Heather Cox Richardson

[anon15383236]

April 14, 2024 (Sunday)

Today, on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu about his recent switch from supporting former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting former president Trump.

“Just to sum up,” Stephanopoulos said, “You support [Trump] for president even if he’s convicted in [the] classified documents [case]. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”

Sununu answered: “Yeah. Me and 51% of America.”

Aside from its overstatement of Trump’s national support, Sununu’s answer illustrated the triumph of politics over principle. Earlier in the interview, Sununu explained that he could swallow all of Trump’s negatives because he wanted a Republican administration. “This is about politics,” he said.

Sununu is part of the Republican faction that focuses on cutting taxes and slashing regulations. Trump has promised further tax cuts, while Biden has said he will raise taxes on the very wealthy and on corporations to make sure the nation does not have to cut Social Security benefits and Medicare. Republicans have suggested they will make those cuts to balance the budget, although at least 90% of the current budget deficit not due to emergencies like Covid is a result of tax cuts under George W. Bush and Trump.

Sununu may be embracing Trump for his fiscal policies. But there is possibly another dynamic at play in the shift of Republican leaders behind Trump. As Thomas Edsall outlined in the New York Times on April 10 in a piece about donors, they appear to be afraid of retaliation if they don’t join his team. Certainly he has worked to instill that fear, warning in January that anyone who contributed to Haley’s campaign “from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them.”

Trump has been very clear that he intends to use the power of the state to crush those who he feels have been insufficiently supportive of him. There is every reason to take him at his word, as he tried to do exactly that during his presidency. He used the Internal Revenue Service to harass former FBI director James Comey—who refused to kill the investigation into the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives as Trump demanded—and Andrew McCabe, who took over as acting FBI director after Trump fired Comey.

He demanded investigations and indictments of former president Barack Obama and then–former vice president Joe Biden, former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as well as a Democratic lawyer. Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman, whom Trump appointed after he fired Preet Bharara, recalled: “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining—in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”

That dynamic already appears to be at work as people are obeying in advance. On April 10, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation after his fellow trustees declined to present the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service to former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney out of concern that a future President Trump would retaliate against the organization by taking away its tax-exempt status.

​​”The historical irony was completely lost on you,” Kennerly wrote. “Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump.”

Harking back to Ford’s service in the World War II Navy, Kennerly wrote: “Did [Lieutenant] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on because he thought he wouldn’t get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You aren’t alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations, and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear that’s sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.”

As Princeton sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele told Edsall, those still operating under the impression that they will curry favor with a dictator are painfully unaware of how dictators actually operate: like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, if he is returned to power, Trump will use the power of the state to squeeze the wealthy as well as his political opponents, threatening them with investigations, audits, regulation—even criminal charges—unless they do as they are told.

But Sununu’s cynical announcement that he would destroy American democracy if it meant his party could stay in power is not only a misguided approach to trying to appease a dictator. It is a profound rejection of the meaning of American democracy: that we all are created equal and have a right to a say in our government. Throughout our history, Americans have found those principles so fundamental to human self-determination that they have given their lives for them.

It’s hard to miss that Sununu’s statement fell on the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who stood at the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where those who had died to defend the United States in July 1863 were buried and asked his fellow Americans to rededicate themselves “to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

[danimagoo]

The GOP is the party of cowards.

[anon61221983]

Let’s just hope that they start losing everywhere, even in supposedly safe districts, because that’s the only way that they’re going to change… that and Trump starts having legal consequences for his actions.

[gatto]

i’m tentatively hopeful. the vast numbers of people who have been voting for abortion rights, or trying to get referenda on the ballot is a really positive sign.

no transcript yet, but stuff like this is also really great:

Alabama may soon have a U.S. House delegation that more closely matches its...

[anon15383236]

April 15, 2024 (Monday)

April 15 is a curiously fraught day in American history.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down a rebellion in the southern states.

In 1865, Lincoln breathed his last at 7:22 a.m., and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who adored the president, said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

In 1912 the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

In 1920, two security guards in Braintree, Massachusetts, were murdered on this date; Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti would be accused of the crime, convicted, and, in 1927, executed.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color line in baseball’s major leagues.

In 2013, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding 264 others.

And on April 15, 2024, the criminal case of The People of New York v. Donald J. Trump began in Manhattan.

For the first time in history, a former president is facing criminal prosecution.

The case has been dubbed a “hush money” case by the media, but it is really a case about election interference. In 2016, shortly after the Access Hollywood tape in which then-candidate Trump boasted of sexually assaulting women became public, Trump allegedly falsified business records of the Trump Organization to hide payments to individuals who possessed damaging stories about him, especially about his behavior with women, before the election.

Then–Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleged she had had an affair with Trump, $130,000 through a shell company. He also set up a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump. That money would give the National Enquirer exclusive rights to the story, meaning they could decline to publish it and she could not take it elsewhere. This practice is known as “catch-and-kill.”

Trump then allegedly falsified business records to reimburse Cohen for “legal expenses.” Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying those records. The case might last as long as 8 weeks.

In many ways, this trial is a vindication of the rule of law. Despite his many attempts to delay it, a former president is facing accountability for his actions just as any American should.

The trial schedule reflected that standard practice. Presiding judge Juan Merchan set out the terms of the trial, covering what information the jury can hear about Trump and reminding Trump that, per the laws of New York, if he fails to appear in court as required, a warrant will be issued for his arrest.

But as jury selection began today, it was also clear that this is no normal trial. The names of the jurors will not be released outside the courtroom out of concerns for their safety, underscoring the degree to which Trump has urged his supporters to violence. And the country is so deeply divided over Trump and his movement that more than half of the first batch of jurors were excused when they said they could not judge the case impartially. No jurors were chosen today.

Trump has used this case—like his others—to try to undermine the rule of law. Rarely arguing that he didn’t commit any of the offenses for which he was charged in four different cases—two civil, two criminal—he has insisted instead that he is being unfairly prosecuted. The Democrats have rigged the judicial system against him, he repeatedly claims, and enough of his loyalists have bought that idea that today some of them urged Trump supporters in the jury pool to undermine the rule of law by lying to get on the jury, then refusing to convict (a plea that observers noted sounded like jury tampering).

Trump’s effort to signal that he remains disgusted by the charges against him continued today. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman noted that “[s]hortly before court adjourned for the day, Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising email falsely claiming he had just stormed out of court.” But it was notable that only a few dozen of his supporters showed up at the court today, and they did not stay long.

Trump has also refused to stop attacking the judge and other participants in the trial despite a gag order imposed by the judge. Today, even as prosecutors were asking Judge Merchan to find Trump in contempt for violating the gag order, Trump posted a video in which one of his allies attacked the judge’s wife as well as primary witness Michael Cohen.

Judge Merchan has scheduled a hearing on potential violations of the gag order for the morning of April 23.

Trump is trying to undermine the rule of law not only out of apparent fear of the outcome of his trials, but also because his appearance in court is likely to hurt his popularity. Last month an Ipsos poll showed that 32% of respondents said a conviction in this case would make them less likely to support Trump for the presidency. And that is before we have heard any of the new evidence that various sources have said we will hear, and which, by the nature of the case, is likely to be sordid.

Seeing Trump treated like any defendant is almost certain to damage his brand as a man who commands his surroundings. Today, Haberman noted: “One thing that is striking: Trump has used the previous court appearances in other cases to project an image of grandeur. That is hard to do in this dingy courtroom, which smells slightly off and where he is an island amid a sea of people.”

Further, the public nature of this trial will make it harder for Trump to present himself only through carefully curated appearances. Haberman also noted that Trump, who has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” appeared to fall asleep during today’s proceedings. “Repeatedly, his head would fall down,” Haberman said. “He didn’t pay attention to a note his lawyer…passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack.” (While Trump was nodding off in court, President Biden was meeting in the Oval Office with Prime Minister Mohammed Shyaa al-Sudani of the Republic of Iraq, and then with Prime Minister Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic.)

Outside of this case, Trump’s image as a wealthy man is also crumbling. Today was the day by which Trump’s lawyers needed to prove that the $175 million appeals bond he posted against the $454 million judgment in the fraud case would really secure the judgment. Late tonight, his lawyers filed their justification of the bond, insisting it was secure and saying there was no need for the hearing about it, scheduled for April 22. Legal analysts on social media immediately found errors in the document.

Trump’s lawyers also filed paperwork today with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue more than 20 million more shares of common stock in the Trump Media & Technology Group. The price of the company’s stock has been dropping since the spike after the initial public offering of March 26. Upon today’s news it dropped another 18%. It has dropped 62% since public trading began.

Although news from Manhattan took up most of the oxygen today, the Commerce Department also made a major announcement: through the CHIPS and Science Act it is investing up to $6.4 billion in a Samsung Electronics chip manufacturing and research cluster in Taylor, Texas. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the two proposed factories will create at least 17,000 construction and 4,500 manufacturing jobs.

In addition to its historical significance, April 15 is also Tax Day. Biden reinstated the tradition of voluntarily releasing tax returns after Trump ended it, and today Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff all released their taxes, revealing that their salaries make up most of their income.

Ken Thomas and Ashlea Ebeling of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump campaign did not answer questions about whether Trump would release his tax returns.

[anon15383236]

April 16, 2024 (Tuesday)

On Sunday, April 14, 2024, Iran fired about 170 drones, more than 120 ballistic missiles, and more than 30 cruise missiles from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and areas controlled by Hezbollah in Lebanon toward Israel. The strike was in retaliation for a strike on Iran’s diplomatic complex in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, which killed two top commanders in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, along with other officials. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the Syrian strike, but officials from other countries believe Israel is responsible. Iran warned its attack was coming, and Israel and the U.S., along with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and France, shot the missiles down. Israel sustained almost no damage. One Arab-Israeli girl was critically injured.

In the leadup to the attack, Arab countries shared intelligence and radar tracking, opened their airspace while closing it to Iran, and even supplied forces to withstand Iran’s attack. According to David S. Cloud, Dov Lieber, Stephen Kalin, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal, in March 2022, top military officials from Israel and Arab countries met in Egypt at the invitation of U.S. Marine General Frank McKenzie, then the top U.S. commander in the region, to discuss coordination against Iran’s growing military capabilities.

That prospective coordination had never been tested, but the fact that Arab states stood alongside Israel against Iran highlights changing dynamics in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the attack, a source connected to the Saudi royal family charged Iran with instigating the Gaza war to stop normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon are Iran’s proxies.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others, President Joe Biden’s apparent top priority has been making sure the crisis doesn’t spread. On October 10, he warned: “to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t.”

The U.S. moved two of its eleven carrier battle groups, which usually consist of an aircraft carrier, at least four other ships, and about 7,500 personnel, to the region. At the same time, while Biden has been careful to note that the U.S. cannot dictate policy to another country, he warned Israel against a planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The U.S. has also led the effort to stop Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen from attacking ships in the Red Sea. The attacks have disrupted global shipping, forcing ships to reroute around Africa.

Since the early days of the conflict, the approach of Israel’s government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to destroying Hamas has caused a deepening rift with the Biden administration. While the U.S. supports Israel’s right to self-defense and “legitimate military objectives,” it has repeatedly called out mounting Palestinian civilian casualties. Then, while the administration has consistently called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the plan for a postwar settlement Netanyahu finally proposed in February rejected that policy and instead called for Israel to maintain military control of Gaza indefinitely.

Increasingly, the Israeli government has rejected U.S. requests to protect civilian lives, including by allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where people are starving. After a brief humanitarian pause in fighting in November, efforts to achieve another pause to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza have failed repeatedly. Frustration in the U.S. over mounting civilian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has led to widespread protests against Biden as well as against Israel, and has led Democratic critics of Israeli policy to demand that the U.S. condition military aid to Israel on a ceasefire.

Tensions rose higher when Israel announced it would launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, without a plan for protecting civilians. More than a million Palestinians have taken shelter there. In March, national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that the president would not support “a military operation in Rafah that does not protect civilians, that cuts off the main arteries of humanitarian assistance and that places enormous pressure on the Israel-Egypt border.”

Israel did not notify the U.S. when on April 1 it attacked the Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria, a strike U.S. defense officials believed put U.S. forces at risk. Also on April 1, Israeli forces killed seven aid workers—including individuals from Australia, Poland, and the United Kingdom, as well as a Palestinian and a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen—with the humanitarian aid group World Central Kitchen. The workers had coordinated with the military and were in three separate marked vehicles.

On April 3, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directly called out Israel’s silence about its attack on Iranian leaders in Syria in a telephone call to his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

On April 4, in a telephone call, Biden told Netanyahu that “the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable.” He said Israel must “announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” He reiterated support for Israel but appeared to distinguish between Israel and its current government. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on the call, told a reporter: "The president made clear we will make sure Israel isn’t left without the ability to defend itself. At the same time, if there are no changes to their approach, we are likely to change our approach.”

Israel has pointed to the inefficient distribution of aid within Gaza as a cause of hardship, but three hours after the call, Israel announced that it would open the Erez crossing into northern Gaza for the first time since October 7, use the Port of Ashdod in Israel as a hub for supplies, and allow more Gaza-bound aid trucks into Israel from Jordan. Days later, Israeli officials dropped the plan to open Erez, and the Ashdod port is not yet accepting aid shipments; Defense Minister Gallant said, “We plan to flood Gaza with aid and we are expecting to reach 500 trucks per day,” but he did not say when that would happen.

While this was taking place, according to the four Wall Street Journal reporters, the administration pressed Arab states for intelligence about a retaliatory strike from Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia shared intelligence, and Jordan allowed warplanes to use its airspace while also intercepting Iranian missiles with its own planes. The White House coordinated Israeli and Arab defensive measures. According to U.S. officials, officials from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council were “in constant, ongoing, continuous contact with Israelis, with other partners in the region, as well as Iran with a series of direct communications through the Swiss channel and other relevant players,” as well as with “Turkey and China,” “in anticipation of the events that transpired.”

This was the background when Iran attacked Israel on Sunday.

In the aftermath of the attack, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, “The matter can be deemed concluded.” The White House immediately gathered the leaders of the Group of 7 wealthy democracies, who issued a statement calling on all parties to “avoid further escalation.” Then Biden urged Netanyahu to “think very carefully and strategically” about retaliation and noted that Israel had “got the best of it,” as it had killed senior Iranian military commanders but lost none of its own leaders. Netanyahu is under great pressure from his right-wing coalition to retaliate, but some members of his war cabinet have stressed that they want “to establish an international coalition and strategic alliance to counter the threat posed by Iran.”

The U.S. warned Israel it would not participate in any offensive counterstrike against Iran, although it has announced new economic sanctions against Iran. Matt Bradley of NBC News pointed out that an aggressive Israeli response would run the risk of dissolving the fragile cooperation between Arab states and Israel that helped to repel the Iranian attack. That cooperation illustrated that Iran is increasingly isolated, but as Oraib Al Rantawi, director of a Jordanian think tank, told Bradley, “Those Arab countries are in a very critical situation. There is no easy position to take….”

In the U.S., Republicans, including House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH) and Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, immediately said the U.S. should join Israel if it launched a retaliatory attack, saying they hoped to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. (David Sanger of the New York Times reminded readers yesterday that in 2015, in a deal with seven countries after two years of negotiations, Iran agreed to surrender 97% of its uranium, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and Iran returned to developing weapons-grade uranium.)

In the House, Republicans who have been refusing to pass the national security supplemental bill that provides additional funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as the Indo-Pacific and humanitarian aid to Gaza, have suddenly snapped to and are demanding additional funding for Israel. A researcher at an Israeli think tank estimated the cost of Israel’s interception of the Iranian weapons on Sunday at more than $550 million.

The Senate passed the measure in February, and the House is expected to as well if House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) brings it up for a vote. But Johnson is facing a revolt from MAGA Republicans who are so adamantly opposed to aiding Ukraine they threatened to oust him as speaker if he tries to pass it. Yesterday, Johnson said he would break the measure up and try to pass it in four pieces. Extremists don’t like this either. Two Republicans—Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie—have said they will challenge Johnson’s speakership, meaning that Johnson will have to rely on Democratic votes not only to pass an aid measure, but also to keep his speakership.

The House is due to recess from Thursday, April 18, until Monday, April 29. This afternoon, House Intelligence Committee chair Turner and the top Democrat on the committee, Jim Himes (D-CT), released a statement: “We must pass Ukraine aid now,” they wrote. “Today, in a classified briefing, our Committee was informed of the critical need to provide Ukraine military aid this week. The United States must stand against Putin’s war of aggression now as Ukraine’s situation on the ground is critical.”

Today the House finally delivered impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, two months after approving them, and demanded a full trial.

[anon15383236]

April 17, 2024 (Wednesday)

Yesterday on the social media site X, formerly Twitter, Miles Taylor wrote: “After 2016, I helped lead the US gov[ernmen]t response to Russia’s election interference. In 2024, foreign interference will be worse. Tech[nology is] more powerful. Adversaries more brazen. American public more susceptible. Political leaders across party lines MUST UNITE against this.”

Taylor served as chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump.

Today, Catherine Belton of the Washington Post reported on a secret 2023 document from Russia’s Foreign Ministry calling for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures that attack “‘a coalition of unfriendly countries’ led by the United States. Those measures are designed to affect “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” of Russia’s perceived adversaries.

The plan is to weaken the United States and convince other countries, particularly those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that the U.S. will not stand by its allies. By weakening those alliances, Russian leaders hope to shift global power by strengthening Russia’s ties to China, Iran, and North Korea and filling the vacuum left by the crumbling democratic alliances (although it is not at all clear that China is on board with this plan).

According to Belton, one of the academics who advised the authors of the Russian document suggested that Russia should “continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationist right-wing forces in America,” “enable the destabilization of Latin American countries and the rise to power of extremist forces on the far left and far right there,” increase tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, and “escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region.”

The Russian document suggests that the front lines of that physical, political, and psychological fight are in Ukraine. It says that the outcome of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order.”

Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky told Belton: “The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss. “This is an absolute misunderstanding.”

Media and lawmakers, including those in the Republican Party, have increasingly called out the degree to which Russian propaganda has infiltrated American politics through Republican lawmakers and media figures. Earlier this month, both Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned about Russian disinformation in their party. Turner told CNN’s State of the Union that it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” When asked which Republicans had fallen to Russian propaganda, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”

That growing popular awareness has highlighted that House Republicans under House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) have for six months refused to pass a national security supplemental bill with additional aid for Ukraine, as well as for Israel and the Indo-Pacific, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. After the Senate spent two months negotiating border security provisions House Republicans demanded, Republicans killed that bill with the provisions at Trump’s direction, and the Senate then passed a bill without those provisions in February.

Johnson has been coordinating closely with former president Trump, who has made his admiration for Russia and his disregard for Ukraine very clear since his people weakened their support for Ukraine in the 2016 Republican Party platform. Johnson is also under pressure from MAGA Republicans in the House, like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who oppose funding Ukraine, some of them by making statements that echo Russian propaganda.

While the White House, the Pentagon, and a majority of both chambers of Congress believe that helping Ukraine defend itself is crucial to U.S. security, Johnson has refused to take the Senate measure up, even though the House would pass it if he did. But as Ukraine’s ability to defend itself has begun to weaken, pressure for additional aid has ramped up. At the same time, in the wake of Iran’s attack on Israel last weekend, Republicans have suddenly become eager to provide additional funds to Israel. It began to look as if Johnson might bring up some version of foreign aid.

But discussions of bringing forward Ukraine aid brought not only Greene but also Thomas Massie (R-KY) to threaten yesterday to challenge Johnson’s speakership, and there are too few Republicans in the House to defend him.

Today, Johnson brought forward not the Senate bill, but rather three separate bills to fund Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and Ukraine, with pieces that House Republicans have sought. A fourth bill will include other measures Republicans have demanded. And a fifth will permit an up-or-down vote on most of the measures in the extreme border bill the House passed in 2023. At the time, that measure was intended as a signaling statement because House Republicans knew that the Democratic Senate would keep it from becoming law.

Johnson said he expected to take a final vote on the measures Saturday evening. He will almost certainly need Democratic votes to pass them, and possibly to save his job. Democrats have already demanded the aid to Gaza that was in the Senate bill but is not yet in the House bills.

Reese Gorman, political reporter for The Daily Beast, reported that Johnson explained his change of heart like this: “Look, history judges us for what we do. This is a critical time right now… I can make a selfish decision and do something that is different but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.… I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important.… I’m willing to take personal risk for that.”

His words likely reflect a changing awareness in Republican Party leadership that the extremism of MAGA Republicans is exceedingly unpopular. Trump’s courtroom appearances—where, among other things, he keeps falling asleep—are unlikely to bolster his support, while his need for money is becoming more and more of a threat both to his image and to his fellow Republicans. Today the Trump campaign asked Republican candidates in downballot races for at least 5% of the money they raise with any fundraising appeal that uses Trump’s name or picture. They went on: “Any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump’s campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations.”

Nonetheless, Greene greeted Johnson’s bills with amendments requiring members of Congress to “conscript in the Ukrainian military” if they voted for aid to Ukraine.

A headline on the Fox News media website today suggested that a shift away from MAGA is at least being tested. It read: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot. She is trying to wreck the [Republican Party].” The article pointed out that 61% of registered voters disapprove of the Republican Party while only 36% approve. That approval rating has indeed fallen at least in part because of the performative antics of the extremists, among them the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that made him the first cabinet officer to be impeached in almost 150 years. Today the Senate killed that impeachment without a trial.

As soon as Johnson announced the measures, President Joe Biden threw his weight behind them. In a statement, he said: "I strongly support this package to get critical support to Israel and Ukraine, provide desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, and bolster security and stability in the Indo-Pacific. Israel is facing unprecedented attacks from Iran, and Ukraine is facing continued bombardment from Russia that has intensified dramatically in the last month.

“The House must pass the package this week and the Senate should quickly follow. I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t let Iran or Russia succeed.”

[anon15383236]

April 18, 2024 (Thursday)

I will not spend the rest of 2024 focusing on Trump and the chaos in the Republican Party, but today it has been impossible to look away.

In Trump’s election interference trial in Manhattan, Judge Juan Merchan this morning dismissed one of the selected jurors after she expressed concern for her anonymity and thus for her safety. All of the reporters in the courtroom have shared so much information about the jurors that they seemed at risk of being identified, but Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters not only ran a video segment about a juror, he suggested she was “concerning.” Trump shared the video on social media.

The juror told the judge that so much information about her had become public that her friends and family had begun to ask her if she was one of the jurors. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted jurors’ fear for their safety was a concern normally seen only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”

Nonetheless, by the end of the day, twelve people had been chosen to serve as jurors. Tomorrow the process will continue in order to find six alternate jurors.

It is a courtesy for the two sides at a trial to share with each other the names of their next witnesses so the other team can prepare for them. Today the prosecution declined to provide the names of their first three witnesses to the defense lawyers out of concern that Trump would broadcast them on social media. “Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We’re not telling them who the witnesses are,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.

Merchan said he “can’t blame them.” Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche offered to “commit to the court and the [prosecution] that President Trump will not [post] about any witness” on social media. “I don’t think you can make that representation,” Merchan said, in a recognition that Trump cannot be trusted, even by his own lawyers.

An article in the New York Times today confirmed that the trial will give Trump plenty of publicity, but not the kind that he prefers. Lawyer Norman L. Eisen walked through questions about what a prison sentence for Trump could look like.

Trump’s popular image is taking a hit in other ways, as well. Zac Anderson and Erin Mansfield of USA Today reported that Trump is funneling money from his campaign fundraising directly into his businesses. According to a new report filed with the Federal Election Commission, in February and March the campaign wrote checks totaling $411,287 to Mar-a-Lago and in March a check for $62,337 to Trump National Doral Miami.

Experts say it is legal for candidates to pay their own businesses for services used by the campaign so long as they pay fair market value. At the same time, they note that since Trump appears to be desperate for money, “it looks bad.”

Astonishingly, Trump’s trial was not the biggest domestic story today. Republicans in Congress were in chaos as members of the extremist Freedom Caucus worked to derail the national security supplemental bills that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has introduced in place of the Senate bill, although they track that bill closely.

The House Rules Committee spent the day debating the foreign aid package, which appropriates aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately. The Israel bill also contains $9.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other countries. A fourth bill focuses on forcing the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company, as well as on imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran.

At stake in the House Rules Committee was Johnson’s plan to allow the House to debate and vote on each measure separately, and then recombine them all into a single measure if they all pass. This would allow extremist Republicans to vote against aid to Ukraine, while still tying the pieces all together to send to the Senate. As Robert Jimison outlined in the New York Times, this complicated plan meant that the Rules Committee vote to allow such a maneuver was crucial to the bill’s passage.

The extremist House Republicans were adamantly opposed to the plan because of their staunch opposition to aid for Ukraine. They wrote in a memo on Wednesday: “This tactic allows Johnson to pass priorities favored by President Biden, the swamp and the Ukraine war machine with a supermajority of House members, leaving conservatives out to dry.”

Extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) vowed to throw House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of the speakership, but Democrats Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida have said they would vote to keep him in his seat, thereby defanging the attack on his leadership.

So the extremists instead tried to load the measures up with amendments prohibiting funds from being used for abortion, removing humanitarian aid for Gaza, opposing a two-state solution to the Hamas-Israel war, calling for a wall at the southern border of the U.S., defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and so on.

Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.

Finally, Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”

Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor.

The name of their response team seems likely to be their way to signal their disrespect for the entire Congress. Their fellow Republicans are returning the heat. Today Mike Turner (R-OH) referred to the extremists as the Bully Caucus on MSNBC and said, “We need to get back to professionalism, we need to get back to governing, we need to get back to legislating.” Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Juliegrace Brufke of Axios: "The vast majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives…are sick and tired of having people who…constantly blackmail the speaker of the House.”

Another Republican representative, Jake LaTurner of Kansas, announced today he will not run for reelection. He joins more than 20 other Republican representatives heading for the exits.

After all the drama, the House Rules Committee voted 6–3 tonight to advance the foreign aid package to the House floor. Three Republicans voted nay. While it is customary for the opposition party to vote against advancing bills out of the committee, the Democrats broke with tradition and voted in favor.

[anon29537550]

@anon15383236

together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up)

[FGD135]

They also have a Supreme Head of Insurrection Training.

[anon29537550]

We need FART and SHIT to floor immediately! Get me FART and SHIT!! (I know, and yes, I am 12 years old at heart.)

[danimagoo]

@anon15383236

Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.

She is not a serious lawmaker. Her only purpose is to spread disinformation and obstruct.

Johnson’s sudden willingness to bring the aid package to the floor is interesting. Apparently during Trump’s recent meeting with Polish President Duda, who is far right, Duda told trump he was worried about Putin and Russia not stopping with Ukraine. And then suddenly, Johnson is fully on board with Ukraine aid. Apparently Trump didn’t brief the rest of the House MAGA wing.

[anon29537550]

Hopefully November can correct a bunch of this BS. In the meantime, I guess I will take this? (Assuming it actually happens, of course.)

[PsiPhiGrrrl]

@danimagoo

Johnson’s sudden willingness to bring the aid package to the floor is interesting.

I was disturbed by Beau’s take on Johnson possibly emulating McConnell (if he survives efforts by the Bully/Twitter Caucus to oust him):

Let's talk about Johnson, Ukraine, and what's next....

[anon29537550]

Beau has an uncanny level of accuracy in his analyses. At the same time, I think (assuming this happens) we need to take the win, then set out to make sure his stay in the speaker’s chair is short.

[anon61221983]

@danimagoo

She is not a serious lawmaker. Her only purpose is to spread disinformation and obstruct.

[danimagoo]

I like Beau, but I think he’s giving Johnson too much credit here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Trump met with the Polish President, and a day later, Johnson is pushing the Ukraine package. Occam’s Razor. Is Johnson secretly way smarter than he has given any indication of and playing 5D chess, or has Trump once again changed his mind based on the most recent fascist who has gotten his ear? I think the latter requires fewer assumptions.

[chenille]

@danimagoo

Duda told trump he was worried about Putin and Russia not stopping with Ukraine.

What, just because he has repeatedly said he won’t stop with Ukraine for all the world to hear?

[anon15383236]

April 19, 2024 (Friday)

The last several weeks of news have been relentless, and I suspect things will not slow down anytime soon. In the midst of all of it, I don’t think I took a night off last weekend, and have hit the wall tonight.

Going to bed and will regroup tomorrow.

Here’s one of Peter’s peaceful photos. We’ve certainly earned it.

[Photo, “Seal Bay,” by Peter Ralston]

[anon15383236]

April 20, 2024 (Saturday)

Cheering broke out in the gallery and among Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives this afternoon when the House passed the $60.8 billion aid bill for Ukraine. The vote was 311–112, with all Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favor and 112 Republicans voting against. One Republican voted present.

The House also voted on the three other bills that will be packaged with the Ukraine bill as a single measure to go in front of the Senate. The House voted in favor of providing $8.1 billion in support for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific by a vote of 385–34. It approved more than $26 billion for Israel, including $9.2 billion in humanitarian aid not specifically for Gaza but for populations in crisis, by a vote of 366–58. And it voted 360–58 to place additional sanctions on Iran, seize Russian assets, and require the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company within nine months if they want it to continue to be available on U.S. app stores.

The total price tag of the measures is about $95.3 billion. About $50 billion of it will be used here in the U.S. to replenish the supplies that will go abroad.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says the Senate will take up the measure on Tuesday. Senators had gone home for recess but will come back to vote. The Department of Defense says it is ready to rush crucial supplies as soon as it gets the go-ahead. “We have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly; as we’ve done in the past, we can move within days,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday.

Aid to Ukraine has been stalled since Biden first asked for it in October 2023. First, MAGA Republicans said they would never pass such a national security supplemental bill until the U.S. addressed the need for better security at the country’s southern border. Senators, including Republican James Lankford (R-OK) took them at their word and hammered out a strong border security measure, only to have Republicans reject it when Trump demanded they preserve border security as a campaign issue. The Senate then passed the national security supplemental bill without a border measure, but that was back in February. Although it was clear the measure would pass the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has steadfastly refused to take it up.

Meanwhile, countries around the globe have been stepping into the breach, providing funds and weapons for Ukraine as Ukraine’s war effort has faltered without U.S. war matériel.

Suddenly, the dam has broken.

The MAGA extremists who oppose aid to Ukraine expressed anger over the measure’s passage, but outside of that group, there was bipartisan relief and mutual congratulations. The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), who has been vocal in his belief that Republicans have fallen prey to Russian propaganda, compared today’s vote to the period before World War II, when British prime minister Neville Chamberlain tried to appease dictator Adolf Hitler in 1938 by agreeing to Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland. To Chamberlain’s successor, Winston Churchill, fell the task of fighting World War II.

“Our adversaries are watching us here today, and history will judge us on our actions here today,” McCaul said. “So as we deliberate on this vote, you have to ask yourself: Am I Chamberlain or am I Churchill?”

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: “For months, the national security priorities of the American people have been obstructed by pro-Putin extremists determined to let Russia win. A bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans has risen up to work together and ensure that we are getting the national security legislation important to the American people over the finish line.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also released a statement welcoming the passage of the measure. “This bipartisan legislation will allow the Department to surge lifesaving security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s aggression, support Israel’s defense from Iran and its proxies, and increase the flow of urgently needed humanitarian aid to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.” It is also, he wrote, “an important investment in America’s future.”

President Joe Biden said that “members of both parties in the House voted to advance our national security interests and send a clear message about the power of American leadership on the world stage. At this critical inflection point, they came together to answer history’s call, passing urgently-needed national security legislation that I have fought for months to secure.”

The reiteration of the bipartisan nature of the vote suggests support for the idea that the breaking dam refers not just to the national security supplemental bill but also to the power of MAGA Republicans more generally. Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) suggested this interpretation in an interview today with Ryan Lizza of Politico.

MAGAs are Trump loyalists, counting on his return to power, and Trump is visibly diminished. For the last week, he has been sitting in a courtroom with no choice but to do as he is told by the judge while potential jurors have expressed their dislike of him to his face. This is novel for him, and it is clearly taking a toll.

Trump’s financial troubles have not gone away, either. Yesterday, New York attorney general Letitia James asked a judge to void the $175 million appeals bond Trump posted to secure the $454 million judgment against him in the business fraud case. She says that the defendants have failed to show that there is enough collateral behind the bond to secure it. She has asked for a replacement bond within a week. Without a bond, James can begin to seize Trump’s property.

Since Republicans took control of the House, Republican leaders have had to turn to Democrats to find the votes to pass crucial legislation like the national security supplemental bill, preventing a U.S. default, and funding the government. Republicans interested in governing and eager to protect the institutions of democracy appear to be getting fed up with the attention-seeking and bomb-throwing MAGA faction that refuses to do the work of governing.

That frustration might have been on display when the House also voted on a fifth measure: a border bill the extremist Republicans demanded. Because it was considered under a suspension of the rules, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. The measure failed with a vote of 215–211. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer with the American Immigration Council advocacy group, noted that the last time the House voted on a similar measure, it got 219 votes. This time it got fewer votes, even with an added $9.5 billion for Texas, Florida, and other states that are restricting immigrants’ rights.

In The Atlantic today, David Frum noted the changing U.S. political dynamic and, referring to the Ukraine vote, wrote: “On something that mattered intensely to [Trump]—that had become a badge of pro-Trump identity—Trump’s own party worked with Democrats in the House and Senate to hand him a stinging defeat. This example could become contagious.” In other words, he said: “Ukraine won. Trump lost.”

For his part, leading Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev had his own reaction to the House’s passage of the national security supplemental bill with aid for Ukraine. He vowed that Russia would win the war anyway and added: “[C]onsidering the russophobic decision that took place I can’t help but wish the USA with all sincerity to dive into a new civil war themselves as quickly as possible. Which, I hope, will be very different from the war between North and South in the 19th century and will be waged using aircraft, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all types of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the inglorious collapse of the vile evil empire of the 21st century—the United States of America."