape the peace in their favor. What they did have was the ability to play different European powers off against each other, for the American Revolution, after all, was only a piece of a global conflict that included Great Britain, France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, Jamaica, Gibraltar, and India.
Peace negotiations began in Paris in April 1782 and stretched on through the summer and into the fall. The United States were allied with France, which in 1778, just two years after the Declaration of Independence, had come to the rescue of the fledgling nation in its struggle with Great Britain. Spain and the Dutch Republic, too, sided with the Americans, hoping they could carve their way out from under King George, thus weakening Great Britain and enabling the European nations to take more global territory.
With all these parties involved, negotiations were slow and sticky, especially as Spain wanted to continue to fight until it could capture Gibraltar from the British. (The Great Siege of Gibraltar, which took more than three and a half years, was actually the largest battle of the war in terms of combatants.) At the same time, French foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, was frustrated with the continuing cost of the American war and, in fall 1782, proposed a plan that would offer independence to the United States but offer Spain something it would value as much as Gibraltar: more land in North America. Essentially, the plan would keep the new nation hemmed in where it already was, dividing the land around it between Britain and Spain.
U.S. negotiator John Jay, who as minister to Spain during the war had been instrumental in convincing Spain to loan money to the United States, immediately turned to the British to negotiate without France and Spain. British prime minister Lord Shelburne saw an opportunity to split the new country off from France and set it up as a trading partner until—as would most likely happen—its radical new government fell apart and Britain could reassert control.
The document was a testament to the negotiating skills of the U.S. team. They got independence, of course, as well as a promise “to forget all past Misunderstandings and Differences that have unhappily interrupted the good Correspondence and Friendship which they mutually wish to restore.” All prisoners of war would be repatriated, no reparations would be demanded, and state legislatures were urged to provide restitution for the confiscated lands of British subjects (a provision that the U.S. government had no power to enforce). The treaty left Britain in possession of Canada but threw out Vergennes’s suggestion and established the western boundary of the new nation at the Mississippi River, although it left the northern and southern boundaries of the new nation vague. It then gave both Americans and British the right to transport goods along that watery highway. It also gave the United States exceedingly valuable fishing rights on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
But then it said: “The solemn Ratifications of the present Treaty expedited in good & due Form shall be exchanged between the contracting Parties in the Space of Six Months or sooner if possible to be computed from the Day of the Signature of the present Treaty.”
That is, Congress had six months from the September 3 signing to get the treaty across the Atlantic Ocean, ratify the agreement, and get it back across the ocean to England. The voyages alone could take as much as two months each way.
That put pressure on Congress to act quickly, but the Congress that represented the United States in that era was organized under the Articles of Confederation, a weak and loose agreement of “a firm league of friendship” that the thirteen original states adopted on November 15, 1777. That national government had little power, and those lawmakers interested in real power worked in their own states to build new governments.
Congress was supposed to convene at the Maryland State House in November, but it was a terribly cold winter, and delegates trickled in. As late as January 12, only seven of the thirteen states were represented, and Congress needed nine states to ratify the treaty. Finally, a delegate from Connecticut arrived. Then, on January 13, Richard Beresford of South Carolina, who had been ill in Philadelphia, finally made it to the gathering. Congress had a quorum, and it approved the treaty on January 14.
“By the United States in Congress assembled, A PROCLAMATION,” read the document the Congress had printed to spread the news of the treaty. It reproduced the terms of the agreement, then said, “AND we the United States in Congress assembled, having seen and duly considered the definitive articles aforesaid, did…approve, ratify and confirm the same.”
Seeming to recognize the extraordinary significance of their actions, the congressmen continued: “[W]e have thought proper…to notify…all the good citizens of these United States…that reverencing those stipulations entered into on their behalf, under the authority of that federal bond by which their existence as an independent people is bound up together, and is known and acknowledged by the nations of the world, and with that good faith which is every man’s surest guide…they carry into effect the said…articles, and every clause and sentence thereof, sincerely, strictly, and completely.”
The document was signed by the president of the Congress, his excellency Thomas Mifflin, a name few people now remember, for while the long, difficult, and meticulous negotiations and then the fitful energies of Congress had achieved an agreement that the former colonies were now independent, it would not be until the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 that the new nation finally began yet another long difficult journey to become the United States of America.
[Treaty of Paris by Benjamin West (1783), Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware, image in public domain. This is the American delegation; the British delegation refused to pose for the painter, who could not complete the work.]
Notes:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris
https://www.loc.gov/resource/bdsdcc.09001
—
January 13, 2023
January 13, 2023 (Friday)
Yesterday, Russia released an American whom it had held since April in Kaliningrad, a slice of land held by Russia between Poland and Lithuania. Taylor Dudley had been backpacking in Europe and gone to Poland for a music festival. “At some point,” as accounts have it, he crossed into Kaliningrad and was picked up by Russian authorities. The State Department told reporters that it could not comment on the release because of a law giving control of information to the individual involved, rather than to the State Department.
Former New Mexico congress member and governor Bill Richardson, who now focuses on negotiating for the freedom of Americans detained overseas, said: “It is significant that despite the current environment between our two countries, the Russian authorities did the right thing by releasing Taylor today.”
In other good news, between 2012 and 2019 the rates of cervical cancer dropped an astonishing 65% among women in their early 20s. This is the first cohort to be eligible for vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV). It appears that enough people have been vaccinated to begin to offer herd immunity, as rates have dropped among unvaccinated women as well.
New numbers yesterday show that falling gas prices and airfares meant falling inflation rates last month. Overall, inflation is slowing down significantly, although rising wages are among the factors still driving greater costs.
In other economic news, the federal budget deficit fell significantly in 2022. In 2021 it was $2.6 trillion; in 2022 it was $1.4 trillion. The deficit is the difference between how much the government takes in and how much it spends in a year; it is not the same thing as the debt (although it adds to the debt), which is the total amount the government owes. Right now the debt is above $31 trillion, and it has increased under both Republicans and Democrats (it grew by about 40% under Trump).
The Republicans now in charge of the House of Representatives seem to have spent their time so far voting on issues important to their base and taking “own-the-libs” stands on Twitter, but they are about to have to prove they can govern responsibly. Today, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the United States will hit the debt ceiling on Thursday, January 19, and urged congressional leaders to increase the debt limit or suspend it altogether.
The so-called debt ceiling is a weird holdover from World War I when Congress got tired of specifying the instruments the Treasury should use to raise money and instead just said it could borrow money up to a certain amount. It is not about future spending; it is about paying bills Congress has already run up. But while Congress raises that limit consistently when a Republican president is in office, Republican congress members frequently threaten to send the country into default when a Democrat is in office in hopes of forcing cuts to policies they don’t like.
This is playing with fire. As Yellen wrote, “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”
McCarthy apparently promised the extremists in his conference that he would not agree to a clean debt ceiling increase and would instead demand cuts in spending before agreeing to any such increase.
Tonight, Jeff Stein, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer of the Washington Post reported that the House Republicans are preparing an emergency plan to breach the debt limit. It would enable the Treasury to continue to pay interest on the debt but not to pay other government debts owed to citizens, “things such as Medicaid, food safety inspections, border control and air traffic control, to name just a handful of thousands of programs.”
The government spends about $5 trillion a year, of which revenue covers about 80%. The idea is to cut off that other 20%, but the programs the Republicans are most likely to cut are ones that the American people like, want, and need. An obvious way to make up the difference between revenue and expenditures would be to increase revenue by stopping tax evasion and raising taxes on the very wealthy. This the Republicans are adamant they will not do, preferring instead to cut services.
Aside from being logistically impossible and politically suicidal, their attack on the public credit amounts to holding the federal government hostage, a tactic the country firmly rejected in 1866 when it wrote in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Yellen told McCarthy that the Treasury can operate until June with the same sort of extraordinary measures it has used in the past. This includes, among other things, raiding government pension accounts, but those must be made whole again when this crisis is resolved.
The House Republicans will have to prove they can manage this crisis. So far, they are not off to a stellar start, grabbing headlines for, among other things, Representative George Santos (R-NY), who lied about most aspects of his biography during his campaign. Tonight, Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times broke the story that a number of Republicans knew of his lies but declined to challenge him. Fandos also noted that some of them wondered if Santos’s marriage to a woman when he is openly gay might have been “for immigration purposes,” which seems to be a delicate way to allude to a so-called “green card marriage,” which is a federal crime.
And yet, Santos seems to have found a home in the Republican Party by siding with the extremists: yesterday, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) interviewed Santos on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s podcast. Gaetz defended Santos as a “fighter” who is being unfairly attacked.
Former president Trump is also in the news today as Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan fined two entities within the Trump Organization the maximum penalty of $1.6 million for a tax fraud scheme that led to their conviction on 17 counts last month. The big deal here is less the fine than that a conviction and penalty will make it hard for the corporation to get bank loans in the future. The Trump Organization says it will appeal.
Another lawsuit is also causing trouble for Trump. His sworn deposition in E. Jean Carroll’s rape suit against him has been released. It shows him saying that he doesn’t know Carroll, that he thinks she’s “mentally sick,” and that “she loved it.” Carroll has sued Trump under the New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which provides a yearlong window for lawsuits over sexual assault that had previously been outside the statute of limitations. Trump tried to argue that the law violates the state constitution by depriving him of his rights of due process. Today a judge dismissed his claim as “absurd.”
Trump’s ally Jair Bolsonaro continues to be in the news as well. Late today, Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes approved prosecutors’ request to investigate the former president for his role in inspiring the January 8 attack on Brazil’s presidential offices, congress, and supreme court. Bolsonaro spent much of his campaign and its aftermath claiming the election had been stolen, and he flew to Florida just before his term ended, leaving his successor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to take office without the traditional symbols of peaceful transfer of power.
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/world/europe/russia-taylor-dudley-veteran-released.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/12/business/december-cpi-inflation-report
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-13/good-news-us-cancer-death-rate-has-plunged
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/business/us-deficit-falls-2022.html
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1188
https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-calls-on-congress-to-raise-debt-limit-11673630279
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/01/13/debt-ceiling-gop-plan/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/santos-finally-finds-some-friends
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/13/trump-carroll-rape-deposition/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-riot-investigation.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/business/economy/debt-limit-us-economy.html
January 12, 2023
January 12, 2023
After news broke yesterday that President Joe Biden’s lawyers had found a second batch of documents in his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Attorney General Merrick Garland today appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents. After law school, Hur clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and then served as special assistant to Christopher Wray—then an assistant attorney general, now FBI director—before being appointed by former president Trump as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Since he left office in February 2021, he has been in private practice.
Accepting the post, Hur said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
The appointment of a special counsel seemed inevitable considering what Garland called “extraordinary circumstances”—likely a reference to the fact that former president Trump is being criminally investigated for his own handling of documents marked classified—and it serves to reinforce the idea that the Department of Justice treats everyone the same. This is a good thing.
But it presents a problem for MAGA Republicans. Unable to attack Biden for having documents marked classified in his possession without also faulting Trump, Republicans have tried to suggest that Biden was being treated differently than Trump is. The appointment of a special counsel undermines that. It also takes away from House Republicans the publicity they could get by investigating the issue themselves. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this morning that he did not “think there needs to be a special prosecutor,” and that Congress should conduct its own investigation.
This evening, Republicans appear to have settled on the talking point that Hur is tainted by his time at the Department of Justice under Wray—although Wray was appointed to the FBI directorship by Trump—and that his appointment is further evidence of the “political weaponization” of the FBI and the Justice Department.
(Just to be clear: people writing about these cases keep referring to “documents marked classified” rather than “classified documents” because classification status can change, as Trump argued when he said he had declassified the materials found in his possession despite their markings. It’s awkward phrasing, I know, but it marks an important distinction.)
So far, anyway, Biden’s possession of documents marked classified appears very different from Trump’s. Biden’s team offered up to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the information that Biden had documents in his possession, has apparently been zealous about searching for them, and is apparently cooperating with the Justice Department.
Here’s the story Garland laid out today: On November 2, Biden’s lawyers found a batch of documents from the time of the Obama-Biden administration when they were cleaning out Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the Washington, D.C., think tank where Biden worked after his time as vice president. They immediately contacted NARA, which took possession of the documents the next morning. On November 4, NARA’s inspector general contacted the Justice Department to notify it of the document exchange, and on November 9 the FBI began to assess whether Biden had illegally mishandled classified information.
According to journalist Matthew Miller, classified documents often get taken from government facilities by accident. Those errors are reported, the documents recovered, and a damage assessment made to determine whether further action needs to be taken, all of which took place here.
On November 14, Garland assigned U.S. Attorney John Lausch, a Trump appointee, to consider whether Garland should appoint a special counsel. Meanwhile, Biden’s team had continued to search for more documents, and on December 20, Biden’s lawyer told Lausch they had found more documents with classification markings at Biden’s Wilmington home. On January 5, Lausch told Garland he thought it was a good idea to appoint a special counsel.
Finally, on January 12, Biden’s lawyer told Lausch that Biden’s lawyers had found one more document, apparently in his personal library, but that a thorough review had turned up nothing else. This afternoon, the White House counsel said: “We have cooperated closely with the Justice Department throughout its review, and we will continue that cooperation with the Special Counsel.”
While there is still a great deal we don’t know about either case, there are obvious and key differences between Biden’s and Trump’s handling of documents.
In Trump’s case, NARA repeatedly asked him simply to return the documents it knew he had. He refused for a year, then let NARA staff recover 15 boxes that included documents marked classified, withholding others. After a subpoena, his lawyers turned over more documents and signed an affidavit saying that was all of them. But of course it wasn’t: the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago recovered still more documents marked classified. Even now, none of Trump’s lawyers will certify that they have turned over all the documents they are required to.
Trump is apparently being investigated for obstruction and for violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to withhold documents from a government official authorized to take them.
On his social media network today, Trump wrote: “Merrick Garland has to immediately end Special Counsel investigation into anything related to me because I did everything right, and appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden who hates Biden as much as Jack Smith hates me.” In a different post, he called Smith an “unfair savage.”
Garland’s appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith came only after Trump declared he was running for president in 2024, an announcement Trump likely made because he thought it would shield him from potential indictments. But news is coming daily that Smith’s subpoenas have been far ranging and widely spread, and that those who have testified before the grand jury found the questioning “intense.”
Meanwhile, arguments began today in the trial of five Proud Boys for their actions associated with the events of January 6, 2021. This is the third trial for seditious conspiracy associated with those events. Nine indicted Oath Keepers had to be broken into two groups because there was no courtroom in Washington, D.C., big enough for all of them. In the first Oath Keepers trial, a jury found five of the defendants guilty of various crimes, and two of them guilty of seditious conspiracy. The second Oath Keepers trial is going on right now.
The Proud Boys defendants are charged with a variety of charges, including seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to prevent federal officers from performing their duties.
Roger Parloff of Lawfare, a legal correspondent who is covering the January 6 cases closely, writes that this trial “could well be the most important and informative of all.” The Justice Department today argued that the Proud Boys led the attack on the Capitol, while defense attorneys in turn argued that their clients were being used as “scapegoats” for Trump. “He is the one who unleashed that mob at the Capitol on January 6,” the lawyer for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said.
—
Notes:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-special-counsel-robert-k-hur
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/garland-biden-documents
Aaron Rupar @atruparcheckmate, libs 
6:05 PM ∙ Jan 12, 20233,284Likes277Retweets
Matthew Miller @matthewamillerWorth noting what former government officials have said since Mar a Lago raid: classified docs get mistakenly removed from government facilities fairly frequently. You report it, turn in the docs, the government does a damage assessment, and that is the end of it. OR…10:51 PM ∙ Jan 9, 20232,455Likes536Retweetshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/08/trump-contempt-mar-a-lago-records/
Roger Parloff @rparloffduring presidential debate biden challenged trump to condemn PBs. trump told PBs to "stand back and stand by." [playing video] "somebody needs to do something about Antifa." battlelines drawn. trump for PBs. Biden for Antifa. PB org not on trial today. ... /564:35 PM ∙ Jan 12, 202363Likes11Retweetshttps://www.lawfareblog.com/proud-boys-liveblog
‘
Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFastNew talking point just dropped. Also I no way endorse anyone or anything at all ever. 
11:34 PM ∙ Jan 12, 2023265Likes58Retweetshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-trial-live-updates/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/02/oath-keepers-convicted-00071669
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/12/doj-proud-boys-jan-6-case-00077719
https://www.thedailybeast.com/special-counsel-may-end-up-protecting-biden-admin-from-gop-witch-hunts
January 11, 2023
January 11, 2023
Watching the news today, I suspect I am not always going to report all the twists and turns of the House Republicans for the next two years. They campaigned in the midterm elections on so-called kitchen-table issues—inflation, primarily—but upon taking control of the House, they instantly reverted back to the culture wars that are their bread and butter. This is largely performative for their base, since the Democratic-led Senate will never pass their extreme measures.
On Monday evening the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to cut funding for the Internal Revenue Service that the previous Congress included in the Inflation Reduction Act, funding intending to add workers to clear a big backlog of unprocessed returns, overhaul technology, and improve customer service. Republicans insist that funding the IRS will send bureaucrats to hassle ordinary Americans, but in fact, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has directed that none of the new resources will be used to increase audit rates for small businesses or households with an annual income below $400,000.
If the House measure were to become law—which it will not because the Senate will not pass it—it would add significantly to the deficit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the Republicans’ bill would increase the deficit by nearly $115 billion over ten years.
The Biden administration has focused on tax evasion among the wealthy and has sought since the beginning of Biden’s term to crack down on tax cheats.
The administration responded to the House measure with uncharacteristic saltiness. “With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multi-billion dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe,” responded the Office of Management and Budget.
“That’s their agenda; not lowering costs or cutting taxes for hard working Americans—as President Biden has consistently advocated. If the President were presented with H.R. 23—or any other bill that enables the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to cheat on their taxes, while honest and hard-working Americans are left to pay the tab—he would veto it.”
Today the House followed up on its IRS bill with two antiabortion measures. With only three Democrats joining the Republicans, they adopted a resolution condemning attacks on “pro-life facilities, groups and churches.” Democrats pointed out that abortion providers and women seeking to obtain abortions have suffered deadly attacks, including the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller of Kansas.
Mini Timmaraju, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America said: “If you’re going to put a resolution out on violence against churches and fake pregnancy centers, why are we not also addressing violence against abortion providers and violence in general?”
The second measure is called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and requires doctors to care for infants who survive an abortion. Opponents of the measure point out that such a scenario is exceedingly rare and that doctors are already required to do what the bill requires. The new measure adds new penalties for doctors.
The first of these measures is not a law; the second will not pass the Senate. Still, both are much less extreme than what Republicans planned to offer when they expected the 2022 elections to go their way.
A week ago, Bloomberg’s editors blamed the Republican Party’s dysfunction on the fact that the party has ignored public policy. “After a campaign in which culture-war issues took the place of an actual governing agenda—and in which the GOP nominated numerous on-message candidates who were clearly unfit for office—House Republicans have found themselves in power without a plan,” they wrote.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin today called out the elephant in the room when she wrote that “there are no moderate House Republicans.” The positions of the extremist Republicans in the fight over House speaker often made people talk of the rest of the party as “moderate,” but in fact, as Rubin points out, they all supported Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for speaker, and McCarthy is an election denier. They also voted for the extremist rules package that threatens to bring the country to the unthinkable: a financial default.
Rubin pointed out that with the House as closely divided as it is, a few of these so-called moderates could defeat the radicals and force the party closer to the mainstream. So far, though, they have shown no inclination to do so.
But there has been a sign that a new crop of Republicans might someday demand the party clean itself up (which doesn’t sound like much, but a fight against corruption was what launched Theodore Roosevelt’s political career in 1884). Today, four new Republican representatives from New York called on Representative George Santos (R-NY) to resign. During his campaign, Santos lied about his education, work experience, and also apparently about his finances, which could involve him in legal trouble.
Republican officials in New York’s Nassau County also demanded Santos resign, saying: “This scandalous behavior does damage to all of our reputations because there is a part of our public that is cynical about politicians and public officials.”
But Republican House leadership, including McCarthy and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who is the third most powerful Republican in the House and was a key endorser of Santos, have stayed silent. For his part, Santos vows to stay in office.
As I say, I may well not follow all the performances of House members going forward unless a performance seems like it will change the larger story of the country, in part because I worry that letting them take up all the oxygen will crowd out other crucial stories, like this one:
Since late last year, California has been pummeled by storms traveling in what are known as “atmospheric rivers,” powerful bands of water-filled clouds that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes as “rivers in the sky.” These storm systems have created floods and mudslides, especially on land scarred by recent fires, and brought 70-mile-per-hour winds to Sacramento, knocking out power for more than 345,000 people.
More than 4.5 million Californians have been under flood watches, and at least 17 people have died. According to San Francisco area meteorologist Jan Null, this has been the third rainiest period in San Francisco since the 1849 Gold Rush.
On January 4, California governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency, and Biden issued an emergency declaration on January 8.
The warming climate is intensifying both droughts—which feed fires—and storms like those currently creating such destruction.
—
Notes:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/HR-23-S.A.P..pdf
#NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.\n\nI will NOT resign!","username":"Santos4Congress","name":"George Santos","date":"Wed Jan 11 18:01:02 +0000 2023","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":1197,"like_count":8134,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}">
George Santos @Santos4CongressI was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.I will NOT resign!6:01 PM ∙ Jan 11, 20238,134Likes1,197Retweetshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/house-republicans-mccarthy-abortion-biden/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/11/house-republicans-no-moderates/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/10/house-republicans-have-voted-to-cut-irs-funding-.html
https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-rivers
Jan Null @ggweatherThis is now San Francisco's 3rd wettest 15-day period, going back to the Gold Rush in 1849. But a long way, thankfully, from the Winter of 1861-62 which saw 19.77" in 15-days, a record 24.36" for the month and a record 49.27" for the season. 
4:30 PM ∙ Jan 10, 2023253Likes103Retweetshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/01/11/california-storms-maps-rainfall-floods/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-california-is-being-deluged-by-atmospheric-rivers/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/california-rain-forecast-timeline.html
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