HCR Letters from an American IV

[Go Bama]

July 27, 2023 (Wednesday)


Yesterday a team of international researchers confirmed that human-caused climate change is driving the life-threatening heat waves in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has broken more than 2,000 high temperature records in the past month, and it looks like July will be the hottest month on Earth since scientists have kept records.

Another study published yesterday warns that the Atlantic currents that transport warm water from the tropics north are in danger of collapsing as early as 2025 and as late as 2095, with a central estimate of 2050. As Arctic ice melts, the cold water that sinks and pulls the current northward is warming, slowing the mechanism that moves the currents. The collapse of that system would disrupt rain patterns in India, South America, and West Africa, endangering the food supplies for billions of people. It would also raise sea levels on the North American east coast and create storms and colder temperatures in Europe.

On Sunday and Monday, the ocean water off the tip of Florida reached temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), the same temperature as an average hot tub. According to the Coral Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Florida’s Key Largo that works to protect coral reefs, the hot water has created “a severe and urgent crisis,” with mortality up to 100%. The Mediterranean Sea also hit a record high this week, reaching 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit (28.4 Celsius).

An op-ed by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times today noted that more land burned in Quebec in June than in the previous 20 years combined; across Canada, more than 25 million acres burned. And most of Canada’s fire season is still ahead.

Professor Ian Lowe of Australia’s Griffith University told The Guardian that he recalled reading the 1985 report that identified the link between greenhouse gasses and climate change, and worked to draw public attention to it. “Now all the projected changes are happening,” he said. “I reflect on how much needless environmental damage and human suffering will result from the work of those politicians, business leaders and public figures who have prevented concerted action. History will judge them very harshly.”

Former vice president Mike Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, today unveiled his economic proposal. It calls for eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Biden administration’s incentives designed to address climate change.

In that, he is in line with Republican lawmakers. Earlier this month, Mike Magner in Roll Call noted that at least four of the bills released so far by the House Appropriations Committee for 2024 include cutting funding to address climate change that Congress appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act. Project 2025, which has provided the blueprint for a Trump presidency, says “the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding,” and calls for more use of fossil fuels.

A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Columbia University says that court cases related to climate change have more than doubled in five years. Thirty-four of the 2,180 lawsuits have been brought forward on behalf of children, teens, and young adults.

And therein lies a huge problem for today’s Republican Party. A recent poll of young voters shows they care deeply about gun violence, economic inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change. All of those issues are only becoming more prominent.

And speaking of young people and the problems Republicans are having with that generation, I have only one other observation tonight, as I am spending this week reading the audiobook for the new book and am truly exhausted. It appears that the administration is pushing back on the attempts of states like Florida to whitewash our history by providing historical recaps in its press releases.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, and the White House statement celebrating that anniversary did more than acknowledge it and praise today’s multicultural military. It recounted the history of Black service members from the American Revolution to the present.

It covered the Black regiments that fought in the Civil War to preserve the United States and defend their own freedom; the highly decorated Harlem Hellfighters of World War I who fought in France as part of the French army because American commanders would not have them alongside white units; the Tuskegee Airmen who flew 15,000 missions in World War II but returned home to discrimination and oppression.

It then went on to call out the women and men of color who have served in the U.S. military, including the Indigenous Code Talkers, who turned native languages into an unbroken code during World War II while their people were losing their lands; the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team of Japanese Americans who fought in Europe even as their families were incarcerated in camps in the United States; the 65th Infantry Regiment of Puerto Rican soldiers in the Korean War, known as the Borinqueneers, who were court martialed as a group when their commander was replaced by a non-Hispanic officer.

Taken with yesterday’s quite comprehensive history of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Black child Emmett Till, it seems as if the White House has found a simple way to push back on the whitewashed history taught in places like Florida: making the country’s real history easily available.

 

[Go Bama]

July 28, 2023 (Thursday)


More good news today for Bidenomics, as the gross domestic product report for the second quarter showed annualized growth of 2.4%, higher than projected, and inflation rose at a slower pace of 2.6%, down from last quarter and well below projections. Economic analyst Steven Rattner noted that as of the second quarter, “the US economy is over 6% larger than it was before COVID (after adjusting for inflation). At this point in the recovery from the Great Recession, 2011, the economy was just 0.7% larger than it had been in 2007.”

Both consumer spending and business investment, which is up 7.7% in real annualized terms, drove this growth. Business spending makes up a much smaller share of gross domestic product, but it drives future jobs and growth, and much of this growth is in manufacturing facilities. In keeping with that trend, the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturer, First Solar, announced today that it will build a fifth factory in the U.S. as alternative energy technology takes off. This commitment brings to more than $2.8 billion the amount First Solar has invested in the U.S. to ramp up production.

While so-called Bidenomics is designed to rebuild the middle class, the administration is also trying to reestablish fair ground rules for corporate behavior. Yesterday, the Departments of Justice, Commerce, and Treasury invited American businesses to come forward voluntarily if they think they might have violated U.S. sanctions, export controls, or other national security laws by sharing sensitive technology or helping sanctioned individuals launder money. Coming forward “can provide significant mitigation of civil or criminal liability,” the note says.

It highlighted the anti–money laundering and sanctions whistleblower program in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

While many of us were watching the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., to see if an indictment was forthcoming against former president Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a different set of charges appeared tonight. Special counsel Jack Smith brought additional charges against Trump in connection with his retention of classified documents.

The new indictment alleges that Trump plotted to delete video from security cameras near the storage room where he had stored boxes containing classified documents, and did so after the Department of Justice subpoenaed that footage. That effort to delete the video involved a third co-conspirator, Carlos De Oliveira, who has been added to the case.

De Oliveira is a former valet at the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property who became property manager there in January 2022. Allegedly, he told another Trump employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and that the conversation should stay between the two of them.

In the Washington Post, legal columnist Ruth Marcus wrote, “The alleged conduct—yes, even after all these years of watching Trump flagrantly flout norms—is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Trump allegedly conspired with others to destroy evidence.” If the allegations hold up, “the former president is a common criminal—and an uncommonly stupid one.”

This superseding indictment reiterates the material from the original indictment, and as I reread it, it still blows my mind that Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence).

It sounds like he was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.

The Justice Department has asked again for a protective order to protect the classified information at the heart of this case. In their request, they explained that, among other things, Trump wanted to be able to discuss that classified information with his lawyers outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a room protected against electronic surveillance and data leakage.

Former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Peter Strzok noted that there is “[n]o better demonstration of Trump’s abject lack of understanding of—and disregard for—classified info and national security. He is *asking the Court* to waive the requirements for classified info that EVERY OTHER SINGLE CLEARANCE HOLDER IN THE UNITED STATES must follow.”

The Senate today passed the $886 billion annual defense bill by a strong bipartisan margin of 86 to 11 after refusing to load it up with all the partisan measures Republican extremists added to the House bill. Now negotiators from the House and the Senate will try to hash out a compromise measure, but the bills are so far apart it is not clear they will be able to create a bipartisan compromise. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has passed on a bipartisan basis for more than 60 years.

The extremists in the House Republican conference continue to revolt against House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal with the administration to raise the debt ceiling. They insist the future cuts to which McCarthy agreed are not steep enough, and demand more. This has sparked fighting among House Republicans; Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo suggests that McCarthy’s new willingness to consider impeaching President Biden might be an attempt to cut a deal with the extremists.

As the Senate is controlled by Democrats, the fight among the House Republicans threatens a much larger fight between the chambers because Democratic senators will not accept the demands of the extremist Republican representatives.

The House left for its August recess today without passing 11 of the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government after September, setting up the conditions for a government shutdown this fall if they cannot pass the bills and negotiate with the Senate in the short time frame they’ve left. Far-right Republicans don’t much care, apparently. Representative Bob Good (R-VA) told reporters this week, “We should not fear a government shutdown… Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”

Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA), the second ranking Democrat in the House, disagreed. “The Republican conference is saying they are sending us home for six weeks without funding the government? That we have one bill…out of 12 completed because extremists are holding your conference hostage, and that’s not the full story: the extremists are holding the American people hostage. We will have twelve days…when we return to fund the government, to live up to the job the American people sent us here to do. This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown, and for what? In pursuit of a national abortion ban? Is that what we are doing here?

“The American people see through this. They know who is fighting for them, fighting for solutions…. Your time is coming. The American people are watching. They are going to demand accountability. We should be staying here, completing these appropriations bills, stripping out the toxic, divisive, bigoted riders that have been put on these bills and get[ting] back to work for freedom and for our economy and the American family.”

 

[92tide]

July 28, 2023 (Thursday)
“the former president is a common criminal—and an uncommonly stupid one.”

trump is the gop, the gop is trump

 

[Go Bama]

Apologies for being so late. I had a gig in McMinnville, TN last night and got home at 2:30. I’m still exhausted after moving gear in 98 degrees on a bank parking lot.

Julr 28, 2023 (Friday)


On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani. Niger gained independence from France in 1960, and after a series of upheavals, the country established its current democracy in 2011. Bazoum was the first elected leader since then to succeed another in a peaceful democratic transfer of power. Niger is a key player in the struggle to establish democracy in Africa, and Bazoum’s overthrow is part of that larger story.

Niger is a landlocked country about twice the size of Texas in the center of the Sahel region in Africa, a dry grassland region that crosses the continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Sahel sits below the Sahara and above the tropical Sudanian savanna. That region is being hit terribly hard by climate change, as temperatures are rising there faster than anywhere else in the world, making the desert push into the grasslands. The United Nations estimates Niger loses almost 250,000 acres of arable land each year.

That region has also been plagued by violent Islamic groups, and strongmen promising to restore order have launched successful coups in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which are Niger’s neighbors. (When Vice President Kamala Harris went to Ghana in March, her visit was partly to shore up democracy in that country, which is on the edge of the Sahel region and under pressure from militants in Sahel countries.)

While Niger’s people are some of the poorest in the world, the country’s resources are immensely valuable. Niger has oil and, more strikingly, produces 7% of all the uranium in the world. It also has the fastest population growth in the world, with more than half the population under 15. Noting that young people are vulnerable to radicalization, the U.S. last year said that “helping Niger to become an increasingly capable partner against regional threats is a critical goal.”

Nigerien forces have worked alongside France and the U.S. to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, and both France and the U.S. have troops stationed in Niger: France has about 1,500, and the U.S. has about 1,100. In 2022 the U.S. State Department described Niger as “strategically important as a linchpin for stability in the Sahel as well as a reliable counterterrorism partner against ISIS,…Boko Haram,…[and] other regional violent extremist organizations.”

In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger, where he announced a $150 million humanitarian aid package to the Sahel region, bringing the year’s total aid from the U.S. to $233 million. "Niger is a young democracy in a challenging part of the world," Blinken told reporters. "But it remains true to the values we share. Niger has been quick to defend the democratic values under threat in neighboring countries."

During that visit, Niger's foreign minister said that Niger would uphold democratic values to combat extremists. "We need to show that democracy is the only way to defeat terrorism," he said.

Russia’s mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group troops have also been active in the region, working on the side of those overthrowing the governments in Mali and Burkina Faso by mercilessly crushing their opponents. In exchange, they extract highly valuable resources.

While it is not clear that the Wagner Group was involved in the government overthrow in Niger—the French newspaper Le Monde says there are no obvious signs of Russian involvement—some of the militants have been waving Russian flags, and Prigozhin yesterday took credit for the coup.

“This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin said on social media. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.” This boast could well just be Prigozhin trying to rebuild his brand after his march on Moscow, but both Mali and Burkina Faso have turned toward Moscow after the coups there, and there is reason to think the same could happen in Niger.

Certainly, as their war in Ukraine goes poorly, it seems as if Russian leaders are throwing more of their weight into Africa. Putin has recently torn up the agreement that enabled Ukraine to export 35 million tons of grain in the past year, at least half of it to the developing world. He has added new mines to the Black Sea and has begun to bomb Ukraine’s grain-exporting ports, including the major port of Odesa, destroying 60,000 tons of grain stored there for export.

At a Russia-Africa summit held in St.Petersburg over the past two days between Russia and the leaders of 17 African countries, Russian president Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would export free grain to African countries to make up the difference. But Gyude Moore, senior policy fellow at the Centre for Global Development, told an Al Jazeera reporter that the amount he has offered is “too small in terms of the need.” It is also notable that African attendance at this summit is much smaller than at the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, when 43 African leaders attended, suggesting that the continent as a whole is not tilting toward Russia.

In New Zealand yesterday, where he said the “door is open” for New Zealand and other nations to join AUKUS, the new security pact between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, Blinken noted that Russia is responsible for cutting off food to Africa and pointed out that the U.S. donates about half of the budget of the World Food Program while Russia contributes about .02%.

“So that gives you some idea of who’s the solution and who’s the problem,” he said. He suggested that Russia’s attack on grain headed for Africa “sends a very clear message, and I think it’s a message that is falling on very, very critical and concerned ears in Africa and throughout the developing world. My expectation would be that Russia will hear this clearly from our African partners when they meet.” “[T]hey know exactly who’s to blame for this current situation.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned “in the strongest terms” the attempt to seize power by force and called for those involved “to exercise restraint and to ensure the protection of constitutional order.” “We strongly condemn any effort to detain or subvert the functioning of Niger’s democratically elected government, led by President Bazoum,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council added: “An unconstitutional seizure of power puts at grave risk our continued security cooperation with the government of Niger.”

Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told the Associated Press that the mutiny was a “nightmare scenario for Western powers who had betted on Bazoum and Niger as new security anchor for the Sahel.”

Still, Laessing added, “It remains to be seen whether this is the last word. Parts of the army are probably still loyal to Bazoum. They benefited much from equipment and training as part of foreign military assistance.” People in the streets protested the takeover, with one telling a reporter: “We are here to show the people that we are not happy about this movement going on, just to show these military people that they can’t just take the power like this…. We are a democratic country, we support democracy and we don’t need this kind of movement.”

 

[Go Bama]

If anyone is interested:

EVENT FULL: Steve Inskeep, author of Differ We Must, and Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening

www.parnassusbooks.net

I ordered the book and am registered. If anyone wants to meetup, let me know. I’ll be the baldest guy there. 😄

 

[NationalTitles18]

If anyone is interested:

EVENT FULL: Steve Inskeep, author of Differ We Must, and Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening

www.parnassusbooks.net

I ordered the book and am registered. If anyone wants to meetup, let me know. I’ll be the baldest guy there. 😄

Not if I show up.

 

[Go Bama]

Not if I show up.

You sure?

 

[NationalTitles18]

You sure?

View attachment 35312

Well, I do have to shave it again...

 

[Go Bama]

July 29, 2023 (Saturday)


I had intended to write about Bacon’s Rebellion today, since on this date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon published the Declaration of the People of Virginia, outlining the rebels’ demands —and, let’s be honest, also because I am giddy with relief at finishing the final stages of the new book and eager to be doing actual history again—but President Joe Biden gave a surprisingly interesting talk in Freeport, Maine, yesterday that hit my in-box today just as I was sitting down to write about Bacon. (I wasn’t at the event—I was in Boston recording the audiobook.)

When he first spoke at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Biden tied foreign policy and domestic policy together, saying: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic…economic renewal.”

“If we invest in ourselves and our people,” he said back in 2021, “if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth…that can match us.

“Investing in our diplomacy isn’t something we do just because it’s the right thing to do for the world. We do it in order to live in peace, security, and prosperity. We do it because it’s in our own naked self-interest. When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores.”

Yesterday, in a campaign reception at a private home in Freeport, he gave what amounted to a more personal version of that speech, updated after the events of his first two and a half years in office. As he spoke informally to a small audience, he seemed to hit what he sees as the major themes of his presidency so far. The talk included an interesting twist.

Biden talked again about the world being at an inflection point, defining it as an abrupt turn off an established path that means you can never get back on the original path again. The world is changing, he said, and not because of leaders, but because of fundamental changes like global warming and artificial intelligence. “We’re seeing changes… across the world in fundamental ways. And so, we better get going on what we’re going to do about it, both in foreign policy and domestic policy.”

“Name me a part of the world that you think is going to look like it did 10 years ago 10 years from now,” he said.

But Biden went on to make the case that such fundamental change “presents enormous opportunities.”

He began by outlining the economic successes of his administration: more than 13.2 million new jobs—including 810,000 jobs in manufacturing—inflation coming down, and so on. He attributed that success to his administration’s embrace of the country’s older vision of investing in workers and the middle class rather than concentrating wealth at the top of the economy in hopes that the wealthy would invest efficiently. The administration focused on infrastructure and manufacturing, using measures like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act to jump-start private investment in new industries in the U.S.

Then he turned to foreign affairs. “Does anybody think that the post-war eras still exist, the rules of the road from the end of World War Two?” he asked. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 that defined a post–World War II order based that world on territorial integrity, national self-determination, economic growth, and alliances to protect those values. It was the basis for most of the postwar international institutions that have protected a rules-based order ever since.

But the world has changed, Biden said. In recognition of the new era, in June 2021, Biden and then–U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson signed a “New Atlantic Charter” to update the original. The new charter renews the U.S. commitment to the old one, then resolves “to defend the principles, values, and institutions of democracy and open societies,” and to “strengthen the institutions, laws, and norms that sustain international co-operation to adapt them to meet the new challenges of the 21st century, and guard against those that would undermine them.”

Yesterday, Biden noted that his administration has shored up alliances around the world, just as he called for at the State Department back in February 2021 and in the New Atlantic Charter of June 2021. It helped to pull Europe together to support Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “is stronger today than it’s ever been in its existence.”

The Indo-Pacific world is changing, with new alliances coming together to hold firm on the idea of a rules-based international order. Biden has supported “the Quad”—India, Japan, Australia, and the United States—to stop China from changing that order, and other countries are taking note, shifting toward support for that order themselves. Did “anybody ever think Japan would increase its military budget over its domestic budget and help a European war on the side of the West?” Biden asked. “That’s what it’s doing. It’s changing the dynamic significantly.”

“The world is changing in a big way,” Biden said. “And we want to promote democracies…. [T]here is so much going on that we can make the world…a lot safer and better and more secure.”

“So…if you think about what’s happening, there is a confluence, if we get this right, of both domestic economic policy and foreign policy. [It] can make [us] safer and more secure than we’ve been [for] a long, long time.”

For all that his talk was a heartfelt recap of his presidency, he emphasized that the key to those successes has been democratic institutions. Referring to President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s reference to the United States as “the essential nation,” he attributed the leadership of the United States in world affairs not to its military might or economic power, but rather to its ability to create and defend alliances and, crucially, institutions that aspire to a rules-based world that works for, rather than against, ordinary people.

“Who could possibly bring the world together?” Biden asked. “Not me. But the President of the United States of America. Who could do it unless the President of the United States does it? Who? What nation could do it?” His vision was not the triumphalism of recent presidents; it reached back to the 1940s, to the postwar institutions that helped to rebuild Europe and create lasting alliances, and expanded that vision for the twenty-first century.

He recognized that U.S. policies have caused damage in the past, and that the country must fix things it has broken. “We’re the ones who polluted the world,” he said, for example. “We made a lot of money,” and now the bill has come due.

And while the nation’s postwar vision was centered on majority-white countries, he emphasized that the modern world must include everyone. “[T]here’s a whole lot at stake, he said, “And I think we have an opportunity. And one of the ways we make life better for us is make life better for the rest of the world. That’s why I pushed so hard for the Build Back Better initiative to build the infrastructure in Africa…and in Latin America and South America.”

Biden noted that the strength of the U.S. is in its diversity. “I said when I got elected I was going to have an administration that looked like America.” He noted that there are a higher percentage of women in his Cabinet than ever before—more than the number of men—and that he had appointed more Black appellate court judges to the federal courts “than every other president in America combined.” He did this for a simple reason, he said: “Our strength is our diversity. It’s about time we begin to use it.”

“[T]he whole world is changing,” Biden said, “But if we grab hold,” he continued, “[t]here’s nothing beyond our capacity.”

If I were writing a history of the Biden administration 150 years from now, I would call out this informal talk as an articulation of a vision of American leadership, based not in economic expansion, military might, or personalities, or even in policies, but in the strength of the institutions of democracy, preserved through global alliances.

So I guess I got to write about history today, after all.

 

[JDCrimson]

I firmly believe the Democrats gave away a generation of voters late Boomers and Gen Xers with the adoption of NAFTA and the transition to the global economy. The Republicans exploited this giveaway. These policies were over done and gutted middle America supercharging income inequality. This opened the door for fascism to take root in this country. There are a lot of people who missed out on the American dream mostly in rural America. Those are the mad folks voting with Trump fixated on the cultural shift because they missed on the economic growth. It will take a generation for the Democrat to win back the spirit of our democracy.

 

[NationalTitles18]

I firmly believe the Democrats gave away a generation of voters late Boomers and Gen Xers with the adoption of NAFTA and the transition to the global economy. The Republicans exploited this giveaway. These policies were over done and gutted middle America supercharging income inequality. This opened the door for fascism to take root in this country. There are a lot of people who missed out on the American dream mostly in rural America. Those are the mad folks voting with Trump fixated on the cultural shift because they missed on the economic growth. It will take a generation for the Democrat to win back the spirit of our democracy.

Strange, given that NAFTA was passed in Congress with more R votes in both the House and the Senate than D votes. Rs were very much in favor of free trade policies.

 

[JDCrimson]

Yes, but Clinton signed the legislation and the giant sucking sound began...

Strange, given that NAFTA was passed in Congress with more R votes in both the House and the Senate than D votes. Rs were very much in favor of free trade policies.

 

[Go Bama]

July 30, 2023 (Sunday)


This week we finished recording the audiobook for Democracy Awakening.

And so the entire process of writing a book, from getting the idea to reading the audiobook, is done, done, done, done, done.

It reads well, I think. In an odd way it is a deeply personal book: it’s basically my thoughts about the conversations we all have been having for the past four years about history, politics, democracy, and authoritarianism, based on my years of studying history and thinking about the human condition. We originally called the book “All I Know,” and that title would actually be pretty fair.

I’m superstitious about saying more now, but I’ll be speaking about the ideas in the book all over the country starting on the publication date—September 26—and will undoubtedly say then all the things I don’t dare venture now. (I’ll post a tour schedule somewhere obvious as soon as I get it.)

One thing new in this go-round is that the pandemic made it hard to get paper (manufacturers switched to cardboard packaging) and to print new runs (large printing facilities in the U.S. have closed as people turned to electronic formats), so if you think you’re going to want an actual book you might want to consider preordering one in the next week or so, from a local bookseller if you can. The publisher uses an algorithm based on preorders to determine the size of the first run, and while a second print run used to take about a week, now it can take as long as 8 weeks, so strong preorder numbers help to avoid running out of copies.

Considering how much the book feels like a community conversation, it seemed particularly appropriate that the audio recording was sort of old home week. My favorite sound guy, with whom I’ve worked for ages, was producing the recording. He was using a new studio, and it turned out I knew the studio’s owners; we had worked together about five years ago. I had never worked with the director before, but we figured out over the course of the week that we had a number of friends in common. And then, just as we were finishing the last chapter, my nephew, who’s a photographer, stopped by and started snapping pictures.

Here is an image of his I particularly like because it evokes all the hard work it takes to bring a project to life, and all the terrific people who make it happen. Sound producer Michael Moss is at the far right of the photo managing the recording, director Paul Ruben is on the computer screens (probably correcting me for the millionth time, poor man), and I’m on the left in the sound booth.

I’m going to take the night off, and will be back at it tomorrow. I’m guessing this week is going to be interesting.

[Image by Tyler Mitchell of Tyler Mitchell Creative.]

 

[Go Bama]

July 31, 2023 (Monday)


At Ukraine’s request, Saudi Arabia will host peace talks with up to 30 countries next month about negotiating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meetings will include the United Kingdom, Poland, and the European Union, as well as the United States. Brazil, India and South Africa—all three members of BRICS, the economic group made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—will attend, but Russia is not invited. Laurence Norman and Stephen Kalin of the Wall Street Journal report that diplomats picked Saudi Arabia to host the talks in hope of persuading China, which has close ties to Russia, to participate.

The basis for the talks will be Ukraine’s ten-point plan, which includes the removal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, but Norman and Kalin report that the plan will be adopted only if it is broadened into a widely shared set of principles that reinforce a rules-based international order. That ten-point plan calls for nuclear safety, food security, energy security, the release of all prisoners and deportees, territorial integrity, withdrawal of troops, justice, prevention of environmental damage, military security, and a firm end to the war.

While Ukrainians have the specific examples of the current war in mind—the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is now occupied by Russia, for example, and Russia’s destruction of food supplies and energy infrastructure, as well as Russian kidnapping of children—these principles have universal appeal.

“The Ukrainian Peace Formula contains 10 fundamental points, the implementation of which will not only ensure peace for Ukraine, but also create mechanisms to counter future conflicts in the world,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement. “We are deeply convinced that the Ukrainian peace plan should be taken as a basis, because the war is taking place on our land.”

At home, as David Smith noted today in The Guardian, quoting Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, Republican talking points against Biden and the Democrats “are having a really bad summer.” Republicans have centered their attacks on what they insist is a crisis at the southern border, crime in cities, and inflation. But in fact, as Smith points out, there is relative calm at the border (unlawful crossings dropped by more than 70% when Biden’s policies went into effect in early May) and violent crime has fallen (while Republicans are in the awkward position of explaining away Trump’s own apparent lawbreaking and threats of violence).

And inflation is down to 3%, lower than in any other major economy, while employment is at its strongest rate in half a century. On Friday, Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, a former quantitative investment analyst, wrote an article in Fortune titled: “Bidenomics’ Critics Are Being Proven Wrong. Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Sonnenfeld and Tian wrote that the economic theories of the past were proved wrong long ago and “[t]he U.S. economy is now pulling off what all these experts said was impossible: strong growth and record employment amidst plummeting inflation. And just as importantly, thanks to Bidenomics, the fruits of economic prosperity are inclusive and broad-based, amidst a renaissance in American manufacturing, investment, and productivity.” They conclude: “Bidenomics is proving to be the most impactful and transformative public investment program since FDR’s New Deal, with even Morgan Stanley acknowledging that economists broadly underestimated the positive effect of Bidenomics.”

As Smith wrote, the relative weakness of attacks on policy positions means that Republicans are pivoting to attacks on Biden’s character, not a bad move considering their own front runner appears to be weak on that front. Hence today’s House Committee on Oversight closed-door hearing with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner.

Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) told reporters that the hearing reaffirmed their questions—perhaps because they didn’t like the answers—about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings. Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), who said he was the only committee member who stayed for the whole testimony (suggesting that the Republicans weren’t really interested in it), said that “Archer testified that Joe Biden NEVER discussed any business with Hunter and his associates” and that “there was no bribe from Burisma to Joe or Hunter.”

Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) confirmed that Archer “didn’t know anything about” the supposed $5 million bribe to Biden that Republicans have made much of. Goldman concluded: “This investigation has uncovered ZERO evidence connected to President Biden.”

But there is another story that would have been a scandal in any other era, when we weren’t completely exhausted by scandals: the giant trucking company Yellow is on the verge of bankruptcy and is shutting down, throwing 30,000 people, including 22,000 Teamsters union members, out of work.

Just three years ago, the Trump administration overruled the Pentagon to certify that Yellow was critical to maintaining national security, qualifying it for a $700 million federal loan during the pandemic. Both White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were personally involved in the deal, which Trump’s 2020 campaign used to suggest Trump was friendly to workers.

According to Yeganeh Torbati and Jeff Stein, who covered the story in April 2022 for the Washington Post, the $700 million loan “was by far the largest provided to any company through the program for businesses critical to national security.” Yellow has repaid $55 million in interest on the loan, but just $230 in principal. In May the company owed $729.2 million to the U.S. Treasury.

Still, the first New York Times/Sienna College poll of the 2024 campaign shows Trump winning 54% of the votes of likely Republican primary voters. The next closest challenger is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 17%. It appears Trump still has a lock on his base, and it is that base, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent points out, that is demanding that House Republicans, led by House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) do more to protect Trump and bring down Democratic president Joe Biden.

For all that the base is in Trump’s camp, Peter Nicholas and Megan Lebowitz of NBC News note that of all the dozens of people who served in Trump’s cabinet, only four have said publicly they support his reelection and many are openly opposing him. Semafor’s Washington bureau chief Benji Sarlin noted that while “[e]veryone has thoroughly absorbed it already, it is 100% insane to have a president opposed by basically his whole cabinet—some of whom actively are or considered running against him themselves.”

Journalist Brian Beutler points out that Republican leaders could get together and fix their Trump problem by being honest with their voters about Trump’s behavior, “but refuse to.” Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne adds: “There is a vicious cycle here. Republican leaders who know how dangerous Trump is fear speaking up because Trump is strong with their electorate. They stay silent. Trump gets stronger. They become even more fearful. Rinse and repeat.”

Trump’s political action committee, which theoretically is supposed to give money to political allies, has spent $40 million on legal fees for the former president and his aides in the first half of 2023. His allies are creating a new legal defense fund to keep the money coming in as his legal troubles get worse. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: “In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees.”

But there are signs that the era that celebrated strongmen is coming to an end as people recognize the danger of such centralization of power. A study by New York Times reporters on Friday noted that Elon Musk has steadily come to dominate satellite internet technology with the Starlink technology made by his SpaceX rocket company, and that he has used that dominance to restrict the activities of Ukraine’s military. Musk began to launch satellites into space in 2019, and currently has in position more than 4,500 of the 42,000 satellites he plans. He controls more than 50% of the globe’s working satellites.

The federal government contracts with SpaceX for its rockets and the technology that reaches into areas other companies don’t yet reach. Ukraine, for example, depends on the 42,000 Starlink terminals across the country. Late last year, Musk restricted the use of Starlink on the battlefields, leaving Ukrainian troops without the ability to communicate in a way that suggests he was conducting his own foreign and military policy that conflicted with that of the United States. But a number of countries worry that no one man should have such power, and U.S. officials noted his proposals for a peace plan that would have given Russia Ukrainian land.

 

[Go Bama]

August 1, 2023 (Tuesday)


Today a grand jury in Washington, D.C, indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.

The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted and certified by the government; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.”

As Rachel Weiner pointed out in the Washington Post, “conspiracies don’t need to be successful to be criminal, and perpetrators can be held responsible if they join the conspiracy at any stage.”

The indictment referred to six co-conspirators without identifying them by name, but the details included about them suggest that Co-Conspirator 1 is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Co-Conspirator 2 is lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes to throw the election to Trump; Co-Conspirator 3 is Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to push into the role of attorney general so he could lie that there had been election fraud; Co-Conspirator 5 appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney behind the idea of the false electors.

The identity of Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant, is unclear.

On The Reid Out tonight, law professor Neal Katyal suggested that the six were not indicted because the Justice Department “doesn’t want the trial of the other six to be bundled up with this and slow this down.” Los Angeles Times senior legal affairs columnist Harry Litman concluded that the absence of Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from the indictment indicates he’s cooperating with the Department of Justice. Meadows had a ringside seat to the last days of the Trump administration.

The indictment is what’s known as a “speaking indictment,” one that explains the alleged crimes to the public. It undercuts Trump loyalists’ insistence that the Department of Justice is trying to criminalize Trump’s free speech by laying out that Trump did indeed have a right to challenge the election—which he did, and lost. He also had a first-amendment right to lie about the election.

What he did not have was a right to use “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

The indictment begins by settling out that Trump “lost the 2020 presidential election” but that “despite having lost, [Trump] was determined to remain in power.” So he lied that he had actually won. “These claims were false, and [Trump] knew they were false.” More than 15 pages of the 45-page indictment establish that Trump knew the allegations he was making about election fraud were lies.

In one memorable December exchange, a senior campaign advisor wrote in an email, “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0–32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy sh*t beamed down from the mothership.”

The Trump team used lies about the election to justify organizing fraudulent slates of electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Allegedly with the help of Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, they attempted to have the legitimate electors that accurately reflected the voters’ choice of Biden replaced with fraudulent ones that claimed Trump had won in their states, first by convincing state legislators they had the power to make the switch, and then by convincing Vice President Mike Pence he could choose the Trump electors.

When Pence would not fraudulently alter the election results, Trump whipped up the crowd he had gathered in Washington, D.C., against Pence and then, according to the indictment, “attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” to overturn the election results. “As violence ensued,” the indictment reads, Trump and his co-conspirators “explained the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.” On the evening of January 6, 2021, the indictment alleges, Trump and Co-Conspirator 1 called seven senators and one representative and asked them to delay the certification of Biden’s election.

While they were doing so, White House counsel Pat Cipollone called Trump “to ask him to withdraw any objections and allow the certification. The Defendant refused.” Just before midnight, Co-Conspirator 2 emailed Pence’s lawyer, once again begging the vice president to “violate the law and seek further delay of the certification.”

While Trump loyalists are trying to spin the indictment as the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Trump, legal analyst George Conway noted on CNN tonight: "All the evidence comes from Republicans. If you go through this indictment and you annotate the paragraphs to figure out who are the witnesses the[special counsel] would use to prove particular points, they're all Republicans. Those are the people who were having the discussions, telling [Trump], 'You lost.'”

Trump will be arraigned at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 3. The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump has been randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Chutkan has presided over dozens of cases concerning the defendants who participated in the events of January 6, 2021, and has been vocal during sentencing about the stakes of that event. In December 2021 she said: “It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power, assaulting law enforcement, is going to be met with certain punishment.”

“The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Special Counsel Jack Smith said in his statement about the indictment.

“The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They’re patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States.”

The prosecution of former president Trump for trying to destroy those institutions and principles, including our right to consent to the government under which we live—a right the Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence—should deter others from trying to do the same. Moreover, it will defend the rights of the victims—those who gave their lives as well as all of us whose votes were attacked—by establishing the truth in place of lies. That realistic view should enable us to recommit to the principles on which we want our nation to rest.

Such a prosecution will reaffirm the institutions of democracy. Donald Trump tried to destroy “the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured…by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” Such an effort must be addressed, and doing it within the parameters of our legal system should reestablish the very institutions Trump loyalists are trying to undermine.

As former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said this evening: “Like every criminal defendant, the former President is innocent until proven guilty…. The charges…must play out through the legal process, peacefully and without any outside interference…. As this case proceeds through the courts, justice must be done according to the facts and the law.”

 

[Go Bama]

August 2, 2023 (Wednesday)


There have been more developments today surrounding yesterday’s indictment of former president Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in office over the wishes of the American people.

Observers today called out the part of the indictment that describes how Trump and Co-Conspirator 4, who appears to be Jeffrey Clark, the man Trump wanted to make attorney general, intended to use the military to quell any protests against Trump’s overturning of the election results. When warned that staying in power would lead to “riots in every major city in the United States,” Co-Conspirator 4 replied, “Well…that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 permits the president to use the military to enforce domestic laws, invoking martial law. Trump’s allies urged him to do just that to stay in power. Fears that Trump might do such a thing were strong enough that on January 3, 2021, all 10 living former defense secretaries signed a Washington Post op-ed warning that “[e]fforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

They put their colleagues on notice: “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo recalled today that military leaders told Congress they were reluctant to respond to the violence at the Capitol out of concern about how Trump might use the military under the Insurrection Act.

Political pollster Tom Bonier wrote: “I understand Trump fatigue, but it feels like the president and his advisors preparing to use the military to quash protests against his planned coup should be bigger news. Especially when that same guy is in the midst of a somewhat credible comeback effort.”

On The Beat tonight, Ari Melber connected Trump Co-Conspirator John Eastman to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Just before midnight on January 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eastman wrote to Pence’s lawyer to beg him to get Pence to adjourn Congress “for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.” On the floor of the Senate at about the same time, Cruz, who voted against certification, used very similar language when he called for “a ten-day emergency audit.”

An email sent by Co-Conspirator 6, the political consultant, matches one sent from Boris Epshteyn to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, suggesting that Epshteyn is Co-Conspirator 6. The Russian-born Epshteyn has been with Trump’s political organization since 2016 and was involved in organizing the slates of false electors in 2020. Along with political consultant Steve Bannon, Epshteyn created a cryptocurrency called “$FJB, which officially stands for “Freedom. Jobs. Business.” but which they marketed to Trump loyalists as “F*ck Joe Biden.” By February 2023, Nikki McCann Ramirez reported in Rolling Stone that the currency had lost 95% of its value.

Since the indictment became public, Trump loyalists have insisted that the Department of Justice is attacking Trump’s First Amendment rights to free speech. Indeed, if Giuliani’s unhinged appearance on Newsmax last night is any indication, it appears that has been their strategy all along. Aside from the obvious limit that the First Amendment does not cover criminal behavior, the grand jury sidestepped this issue by acknowledging that Trump had a right to lie about his election loss. It indicted him for unlawfully trying to obstruct an official proceeding and to disenfranchise voters.

Today, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr dismissed the idea that the indictment is an attack on Trump’s First Amendment rights. Barr told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “As the indictment says, they're not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better. But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy. All conspiracies involve speech. And all fraud involves speech. Free speech doesn't give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”

Rudy Giuliani has his own troubles in the news today, unrelated to the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His former assistant Noelle Dunphy is suing him for sexual harassment and abuse, and new transcripts filed in the New York Supreme Court of Giuliani’s own words reveal disturbing fantasies of sexual domination that are unlikely to help his reputation. (Historian Kevin Kruse retweeted part of the transcript with the words, “Goodbye, lunch.”)

The chaos in the country’s political leaders comes with a financial cost. According to Fitch Ratings Inc., a credit-rating agency, the national instability caused by “a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years” has damaged confidence in the country’s fiscal management. Yesterday it downgraded the United States of America’s long-term credit rating for the second time in U.S. history.

Fitch cited “repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions,” “a complex budgeting process,” and “several economic shocks as well as tax cuts and new spending initiatives” for its downgrade. The New York Times warned that the downgrade is “another sign that Wall Street is worried about political chaos, including brinkmanship over the debt limit that is becoming entrenched in Washington.”

The timing of the downgrade made little sense economically, as U.S. economic growth is strong enough that the Bank of America today walked back earlier warnings of a recession. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that the key factors on which Fitch based its downgrade had started in 2018 and called the downgrade “arbitrary.” The editorial board of the Washington Post called the timing “bizarre.” But the timing makes more sense in the context of the fact that House Republicans could not pass 11 of 12 necessary appropriations bills before leaving for their August recess.

The White House said it “strongly disagree[d]” with the decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating, noting that the ratings model Fitch used declined under Trump before rebounding under Biden, and saying “it defies reality to downgrade the United States at a moment when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.” But it did agree that “extremism by Republican officials—from cheerleading default, to undermining governance and democracy, to seeking to extend deficit-busting tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations—is a continued threat to our economy.”

 

[Go Bama]

August 3, 2023 (Thursday)


In a special election today, voters reelected Tennessee state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, whom the Republican supermajority in the state house voted on April 6 to expel for their participation in a demonstration in favor of gun safety. “Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken,” Jones tweeted. The Tennessee legislature will convene on August 21 for a special session.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted: “Congratulations [Brother Jones] on your decisive victory and return to the Tennessee legislature! So pleased that the voters have sent you back where you belong—pursuing justice and opportunity For The People.”

At the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., this afternoon, in the same courtroom where a number of defendants charged with crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have been tried, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned. He is charged with conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.

He is also charged with conspiring to take away “the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured…by the Constitution and laws of the United States…the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted,” as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in office over the wishes of the American people.

After Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya read the counts against him, Trump entered a plea of not guilty on all four charges. The judge warned him that one of the conditions of his release was that he must not commit new crimes. Then she added to that standard warning an unusual one, warning him that any attempts to influence a juror would be a crime.

The lead prosecutor for the United States, Thomas Windom, asked the judge for a speedy trial; Trump’s attorneys refused to agree, saying it would take a long time to review the huge amount of evidence. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hash out this difference when she presides over the case. The first hearing is scheduled for August 28.

And so, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., Trump became the 1,078th person charged with federal crimes in connection with the events of January 6, 2021.

Trump and his loyalists insist that the case against Trump attacks his right to free speech, although the grand jury’s indictment agrees that Trump had the right to lie about the election and charges him instead with illegal attempts to overturn its results.

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder noted: “That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.” While Trump has tried to whip up his supporters to fight for him, only a few turned out today to protest the proceedings, likely in part because the prosecutions of January 6 rioters have shown there are serious consequences for such actions.

Forty Democratic representatives today asked the Judicial Conference to authorize cameras in the courtroom during Trump’s trial. “It is imperative the Conference ensures timely access to accurate and reliable information surrounding these cases and all of their proceedings, given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency,” they wrote. “If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses.”

Also today, while all eyes were on the former president’s arraignment, House Republicans on the Oversight Committee released the transcript of their July 31 interview with Devon Archer, former business associate of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s 53-year-old son. Democrats on the committee had protested the Republicans’ spin on the closed-door interview and had been clamoring for the release of the transcript.

Archer was supposed to be a key witness for the Republicans’ allegations, but in fact the transcript supported the Democrats: Archer testified that he had never seen Hunter Biden involve his father in business discussions and that he had no evidence that then–vice president Biden changed U.S. policy to help Hunter. He said he knew nothing about the $5 million bribe to each Biden Republicans have been alleging.

He testified that he had no knowledge of wrongdoing by Biden senior, who was not involved with the Ukrainian company Burisma on whose board Hunter sat, and that he believed it was important to Hunter Biden to follow the law.

What emerged from the interview was a very different picture than Trump Republicans have been alleging in the media: Biden was calling his son every day around the time of his other son Beau’s death, just to check in, and the younger Biden sometimes put the call on speakerphone. Archer said: “Hunter spoke to his dad every day…[a]nd so in certain circumstances…if his dad calls him at dinner and he picks up the phone, then there’s a conversation. And…you know, the conversation is generally about the weather and, you know, what it’s like in Norway or Paris or wherever he may be.”

The transcript also revealed complaints by Democrats on the committee that the Republicans have kept information and documents about their investigation into Hunter Biden from Democratic committee members, forcing the Democrats to get their information “mainly from press statements…and leaks to press outlets.” The Republicans claim to have “a hard drive in their possession that they have refused to date to provide to committee Democrats.” They also limited the ability of Democrats to ask questions of Archer. “This obviously raises strong concerns that committee Republicans are once again attempting to cherry-pick facts, which has been an ongoing issue in this probe.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said: “The transcript released today shows the extent to which Congressional Republicans are willing to distort, twist, and manipulate the facts presented by their own witness just to keep fueling the far-right media’s obsession with fabricating wrongdoing by President Biden in a desperate effort to distract from Donald Trump’s third indictment and the overwhelming evidence of his persistent efforts to undermine American democracy.”

In contrast, on Newsmax tonight, Trump lawyer John Lauro appeared to confirm his client’s guilt when he tried to defend Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election by saying that “at the end, he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify. But what he didn't do is, you know, send in the tanks….” Legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Joyce White Vance tweeted: “Sounds like a coup to me.”

Meanwhile, this afternoon the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office announced a series of road closures beginning on August 7 in downtown Atlanta near the Superior Court of Fulton County and the Fulton County Government Center. At the end of July, the sheriff’s office put up security barricades around the courthouse.

The extra security measures might indicate that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is about to announce the results of the grand jury’s investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia: "I took an oath, and…the oath requires that I follow the law,” Willis said today. “And…if someone broke the law in Fulton County, Georgia,...I have a duty to prosecute, and that's exactly what I plan to do.”

 

[NationalTitles18]

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder noted: “That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.”

100%

 

[Go Bama]

August 4, 2023 (Friday)


Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, the 40th person to hold that position, retired today. Because Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put a hold on military promotions for the past 8 months, there is no Senate-confirmed leader to take McConville’s place. There are eight seats on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of the most senior military officers who advise the president, homeland security officials, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. Currently, two of those seats are filled by acting officials who have not been confirmed by the Senate.

Politico’s defense reporter Paul McLeary wrote that as of today, there are 301 senior military positions filled by temporary replacements as Tuberville refuses to permit nominations to go through the Senate by the usual process. Two more members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will retire before the end of September.

Politico’s Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman illustrated what this personnel crisis means for national security: “U.S. forces are on high alert in the Persian Gulf,” she wrote today. “As Tehran attempts to seize merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. is sending warships, fighter jets and even considering stationing armed troops aboard civilian vessels to protect mariners. Yet two of the top senior officers overseeing the escalating situation aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”

Two days ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a memo that the “unprecedented, across-the-board hold is having a cascading effect, increasingly hindering the normal operations of this Department and undermining both our military readiness and our national security.” Today he reiterated: “The failure to confirm our superbly qualified senior uniformed leaders undermines our military readiness.” He added, “It undermines our retention of some of our very best officers. And it is upending the lives of far too many of their spouses, children and loved ones.”

Tuberville, who did not serve in the military, likes to say "there is no one more military than me.” And yet, thanks to him and the Republican conference that is permitting him to hold the nominations, we are down two chiefs of staff tonight.

Meanwhile, on July 26, when soldiers took charge in Niger, a country central to the fight against Islamic terrorists and the security of democracy on the African continent, the U.S. had no ambassador there. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was blocking the confirmation of more than 60 State Department officials the same way that Tuberville was blocking the confirmation of military officials.

Paul claimed he was blocking State Department confirmations because he wanted access to information about the origins of COVID, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the department had “been working extensively” with Paul, providing the documents and other information he had requested. “But unfortunately, he continues to block all our nominees.” Paul complained that he had been only given private access, and wanted to “take those documents out.”

As of July 17, the current Senate had confirmed only five State Department nominees. On that day, Blinken wrote to each senator to express “serious concern” about the delays. He told reporters that he respects and values the Senate’s “critical oversight role…but that’s not what is happening here. No one has questioned the qualifications of these career diplomats. They are being blocked for leverage on other unrelated issues. It’s irresponsible. And it’s doing harm to our national security.”

Ambassadors “advance the interests of our country,” he said, and not having confirmed ambassadors “makes us less effective at advancing every one of our policy priorities—from getting more countries to serve as temporary hubs for [immigrant visa] processing, to bringing on more partners for global coalitions like the one we just announced to combat fentanyl, to support competitive bids for U.S. companies to build…critical infrastructure projects around the world.”

Our adversaries benefit from these absences, not only because they offer an opening to exploit, but also because “[t]he refusal of the Senate to approve these career public servants also undermines the credibility of our democracy. People abroad see it as a sign of dysfunction, ineffectiveness—inability to put national interests over political ones.”

Blinken noted that “in previous administrations, the overwhelming majority of career nominees received swift support to advance through the Senate by unanimous consent. Today, for reasons that have nothing to do with the nominees’ qualifications or abilities, they are being forced to proceed through individual floor votes.” More than a third of the nominees had been waiting for more than a year for their confirmation.

Late on July 27, the day after the conflict began in Niger and the day before the senators left for their summer recess, Paul lifted his hold, tweeting that the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency that administers foreign aid, had agreed to release the documents he wanted. The Senate then confirmed career diplomat Kathleen A. FitzGibbon as ambassador to Niger, as well as ambassadors to other countries including Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Guyana, Ethiopia, Jordan, Uganda, and Italy.

But FitzGibbon did not arrive in Niger before the U.S. government on Wednesday ordered “non-emergency U.S. government personnel” and their families to leave the country out of concerns for their safety.

The attack on our nation by individual Republicans seems to be a theme these days. After yesterday’s arraignment on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired and attempted to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspired to overturn Americans’ constitutionally protected right to vote, Donald Trump today flouted the judge’s warning not to try to influence jurors. He posted on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Prosecutors from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith tonight alerted the court to Trump’s threat when they asked the court for a protective order to stop him from publishing information about the materials they are about to deliver to his lawyers. They expressed concern that publishing personal information “could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses” or taint the jury pool by telling potential jurors too much before the trial.

 

[Go Bama]

“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

He just can’t help himself.