Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 170
December 28, 2022
December 28, 2022
On the clear, cold morning of December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, three U.S. soldiers tried to wrench a valuable Winchester away from a young Lakota man. He refused to give up his hunting weapon. It was the only thing standing between his family and starvation and he had no faith it would be returned to him as the officer promised: he had watched as soldiers had marked other confiscated valuable weapons for themselves.
As the men struggled, the gun fired into the sky.
Before the echoes died, troops fired a volley that brought down half of the Lakota men and boys the soldiers had captured the night before, as well as a number of soldiers surrounding the Lakotas. The uninjured Lakota men attacked the soldiers with knives, guns they snatched from wounded soldiers, and their fists.
As the men fought hand to hand, the Lakota women who had been hitching their horses to wagons for the day’s travel tried to flee along the nearby road or up a dry ravine behind the camp. Stationed on a slight rise above the camp, soldiers turned rapid-fire mountain guns on them. Then, over the next two hours, troops on horseback hunted down and slaughtered all the Lakotas they could find: about 250 men, women, and children.
A dozen years ago, I wrote a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, and what I learned still keeps me up at night. But it is not December 29 that haunts me.
What haunts me is the night of December 28.
On December 28 there was still time to avert the massacre.
In the early afternoon, the Lakota leader Big Foot—Sitanka—had urged his people to surrender to the soldiers looking for them. Sitanka was desperately ill with pneumonia, and the people in his band were hungry, underdressed, and exhausted. They were making their way south across South Dakota from their own reservation in the northern part of the state to the Pine Ridge Reservation. There they planned to take shelter with another famous Lakota chief, Red Cloud. His people had done as Sitanka asked, and the soldiers escorted the Lakotas to a camp on South Dakota's Wounded Knee Creek, inside the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
For the soldiers, the surrender of Sitanka's band marked the end of what they called the Ghost Dance Uprising. It had been a tense month. Troops had pushed into the South Dakota reservations in November, prompting a band of terrified men who had embraced the Ghost Dance religion to gather their wives and children and ride out to the Badlands. But at long last, army officers and negotiators had convinced those Ghost Dancers to go back to Pine Ridge and turn themselves in to authorities before winter hit in earnest.
Sitanka’s people were not part of the Badlands group and, for the most part, were not Ghost Dancers. They had fled from their own northern reservation two weeks before when they learned that officers had murdered the great leader Sitting Bull in his own home. Army officers were anxious to find and corral Sitanka’s missing Lakotas before they carried the news that Sitting Bull had been killed to those who had taken refuge in the Badlands. Army leaders were certain the information would spook the Ghost Dancers and send them flying back to the Badlands. They were determined to make sure the two bands did not meet.
But South Dakota is a big state, and it was not until late in the afternoon of December 28 that the soldiers finally made contact with Sitanka's band. The encounter didn’t go quite as the officers planned: a group of soldiers were watering their horses in a stream when some of the traveling Lakotas surprised them. The Lakotas let the soldiers go, and the men promptly reported to their officers, who marched on the Lakotas as if they were going to war. Sitanka, who had always gotten along well with army officers, assured the commander that the band was on its way to Pine Ridge, and asked his men to surrender unconditionally. They did.
By this time, Sitanka was so ill he couldn't sit up and his nose was dripping blood. Soldiers lifted him into an army ambulance—an old wagon—for the trip to the Wounded Knee camp. His ragtag band followed behind. Once there, the soldiers gave the Lakotas an evening ration and lent army tents to those who wanted them. Then the soldiers settled into guarding the camp.
And the soldiers celebrated, for they were heroes of a great war, and it had been bloodless, and now, with the Lakotas’ surrender, they would be demobilized back to their home bases before the South Dakota winter closed in. As they celebrated, more and more troops poured in. It had been a long hunt across South Dakota for Sitanka and his band, and officers were determined the group would not escape them again. In came the Seventh Cavalry, whose men had not forgotten that their former leader George Armstrong Custer had been killed by a band of Lakota in 1876. In came three mountain guns, which the soldiers trained on the Indian encampment from a slight rise above the camp.
For their part, the Lakotas were frightened. If their surrender was welcome and they were going to go with the soldiers to Red Cloud at Pine Ridge, as they had planned all along, why were there so many soldiers, with so many guns?
On this day and hour in 1890, in the cold and dark of a South Dakota December night, there were soldiers drinking, singing and visiting with each other, and anxious Lakotas either talking to each other in low voices or trying to sleep. No one knew what the next day would bring, but no one expected what was going to happen.
One of the curses of history is that we cannot go back and change the course leading to disasters, no matter how much we might wish to. The past has its own terrible inevitability.
But it is never too late to change the future.
December 27, 2022
December 27, 2022
It turns out that Republican George Santos, 34, who was just elected to represent New York’s Third District, lied about his education, saying he had attended schools he had not, and lied about his work experience, falsely claiming to have worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He claimed to be the grandson of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust; now he says he meant he was a Catholic with Jewish heritage—although there is no evidence of that, either—and so thinks of himself as “Jew-ish.” He claimed to have lost employees at the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, but when there was no evidence for that, either, he claimed the employees were in the process of being hired.
Santos also has an outstanding criminal charge in Brazil, where there is evidence he stole an elderly man’s checks—he denies this, although has produced no evidence—and questions about where the $700,000 he apparently lent to his 2022 campaign came from, since he was in trouble over relatively small outstanding debts as recently as 2020. Finally, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out, although Santos claims to have been born in Queens to immigrants from Brazil, it is not entirely clear that he is a U.S. citizen. Former co-workers say he told them he was born in Brazil.
That point, at least, should be easy to clear up.
“If I disappointed anyone by my résumé embellishment, I’m sorry,” Santos said in a radio interview but claimed that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés” and such fictions would not hurt his ability to do the job he was elected to do. “I will be sworn in,” he said. “I will take office.”
Democrats Joaquin Castro of Texas and Ted Lieu of California have called for Santos to step aside, but with the Republican majority in the House resting on five seats, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other sitting Republican lawmakers have been unwilling to speak out about Santos’s lies. McCarthy needs all the votes he can muster to make him House speaker, even if it means overlooking Santos’s fabrications and hoping voters will forget quickly.
Two incoming Republican representatives have called him out, though, suggesting they are more interested in protecting the future of the party than its current incarnation. If revelations continue to drop, the newbies might have called the situation better than their more senior colleagues.
Today, in a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld a stay to stop the ending of the Title 42 pandemic rule that prevents much migration into the U.S. out of concerns about disease. Chief Justice John Roberts issued the stay on December 19, 2022, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Title 42 must end on December 21 unless the Supreme Court stepped in. Close to two dozen Republican-dominated states asked it to, and it did.
Joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Neil Gorsuch backed the Biden administration’s position when he wrote: “The current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.” Gorsuch added: “Courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented separately from Gorsuch and Jackson, but the four were outvoted by the other five justices. This order does not address whether Title 42 should ultimately stay in place; it establishes that states may intervene in the dispute over pandemic restrictions that is currently in federal court.
Title 42 is a law that permits the government to keep contagious diseases out of the country, and Trump put it in place in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, in part because it enabled him to stop considering migrants for asylum as is required by U.S. and international law (Title 42 had only been used once before, in 1929, to keep ships from China and the Philippines, where there was a meningitis outbreak, from coming into U.S. ports). Extremist Republicans want to keep it as a way to stop immigration to this country, although technically it is an emergency rule that, when revoked, will simply restore the laws in place before it went into effect.
The Biden administration has called for Congress to pass new legislation to address what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has called a “fundamentally broken” system, “outdated” at every level. “In the absence of congressional action to reform the immigration and asylum systems, a significant increase in migrant encounters will strain our system even further,” Mayorkas said in anticipation of the end of Title 42. “Addressing this challenge will take time and additional resources, and we need the partnership of Congress, state and local officials, NGOs, and communities to do so.”
Earlier this month it seemed that Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) had hammered out a deal that did just that, offering to a path to citizenship for about 2 million “dreamers,” people who were brought to the U.S. by their parents without documentation and have never known any home but this one; offering protections for migrant rights by providing up to $40 billion for processing those coming to the U.S. to seek asylum, including more processing centers, more judges, more asylum officers, and more border officers; and continuing Title 42–type restrictions on migrants until the new processing centers were ready.
But Republicans opposed the dreamer provision—which about 70% of Americans support—and killed the deal. Instead, those like Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted: “With Title 42 ending, our nation is going to be overrun with illegals worse than at just about any other point in history. Remember, this is intentional and all part of Biden’s systematic destruction of America.”
On Christmas Eve a dramatic illustration of the attempt to politicize the migrant issue took place in Washington, D.C., where the 15°F (–9°C) temperatures marked a historic low for that date. Three buses dropped migrant families from Texas on the street near the vice president’s residence in what White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan called a “cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.” Some of the migrants were in shorts and T-shirts. Local relief agencies had expected the migrants on Sunday but responded quickly once they knew of the plan change.
Appearing to assume responsibility for the unannounced dropoff, a spokesperson for Texas governor Greg Abbott said: "Instead of their hypocritical complaints about Texas providing much-needed relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities, President Biden and Border Czar Harris need to step up and do their jobs to secure the border—something they continue failing to do.”
In response to the Supreme Court’s order, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration “will, of course, comply” as it continues to prepare for the end of the pandemic policy. She continued: “To truly fix our broken immigration system, we need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform measures like the ones President Biden proposed on his first day in office. Today’s order gives Republicans in Congress plenty of time to move past political finger-pointing and join their Democratic colleagues in solving the challenge at our border by passing the comprehensive reform measures and delivering the additional funds for border security that President Biden has requested.”
The court will decide the case in June.
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-santos-republican-explainer.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/politics/george-santos-democrats-gop-leadership/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/26/george-santos-resume-wealth/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-leaves-pandemic-border-controls-in-place-11672178053
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/12/13/statement-secretary-mayorkas-planning-end-title-42
@laurenboebert No, Lauren. It’s not intentional. Biden’s doing his best to make America safe and it’s the GOP who actively helped Trump try to overthrow a legal election. The GOP doesn’t want people to have the right to vote. They make laws to suppress the vote. Democracy is at risk with GOP.","username":"lotsofuss","name":"Beki Knott 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦","date":"Sun Dec 18 19:45:52 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":35,"like_count":161,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}">
Beki Knott 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 @lotsofuss@laurenboebert No, Lauren. It’s not intentional. Biden’s doing his best to make America safe and it’s the GOP who actively helped Trump try to overthrow a legal election. The GOP doesn’t want people to have the right to vote. They make laws to suppress the vote. Democracy is at risk with GOP.7:45 PM ∙ Dec 18, 2022161Likes35Retweets
December 26, 2022
December 26, 2022
One hundred and sixty years ago, on December 26, 1862, in the largest mass execution in American history, the U.S. government hanged 38 Santee men for their actions in Minnesota’s so-called Dakota War.
The struggle did not involve all of the Santees, but rather those driven to war in August 1862 after the U.S. government, financially strapped by the Civil War, did not appropriate the money necessary to pay for the food promised to the Santees by treaty. Nine years before, in 1851, settlers had poured into the territory demanding land to farm, and the government had forced the Santees onto a reservation too small to feed their people. The government promised the Santees provisions to make up for the loss of their economic base not as a one-time payment but as a fifty-year contract. Then, when Minnesota became a state in 1858, its leaders took even more Santee land.
But by summer 1862, the Civil War had drained the Treasury, and so-called Indian appropriations fell behind.
Starving and unable to provide for themselves on the small reservation onto which they had been corralled, some Santees demanded the provisions for which they had exchanged their lands. At least one of the agents who had contracted to provide that food had some on hand but refused to hand it over until he had been paid. Furious, young Santee men considered their agreement broken and attacked the settlers who had built homes on the land the Santees had ceded.
On August 17, four young Santee men killed five settlers, and violence escalated. By September, both Minnesota militia and U.S. Army regiments were battling the Santees, and the struggles would leave more than 600 settlers, at least 100 to 300 Santees, and more than a hundred soldiers dead before the last of the Santee warriors surrendered to the military at the end of the month. Another 300 Santees—at least—would die from conditions of their imprisonment after the war or from exposure as they fled the state.
The timing of the military action meant that northerners, and especially Minnesota settlers, interpreted the Santees’ actions as an existential threat to the nation. The war was going poorly for the United States in summer 1862, and many northerners saw the Santees’ attempt to reclaim their land as part of a plan to destroy the United States from within in order to help the Confederacy. Rather than understanding that their neighbors were starving and desperate for the enforcement of a contract into which they had been forced, settlers turned on the Santees with fury. Even as northerners were redefining Black Americans as potential equals, they redefined Santees as unredeemable enemies and fantasized about exterminating them.
By September 23, most of those Santees involved in the fighting had either surrendered or fled, and on September 27, Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley, who had commanded the state militia troops engaged in the war, ordered a military commission to try those fighters now in custody.
Over the course of five weeks in the fall of 1862, a military commission tried 393 Santees for their part in the conflict. The prisoners did not have lawyers, and many of them did not speak English. Those who did understand the questions put to them did not understand the legal process that permitted them to avoid self-incrimination; they told the truth about their part in the fighting and thus cemented their convictions. Many of the trials took fewer than ten minutes before the judges reached a guilty verdict: in one two-day span, 82 men were tried.
In early November the commission convicted 303 Indians of murder or rape and sentenced them to death. Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, expressing his hope that “the execution of every Sioux Indian condemned by the military court will be at once ordered.” But by law, the president had to sign off on executions, and Lincoln refused.
While the harsh sentences pleased the furious Minnesota settlers, they presented a problem for Lincoln. Personally, he was reluctant to use the government to execute men and frequently commuted death sentences for soldiers convicted of anything other than rape or murder. He recoiled from the idea of executing several hundred men at once, especially since he had little faith in military tribunals, and the Santee trials were obviously predetermined.
But there was a national, as well as a personal, issue at stake. Lincoln’s primary focus was not on the troubles in Minnesota, but on the successful prosecution of the Civil War. If the United States executed captured Indigenous fighters for killing soldiers in battle, why shouldn’t it do the same to captured Confederate soldiers, who were also attacking the government?
While there were plenty of people who were willing to follow that logic, it presented a problem: if the Union government could do whatever it wanted to enemy combatants who surrendered, what was to stop the Confederacy from doing whatever it wanted to surrendering Union soldiers? Ultimately, Lincoln’s decision about what to do with the Santee prisoners could determine the fate of the Union men who fell into enemy hands.
Lincoln negotiated the crisis by distinguishing between soldiers in battle and war criminals. First he demanded to see the Santee trial records and ordered the military judges to separate men who had fought in battles from those who had committed murder or rape against civilians. Then he reviewed the records and concluded that 265 of the Santee had been convicted only of going to war against the United States. Although these men had not been party to a formal declaration of war, the Lincoln administration decided they were nonetheless covered by the traditional rules of war that prohibited the execution of prisoners. Lincoln refused to sign off on their executions, effectively pardoning them.
The 38 Indigenous Americans who had been convicted of murder or of rape against civilians, though, fell outside the traditional protections accorded to enemy combatants. Their sentences stood.
And so, on December 26, 1862, the U.S. government hanged these 38 men in a group from a scaffold in Mankato, Minnesota, in what is still the largest mass execution in American history.
In the aftermath of the hangings, the Lincoln administration continued to develop the concept of war crimes. On April 24, 1863, the administration issued what became known as the Lieber Code after its author, legal philosopher Francis Lieber. It tried to establish rules for wartime, prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war, for example, and outlawing rape and torture. The Lieber Code helped to make up the international Hague Conventions of the turn of the century, which set out to establish rules of war.
But northerners’ interpretation of the Dakota War had made them push Indigenous Americans outside those rules, and once that principle was in motion, it did not stop. In 1862, northerners supported a mass execution of Santees despite the obviously biased convictions; in 1864, after skirmishes between settlers and Navajos, army officers forced the Navajo people to walk hundreds of miles from their homelands in Arizona to internment at a military fort in eastern New Mexico where a lack of food and shelter led to horrific death rates.
And later that year, at the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado Territory, soldiers would butcher surrendering Cheyennes and Arapahos and take their body parts as trophies.
—
Notes:
Paul Finkelman, “I Could Not Afford to Hang Men for Votes– Lincoln the Lawyer, Humanitarian Concerns, and the Dakota Pardons,” William Mitchell Law Review 39 (2013): 405-449, at https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1488&context=wmlr
I developed the argument about dehumanization in How the South Won the Civil War.
December 25, 2022
December 25, 2022
In the summer heat of July 1776, revolutionaries in 13 of the British colonies in North America celebrated news that the members of the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, had adopted the Declaration of Independence. In July, men had cheered the ideas that “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States,” and that, in contrast to the tradition of hereditary monarchy under which the American colonies had been organized, the representatives of the thirteen united states intended to create a nation based on the idea “that all men are created equal” and that governments were legitimate only if those they governed consented to them.
But then the British responded to the colonists’ fervor with military might. They sent reinforcements to Staten Island and Long Island and by September had forced General George Washington to evacuate his troops from New York City. After a series of punishing skirmishes across Manhattan Island, by November the British had pushed the Americans into New Jersey. They chased the colonials all the way across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
By mid-December the future looked bleak for the Continental Army and the revolutionary government it backed. The 5,000 soldiers with Washington who were still able to fight were demoralized from their repeated losses and retreats, and since the Continental Congress had kept enlistments short so they would not risk a standing army, many of the men would be free to leave the army at the end of the year, weakening it even more.
As the British troops had taken over New York City and the Continental soldiers had retreated, many of the newly minted Americans outside the army had come to doubt the whole enterprise of creating a new, independent nation based on the idea that all men were created equal. Then things got worse: as the American soldiers crossed into Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress abandoned Philadelphia on December 12 out of fear of a British invasion, regrouping in Baltimore (which they complained was dirty and expensive).
By December, the fiery passion of July had cooled.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” read a pamphlet published in Philadelphia on December 19. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The author of The American Crisis was Thomas Paine, whose January 1776 pamphlet Common Sense had solidified the colonists’ irritation at the king’s ministers into a rejection of monarchy itself, a rejection not just of King George III, but of all kings.
Now he urged them to see the experiment through. He explained that he had been with the troops as they retreated across New Jersey and, describing the march for his readers, told them “that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes centred in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back.”
For that was the crux of it. Paine had no doubt that patriots would create a new nation, eventually, because the cause of human self-determination was just. But how long it took to establish that new nation would depend on how much effort people put into success. “I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake,” Paine wrote. “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”
In mid-December, British commander General William Howe had sent most of his soldiers back to New York to spend the winter, leaving garrisons across the river in New Jersey to guard against Washington advancing.
On Christmas night, having heard that the garrison at Trenton was made up of Hessian auxiliaries who were exhausted and unprepared for an attack, Washington crossed back over the icy Delaware River with 2400 soldiers in a winter storm. They marched nine miles to attack the garrison, the underdressed soldiers suffering from the cold and freezing rain. Reaching Trenton, they surprised the outnumbered Hessians, who fought briefly in the streets before they surrendered.
The victory at the Battle of Trenton restored the colonials’ confidence in their cause. Soldiers reenlisted, and in early January they surprised the British at Princeton, New Jersey, driving them back. The British abandoned their posts in central New Jersey, and by March the Continental Congress moved back to Philadelphia. Historians credit the Battles of Trenton and Princeton with saving the Revolutionary cause.
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” Paine wrote, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
—
Notes:
https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/01/a-brief-publication-history-of-the-times-that-try-mens-souls/
https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/buildings/section4
December 24, 2022
December 24, 2022
Happy holidays to you all, however you celebrate... or don’t.
We are some of the lucky ones this year, with a roof over our heads, food on the table, and family and friends close to hand. We are blessed.
But it has not always been this way.
For those struggling this holiday season, a reminder, if it helps, that Christmas marks the time when the light starts to come back.
[Photo by Buddy Poland.]
December 23, 2022
December 23, 2022
Today, by a vote of 225 to 201, the House passed the 4,155-page omnibus spending bill necessary to fund the government through September 30, 2023. The Senate passed it yesterday by a bipartisan vote of 68–29, and President Joe Biden has said he will sign it as soon as it gets to his desk.
The measure establishes nondefense discretionary spending at about $773 billion, an increase of about $68 billion, or 6%. It increases defense spending to $858 billion, an increase of about 10%. Defense funding is about $45 billion more than Biden had requested, reflecting the depletion of military stores in Ukraine, where the largest European war since World War II is raging, and the recognition of a military buildup with growing tensions between the U.S. and China.
Senators Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) and Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) and Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) hammered out the bill over months of negotiations. Leahy and Shelby are the two most senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and both are retiring at the end of this session. Shelby told the Senate: “We know it’s not perfect, but it’s got a lot of good stuff in it.”
House Republicans refused to participate in the negotiations, tipping their hand to just how disorganized they are right now. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted that the measure should wait until the Republicans take control of the House in 11 days. This reflects the determination of far-right extremists in the party to hold government funding hostage in order to get concessions from the Democrats.
But their positions are so extreme that most Republicans wanted to get the deal done before they could gum it up. Indeed, right now they are refusing to back Republican minority leader McCarthy for speaker, forcing him to more and more extreme positions to woo them. Earlier this week, McCarthy publicly claimed that if he becomes House speaker, he will reject any bill proposed by a senator who voted yes on the omnibus bill. After the measure passed the House, McCarthy spoke forcefully against it, prompting Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) to say: “After listening to that, it’s clear he doesn’t have the votes yet.”
The measure invests in education, childcare, and healthcare, giving boosts to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and investing in mental health programs. It addresses the opioid crisis and invests in food security programs and in housing and heating assistance programs. It invests in the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service and makes a historic investment in the National Science Foundation. It raises the pay for members of the armed forces, and it invests in state and local law enforcement. It will also provide supplemental funding of about $45 billion for Ukraine aid and $41 billion for disaster relief. It reforms the Electoral Count Act to prevent a plan like that hatched by former president Donald Trump and his cronies to overturn an election, and it funds prosecutions stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“A lot of hard work, a lot of compromise,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) said. “But we funded the government with an aggressive investment in American families, American workers, American national defense.” Schumer called the bill “one of the most significant appropriations packages we've done in a really long time.”
And so, members of Congress are on their way home, in the nation’s severe winter storm, for the winter holiday.
It is a fitting day for the congress members to go home, some to come back in January, others to leave their seats in Congress to their successors. On this day in December 1783, General George Washington stood in front of the Confederation Congress, meeting at the senate chamber of the Maryland State House, to resign his wartime commission. Negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War on September 3, 1783, and once the British troops had withdrawn from New York City, Washington believed his job was done.
“The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place; I have now the honor of offering my sincere Congratulation s to Congress and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the Service of my Country,” he told the members of Congress.
“Happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable Nation, I resign with satisfaction the Appointment I accepted with diffidence.”
“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation. As they discussed the project, he told President James Madison: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”
Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily giving up power hangs today in the U.S. Capitol, in the Rotunda. It hung there over the January 6 rioters as they tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and put in place their candidate, who insisted he should remain in power despite the will of the American people.
Yesterday’s release of the report of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol reviewed the material the committee has already explained, but it did have a number of revelations.
One is that former president Trump was not simply the general instigator of the Big Lie that he had won the election, and the person egging on his violent supporters, but also that he was the prime instigator of the attempt to file false slates of electors. This puts him at the heart of the attempt to defraud the U.S. government and to interfere with an official proceeding. On page 346, the report says: “The evidence indicates that by December 7th or 8th, President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it.” In that effort, he had the help of Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, even after White House lawyers had called the plan illegal and had backed away from it.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS)’s introduction to the report put Trump’s effort in the larger context of a history that reaches all the way back to the American Revolution. “Our country has come too far to allow a defeated President to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions, fomenting violence, and…opening the door to those in our country whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans.”
“We can never surrender to democracy’s enemies. We can never allow America to be defined by forces of division and hatred. We can never go backward in the progress we have made through the sacrifice and dedication of true patriots. We can never and will never relent in our pursuit of a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all Americans.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/us/politics/defense-contractors-ukraine-russia.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/12/22/omnibus-bill-senate/
https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HIGHLIGHTS%20DOCUMENT%20FY%2023.pdf
Ed Markey @SenMarkeyI was proud to vote for this package, but I won't stop fighting for bold, progressive legislation that reigns in the greed of Big Oil and Big Tech and ensures we create an economy that works for all.8:58 PM ∙ Dec 23, 202280Likes5Retweets
Connor O'Brien @connorobrienNHAfter McCarthy’s speech railing against the omnibus, Jim McGovern rolls his eyes and says: “After listening to that, it’s clear he doesn’t have the votes yet.” 4:48 PM ∙ Dec 23, 20223,304Likes407Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/23/us/january-6-committee-final-report.html#page-367
John Trumbull, Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of J. Trumbull, from 1756 to 1841, p. 263, at https://archive.org/details/autobiographyre01trumgoog/page/262/mode/2up
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0319-0004
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/january-6-committee-final-report/2095325cbebd8378/full.pdf
December 22, 2022
December 22, 2022
Already there are revelations from the documents being released this week.
Among the transcripts released by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S Capitol is one from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In it, Hutchinson tells the interviewers that what she calls “Trump world” set her up with her first attorney, Stefan Passantino. He refused to tell her who was paying the bills—it was Trump’s political action committee—and she worried that “they will ruin my life… if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”
Emphasizing repeated references to “loyalty,” and “Trump world,” Hutchinson told the committee that Passantino urged her not to tell what she knew, prodding her to say she didn’t recall events she clearly did. “If you don’t 100 percent recall something, even if you don’t recall a date or somebody who may or may not have been in the room, that’s an entirely fine answer, and we want you to use that response as much as you deem necessary.” “Look,” he told her, “the goal with you is to get you in and out. Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go. It’s going to be painless. And then you’re going to be taken care of.”
“We just want to focus on protecting the President,” Passantino said. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply to other places. We’re gonna get you taken care of. We want to keep you in the family.” Hutchinson told of being scared of what they could do to her. “I’d seen how vicious they can be. And part of that’s politics, but…I think some of it is unique to Trump world, the level they’ll go to to tear somebody else down. And I was scared of that.”
Mark Meadows, too, sent Hutchinson a message through a mutual friend saying “he knows you’re loyal and he knows…you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re a family.” She also received notice that Trump was aware of her testimony.
After two interviews with the committee, Hutchinson reached out to a former White House colleague, Alyssa Farah, to become a back channel to the January 6 committee to clear her conscience of testimony she felt was not fully truthful. In a third interview, committee members asked questions that clearly shocked Passantino, who kept asking how they knew what to ask. When, afterward, he insisted on talking both to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and his Trump world law partners against Hutchinson’s wishes, she realized that he was working for Trump, not her. When he suggested she should risk a charge of contempt of Congress, along with jail time, she cut ties with him and began working with new lawyers.
In her newer, clean testimony to the committee, Hutchinson recounted a number of conversations in which it was clear Trump knew he had lost the election, as well as some conversations that suggested the planning for January 6 was well underway weeks ahead of time. On December 12, for example, when Trump tried to cancel a trip to the Army-Navy game, Meadows told Hutchinson, “He can’t do that. He’s gonna tick off the military, and then he’s gonna be ticked off at me in a few weeks when the military’s ticked off at him….” Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) asked Hutchinson what she thought that exchange meant, and she answered: “Looking back now, I can speculate.”
The transcript is not just a damning portrait of the Trump loyalists, it is a window into the struggles of a clearly very bright young woman who was under enormous financial and emotional pressure to please her former boss and yet could not accept the erasure of her moral values. After two sessions with the committee in which she felt she had not been forthcoming, she realized she had to “pass the mirror test.”
She told the committee: “[Y]ou know, I did feel like it was my obligation and my duty to share [what she knew], because I think that if you’re given a position of public power, it’s also your job, your civic responsibility, to allow the people to make decisions for themselves. And if no one’s going to do that, like, somebody has to do it.”
There will no doubt be more information from the January 6 committee documents forthcoming. (The committee released its 845-page report a little before 10:00 Eastern time, but I will not have time to read it before posting this letter tonight.)
Hutchinson’s moral reckoning stands in stark contrast to a court filing yesterday that revealed Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity pushed the idea on air that Trump had won the 2020 election even though, as he said under oath, “I did not believe it for one second.” Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for defamation after its frequent declarations that voting systems rigged the election. Testimony like Hannity’s makes a strong case that the outlet knew it was lying when it pushed the story that Trump had won the election.
Other documents, released from the House Committee on Ways and Means concerning Trump’s taxes, suggest corruption was widespread under Trump. By law, the Internal Revenue Service must audit a president’s tax returns. It audited President Barack Obama’s taxes while he was in office and has audited President Joe Biden’s taxes as well during his term. But it did not audit former president Trump’s taxes for the first two years he was in office and finally began an audit on the same day the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Richard E. Neal (D-MA), asked for information about the returns.
Charlie Savage and Alan Rappeport of the New York Times reported that the IRS began to audit the tax returns Trump filed during his presidency only after he had already left office, and then assigned only one person to the job. But, Michael Schmidt of the New York Times reported earlier this year, Trump repeatedly talked about using the IRS to investigate his enemies, and the bureau did, in fact, launch invasive audits on former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, both of whom Trump believed to be his enemies.
The numbers released show that Trump declared he lost money in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2020, so that he paid no income tax, and that he paid a total of $1500 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) said there is “no justification for the failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.” He called for additional funding for the IRS, noting: “These are issues much bigger than Donald Trump. Trump’s returns likely look similar to those of many other wealthy tax cheats—hundreds of partnership interests, highly-questionable deductions, and debts that can be shifted around to wipe out tax liabilities.” He also said: “I have additional questions about the extent to which resource issues or fear of political retaliation from the White House contributed to lapses here.”
This afternoon the House passed a bill requiring the IRS to conduct annual audits of the president’s tax returns. Five Republicans joined the Democrats to vote in favor of the measure, but 201 Republicans voted against it.
For its part, the Senate this afternoon passed the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund the government through next September 30. Among other measures in the bill, the Senate included a reform of the Electoral Count Act to make impossible another attempt to overturn a presidential election the way Trump tried. The bill clarifies that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is purely ceremonial, makes it clear that there is only one slate of electors per state, and increases the number of congress members required to launch an objection to a state’s electoral slate.
Today, the Democrats elected Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) as the top Democratic member (the top member of the party out of power is called the “ranking member”) of the House Oversight Committee. This is an enormously significant election because the Republicans have already announced they plan to use their majority to investigate a wish list of targets, and many of those investigations will likely come from the Oversight committee.
Because Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has decided not to put together committees until after the election for speaker takes place on January 3, it is not clear what Republicans will be on that committee, but Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) currently sits on it, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has said she expects a seat on it. Jordan’s role for the Republicans in Congress is to shout and hector witnesses to establish a narrative (he is famously ineffective at passing legislation), while Greene’s role is to parrot right-wing conspiracies. Clearly, the Republicans plan to use the Oversight Committee largely for propaganda before the 2024 election.
This makes Raskin’s new position key: Raskin is a brilliant constitutional law professor who is cowed not even a little bit by the likes of Jordan and Greene. He tweeted: “I was recruited to [the Oversight Committee] by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/us/politics/trump-irs-investigations.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/politics/comey-mccabe-irs-audits.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/trump-irs-taxes.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/us/house-ways-and-means-trump-tax-report.html
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/it-is-time-to-reform-the-electoral-count-act/
https://raskin.house.gov/press-releases?ID=5815D12C-4BE5-41EE-9311-D76B97DA1803
@OversightDems by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.","username":"RepRaskin","name":"Rep. Jamie Raskin","date":"Thu Dec 22 18:44:38 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":2689,"like_count":26745,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}">
Rep. Jamie Raskin @RepRaskinI was recruited to @OversightDems by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.6:44 PM ∙ Dec 22, 202226,745Likes2,689Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/business/media/sean-hannity-fox-trump-election.html
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/u-s-senate-passes-electoral-count-reform-act/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/trump-income-tax-returns-detailed-in-new-report-.html
December 21, 2022
December 21, 2022
Three hundred days ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a new assault into Ukraine, where his troops had been fighting since 2014. Apparently, he expected that a new strike would bring a quick victory that would enable him to break away the eastern regions of Ukraine and annex them to Russia with a puppet government in place, expanding his territory and power.
Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky—whose leadership of the Ukrainians, who have refused to yield and whose resistance has debilitated the Russian military, has made him an international hero—made his first trip outside Ukraine since the invasion began.
Flying on a U.S. government plane, Zelensky came to the White House to thank President Biden, Congress, and the American people for their support.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were instrumental in convincing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—which former president Trump had quite deliberately weakened—to stand together against Russian aggression. Biden and Blinken pulled together allies around the globe to sanction Russia and Russian individuals and entities, making the Russian economy suffer increasingly as the war went on. And they have urged countries around the world to rush money and supplies to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression.
From the beginning, Biden and Blinken recognized that if Russia were permitted to crush the sovereignty of Ukraine and take its territory, the concept of an international rules-based order that has protected much of the world since World War II would have been abandoned. They also recognized that involving NATO directly in the war would have given Putin the stature he craved and would have led at the very least to an extensive ground war. The U.S. offered to evacuate Zelensky as Russian troops moved in.
“The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky answered.
For ten months now, the Ukrainians first held their own, and then recovered significant territory from the invaders, even as Putin tried to claim Ukrainian lands as his own. The process of reclaiming their territory has been heartwrenching as it has become clear that Russian soldiers and their leaders engaged in murder, torture, rape, and other war crimes. Now, the Russians are targeting missile strikes at civilian infrastructure, knocking out heat and electricity in the bitter winter cold, hoping to inflict yet more suffering on Ukraine. And yet, the Ukrainians fight on.
In a time when democracy seemed to be on the ropes and authoritarians like Putin seemed to be gaining the upper hand, the Ukrainians came to stand for the power of democracy. They showed that Putin’s mighty army was hollowed out by corruption and apathy, while the Ukrainians, who were supposed to be weak, dropped their civilian lives to defend their country. They showed that Putin’s claim of moral superiority over secular democracies—which, he said, were a cesspool of decadence—was a sham: his mercenaries committed war crimes and boasted of it. As the western Allies had done during World War II, the Ukrainians demonstrated that democracy, for all its messiness, was far superior to authoritarianism.
Sadly, it has been a demonstration some Americans were not eager to see as they continue to believe that the willingness of secular democracies to welcome LGBTQI+ individuals and racial minorities as equals to white, straight Christians is undermining society.
Speaking in English today to make sure Americans got his message directly, Zelensky thanked Congress for the bipartisan support Ukraine has received, and the American people, who have invested significant tax dollars in the Ukrainians’ efforts. He conveyed “thanks from our just ordinary people to your ordinary people, Americans. I really appreciate. I think it’s very difficult to—to understand what does it mean when we say appreciate, but—but you really have—have to feel it. And thank you so much.”
Zelensky also came to ask for more aid, both military and humanitarian, to support Ukraine’s war effort. Congress has proposed $44 billion in aid in the new omnibus funding package, bringing the U.S. package so far to more than $100 billion in military and humanitarian aid over four spending packages. While a few right-wing Republicans are complaining about this spending, it is worth noting that the U.S. annual defense budget Congress passed earlier this month was $858 billion.
This evening, Zelensky spoke to a joint meeting of the Congress, where the members greeted him with a standing ovation (with the pointed exception of some right-wing House members). He described Ukraine’s defense as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism across the globe, and assured Americans, “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”
“We defeated Russia in the battle for minds of the world,” he said. “We have no fear, nor should anyone in the world have it. Ukrainians gained this victory, and it gives us courage which inspires the entire world.
“Americans gained this victory, and that’s why you have succeeded in uniting the global community to protect freedom and international law. Europeans gained this victory, and that’s why Europe is now stronger and more independent than ever. The Russian tyranny has lost control over us. And it will never influence our minds again.
“Yet, we have to do whatever it takes to ensure that countries of the Global South also gain such victory. I know one more, I think very important, thing: The Russians will stand a chance to be free only when they defeat the Kremlin in their minds.”
At the end of his speech, Zelensky presented a signed Ukrainian flag from the recent battleground of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, the president of the Senate, who were seated behind him. In a dramatic image, they held it up between them before giving Zelensky a U.S. flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol today to mark his visit in exchange.
Putin lately seems desperate to make Russia look like a world power. Two days ago he was in Belarus, apparently trying to shore up his armies, and claims he is adding an additional 500,000 soldiers to those he says are already in the ranks. Today he exaggerated outlandishly at a meeting of Russia’s defense chiefs, saying that NATO countries are using their full military capabilities against Russia.
In contrast to Putin’s boasts and trip to Belarus, Zelensky traveled on a U.S. plane to meet with President Biden at the White House and give a speech to a joint session of Congress. His visit demonstrated that the U.S. will give Ukraine what Biden said is its "unequivocal and unbending support" for “as long as it takes.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/politics/defense-bill-ndaa/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/16/russia-200th-brigade-decimated-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/us/politics/defense-contractors-ukraine-russia.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/europe/ukraine-zelensky-evacuation-intl/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/zelensky-speech-transcript.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/us/politics/congress-aid-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/world/europe/belarus-putin-kyiv.html
https://www.yahoo.com/now/putin-says-almost-nato-potential-150323061.html
December 20, 2022
December 20, 2022
There is some fallout from yesterday’s hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Yesterday afternoon, after the committee had voted unanimously to refer former president Trump to the Department of Justice for breaking at least four laws, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, made a statement. “House Democrats and Vicious Never Trumpers, who were run out of Congress by the American people, continue to desperately and unconstitutionally target President Trump & Republicans,” she said.
Stefanik blew up her reputation as a moderate to ride Trump’s coattails to power and now appears to think she has little choice but to back him to try to keep him from taking everyone down with him.
Also, sources have identified for CNN reporters Katelyn Polantz, Pamela Brown, Jamie Gangel, and Jeremy Herb the person to whom the committee referred as telling a witness to give misleading testimony. The person giving the advice was apparently Stefan Passantino, the top ethics lawyer for the Trump White House, and the person receiving it was top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson. By the time he was allegedly giving Hutchinson advice to protect Trump, Passantino was funded by Trump’s Save America political action committee.
Passantino denies the suggestion that he advised Hutchinson to mislead the committee, but he is on leave from the law firm where he was a partner, claiming that leave is because of “the distraction of this matter.” Los Angeles Times legal columnist Harry Litman tweeted that the accusation involving Passantino is “absolutely career ending if it pans out. Virtual instant [disbarment] and lucky if he stays out of jail.”
Finally, as the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol prepares to release its final report and close up shop, Punchbowl News today reported that the committee is also “extensively cooperating” with the Justice Department’s special counsel overseeing that investigation for the Department of Justice, Jack Smith. Smith requested all the committee’s materials on December 5. The committee began to send over materials last week.
Other continuing stories include the end of Title 42, the pandemic restriction on migrants’ right to apply for asylum in the U.S. After almost a year of litigation, a federal court ordered the rule lifted tomorrow. At the last minute, Republican attorneys general from 19 states sued to stop the lifting of the rule, and the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay.
In response, the administration today responded that it is not legitimate to use a health measure in place of immigration rules. It acknowledged that ending Title 42 orders “will likely lead to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings,” and it “in no way seeks to minimize the seriousness of that problem.” But, the administration asserts, “[T]he solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification.” Instead, the country needs to rely on the immigration laws Congress has passed.
The administration has asked the court to deny the applicants’ attempt to keep Title 42 in place, but asks that if it does so that it give the government at least a few days notice, so it can prepare “for a full return” to normal operations.
Republicans have, of course, just killed a measure to increase funding and personnel at the border, and to extend restrictions until new facilities are built, at least in part because they are unwilling to extend a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” those folks brought to the U.S. by their parents as children. About 70% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for dreamers.
In another continuing story, the House Republicans continue to snarl at one another. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is now backing House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and has turned on Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who is siding with Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) against McCarthy. Boebert started things off by tweaking Greene about believing in “Jewish space lasers.” (You know, I started to explain this reference, but… I give up. For once I’m asking you just to take my word for it that it involves Greene.) Greene responded on Twitter, accusing Boebert of being in it for the money. The fight has devolved from there.
Meanwhile, CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, reported today that Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) was unhappy with McCarthy’s threat to block bills from Senate Republicans if they back the omnibus funding bill to keep the government afloat. “Statements like that and statements coming from House Republicans is the very reason that some Senate Republicans feel they probably should spare them from the burden of having to govern.”
A profile of McCarthy by Jonathan Blitzer in the forthcoming New Yorker clearly lays out the Republicans’ problem. Blitzer quotes Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist, as saying: “The Dems’ extreme people are extreme on progressive policies. The Republicans’ extreme are extreme on the level of the insane taking over the asylum.”
McCarthy has to cater to those folks to become House speaker because the party’s majority is so small, but party members who actually want to govern don’t want to be held hostage to the far right. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) says he thinks McCarthy is the only serious candidate for speaker, but if he doesn’t have the votes, Bacon said, ““I’m going to work with like-minded people across the aisle to find someone agreeable” for speaker.”
And finally, it appears that a story that has continued now since 2015 is approaching a new ending. As a candidate for the U.S. presidency, Trump promised he would release his tax returns, as is common for presidential candidates. In fact, he has fought the release of those returns ever since. Under the leadership of Representative Richard Neal (D-MA), the House Committee on Ways and Means subpoenaed about six years of Trump’s tax returns in May 2019 as part of an attempt to make sure presidents’ taxes were adequately audited, but it was not until last month the committee received the returns.
Today the committee voted to make those returns public after blacking out personal information such as Social Security numbers, street addresses, and banking information. It will also make public the returns of eight Trump business entities, along with a report by the committee. The vote was 24 to 16, along party lines, with Republican Kevin Brady (R-TX) arguing strongly against the release.
Already there are questions. The Internal Revenue Service has a policy that the individual tax returns for the president and vice president are “subject to mandatory review,” but it did not audit Trump’s taxes for the first two years he was in office. It did so only after Neal and the Ways and Means committee requested the taxes in 2019. That audit is still not finished.
Ironically, the discovery that the IRS was not, in fact, doing its job with regard to Trump’s taxes proves what the House Ways and Means Committee argued all along: we need new legislation to ensure that the IRS makes timely examinations of presidential tax returns while disclosing certain information to the public.
—
Notes:
@WaysMeansCmte Chairman Richard Neal wrote the IRS to request Trump's tax returns as part of our Committee's oversight of the IRS' mandatory audit of presidential tax returns.\n\nOn the same day the IRS initiated its first audit of Donald Trump's tax returns. ","username":"RepDonBeyer","name":"Rep. Don Beyer","date":"Wed Dec 21 02:31:59 +0000 2022","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/Fkd8vG...
Rep. Don Beyer @RepDonBeyerOn April 3, 2019, @WaysMeansCmte Chairman Richard Neal wrote the IRS to request Trump's tax returns as part of our Committee's oversight of the IRS' mandatory audit of presidential tax returns.On the same day the IRS initiated its first audit of Donald Trump's tax returns. 
2:31 AM ∙ Dec 21, 2022239Likes124Retweetshttps://punchbowl.news/archive/punchbowl-news-special-edition-1220/
Ronald Brownstein @RonBrownsteinNew statement from Elise Stefanik: "House Democrats and Vicious Never Trumpers, who were run out of Congress by the American people, continue to desperately and unconstitutionally target President Trump & Republicans" Early sign of how GOP majority may bind party tighter to Trump9:09 PM ∙ Dec 19, 2022167Likes33Retweetshttps://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23472590-doj-response-on-title-42-lawsuit
Manu Raju @mkrajuSen. Kevin Cramer to me on McCarthy’s threat to block Senate R bills if they back omnibus. “Statements like that and statements coming from House Republicans is the very reason that some Senate Republicans feel they probably should spare them from the burden of having to govern.”11:29 PM ∙ Dec 20, 20223,685Likes672Retweetshttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/26/what-kevin-mccarthy-will-do-to-gain-power
Harry Litman @harrylitmanThe accusations involving Stefan Passantino--that he advised Cassidy Hutchinson to say she did not recall when in fact she did -- is absolutely career ending if it pans out. Virtual instant disarmament and lucky if he stays out of jail.11:35 PM ∙ Dec 20, 202210,812Likes1,881Retweetshttps://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/trump-tax-returns-house-committee-considers-release-.html
https://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-008-004#idm139994953458320
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/politics/trump-tax-summary-ways-and-means-committee/index.html
December 19, 2022
December 19, 2022
Today the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held its final public hearing.
It reviewed the material establishing how former president Donald Trump planned even before the 2020 election to declare he had won even if he actually lost, and how he executed that plan. It then laid out how he maintained he had won even as his own lawyers and campaign advisors repeatedly assured him that the conspiracy theories on which he was relying were false. It showed how he contested Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s victories in court—losing 61 times—and then pressured state governments to “find” the votes he needed to win.
When those attempts to hand him the election all failed, he turned to trying to steal the election through pressuring state officials to create false slates of electors that chose him, rather than Biden, and then pressured the Department of Justice to get states to turn to those electors by alleging—falsely—that the department thought the election was fraudulent (its leaders had said repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that the election was not fraudulent). When Justice Department leaders refused, he tried to put a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, at the head of the department to do as he wished. He was stopped only when the department leaders threatened to resign as a group.
That left him with a plan hatched by right-wing lawyer John Eastman. The plan hinged on the outrageous idea that the vice president, in his capacity as the person to oversee the counting of electoral ballots, could decide not to count the legitimate ballots for which Trump loyalists had submitted competing ballots, enabling him single-handedly to throw the election to Trump over the wishes of the American voters.
Eastman himself admitted this plan was illegal.
And yet it was Trump’s last hope to look like he was playing by the rules. When Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, refused to participate in the scheme, Trump went to his final card—his trump card, if you’ll forgive me—his base.
Exactly two years ago today, on December 19, 2020, when it became clear that his campaign lawyers had lost their legal challenges and the real electors had filed their electoral slates, Trump tweeted to his supporters to urge them to come to Washington, D.C., on January 6, the day those electoral votes would be counted and confirm Biden’s election to the White House. Falsely claiming what he knew to be untrue, that it was statistically impossible for him to have lost the election, he told his supporters: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”
The right-wing militias he had courted since the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally of August 2017 heard the message. Immediately, they interpreted his tweet as an order to come to Washington to keep him in office, with violence if necessary, and they planned accordingly. Trump appears to have seen their potential violence as a final way to force Pence to do as he wished. When the vice president continued to refuse, Trump whipped up the crowd against his vice president and sent them toward the Capitol, where both houses of Congress and the vice president were all, in an exceedingly rare occurrence, together.
For 187 minutes, as his supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump watched the chaos on television and did nothing to stop it, communicating only with those continuing to try to stop the counting of the electoral votes. Only when troops had been mobilized and it was clear the insurrection would not succeed did he tell his people that he loved them and they should go home. They promptly did, underscoring that he could have called them off whenever he wished.
He expressed no concern for those under siege that day, and he did nothing to stop the rioters.
After outlining the former president’s attempt to stay in power against the wishes of the American people, overturning the very foundation of our democracy, the committee members voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for violating at least four laws:
The first law the committee says Trump broke was that he obstructed an official proceeding. Trump tried corruptly to stop the joint session of Congress counting electoral votes in a bunch of different ways, from gathering false electors, to trying to send a letter to state legislators from the Department of Justice lying that the department thought the election was suspect, to spurring on a mob. Under this charge, the committee also referred lawyer John Eastman “and certain other Trump associates.”
It noted that “multiple Republican Members of Congress, including Representative Scott Perry, likely have material facts regarding President Trump’s plans to overturn the election. For example, many Members of Congress attended a White House meeting on December 21, 2020, in which the plan to have the Vice President affect the outcome of the election was disclosed and discussed. Evidence indicates that certain of those Members unsuccessfully sought Presidential pardons from President Trump after January 6th…revealing their own clear consciousness of guilt.”
The second law Trump broke was conspiring to defraud the United States, in this case by stealing the election. Other conspirators the committee suggests the department should look at include Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Rudolph Giuliani, and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The third was conspiracy to make a false statement, which the committee said described the false elector scheme. This conspiracy, too, might involve others, including Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who agreed to help Trump with the project.
The fourth law the committee says Trump broke was that he “Incited,” “Assisted,” or provided “Aid and Comfort” to an insurrection.
The committee suggested that this list was not exhaustive and that there might be other laws the former president has broken. Those included obstruction of justice, as the committee revealed that some of its witnesses suggested Trump loyalists had attempted to affect their testimony. The referrals create no legal obligation for the Justice Department to act but, along with the evidence the committee has compiled, will make it important for the department to explain why it disagrees that crimes have been committed if it decides not to charge the former president.
The committee also referred four members of the House to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ). The incoming Republican House will likely ignore this referral, but that will make it hard for its members to enforce subpoenas themselves.
Along with the hearing, the committee released an introduction to its forthcoming report. At only 104 pages, the report is worth reading: it’s very clear and very fast paced, reading more like a 1940s thriller than a government report. And like an old-time novel, it has in it some eye-popping facts just waiting for more development.
Trump raised “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars…between the election and January 6th” by falsely claiming election fraud. The “Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office.” That’s a lot of money raised fraudulently, and the RNC was involved. The RNC shows up again when chair McDaniel agrees to help Trump with the fake elector scheme.
The committee establishes that Trump fully intended to go with his supporters to the Capitol. This is a very big deal indeed: the president traditionally cannot go to the chambers of Congress without a formal invitation. Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani told Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to Mark Meadows, that Trump intended to be with the members of Congress and to “look powerful.” A White House security official said, “[W]e were all in a state of shock…we all knew what that implicated and what that meant, that this was no longer a rally, that this was going to move to something else…. I—I don’t know if you want to use the word “insurrection,” “coup,” whatever.”
The committee generously attributes this plan to be part of Trump’s hope to pressure Pence, but historian of authoritarians Ruth Ben-Ghiat noted that a leader launching a new regime needs to be present at the front of his cheering troops to mark his success.
Fittingly, on December 15, the Coup d’État Project of theCline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, which maintains the world’s largest registry of coups, attempted coups, and coup conspiracies since World War II, reclassified the events of January 6 as an attempted “auto-coup.” According to its director, Scott Althaus, an auto-coup occurs when “the incumbent chief executive uses illegal or extra-legal means to assume extraordinary powers, seize the power of other branches of government, or render powerless other components of the government such as the legislature or judiciary.”
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Notes:
Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowskiTrump’s “be there, it will be wild” tweet from Dec 19. 
11:48 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2021236Likes97Retweetshttps://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-presence-capitol-riot-key-successful-coup-expert-says-2022-6
https://clinecenter.illinois.edu/coup-detat-project/statement_dec.15.2022
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