Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson
Today, as state-level Republicans embraced Trump and QAnon, 45 Republican Senators led by Rand Paul (R-KY) agreed that the former president should not be tried for inciting the January 6 insurrection or trying to overturn the 2020 election results. Also today, Google joined the many other corporations that say they will not give money to any Republicans who voted against the counting of the certified ballots on January 6. The collision between these two warring groups cannot be avoided once the Senate impeachment trial starts two weeks from today.
While the Republicans split and congress people struggle for power, Biden has stayed strictly within his constitutional role, where he has worked at breakneck speed. Staying out of the partisan fray in Congress, he has earned good marks from Americans for his first week, ending it with an approval rating of 56%.
—
Submitted January 27, 2021
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-technocrats-normal/2021/01/23/168bb0ba-5cd6-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/politics/blinken-state-department.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/here-s-full-list-biden-s-executive-actions-so-far-n1255564
Kyle Griffin
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1354240205377597450
https://www.state.gov/protests-in-russia/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/26/readout-of-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-call-with-president-vladimir-putin-of-russia/
Judd Legum( major corporations cease donations )
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1354056778175180806
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/08/30/473966/private-prisons-profiting-trump-administration/
While the Republicans split and congress people struggle for power, Biden has stayed strictly within his constitutional role, where he has worked at breakneck speed. Staying out of the partisan fray in Congress, he has earned good marks from Americans for his first week, ending it with an approval rating of 56%.
—
Submitted January 27, 2021
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-technocrats-normal/2021/01/23/168bb0ba-5cd6-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/politics/blinken-state-department.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/here-s-full-list-biden-s-executive-actions-so-far-n1255564
Kyle Griffin
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1354240205377597450
https://www.state.gov/protests-in-russia/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/26/readout-of-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-call-with-president-vladimir-putin-of-russia/
Judd Legum( major corporations cease donations )
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1354056778175180806
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/08/30/473966/private-prisons-profiting-trump-administration/
‘When a reporter asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether Biden believes the Senate should convict the former president of incitement of insurrection in his upcoming Senate trial, Psaki answered: “Well, he’s no longer in the Senate, and he believes that it’s up to the Senate and Congress to determine how they will hold the former president accountable and what the mechanics and timeline of that process will be.” ‘
I am so enjoying having a President in office who knows his constitutional role and sticks to operating within it.
Thank you for providing this information, Ahavati. It’s a nice change from having to wade through the bullshit going on in other threads to find a balanced point of view 💜.
I am so enjoying having a President in office who knows his constitutional role and sticks to operating within it.
Thank you for providing this information, Ahavati. It’s a nice change from having to wade through the bullshit going on in other threads to find a balanced point of view 💜.
LunaGreyhawk said:‘When a reporter asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether Biden believes the Senate should convict the former president of incitement of insurrection in his upcoming Senate trial, Psaki answered: “Well, he’s no longer in the Senate, and he believes that it’s up to the Senate and Congress to determine how they will hold the former president accountable and what the mechanics and timeline of that process will be.” ‘
I am so enjoying having a President in office who knows his constitutional role and sticks to operating within it.
Thank you for providing this information, Ahavati. It’s a nice change from having to wade through the bullshit going on in other threads to find a balanced point of view 💜.
💜
I am so enjoying having a President in office who knows his constitutional role and sticks to operating within it.
Thank you for providing this information, Ahavati. It’s a nice change from having to wade through the bullshit going on in other threads to find a balanced point of view 💜.
💜
January 27, 2021
The contours of politics today look much like they did yesterday. President Biden is forging ahead through executive actions—today pausing oil and gas leases while switching the government to electric vehicles— while the two factions in the Republican Party claw for supremacy.
Dead center of both of these political fights is the future of this country. Will Trump and his supporters seize control of the government—by means legal or illegal—or will the country steer itself back to the norms and values of democracy?
The dangers of Trumpism are becoming clearer each day. Today, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin that warned of violence from domestic extremists angry over “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” and emboldened by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bulletin expires at the end of April.
Law enforcement has moved National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in part to guard against violence on March 4, a day that QAnon supporters who still believe Trump is part of an elaborate trick to reclaim the nation from the Democrats think will be the day on which the former president is finally sworn in for his second term. (March 4 was the nation’s original inauguration date; it changed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937.)
In testimony yesterday, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington told the House Appropriations Committee that at least 65 officers filed reports of injury after the January 6 attack. The chair of the Capitol Police officers’ union, Gus Papathanasiou, put the number closer to 140. "I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake," he said. One officer died of injuries sustained on January 6. Two officers have since taken their own lives.
Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.
The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Republican lawmakers seem to be siding with Trump’s supporters, turning against the ten House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. In the House, Trump supporters are trying to throw Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of her spot in the party’s leadership, and the former president’s new political action committee is ginning up anger against her as it urges primary challengers to jump into the race in 2022.
Increasingly, Republican lawmakers are pushing to let Trump off the hook on impeachment. In the Senate yesterday, Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted that a former president could not be tried on an impeachment charge, and 45 Republicans agreed with him. This is not necessarily a signal of how the eventual Senate vote will go, but Paul said it was: he insisted this was a sign that Trump would not be convicted. Republican lawmakers seem to be coming down on Trump’s side as polls show that while most Americans are horrified by the attack on the Capitol and blame Trump for it, most Republicans- 78%-- don’t blame him. Republican lawmakers are accusing Democrats of divisiveness in their move to hold the president accountable.
Some Republicans are, though, alarmed at the idea that a president might get away with inciting an insurrection that endangered our elected representatives and our government itself—remember the next three people in line for the presidency were in the Capitol when the rioters stormed it—and which came perilously close to making good on threats against individuals, including then-vice president Mike Pence.
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) dismissed the idea that the country could have unity without addressing the causes of the current anger. “I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? If you said that, then I’m happy to listen to you talk about other things that might inflame anger and divisiveness,” he explained to Dennis Romboy of Deseret News. “But if you haven’t said that, that’s really what’s at the source of the anger right now.”
[ Continued below ]
The contours of politics today look much like they did yesterday. President Biden is forging ahead through executive actions—today pausing oil and gas leases while switching the government to electric vehicles— while the two factions in the Republican Party claw for supremacy.
Dead center of both of these political fights is the future of this country. Will Trump and his supporters seize control of the government—by means legal or illegal—or will the country steer itself back to the norms and values of democracy?
The dangers of Trumpism are becoming clearer each day. Today, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin that warned of violence from domestic extremists angry over “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” and emboldened by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bulletin expires at the end of April.
Law enforcement has moved National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in part to guard against violence on March 4, a day that QAnon supporters who still believe Trump is part of an elaborate trick to reclaim the nation from the Democrats think will be the day on which the former president is finally sworn in for his second term. (March 4 was the nation’s original inauguration date; it changed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937.)
In testimony yesterday, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington told the House Appropriations Committee that at least 65 officers filed reports of injury after the January 6 attack. The chair of the Capitol Police officers’ union, Gus Papathanasiou, put the number closer to 140. "I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake," he said. One officer died of injuries sustained on January 6. Two officers have since taken their own lives.
Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.
The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Republican lawmakers seem to be siding with Trump’s supporters, turning against the ten House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. In the House, Trump supporters are trying to throw Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of her spot in the party’s leadership, and the former president’s new political action committee is ginning up anger against her as it urges primary challengers to jump into the race in 2022.
Increasingly, Republican lawmakers are pushing to let Trump off the hook on impeachment. In the Senate yesterday, Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted that a former president could not be tried on an impeachment charge, and 45 Republicans agreed with him. This is not necessarily a signal of how the eventual Senate vote will go, but Paul said it was: he insisted this was a sign that Trump would not be convicted. Republican lawmakers seem to be coming down on Trump’s side as polls show that while most Americans are horrified by the attack on the Capitol and blame Trump for it, most Republicans- 78%-- don’t blame him. Republican lawmakers are accusing Democrats of divisiveness in their move to hold the president accountable.
Some Republicans are, though, alarmed at the idea that a president might get away with inciting an insurrection that endangered our elected representatives and our government itself—remember the next three people in line for the presidency were in the Capitol when the rioters stormed it—and which came perilously close to making good on threats against individuals, including then-vice president Mike Pence.
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) dismissed the idea that the country could have unity without addressing the causes of the current anger. “I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? If you said that, then I’m happy to listen to you talk about other things that might inflame anger and divisiveness,” he explained to Dennis Romboy of Deseret News. “But if you haven’t said that, that’s really what’s at the source of the anger right now.”
[ Continued below ]
Also notable is the firm stance of Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who has bucked his party to speak out against the former president’s attacks on the election and incitement of the rioters. “I’ve felt very isolated in my party,” Kinzinger told Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post.
While the Republican Party’s apparent embrace of Trump and all he now stands for is grabbing headlines, Biden and his administration officials are taking on the radicalization of his opponents in a new and promising way. They are demonstrating an approach to sidelining Trumpism by shifting the focus off the exhausting drama of the former president and his supporters and onto a functioning government that is working for ordinary Americans.
When a reporter today asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if the administration had any comment on Greene, Psaki made it clear the administration was not going to give any oxygen to her or those like her. “We don’t, and I am not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room,” Psaki said.
While Biden is starving the Republicans of oxygen, he is also working to address the conditions that have fed desperate conspiracy theories and divisions. In America, such societal breakdown is associated with periods in which ordinary people face economic hardship. Biden is moving quickly on a range of issues that are popular among ordinary voters of both parties, including addressing the country’s extreme inequality. After all, one of the complaints that drew voters to an outsider in 2016 was the belief that government no longer worked for the people and needed to be shaken up.
Today’s executive order on addressing climate change talks at length about creating “good-paying union jobs” and “tapping into the talent, grit, and innovation of American workers.” It calls for the government to buy zero-emission vehicles made in the U.S., and to rebuild federal infrastructure, creating construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades jobs. Job creation and infrastructure development were both promises the previous president made in 2016 that boosted his support but which never really came to pass. If Biden can actually deliver on them, he could reclaim those Trump voters for the Democrats, as well as addressing climate change and our failing infrastructure.
Biden’s people are also making sure we see a White House that is addressing issues that created concern in the past administration. They are upholding old norms—holding daily press briefings, for example—honoring science, restoring government websites, and treating members of the media with respect.
They seem to be trying to remind us how our democracy is supposed to work.
—-
Submitted January 28, 2021
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/climate/biden-climate-executive-orders.html
https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-january-27-2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-comments-reaction/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-david-hogg-video/index.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/536189-second-police-officer-dies-by-suicide-after-capitol-attack
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/27/donald-trump-poll-impeachment-backlash-liz-cheney-463339
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-republican-impeachment-democrats/
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/1/26/22251070/donald-trump-impeachment-stolen-election-big-lie-mitt-romney-senate-trial
https://gomez.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/adam-kinzinger-republican-impeach-trump-capitol/2021/01/26/c544cc1e-55fa-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/01/27/qanon-supporter-put-on-house-education-committee/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/27/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government/
While the Republican Party’s apparent embrace of Trump and all he now stands for is grabbing headlines, Biden and his administration officials are taking on the radicalization of his opponents in a new and promising way. They are demonstrating an approach to sidelining Trumpism by shifting the focus off the exhausting drama of the former president and his supporters and onto a functioning government that is working for ordinary Americans.
When a reporter today asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if the administration had any comment on Greene, Psaki made it clear the administration was not going to give any oxygen to her or those like her. “We don’t, and I am not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room,” Psaki said.
While Biden is starving the Republicans of oxygen, he is also working to address the conditions that have fed desperate conspiracy theories and divisions. In America, such societal breakdown is associated with periods in which ordinary people face economic hardship. Biden is moving quickly on a range of issues that are popular among ordinary voters of both parties, including addressing the country’s extreme inequality. After all, one of the complaints that drew voters to an outsider in 2016 was the belief that government no longer worked for the people and needed to be shaken up.
Today’s executive order on addressing climate change talks at length about creating “good-paying union jobs” and “tapping into the talent, grit, and innovation of American workers.” It calls for the government to buy zero-emission vehicles made in the U.S., and to rebuild federal infrastructure, creating construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades jobs. Job creation and infrastructure development were both promises the previous president made in 2016 that boosted his support but which never really came to pass. If Biden can actually deliver on them, he could reclaim those Trump voters for the Democrats, as well as addressing climate change and our failing infrastructure.
Biden’s people are also making sure we see a White House that is addressing issues that created concern in the past administration. They are upholding old norms—holding daily press briefings, for example—honoring science, restoring government websites, and treating members of the media with respect.
They seem to be trying to remind us how our democracy is supposed to work.
—-
Submitted January 28, 2021
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/climate/biden-climate-executive-orders.html
https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-january-27-2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-comments-reaction/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-david-hogg-video/index.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/536189-second-police-officer-dies-by-suicide-after-capitol-attack
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/27/donald-trump-poll-impeachment-backlash-liz-cheney-463339
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-republican-impeachment-democrats/
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/1/26/22251070/donald-trump-impeachment-stolen-election-big-lie-mitt-romney-senate-trial
https://gomez.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/adam-kinzinger-republican-impeach-trump-capitol/2021/01/26/c544cc1e-55fa-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/01/27/qanon-supporter-put-on-house-education-committee/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/27/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government/
Let me repeat this because it's horrifying, absolutely horrifying. This is your Republican party.
Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.
The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Let that sink in for just a moment. . .
Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.
The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.
Let that sink in for just a moment. . .
January 28, 2021
It has been just three weeks and a day since a crazed mob, egged on by the former president and his supporters, stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. They smashed into the building, carrying handcuffs and searching for our elected officials, whom they threatened to harm. They killed one police officer and wounded 140 more. Our vice president, senators, and representatives, along with all their staff, had to be evacuated to secure quarters, and then to hide, while rioters took over the building, rifling through their offices and smearing excrement on the floors.
That anyone is trying to downplay that attempt to destroy the central principle of our democracy—fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power-- is appalling.
And yet, Republican lawmakers are doing just that. Within the party, the pro-Trump faction and the business faction are struggling to take control. Those in the business wing of the party are not moderates: they are determined to destroy the government regulation, social welfare legislation, and public infrastructure programs that a majority of Americans like. But they are not openly white supremacists or adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, the way that Trump’s vocal supporters are.
Members of that second faction have risen to power by grabbing headlines with more and more outrageous statements that play well on right-wing media, although they appear to have no program except hatred of the “libs.” Members of this faction are going after the business wing of the party, seemingly with glee. Today Florida Representative Matt Gaetz held a rally outside the Wyoming state capitol to lead a challenge against Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, the third most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives. Cheney was one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 riot.
Cheney is no “lib”: she is a hard line right-winger. Trump and his supporters are targeting her to make it clear that no one is too powerful for them to go after. The former president wants loyalists across the Republican leadership. The dividing line in the party now is not between moderates and extremists; they are all extremists. It is whether a lawmaker supports the former president and his false accusation that the Democrats “stole” the 2020 election from him.
As if to underscore this reality, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who originally blamed the former president for the January 6 insurrection, has backed down and caved to the Trump wing of the party. Over the past two days, McCarthy met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, apparently discussing how to retake the seven seats the Republicans need to regain the House majority in 2022. To accomplish that, Republicans in Georgia as well as other states are backing laws to suppress voting.
Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that in this atmosphere Democratic members of Congress and staffers are facing harassment and violent threats. Representatives wrote a letter to leadership asking for stronger security measures, and Pelosi responded by agreeing that “the enemy is within the House of Representatives.” When asked to clarify her statement, she said: “[W]e have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”
We’ll see how this plays out in the next two weeks as Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate approaches. Mounting evidence suggests that at least some members of the president’s circle planned for trouble on January 6—presidential adviser Steve Bannon, for example, and new representative Lauren Boebert from Colorado, both recorded on social media their expectation that January 6 would see a fight or a revolution—and it seems unlikely that an examination of the president’s behavior before and during the attack of January 6 will bear close scrutiny.
News broke yesterday that extremists began planning for an attack on the Capitol in November. The Alabama Political Reporter broke the story on Tuesday that new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) met on January 5 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., with the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, an organization that backed the January 6 rally, and with members of the Trump family and the family’s advisors, including Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. One of the attendees wrote on Facebook that he was standing “in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.”
[ Continued below ]
It has been just three weeks and a day since a crazed mob, egged on by the former president and his supporters, stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. They smashed into the building, carrying handcuffs and searching for our elected officials, whom they threatened to harm. They killed one police officer and wounded 140 more. Our vice president, senators, and representatives, along with all their staff, had to be evacuated to secure quarters, and then to hide, while rioters took over the building, rifling through their offices and smearing excrement on the floors.
That anyone is trying to downplay that attempt to destroy the central principle of our democracy—fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power-- is appalling.
And yet, Republican lawmakers are doing just that. Within the party, the pro-Trump faction and the business faction are struggling to take control. Those in the business wing of the party are not moderates: they are determined to destroy the government regulation, social welfare legislation, and public infrastructure programs that a majority of Americans like. But they are not openly white supremacists or adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, the way that Trump’s vocal supporters are.
Members of that second faction have risen to power by grabbing headlines with more and more outrageous statements that play well on right-wing media, although they appear to have no program except hatred of the “libs.” Members of this faction are going after the business wing of the party, seemingly with glee. Today Florida Representative Matt Gaetz held a rally outside the Wyoming state capitol to lead a challenge against Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, the third most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives. Cheney was one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 riot.
Cheney is no “lib”: she is a hard line right-winger. Trump and his supporters are targeting her to make it clear that no one is too powerful for them to go after. The former president wants loyalists across the Republican leadership. The dividing line in the party now is not between moderates and extremists; they are all extremists. It is whether a lawmaker supports the former president and his false accusation that the Democrats “stole” the 2020 election from him.
As if to underscore this reality, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who originally blamed the former president for the January 6 insurrection, has backed down and caved to the Trump wing of the party. Over the past two days, McCarthy met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, apparently discussing how to retake the seven seats the Republicans need to regain the House majority in 2022. To accomplish that, Republicans in Georgia as well as other states are backing laws to suppress voting.
Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that in this atmosphere Democratic members of Congress and staffers are facing harassment and violent threats. Representatives wrote a letter to leadership asking for stronger security measures, and Pelosi responded by agreeing that “the enemy is within the House of Representatives.” When asked to clarify her statement, she said: “[W]e have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”
We’ll see how this plays out in the next two weeks as Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate approaches. Mounting evidence suggests that at least some members of the president’s circle planned for trouble on January 6—presidential adviser Steve Bannon, for example, and new representative Lauren Boebert from Colorado, both recorded on social media their expectation that January 6 would see a fight or a revolution—and it seems unlikely that an examination of the president’s behavior before and during the attack of January 6 will bear close scrutiny.
News broke yesterday that extremists began planning for an attack on the Capitol in November. The Alabama Political Reporter broke the story on Tuesday that new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) met on January 5 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., with the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, an organization that backed the January 6 rally, and with members of the Trump family and the family’s advisors, including Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. One of the attendees wrote on Facebook that he was standing “in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.”
[ Continued below ]
Former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Robert Grenier noted yesterday in the New York Times that the United States is facing a violent insurgency and should apply the lessons we have learned about counterinsurgency to head off political violence. Grenier notes that the nation must insist on criminal justice, tracking and trying those responsible for crimes. We must also return the nation to a fact-based debate about issues.
Crucially, Grenier noted that it is a national security imperative to convict the former president and bar him from future elective office. “I watched as enraged crowds in the streets of Algiers, as in most Arab capitals, melted away when Saddam Hussein was ignominiously defeated in the Persian Gulf war,” Grenier wrote. “Mass demonstrations in Pakistan in support of Osama bin Laden fell into dull quiescence when he was driven into hiding after Sept. 11. To blunt the extremists, Mr. Trump’s veneer of invincibility must similarly be crushed.”
In all my years of studying U.S. politics, seamy side and all, I never expected to see the name of an American president in the New York Times in a list comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But then, I never expected to see an American president urge a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election, either.
—-
Submitted January 29, 2021
Notes:
Gaetz:
1. Parties polarized from each other does not equal internal party cohesion;
2. Modern media landscape allows / incentivizes backbenchers to gain national attention like never before;
3. Kevin McCarthy is a really weak conference leader.
Brendan Gutenschwager @BGOnTheScene
Florida Representative Matt Gaetz takes the podium outside the Wyoming State Capitol for today’s rally against Liz Cheney #Cheyenne #Wyoming #LizCheney https://t.co/fRxek5lQLy
January 28th 2021
https://twitter.com/MattGlassman312/status/1354897896039206917
Norman Ornstein
@NormOrnstein
Liz Cheney by any standard is a hardline conservative. On policy issues, she is on the right end of her party's spectrum. So the jihad against her, with the execrable Matt Gaetz going to Wyoming to attack her, underscores the reality of the GOP. It is a radical cult. 1/
January 29th 2021
https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1354947465330520064
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/24/republicans-voter-id-laws-461707
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pelosi-security-house-representatives
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/opinion/how-to-defeat-americas-homegrown-insurgency.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/self-styled-militia-members-in-three-states-began-planning-in-novembe-for-recruits-weapons-ahead-of-capitol-breach-us-alleges/2021/01/27/f13b0bfc-60b9-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html
https://www.alreporter.com/2021/01/26/trump-appointee-says-tuberville-raga-director-met-with-trump-family-top-advisors-on-eve-of-capitol-attack/
Crucially, Grenier noted that it is a national security imperative to convict the former president and bar him from future elective office. “I watched as enraged crowds in the streets of Algiers, as in most Arab capitals, melted away when Saddam Hussein was ignominiously defeated in the Persian Gulf war,” Grenier wrote. “Mass demonstrations in Pakistan in support of Osama bin Laden fell into dull quiescence when he was driven into hiding after Sept. 11. To blunt the extremists, Mr. Trump’s veneer of invincibility must similarly be crushed.”
In all my years of studying U.S. politics, seamy side and all, I never expected to see the name of an American president in the New York Times in a list comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But then, I never expected to see an American president urge a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election, either.
—-
Submitted January 29, 2021
Notes:
Gaetz:
1. Parties polarized from each other does not equal internal party cohesion;
2. Modern media landscape allows / incentivizes backbenchers to gain national attention like never before;
3. Kevin McCarthy is a really weak conference leader.
Brendan Gutenschwager @BGOnTheScene
Florida Representative Matt Gaetz takes the podium outside the Wyoming State Capitol for today’s rally against Liz Cheney #Cheyenne #Wyoming #LizCheney https://t.co/fRxek5lQLy
January 28th 2021
https://twitter.com/MattGlassman312/status/1354897896039206917
Norman Ornstein
@NormOrnstein
Liz Cheney by any standard is a hardline conservative. On policy issues, she is on the right end of her party's spectrum. So the jihad against her, with the execrable Matt Gaetz going to Wyoming to attack her, underscores the reality of the GOP. It is a radical cult. 1/
January 29th 2021
https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1354947465330520064
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/24/republicans-voter-id-laws-461707
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pelosi-security-house-representatives
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/opinion/how-to-defeat-americas-homegrown-insurgency.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/self-styled-militia-members-in-three-states-began-planning-in-novembe-for-recruits-weapons-ahead-of-capitol-breach-us-alleges/2021/01/27/f13b0bfc-60b9-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html
https://www.alreporter.com/2021/01/26/trump-appointee-says-tuberville-raga-director-met-with-trump-family-top-advisors-on-eve-of-capitol-attack/
January 29, 2021
While the anti-democracy crusaders in the Republican Party are drawing headlines, President Biden has resolutely refused to engage with the craziness and has instead continued to move forward at a pace that feels remarkable after years of what seemed to be governmental inaction on matters ordinary people care about.
Pressed again today to speak about Republican congress members who are in the news for their antisocial behavior, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to comment. “We don’t want to elevate conspiracy theories further in the briefing room, so I’m going to leave it at that,” she said.
The White House has also declined to comment on Congress, taking the constitutional position that the president should stay in the executive branch’s lane and let the legislative branch handle its own affairs.
Instead, Biden is moving his agenda forward quickly. He has signed at least 33 executive actions that direct the members of the executive branch on how they should implement laws. In addition to the military, the executive branch has more than 4 million people in it, and it includes the State Department, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Interior Department, and so on—a lot of people in a lot of positions.
The breadth of the executive branch is enabling Biden to turn the direction of the government by coordinating changes across a number of departments. So, for example, in an article in the New Yorker, environmentalist Bill McKibben called out Wednesday, January 27, as “the most remarkable day in the history of America’s official response to the climate crisis…. The Biden Administration took a series of coordinated actions that, considered together, may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.”
McKibben notes that Biden adjusted rules in the Justice Department, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and involved the Pentagon by making climate change a national-security priority. He also asked the Secretary of Agriculture to confer with farmers and ranchers on how to encourage adoption of “climate-smart” agricultural practices. Anticipating the usual accusations that ending the fossil-fuel industry will cost jobs, he explicitly tied jobs to the new measures, ordering new, American-made, electric vehicles for the government and promising “good-paying” union jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering and the skilled-trades as the nation switches to clean energy.
Biden is using executive orders to undercut the partisanship that has ground Congress to a halt for the past several years. While Biden’s predecessor tended to use executive actions to implement quite unpopular policies, Biden is using them to implement policies that most Americans actually like but which could never make it through Congress, where Republicans hold power disproportionate to their actual popularity.
According to a roundup by polling site FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s executive actions cover issues that people want to see addressed. Eighty-three percent of Americans—including 64% of Republicans—support a prohibition on workplace discrimination over sexual identification, 77% (including 52% of Republicans) want the government to focus on racial equity, 75% want the government to require masks on federal property, and 68% like the continued suspension of federal student loan repayments. A majority of Americans also favor rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords, and so on.
Republicans are insisting that Biden is not practicing the unity he promised in his campaign, but here’s the interesting thing: work by political scientists Dr. Shana Gadarian and Dr. Bethany Albertson shows that most Americans actually agree on problems and solutions so long as politicians do not take on those issues as partisan ones. But as soon as politicians adopt a partisan stance on an issue, voters polarize over it. So it is possible that by keeping these issues out of the current partisanship in Congress and handling them from the White House, Biden is doing exactly what he promised: creating unity. He is also making Americans feel like the government is doing something for them again.
[ Continued below ]
While the anti-democracy crusaders in the Republican Party are drawing headlines, President Biden has resolutely refused to engage with the craziness and has instead continued to move forward at a pace that feels remarkable after years of what seemed to be governmental inaction on matters ordinary people care about.
Pressed again today to speak about Republican congress members who are in the news for their antisocial behavior, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to comment. “We don’t want to elevate conspiracy theories further in the briefing room, so I’m going to leave it at that,” she said.
The White House has also declined to comment on Congress, taking the constitutional position that the president should stay in the executive branch’s lane and let the legislative branch handle its own affairs.
Instead, Biden is moving his agenda forward quickly. He has signed at least 33 executive actions that direct the members of the executive branch on how they should implement laws. In addition to the military, the executive branch has more than 4 million people in it, and it includes the State Department, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Interior Department, and so on—a lot of people in a lot of positions.
The breadth of the executive branch is enabling Biden to turn the direction of the government by coordinating changes across a number of departments. So, for example, in an article in the New Yorker, environmentalist Bill McKibben called out Wednesday, January 27, as “the most remarkable day in the history of America’s official response to the climate crisis…. The Biden Administration took a series of coordinated actions that, considered together, may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.”
McKibben notes that Biden adjusted rules in the Justice Department, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and involved the Pentagon by making climate change a national-security priority. He also asked the Secretary of Agriculture to confer with farmers and ranchers on how to encourage adoption of “climate-smart” agricultural practices. Anticipating the usual accusations that ending the fossil-fuel industry will cost jobs, he explicitly tied jobs to the new measures, ordering new, American-made, electric vehicles for the government and promising “good-paying” union jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering and the skilled-trades as the nation switches to clean energy.
Biden is using executive orders to undercut the partisanship that has ground Congress to a halt for the past several years. While Biden’s predecessor tended to use executive actions to implement quite unpopular policies, Biden is using them to implement policies that most Americans actually like but which could never make it through Congress, where Republicans hold power disproportionate to their actual popularity.
According to a roundup by polling site FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s executive actions cover issues that people want to see addressed. Eighty-three percent of Americans—including 64% of Republicans—support a prohibition on workplace discrimination over sexual identification, 77% (including 52% of Republicans) want the government to focus on racial equity, 75% want the government to require masks on federal property, and 68% like the continued suspension of federal student loan repayments. A majority of Americans also favor rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords, and so on.
Republicans are insisting that Biden is not practicing the unity he promised in his campaign, but here’s the interesting thing: work by political scientists Dr. Shana Gadarian and Dr. Bethany Albertson shows that most Americans actually agree on problems and solutions so long as politicians do not take on those issues as partisan ones. But as soon as politicians adopt a partisan stance on an issue, voters polarize over it. So it is possible that by keeping these issues out of the current partisanship in Congress and handling them from the White House, Biden is doing exactly what he promised: creating unity. He is also making Americans feel like the government is doing something for them again.
[ Continued below ]
This attempt to avoid partisan polarization will be tested by his determination to pass a new, $1.9 trillion economic aid package through Congress. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve and the chair of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, has urged a fast injection of stimulus into the economy after it slowed down significantly at the end of 2020. Republicans have expressed concern at the passage of another large spending bill, but some are willing to negotiate, especially since the Democrats can pass a bill without them through a process called reconciliation (it will almost certainly be significantly pared down from this first version).
Today, as he went to the Walter Reed hospital to visit wounded soldiers, Biden said, "I support passing COVID relief with support from Republicans if we can get it…. But the COVID relief has to pass. No ifs, ands or buts." Psaki said that the White House would not agree to breaking the package up and passing only the parts the Republicans like. "But the size and the scope of the package – this is the legislative process, this is democracy at work now."
The Democrats’ hand has likely been strengthened this week by the media frenzy over the so-called “GameStop short squeeze,” in which hedge fund managers got squeezed by ordinary investors driving up the price of the stock of a video game retailer so that the hedge funds could not cover short sales. Investment firms promptly cried foul, only to be greeted with derision, since it is not at all clear that their own stock purchases have a better effect on the markets than those of the smaller investors, and since they made huge money betting on the Covid-19 crisis. Observers see the short squeeze as a populist attack on unscrupulous Wall Street types.
While the entire story behind the short squeeze is not yet clear, it does already have a political meaning. The GameStop story reinforced the growing sense that the system has been rigged for the wealthy. People from across the political spectrum are demanding more thorough regulation of the stock market, a dramatic cultural change.
It didn’t help that Leon Cooperman, a hedge fund trader worth $2.5 billion, took to CNBC to vent his fury. “The reason the market is doing what it’s doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates,” he said, referring to relief for people thrown out of work by the pandemic.
With calls for unity in the air, Cooperman offered his own definition. Democrats’ suggestion that the rich should pay their “fair share” of taxes is “bullsh*t,” he said. “It’s just a way of attacking wealthy people, and you know I think it’s inappropriate…. We all got to work together and pull together.”
—-
Submitted January 30, 2021
Notes:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/536473-psaki-wont-comment-on-taylor-greene-saying-it-would-elevate
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/64-oppose-trumps-move-build-wall-asylum-30/story?id=62702683
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bidens-initial-batch-of-executive-actions-is-popular/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/27/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government/
Shana Kushner Gadarian and Bethany Albertson, “Anxiety, Immigration, and the Search for Information,” Political Psychology 35 (April 2014): 133-164.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gdp-report-2020.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-29/democrats-hope-for-compromise-plan-for-action-on-coronavirus-relief-bill
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/leon-cooperman-gamestop-rant
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/29/leon-cooperman-gamestop/
Today, as he went to the Walter Reed hospital to visit wounded soldiers, Biden said, "I support passing COVID relief with support from Republicans if we can get it…. But the COVID relief has to pass. No ifs, ands or buts." Psaki said that the White House would not agree to breaking the package up and passing only the parts the Republicans like. "But the size and the scope of the package – this is the legislative process, this is democracy at work now."
The Democrats’ hand has likely been strengthened this week by the media frenzy over the so-called “GameStop short squeeze,” in which hedge fund managers got squeezed by ordinary investors driving up the price of the stock of a video game retailer so that the hedge funds could not cover short sales. Investment firms promptly cried foul, only to be greeted with derision, since it is not at all clear that their own stock purchases have a better effect on the markets than those of the smaller investors, and since they made huge money betting on the Covid-19 crisis. Observers see the short squeeze as a populist attack on unscrupulous Wall Street types.
While the entire story behind the short squeeze is not yet clear, it does already have a political meaning. The GameStop story reinforced the growing sense that the system has been rigged for the wealthy. People from across the political spectrum are demanding more thorough regulation of the stock market, a dramatic cultural change.
It didn’t help that Leon Cooperman, a hedge fund trader worth $2.5 billion, took to CNBC to vent his fury. “The reason the market is doing what it’s doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates,” he said, referring to relief for people thrown out of work by the pandemic.
With calls for unity in the air, Cooperman offered his own definition. Democrats’ suggestion that the rich should pay their “fair share” of taxes is “bullsh*t,” he said. “It’s just a way of attacking wealthy people, and you know I think it’s inappropriate…. We all got to work together and pull together.”
—-
Submitted January 30, 2021
Notes:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/536473-psaki-wont-comment-on-taylor-greene-saying-it-would-elevate
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/64-oppose-trumps-move-build-wall-asylum-30/story?id=62702683
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bidens-initial-batch-of-executive-actions-is-popular/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/27/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government/
Shana Kushner Gadarian and Bethany Albertson, “Anxiety, Immigration, and the Search for Information,” Political Psychology 35 (April 2014): 133-164.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gdp-report-2020.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-29/democrats-hope-for-compromise-plan-for-action-on-coronavirus-relief-bill
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/leon-cooperman-gamestop-rant
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/29/leon-cooperman-gamestop/
JohnnyBlaze said:^ The Stock Market needs reforms to restore the original practice of investing - to help American businesses grow. This Gamestop fiasco couldn't have happened at a better time.
This whole country needs reform, which is why President Biden is staying in his own lane and forging ahead.
This whole country needs reform, which is why President Biden is staying in his own lane and forging ahead.
