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Pretty much sums it up. 15 years ago. Wow.
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I think it’s under the legal principle of “You break it you bought it”.
Conquering the country was seen as a bad thing. Leaving the country in the state where all progress was systematically undone in about a week after pulling out is seen as a bad thing.
If that seems like a double standard, then it’s more of a “If I were going there, I wouldn’t start from here,” situation. Once the decision was made to conquer Afghanistan, there were no good solutions, except, possibly, to build Afghanistan into a self-supporting liberal pluralistic democracy under its own terms. Which wasn’t really possible either, given that 1) the military was carefully built to be entirely reliant on US air support, 2) the government needed to ask Washington for permission to do anything and everyone knew it, and 3) between the US mercenaries contractors and the local opportunists, all the trillions of dollars being pumped into the place was stolen, and, again, everyone knew it.
So once it was conquered, the choices were to make it a permanent colony, or to build a nation, and neither one was ever going to happen. Afghanistan was set up to fail, and it was doomed the moment someone in Washington decided to go in. I mean, it wasn’t in a great state to begin with, but if the US hadn’t pretended to want to fix it, it wouldn’t be blamed for failing to do so.
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I agree 100%. What you wrote provides great detail, but is consistent with what I wrote.
The exit wasn’t a disaster. The disaster was the entry.
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January 24, 2022 (Monday)
Today, the Pentagon ordered up to 8500 troops to go on standby in case they are needed to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. The troops have not been activated. If they are, they will deploy to nations allied with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), nations like Poland or Lithuania or Latvia, to provide help with logistics, medical needs, intelligence, and so on. If activated, the troops will not be authorized to enter Ukraine.
Here’s the story of how we got here:
The USSR dissolved in 1991 under pressure from a new alliance of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, joined by most of the other Soviet republics. Quickly, well-connected businessmen in those former republics began to amass wealth and power. At the same time, the fall of the Soviet Union prompted lawmakers in the U.S. to champion the free enterprise they were convinced had sunk the Soviets. They deregulated the U.S. financial industries just as rising oligarchs in Eastern Europe were eager to launder illicit money.
In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, all former satellites of the USSR, joined NATO over the protests of Russia, which was falling under the control of oligarchs who opposed western democracy. More countries near Russia joined NATO in the 2000s.
Russia set out to keep control of Ukraine. In 2004, it appeared to have installed a Russian-backed politician, Viktor Yanukovych, as president of Ukraine, but Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was so full of fraud—including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe—that the government voided the election and called for a do-over.
In 2004, Yanukovych began to work with U.S. political consultant Paul Manafort, who was known for managing unsavory characters, and in 2010, Yanukovych finally won the presidency on a platform of rejecting NATO. Immediately, Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia. But in 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power in what is known as the Revolution of Dignity. He fled to Russia.
Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. Since Russians had been using U.S. financial instruments to manage their illicit money, these sanctions froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs.
Putin wanted to get the sanctions lifted. At the same time, with Yanukovych out of power, Manafort was out of a job and in debt to his former friends. In summer 2016, Manafort began to manage the presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Shortly afterward, the Trump campaign changed the Republican Party’s 2016 platform to weaken its formerly strong stance against Russia and in defense of Ukraine.
Trump won the election, of course, and an investigation by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Russia had worked to get Trump elected and that Manafort had shared campaign information with his own former partner, a man the senators identified as a Russian operative.
Under Trump, American policy swung Putin’s way as Trump attacked NATO and the European Union, weakened our ties to our traditional European allies, and threatened to withdraw our support for Ukraine.
That policy changed when Biden took office. His administration renewed support for Ukraine and its move toward stronger ties to NATO and the European Union. At the same time, it has dramatically cracked down on money laundering, shell companies, and the movement of illicit money.
The U.S. began to take note that Russia was massing troops on its border with Ukraine last November. Rather than act unilaterally, the Biden administration immediately reached out to European allies and sent senior U.S. officials to Russia to meet with officials there, at the same time reassuring Ukraine officials that the U.S. would continue its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. When Putin worked with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko to destabilize Poland by pushing migrants over the border, he helped to strengthen NATO’s unity, until now countries like Finland and Sweden, which are not NATO members, are considering joining.
The question at home is whether today’s Republicans will stand with Ukraine, NATO, and the rule of law that says sovereign countries have the right to determine their own alliances. If they support another Russian invasion of Ukraine, they will weaken NATO and the stands the U.S. and the European Union have taken to clean up global finances to stop oligarchs from amassing the power that comes from illicit money.
Since November, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson has led the U.S. defense of Russia, echoing Russian talking points and suggesting that there is no reason for the U.S. to support Ukraine. (In November, when he asked of Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) why the U.S. should side with Ukraine over Russia, Turner noted that Ukraine is a democracy, “Russia is an authoritarian regime,” and that America is “for democracy” and “not for authoritarian regimes.”)
But the Republicans are split on the issue. Many are criticizing Biden not for his stand against Russian aggression, but because they say he has not been tough enough about it. National Review editorialized today that Biden should be moving weapons to Ukraine more quickly, the Wall Street Journal said the same on January 19, and Breitbart has called for impeaching Biden for not pushing back strongly enough against Russia.
While the Republicans are focusing on a unilateral military approach to the situation before Putin makes another move into Ukraine, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez (D-NJ), along with 38 colleagues, has introduced legislation to impose sanctions on the Russian banking sector, senior military and government officials, and Russia’s extractive industries, as well as cut Russia out of the SWIFT global transaction system, if Putin escalates hostilities. It authorizes another $500 million in assistance to Ukraine if Russia reinvades, and it seeks to counter disinformation coming from the Kremlin. Republican lawmakers are in talks with their Democratic counterparts over the bill.
At stake in this crisis is the concept of the international rule of law. The obvious question is whether nations should control their own borders and governments, or whether larger countries can absorb others in a sphere of influence. But there is also the question of money: oligarchs have risen to power thanks in part to the financial systems that enabled them to amass and launder illicit money that they then used to manipulate the politics of other countries. Under Biden, the U.S. and our allies are trying to strengthen democracies by getting rid of the loopholes that have helped illicit money poison democratic politics. The economic sanctions that Republicans are finding weak sauce might, in the end, reach far beyond Ukraine.
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Republicans are focusing on a unilateral military approach
there is also the question of money: oligarchs have risen to power thanks in part to the financial systems that enabled them to amass and launder illicit money
We’ve seen this too many times before, and I’m glad the Biden administration is going in a different direction. War mongers who profit from weapons don’t want diplomatic solutions. They see Afghanistan as a financial loss, and will stir the pot wherever they can to continue profiting at everyone else’s expense.
I hope those working to end money laundering also expose the blackmail, influence peddling, and economic or market manipulation that occurred to support the events described above. They should also invite Rep. Katie Porter to explain it to the public. She’s gonna need a bigger board.
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Very quickly: the exit was a disaster, among other things, because the US did not properly consult with it’s allies, nor the Afghan government, apparently.
There would have been other options. They were not chosen. This was a mess, and both the Trump admin and the Biden admin have made that mess.
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what’s nice about these outlets is they could suddenly change their mind tomorrow, defend putin and a russian invasion, and never bat an eye
i wonder what percentage of this is just to see which republicans are fully in russia’s pocket. if putin can split america on this, he can split nato, and that is certainly a goal
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January 25, 2022 (Tuesday)
Tonight is not an imperative read, if you need a break from politics. It just covers details emerging in ongoing stories.
Today, the White House told reporters that it is preparing severe economic reprisals for any new Russian movement into Ukraine. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Bloomberg Television that the sanctions are prepared. He did not deny that Russia might be expelled from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a system that facilitates international money transfers.
The White House is also working with energy-producing nations in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia to see if it will be possible to ease shortages of liquefied natural gas in Europe if Russia invades Ukraine and sanctions fall into place.
Administration officials noted that the Russian economy is already taking a hit from the threatened economic measures. Indeed, Russian stocks sank 8% today, and the ruble has dropped to a 14-month low. Today the JPMorgan Chase bank stopped handling the ruble. It closed all its positions in Russian currency, saying that the buildup of troops made the currency too risky. The Moscow Times today reported that Russian businesses are preparing for heavy losses.
When a reporter today asked President Biden if he would consider placing sanctions on Russian president Vladimir Putin himself if he invaded Ukraine, Biden responded: “Yes. I would see that.”
There was a sign today that Putin’s position at home is not as strong as his military stance is designed to project. Russian authorities are cracking down on opposition to Putin’s leadership, and now they have added Alexei Navalny and some of his allies to a registry of terrorists. Putin had Navalny poisoned and then, when he survived to return to Russia, had him imprisoned. And yet, despite Navalny’s removal from active politicking, Putin appears still to consider him a threat.
Another major story developing today is the story of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis last week asked for a special grand jury to investigate former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Willis has said she needs the grand jury because a number of potential witnesses to Trump’s actions refuse to testify without subpoenas, which the grand jury can provide. The judges on Fulton County’s Superior Court agreed to a grand jury to be impaneled May 2.
This is the only investigation we know of that is focusing directly on Trump himself and his part in trying to steal the election. Observers say that he is at risk of being charged with racketeering or conspiracy; Willis hired an outside expert in state racketeering back in March.
Trump was recorded on January 2, 2021, trying to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to override the will of the voters and deliver the state to Trump. A number of people joined then-president Trump on the call, including then–White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several lawyers, among them longtime right-wing attorney Cleta Mitchell, whose law firm distanced itself from her after Raffensperger made the call public (when she resigned days later, she blamed “left-wing pressure groups” for the need to leave).
Curiously, Trump released a statement blasting the Georgia investigation and complaining that he is being investigated for “asking an Attorney General…to look for corruption.” But, so far as we know, he was being investigated for pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state. They are two different positions, two different men. Was Trump just confused when he issued the written statement, or was there another conversation?
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is also in the news. On Sunday, committee member Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told CNN’s Jim Acosta that Trump’s attorney general William Barr had appeared voluntarily before staff attorneys for the January 6 committee. Trump announced Barr’s resignation on Twitter on December 15, 2020, minutes after Congress counted in the Electoral College ballots certifying Biden as president. On December 14, false electors had met in seven states to declare for Trump; the plan to use those false votes to throw out the real ones may have been connected to Barr’s sudden removal.
Also on Sunday, on the Fox News Channel, former Republican representative from Georgia Newt Gingrich attacked the January 6 committee as a lawbreaking lynch mob and said that when the Republicans retake the house and the Senate in fall 2022, the committee’s members will face “a real risk of jail.”
And yet, today a federal judge in California strongly rejected the argument that the committee is not legitimate, an argument Trump loyalists have made as they have ignored subpoenas.
At issue was the attempt of lawyer John Eastman, who wrote the infamous memo outlining how then–vice president Mike Pence could steal the election for Trump, to keep his former employer from turning documents over to the committee. Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment’s right to silence to avoid self-incrimination 146 times in his own responses to the committee, and when it then subpoenaed his former employer, Chapman University, for the material it wanted, Eastman tried to stop the university from turning over nearly 19,000 of his emails that pertain to the insurrection. Eastman argued that the committee was illegitimate.
Federal Judge David Carter rejected that argument. “The public interest here is weighty and urgent,” Carter wrote. “Congress seeks to understand the causes of a grave attack on our nation’s democracy and a near-successful attempt to subvert the will of the voter.”
The committee appears to be getting answers. Today, right-wing personality Alex Jones of InfoWars told his followers that he met virtually with the committee on Monday and that he had taken the Fifth “almost 100” times, claiming he was worried he would misspeak and the misstatement would be used against him. He seemed taken aback to learn that the committee had his text messages and emails.
Today, Jones walked back his rhetoric from early January and appeared to want to distance himself from the events of January 6. “Let’s get something clear for the committee and my audience and everybody else,” he said, “I don’t want a civil war in this country, and that’s a terrible idea…. And I don’t want lawlessness by anybody. And I don’t want anybody attacking anybody, OK?"
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Ah, the old punch someone in the nose and say “Hey, let’s calm down and settle this peacefully “ move.
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January 26, 2022 (Wednesday)
Today’s big news is that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer plans to announce this week that he will step down from the court at the end of the term. He is expected to make the announcement tomorrow at an appearance with President Joe Biden. Breyer is 83 years old; he took his seat on the court on August 3, 1994.
While the recent extremes to which Senate Republicans have gone to dominate the Supreme Court have made the seats seem simply to reflect political parties, in fact Breyer’s history on the court shows how American democracy and, with it, the Supreme Court, have become partisan since the 1980s.
Breyer has always been adamant that the court must not be political. Instead, he has advanced a strong defense of democracy, arguing that the main achievement of the Constitution was to set up a system that would accommodate the changing needs of the American people. To that end, he is a scholar of administrative law, examining the detailed ways in which our system works.
Democratic President Bill Clinton appointed Breyer to a seat formerly held by Harry Blackmun, who had been appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon. Blackmun was a justice in the days when it made sense for a Republican to support measures that defended civil rights: he was the author of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting a woman’s right to choose an abortion. So the seat, itself, has been characterized by pragmatism and moderation, rather than political affiliation, since the 1960s.
Clinton appointed Breyer to the court after President Ronald Reagan had set out to change the Supreme Court to reorder the nature of the country. From 1954 until 1987, the prevailing principle of the court was that it must protect civil rights, especially when state legislatures discriminated against certain populations. Using the Fourteenth Amendment’s declaration that all Americans should enjoy equal protection under the law and receive due process of the law before losing any rights, the Supreme Court stepped in to try to make sure that all Americans were treated equally before the law.
Americans who resented the court’s protection of equal rights insisted that the justices protecting civil rights were “legislating from the bench,” or were exercising “judicial activism” by changing laws that the people’s elected representatives had enacted. They insisted that the court must return to enforcing the letter of the law, simply interpreting what the Framers had written in the Constitution, as they had written it. That view of the Constitution would erase the expansion of civil rights—desegregation, interracial marriage, access to birth control, and so on—that the post–World War II Supreme Court had enshrined into law. Those who embraced this literal version of the Constitution called themselves “originalists” or “textualists,” and their intellectual representative was Justice Antonin Scalia, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by Republican President Ronald Reagan.
Breyer is an intellectual counterpoint to Scalia. In a book Breyer wrote in 2005, he took on originalism with his own interpretation of the Constitution called “Active Liberty.” Breyer explained that we should approach constitutional questions by starting at the beginning: what did the Framers intend for the Constitution to do? Their central goal was not simply to protect liberties like free speech or gun ownership, he argued; their goal was to promote democracy. All court decisions, he said, should take into consideration what conclusion would best promote democracy.
The conviction that the point of the Constitution was to promote democracy meant that Breyer thought that the law should change based on what voters wanted, so long as the majority did not abuse the minority. Every decision was complicated, he told an audience in 2005—if the outcome were obvious, the Supreme Court wouldn’t take the case. But at the end of the day, justices should throw their weight behind whichever decision was more likely to promote democracy.
That idea honored the changing necessities of the modern world and thus stood against the originalists. Although that vision was not always aligned with the Democratic Party, it was firmly rooted in the idea that the point of the Constitution was to anchor a nation in the voice of its people.
Now, of course, thanks to the three justices former president Donald Trump added to the Supreme Court, originalists have a strong majority of six of the nine seats on the court. Biden will undoubtedly try to counter those originalists with a justice who embraces a vision more like Breyer’s, but it would be a mistake to see this as a question of partisanship so much as a question of what, exactly, the American government should look like.
Should the federal government be able to protect equality before the law, or should state legislatures be able to do as they wish? In the last year, the right-wing majority on the Court has allowed the state of Texas to undermine the constitutional rights of women, established by Blackmun’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and has indicated it will challenge the ability of Congress to delegate power to regulatory agencies in the executive branch, thus hamstringing the modern government.
Breyer’s successor will, almost certainly, stand against such “originalism.”
Already, Republican voices are opposing the idea of Biden appointing a Supreme Court justice. During his campaign, Biden vowed he would appoint a Black woman to a position on the Supreme Court, and today White House press secretary Jen Psaki said he would keep that promise. There are a number of truly exceptional candidates for the post. Nonetheless, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity tonight called Biden’s promise “unconstitutional discrimination.”
And yet, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck noted that representation on the Supreme Court has been wildly skewed. Of the 115 Supreme Court justices we have had in our history, we have had 108 white men, 2 Black men, and 5 women (4 white; 1 Latina).
Breyer has pointed out that there is almost always a tension in our laws. In this case, should we adhere to the ideal that the law should be race and gender blind, or should we work to remedy past wrongs? This seems an excellent example of where the principles of “Active Liberty” are useful: addressing the obvious skewing of representation on the Supreme Court seems like a good way to promote democracy.
There is other legal news today, as well.
In matters close to Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), we learned that Florida shock jock Joe Ellicott has been cooperating with federal prosecutors. Ellicott is friends with Joel Greenberg, the Florida tax official who was friends with Gaetz and who has pleaded guilty to fraud and to sex trafficking of a minor. Greenberg has also been talking to prosecutors, and so has Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend. Tonight the Daily Beast reported that Ellicott could confirm that Greenberg told Gaetz that they had sex with a minor (Gaetz has denied any such knowledge).
Former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Richard Signorelli tweeted that the apparent delay in charging Gaetz in the sex-trafficking case may come from the fact that Greenberg was such a problematic witness that the Department of Justice wanted everything corroborated. The news that both Ellicott and Gaetz’s girlfriend have testified might relieve that concern.
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Oh, thanks.
Oh shit, I scrolled down to the next post and now I would like to have a stiff drink.
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What an artfully understated way of saying, “It’s looking more and more like Gaetz is truly fucked.”
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January 27, 2022 (Thursday)
Numbers released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Federal Statistical System producing data and official statistics, show that the U.S. economy grew by an astonishing 6.9 percent annual rate from October to December 2021. That puts the growth of the U.S. economy for 2021 at 5.7 percent in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is the fastest full-year growth since 1984.
At the same time, the U.S. added 6 million jobs in 2021, pegging the unemployment rate below 4%.
Economists predict that in 2022 the economy will continue to grow at a much higher rate than the 1.8% policymakers generally expect, expanding at 3.9%.
This growth is the outcome of a dramatic change in economic policy launched by the Biden administration through measures like the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law.
On January 21, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained to the World Economic Forum that the Biden administration rejected Republican supply-side economics, ushered in during the Reagan administration. That system relied on tax cuts and aggressive deregulation to spark private capital—the supply side—to drive the economy. Supply-side economics has not increased growth, Yellen said, while it has failed to address climate change and has shifted money upward as it moved the burden of taxes from capital and put it on workers.
Biden’s economic policy, Yellen explained, rejected this philosophy in favor of what she calls “modern supply-side economics.” This term appears to be intended to suggest a middle ground between the supply-side economics of the 1980s, which focused on putting money in the hands of the wealthy, and the post–World War II idea that the government should manage the economy by investing in infrastructure and a social safety net.
Biden’s plan, Yellen explained, has focused on “labor supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment.” Rather than focusing on putting money into the hands of the “demand side” of the economy—consumers—it focuses on developing a strong labor force in a strong democracy to create growth through hard work and innovation.
In its emphasis on education and access to resources, the Biden administration’s economic policy echoes the ideology Abraham Lincoln articulated in 1859. Wealthy southern enslavers insisted the government should simply defend the property rights of the wealthy, who would amass wealth that they would then put to its best use to develop the country. But Lincoln argued that the government should nurture the country’s laborers, who were the nation’s true innovators and hardest workers and who, if properly supported, would move the country forward much faster than a few wealthy men would.
Yellen said, “A country’s long-term growth potential depends on the size of its labor force, the productivity of its workers, the renewability of its resources, and the stability of its political systems.” The administration plans to increase growth by increasing the labor supply and productivity while reducing inequality and environmental damage. “Essentially,” she said, “we aren’t just focused on achieving a high topline growth number that is unsustainable—we are instead aiming for growth that is inclusive and green.”
This new approach is designed to address the problem of a limited labor force. Yellen noted that for decades now, the U.S. has underinvested in public infrastructure, and in education and training for children and for those who are not college-bound. That underinvestment has widened the wealth gap between people with and without specialized training or college degrees. Biden’s policies would address that gap.
Yellen identified investment in children as central to the administration’s policies. Universal childhood education, a cap on childcare costs, and expanded eldercare to relieve pressures on families are designed to enable younger people to join the workforce and boost growth.
When the numbers underlining the success of his policies came out today, President Biden tweeted: “Last year, we had the fastest economic growth in 38 years. While there is still more work to do, it’s clear we are finally building an American economy for the 21st century.”
In contrast, when asked earlier this week about childcare in this moment when the pandemic has created a severe childcare shortage—a gap Biden’s Build Back Better bill is designed in part to address—Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) made it clear that he saw no such role for government. “People decide to have families and become parents, that’s something they need to consider when they make that choice,” Johnson said. “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children.”
That attitude, the idea behind forty years of supply-side economics and the tax cuts that were its centerpiece, is showing up in opposition to the extension of the Child Tax Credit that lifted more than 30% of America’s children from poverty in the past year. Studies show the Child Tax Credit was enormously effective. It enabled families to buy food and clothing and to pay off debt. But the measure expired in December. Negotiations over the Build Back Better Act continue, but Congress has dropped the Child Tax Credit from the plan. All of the Republicans in the Senate stand against it, as well as at least one Democratic Senator: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who wants a work requirement added before he will agree to an extension of the policy.
And yet, stories of the end of the new Child Tax Credit system focus not on the Republicans, who oppose it across the board, but on Democrats, who are doing their best to put their new system in place permanently. A piece in Politico today suggested that angry voters who counted on the Child Tax Credit are blaming the Democrats for its demise, and that as families suffer, they too will blame Democrats, who will pay in the 2022 midterms.
Similarly, the media seems to be downplaying the extraordinary success of the Democratic policies and instead focusing on their possible downsides. Today, the Washington Post ran a story that began: “Even as the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in decades in 2021, the recovery has more recently flashed troubling warning signs, with soaring inflation, whipsawing financial markets and slowing consumer spending complicating the rebound.”
It was a surprising way to introduce the best economic growth since 1984.
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Holy shit, he said this out loud?? What a fucking ghoul! I sincerely hope Wisconsin voters remember this at the polls. It is not your responsibility to send heartless bastards to DC!
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Sadly, at least some of his (more well-off) voters will agree with his BS… hopefully, it’s not enough to send him back to DC…
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we should add a work requirement for billionaires. i hear there are some minimum wage jobs that need filling, and being born wealthy means they don’t need to be paid well.
problem solved
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January 28, 2022 (Friday)
Today the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas to 14 individuals who were either chairs or secretaries of the groups signing the false electoral documents in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, on December 14, 2020.
In the past several weeks, it has become clear that the submission of false electoral votes from seven states was part of a larger scheme to throw the election to then-president Donald Trump. This raises the question of who organized the process of writing false documents and getting a group together to sign them. In a press release announcing the subpoenas, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said the committee thinks the individuals it is subpoenaing “have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.”
The committee has also issued a subpoena for documents and testimony from former deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere, who, according to a copy of the subpoena letter obtained by CNN, helped with "formulating White House’s response to the January 6 attack as it occurred.” The letter also said that Deere was in a January 5 staff meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump repeatedly asked “What are your ideas for getting the RINOs to do the right thing tomorrow? How do we convince Congress?” Deere was part of the White House response to the insurrection on January 6 and beyond. He currently works as a deputy chief of staff to Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN).
On Tuesday, Ben Williamson, who was an aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified before the January 6 committee for between six and seven hours and did not invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6 committee, told CNN: “We have filled in a lot more evidence that [Trump] wasn’t just inciting an insurrection, he was working to organize a coup against the democracy…I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice would not have evidence at this point to that effect.”
If the information hanging out there turns out to be explosive, it is not clear that Trump can continue to command the loyalty of the Republican base. His position in several investigations appears to be precarious, and as those investigations play out, his suitability as a political leader might well take an irreparable hit.
His legal troubles also likely mean he is having trouble borrowing money and, if his instant hop on the fundraising bandwagon after the story of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement from the Supreme Court is any sign, is relying on donations. On Monday, Forbes reported that a review of documents released last week in the civil suit over fraudulent valuations of Trump properties indicated that Trump had about $93 million in cash in the last year of his term, compared to his claims in 2015 that he had $793 million in cash. Trump’s valuations of the value of his holdings are notoriously unreliable, but it is likely there is a downward trend going on.
A recent poll shows that 57% of Republicans say they will not vote for any candidate who admits Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, a result which explains why presidential hopefuls continue to talk about election crimes. But 27% of Republicans say Trump should not run again and 21% say they would vote for Florida governor Ron DeSantis instead of Trump.
DeSantis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin both seem to be trying to out-Trump the man himself, perhaps in preparation to take his place.
DeSantis this week said he might sue the federal government for halting the use of two monoclonal antibody therapies for Covid-19 after the Food and Drug Administration said they don’t work against Omicron. Other therapies, which appear to be effective, are still authorized.
DeSantis has downplayed vaccines and touted monoclonal antibody treatments for the disease, opening clinics this summer to provide the treatment. Now that those treatments have proved less effective than they were against previous variants. DeSantis has blamed Biden for restricting access to the drugs, although the banned measures don’t appear to work against the Omicron variant and Biden had nothing to do with the regulatory decision.
Youngkin is giving DeSantis a run for his money. He distanced himself from Trump and ran on the idea that he was a moderate who would defer to the wishes of voters; he outperformed Trump in Virginia by 14 points. But as soon as he took office, he began to use executive orders to advance a far-right agenda.
Youngkin issued an executive order ending mask mandates in public schools. School boards immediately sued him, arguing the order was unconstitutional. The move has been unpopular in the state, with 56% of those polled in a Public Policy Polling survey saying that local school districts should set their own policies. Opponents have also pointed out that Youngkin’s own child goes to a private school in Maryland that requires masks.
Youngkin has also signed an executive order banning the teaching of critical race theory or any “inherently divisive concepts.” He has established a tip line for concerned parents to “send to us any…instances where they feel that their fundamental rights are being violated, where their children are not being respected, where there are inherently divisive practices in their schools.”
Today, he signed a memo with officials from colleges and universities to pave the way for more publicly funded private schools in Virginia. The measure will permit private, for-profit businesses to open schools using taxpayer money.
Youngkin’s move is in line with a long history of right-wing activism calling for the privatization of public schools. That call illustrates the marriage of business, racism, and religion that currently dominates the Republican Party. The for-profit school industry likes the idea of privatization because it would move enormous amounts of taxpayer money into private businesses; reactionary and religious parents like it because it would fund segregated or religious schools.
Meanwhile, the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge near Frick Park in Pittsburgh this morning, which injured ten people, illustrated the need for federal investment in public infrastructure. Biden was on his way to the city today anyway and toured the site before a speech touting his administration’s investment in roads, bridges, manufacturing, and innovation and calling for the passage of the Build Back Better plan. His goal, he said, is “to restore the backbone of America: the middle class.” He noted that the U.S. has added 367,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office—the highest increase in 30 years.
Blaming inflation on the high price of cars due to the lack of semiconductors, Biden promised to address that shortage by increasing production of electric cars. Noting that our investment in research and development has dropped from 2% of our gross domestic product to less than 1%, he thanked the American Rescue Plan for $1 billion to strengthen regional economies. “When the federal government invests in innovation, it powers up the private sector to do what it does best: creating incredible new technologies and new industries and, most importantly, new jobs—good-paying jobs,” he said.
“We need to ease the burden on working families,” he said, “ making… everything… more affordable and accessible to hardworking people.” “It’s about time we stopped fighting and it’s about time we start working together again,” he said. “We can do an awful lot.”
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People decide to start companies and buy stocks, that’s something they need to consider when they make that choice. I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s investments.
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