Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative January 2025 news and views
Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this.
Jan. 8
Top Headlines
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Other Top Headlines
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom Hartmann
Politico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24
New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage
More On U.S. Presidential Vote Certification
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Trump / GOP Transition News, Commentary
More U.S. Legal News
Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson
More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: President Biden Signs Social Security Fairness Act; The bipartisan legislation enhances benefits for millions of Americans , Aaron Parnas
More On Carter Life, Legacy
Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
New York Times, ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History, Peter Baker
New York Times, Carter the Critic Didn’t Spare His Successors
Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats, Opponents
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case
U.S. Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images)
Washington Post, Democrats’ new push to stop RFK Jr.: Highlight Samoa’s measles outbreak
More On Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel, Lebanon
Washington Post, Gaza didn’t get enough winter shelters. Now babies are dying in the cold
More On U.S. Foreign Policy, Defense, Tariffs
Lance Rosen Substack, The Trump Press Conference Gives Us A Clear Look Into The Abyss, Lance F Rosen
Washington Post, U.S. Treasury says it was hacked by China-backed intruder
More On Presidential Pardons, Cases
Russia, Russian War Against Ukraine
Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights
New York Times, Genocide Committed by Paramilitary Group in Sudan, U.S. Says
U.S. Defense, Foreign Policy, Security
Daily Mail, Disturbing new details show how CIA drugged and tortured Americans in secret mind control program MKUltra, Stacy Liberatore
U.S. Immigration
Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case 
Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations
U.S. Economy, Jobs, Pensions
Energy, Environment, Transportation, Climate Change, Disasters
Media, High-Tech, Culture, Education, Sports
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board
Top Stories
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
New York Times, Trump Investigations: Justice Dept. Signals Report on Trump Documents Case May Never Be Released, Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage, Jan. 8, 2025. In a court filing, the department indicated that the report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, may not be made public before Donald J. Trump takes office, raising the prospect that the new administration will bury it.
Federal prosecutors tacitly signaled on Wednesday that the public may never see a portion of a report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, detailing his investigation into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s refusal to give back a trove of classified documents he took from the White House after leaving office.
Mr. Trump’s legal team has been fighting a pitched battle in recent days to keep the report out of the public eye. In court papers on Wednesday, the Justice Department said that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not intend to release the volume about the documents inquiry until legal proceedings have ended against two co-defendants who were charged along with Mr. Trump.
The decision raised the prospect that the report might never be made public at all. The case against Mr. Trump’s co-defendants is likely to continue into his second term starting Jan. 20, when he could pardon the men and end the case altogether. His appointees would then have the power to continue keeping Mr. Smith’s report secret.SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORTRead the Justice Department’s court filing delaying the release of Jack Smith’s report.
The government’s filing, before a federal appeals court in Atlanta, came one day after Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who oversaw — and ultimately threw out — the documents case, issued an injunction temporarily barring the department from releasing Mr. Smith’s report. Her order did not appear to distinguish between the volume about the documents case and the one compiled by Mr. Smith and his team about their separate case against Mr. Trump for his attempt to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.
The Justice Department does plan to release the portion of Mr. Smith’s report focusing on the election interference charges, the court papers said. That case was dropped after Mr. Trump won the election as prosecutors bowed to a longstanding Justice Department policy that prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions against sitting presidents.
In their filing to the appeals court, prosecutors said that Mr. Garland would make Mr. Smith’s report about the classified documents case available to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, except for information that is covered by a grand jury secrecy rule.
Washington Post, Judge Cannon blocks release, for now, of special counsel report on Trump classified-documents case, Perry Stein, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon barred special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from sharing the report while a federal appeals court weighs whether making it public would unfairly harm Donald Trump’s two codefendants.
The federal judge in Florida who dismissed the case against Donald Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a report detailing the findings of that investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon,right, barred Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting” the long-awaited report or any drafts or conclusions from it while a federal appeals court in Atlanta weighs an emergency motion from two of the president-elect’s former co-defendants. The co-defendants said releasing the report would unfairly prejudice them. Their motion cited a letter from Trump’s attorneys which also argued that the release of Smith’s findings was not in the public interest and would interfere with his presidency and his presidential transition.
Earlier Tuesday, Smiths’ office told the court that Garland might not make the classified documents part of the report public. The report is two volumes. One volume details prosecutors’ findings in the classified documents case, and the other focuses on the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Donald Trump’s lawyers have read special counsel Jack Smith’s draft report detailing the findings of his two investigations of the incoming president and are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire Smith and block the report’s public release.
It is the latest effort by the president-elect to quash the remnants of the four criminal cases he has faced over the past two years.
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
New York Times, An Emboldened Trump Suggests U.S. Territorial Expansion, Staff Reports, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). Speaking from his private Florida club, President-elect Trump refused to rule out using force to retake the Panama Canal and to claim Greenland. Mr. Trump also refused to give a straight answer on whether he would pardon any of the Jan. 6 rioters.
In an hourlong news conference at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned by treaty in the late 1990s, and acquire Greenland, which Mr. Trump said was necessary for U.S. national security. Read more ›
Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and instead pivoted to criticism of the F.B.I. In his opening comments, he announced a multibillion-dollar plan to build data centers in multiple states bankrolled by investors from Dubai. He then repeatedly attacked President Biden and other foes.
The House passed its first bill of the new Congress, a measure to increase deportations that requires mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting, and lets states sue the federal government when immigrants who could have been detained commit crimes. Four dozen Democrats joined all Republicans to pass the measure; the Senate is expected to take up identical legislation on Friday.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, plans to meet this week with Republican senators seen as potentially key votes in his confirmation process, and some Democrats who have signaled openness to parts of his agenda. Among the lawmakers he is set to hold sessions with on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a spokeswoman, are Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is set to lead the Senate health committee, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a more moderate member of the conference.
Trump’s team just sent out an email quoting him at the news conference as saying that on Jan. 6 rioters went to the Capitol “with not one gun.” That’s simply not true. Prosecutors have charged and convicted several people with carrying firearms that day.
Trump says he does not want to see a default over the debt ceiling. “All I want to see is no default,” he said, adding nobody knows what would happen if the U.S. does not pay its bills. “I just want to see an extension.”
Hopium Chronicles, Political Opinion: Trump Goes Full On Authoritarian, 
Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Dem Party And Our Electeds.
Trump’s repeated threats against the sovereign nations of Canada, Greenland and Panama are a direct attack on the post WWII American-led global order.
Our support of Ukraine has been a means of protecting the foundational principle of that order -- the unquestioned sovereignty of all nations -- one that Russia has violated by its invasion. Trump’s clear flouting of this foundational principle of the modern world -- not ruling out direct military seizure, like Russia in Ukraine -- could be interpreted as his walking away from this global system that has made America prosperous, safe and free.
It is also a way of providing cover and justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and future acts by autocrats around the world. Coupled with Musk’s escalating attacks on the pro-Western, pro-US governments of Canada, Germany and the UK the new Trump regime seems hellbent on helping Russia and China forge a post-American global system, one built on force and dominion and not freedom and democracy. Here’s the clip:
Friends, this is ugly, ugly stuff and he isn’t even President yet. This is going to be a hard, hard four years. We need to prepare ourselves.
Other Top Stories
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle. Behind the vice president sat the newly reelected speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), who was a key player in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election: he lied about fraud; recruited colleagues to join a lawsuit challenging the election results from the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; and, after the January 6 riot, challenged the counting of certified votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.
After the session concluded, Harris told reporters: “Well, today was…obviously, a very important day, and it was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“And today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included, today, performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America will have their votes counted, that those votes matter, and that they will determine, then, the outcome of an election.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it—every single person, their willingness to fight for and respect the importance of our democracy. Otherwise, it is very fragile and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis.
“And today, America’s democracy stood.”
Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.
Excerpt Continued Below.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion:, Release Jack Smith’s ReportI, Bill Kristol, right, 
Jan. 7, 2025. The outgoing administration shouldn’t play along with the whitewashing of January 6th.
You can never really tell which of the wacky ideas that Trump spins up will end up forgotten in a few days and which will lodge like a splinter in his brain forever. During his first term, “We’re gonna buy Greenland” seemed like it belonged to the former category. Now, it seems he’s making it a top administration priority.
“I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” Trump wrote yesterday. “My son, Don Jr, and various representatives, will be traveling there to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights. Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Last night, Donald Trump’s lawyers demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his two investigations, one on Trump and January 6th, the other on Trump’s handling of the classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago.
The attorney general will surely refuse Trump’s demand. Justice Department regulations require special counsels to submit reports explaining their legal decisions at the end of their investigations. Just as Garland last year released Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, he’ll make public—with appropriate redactions—Smith’s report on Trump. (For that matter, we can also expect the attorney general to release special counsel David Weiss’s final report on his investigation of the now-pardoned Hunter Biden.)
Trump’s demand that Smith’s report be suppressed is a useful reminder that he really hates truthful accounts of January 6th, even if—especially if—they are based on testimony under oath from many different individuals, including many who worked for him. Recall Trump’s fear and loathing of the House January 6th Committee.
The loathing is, I suppose, easily understandable. Politicians don’t like scrutiny. And they especially don’t like criticism. And those who’ve gone so far as to commit sordid and likely criminal acts don’t like to see their disreputable behavior exposed.
But one senses that in addition to the hatred and the loathing, there’s an element of fear. Why?
Trump won. Smith’s report won’t change that. And in any case, his entire propaganda machine is ready to attack the report as the product of a biased Biden Justice Department and a Trump-hating special prosecutor. The report will have no immediate effect on public opinion, nor on the successes or failures of the opening days of Trump’s presidency.
Still, Trump knows how crucial his rewriting of the history of January 6th was to his victory in November. If most Republicans had held to their original judgment of January 6th as a day of shame—if they had continued to believe that it was what Trump the very next day called a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy”—Trump would not have been the 2024 GOP nominee. If most Americans had thought January 6th not just an unfortunate event but a disqualifying disgrace, Trump wouldn’t have won the general election.
The whitewashing of January 6th was key to Trump’s political comeback.
And Trump has the sense—and I think he’s right about this—that he must make sure that January 6th stays whitewashed for the sake of his political success going forward.
In the mid-twentieth century, Southern segregationists could have chosen simply to defend their policies as appropriate for then-current circumstances. They did make such arguments. But they also understood that in politics, present legitimacy depends on past origins. It was important to advocates of 20th century policies of racial discrimination that those policies were defended against the backdrop of the nobility of the Southern effort in the “War Between the States,” the depredations of Reconstruction, and the historic legitimacy of states’ rights.
So Trump too will continue to seek to rewrite the history of January 6th. He’ll pardon those who stormed the Capitol. He’ll fill the ranks of his administration with January 6th truthers. His administration will attack those, from Liz Cheney to Jack Smith, who’ve sought to hold him accountable. Trump’s more respectable apologists won’t go all the way with him in celebrating January 6th, but they’ll ignore or minimize or excuse what happened.
In a sense, the release now of Smith’s report will simply signify the failure of the effort, over the last four years, of accountability and truth-telling about January 6th. It will be the last gasp, for now, of a lost cause.
But, as T.S. Eliot remarked, “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory.”
Who knows if or when such a victory will come? But if American politics is ever to return to a condition of civic and political health, it will need to embrace an honest account of January 6th.
Which is why we need the release of the special counsel’s report.
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he’s sworn in on January 20th.
Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent billions to convince us to make that choice.
As you’re reading these words, billionaires from America and around the world are making pilgrimages to his shabby golf motel to kiss our upcoming billionaire president’s ass and hand him envelopes with $1 million checks that represent a few hours (at most) of income for most of them or their companies.
Meanwhile, our billionaire president-in-waiting is packing his cabinet — the heads of all of the most important federal agencies — with even more billionaires. This is all being celebrated over on billionaire-owned Fox “News” and on billionaire-owned hate radio networks, as well as in the billionaire-owned Washington Post, LA Times, and the roughly half of American local newspapers owned by billionaire hedge funds.
Other countries enjoy benefits like free healthcare and college; modern mass transit; and affordable housing, food, and drugs.
They also have inexpensive internet and phone service without companies listening in and selling their information, schools that don’t even need to mention school shooters, and streets and parks filled with pedestrians and children instead of tents for the homeless.
Additionally, they benefit from renewable electricity that gets cheaper every year while cleaning their environment.
We, on the other hand, have the world‘s largest collection of billionaires.
New York Times, Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term, Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac, Jan. 7, 2025. The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies. Zuckerberg conceded there would be more ‘bad stuff’ on his sites.
Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.
The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone 
to over-enforcement.”
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Here’s what to know:
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
New York Times, Trump Transition: Trump Asks Supreme Court to Halt His Sentencing in N.Y. Criminal Case, Ben Protess and Adam Liptak, Jan. 8, 2025. Prosecutors have been ordered to respond to the president-elect’s request by Thursday morning, suggesting the court could rule before Friday’s scheduled sentencing.
Days away from his criminal sentencing in New York, President-elect Donald J. Trump is seeking a late-stage rescue from the U.S. Supreme Court, escalating his bid to shut down the case before he returns to the White House.
In an emergency application filed late Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers urged the justices to intervene and halt the sentencing, which is scheduled for Friday, 10 days before the presidential inauguration.
The filing came after a New York appeals court rejected the same request on Tuesday, casting doubt on the validity of his effort to stave off the sentencing.
The effort hinges on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is entitled to full immunity from prosecution, and even sentencing, now that he is the president-elect. His lawyers have based that claim on a polarizing Supreme Court ruling from last year that granted former presidents broad immunity for their official acts.
“This court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court,” the application said, “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
The Supreme Court directed prosecutors to respond to Mr. Trump’s application by Thursday morning, an indication that the justices may act before the scheduled sentencing on Friday. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump, declined to comment, saying only that the office would respond in court papers.
The filing capped a whirlwind stretch of legal wrangling for the former and future president, who is scrambling to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of a public sentencing.
Although Mr. Trump is expected to receive nothing more than a slap on the wrist — the trial judge overseeing the case has signaled that he would spare Mr. Trump jail time — the sentencing carries symbolic importance. It would formalize Mr. Trump’s status as a felon, making him the first president to hold that dubious designation.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued in the Supreme Court filing that being officially deemed a felon might complicate Mr. Trump’s presidential duties.
Washington Post, N.Y. judge denies Trump effort to block sentencing in hush money case, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a New York judge, above, to stop Trump’s sentencing scheduled for Friday on his convictions for falsifying business documents.
The judge overseeing President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case on Monday rejected a request by Trump lawyers to delay sentencing this week pending an appeal.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that Trump’s arguments related to presidential immunity were recycled from previous failed attempts and legally improper. The sentencing remained scheduled for Friday, he wrote.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Merchan ruled last week that a sentence would be imposed ahead of Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, which would make Trump the first president who is a felon.
The Trump attorneys filed a 17-page legal notice asserting that Merchan had no choice but to halt the proceedings. They argued that all events in the case must be automatically paused “by operation of federal constitutional law.”
Proof, Investigtive Commentary: Elon Musk Aims to Start a Race War in the United Kingdom. Is the United States His Next Target? Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 7, 
2025. Somehow this message isn’t crossing international boundaries with the alacrity or the urgency it needs to: Elon Musk is now a global threat, and his actions will cause mass violence in the near term.
The amount of gall required for a South African-born Canadian-American with no meaningful liberal arts education—no background in History, Political Science, or Law—to blithely declare that “civil war is inevitable” in the United Kingdom, and to send that hyperventilating warning to literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide on a social media platform he’s rigged to elevate his voice above others is staggering.
Historically, those few with a significant enough global profile to influence politics in nations not their own avoid doing so at all costs—first, because it’s not their business to do otherwise, and second because interfering with foreign countries may harm the efforts of the U.S. government to conduct international diplomacy.
For this reason, we generally associate public or illicit attempts to meddle in the affairs of other nations with conduct that is not just improper but possibly illegal, and usually the province of hostile intelligence agencies exclusively.
One of the only men on Earth with the gall to ignore this basic precept of being part of a civilization and species is Elon Musk, who Proof has in the past covered as he derangedly went to war with the nation of Brazil. Again, such conduct is even more gall-encrusted and galling when the perpetrator, as with Musk, knows virtually nothing at all about the countries he tries to meddle with.
This staggering quantity of gall makes it even more likely that the dire warning (some would say threat) Mr. Musk has lately issued about a civil war in the United Kingdom is wildly inaccurate. The more evidently someone is a malignant narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur, a martyr complex, and a streak of fascist cruelty that runs through almost every word they utter, the more likely they have also fallen short in yet another watchword of a successfully completed liberal arts education: media literacy.
Simply put, even if Elon Musk were finally willing to educate himself on the domestic politics of other nations, it’s not clear that he has the temperament, patience, wisdom, or information-science skills to actually do so. It’s for these and other reasons that he has become the world’s largest firehose of disinformation—a fact, not a supposition; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here—and in very short order his actions are going to accrue a massive worldwide death toll.
Will it be in the United Kingdom, where Musk is trying to stoke a race war in which non-white immigrants are murdered by the tens of thousands by roving Christofascist mobs whose leaders and enablers and advocates he’s openly cheering on? Will it be in the United States, where Musk is about to become co-president and routinely spreads lies about race relations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)?
Will it be in Germany, where Musk is now an open advocate of that nation’s neo-Nazi political party? Will it be in Ukraine, where Musk’s products are being used to kill innocents as the Starlink chief himself (a) does nothing to stop it in a timely fashion and (b) secretly communicates with the author of these war crimes, Vladimir Putin, on a regular basis?
We don’t know. Maybe all of these places will see a sudden additional death-toll spike that Elon Musk is uniquely responsible for and—in a world with rule of law—would face consequences for, also.
But we live in this world, where Musk even appearing in court when ordered to do so is wholly optional for him, so seven things are perfectly clear, now: (1) Musk is going to get people killed; (2) he knows he’s going to get people killed; (3) he’s not going to take any time whatsoever to educate himself on the issues he insists on writing about without any relevant expertise; (4) he’s not going to stop trying to enflame passions and spread disinformation on these subjects, because he ultimately doesn’t care at all about the issues themselves—not child rape or war crimes or government spending in the United States—except to the extent that his taking the positions he takes accrues geopolitical power and influence to him (partly directly, partly indirectly, through the implicit threat of his inciting involvement in any future conflagrations) and pleases his apparently superheated, quivering personal animus toward women, non-whites, Jews, migrants, and the LGBTQIA2S+ community; (5) he won’t face consequences for his actions in the United States or anywhere else; (6) he’s well aware that he won’t face any consequence for his actions, which is precisely why they’ll continue unabated no matter how many people they kill; (7) and there’s nothing natively inside the man—no humility, leadership skills, empathy, temperance, patience, or generosity of spirit—that will organically cause him to stop what he’s doing once the mass killing starts
.Those who don’t understand yet that Musk is an unscrupulous bad actor on the world stage whose only aims are wealth and authority—the exact opposite of the mythos his fawning amanuensis Walter Isaacson is now pushing—are going to learn in the next few weeks and months what it means for Earth’s most powerful nation to transfer its powers wholesale to someone who not only wants to control all of Earth but actually has a scheme and the resources to accomplish it.
Musk’s ostensible focus is manned missions to Mars—a planet humans will never occupy in any significant numbers, but which fiction gives Musk a way to rally support for and attention to himself and divert resources from helping those on Earth who need help but who Musk doesn’t wish to see helped—when in fact his supposed Mars focus is simply the most chilling example yet of grifting MAGA influencers’ abiding “every accusation is a confession” principle.
Elon says he’s focused on control of Mars because he’s actually focused on control of Earth. It’s likely Musk cares little about Mars at all, given that he has been told again and again and again by scientists—each and every day, for the last twenty years—that the planet is uninhabitable and can never be made otherwise at scale. While Mars may yet be a useful outpost for scattered scientific research—if still not the best use (at all) of precious research resources—and while it could host mining operations designed solely to make Musk the world’s first centi-trillionaire (indeed, the Boring Company exists only for that prospective purpose, not the terrestrial purposes Mr. Musk falsely claimes), it will never harbor a significant human civilian settlement, nor should it.
The money Musk is funneling from U.S. taxpayers and, soon enough, directly from the federal budget using DOGE as his instrument, is money that would be infinitely more valuable here on Earth—for instance, to ensure that our ecosystem doesn’t collapse, killing over a billion humans on Earth in an entirely foreseeable way. So we must see the broader “project” of Elon Musk as one whose endgame enriches him and harms or actively endangers everyone who’s not him. The non-MAGA argument for his plans being a net positive for humanity has in recent years not just dimmed, but evaporated.
Yet the fact that Musk spent almost 300 million to elect Trump and his allies through PACs, and another $44 billion for the purchase of Twitter—which he now admits was a purchase with political aims (contrary to everything he told Americans at the time)—means that the Republican Party will more or less give him the keys to America now.
Those who thought that the GOP doing so would only endanger America are learning now that in fact this Republican cowardice and venality is going to endanger—indeed, already is endangering—the whole world.
Washington Post, The New Administration Exclusive:Trump aides ready ‘universal’ tariff plans — with one key change, Jeff Stein, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Aides are looking at universal import duties, but only on certain sectors, among the first big moves of the presidency.
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers.
As a candidate, Trump called for “universal” tariffs of as high as 10 or 20 percent on everything imported into the United States. Many economists warned that such plans could cause price shocks, and many Republicans in Congress might have criticized them.
Two weeks before Trump takes office, his aides are still discussing plans to impose import duties on goods from every country, the people said. But rather than apply tariffs to all imports, the current discussions center on imposing them only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security — a shift that would jettison a key aspect of Trump’s campaign pledge, at least for now, said the people, who cautioned that no decisions have been finalized and that planning remains in flux. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive. But consideration of universal tariffs of some kind still reflects the Trump team’s determination to implement measures that can’t be easily circumvented by having products shipped via a third country.
New York Times, The Jan. 6 Rioters, 4 Years Later, Alan Feuer, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Hundreds accused of nonviolent crimes during the attack on the Capitol have wrapped up their cases.
In the past four years, nearly 1,600 people have been prosecuted in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some were accused of felonies like assault or seditious conspiracy and are still in prison. But hundreds charged with lesser crimes have wrapped up their cases and returned to their lives.
Jan. 6 was a turning point for everyone involved. In breaching the Capitol, a mob of Trump loyalists caused millions of dollars in damage, injured more than 140 police officers and, for the first time in American history, chased lawmakers away from their duty to certify a presidential election.
The attack also prompted the largest single investigation the Justice Department has ever undertaken, leading to arrests in all 50 states. Ever since, the defendants have been held to account in Washington’s federal courthouse, blocks away from the Capitol itself, for their roles in undermining a bedrock of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.
While some have come to regret their actions on that day, others do not. At best, they say they have seen the realities of the criminal justice system, becoming more sympathetic to the plights of others facing prosecution. At worst, they remain convinced that the system treated them unfairly, hardened by their brushes with the law.
Washington Post, The fate of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants depends on Trump, Robert Klemko, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman, Sarah Cahlan, Clara Ence Morse and Hannah Dormido, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The incoming president has pledged to pardon many defendants accused or convicted of crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Washington Post, U.S. Capitol Police chief opposes pardons for assaults against police, Spencer S. Hsu, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Pardoning people who assault police would send a message that the safety of officers does not matter and could risk politicizing the law enforcement of violent protests, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in an exclusive interview Sunday on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Manger declined to comment about President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to grant clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, about 600 of whom were charged with felony assault or obstruction of police during a civil disorder. But in his first public remarks as chief of the 2,300-member department on the broader subject, he decried what he said was the wiping away of accountability for attacks against law enforcement.
“What message does that send? What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?” Manger said after swearing in officers to help secure Congress’s certification of the 2024 election on Monday.
New York Times, Flurry of Announcements Signals That Trump Family Will Keep Making Deals, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Alan Blinder, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.. Even before the start of the new administration, there has been repeated blurring of lines between the federal government efforts and Trump family businesses.
Associated Pres via Politico, North Carolina justices block certification of election outcome in race for one of its own seats, Staff Report, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs speaks to reporters.
North Carolina’s highest court blocked on Tuesday the certification of a November election result for one of its own seats so it can review legal arguments by a trailing candidate who contends over 60,000 ballots that were cast shouldn’t be counted.
The decision by the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court to issue the temporary stay is a setback for Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs. Election results show Riggs ahead of GOP challenger Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast.The video player is currently playing an ad. Top Stories from POLITICOSkip Ad
The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.
The State Board of Elections dismissed last month Griffin’s written protests challenging the ballots. That initiated a timeline in which the board would issue a certificate confirming Riggs’ election this Friday — ending the litigation — unless a court stepped in.
Tuesday’s order stops such certification and tells Griffin and the board to file legal briefs with the justices over the next two weeks.
Lawyers for Griffin, who is a judge on the intermediate-level state Court of Appeals, initially asked the state Supreme Court to intervene three weeks ago. But the elections board quickly moved the matter to federal court, saying Griffin’s appeals involved matters of federal voting and voting rights laws.
Griffin disagreed, and so did U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who on Monday returned the case to the state Supreme Court. Myers — a nominee to the bench by Donald Trump — wrote that Griffin’s protests raised “unsettled questions of state law” and had tenuous connections to federal law.
Hours later, Griffin’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court for the temporary stay, which the court granted.
“In the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election,” Tuesday’s order read.
The order said that Riggs recused herself from the matter and that Associate Justice Anita Earls, the other Democrat on the court, opposed the stay in part because the “public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”
Politico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24, Mike Blanchfield, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.Justin Trudeau waits on the front steps of Parliament Hill.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau era is coming to an end.
Abandoned by a majority of his caucus, the three-term prime minister, right, announced Monday that he plans to step down as prime minister and 
as the leader of his party, the latest in a global line of sinking incumbents.
Trudeau also announced that Canada’s Parliament would shut down until March 24, and that he has asked the Liberal party to begin the search for a new leader.
The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and a looming trade war.
New York Times, Genocide Committed by Paramilitary Group in Sudan, U.S. Says, Declan Walsh, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed. A paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s army in a brutal civil war committed massacres and rape that amounted to genocide, the secretary of state said.
The United States on Tuesday accused a Sudanese paramilitary group and its proxies of committing genocide, singling them out in a conflict of unchecked brutality and drawing fresh attention to the scale of atrocities being perpetrated in Africa’s largest war.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting against Sudan’s military had committed acts of genocide, including a fearsome wave of ethnically targeted violence in the western region of Darfur.
The Treasury Department backed the determination of genocide with a raft of sanctions targeting the R.S.F.’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, as well as seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, the group’s main foreign sponsor, that have traded in weapons and gold on his behalf.
“The R.S.F. and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement. “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
JIP Editor's Note:
Critics say the Biden administration, rather than empowering civilian leaders, prioritized working with the two rival generals, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, right, the head of Sudan’s army, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, left, a paramilitary chief generally known as "Hemetti," 
even after they carried out a military coup together in 2021.
Senior American diplomats “made the mistake of coddling the generals, accepting their irrational demands and treating them as natural political actors,” said Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, an adviser to Sudan’s deposed prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. “This fed their lust for power and their illusion of legitimacy.”
Washington Post, Elon Musk goes global with his playbook for political influence, Cat Zakrzewski, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The X owner and tech billionaire has boosted far-right figures in Britain, Germany and Canada with a blizzard of social media posts in recent days.
In the first three days of 2025, Elon Musk commandeered global politics through dozens of rapid-fire, often inflammatory posts to his 210 million followers on X.
The world’s richest person called for the release of a jailed British far-right extremist. He shared a post pressing King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and order a new general election, as he posted memes and a flurry of attacks directed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Musk accused Starmer of failing to prosecute“rape gangs” more than a decade ago, a child exploitation scandal that has prompted Britain’s Conservative Party to call for a full national inquiry.
Musk reposted a message from Rupert Lowe, a politician in the Reform UK party who serves in Parliament and who said he spent Friday talking to rape gang victims.
“Victims, past and present, don’t need ‘thoughts and prayers’ from politicians, they need justice,” Lowe said. “We will fight for that in Parliament.”
Musk also briefly turned his attention to the United States’ northern neighbor and praised an interview with Pierre Poilievre, a populist firebrand who leads Canada’s Conservative Party. Musk said that next week he would live-stream a conversation with Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party he has endorsed ahead of that country’s snap elections in February.
Last year, Musk dominated U.S. politics, using his deep war chest and X microphone to boost Donald Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 elections. As the GOP prepares to retake control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Musk has emerged more powerful than ever. His fortune has exploded, and he has a perch as Trump’s right-hand man, weighing in on his Cabinet choices and joining his conversations with global leaders.
In the new year, Musk is flexing his political muscle on the global stage as well. He appears to be applying a playbook similar to the one he used to disrupt American politics, now boosting conservative politicians in the governments of the United States’ top allies. But his disregard for the veracity of his posts and his elevation of far-right and extremist figures have alarmed liberal leaders around the world.
Politico, Elon Musk’s European political meddling is ‘worrying,’ says Norway’s PM, Ketrin Jochecová, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). European backlash grows against billionaire ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Monday he found it “worrying” that a billionaire social media owner like Elon Musk is inserting himself into the politics of other countries.
Musk, a key ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has been on a social media rampage over the holidays, endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, repeatedly denouncing the U.K.’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and even torpedoing his relationship with British hard-right chief Nigel Farage.
“I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not how it should be between democracies and allies,” Støre told public broadcaster NRK.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, involving in part hush money to women (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).
New York Times, Trump Seeks to Halt His Criminal Sentencing in New York, Ben Protess, Jan. 6, 2025. A Manhattan judge has already indicated that he will spare Donald Trump from jail time, but the president-elect is seeking to avoid the criminal proceeding.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has signaled that he plans to mount a full-scale legal offensive to stave off his criminal sentencing in New York, seeking a last-minute reprieve before becoming the first president who is a convicted felon.
With the sentencing scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have implored the judge overseeing his case to postpone the proceeding, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.
Although that request is most likely doomed — the judge, Juan M. Merchan, was the one who scheduled the sentencing — Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed in the filing that they planned to escalate their effort. If the judge does not pause the sentencing by 2 p.m. on Monday, the filing said, Mr. Trump will “seek an emergency appellate review.”
Hoping to persuade a New York appeals court to intervene, Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to file a civil action against Justice Merchan and seek to freeze the sentencing, according to the filing. It is unclear when they will file that action with the appellate court, but it could come as soon as Monday.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
Excerpt Continued Below.
New York Times, Trump Has Reeled in More Than $200 Million Since Election Day, Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The president-elect has boasted about the donations for his inauguration, library and political activities from those seeking favor or perhaps in some cases, atonement.
Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.
It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him following the violence by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump has promised to gut the “deep state” and made various promises to industry supporters. Among the pledged donors for the inaugural events are Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon and Meta, along with cryptocurrency firms.
The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration, according to three people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: 2025: The year American Oligarchy officially begins? Thom Hartmann, Jan. 4, 2025. I’m an unpaid volunteer member of the board of directors of a nonprofit that’s making use of a multi-million-dollar endowment, and working with their professional investment advisors over the years has given me insight into some of the ways the morbidly rich get richer, faster, and in ways impossible for average people: there are multiple types of investments and investment advisors that are only accessible to people or organizations that can pony up millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.
Thus, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, Elon Musk (for example) went from being worth $25 billion in 2020 to $428 billion a few weeks ago. During that same time, Jeff Bezos (who apparently just censored a Washington Post comic showing him bowing down and handing a bag of money to Trump) reportedly went from $113 billion to $235 billion; similarly, three heirs to the Walmart fortune reportedly went, during the same period, from $161 billion to $317 billion. We see a similar phenomenon with members of Congress using inside information to trade stocks, something that would land you or me in jail.
Washington Post, Trump sentencing sets up an unusual scene ahead of his inauguration, Marianne LeVine, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Just 10 days before he is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump will have to appear before a judge to be sentenced on his 34 felony convictions.
Days before his second inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump faces the uncomfortable prospect of appearing — in person or virtually — before a New York state judge to be sentenced for his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.Get the latest election news and results
New York Times, Trump Transition: Biden Acknowledges He Might Not Have Been Able to Serve Four More Years,
More U.S. Political Commentary
New York Times, Trump Has Reeled in More Than $200 Million Since Election Day, Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The president-elect has boasted about the donations for his inauguration, library and political activities from those seeking favor or perhaps in some cases, atonement.
Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.
It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him following the violence by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump has promised to gut the “deep state” and made various promises to industry supporters. Among the pledged donors for the inaugural events are Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon and Meta, along with cryptocurrency firms.
The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration, according to three people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: 2025: The year American Oligarchy officially begins? Thom Hartmann, Jan. 4, 2025. I’m an unpaid volunteer member of the board of directors of a nonprofit that’s making use of a multi-million-dollar endowment, and working with their professional investment advisors over the years has given me insight into some of the ways the morbidly rich get richer, faster, and in ways impossible for average people: there are multiple types of investments and investment advisors that are only accessible to people or organizations that can pony up millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.
Thus, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, Elon Musk (for example) went from being worth $25 billion in 2020 to $428 billion a few weeks ago. During that same time, Jeff Bezos (who apparently just censored a Washington Post comic showing him bowing down and handing a bag of money to Trump) reportedly went from $113 billion to $235 billion; similarly, three heirs to the Walmart fortune reportedly went, during the same period, from $161 billion to $317 billion. We see a similar phenomenon with members of Congress using inside information to trade stocks, something that would land you or me in jail.
Washington Post, Trump sentencing sets up an unusual scene ahead of his inauguration, Marianne LeVine, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Just 10 days before he is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump will have to appear before a judge to be sentenced on his 34 felony convictions.
Days before his second inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump faces the uncomfortable prospect of appearing — in person or virtually — before a New York state judge to be sentenced for his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.Get the latest election news and results
New York Times, Trump Transition: Biden Acknowledges He Might Not Have Been Able to Serve Four More Years,
More U.S. Political Commentary
New York Times, Trump Transition: Biden Acknowledges He Might Not Have Been Able to Serve Four More Years, Peter Baker, Jan. 8, 2025. President Biden insisted that he still could have beaten Donald J. Trump had he stayed in the race, but could not say he would have been vital enough to be president until age 86.
President Biden acknowledged in a new interview released on Wednesday that he might not have had the vitality to serve another four years in office, even as he insisted that he could have won re-election had he stayed in the race.
Mr. Biden, 82, who abandoned his bid for a second term in July under enormous pressure from Democrats panicked over his faltering debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump, maintained that he was still in good enough shape to run the country as he finishes his term.
“So far, so good,” he told USA Today. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
That was exactly the point many Democrats raised privately for months before the issue exploded into public view with the televised debate in June, when a frail-looking Mr. Biden struggled to finish sentences and at times appeared blank or confused.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.
All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.
Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked.”
Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
Washington Post, Elections updates: Congress counts, certifies Trump’s electoral college victory over Harris, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 6 announced the certified vote total of the 2024 presidential election during a joint session of Congress.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our National Day of Shame, William Kristol and Andrew Egger, Jan. 6, 2025. Four years later, the shock of that day is replaced by the shock of how that day has become accepted.
Washington Post, Biden urges Americans not to rewrite, or forget, Jan. 6, 2021, Matt Viser, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The president sought to contrast the peaceful transfer of power this year with what happened in 2021.
President Joe Biden, who has attempted to oversee a smooth transition by withholding criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, has grown more animated about their differences ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.Get the latest election news and results
“I think it should not be rewritten. I don’t think it should be forgotten,” he told reporters at the White House on Sunday afternoon. He expanded upon the remarks at an evening event and in a new opinion piece published Sunday night by The Washington Post.
“But I don’t think we should — if you notice, I’ve reached out to make sure the smooth transition, we’ve got to get back to basic, normal transfer of power. I don’t think we should pretend it didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking about Trump specifically, Biden added: “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy, and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it.”
It was his latest effort to remind Americans of how imperiled he views the country’s democratic norms. He also in recent days awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring her for speaking out against Trump and for investigating his actions in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump attacked Cheney on social media over the award and has suggested that she and other members of the House committee that investigated the Capitol assault “should go to jail.”
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Mike Johnson Acts Like a CHILD as Kamala Patriotically Certifies the Election, Tim Miller, Jan. 6, 2025. Tim Miller reacts to VP Kamala Harris presiding over the peaceful transfer of power as she certifies the election results on the fourth anniversary of the violent attack on the Capital.
New York Times, Giuliani Is Held in Contempt of Court in Defamation Case, Stefanos Chen, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has failed to turn over his assets to two Georgia poll workers who won a defamation lawsuit against him.
A federal judge on Monday held Rudolph W. Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of his personal assets to Georgia poll workers he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has so far failed to turn over the bulk of his personal assets as a down payment on the $148 million judgment the poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, won in a defamation lawsuit.
The judge, Lewis J. Liman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, has yet to detail what specific sanctions Mr. Giuliani faces. But being held in contempt could possibly hinder the former mayor’s attempts to hang onto his Palm Beach, Fla., condo.
Mr. Giuliani’s assets include a 10-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; a 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible; a collection of 26 designer watches; and rare Yankees collectibles, the most valuable of which might be a signed and framed Joe DiMaggio jersey.your times access
He is due back in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 16 to argue that his Palm Beach condo should be exempt from the seizure, because it is his primary residence. But Mr. Giuliani has failed repeatedly to answer questions that could prove his residency.
The court ruled that Mr. Giuliani had obstructed the election workers’ attempts to determine Mr. Giuliani’s real primary residence, which for years had been the cooperative apartment on East 66th Street in Manhattan.
Judge Liman, who has appeared frustrated at Mr. Giuliani’s shifting rationale for the omissions, ruled that his failure to comply will permit the court to draw negative conclusions about his Florida residency status, which could hobble his defense.
“The defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” Judge Liman said, adding that he was unmoved by the former mayor’s argument that he was overwhelmed with court requests, including charges in two criminal cases and several other civil actions. “The fact that he is a busy person and relied on others is not an excuse,” he said.President Joe Biden delivers a speech on the U.S. economy and “Bidenomics”, Thursday, September 14, 2023, at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz) image caption
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: It’s January 6th. Trump Won, William Kristol, Jan. 6, 2025. George Orwell wrote that in our day “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So let me restate the obvious: January 6, 2021 is a day that should live in infamy.
But for the next four years January 6th won’t live in infamy. Because in two weeks the man who incited January 6th, the man who now excuses it—no, celebrates it—will be sworn in as our next president.
So the obvious if unpleasant fact is that today we as a nation are in a worse condition, facing a more ominous future, than we faced four years ago.
The mob violence of January 6th was awful. That it was incited by the president of the United States made it worse. That it was the capstone of a more comprehensive effort by President Trump and his apparatchiks to overturn the election results and to stay in power made the date even more deserving of infamy.
But the attempted auto-coup failed. We made it through the dangerous period from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021. The guardrails held. President Trump left office. President Biden succeeded him, and tried to restore normalcy.
To his credit, he’s still trying. The outgoing president has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post lamenting that “an unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite—even erase—the history” of January 6th, and urging us not to forget what happened.
But the fact is that the unrelenting effort of Trump and his supporters has, as of now, succeeded. It’s telling that nowhere in his article does President Biden mention the name of the person who has been behind the effort to “rewrite—even erase” the history of January 6th. Presumably he thought it uncivil or inappropriate to attack his successor by name two weeks before he takes over.
But Biden’s silence about Trump merely brings home the extent of Trump’s success. The January 6th truther-in-chief will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new Trump administration will be presidential pardons or commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not? Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in prison?
Some of the more respectable supporters of the new administration are aware of how distasteful this will be. The Wall Street Journal editorial page frets that “pardoning such crimes would send an awful message about [Trump’s] view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.”
But that is Trump’s view. Indeed, it’s his oft-expressed view. Indeed, he ran for office on this view—and won. The fact that some establishment types have chosen to close their eyes to this isn’t his fault.
What can be done? Here in the United States, there are thankfully many sources of possible resistance, ranging from others in government—at both the federal and state level—to institutions in the private sector and civil society. They all have a role to play in the fight against the whitewashing of history and the erasure of truth.
But in the near term, it is the Senate of the United States that can do the most to help. It is the Senate that has to choose whether to confirm Trump’s cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees. It is Senate committees that can hold hearings and get those nominees on the record on January 6th.
All senators have to do is to ask the nominees whether they agree with what President Trump said on January 7, 2021—that what happened on January 6th was a “heinous attack” and that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”
Senators can ask this of all nominees. And Senators can refuse to confirm at least some of the January 6th deniers, especially those nominated to important positions in law enforcement and national security.
One nominee particularly deserving of decisive rejection is Kash Patel, selected to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an important article this morning, Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen lay out evidence that clearly shows why Patel is unfit to serve as FBI director. They show in great detail that Patel has embraced and promulgated false conspiracy theories not just about January 6th in general, but about the very organization he’s been nominated to lead.
The authors conclude, “That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.”
Will it be? Will the United States Senate permit Trump to install a full-on January 6th truther as head of the FBI? Or will some Republican senators put country before party, enabling the Senate to set up some roadblocks to our steep descent on a path towards an Orwellian and authoritarian future?
To fight for the future of democracy, we need pro-democracy news media. That’s what we’re building here. Help us grow by becoming a Bulwark+ member.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: How ‘My Kevin’ Helped, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 6, 2025. As Bill notes, Trump’s successful retcon of January 6th was the long, slow work of a lot of willing contributors. But it’s worth taking a moment today to look back on one of the most crucial links in that chain: then-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s 2021 decision not to cooperate with establishing an independent commission to investigate the ransacking of the Capitol by Trump’s mob.
In the months immediately following the attack, Republicans were still having trouble letting go of the horror they’d felt as they watched that day unfold. There was considerable talk of a bipartisan commission, modeled on the one empaneled after 9/11. As leader, McCarthy, right, blessed Rep. John Katko, the GOP ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, to strike a deal with 
committee chair Bennie Thompson on forming just such a committee.
Katko, a moderate New York Republican with a prosecutorial background and a national security focus, had been among the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the attack. The deal he and Thompson struck spoke to a desire to present a united front against the lawlessness of that day. It also contained significant incentives for Republicans. Democrats were then in power in the House, but the commission would not have made the GOP junior partners: Pelosi and McCarthy would appoint an equal number of members, and Republicans would have equal access to investigative tools like subpoenas.
“We must do everything we can to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again,” Katko said in a statement at the time. “An independent, bipartisan commission will remove politicization of the conversation and focus solely on the facts and circumstances surrounding the security breach at the Capitol as well as other instances of violence relevant to such a review.”
But while Katko and Thompson were negotiating, McCarthy’s spine was bending. Just a few months after the attack, it was already becoming plain to him that the Republican base’s devotion to Trump was going to outlast their momentary horror over the attempted insurrection. Rep. Liz Cheney, previously his third-in-command in House leadership, had already been ousted over her refusal to stop clearly and loudly prosecuting the case against Trump; after initially supporting her, McCarthy ultimately played along as Republicans kicked her to the curb.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Pete Hegseth Claims the Pledge of Allegiance Is a Forgery Used to Replace God, J.D. Wolf, Jan. 5, 2025. Trump’s nominee to run the military believes the flag and the Pledge were used to boot God from schools.
In June 2022, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, made remarks at the Ronald Reagan Library suggesting that the Pledge of Allegiance and the American flag were used by “progressives” to replace God and biblical truths in schools with nationalism.
Hegseth argued that the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were used as a "forgery" by progressives to substitute allegiance to the state for faith:
“The progressives had the targeting of our youngest minds on their mind from the very beginning.
They knew they had to remove the one immovable object inside American civic life and in Western civilization if their schemes were to ever catch on.
And they understood that a moveable object was God, was faith and that it was at the centerpiece of the American classroom since the founding, and they had to replace it. The way we describe it is, to keep the Indiana Jones analogy going, it's like when you're trying to grab a precious artifact, but it's on a pressure plate. And if you're gonna, if you take that artifact off the pressure plate, the alarm bells go off.
If they had removed God immediately a hundred years ago, the parents, the culture, the communities, the churches would have revolted.
And so they openly wrote in The New Republic and other publications, and this is the research that David did, they openly discussed how do we remove God from the classrooms?
That's the immovable object, and they ultimately landed on a forgery, which the culture, at the time, was willing to accept, which effectively was allegiance to the state.
It was the flag. It was a new pledge, a pledge of allegiance written by a socialist that didn't say under God when it was originally written.
I love the flag. I've proudly said the Pledge of Allegiance today at the beginning. I revere it.
For them, it was a new idea around which they could get society cohere that was more malleable than nationalism being more malleable than biblical truth, because when you have biblical truth and objective truth, you can't move people off of that.
Hegseth officeLiquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking AllegationsRead More
However, the historical timeline doesn’t support this view. The Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Christian minister Francis Bellamy, was designed to promote patriotism, not to secularize schools or replace religious practice.Pete Hegseth at the Ronald Reagan Library
At the time, public schools still included prayer, and it wasn’t until the early 1960s that the Supreme Court ruled against state-sponsored prayers and Bible readings. Meanwhile, the Pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942 and was used in schools beforehand.
Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg, right, Trump The Felon, Incoherent GOP Economic Plans Already Falling.
Morning all. We’ve talked about how the road ahead is going to be full of hard days. This is one of them. Stay strong.
On Friday Trump posted this on Truth Social:
Biden gave Liz Cheney a Medal yesterday, even though she has proven to be totally corrupt. She, “Bennie” Thompson, and the rest of the Unselect Committee, destroyed and deleted all evidence from their crooked investigation of January 6th. Cheney has the distinction of losing her Congressional seat by the largest margin in History! The people of Wyoming understood how bad for our Country she was, but Biden rewarded her only because she hated “TRUMP.” She’s a Warmonger of low intelligence. All she wants to do is kill people in “Endless Wars,” with no gain other than to defense companies. Liz Cheney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, Bennie Thompson, and the rest of these dishonest Thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the help which was offered for security. She is responsible, and admitted as much, for all to see, on her daughter’s tape. They have destroyed the lives of many people, and are rewarded by getting Biden Fake Medals. This is not America. January 20th cannot come fast enough. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Here is how she responded:
Here’s what I wrote to you in my very first post after the 2024 election:
While I am going to go slow, listen, and take my time I do have a few initial thoughts this morning about where we are now and where we are going, together……
Over the past few years we, our country, our leaders, Merrick Garland, the Harris SuperPAC and many, many others failed to adequately indict Trump and explain what an unprecedented threat he was. A rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon was just elected President. The relentless normalization of his extremism, madness and ugliness, the legacy media’s complicity in reporting on the race not the stakes, was a collective failure of enormous consequence.
Related to point one, I still think many on our side and in the establishment simply do not understand the nature of the conflict America finds itself in today. Trump and his global allies are playing a different game than we are used to. They have invented a whole new deeply illiberal game with all sorts of new pieces and rules. We have been slow, dangerously and recklessly, slow in recognizing how the rules of the game have changed.
It’s why whatever happens next, it is time for the Democratic Party’s generational wheel to turn and for new leaders who are not steeped in and hobbled by old ways to take the helm. We are facing a new battlefield, and more contemporary strategies, tactics, alliances and leaders are required in this next stage of the fight. Now is a time for re-invention, re-imagination, and risk-taking. We need to build a new politics for the American center-left, a more modern one, one more suited to the opportunities and challenges in front of us, a more “networked” one as my friend Joe Trippi would say.
The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Trump is likely to scale back his reckless, inflationary tariff plans:
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers….
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive.
This is a significant development for Republicans have been counting on the revenue of broad, across the board tariffs to make up revenue lost from their plutocratic tax cutting plans. Less revenue means higher deficits and much more trouble inside his already deeply unstable governing coalition. Trump’s team is working furiously to try to prevent Trump’s incoherent and reckless economic agenda from being implemented as he promised, for it’s inherent dangers are already starting to unravel the strong economy he’s inheriting; which in turn is putting the entire early Trump 2.0 project at risk.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: GOP faces INSTANT KARMA over Trump’s DAY 1 PLAN, Ben Meiselas, Jan. 6, 2025. MeidasTouch MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans in panic mode that they can’t make good on Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
Donald J. Trump, who has described himself in semi-religious terms and imagry as "The Chosen One."
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary: What Is Trump Doing With A January 19th Rally? Lance F Rosen, Jan. 4, 2025. Just what you would expect of a 
stochastic terrorist.
It should be obvious. He is calling in his movement of extremists comprised of QAnons and Nazis, psychotic fundamentalists and bonkers conspirophiles in an outdoor version of his pre-election Madison Square Garden hate-fest.
And his purpose? To essentially deliver the threat of a mailed fist to Congress, not just to the Democrats but to any lingering dissidents within his own party.
Lance’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
What he is conveying as his message with this rally is, in effect, "If you dare to oppose me on the deportations, the budget, my plans to use the military domestically, or try anything to obstruct my nominees, I will send my mob after you and they will get you, wherever you are."
That is his purpose. It's not a photo op. It's not to prove he can draw big crowds. It is a message to all, including the January 18th pro-democracy rally attendees, that there will be blood.
You will see it in the faces of the people there. Don't be surprised if there is violence, though I expect Presidential security and reinforcements will be there in force, therefore not likely. The relevant point is that he now has official immunity, and will be pardoning the January 6th criminals to augment his private army of Brownshirts.
The media has dropped any reference to the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally which Trump organized because for the most part they have been broken by a barrage of terroristic threats from Trump to pull their licenses and shut them down, to use government agencies to investigate and destroy them, to acquire them through hostile takeovers, or to incite stochastic terrorism against their ownership and editors. That is why you've heard nothing about the Madison Square Garden version of Trump, and instead are getting drowned by mindless coverage of the juvenile squabbles within the GOP.
So, if you were curious about this rally, now you know what it is. He is taking a page from his mentor who used to have them at Nuremberg. And don't be surprised if the staging of it looks eerily similar to this.
New York Times, As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle, Reid J. Epstein, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The race to lead the Democratic National Committee centers on the favorites, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, but the party’s infighting over them looks nothing like a broad reckoning with its 2024 defeats.
Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the 
party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.
The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.
Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.
Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 5, 2025. President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
The terrorist attack by an American man who said he had joined ISIS that killed 14 people in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day served as a reminder that the Islamic State, which Mr. Trump likes to boast he defeated during his previous term, remains a threat and an inspiration to radicalized lone wolves. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are daunting challenges even without U.S. troops engaged in combat there.
Thanks in part to Covid relief spending by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself. Families remain pressed by the cost of living, including housing, health care and college tuition. The cost of gasoline, while down from its peak, is still about 70 cents per gallon higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Moreover, Americans remain as divided as they have been in many years — politically, ideologically, economically, racially and culturally. As healthy as the country may be economically and otherwise, a variety of scholars, surveys and other indicators suggest that America is struggling to come together behind a common view of its national identity, either at home or abroad.
Indeed, many Americans do not perceive the country to be doing as well as the data suggests, either because they do not see it in their own lives, they do not trust the statistics or they accept the dystopian view promoted by Mr. Trump and amplified by a fragmented, choose-your-own-news media and online ecosphere.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Is the “Scarlet F” coming to Trump? Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 4, 2025. What is the legal significance of Trump being a convicted felon? Most of America’s laws punishing convicted felons long after they’ve gotten out of jail or otherwise finished their sentences date back to the use of felony convictions in the old South to disenfranchise Black people. These include losing your ability to vote, to hold certain types of jobs, and even to own a gun. (Almost all of the states where ex-felons can’t vote are former Confederate states, which have disenfranchised over 5 million people, most nonwhite, this way.)
It appears that a loophole in Florida’s law, which forbids felons with unpaid fines from voting, will let Trump continue to cast a ballot in that state because he was convicted out-of-state (NY) rather than by a Florida court. Will he have to surrender the gun he reportedly owns? Will there be any consequence at all for him? Judge Merchan will have the first final say (I say “first” because Trump will appeal) and it’ll be interesting to see if the press focuses on Trump’s response or Merchan’s opinion, which is virtually certain to point out that Trump’s conviction is for criminally manipulating the 2016 election. I’m betting they won’t use the phrase “election interference” at all, but stay tuned…
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 3, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, Jan. 4, 2025. Today a new Congress, the 119th, came into session. As Annie Karni of the New York Times noted, Americans had a rare view into the floor action of the House because the party in control sets the rules for what parts of the House floor viewers can see. Without a speaker, there is no party in charge to set the rules, so the C-SPAN cameras recording the day could move as their operators wished.
Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. All eyes were on the House, where Republicans will hold 219 seats. Initially, though, that number will be 218: The seat to which Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was elected will be empty since he resigned from the previous Congress and, after the House Ethics Committee released a report saying there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had broken state and federal laws, apparently decided to focus on his new media show rather than return to the House. When the clerk announced that Gaetz would not take a seat in the 119th Congress, applause broke out.
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Man killed in Cybertruck explosion, Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was active-duty U.S. Army soldier, officials say (Alcides Antunes photo via Reuters and PBS).
New York Times, New Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear, Jacey Fortin and Jesus Jiménez, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Officials said they used data from Tesla charging stations to chart the driver’s dayslong journey from Colorado to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
It was difficult, at first, for the authorities to identify the driver of the Tesla truck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning. By the time the flames were extinguished, he had been burned beyond recognition.
But as investigators pored over the charred remains of his ruined rented vehicle, a 2024 Cybertruck, they discovered some clues to the driver’s background and his intentions: some guns, a military ID, fuel and many fireworks.
And on Thursday, the authorities said that they had found something else: The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the driver’s head, the county coroner ruled.
“Am I comfortable calling it a suicide mission?” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in response to a reporter’s question at a Thursday news briefing. “I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other labels.”
New York Times, Cybertruck Driver Shot Himself in Head Before Vegas Blast, Jacey Fortin, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The man who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning shot himself in the head immediately before the vehicle was engulfed by fire, the authorities said on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The authorities are still working to determine exactly what happened, and what the motivation was for the incident, which injured seven people. Here is what we know so far.
Trump / GOP Transition News
Washington Post, Trump says he will rename the Gulf of Mexico. Can he do that? Maegan Vazquez, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and the president-elect seemed to tie the prospective renaming to his long-standing grievances with Mexico’s handling of immigration, drug trafficking and trade.
Trump provided no additional details about how he planned to implement the name change, but the comments sparked immediate questions about whether a president has the authority to rename an international body of water and prompted at least one Republican member of Congress to draft legislation.
Axios, Mike Johnson reelected as speaker after brief revolt, Andrew Solender, Jan. 3-4, 2025. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected as the speaker of the House on Friday, securing the gavel on the first ballot.
Why it matters: Johnson appeared imperiled as three Republicans initially voted against him — enough to sink him on the first ballot.
After a roughly 45-minute standoff, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) switched to voting for Johnson, giving him the 218 votes he needed to secure the gavel without a multi-ballot fight. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the lone defector, voting for Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), while all Democrats voted for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Politico, Judge turns down Jan. 6 felon’s request to attend Trump inauguration at invitation of GOP lawmakers, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2025. It’s the second time a federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration.A bird flies framed by security fencing in front of the U.S. Capitol.
A federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 felony defendant’s request for permission to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite a personal invitation from members of the Utah congressional delegation.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Russell Taylor’s “unusually grave” conduct at the Capitol — which included recruiting “fighters” to descend on the Capitol, wearing armor, carrying weapons and helping others push past a police line — did not warrant the “immense privilege” of attending an inauguration.
“It would not be appropriate for the Court to grant permission to attend such a hallowed event to someone who carried weapons and threatened police officers in an attempt to thwart the last Inauguration, and who openly glorified ‘[i]nsurrection’ against the United States,” Lamberth wrote in a five-page decision.
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, is the second federal judge to deny a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, turned down a request Thursday from a felony defendant charged with unleashing chemical spray at a police officer.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, approved a misdemeanor defendant’s request to attend the inauguration, and several other requests are pending. The Justice Department has largely opposed such requests, saying it would be improper to subject Capitol police to facing the very people who stood against them four years ago.
Taylor’s is the only request that was publicly endorsed by members of Congress.
Former Utah representative Chris Stewart, who wrote to Lamberth on behalf of three current members of Utah’s congressional delegation, asked the judge’s permission for Taylor to attend as their guest.
“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote last month. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”
Despite the charges against him, Taylor’s case was complex. He quickly pleaded guilty for his crimes, acknowledged his wrongdoing and became an early cooperator with prosecutors, even testifying at the trial of an alleged co-conspirator. Lamberth sentenced Taylor to a term of probation and praised him as a model defendant. Under the terms of Taylor’s three-year probation, he must receive permission to travel to Washington.
Lamberth acknowledged Stewart’s praise for Taylor, but said he had already considered those factors when he gave Taylor a lenient sentence.
Washington Post, Biden awards Liz Cheney a presidential medal for challenging Jan. 6 attack, Maeve Reston, Jan. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The president honored one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics less than three weeks before Trump is set to take office a second time.
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More U.S. Legal News
Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson, left, author, attorney and former professor, Jan. 4, 2025. Bill Ackman, above, asks, “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?” It’s a child’s question—or anyone with no knowledge of criminal justice—but here an expert answers it.
Seth AbramsonJan 4 QUESTION from far-right billionaire BILL ACKMAN: “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?”
We know this question is asked in bad faith, because a billionaire like Ackman has lawyers and other advisers who could answer this extremely basic question for him almost immediately.
There’s no reason to broadcast the question to his 1.6 million Twitter followers other than to spread three far-right canards that every criminal justice professional knows to be false: New York City is a dangerous large city (it is actually a very, very safe large city); prosecutors are by and large progressive (by and large, prosecutors are extremely conservative by instinct, politics, and professional-advancement planning); and violent crime is now out of control (it is plummeting).
Nevertheless here’s an ANSWER from criminal defense attorney Seth Abramson:
On a criminal record, each charge a person has ever faced is a separate arrest entry—so if, on a single date of offense, a person is arrested on ten charges, that may well show as ten arrests even though all of those arrests were for a single course of conduct.
Because over 95% of criminal cases are resolved by a defendant taking responsibility for their actions and accepting a plea deal—that’s right, the overwhelming majority of those arrested aren’t like Donald Trump and seek no more than a just punishment for what they are accused of doing—police and prosecutors prepare in advance for this known eventuality by habitually wildly overcharging cases. The theory behind this is that the more charges you can pile on someone, the more likelihood (because each charge carries its own penalty, which can be assessed consecutively to all other penalties) they will enter into a plea agreement with the government and thus spare taxpayers the cost (and government agents the time) of a full-blown criminal trial.
The result of this is that even a rather minor incident will often lead to a very large number of more-or-less redundant charges and an extremely filled-up arrest record.
I’ve seen and personally represented defendants with 50+ arrests from just two dates of offense—meaning just two actions that were deemed by the arresting officers to be criminal. Bill Ackman is also aware of such a situation, given that his political hero, Donald Trump, technically was arrested on 34 felonies as part of a single course of conduct (though in Trump’s case these crimes spanned months, which is actually far worse than what we see with unpremeditated street crimes born of transient anger).
And of course arrests aren’t convictions. While arrests show up on an arrest record, many arrests result in nolle prosequi withdrawals of the charges by prosecutors for reasons ranging from a witness recantation to a plea deal that involves some charges being withdrawn, from the evidence ultimately gathered by police not sustaining the charges the arresting officers originally believed could be sustained to a prosecutor deciding (but this is rare) that the case was overcharged and that is was unfair to the defendant.
Short of charges being withdrawn voluntarily by the government, they may also be “kicked” (dismissed) by judges because (say) witnesses fail to appear in court, certain evidence was illegally seized, the government has botched the collection or testing of the evidence in a way that infringes upon the defendant’s constitutional rights, or a whole host of other reasons—including, notably, a “not guilty” verdict by a jury of the defendant’s peers after a trial.
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Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg
More Political News, Commentary
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 21, 2024 [U.S. Government Shutdown Avoided], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 22, 2024. Shortly after midnight last night, the Senate passed the continuing resolution to fund the government through March 14, 2025. The previous continuing resolution ran out at midnight, but as Bloomberg’s congressional budget reporter Steven Dennis explained, “midnight is NOT a hard deadline for a government shutdown. A shutdown occurs only when [the Office of Management and Budget] issues a shutdown order, which they traditionally will NOT issue if a bill is moving toward completion.”
President Joe Biden signed the bill this morning, praising the agreement for keeping the government open, providing urgently needed disaster relief, and providing the money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a container ship hit it in March 2024, causing it to collapse.
Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Bowser goes to Mar-a-Lago, says she had ‘great meeting’ with Trump, Meagan Flynn and Martin Weil, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). 
Bowser said the two had met “to discuss our shared priorities” for Donald Trump’s second term as president.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed “shared priorities” involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the “great meeting.”
New York Times, Trump Weighs In on Immigrant Visa Debate but Offers Little Clarity, Ken Bensinger, Dec. 29, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump said he had used the visas for skilled workers “many times.” But he has mainly used visas for unskilled workers like housekeepers.
President-elect Donald J. Trump appeared to weigh in on Saturday on a heated debate among his supporters over the role of skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy, saying he had frequently used the visas for those workers and backed the program.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” he told The New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
But his comments — which were enthusiastically embraced by the technology industry as an endorsement — may muddy the waters because Mr. Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States for up to three years and can be extended to six years.
Instead, he has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months. Federal data show Mr. Trump’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past 20 years.
New York Times, Trump Previews Second Term in Sprawling Speech to Conservative Conference, Michael D. Shear, Dec. 22, 2024. President-elect Trump repeated false claims about immigration and the border and discussed the Panama Canal in the 90-minute address.
President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a sprawling address on Sunday that he called a “small preview of the common-sense revolution” his administration will bring, pledging to slam shut the nation’s borders, end federal regulations, lower taxes, prosecute his rivals, “stop woke” and “end the transgender lunacy.”
In a 90-minute speech at a conservative conference in Phoenix, Mr. Trump offered a triumphant view of his election victory in which he described his liberal adversaries as “befuddled” and promised that a new “golden age in America” had begun.
“We will end the occupation, and Jan. 20 will truly be liberation day in America,” Mr. Trump told thousands of people at AmericaFest, a four-day conference run by the conservative group Turning Point USA.
The president-elect’s speech was a familiar mash-up of false assertions, self-praise, fierce attacks on his adversaries and promises about how his return to power would change the country for the better.
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More On Carter Life, Legacy
Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
New York Times, Jimmy Carter (1924-2024): A Pomp-Filled Farewell for Carter With 3 Days of Tributes, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025. The nation’s leaders on Tuesday kicked off three days of tributes to Jimmy Carter, staging an elaborate pageant of Washington fanfare for a politician who disavowed the trappings of the imperial presidency and never gave up his humble Georgia roots.
Mr. Carter, who died last week at age 100, was flown to Washington and taken to the U.S. Navy Memorial downtown, then delivered to the Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. He will lie in state in the Rotunda all day Wednesday before a formal state funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
“James Earl Carter Jr. loved our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a eulogy during a solemn Capitol service attended by members of Congress, the cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomatic corps. “He lived his faith, he served the people and he left the world better than he found it. And in the end, Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.”
Former President Carter, who once banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” will lie in state at the Capitol as part of three days of elaborate ceremonies.
President Jimmy Carter and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 1978. Both saw themselves as straight shooters in a world of spinners (Photo:
Barry Thumma/Associated Press
New York Times, ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History, Peter Baker, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). President Biden is another Democrat hurt by inflation and struggling to free hostages. But Mr. Carter’s enhanced reputation post-presidency offers hope.
When President Biden appeared on camera to pay tribute to former President Jimmy Carter, he sounded almost as if he were thinking of himself in these final days in office.
“In today’s world, some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era — with honesty and character, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden said in breaking away from his Caribbean vacation on Sunday after the former president’s death. “It mattered. But I don’t believe it’s a bygone era.”
Mr. Biden, too, has been dismissed as a man of a bygone era, an old-school politician in a new-school world, an octogenarian president playing by rules he learned in the 1970s when he served in the Senate and Mr. Carter was in the White House, rules that did not help him in today’s fast-paced, smash-mouth political arena. He is, in this view, a man out of time — Mr. Carter’s time.
Washington Post, Jimmy Carter: They wrote obituaries about Carter — but died before him, Laura Wagner, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Carter’s longevity meant that some of his obit writers have by now not only left journalism but also their mortal coils.
New York Times, In Carter’s Hometown, a Long Vigil Ends With Sorrow, but Also Uplift, Rick Rojas, Christina Morales and Christian Boone, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Plains, Ga., had been bracing for the inevitable through Jimmy Carter’s ailments and nearly two years of hospice care. Still, his death “doesn’t seem real.”
The Georgia town known first and foremost as the home of Jimmy Carter had steeled itself time and again for an existence without him. First, there was his cancer diagnosis in 2015, and then the fall that broke a hip, and the disclosure almost two years ago that he had entered hospice care.
But sure enough, every time, he held on.
And so, Plains, a speck of a community tied to the 39th president for the better part of a century, awoke on Monday to a reality that, strangely enough, seemed almost as inconceivable as it was inevitable. Mr. Carter, 100, was gone. He died on Sunday at his home, the modest ranch house hidden behind the security fencing and guard stations in the center of town.
“Honestly, it doesn’t seem real,” said Philip Kurland, the owner of the Plains Trading Post, an overstuffed emporium of political memorabilia in the strip of businesses that makes up downtown. “It was inevitable, but there’s still sadness. There’s also a feeling of: Let’s celebrate a life well lived.”
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (New York Times photo by Damon Winter )
New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100, Peter Baker and Roy Reed, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but held on longer than even his family expected.
Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter on the campaign trail and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of the former president’s signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
Other than interludes in the White House and the Georgia governor’s mansion, he and his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, lived in the same simple home in Plains for most of their adult lives and each of them passed away there, Mrs. Carter in November last year.
A lifelong farmer who still worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s, Mr. Carter had long defied death and outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him. Over the years, he beat back a series of health crises, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, and repeated falls, one giving him a broken hip.
The Carter Center announced in February last year that Mr. Carter, “after a series of short hospital stays,” had decided to forgo further life-prolonging medical treatment and would receive hospice care at home.
News that he seemed to be in his final days prompted a wave of tributes and remembrances of his extended and eventful life, but even then he upended expectations by hanging on for nearly two years. He lived long enough to bid farewell to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96, culminating a marriage of 77 years.
Jimmy Carter, furthest right, is standing in the Oval Office with four of his successors. From left to right: George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former President Jimmy Carter, furthest right, in a group photo of his successors in January 2009 (New York Times photo by Doug Mills)
New York Times, Carter the Critic Didn’t Spare His Successors, Linda Qiu, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter defied the unwritten rule of former presidents: Don’t criticize the occupant of the Oval Office.
Former President Jimmy Carter grinned in the Oval Office in January 2009 for a photograph, a visible gap separating him from four of his successors. As the others stood shoulder to shoulder, he positioned himself off to the side, a hand in one pocket, as if to distance himself just slightly from that most exclusive club.
Mr. Carter had no qualms about breaking one of that club’s unwritten rules, namely that former presidents restrain their critiques of the current occupant of the Oval Office. In the four decades after leaving the White House following the 1980 election, he caused regular stirs with pointed opinions about his successors.
“He was in fights with everyone, Democrats, Republicans,” said Julian E. Zelizer, the author of “Jimmy Carter” and a historian at Princeton University, who called Mr. Carter “a maverick through and through.”
Stuart Eizenstat, a former adviser to Mr. Carter, said the former president wasn’t the type of person to just go back to Plains, Ga., and “work on carpentry and painting.”
“When he left office, he was in his mid 50s,” Mr. Eizenstat said. “He didn’t want his voice to be unheard.”
Washington Post, Carter to lie in state at Capitol, with state funeral to follow on Jan. 9, Azi Paybarahm, Dec. 30, 2024. Former presidents and other dignitaries are expected to attend the service at Washington National Cathedral where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy.
The death of former president Jimmy Carter touched off an American mourning ritual that requires quickly coordinating a sprawling group of federal officials, local partners and law enforcement, as well as elected leaders from across the political spectrum.Get the latest election news and results
Services to honor Carter will begin Jan. 4 in his home state of Georgia and conclude Jan. 9 with a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral, where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy. Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for three days, which will give members of Congress and everyday Americans the opportunity to pay their respects.
The events require a complicated choreography of protocol, ceremony and security at which official Washington excels, but the timing of Carter’s funeral presents some particular challenges. The former president died Sunday at the age of 100.
The tributes to Carter come after the New Year’s Day holiday and as Washington is experiencing a political transition, with Biden preparing to hand power to President-elect Donald Trump. Separately, a fractured House Republican majority will try to elect a speaker on Jan. 3, a process that previously took the GOP dozens of rounds of votes spread over several days of public feuding.
New York Times, After Jimmy Carter Won the Presidency, Democrats Lost the South, Richard Fausset, Dec. 30, 2024. On the day he was sworn in as governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, an ambitious white peanut farmer from rural Sumter County, announced that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
The declaration landed like the carefully calculated bomb it was intended to be in the South of 1971 — and landed Mr. Carter on the cover of Time magazine, along with the blurb, “Dixie whistles a different tune.”
But in his ensuing half-century of public life, Mr. Carter, the one-term Democratic president who died Sunday at 100, would be forced to listen rather helplessly as Republicans mostly called the tune in his native South, supported by white voters who were uncomfortable with the Democrats’ embrace of racial inclusion and abortion rights, and were attracted to the small-government, low-tax promises of the party of Ronald Reagan.
Indeed, after Mr. Carter’s ascension to the White House, the states of the old Confederacy would go on to become, with a few exceptions, a crucial base of support for Republican presidential candidates. Much of that support came from Mr. Carter’s fellow Southern evangelicals, who turned sharply away from him and the Democrats during his presidential term. They became one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs and remain so to this day.
That was part of a shift that had begun in the early 1960s, as Republicans found a way to chip and then blast away at what had been a solidly Democratic South since the end of Reconstruction. Southerners’ fealty to the party had been based on their appreciation for Roosevelt’s New Deal, and their bitterness over the 19th century Republicanism of Lincoln that helped erode the region’s strict racial hierarchies.
Yet Mr. Carter also helped to create a model for Democratic success in a South that has become increasingly Republican‚ a model that remains workable to varying degrees today. The election of 1976 was one of a number of times that a Democratic candidate has emerged with just the right balance of rhetoric and policy promises, uniting just enough white Southern progressives and white moderates in a successful coalition with Black and other minority voters.
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Trump's Cases, Allies, Threats, Opponents
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using his 
name. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued from above.
I'm going to state publicly what I have suspected all along but have not yet divulged until now. This is my personal speculation, but I believe that a deal was made by Biden to get Trump to leave the White House and relinquish power in 2021, provided he would not be prosecuted aggressively. This, in my mind, is the only thing which solves the mystery of why did Trump even leave, and why did he agree to a transition? And I should state for the record that while I always remained critical in a principled way, I have been a strong and vocal defender of Joe Biden since he launched his candidacy in 2017, and I am not writing this to bash him. In a way, if a deal was made I understand it and his motives.
That said, all indications were that Trump would make some desperate effort at a last stand, because he stood to lose his Presidential legal shield and go to jail if he didn't. He even tried to get Netanyahu's help in launching a war with Iran at the end to fabricate a national emergency and void the election. General Milley actually called it Trump's "Reichstag Fire" and blocked it. Despite his desperation, Trump relented, and it has always been puzzling to me as to why. If there were a deal, that would explain it. We know that everything with Trump is a transaction, devoid of any motive other than self-preservation. I am certainly open to discussion if others have thoughts on it, because it is just my opinion and nothing more.
So, on our timeline, Biden came in, pledged bipartisanship and healing in his inaugural, appointed Garland under pressure from Dunns's flunky Klain, left. 
He (Garland) was a former DOJ prosecutor and federal judge, a plodding GOP bureaucrat and proceduralist, guaranteed to not do anything which could remotely be considered "political" in order to protect the DOJ from charges of "weaponizing Justice. Therefore when it came to not antagonizing MAGA, he was right on board with Klain's and Dunn's program.
Remember also that this was the guy who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers McVeigh and Nichols, but the religious cult and militia networks (the neo-Nazi "Christian Identity," and the Michigan militia) which housed them and actively supported their anti-government plot were let off the hook. There was a network, not just two guys, and Garland chose to not go after all of them for sedition conspiracy, only the two mentioned for the crime of the bombing. (It should be mentioned that the same Michigan militia networks that supported them were caught plotting a "citizen's arrest" of Governor Gretchen Whitmer 26 years later, which was in fact a plot to kidnap her and her cabinet, conduct mock trials and summary executions for treason, right after they were incited by Trump to storm the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to oppose covid lockdown)
Garland, once sworn in after the usual obstruction in the Senate by McConnell, (the second go-round for him after he was Obama's failed nominee for SCOTUS) did nothing for month after month about the stolen documents or J-6. Instead of going after the planners and the ringleaders, he was preoccupied with rounding up and prosecuting the thousand or so zombies used as cannon-fodder for the riot, which was just cover for the actual coup plot of Trump's Congreseional allies boiding Biden's electors. Not Trump,Meadows, Bannon, Stone, especially not Ginni Thomas. No, it was more important to nail the “horny” QAnon guy than the people who were responsible for bring the mob which left five dead DC cops and hundreds more injured.
Then the J-6 committee did such a thorough job documenting Trump's coup attempt, that Garland was literally forced to abort the "hands off" policy and started a grand jury. And once it was finally underway, all of his foot-dragging led to his "cover your ass" move of appointing a special prosecutor, Jack Smith.
Then there were shocking revelations that Trump's stolen documents included nuclear secrets which he was showing off to guests and donors at his golf club, and Biden's national security team raised the roof to convince him to pressure Garland to go after them. Garland started another investigation he didn't want in order to force Trump to give the documents up. Trump said "fuck you," ordered his lawyers to lie to the FBI, he was allowed to stall, hide some of what he had, possibly sell some of it, so Garland was forced to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and start a second grand jury (which again he never wanted) and Biden went along with him on all of it.
And to top it off, Garland incredibly insisted that Smith convene the grand jury and try the stolen documents case in Ron DeSantis' fascist hellscape of Florida, not Washington DC where the judges are more balanced than Florida's Republican hack federal appointees. No credible reason for Garland to insist Smith go to trial in Florida was ever given, aside from the fact the documents were there. He personally oversaw packing up in Washington, and had no immunity the moment Biden was sworn in. It would have been a slam dunk.
The only possible explanation is that bringing the case in Trump's home state was a sop, a buy-off to mitigate the rage and retribution factor from the Congressional MAGAts. Remember that after the Mar-aLago FBI search warrant was executed, a Trump supporter assassinated an FBI agent in Cincinnati, and there was a pattern of threats against their offices nationwide. Therefore Florida is what they went with, and almost predictibly a Trump appointed "fan-girl" known as Aileen "Loose Cannon" got jurisdiction, stalled, delayed, and after the SCOTUS immunity ruling threw out the case entirely.
This bought Trump the time he needed to let the SCOTUS step in and give him his blank check to cancel all of his cases and start making plans to deploy Seal Team Six to assassinate his political opponents. All of the cases were then pronounced DOA, including the state criminal charges in Georgia and New York.
As a consequence of Garland's malfeasance and incompetence, we now have a Führer, not a President, coming in with list in hand of his targets for bloody retribution, a person with the mental map and personality disorders of the movie character Patrick Bateman from the bloody horror novel "American Psycho." And the worst thing is that some of us wanted to believe the same thing President Biden believed, that this collection of vengeance-seeking bloodthirsty fascists who belong to a violent cult led by a psychopath could be bargained with. Or, for that matter cared even a whit about the national interest, and were really just normal good people who would come around when we got some bills passed that would mean job security and putting money in the pockets of their voters.
It is beyond me that someone with Joe's battle-tested life experiences and history of political wars in the Senate and as VP could actually have believed this. He once told Putin to his face that he had no soul. Did he really think he could horse-trade with people who were bought or sold, or had their lives threatened? Did he really believe that Trump would honor his side of any deal that was made, if one was made? I believe in redemption, but I don't cry over Hallmark movie happy endings which I know to not be real,
The intention, in my view, was never to prosecute or jail Trump, despite Jack Smith's committment to do just that. It was to use the prosecutions as leverage to contain Trump and force him to eventually drop out of the campaign. And instead he turned around and did the exact opposite. And Biden went along with the deal and Garland's do-nothingism because his "Rasputin" Anita Dunn was in his ear telling him that if Trump went on trial he would lose the "moderate MAGA" vote and therefore the whole election, and our democracy along with it.
Biden never realized how tragic his error was until Garland went after his son, then after him personally on his decade old collection of useless memorabilia in his garage, and Garland's choice for Special Prosecutor, Republican hack prosecutor Robert Hur (approved of by Gym Jordan and James Comer) wrote a long report on how there was no crime, but Biden seemed senile. All this of course to prove himself fair and non-partisan when it came time to testify in Jordan's committee to grovel for budget crumbs and defend his turf. Joe never saw it coming, like a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.
That is my reading from the outside, fwiw. Like I said it is speculation. And the tragedy regardless is that Biden's awful pragmatic decision born of a 50 year long career of centrist dealmaking with Republicans came back to haunt him because Garland offered up his son Hunter as a sacrifice to the MAGA carnivores, hoping that would "balance things out" for his Trump cases, (which again, I believe he never wanted) and prove his department was apolitical in order to keep them out of his business running the DOJ. Well...how did that all work out?
That is what I believe actually happened. At some point I think more will come out that points toward this scenario as being likely.
So, one mystery solved, which is why Biden picked Garland. Another one still remains open, which is why did Trump leave the White House in 2021, a decision he has said he regretted all along. Whatever the case, we will pay the price for President Biden's unfortunate decisions reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. He only found out at the tragic end who his real friends were, and who were his enemies, because he saw what he wanted to see and placed his trust in the wrong people at the worst possible time. He wanted to believe that McConnell and Lindsey Graham were still his friends and that they would work with him. He didn't want to see how they and others were broken by Trump.
Former President and President-elect Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case, Lola Fadulu, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed). The president-elect had asked a court to overturn the defamation judgment against him in the case, which centered on E. Jean Carroll’s account of a sexual attack in a dressing room.President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that the court should not have allowed Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.
The appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him. “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. It was unsigned but issued by a three-judge panel made up of Denny Chin and Susan Carney — appointed by President Barack Obama — as well as Myrna Perez, appointed by President Biden.
“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” Roberta Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a statement. “We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, who is set to be his White House communications director, said Mr. Trump was re-elected with an “overwhelming mandate,” and he said the American people “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
Mr. Trump was represented in the appeal by D. John Sauer, his pick for U.S. solicitor general.
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A 
HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, a Florida Republican who was President-elect Trump's's first nominee to become U.S. Attorney General in a second Trump administration, is shown with Trump in a file photo via Facebook.
New York Times, Trump Transition Updates: Ethics Panel Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman and Robert Draper, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). Former Representative Matt Gaetz has been under investigation over allegations including sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
A report (here) by the House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, of regularly paying for sex, using illegal drugs and having sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. The report concluded that the actions by Mr. Gaetz — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former 
pick for attorney general — violated state sexual misconduct laws, including Florida’s statutory rape law, and violated House rules. But the committee said it did not find conclusive evidence that he violated federal sex trafficking laws. Read more ›
President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Mr. Trump returns to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row. Mr. Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, but legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration.
An ethics panel report concluded that Gaetz violated state laws and House rules.
The House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general, of regularly paying for sex, possessing illegal drugs and having sexual relations with an underage girl, according to a draft of the panel’s report.
The report, which was released on Monday, found that from at least 2017 to 2020, Mr. Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; and, in 2017, “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” the report said.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), center, in a 2017 Facebook photo with friends and fellow ardent Trump supporters Roger Stone and Joel Greenberg, the latter a former Florida tax collector now imprisoned on multiple federal felony charges for sex trafficking, allegedly in part with Gaetz.
Politico, Gaetz report renews debate about how he escaped federal charges, Josh Gerstein, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The Justice Department applies federal sex-trafficking laws narrowly.
The House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz offers some hints about why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute the former Florida congressman after a wide-ranging federal investigation into whether he committed sex trafficking.
The decision likely stemmed from concerns about the strength of the evidence and the department’s history of applying sex-trafficking laws narrowly, former prosecutors said Monday.
The modern federal sex trafficking law is limited to cases involving coercion, fraud or the interstate or international movement of minors for sex. Despite its damning evidence of wide-ranging violations of law and House rules by Gaetz, the Ethics Committee report did not find those factors.
An older statute, known as the Mann Act, sweeps more broadly, but the Justice Department as a matter of discretion limits its application to particularly egregious acts of trafficking.Jeffries on Gaetz Report: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'
The most egregious allegation Gaetz faces is having sex with a 17-year-old. But the Ethics Committee report does not say that he transported or arranged for transport of the alleged victim across state lines — an important point because some connection to interstate commerce is required for it to become a federal sex-trafficking crime. The report also says the then-17-year-old told investigators she did not tell Gaetz her age at the time, and that he didn’t ask.
The report does bluntly accuse Gaetz of having violated Florida’s statutory rape law. But it concluded that a state prosecution is impossible at this point because he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old in 2017, and the state’s statute of limitations has expired.
The report also found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed other illegal conduct, including hiring prostitutes and using illicit drugs. Some of that conduct was connected to interstate commerce — but federal prosecutors likely felt it did not rise to the level of what is typically prosecuted under the relevant federal statutes.
The Mann Act is traditionally reserved “for situations where there’s severe forms of trafficking and exploitation of the victims,” said Margaret Gandy, a former federal prosecutor.
Because Gaetz’ alleged interstate and international conduct involved women over 18 and there was no suggestion of violence or duress, DOJ may not have thought it was an appropriate Mann Act case to charge, Gandy said.
“When it is exploitative and abusive, when there’s obviously physical force, coercion, duress, all those things, that makes it easy,” Gandy said. “There’s more of a gray area sometimes around some more transactional sex with consenting adults that warrants that additional pause and consideration.”
Another former federal prosecutor, Robert Bittman, agreed that the department rarely brings sex-trafficking charges in cases of consensual sex between adults, even if money changed hands.
“It’s a crime, it’s a statute on the books that they can prosecute — but it’s not a high-priority thing,” he said. “It’s not something that’s often prosecuted, and really would only be prosecuted if there are significant, other aggravating factors.”
Federal prosecutors have also historically hesitated to bring cases that involve quid-pro-quos for sex that involve things other than an explicit payment.
The Justice Department concluded its investigation into Gaetz last year. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
However, a law enforcement official said all DOJ decisions about Gaetz were made by career prosecutors. The official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, added that this has been the standard practice for the Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive investigations into political figures.
An attorney for Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment, and Gaetz directed reporters seeking comment to his social media posts.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X, contending that many of the claims in the report were inaccurate. He has repeatedly denied having sex with anyone under 18 and said money he transferred to women was to compensate girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for their travel.MOST READbiden-37249.jpg
New York Times, Trump’s Suit Over Iowa Poll Is His Latest Action Against News Media, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, David Enrich and Alan Feuer, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump sued The Des Moines Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, escalating his threats to seek retribution against the mainstream media and his political enemies.
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, right, Dec. 15, 2024. Kash Patel Is A Lunatic.
This MSNBC article by author and writer Jay Michaelson makes a strong case for Biden to carry out sweeping pre-emptive pardons to protect those targeted for revenge prosecutions by Trump and his incoming "Himmler," Kash Patel, left.
The counterarguments by legalists, MAGA fascists and several Biden-bashing liberal media pundits are fairly well refuted, and in fact shown to be bogus in each example.
Americans by and large are letting their fears affect their judgment, and are either blocking out the Trump/Patel threat to our constitutional system and targeted individuals, or have resigned themselves to it and are retreating into a psychological bunker mentality.
The only remedy is effective political action. Throwing junk memes up against your Facebook wall is no solution and represents a net negative as far as wasted time and energy.Facebook is part of the apparatus which will be deployed to identify us and pick us off, one by one. Be clear that this is a devolving Orwellian type of platform designed to neutralize Trump's political opposition.
I should not have to make this case. You all saw what Facebook did with their algorithm to spike most of the posts about Project 2025 when that became the leading issue in the campaign. And of course it was soon determined that the corporate figure who designed that algorithm in charge of so-called “community guidelines” was a Trump guy.
And now you have Zuckerberg crawling to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's bone spurs, then funding his inaugural to the tune of 1 million, with who knows what other kinds of backroom deals were struck to keep Trump off his back. Same with Bezos.
My days here are numbered. You also saw this week that my page was hijacked and I lost all but a handful of my 1400 readers. My wife posted a notice on my timeline to notify everyone that I have a new page, and how to find it. That message was removed, either by Facebook or the hijacker.
So this place is a dead end for those resisting the regime. That is where we are. I'm taking steps this weekend to backup and safeguard my Substack archive of a 1000 articles going back six years. Others who are writers and posters should consider taking similar steps to preserve their data.
Don't block on this, we are headed into dark territory.
Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Weiner went to prison but Gaetz won’t? Thom Hartmann, Dec. 28, 2024. Remember when Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, right, served 18 months in prison for texting a dick pic to an underage girl he never met or touched or paid or anything else?
Now comes Matt Gaetz and, according to a new report from the House Ethics Committee, the Republican Congressman actually paid an underage girl for sex that he then had with her in such a public part of a party house that multiple people witnessed it.
Will Gaetz similarly go to prison? Don’t count on it; Republicans are generally immune from prosecution for such crimes, particularly when their fathers are major and morbidly rich Republican movers-and-shakers and Trump is trying to pack his administration with accused rapists and predators…
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: WHOA! DOJ Drops BOMBSHELL FILING in Trump Case, Michael Popok, Dec. 31, 2024. Dec 31, 2024 Special Counsel Jack Smith and President Biden just gave Trump a New Year’s surprise, handing off the Mar a Lago appeal to the main Miami federal prosecutor, rather than dismiss it, in hopes that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Judge Cannon and her ruling that the Special Counsel is unconstitutional before the inauguration. reports.
New York Times, Guest Essay: What Judges Can Do for the Rule of Law Under Trump, Nancy Gertner, right,and Joel Cohen (Ms. Gertner is a retired federal judge. Mr. Cohen is a former federal prosecutor), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.
This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.
If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.
Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Suppose a federal district judge is asked to sign off on an eavesdropping warrant under Title III of the federal criminal law. He or she will receive one-sided (“ex parte”) submissions from prosecutors applying for search warrants (for a physical search or a wiretap), an application that the target’s attorney will not know about nor have the ability to contest.
In previous administrations, federal trial judges have had generally well-founded confidence that the Justice Department and the post-Hoover F.B.I., under presidents from either party, have not been employed to attack political enemies. Most district judges — especially those who have served as federal prosecutors, as most have — believe that the prosecutors appearing before them act with integrity, that their offices are not being manipulated to undermine those who challenged the current administration or its leader.
A judge could assume that the warrant has gone through layers of approval within the Justice Department, even reaching the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, an extremely high ranking official in the department. That judge could also be reasonably confident that very little, if anything, would be amiss after passing through the layers of the approval process, including senior department officials.
But with the astonishing comments from the president-elect and his appointments, it is reasonable to ask if judges can still assume that level of confidence in the review process. The previous assumption that prosecutions would be undertaken only against individuals suspected of committing crimes may be wrong.Editors’ PicksLin-Manuel Miranda on ‘Mufasa’ and the Secret to a Disney HitThe Trinidadian Christmas Staple Worth the Yearlong WaitHow ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (and Its Writer) Went Down in History
Now, when judges are asked to review warrant applications, or any other ex parte submissions from the government, they should do so through a different lens, much more scrupulously than ever before.
Or consider a motion to dismiss an indictment based on selective prosecution. In the usual case, prosecutors are given broad discretion, so long as there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the prosecution does not run afoul of constitutional protections.
A selective prosecution motion alleges that criminal charges were brought for reasons forbidden by the Constitution. The defendant must prove that he was singled out for prosecution when those similarly situated were not and that the prosecution was based on an impermissible reason, such as race, religion or political affiliation.
Since courts presume that the government undertakes a prosecution in good faith, the defendant’s burden of proof is typically quite heavy. The motion rarely succeeds — for example, Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss his gun case on selective prosecution grounds failed.
But what if, in Mr. Trump’s second term, the object of the prosecution is on Mr. Patel’s list, or is expressly targeted in a Trump speech? Judges should obviously not assume that prosecutors in the Trump administration are always acting in bad faith. But they should consider accusations of selective prosecution differently than they have in the past.
If a defendant in a political case raises legitimate concerns about the integrity of a case in Mr. Trump’s second term, federal judges can’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore the attorney general’s clear intentions or those of the proposed F.B.I. director.
When these individuals announce that political affiliation will influence their prosecution decisions, judges should believe them — and act accordingly.
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, teaches law, neuroscience and sentencing at Harvard Law School and is the author of “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate” and the forthcoming “Incomplete Sentences.” Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior counsel at Petrillo Klein & Boxer and the author of “Blindfolds Off: Judges on How They Decide.”
Politico Magazine, Trumpian Revenge, Campus Revolts and the Collapse of a Presidency: 24 Stories That Explain a Chaotic Year, Staff Report, Dec. 25, 2024. It has been a year of unprecedented headlines — even for an election year.
The conviction of Donald Trump. An assassination attempt just weeks later. An abrupt end to Joe Biden’s candidacy, followed by the rise and fall of Kamala Harris. It was a historically chaotic and consequential year on the campaign trail, and beyond. America saw intense protests on campus colleges over the Israel-Hamas war, a rising gender divide among the youth and the kind of widening polarization that can even fracture families.
It might have been too many events to fully process in one year, so POLITICO Magazine has you covered. Check out these 24 stories — many of them our top reads of the year — that will help you understand what just happened and what’s to come under Trump 2.0.
New York Times, Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board, Charlie Savage, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). As chair of the House Intelligence Committee (shown above), he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social media company.
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congresswho had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy.
The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.
In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Nunes — who is currently the chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform — for his counterinvestigation into the Trump-Russia inquiry in 2017-18, when Mr. Nunes led the House Intelligence Committee as a Republican congressman from California.
“While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
New York Times, Trump Names Richard Grenell for ‘Special Missions’ Role, Elizabeth Williamson, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). A combative loyalist and the president-elect’s former ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grenell had hoped to be secretary of state.
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Richard Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as his “envoy for special missions,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
A loyalist known for unbridled social media attacks on Mr. Trump’s perceived critics and many others, Mr. Grenell led a shambolic effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Nevada after Mr. Trump’s loss, and he has lobbied assiduously for a diplomatic job in the new administration.
He got his start in government before Mr. Trump’s rise, as a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under multiple presidents. But his online toxicity, foreign business contacts and tendency toward biting personal attacks on political opponents and the media turned off many centrist conservatives, helping propel him toward Mr. Trump, a man he denounced in 2016 as “dangerous.”
“Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
Mr. Grenell did not immediately reply to a texted question about his priorities for the role, which does not currently exist. Mr. Trump outlined it as: “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”
The role is a far cry from secretary of state, the job Mr. Grenell coveted, but to which Mr. Trump plans to appoint Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida. Being named for a lower-profile White House envoy job could help Mr. Grenell avoid persistent questions about his paid work for foreign clients, including luxury hotel development projects he has pursued in the Balkans with Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Grenell was ambassador to Germany. His abrasiveness and partisanship alarmed diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly after he told Breitbart London that he planned to “empower” German conservatives opposing “the failed policies of the left.”
In 2020, Mr. Trump named Mr. Grenell to temporarily replace the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, whom Mr. Trump had fired.
New York Times, An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones, Natasha Singer (Natasha Singer reported from Revere, Mass., and reviewed more than 400 student fight videos from schools in 15 states), Dec. 15, 2024. Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools.
Ricardo Martinez, an 11th grader, was in his high school lunchroom in April when a mass brawl erupted.
He watched, horrified, as a dozen teenage boys rampaged through the cafeteria, pummeling and kicking one another, overturning tables and chairs. Other students jeered and jostled to film the fight on their phones.
“It was like a stampede of videos,” said Mr. Martinez, now 18 and a senior. “Everyone was trying to get the best angle.”
But the pandemonium at Revere High School in Revere, Mass., was just beginning.
Within minutes, students in other parts of the building began receiving text messages about the lunchroom brawl. Suddenly, teachers said, dozens of riled-up teenagers started racing down hallways and careening down stairways with their phones to get to the fight.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Special counsel Jack Smith moves to dismiss Trump’s D.C. prosecution, Perry Stein and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov. 26, 2024 (print ed.). The special counsel filed a motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s election-obstruction case without prejudice, which means the case could be revived in the future.
Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Monday to dismiss the federal election interference charges against President-elect Donald Trump, putting an end to a lengthy investigation that never made it to trial.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Smith’s motion seeks to dismiss the case without prejudice, acknowledging that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. If she does that, it leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could again bring charges once Trump leaves office after his second White House term.
But legal experts said it’s possible that once Trump is in office, he could try to do something that has never been tested before: pardon himself to foreclose the possibility of legal jeopardy in the future.
Trump faces four counts related to conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results. Smith’s filing acknowledges that the Justice Department has longed believed a sitting president cannot stand trial, and says prosecutors conferred with Trump’s attorneys and that they did not oppose the request to dismiss the case.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, reportedly involving in part hush money to women ((Associated Press photo by Seth Wong). Below, the presiding judge in the case was Juan Merchon, below left.
New York Times, Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling, Ben Protess and Kate Christobek, Dec. 16, 2024. Justice Juan Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by President-elect Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Deadline, Donald Trump, On ‘Meet The Press,’ Again Pledges To Pardon January 6th Rioters, Says Liz Cheney And Other Committee Members “Should Go To Jail
Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
New York Times, U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol, Roni Caryn Rabin, Jan. 3, 2025. Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to malignancies, including breast cancer. But to label them, Congress would have to act.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general, above, said on Friday.
It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer.
Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”
But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said.
He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview.
“The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change.
Still, President-elect Donald J. Trump does not drink, and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swore off alcohol and drugs decades ago, and says he regularly attends AA meetings.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
There is no question that heavy consumption is harmful. But supporters of moderate drinking — including makers of wine, beer and spirits, and some physicians and scientists — argue that a little alcohol each day may reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States.
Newer scientific studies have criticized the methodology of earlier studies, however, and have challenged that view, which was once a consensus.
While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.
Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.
Two scientific reviews will be used to inform the updated recommendations about alcohol consumption in the federal dietary guidelines.
Five years ago, the scientific report that informed the writing of the 2020-2025 dietary guidelines acknowledged that alcohol is a carcinogen and generally unhealthy and suggested “tightening guidelines” by capping the recommendation for men at one standard drink, or 14 grams of alcohol a day.
When the final guidelines were drafted, however, there was no change in the advice that moderate drinking of up to two drinks a day for men was acceptable.
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images).
Washington Post, Democrats’ new push to stop RFK Jr.: Highlight Samoa’s measles outbreak, Dan Diamond, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). They say the island’s public health crisis, which followed Kennedy’s meeting with local anti-vaccine activists, reveals the consequences of questioning vaccines.
In June 2019, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to the small Pacific island nation of Samoa, where he met with activists calling for Samoans to skip measles vaccines and opt for alternatives instead. Now that visit — and the country’s subsequent measles outbreak — are receiving new political attention, as Democrats and advocates seek to block Kennedy’s confirmation as America’s top health official.
Five months after Kennedy’s visit, Samoa declared a measles emergency, with leaders warning that vaccination levels had declined precipitously. Thousands of Samoans were infected during the outbreak, and 83 people died of the vaccine-preventable disease — an episode that Democrats say could foreshadow a future American crisis, should Kennedy be elevated to a Cabinet position and sow doubts about vaccines here. Most of Samoa’s measles deaths were in young children.
“It’s a real-life example of what this individual will [do] as the nation’s leading health-care official,” said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D), a physician who responded to Samoa’s outbreak five years ago and said he witnessed the deaths of measles-afflicted infants. Green traveled to Capitol Hill this week in a bid to sway senators by sharing his story, part of a larger effort by advocates to scuttle Kennedy’s selection as secretary of health and human services by focusing on the Samoan crisis.
New York Times, Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? Emily Baumgaertner, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Preferring Not to See, Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t exactly hidden his anti-vaccine views over the years, as hundreds of hours of video footage, numerous books, and many documentaries show. And yet, on the cusp of being considered for the top health post in the country, Senate Republicans are suggesting they’re reassured Kennedy has moderated his views based on their brief, one-on-one conversations.
“I think he’s done a good job of answering a lot of the questions about his views on vaccines,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNN after meeting with Kennedy this week. “I think he understands the values and benefit that vaccines play and have played through the years preventing disease.”
We don’t know exactly what Thune and Kennedy discussed. (Neither party opted to fill me in, although I did ask.) But come on!
Kennedy may well have denied—as he has in public for years—that he is truly “anti-vaccine.” Like many other anti-vaxxers, Kennedy prefers to be thought of as a stickler for vaccine safety.
But one would have to be deliberately obtuse or willingly naïve to think that Kennedy has suddenly seen the light about the benefits of vaccines. He has spent years arguing that the vaccines currently on the market are harming more people than they help. And he’s actively campaigning against their continued use, pending a brand-new regimen of placebo-controlled testing.
In one interview, Kennedy made the case against the measles vaccine by noting what a great time he had when he and his siblings caught the disease, which can have gruesome complications including brain swelling (you don’t say?), gastrointestinal issues and fever, sepsis, and septicemia.
“My 11 brothers and sisters, we all had measles and it was a great week” he said, describing the cure for measles as “chicken soup and vitamin A.”
He has declared that “the polio vaccine does not work” and argued that it in fact could be responsible for a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
In 2021, he told podcaster Alec Zeck that he tries to actively convince people not to get their kids vaccinated. “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not to get him vaccinated.’”
Last year, he went further while speaking to podcaster Lex Fridman: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
A few months later, in a CNN appearance, he tried to clean those comments up:
"What I meant—which was a bad use of words in this—none of the vaccines that are currently on the mandated schedule for children, the 72 vaccines for children, have ever been tested in a pre-licensing safety study. What that means is that we do not know what the risk profile is for those products."
When Kennedy argues that he just wants to “test” vaccines—or when Donald Trump says, as he did last weekend, that “there are problems” surrounding pediatric vaccination and “we’re going to find out what those problems are”—what he is saying is actually quite drastic.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Never Trumpers Were Right, Actually, Jonathan V. Last, right, Dec. 18, 2024. A response to Bret Stephens. Plus drone talk from the 
front lines.
Bret Stephens has a column today in which he renounces his Never Trump patrimony and castigates Trump critics for being overheated and wrong about so many things.
You should read his piece to get the full breadth of his argument. But I’ll give you a taste:
Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose. We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. We hyperventilated about his odd chumminess with Vladimir Putin. But the collusion allegations were a smear, and Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher than either Barack Obama’s or (at least until Russia invaded Ukraine) President Biden’s.
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and Promise, Corey Kilgannon, Mike Baker, Luke Broadwater and Shawn Hubler, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione, above, charged in the death of an executive in New York, was an Ivy League graduate who had recently suffered physical and psychological pain.
Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue-blazered frat buddies.
He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford University.
With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family’s thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path.
The police now believe that Mr. Mangione, 26, is the masked gunman who calmly took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a Midtown Manhattan street last week and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He was arrested in Altoona, Pa., on Monday after an employee at a McDonald’s recognized him and called the police. Officers said they found him with fake identification, a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing and a manifesto decrying the health care industry.
Later on Monday, Mr. Mangione was charged in Manhattan with murder, along with additional counts of forgery and illegal weapons possession. And in the hours after his apprehension, his baffling journey from star student to murder suspect began to come into focus.
Washington Post, Person of interest in UnitedHealthcare shooting arrested in Pa., police say, Mark Berman and Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione faces gun charges and other counts. He was denied bail after his arraignment in Altoona, Pa.police commissioner, said at a news briefing.
Thompson, 50, right, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a stunning act of early-morning violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.
Police said it appeared that the suspect they were seeking escaped the city shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement officials said they were scouring reams of video footage and tips, but they pleaded with the public for more help, sharing several images of a person they said was wanted in connection with the killing.
ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele, Josh Margolin, and Meredith Deliso, Dec. 9, 2024. Mangione, above, was located in Pennsylvania nearly a week after Brian Thompson's death.
Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus," Russell Payne, Dec, 9, 2024. Not so fast, what kind of "anti-capitalist" is praising Elon Musk and retweeting Peter Thiel?
On Monday afternoon, police announced that they had arrested a person of interest in the investigation into the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was shot outside his hotel in midtown Manhattan last week.
According to police, Luigi Mangione was arrested around 9:15 a.m. in Altoona, Pennsylvania with a ghost gun and suppressor that New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was “consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Recent Relevant Headlines
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and PromiseABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder,
More On Presidential Pardons
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
Trump in that interview also repeated favorite right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 ― that “Antifa” was behind the violence and that a man named Ray Epps actually instigated the attack.
What’s more, Trump said his pardons would also extend to those who actually pleaded guilty to assaulting officers because, in his view, the justice system is “corrupt,” and the accused were coerced into taking pleas. “Because they had no choice,” he said.
Further, the “radical” and “crazy” qualifiers for those who might not get pardons conflicts with dozens of statements at his rallies over the past three years in which he has promised to pardon all the Jan. 6 defendants.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Emptywheel, Analysis: Judge Mark Scarsi’s Umbrage: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)
Middle East Wars, Reactions
New York Times, In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under Bashar al-Assad, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Laura Boushnak, Jan. 5, 2025. Residents of Syria’s capital are picnicking on a once-forbidden mountaintop and trading dollars and imported Nescafe. They say the city seems theirs again.
Across Damascus, as in much of the country, Syrians are reclaiming, and in some cases embracing anew, spaces and freedoms that had been off limits for years under the Assad regime. There were places ordinary Syrians were not allowed to go and things that they were not permitted to say when the Assad family was in power. The country, many said, increasingly felt as if it did not belong to them.
But with the newfound sense of freedom comes some trepidation about the future under a government formed by Islamist rebels, and whether with time it might institute new restrictions and limitations.
Many Syrians are watching each decision and announcement as a harbinger of how their new rulers may govern. Last week, Syria’s de facto new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, said it could take two to three years to draft a new Constitution and up to four years to hold elections, alarming Syrians who fear they may have traded one authoritarian leader for another.New York Times, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. Tread Cautiously With Syria’s New Leaderssing money from the drivers who contribute to it. The plan will help generate $15 billion for crucial upgrades to the region’s mass transit system.
New York Times, As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Only Worsened, Aryn Baker and Abu Bakr Bashir, Dec. 28, 2024. Israel says that it tries to limit the loss of civilian life. But the dire humanitarian situation has prompted condemnation from human rights organizations.
Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.
In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.
Israel says that its target is Hamas and that it does everything possible to limit the loss of civilian life. But the increasingly dire humanitarian situation has prompted a particularly scathing chorus of condemnation from the United Nations and international human rights organizations.
Here is a closer look at three parts of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Washington Post, U.S. amplifies strikes on Yemen’s Houthis as tensions with Israel flare, Missy Ryan, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The latest round of strikes occurred as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.
The Biden administration directed new airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Tuesday, as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks struck targets in coastal Yemen and the capital, Sanaa, including a command node and facilities used for manufacturing and storing weapons. The operations, which also included strikes on Monday, destroyed radar positions and one-way aerial drones, Centcom said in a statement.
Video provided by Centcom showed aircraft taking off from the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier positioned in the Red Sea.
The strikes mark the latest salvo in a year-long U.S.-led campaign aimed at halting ongoing attacks by the Houthis, a militant group that functions as the de facto government in much of Yemen, on commercial ships and military vessels in nearby waters. The Houthis’ campaign has impaired global shipping and taken a major toll on U.S. allies reliant on related revenue.
New York Times, Investigation: Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians, Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay, Sheera Frenkel and Adam Sella (The reporters interviewed more than 100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
Fearful of another Oct. 7-style attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants. One of the deadliest attacks of the 21st century followed.
At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.
Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.
In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.
The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.
It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.
In previous conflicts with Hamas, many Israeli strikes were approved only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt. Sometimes, officers could risk killing up to five civilians and only rarely did the limit rise to 10 or above, though the actual death toll was sometimes much higher.
On Oct. 7, the military leadership changed its rules of engagement because it believed that Israel faced an existential threat, according to a senior military officer who answered questions about the order on the condition of anonymity.
New York Times, Here Are 8 Ways Israel Weakened Civilian Protections, Samuel Granados, Patrick Kingsley and Natan Odenheimer, Dec. 26, 2024. Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.The Israeli military said its air force had struck a vehicle overnight in Nuseirat with a “terrorist cell” from the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad inside. Reports about journalists being targeted were “fake claims,” Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media.
The media office of Gaza’s Hamas-run government said five journalists from Al Quds Today, a Palestinian television channel, were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcast vehicle. The channel has regularly featured Islamic Jihad leaders and promoted the group’s ideology.
The office said this brought the number of journalists killed in Gaza to 201 since the start of the war in October last year.
The vehicle, bearing the word “Press” in red letters, was hit near the gates of Al Awda Hospital, according to a post on social media from Quds News Network, another Palestinian news outlet. The Israeli military has previously said that it has never deliberately targeted journalists but that it considers members of “an organized armed group,” such as the military wing of Hamas, or those who participate in hostilities, as lawful targets.
Recent Relevant Headlines
Washington Post, Israeli government approves plan to expand settlements on occupied Golan
More Global News
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
New York Times, Elon Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 28, 2024. The world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Trump, ridiculed critics over his backing of the extremist party AfD, as Germany prepares for elections.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist.
This week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election, explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
“The traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”
Mr. Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new elections.
With four mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform, is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.
Mr. Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor in chief-designate on the same page.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling Trade
New York Times, Taiwan Says China Has Deployed Largest Fleet of Ships in Decades
More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs
Lance Rosen Substack, The Trump Press Conference Gives Us A Clear Look Into The Abyss, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 7, 2025. I would say we have a category five emergency.
Taking Greenland by force is bad enough. It would be an attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. Technically the US would be in violation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which is what has held it together since its inception. "An attack on any member nation is an attack on all, therefore will be met with full retaliation," to paraphrase. Which of course will not under sny circumstances happen. At that precise moment, NATO is dead, the treaties notwithstanding.
This is how the forty-year long Russian asset intends to end it. He knows he will never get the NATO treaty repealed by the Senate, so this is his "work around."
At that point Ukraine is gone, and Putin will be free to establish hegemony in Europe. The US would retreat into "Fortress America," operating to conquer and colonize our hemisphere, surving through using our military to seize assets and raw materials. That is what explains his planned Panama gambit.
That is the dystopian future which the sabotage by the Democratic leadership is bringing us into, if we don't take the next 100 days to put it to a stop.
I keep telling everyone, the most important task, the key flank is derailing these nominations.
None of you that I know of is taking that up, or acting with an ounce of urgency.
What else should I say? Is anyone on board with what I am saying? We are running out of time. We have to jolt the Dem leadership into emergency actions now.
New York Times, U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese Drones, Citing National Security Concerns, Ana Swanson, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). The Commerce Department requested that companies comment on the implications of the rule by March. The final decision will fall to the Trump administration.
The Biden administration said on Thursday that it was considering a new rule that could restrict or ban Chinese drones in the United States out of national security concerns.
In a notice, the Commerce Department said the involvement of foreign adversaries — notably China and Russia — in the design, development, manufacture and supply of drones could pose “undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
The notice requested private companies to comment on the scope and implications of the rule by March 4. The decision of what restrictions to impose, if any, on Chinese and Russian drones will fall to the Trump administration.
China and Russia have shown a willingness to compromise U.S. infrastructure and security through cyberespionage, the Commerce Department said, adding that the governments could leverage their laws and political situations to “co-opt private entities for national interests.”
Beyond the use of drones by hobbyists, the devices are employed in a variety of U.S. industries. They help farmers monitor crops and spray for pests, inspect pipelines for the chemical industry, survey bridges and construction sites, and aid firefighters and other emergency responders.
But drones have evolved over the past decade to include sophisticated cameras, receivers and artificial intelligence abilities, fueling concerns that they could be turned into a useful tool for an adversarial government.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling Trade
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy to Win, Andrew Egger
Russia, Russian War Against Ukraine
New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage, Lara Jakes, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Russia has become increasingly brazen in adopting “gray zone” attacks against Europe and the U.S., leaving officials with a dilemma: How to respond?
When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.
But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”
The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.
In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.
Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.
Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.
As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?
New York Times Magazine, Ukraine Was Outgunned. Its Solution: Small, Cheap Suicide Drones, C.J. Chivers, Photographs and Video by David Guttenfelder, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Outnumbered and desperate, the nation began hacking cheap consumer drones with explosives — bringing a brutal new form of violence to 21st-century warfare.
Known as first-person-view drones, or FPVs, the weapons have altered the human experience of war and flooded the internet with footage chronicling the desperate last seconds of lives ended by miniaircraft that transmit video of the people they pursue, then smack into them and explode.
Its camera revealed a surprise: a Russian T-80 tank parked in the foliage. A $3 million military machine had been discovered by a $400 repurposed toy.
The tank was well defended. Its crew had backed the 44-ton vehicle into undergrowth, blocking access to its vulnerable exhaust grate. Slats of reactive armor, which can thwart armor-piercing charges, bedecked its sloped front end. Its rotating turret carried a metal frame and netting, a combination derisively referred to as a cope cage, designed to snag drones and prevent warheads from making direct strikes on hulls. All its hatches were closed, blocking Prorok from flying the warhead inside.
In the past, attacking an armored vehicle with such a warhead typically required a soldier to risk exposure to take a hasty shot with a rocket-propelled grenade, sending a projectile at almost 1,000 feet per second that may not hit the vehicle at all. Weaponized FPV drones have created a new way. In the field south of Belgorod, the combination of the tank’s defensive measures and the drone’s peculiar characteristics made for an exercise that was almost surreal. Time seemed to slow down. The little drone hovered patiently before the massive military machine, rising and falling, swaying on the breeze, emitting its high-pitched buzz while Prorok flew it safely from afar, deciding his attack’s best place, which he could strike with uncanny precision.
Prorok selected the turret’s base, where armor was thinner. “Yes, yes,” Buryi said. Prorok leaned forward as he pushed the flight controller and the drone plunged into the spot. The screen went blank. Watching from the surveillance drone, Andy called out. “I see an explosion!” he said.
Alexander Dugin, a far-right writer and ideologue known as “Putin’s brain,” is seen in 2016 in his studio in Moscow (Photo by Francesca Ebel of the Associated Press).
Washington Post, U.S. imposes Russia, Iran sanctions over attempted election interference, Jeff Stein, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The Treasury Department accused a Russian entity of having “manipulated a video” about a vice-presidential candidate.
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday on Iranian and Russian entities accused of trying to interfere with the U.S. 2024 elections, including by allegedly using artificial intelligence to disseminate false information.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
In its statement, Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on both a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an affiliate of Russia’s military intelligence agency over their efforts to “stoke sociopolitical tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 election.”
Treasury’s statement also said the Russian entity used AI tools to “quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network” of fake news websites and produced “baseless accusations” about a 2024 vice-presidential candidate, whom Treasury declined to identify.
Although the sanctions target relatively minor entities and are unlikely to have major economic effects, they reflect the deteriorating relationship between the United States and two of its chief geopolitical adversaries. President Joe Biden is weighing much more far-reaching sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, while President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to significantly increase economic pressure on Tehran.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Bradley Smith, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”
Sanctions were imposed on the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), a Moscow-based group founded by Aleksandr Dugin, whom Treasury had 
already sanctioned in 2015. Treasury accused the center of working closely with the Russian military intelligence service that “oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare” against the West. Dugin's daughter, Darya Dugina, shown in an image circulated on X by @AlexKokcharov, was another ultra nationalist killed in car bomb attack that some suspect was aimed at her father.
In its statement, Treasury said the intelligence service both directed and provided financial support to the center to influence the 2024 presidential election. With that support, Treasury said, the center maintained a network of “at least 100 websites” for its “disinformation operations,” through which it pushed false information.
“CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the Treasury statement said.
The Russian center also “manipulated a video” to “produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice-presidential candidate,” Treasury said. Treasury did not identify the video, but The Washington Post and other news organizations reported in October that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Moscow was behind a faked video and other material smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations. Separately, Microsoft researchers said this fall that Russian entities had circulated false videos on social media in which an actor accused Vice President Kamala Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run.
The sanctions also target the Cognitive Design Production Center, a subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, over its “influence operations,” according to the Treasury Department. The Justice Department previously charged three men with an alleged hack-and-leak attack against Trump’s presidential campaign.
Washington Post, Putin says he saved Russia, but a year of challenges suggests Moscow’s position is precarious, Mary Ilyushina, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Marking 25 years in office, Vladimir Putin says he has remade Russia as a sovereign power and will prevail in Ukraine, but economic and strategic setbacks complicate the picture.
When Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, resigned on New Year’s Eve in 1999, he publicly implored Vladimir Putin, his handpicked but little-known successor, to “take care of Russia.”A quarter-century later, Putin insists he has done just that — and more.
As he wrapped up his marathon year-end news conference on Dec. 19, Putin boasted that he had thwarted efforts by the United States and its Western allies to subjugate Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.
“I have not just taken care of it, but I believe we have stepped back from the edge of the abyss,” he declared, in response to a question about Yeltsin’s remark.
“I have done everything so that Russia can be an independent and sovereign state that is capable of making decisions in its interests,” Putin said, “rather than in the interests of the countries that were dragging it toward them, patting it on the back, only to use it for their own purposes.”
But as 2024 draws to a close, Russia is in a far more precarious place than Putin’s rhetoric and bravado suggest. His forces are making slow but steady advances in Ukraine, but estimates by some NATO countries suggest hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, which has dragged on for nearly three years.
Washington Post, U.S. Treasury says it was hacked by China-backed intruder, Pranshu Verma and Ellen Nakashima, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). The department told lawmakers that the breach gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday that it was hacked by a Chinese state-sponsored actor who gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents, according to a letter reviewed by The Washington Post.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The department was notified Dec. 8 by a third-party software provider, BeyondTrust, that a hacker had gained access to a security key, which allowed the intruder to override certain security protocols and access some Treasury Department office workstations and unclassified documents stored on them, according to the letter notifying the Senate Banking Committee leadership of the breach.
The Treasury Department labeled the breach a “major incident,” in line with department policy that, according to the letter, categorizes nation-state intrusions as “major.” Once Treasury was alerted to the issue, it contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and it has taken the BeyondTrust service offline, according to a Treasury spokesperson. There is no evidence the hacker still has access to Treasury systems, the spokesperson said.
New York Times, Putin Apologizes for Kazakhstan Crash but Stops Short of Taking Responsibility, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Dec. 28, 2024.President Vladimir Putin of Russia called his Azerbaijani counterpart, the Kremlin said, to apologize for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday apologized for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane this past week, breaking the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the accident that killed 38 people. He did not explicitly acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the crash.
Mr. Putin “offered his apologies” for the crash in a phone call to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the Kremlin said in a statement. Mr. Putin initiated the phone call, according to the statement, and told Mr. Aliyev “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace.”
Mr. Putin said that as the plane approached its scheduled destination of Grozny, in southern Russia, Russian air defenses had begun to repulse an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Grozny airport and others nearby, according to the Kremlin.
Aviation experts and U.S. officials believe a Russian air-defense missile may have mistakenly downed the passenger jet. The Kremlin statement stopped short of attributing the crash to a Russian missile, but in its own statement acknowledging the apology, Azerbaijan’s presidential office suggested that was indeed the cause.
New York Times, Plane Crash Investigators Focus on Russian Air Defenses as Possible Cause, Ivan Nechepurenko, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).Russian aviation authorities said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had hit a flock of birds. But some experts cast doubt on that account, pointing to footage showing apparent holes in the fuselage.Listen to this article · 5:51 min Learn more
As authorities in several countries tried to determine what caused the deadly crash of a passenger airplane in Kazakhstan, investigators and experts on Thursday were focusing on the possibility that a Russian air defense system had struck the plane.
Aviation experts cast doubt on a Russian agency’s contention that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet had hit a flock of birds, saying images of the crash site show holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared unlikely to have been caused by them.
The jet had been flying on Wednesday morning from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, at a time when drone strikes were taking place around Grozny and Russian air defense systems were responding, according to residents and local news media reports.
Two Azerbaijanis briefed on a government inquiry said that Azerbaijani officials now believe that a Russian Pantsir-S defense system damaged the plane. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Caliber, a news outlet in Azerbaijan that is close to the government, also reported that the country’s investigators believe a Russian Pantsir system was responsible.-
New York Times, Analysis: Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Engaged in Sabotage? Michael Schwirtz, Dec. 28, 2024. Russia has assembled a fleet of hundreds of vessels to covertly ship its oil. The idea of using some to cause havoc may be proving irresistible to the Kremlin.
Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.
But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.
This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.
If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.
New York Times, Finland Says Vessel Suspected of Cutting Cable May Be Part of Russia’s ‘Shadow Fleet,’ Johanna Lemola and Lynsey Chutel, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.). Finland seized an oil tanker after the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure.
The Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker on Thursday on the suspicion that it was involved in cutting vital undersea cables and said the ship might have been part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” aimed at evading Western sanctions.
In a statement, the police in Finland said the authorities had boarded the Eagle S tanker in Finnish waters. The ship, which is registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, had been sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt, when it was detained.
The police said they were investigating whether the vessel was involved in the latest suspected act of sabotage on undersea infrastructure: the cutting on Wednesday of the Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish authorities said Thursday that four other cables carrying data also had been damaged. The police called the latest cable cuts “aggravated vandalism.”
The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington Post, In major shift, Zelensky appears open to negotiating an end to the war, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ellen Francis, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). A new U.S. president and battlefield realities appear to be pushing Ukraine’s leader, who had long insisted on fighting for every inch of occupied land, to the table.
As Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russia’s army on the battlefield and President-elect Donald Trump looks to broker a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelensky has in recent weeks signaled a greater willingness for negotiations to end the war — a major shift for the Ukrainian leader, who had long vowed to fight for every last inch of his country’s land.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
Zelensky’s messaging has been careful; he has not explicitly said Kyiv would agree to concessions — territorial or otherwise — even while Russia occupies more than 20 percent of Ukraine and would probably retain control of that land after any ceasefire. But after previously stating that negotiations could begin only once Moscow withdrew all its troops, Zelensky is now emphasizing the need for long-term security rather than the immediate return of territory.
Zelensky’s change in rhetoric — something Ukrainian and Western officials have noticed — can probably be attributed to a worsening situation on the front line and an incoming U.S. administration that has put future security assistance for Kyiv in doubt. Ukrainian officials throughout the first year of the war stressed the importance of reclaiming all of Ukraine’s land, including Crimea and other areas Russia has effectively ruled since 2014, as a condition for any deal.
In recent meetings with Trump and European leaders, however, Zelensky has focused more on what he has referred to as “lasting peace” for Ukraine. The top priority is securing an invite to the NATO military alliance and other security guarantees, such as the possible presence of Western peacekeepers, to prevent future Russian attacks.
Officials and analysts said Zelensky’s tone shift is probably an attempt to be more in line with Trump’s emphasis on halting the conflict. But the Ukrainian leader is also trying to ensure his country doesn’t come out empty-handed.
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Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights
Politico, Driver Rams Christmas Market in Germany, Killing at Least 2 in Suspected Attack, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 20, 2024. Video showed a car plowing into a large crowd in the city of Magdeburg. The driver, identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who worked as a doctor, was arrested
A driver plowed a vehicle into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing an adult and a small child and injuring dozens of other people in what officials indicated was a targeted attack.
The driver was arrested, the authorities said. He was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who first came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor in a small town 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.
Saudi Arabia condemned the attack in a statement by its Foreign Ministry that did not mention the suspect. “The Kingdom expresses its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims,” the statement said.
More than 65 people were injured, 14 of them severely, said Michael Reif, the spokesman for Magdeburg. The authorities say they believe it was a deliberate attack. They are working to determine a motive, said Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, where Magdeburg is the capital.your times accessHave a moment? Play these games.Connections
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“Every human life lost in this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” a visibly shaken Mr. Haseloff told reporters on Friday night.200 mi.300 km.© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Nancy Faeser, who as Germany’s interior minister is responsible for public safety, said in a statement: “The shocking act in Magdeburg a few days before Christmas hits us in the heart. We continue to fear for the lives of the seriously injured and mourn the people who were torn from life by this terrible act.”
Before leaving his post in November, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, warned that the country’s threat level was higher because of the war in Middle East.
“The danger is real and more acute than it has been in a long time,” he said at the time.
More than 1,000 temporary Christmas markets pop up every year in Germany, and they have been the target of terrorists in the past. Last month, the police in Germany arrested two teenagers suspected of exchanging plans about attacking a Christmas market, but those alleged plans appear to have nothing to do with the attack on Friday.Editors’ PicksMy Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?A Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?Skiing’s Budget Secret: It Can Be Cheaper in Europe
In 2016, an extremist rammed a truck into a crowd in Berlin, killing 13. Since then, the police have secured many Christmas markets with temporary barriers.
It remains unclear how the driver in Magdeburg was able to circumvent the barriers that were protecting the market. The car drove some 1,200 feet before it stopped, officials said.
The authorities said the driver had rented a car before plowing it into the market on the last Friday before Christmas, when it was especially crowded with visitors. Many police officers were at the site. The area around the market was closed after the episode, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack in Germany inspired additional security measures around Christmas markets thousands of miles away, in New York City.
The New York Police Department said in a statement on Friday: “The N.Y.P.D. has been closely monitoring recent events in Germany and coordinating with federal and international partners. While we have not identified any specific/credible threats to New York City at this time, resources have been deployed to various Christmas markets and other locations throughout the city out of an abundance of caution.”
The city of Magdeburg, population 240,000, used to be part of Communist East Germany. The year’s Christmas market is in the old market square, just in front of City Hall.
Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car plowing into a large crowd at the Christmas market. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.
“The reports from Magdeburg are alarming,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in social media post. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
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New York Times, Syrian Rebels Breach City of Aleppo, in Biggest Advance in Years
Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey attends a news conference outside New York City Police Department 40th Precinct, July 17, 2023, in New York. (AP File photo by Jeenah Moon).
Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations, Philip Marcelou, Dec. 22, 2024. The highest-ranking uniformed officer in the New York Police Department has resigned amid allegations he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey ’s resignation Friday night, effective immediately, according to a department statement Saturday.
Chief of Patrol John Chell will take over as interim chief of department, and Philip Rivera will assume Chell’s duties as the head of the patrol division, the NYPD said.
Late Saturday, Tisch replaced the head of the internal affairs bureau, which investigates alleged police misconduct, saying in a statement that the unit “must always be dedicated to preserving integrity and rooting out corruption in all its forms.” She appointed Edward Thompson as interim chief after Miguel Iglesias was relieved of his command.
The NYPD declined to comment on the allegations against Maddrey other than to say it “takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously and will thoroughly investigate this matter.”
A lawyer for his accuser, Lt. Quathisha Epps, said the move was overdue.
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U.S. Immigration
New York Times, Trump Vowed Mass Deportations. Mexico and Central America Brace for Impact, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Jan. 7, 2025. Donald J. Trump has said that Mexico is allowing an “invasion” of migrants into the United States. But the current situation on the ground tells a different story: Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped sharply last year.
Crossings into the United States from Mexico dropped sharply last year. But countries south of the U.S. border are waiting nervously to see if President-elect Donald J. Trump orders mass deportations.
The possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers.
“We see dark times coming for the migrant community,” said Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “Anyone who falls prey to the Trump administration is now going to be devoured, chewed up and spat out.”
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U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Stock Market On Pace For Best Two Year Period This Century, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 31, 2024. The Biden Administration's economic policy is working.
The United States stock market is expected to have its best two year stretch this entire century, achieving a feat that has only happened a few times in history. According to latest numbers, the S&P 500 is set to gain over 20% this year.
This comes one year after the index rose 24%. Should these results hold, which they will for all intents and purposes, it would be the best performance for the index since 1997 and 1998.
According to statistics over the past two centuries, this type of performance by the index has only occurred three other times, in 1927 and 1928, in 1935 and 1936, and again in 1954 and 1955. This would mean that the current pace for the market is one that has been achieved only four other times in our nation's history.
In total, the S&P 500 is now up over 60% of the past two years, marking significant gains from 2022 which saw the index fall about 20%. Today's news is a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration's economic policy which has successfully ushered the United States out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is now almost certain that the economy will achieve the vaunted soft landing, ensuring that the United States stays out of a recession following extremely high inflation. It also means that the incoming Trump Administration will now be inheriting a booming, record breaking economy.
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New York Times, Opinion: Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America, Paul Krugman
Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. "‘Let’s get out of here’: Palisades residents flee fire.
An ominous fire broke out Tuesday near the Pacific Palisades — a coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles — and quickly exploded. The fire has grown to at least 2,921 acres, according to Cal Fire. Evacuation orders were issued as officials ordered residents in notoriously winding hillside neighborhoods to leave immediately.
Smoke plumes spread rapidly, moving toward structures and homes. A large swath of residences in Topanga Canyon, a woodsy, tucked-away community with one winding road in and out, are under evacuation warnings. The fire sparked amid a “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm event that is sweeping through a region that has not seen significant rain since spring. The Palisades Fire has now grown to at least 2,921 acres and is zero percent contained, according to a 6:18 p.m. update from Cal Fire. State fire officials are warning of extreme fire behavior — including short and long-range spotting — and say that wind gusts of up to 60 mph are expected to continue through Thursday. The cause is still under investigation.
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Media, High Tech, Culture, Education
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Steady, Political Opinion: Take This Billionaire, Please, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Jan. 6, 2025. Why 
is Jeff Bezos (shown above in a photo via Getty Imagaes) hurting, not helping, journalism?
When a journalistic institution is the one making headlines, it’s rarely good news. Such is the case for a revered American newspaper, The Washington Post. A mothership of American journalism, whose reporters helped topple an American president and inspired generations of young reporters, is listing and taking on water.
As Donald Trump and his army of “alternate” truth-tellers get ready to take the reins of government again, the country desperately needs the best and brightest journalists watching and reporting on their every move. And yet we wake to news that the Post is expected to lay off dozens more staffers the very month Trump returns to power.
The 147-year-old newspaper is apparently bleeding money, a problem of its own making. When billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos pulled the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, a reported 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. That accounts for 10% of the paper’s online audience.
“I just cancelled my Washington Post subscription. The web site asked why, and the closest option was ‘concern with the content.’ There was no option about surrendering to fascism, but that’s the real reason,” a former subscriber posted on X.
For Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Post’s financial losses are peanuts considering his $200 billion plus net worth. But his love of the paper and his passion for quality journalism seem to be shrinking.
Back in 2013, when Bezos bought the Post from the family of venerated publisher Katharine Graham, he said he wanted to transform it from a regional newspaper to a global one. He provided money — big money — to expand the newsroom and encouraged reporters to extend their reach by embracing the “gifts of the internet.”
Over the ensuing decade, his interest in the paper ebbed and flowed, but he mostly stayed out of the editorial decision-making. Then he pulled the Harris endorsement causing an exodus of top editors, opinion writers, and reporters.
But Bezos wasn’t done burnishing his rep with the former president. After the election, he pledged $1 million to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to stream it live on Amazon Prime (an additional $1 million in-kind contribution). Just before Christmas, he was seen at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring with fellow super-rich guy Elon Musk. And he has green-lit a documentary about Melania Trump to air on Prime. I’m guessing it will be what’s known in the trade as a “sweetheart profile.”
While it isn’t great that the owner of one of the most important papers in the country is cozying up to an incoming president who says he will be a dictator on “day one,” Bezos’s actions aren’t surprising. He didn’t become a billionaire by being selfless.
But on Friday, things took another turn at the Post. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes (shown above) quit in protest after a cartoon of hers (shown in draft form) was killed.
In a piece she published on Substack, Telnaes explained that “there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.”
Daily Mail, Disturbing new details show how CIA drugged and tortured Americans in secret mind control program MKUltra, Stacy Liberatore, Jan. 6, 2025. Newly declassified bombshell records of an infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured more than 60 years ago.
The collection of more than 1,200 pages detail how the CIA used induced sleep, electroshocks and 'psychic driving' on drugged subjects who were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
The subjects included criminals, mental patients and drug addicts, but also Army soldiers and average citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
A total of 144 projects were conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages detail how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and 'psychic driving,' under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and 'subjects in normal life settings' were 'unwittingly' given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
In a newly unsealed document from 1956, researchers were developing 'an anti-interrogation drug' by testing 'materials capable of producing alterations in the human central nervous system which are reflected as alterations in human behavior.'
A memo about a classified meeting showed that the CIA contemplated the possibility of testing on foreign nationals,' but decided that 'unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued' instead.Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary. He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra
Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss shown in 1953 mug shorts, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.
He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.
'Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,' Bulger penned.
'We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.'
The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: 'The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.
'These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.'
A total of 20 documents with more than 1,200 pages were declassified on December 23, published by the NSA and ProQuest.
'Despite the Agency's efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA's decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and reprogram the human mind,' shared NSA.
Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to be used against the Soviets during the Cold War.The CIA was testing drugs and other techniques on American citizens during the 1950s and 60s to develops new interrogation processes such as mind control. Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles (pictured) ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs
'We in the West, are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,' he said.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 details how the CIA's Technical Services Section (TSS) requested funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the agency's 'biological and chemical warfare program.'
Using a philanthropic organization as a 'cut-out,' the CIA partially funded 'a new research wing' of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and used part of it to conduct 'Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.'
MKULTRA, the memo states, provided research and development funding 'for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare' but did not specifically authorize funds to establish cover for these programs.The program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, performed 144 projects aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations,weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture
In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing.'
The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down.'
A 'knockout pill' was also to be developed, which would be used in 'surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.'
Another declassified document dated June 7, 1956, discusses an MKUltra subproject to be led by Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University who was known to conduct experiments on prisoners.
Pfeiffer was approved to develop 'an anti-interrogation drug' and 'tests in human volunteers.'
The objectives included administering 'large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers.'In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing'The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down'
The document does not specify the amount given, but taking large doses of the drug can induce terrifying hallucinations.
Another point was 'to evaluate the threshold dose levels in humans of a particular natural product to be supplied by [deleted].'
The supplier's name was redacted from the report, but pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed a process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954.
'[The] CIA had [LSD] in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in 'tonnage quantities' and had agreed to become the agency's supplier,' according to NSA.
The documents also show that the CIA established safehouses in 1956, which were run by narcotics agent George White 'for conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects.'
Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist and spymaster who headed the CIA in the 50s and 60s, admitted in the report that activities were 'highly unorthodox nature.'
Because of that 'it [was] 'impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent,' he wrote.
One of the last documents of the program, published in 1963, revealed researchers involved with MKUltra used radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment [sic] substances, and paramilitary devices and materials' during the secret initiative.
It focused on drug experiments conducted at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, but also 'unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.'
'It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKUltra substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations,' it reads.
As of 1960, however, the CIA was unable to develop a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill.
Also during that time, the report noted that 25 of the 144 projects 'remained in existence at present' - 1960.
While most of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church opened an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
'The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends,' Frank's 1977 report stated.
'Crises make it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.'
That report found that there were at least six subprojects that involved testing on unwitting subjects and other projects researcher 'drugs, toxins and biologicals in human tissue.'
The then-director of the CIA, Adam Stansfield Turner spoke during the investigation, saying the MKUltra's activities were more than 12 years old following the investigation.
'They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,' he added.
The investigation brought MKUltra to light, sparking public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA's unethical practices.
That led to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
Status, Paper Cuts: The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned, Oliver Darcy, Jan. 5, 2025. Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper's business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.
The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.
A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.
Poynter Center, Opinion: The new year looks the same as last year at The Washington Post, Tom Jones, Jan. 6, 2025. The Post again faces uncomfortable controversy, this time with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist quitting in protest.
Good morning, and Happy New Year. The Poynter Report is back after a holiday break. We jump right back in where we left off. That’s to say it would appear that 2025 is starting the same way 2024 ended for The Washington Post — with uncomfortable controversy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted a message on Substack that she was quitting the Post because the publication refused to publish her cartoon that showed several billionaire tech and media chief executives genuflecting at a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. One of those executives clearly was Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
Telnaes wrote, “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
Telnaes added, “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press.”
She also wrote, “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’.”
“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Post’s slogan.
In a statement to NPR media writer David Folkenflik, Post editorial page editor David Shipley said he disagreed with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.” Shipley said, “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
While that all might be true, why not just run the cartoon anyway, especially because much of the public believes there is a lot of truth in Telnaes’ cartoon? Not publishing it only reinforces that narrative.
After all, Bezos nixed a Post editorial that would endorse Kamala Harris for president, publicly congratulated Trump following his victory and had dinner with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago after the election. Killing the cartoon does come off as fishy, seeing as how news organizations, including the Post, routinely run several opinion pieces about the same topic.
The cartoon depicted Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse.
The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.”
Telnaes has been with the Post since 2008. She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001.
In a statement, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists called the Post’s decision to kill the cartoon “craven censorship” and “political cowardice.” They added, “The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper.”
The recent past has not been good at The Washington Post. Newsroom leadership has been uncertain since Sally Buzbee stepped down last June. The Post still hasn’t come up with a permanent plan for how its leadership structure will work, and is still reeling from the nixed editorial mess that resulted in staff resignations, internal criticism from some of its most respected journalists and digital subscription cancellations that Folkenflik reported totaled 300,000.More bad news at the Post
Here’s a little more bad news for the Post. They are losing three respected political reporters.
Two high-profile reporters announced they would leave the Post to join The Atlantic: Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent, and Michael Scherer, a national political reporter. And The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin reports that The Atlantic might hire more Post reporters.
Parker is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who joined the Post in 2017. Before that, she spent 11 years at The New York Times. Scherer also has been at the Post since 2017.
The Post’s loss is very much The Atlantic’s gain.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, told Mullin, “We believe in accountability journalism. We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”
Mullin added, “The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.”
Meanwhile, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Josh Dawsey is leaving the Post for The Wall Street Journal. Byers wrote that Dawsey would be a political investigations reporter and join a new Wall Street Journal D.C. reporting team that includes former Politico reporters Meridith McGraw, Olivia Beavers and Gavin Bade.
Dawsey is currently on leave from the Post to work on a book about the 2024 election. Media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his Status newsletter that Dawsey will start at the Journal in February.
Dawsey previously worked at the Journal and Politico before joining the Post in 2017. Another big loss for the Post.And even worse news at the Post …
Media reporter Oliver Darcy reported late Sunday night, “Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Darcy added, “The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.”One more …
This is sort of Post-related. Well, it involves Amazon and it has raised some eyebrows.
Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman reported, “Amazon Prime has exclusively licensed a documentary film for global theatrical and streaming release that will give viewers an ‘unprecedented behind-the-scenes look’ at First Lady Melania Trump’s life, Fox News Digital has learned. Fox News Digital has learned that the project is expected to be released globally in theaters and for streaming use in the second half of 2025. Filming for the upcoming documentary began in December 2024. The documentary will be executive produced by First Lady Melania Trump and Fernando Sulichin of New Element Media, with Brett Ratner of RatPac Entertainment serving as director.”
The Associated Press’ Lindsey Bahr writes, “The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1 million to the President-elect’s inauguration fund, and said that it would also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.”
Perhaps the most controversial part of this isn’t that Amazon is teaming up with Melania Trump, but that the director will be Brett Ratner. As The Hollywood Reporters’ Alex Weprin and Aaron Couch note, “Ratner has been in Hollywood exile since 2017, when six women accused him of sexual misconduct as part of a Los Angeles Times report. He was dropped by his agency and has not made a film since, though in recent months, he attempted to stir up interest in a fourth Rush Hour movie as a comeback vehicle, multiple sources told The Hollywood Reporter in August. Ratner denied accusations of misconduct in 2017, and no criminal charges were brought.”A troubling anniversary
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Today is Jan. 6 — the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and attacked law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
While it’s a chapter in U.S. history that many would prefer to forget, it was a dark day that should never be forgotten, especially with Trump set to become president again in just two weeks.
BBC News, Elon Musk changes his name to Kekius Maximus on X, Tom Bayly and Patrick Jackson, Jan. 1, 2025. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus."
The tech mogul - and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump - offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog - a meme that has been used by far-right groups.
The move has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin - a digital currency inspired by internet memes - that shares the same name skyrocketing.
In the past, Mr Musk has influenced crypto prices with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he had any involvement in this particular memecoin.Elon Musk A picture of Elon Musk's X profile with a picture of Kekius MaximusElon Musk
"Kekius" appears to be a Latinisation of "kek", a word roughly equivalent to "laugh out loud" popularised by gamers but now often associated with the alt right.
"Kek" is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.
Many people would link "Maximus" to the name of Russell Crowe's heroic character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius.
Mr Musk's new profile image depicts Pepe in Roman military dress holding what appears to be a game console.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Jan. 7
Breaking News
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Other Top Headlines
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox RichardsonThe Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom HartmannPolitico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler
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U.S. Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images)
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New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board
Breaking News
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Judge Cannon blocks release, for now, of special counsel report on Trump classified-documents case, Perry Stein, Jan. 7, 2025. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon barred special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from sharing the report while a federal appeals court weighs whether making it public would unfairly harm Donald Trump’s two codefendants.
The federal judge in Florida who dismissed the case against Donald Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a report detailing the findings of that investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon,right, barred Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting” the long-awaited report or any drafts or conclusions from it while a federal appeals court in Atlanta weighs an emergency motion from two of the president-elect’s former co-defendants. The co-defendants said releasing the report would unfairly prejudice them. Their motion cited a letter from Trump’s attorneys which also argued that the release of Smith’s findings was not in the public interest and would interfere with his presidency and his presidential transition.
Earlier Tuesday, Smiths’ office told the court that Garland might not make the classified documents part of the report public. The report is two volumes. One volume details prosecutors’ findings in the classified documents case, and the other focuses on the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Donald Trump’s lawyers have read special counsel Jack Smith’s draft report detailing the findings of his two investigations of the incoming president and are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire Smith and block the report’s public release.
It is the latest effort by the president-elect to quash the remnants of the four criminal cases he has faced over the past two years.
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
New York Times, An Emboldened Trump Suggests U.S. Territorial Expansion, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025. Speaking from his private Florida club, President-elect Trump refused to rule out using force to retake the Panama Canal and to claim Greenland. Mr. Trump also refused to give a straight answer on whether he would pardon any of the Jan. 6 rioters.
In an hourlong news conference at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned by treaty in the late 1990s, and acquire Greenland, which Mr. Trump said was necessary for U.S. national security. Read more ›
Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and instead pivoted to criticism of the F.B.I. In his opening comments, he announced a multibillion-dollar plan to build data centers in multiple states bankrolled by investors from Dubai. He then repeatedly attacked President Biden and other foes.
The House passed its first bill of the new Congress, a measure to increase deportations that requires mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting, and lets states sue the federal government when immigrants who could have been detained commit crimes. Four dozen Democrats joined all Republicans to pass the measure; the Senate is expected to take up identical legislation on Friday.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, plans to meet this week with Republican senators seen as potentially key votes in his confirmation process, and some Democrats who have signaled openness to parts of his agenda. Among the lawmakers he is set to hold sessions with on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a spokeswoman, are Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is set to lead the Senate health committee, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a more moderate member of the conference.
Trump’s team just sent out an email quoting him at the news conference as saying that on Jan. 6 rioters went to the Capitol “with not one gun.” That’s simply not true. Prosecutors have charged and convicted several people with carrying firearms that day.
Trump says he does not want to see a default over the debt ceiling. “All I want to see is no default,” he said, adding nobody knows what would happen if the U.S. does not pay its bills. “I just want to see an extension.”
Hopium Chronicles, Political Opinion: Trump Goes Full On Authoritarian, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Dem Party And Our Electeds.
Good afternoon all. I had a morning post almost done when we started getting all sorts of news: Cannon blocking the Smith report, Trump filing an emergency injunction to stop the Friday sentencing for his 34 felonies, Meta joining the MAGA movement and the many different story lines from Trump’s batshit crazy press conference.
For time and space purposes I will address these new developments tomorrow, but do want to say one thing now: Trump’s repeated threats against the sovereign nations of Canada, Greenland and Panama are a direct attack on the post WWII American-led global order.
Our support of Ukraine has been a means of protecting the foundational principle of that order -- the unquestioned sovereignty of all nations -- one that Russia has violated by its invasion. Trump’s clear flouting of this foundational principle of the modern world -- not ruling out direct military seizure, like Russia in Ukraine -- could be interpreted as his walking away from this global system that has made America prosperous, safe and free.
It is also a way of providing cover and justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and future acts by autocrats around the world. Coupled with Musk’s escalating attacks on the pro-Western, pro-US governments of Canada, Germany and the UK the new Trump regime seems hellbent on helping Russia and China forge a post-American global system, one built on force and dominion and not freedom and democracy. Here’s the clip:
Friends, this is ugly, ugly stuff and he isn’t even President yet. This is going to be a hard, hard four years. We need to prepare ourselves.
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
Other Top Stories
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle. Behind the vice president sat the newly reelected speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), who was a key player in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election: he lied about fraud; recruited colleagues to join a lawsuit challenging the election results from the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; and, after the January 6 riot, challenged the counting of certified votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.
After the session concluded, Harris told reporters: “Well, today was…obviously, a very important day, and it was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“And today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included, today, performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America will have their votes counted, that those votes matter, and that they will determine, then, the outcome of an election.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it—every single person, their willingness to fight for and respect the importance of our democracy. Otherwise, it is very fragile and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis.
“And today, America’s democracy stood.”
Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.
Excerpt Continued Below.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion:, Release Jack Smith’s ReportI, Bill Kristol, right, Jan. 7, 2025. The outgoing administration shouldn’t play along with the whitewashing of January 6th.
You can never really tell which of the wacky ideas that Trump spins up will end up forgotten in a few days and which will lodge like a splinter in his brain forever. During his first term, “We’re gonna buy Greenland” seemed like it belonged to the former category. Now, it seems he’s making it a top administration priority.
“I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” Trump wrote yesterday. “My son, Don Jr, and various representatives, will be traveling there to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights. Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Last night, Donald Trump’s lawyers demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his two investigations, one on Trump and January 6th, the other on Trump’s handling of the classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago.
The attorney general will surely refuse Trump’s demand. Justice Department regulations require special counsels to submit reports explaining their legal decisions at the end of their investigations. Just as Garland last year released Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, he’ll make public—with appropriate redactions—Smith’s report on Trump. (For that matter, we can also expect the attorney general to release special counsel David Weiss’s final report on his investigation of the now-pardoned Hunter Biden.)
Trump’s demand that Smith’s report be suppressed is a useful reminder that he really hates truthful accounts of January 6th, even if—especially if—they are based on testimony under oath from many different individuals, including many who worked for him. Recall Trump’s fear and loathing of the House January 6th Committee.
The loathing is, I suppose, easily understandable. Politicians don’t like scrutiny. And they especially don’t like criticism. And those who’ve gone so far as to commit sordid and likely criminal acts don’t like to see their disreputable behavior exposed.
But one senses that in addition to the hatred and the loathing, there’s an element of fear. Why?
Trump won. Smith’s report won’t change that. And in any case, his entire propaganda machine is ready to attack the report as the product of a biased Biden Justice Department and a Trump-hating special prosecutor. The report will have no immediate effect on public opinion, nor on the successes or failures of the opening days of Trump’s presidency.
Still, Trump knows how crucial his rewriting of the history of January 6th was to his victory in November. If most Republicans had held to their original judgment of January 6th as a day of shame—if they had continued to believe that it was what Trump the very next day called a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy”—Trump would not have been the 2024 GOP nominee. If most Americans had thought January 6th not just an unfortunate event but a disqualifying disgrace, Trump wouldn’t have won the general election.
The whitewashing of January 6th was key to Trump’s political comeback.
And Trump has the sense—and I think he’s right about this—that he must make sure that January 6th stays whitewashed for the sake of his political success going forward.
In the mid-twentieth century, Southern segregationists could have chosen simply to defend their policies as appropriate for then-current circumstances. They did make such arguments. But they also understood that in politics, present legitimacy depends on past origins. It was important to advocates of 20th century policies of racial discrimination that those policies were defended against the backdrop of the nobility of the Southern effort in the “War Between the States,” the depredations of Reconstruction, and the historic legitimacy of states’ rights.
So Trump too will continue to seek to rewrite the history of January 6th. He’ll pardon those who stormed the Capitol. He’ll fill the ranks of his administration with January 6th truthers. His administration will attack those, from Liz Cheney to Jack Smith, who’ve sought to hold him accountable. Trump’s more respectable apologists won’t go all the way with him in celebrating January 6th, but they’ll ignore or minimize or excuse what happened.
In a sense, the release now of Smith’s report will simply signify the failure of the effort, over the last four years, of accountability and truth-telling about January 6th. It will be the last gasp, for now, of a lost cause.
But, as T.S. Eliot remarked, “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory.”
Who knows if or when such a victory will come? But if American politics is ever to return to a condition of civic and political health, it will need to embrace an honest account of January 6th.
Which is why we need the release of the special counsel’s report.
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he’s sworn in on January 20th.
Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent billions to convince us to make that choice.
As you’re reading these words, billionaires from America and around the world are making pilgrimages to his shabby golf motel to kiss our upcoming billionaire president’s ass and hand him envelopes with $1 million checks that represent a few hours (at most) of income for most of them or their companies.
Meanwhile, our billionaire president-in-waiting is packing his cabinet — the heads of all of the most important federal agencies — with even more billionaires. This is all being celebrated over on billionaire-owned Fox “News” and on billionaire-owned hate radio networks, as well as in the billionaire-owned Washington Post, LA Times, and the roughly half of American local newspapers owned by billionaire hedge funds.
Other countries enjoy benefits like free healthcare and college; modern mass transit; and affordable housing, food, and drugs.
They also have inexpensive internet and phone service without companies listening in and selling their information, schools that don’t even need to mention school shooters, and streets and parks filled with pedestrians and children instead of tents for the homeless.
Additionally, they benefit from renewable electricity that gets cheaper every year while cleaning their environment.
We, on the other hand, have the world‘s largest collection of billionaires.
New York Times, Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term, Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac, Jan. 7, 2025. The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies. Zuckerberg conceded there would be more ‘bad stuff’ on his sites.
Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.
The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Here’s what to know:
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Proof, Investigtive Commentary: Elon Musk Aims to Start a Race War in the United Kingdom. Is the United States His Next Target? Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 7, 2025. Somehow this message isn’t crossing international boundaries with the alacrity or the urgency it needs to: Elon Musk is now a global threat, and his actions will cause mass violence in the near term.
The amount of gall required for a South African-born Canadian-American with no meaningful liberal arts education—no background in History, Political Science, or Law—to blithely declare that “civil war is inevitable” in the United Kingdom, and to send that hyperventilating warning to literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide on a social media platform he’s rigged to elevate his voice above others is staggering.
Historically, those few with a significant enough global profile to influence politics in nations not their own avoid doing so at all costs—first, because it’s not their business to do otherwise, and second because interfering with foreign countries may harm the efforts of the U.S. government to conduct international diplomacy.
For this reason, we generally associate public or illicit attempts to meddle in the affairs of other nations with conduct that is not just improper but possibly illegal, and usually the province of hostile intelligence agencies exclusively.
One of the only men on Earth with the gall to ignore this basic precept of being part of a civilization and species is Elon Musk, who Proof has in the past covered as he derangedly went to war with the nation of Brazil. Again, such conduct is even more gall-encrusted and galling when the perpetrator, as with Musk, knows virtually nothing at all about the countries he tries to meddle with.
This staggering quantity of gall makes it even more likely that the dire warning (some would say threat) Mr. Musk has lately issued about a civil war in the United Kingdom is wildly inaccurate. The more evidently someone is a malignant narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur, a martyr complex, and a streak of fascist cruelty that runs through almost every word they utter, the more likely they have also fallen short in yet another watchword of a successfully completed liberal arts education: media literacy.
Simply put, even if Elon Musk were finally willing to educate himself on the domestic politics of other nations, it’s not clear that he has the temperament, patience, wisdom, or information-science skills to actually do so. It’s for these and other reasons that he has become the world’s largest firehose of disinformation—a fact, not a supposition; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here—and in very short order his actions are going to accrue a massive worldwide death toll.
Will it be in the United Kingdom, where Musk is trying to stoke a race war in which non-white immigrants are murdered by the tens of thousands by roving Christofascist mobs whose leaders and enablers and advocates he’s openly cheering on? Will it be in the United States, where Musk is about to become co-president and routinely spreads lies about race relations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)?
Will it be in Germany, where Musk is now an open advocate of that nation’s neo-Nazi political party? Will it be in Ukraine, where Musk’s products are being used to kill innocents as the Starlink chief himself (a) does nothing to stop it in a timely fashion and (b) secretly communicates with the author of these war crimes, Vladimir Putin, on a regular basis?
We don’t know. Maybe all of these places will see a sudden additional death-toll spike that Elon Musk is uniquely responsible for and—in a world with rule of law—would face consequences for, also.
But we live in this world, where Musk even appearing in court when ordered to do so is wholly optional for him, so seven things are perfectly clear, now: (1) Musk is going to get people killed; (2) he knows he’s going to get people killed; (3) he’s not going to take any time whatsoever to educate himself on the issues he insists on writing about without any relevant expertise; (4) he’s not going to stop trying to enflame passions and spread disinformation on these subjects, because he ultimately doesn’t care at all about the issues themselves—not child rape or war crimes or government spending in the United States—except to the extent that his taking the positions he takes accrues geopolitical power and influence to him (partly directly, partly indirectly, through the implicit threat of his inciting involvement in any future conflagrations) and pleases his apparently superheated, quivering personal animus toward women, non-whites, Jews, migrants, and the LGBTQIA2S+ community; (5) he won’t face consequences for his actions in the United States or anywhere else; (6) he’s well aware that he won’t face any consequence for his actions, which is precisely why they’ll continue unabated no matter how many people they kill; (7) and there’s nothing natively inside the man—no humility, leadership skills, empathy, temperance, patience, or generosity of spirit—that will organically cause him to stop what he’s doing once the mass killing starts
.Those who don’t understand yet that Musk is an unscrupulous bad actor on the world stage whose only aims are wealth and authority—the exact opposite of the mythos his fawning amanuensis Walter Isaacson is now pushing—are going to learn in the next few weeks and months what it means for Earth’s most powerful nation to transfer its powers wholesale to someone who not only wants to control all of Earth but actually has a scheme and the resources to accomplish it.
Musk’s ostensible focus is manned missions to Mars—a planet humans will never occupy in any significant numbers, but which fiction gives Musk a way to rally support for and attention to himself and divert resources from helping those on Earth who need help but who Musk doesn’t wish to see helped—when in fact his supposed Mars focus is simply the most chilling example yet of grifting MAGA influencers’ abiding “every accusation is a confession” principle.
Elon says he’s focused on control of Mars because he’s actually focused on control of Earth. It’s likely Musk cares little about Mars at all, given that he has been told again and again and again by scientists—each and every day, for the last twenty years—that the planet is uninhabitable and can never be made otherwise at scale. While Mars may yet be a useful outpost for scattered scientific research—if still not the best use (at all) of precious research resources—and while it could host mining operations designed solely to make Musk the world’s first centi-trillionaire (indeed, the Boring Company exists only for that prospective purpose, not the terrestrial purposes Mr. Musk falsely claimes), it will never harbor a significant human civilian settlement, nor should it.
The money Musk is funneling from U.S. taxpayers and, soon enough, directly from the federal budget using DOGE as his instrument, is money that would be infinitely more valuable here on Earth—for instance, to ensure that our ecosystem doesn’t collapse, killing over a billion humans on Earth in an entirely foreseeable way. So we must see the broader “project” of Elon Musk as one whose endgame enriches him and harms or actively endangers everyone who’s not him. The non-MAGA argument for his plans being a net positive for humanity has in recent years not just dimmed, but evaporated.
Yet the fact that Musk spent almost 300 million to elect Trump and his allies through PACs, and another $44 billion for the purchase of Twitter—which he now admits was a purchase with political aims (contrary to everything he told Americans at the time)—means that the Republican Party will more or less give him the keys to America now.
Those who thought that the GOP doing so would only endanger America are learning now that in fact this Republican cowardice and venality is going to endanger—indeed, already is endangering—the whole world.
Washington Post, N.Y. judge denies Trump effort to block sentencing in hush money case, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 7, 2025. Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a New York judge, above, to stop Trump’s sentencing scheduled for Friday on his convictions for falsifying business documents.
The judge overseeing President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case on Monday rejected a request by Trump lawyers to delay sentencing this week pending an appeal.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that Trump’s arguments related to presidential immunity were recycled from previous failed attempts and legally improper. The sentencing remained scheduled for Friday, he wrote.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Merchan ruled last week that a sentence would be imposed ahead of Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, which would make Trump the first president who is a felon.
The Trump attorneys filed a 17-page legal notice asserting that Merchan had no choice but to halt the proceedings. They argued that all events in the case must be automatically paused “by operation of federal constitutional law.”
Washington Post, The New Administration Exclusive:Trump aides ready ‘universal’ tariff plans — with one key change, Jeff Stein, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Aides are looking at universal import duties, but only on certain sectors, among the first big moves of the presidency.
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers.
As a candidate, Trump called for “universal” tariffs of as high as 10 or 20 percent on everything imported into the United States. Many economists warned that such plans could cause price shocks, and many Republicans in Congress might have criticized them.
Two weeks before Trump takes office, his aides are still discussing plans to impose import duties on goods from every country, the people said. But rather than apply tariffs to all imports, the current discussions center on imposing them only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security — a shift that would jettison a key aspect of Trump’s campaign pledge, at least for now, said the people, who cautioned that no decisions have been finalized and that planning remains in flux. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive. But consideration of universal tariffs of some kind still reflects the Trump team’s determination to implement measures that can’t be easily circumvented by having products shipped via a third country.
New York Times, The Jan. 6 Rioters, 4 Years Later, Alan Feuer, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Hundreds accused of nonviolent crimes during the attack on the Capitol have wrapped up their cases.
In the past four years, nearly 1,600 people have been prosecuted in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some were accused of felonies like assault or seditious conspiracy and are still in prison. But hundreds charged with lesser crimes have wrapped up their cases and returned to their lives.
Jan. 6 was a turning point for everyone involved. In breaching the Capitol, a mob of Trump loyalists caused millions of dollars in damage, injured more than 140 police officers and, for the first time in American history, chased lawmakers away from their duty to certify a presidential election.
The attack also prompted the largest single investigation the Justice Department has ever undertaken, leading to arrests in all 50 states. Ever since, the defendants have been held to account in Washington’s federal courthouse, blocks away from the Capitol itself, for their roles in undermining a bedrock of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.
While some have come to regret their actions on that day, others do not. At best, they say they have seen the realities of the criminal justice system, becoming more sympathetic to the plights of others facing prosecution. At worst, they remain convinced that the system treated them unfairly, hardened by their brushes with the law.
Washington Post, The fate of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants depends on Trump, Robert Klemko, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman, Sarah Cahlan, Clara Ence Morseand Hannah Dormido, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The incoming president has pledged to pardon many defendants accused or convicted of crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Washington Post, U.S. Capitol Police chief opposes pardons for assaults against police, Spencer S. Hsu, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Pardoning people who assault police would send a message that the safety of officers does not matter and could risk politicizing the law enforcement of violent protests, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in an exclusive interview Sunday on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Manger declined to comment about President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to grant clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, about 600 of whom were charged with felony assault or obstruction of police during a civil disorder. But in his first public remarks as chief of the 2,300-member department on the broader subject, he decried what he said was the wiping away of accountability for attacks against law enforcement.
“What message does that send? What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?” Manger said after swearing in officers to help secure Congress’s certification of the 2024 election on Monday.
New York Times, Harris Faces an Awkward Election Task: Certifying the Vote She Lost, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The vice president will preside over Congress on Monday as it counts the Electoral College votes finalizing her defeat by Donald J. Trump.
The vice presidency comes with plenty of indignities, but probably none greater than the one Kamala Harris will endure on Monday when she presides over the certification of her defeat.
Under the Constitution, the vice president takes the gavel when the two houses of Congress meet to formally count the Electoral College votes for president. While not every vice president has chosen to fulfill the duty, Ms. Harris has indicated that she will carry out the task, no doubt painful, of declaring that Donald J. Trump beat her.
Awkward and unpleasant as it may be for Ms. Harris, whose own political future remains uncertain, it is set to be a calmer and less death-defying experience than four years ago when Mr. Trump refused to accept defeat and struggled to hold on to power after voters decided to throw him out of office. A mob he inspired marched on the Capitol and stormed the building to stop Vice President Mike Pence from fulfilling the duty that now falls to Ms. Harris.
Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to cast doubt on the election but has instead accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to pressure the Justice Department, members of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officials to reverse the vote she lost, as Mr. Trump did four years ago.
New York Times, Trump Transition: ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6, Dan Barry and Alan Feuer, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). President-elect Trump and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack, spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom.
In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the United States Capitol to once again take the presidential oath of office. As the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceful transfer of power unfolds, he will stand where the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, took place, largely in his name.
Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with clubs, chemical irritants and other weapons. To his left, the spot where roaring rioters and outnumbered police officers fought hand to hand. To his right, where the prostrate body of a dying woman was jostled in the bloody fray.
And before him, a dozen marble steps descending to a lectern adorned with the presidential seal. The same steps where, four years earlier, Trump flags were waved above the frenzied crowd and wielded like spears; where an officer was dragged facedown to be beaten with an American flag on a pole and another was pulled into the scrum to be kicked and stomped.
In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s volatile political career seemed over, his incendiary words before the riot rattling the leaders of his own Republican Party. Myriad factors explain his stunning resurrection, but not least of them is how effectively he and his loyalists have laundered the history of Jan. 6, turning a political nightmare into a political asset.
What began as a strained attempt to absolve Mr. Trump of responsibility for Jan. 6 gradually took hold, as his allies in Congress and the media played down the attack and redirected blame to left-wing plants, Democrats and even the government. Violent rioters — prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned — somehow became patriotic martyrs.
This inverted interpretation defied what the country had watched unfold, but it neatly fit the persecution narrative that binds Mr. Trump to many of his faithful. Once he committed to running again for president, he doubled down on flipping the script about the riot and its blowback, including a congressional inquiry and two criminal indictments against him, as part of an orchestrated victimization.
That day was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But with his return to office, Mr. Trump now has the platform to further rinse and spin the Capitol attack into what he has called “a day of love.” He has vowed to pardon rioters in the first hour of his new administration, while his congressional supporters are pushing for criminal charges against those who investigated his actions on that chaotic day.
New York Times, Flurry of Announcements Signals That Trump Family Will Keep Making Deals, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Alan Blinder, Jan. 7, 2025. Even before the start of the new administration, there has been repeated blurring of lines between the federal government efforts and Trump family businesses.
Associated Pres via Politico, North Carolina justices block certification of election outcome in race for one of its own seats, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs speaks to reporters.
North Carolina’s highest court blocked on Tuesday the certification of a November election result for one of its own seats so it can review legal arguments by a trailing candidate who contends over 60,000 ballots that were cast shouldn’t be counted.
The decision by the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court to issue the temporary stay is a setback for Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs. Election results show Riggs ahead of GOP challenger Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast.The video player is currently playing an ad. Top Stories from POLITICOSkip Ad
The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.
The State Board of Elections dismissed last month Griffin’s written protests challenging the ballots. That initiated a timeline in which the board would issue a certificate confirming Riggs’ election this Friday — ending the litigation — unless a court stepped in.
Tuesday’s order stops such certification and tells Griffin and the board to file legal briefs with the justices over the next two weeks.
Lawyers for Griffin, who is a judge on the intermediate-level state Court of Appeals, initially asked the state Supreme Court to intervene three weeks ago. But the elections board quickly moved the matter to federal court, saying Griffin’s appeals involved matters of federal voting and voting rights laws.
Griffin disagreed, and so did U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who on Monday returned the case to the state Supreme Court. Myers — a nominee to the bench by Donald Trump — wrote that Griffin’s protests raised “unsettled questions of state law” and had tenuous connections to federal law.
Hours later, Griffin’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court for the temporary stay, which the court granted.
“In the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election,” Tuesday’s order read.
The order said that Riggs recused herself from the matter and that Associate Justice Anita Earls, the other Democrat on the court, opposed the stay in part because the “public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”
Politico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24, Mike Blanchfield, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.Justin Trudeau waits on the front steps of Parliament Hill.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau era is coming to an end.
Abandoned by a majority of his caucus, the three-term prime minister, right, announced Monday that he plans to step down as prime minister and as the leader of his party, the latest in a global line of sinking incumbents.
Trudeau also announced that Canada’s Parliament would shut down until March 24, and that he has asked the Liberal party to begin the search for a new leader.
The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and a looming trade war.
New York Times, Genocide Committed by Paramilitary Group in Sudan, U.S. Says, Declan Walsh, Jan. 7, 2025. A paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s army in a brutal civil war committed massacres and rape that amounted to genocide, the secretary of state said.
The United States on Tuesday accused a Sudanese paramilitary group and its proxies of committing genocide, singling them out in a conflict of unchecked brutality and drawing fresh attention to the scale of atrocities being perpetrated in Africa’s largest war.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting against Sudan’s military had committed acts of genocide, including a fearsome wave of ethnically targeted violence in the western region of Darfur.
The Treasury Department backed the determination of genocide with a raft of sanctions targeting the R.S.F.’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, as well as seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, the group’s main foreign sponsor, that have traded in weapons and gold on his behalf.
“The R.S.F. and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement. “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
JIP Editor's Note:
Critics say the Biden administration, rather than empowering civilian leaders, prioritized working with the two rival generals, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, right, the head of Sudan’s army, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, left, a paramilitary chief generally known as "Hemetti," even after they carried out a military coup together in 2021.
Senior American diplomats “made the mistake of coddling the generals, accepting their irrational demands and treating them as natural political actors,” said Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, an adviser to Sudan’s deposed prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. “This fed their lust for power and their illusion of legitimacy.”
Washington Post, Elon Musk goes global with his playbook for political influence, Cat Zakrzewski, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The X owner and tech billionaire has boosted far-right figures in Britain, Germany and Canada with a blizzard of social media posts in recent days.
In the first three days of 2025, Elon Musk commandeered global politics through dozens of rapid-fire, often inflammatory posts to his 210 million followers on X.
The world’s richest person called for the release of a jailed British far-right extremist. He shared a post pressing King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and order a new general election, as he posted memes and a flurry of attacks directed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Musk accused Starmer of failing to prosecute“rape gangs” more than a decade ago, a child exploitation scandal that has prompted Britain’s Conservative Party to call for a full national inquiry.
Musk reposted a message from Rupert Lowe, a politician in the Reform UK party who serves in Parliament and who said he spent Friday talking to rape gang victims.
“Victims, past and present, don’t need ‘thoughts and prayers’ from politicians, they need justice,” Lowe said. “We will fight for that in Parliament.”
Musk also briefly turned his attention to the United States’ northern neighbor and praised an interview with Pierre Poilievre, a populist firebrand who leads Canada’s Conservative Party. Musk said that next week he would live-stream a conversation with Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party he has endorsed ahead of that country’s snap elections in February.
Last year, Musk dominated U.S. politics, using his deep war chest and X microphone to boost Donald Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 elections. As the GOP prepares to retake control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Musk has emerged more powerful than ever. His fortune has exploded, and he has a perch as Trump’s right-hand man, weighing in on his Cabinet choices and joining his conversations with global leaders.
In the new year, Musk is flexing his political muscle on the global stage as well. He appears to be applying a playbook similar to the one he used to disrupt American politics, now boosting conservative politicians in the governments of the United States’ top allies. But his disregard for the veracity of his posts and his elevation of far-right and extremist figures have alarmed liberal leaders around the world.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” Health Minister Andrew Gwynne said during a Friday interview with the British radio station LBC.
The long-running British child exploitation scandals that Musk has seized on have become a rallying point for Reform UK, a right-wing populist party. An independent review in 2022 found that local government agencies in the town of Oldham, England, had left children vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
That review followed an earlier probe in 2014 that found an estimated 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham, England, over 15-plus years. According to the report, most perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, and some in the town said they were nervous about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being seen as racist.
Although these historical cases of abuse go back decades, right-leaning outlet GB News laid blame this week with the ruling Labour Party, reporting that minister Jess Phillips had recently rejected a request for the national government to conduct a further investigation into the Oldham “grooming gangs.”
Politico, Elon Musk’s European political meddling is ‘worrying,’ says Norway’s PM, Ketrin Jochecová, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). European backlash grows against billionaire ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Monday he found it “worrying” that a billionaire social media owner like Elon Musk is inserting himself into the politics of other countries.
Musk, a key ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has been on a social media rampage over the holidays, endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, repeatedly denouncing the U.K.’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and even torpedoing his relationship with British hard-right chief Nigel Farage.
“I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not how it should be between democracies and allies,” Støre told public broadcaster NRK.
Støre was responding to a question on whether he is worried about potential interference from Musk in Norwegian elections.
“If we were to see it in Norway, I hope and assume that a united Norwegian political environment would warn and distance itself from it,” Støre added.
Støre’s comments are part of a mainstream political backlash against Musk, in which German political leaders have argued that the Tesla entrepreneur’s AfD endorsement amounted to election interference.
Musk has announced he will hold a live discussion this week with the AfD’s chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, on X ahead of Germany’s snap election on Feb. 23.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, involving in part hush money to women (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).
New York Times, Trump Seeks to Halt His Criminal Sentencing in New York, Ben Protess, Jan. 6, 2025. A Manhattan judge has already indicated that he will spare Donald Trump from jail time, but the president-elect is seeking to avoid the criminal proceeding.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has signaled that he plans to mount a full-scale legal offensive to stave off his criminal sentencing in New York, seeking a last-minute reprieve before becoming the first president who is a convicted felon.
With the sentencing scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have implored the judge overseeing his case to postpone the proceeding, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.
Although that request is most likely doomed — the judge, Juan M. Merchan, was the one who scheduled the sentencing — Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed in the filing that they planned to escalate their effort. If the judge does not pause the sentencing by 2 p.m. on Monday, the filing said, Mr. Trump will “seek an emergency appellate review.”
Hoping to persuade a New York appeals court to intervene, Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to file a civil action against Justice Merchan and seek to freeze the sentencing, according to the filing. It is unclear when they will file that action with the appellate court, but it could come as soon as Monday.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
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New York Times, Trump Has Reeled in More Than $200 Million Since Election Day, Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The president-elect has boasted about the donations for his inauguration, library and political activities from those seeking favor or perhaps in some cases, atonement.
Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.
It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him following the violence by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump has promised to gut the “deep state” and made various promises to industry supporters. Among the pledged donors for the inaugural events are Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon and Meta, along with cryptocurrency firms.
The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration, according to three people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: 2025: The year American Oligarchy officially begins? Thom Hartmann, Jan. 4, 2025. I’m an unpaid volunteer member of the board of directors of a nonprofit that’s making use of a multi-million-dollar endowment, and working with their professional investment advisors over the years has given me insight into some of the ways the morbidly rich get richer, faster, and in ways impossible for average people: there are multiple types of investments and investment advisors that are only accessible to people or organizations that can pony up millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.
Thus, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, Elon Musk (for example) went from being worth $25 billion in 2020 to $428 billion a few weeks ago. During that same time, Jeff Bezos (who apparently just censored a Washington Post comic showing him bowing down and handing a bag of money to Trump) reportedly went from $113 billion to $235 billion; similarly, three heirs to the Walmart fortune reportedly went, during the same period, from $161 billion to $317 billion. We see a similar phenomenon with members of Congress using inside information to trade stocks, something that would land you or me in jail.
Thus (as I often note here at Hartmann Report), the rich are truly getting richer while average working people have been in a downward spiral ever since Ronald Reagan’s “Revolution” changed the rules (particularly the tax rules, but also around monopolies, etc.) that once kept obscene wealth in check. Now we have a convicted criminal billionaire about to be sworn in as president with the richest cabinet in American (and, perhaps, world) history, all with an agenda of making the rich even richer. (It’s worth noting — something almost always ignored by the mainstream press — that Trump’s conviction was for using his fortune for election interference leading to a stolen 2016 election; by hiding his affair with Stormy Daniels he kept information away from the public that he believed could have led to his loss that year.)
Oligarchy is generally defined as a form of governance in which the state has been captured by the morbidly rich and the powers and institutions of government are then turned to make the rich even richer while insulating oligarchs from legal strictures, at the same time impoverishing and punishing working people and the poor. As I detailed in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the biggest problem with oligarchy is that it’s an extremely unstable form of government and usually is only transitional (typically lasting fewer than two generations). Average people, realizing they’re being robbed blind, rise up and demand change, sometimes causing oligarchy to flip back to democracy (as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s) or flipping the nation into tyranny when the oligarchs decide to use the military and police powers of government to hold onto their wealth and power (Chile, Hungary, Russia, Iraq, Egypt, Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, etc.).
The big question for Americans as we enter this new period of full-blown oligarchy is whether this generation’s oligarchs will have more success than those in the 1930s and 1850s. They seem to have learned the lessons of history and are now emulating Putin, Orbán, etc., in using lawfare and big money to intimidate or purchase outright the media; this will make a transition back to democracy — like the ones Lincoln and Roosevelt led when the media landscape (and its ownership) was far more diverse — far more difficult. And, as we just saw with the election of Mike Johnson as Speaker, nothing happens in the House without the approval of the billionaires.
The next four years — and, in particular, the next two — will probably decide the fate of America’s form of government for the next several generations. This is no time to check out; to the contrary, it’s the most important moment in our lifetimes to stand up, speak out, and build progressive political institutions while supporting the few brave progressive politicians still standing after the billionaire and AIPAC attacks in the last election.
New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage, Lara Jakes, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Russia has become increasingly brazen in adopting “gray zone” attacks against Europe and the U.S., leaving officials with a dilemma: How to respond?
When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.
But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”
The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.
In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.
Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.
Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.
As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?
Washington Post, Trump sentencing sets up an unusual scene ahead of his inauguration, Marianne LeVine, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Just 10 days before he is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump will have to appear before a judge to be sentenced on his 34 felony convictions.
Days before his second inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump faces the uncomfortable prospect of appearing — in person or virtually — before a New York state judge to be sentenced for his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.Get the latest election news and results
The court appearance, scheduled for Friday, offers yet another reminder of the legal woes that dogged Trump as he mounted his third bid for the White House. It also cements a distinction that he shares with none of his predecessors: He will be the first serving president who is also a felon. No previous president has been convicted of a felony, let alone summoned before a judge just days before their inauguration.
While New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said he will not sentence Trump to jail time, the appearance will be an opportunity for the judge to denounce what he has called the “premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world.”
“It’s a reminder that we live, politically speaking, in a split-screen America,” said Tim Naftali, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “For some Americans, [Trump’s] legal difficulties were a reason to vote for him because it deepened their sense that they, like him, were victims.”
“The fact that the procession to the inauguration will include yet another trip to court, it’s consistent with the peculiarities of Donald Trump’s return to power,” Naftali added.
In the hours after Merchan upheld Trump’s conviction and scheduled his sentencing, the president-elect railed against the judge, his political opponents, and the federal justice system that his appointees will soon oversee.
At 8:43 p.m. Friday, Trump complained on social media that he was “the only Political Opponent in American History not allowed to defend myself.” At 7:29 Saturday morning, he was back at it, describing Merchan as “corrupt” and “crooked” and calling for him to be “disbarred.”
New York Times Magazine, Ukraine Was Outgunned. Its Solution: Small, Cheap Suicide Drones, C.J. Chivers, Photographs and Video by David Guttenfelder, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Outnumbered and desperate, the nation began hacking cheap consumer drones with explosives — bringing a brutal new form of violence to 21st-century warfare.
Known as first-person-view drones, or FPVs, the weapons have altered the human experience of war and flooded the internet with footage chronicling the desperate last seconds of lives ended by miniaircraft that transmit video of the people they pursue, then smack into them and explode.
Its camera revealed a surprise: a Russian T-80 tank parked in the foliage. A $3 million military machine had been discovered by a $400 repurposed toy.
The tank was well defended. Its crew had backed the 44-ton vehicle into undergrowth, blocking access to its vulnerable exhaust grate. Slats of reactive armor, which can thwart armor-piercing charges, bedecked its sloped front end. Its rotating turret carried a metal frame and netting, a combination derisively referred to as a cope cage, designed to snag drones and prevent warheads from making direct strikes on hulls. All its hatches were closed, blocking Prorok from flying the warhead inside.
In the past, attacking an armored vehicle with such a warhead typically required a soldier to risk exposure to take a hasty shot with a rocket-propelled grenade, sending a projectile at almost 1,000 feet per second that may not hit the vehicle at all. Weaponized FPV drones have created a new way. In the field south of Belgorod, the combination of the tank’s defensive measures and the drone’s peculiar characteristics made for an exercise that was almost surreal. Time seemed to slow down. The little drone hovered patiently before the massive military machine, rising and falling, swaying on the breeze, emitting its high-pitched buzz while Prorok flew it safely from afar, deciding his attack’s best place, which he could strike with uncanny precision.
Prorok selected the turret’s base, where armor was thinner. “Yes, yes,” Buryi said. Prorok leaned forward as he pushed the flight controller and the drone plunged into the spot. The screen went blank. Watching from the surveillance drone, Andy called out. “I see an explosion!” he said.
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Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.
All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.
Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked.”
Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
But McConnell appeared reluctant to see Trump impeached. He delayed the Senate trial of the House’s charge of “incitement of insurrection” until Biden was president, then pressed for Trump’s acquittal on the grounds that he was no longer president. Even before that February 2021 acquittal, then–House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—who had had a shouting match with Trump on January 6 in which he allegedly begged Trump to call off his supporters and yelled that the rioters were “trying to f*cking kill me!”—traveled to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago to get him to support Republican candidates in the 2022 election.
Their hunger to keep Trump’s voters began the process of whitewashing Trump’s attempt to overturn our democracy. At the same time, those Republicans who had either participated in the scheme or gone along with it continued to defend their behavior. As time passed, they downplayed the violence of January 6. As early as May 2021, some began to claim it was less a deadly attack than a “normal tourist visit.”
When the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol began to collect testimony and evidence, Trump and fellow Republicans did all they could to discredit it. As it became clear that Trump would win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, they worked to exonerate him from wrongdoing and accused the Democrats of misleading Americans about the events of that day.
In February 2021, McConnell defended his vote to acquit Trump of inciting insurrection by promising the courts would take care of him. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen,” he said, “still liable for everything he did while in office, [and] didn't get away with anything yet…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
But while more than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes associated with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and many of Trump’s lawyers and advisors have been disbarred or faced charges, Trump has managed to avoid legal accountability by using every possible means to delay the federal case brought against him for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
And now, with the help of a compliant Supreme Court stacked with three of his own appointees, he has gained the immunity McConnell said he did not have. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court handed down the aptly named Donald Trump v. United States decision, establishing that sitting presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the scope of their official duties. Before the new, slimmer set of charges brought after this decision could go forward, voters reelected Trump to the presidency, triggering the Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
As Republicans whitewashed January 6 and the legal system failed to hold Trump to account, the importance of Trump’s attack on our democracy seemed to fade. Even the Trump v. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which undermined the key principle that all Americans are equal before the law by declaring Trump above it, got less attention than its astonishingly revolutionary position warranted, coming as it did just four days after President Joe Biden looked and sounded old in a televised presidential debate.
As the 2024 election approached, Trump rewrote the events of January 6 so completely that he began calling it “a day of love.” He said those found guilty of crimes related to January 6 were “political prisoners” and vowed to pardon them on his first day in office. Dan Barry and Alan Feuer noted in the New York Times today that Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, referring to “the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th,” claims that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.”
And yet, today, Trump’s lawyers wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding he prevent the public release of the final report written by special counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They say it would disrupt the presidential transition by “giving rise to a media storm of false and unfair criticism” and interfere with presidential immunity by diverting Trump’s time and energy.
Having reviewed the two-volume report, the lawyers objected to its claim that Trump and others “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort,” that Trump was “the head of the criminal conspiracies,” that he hatched a “criminal design,” and that he “violated multiple federal criminal laws.” They also took issue with the “baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings.”
They conclude that releasing Smith’s report “would not ‘be in the public interest.’”
Washington Post, Elections updates: Congress counts, certifies Trump’s electoral college victory over Harris, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 6 announced the certified vote total of the 2024 presidential election during a joint session of Congress.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our National Day of Shame, William Kristol and Andrew Egger, Jan. 6, 2025. Four years later, the shock of that day is replaced by the shock of how that day has become accepted.
Washington Post, Biden urges Americans not to rewrite, or forget, Jan. 6, 2021, Matt Viser, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The president sought to contrast the peaceful transfer of power this year with what happened in 2021.
President Joe Biden, who has attempted to oversee a smooth transition by withholding criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, has grown more animated about their differences ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.Get the latest election news and results
“I think it should not be rewritten. I don’t think it should be forgotten,” he told reporters at the White House on Sunday afternoon. He expanded upon the remarks at an evening event and in a new opinion piece published Sunday night by The Washington Post.
“But I don’t think we should — if you notice, I’ve reached out to make sure the smooth transition, we’ve got to get back to basic, normal transfer of power. I don’t think we should pretend it didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking about Trump specifically, Biden added: “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy, and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it.”
It was his latest effort to remind Americans of how imperiled he views the country’s democratic norms. He also in recent days awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring her for speaking out against Trump and for investigating his actions in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump attacked Cheney on social media over the award and has suggested that she and other members of the House committee that investigated the Capitol assault “should go to jail.”
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Mike Johnson Acts Like a CHILD as Kamala Patriotically Certifies the Election, Tim Miller, Jan. 6, 2025. Tim Miller reacts to VP Kamala Harris presiding over the peaceful transfer of power as she certifies the election results on the fourth anniversary of the violent attack on the Capital.
New York Times, Giuliani Is Held in Contempt of Court in Defamation Case, Stefanos Chen, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has failed to turn over his assets to two Georgia poll workers who won a defamation lawsuit against him.
A federal judge on Monday held Rudolph W. Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of his personal assets to Georgia poll workers he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has so far failed to turn over the bulk of his personal assets as a down payment on the $148 million judgment the poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, won in a defamation lawsuit.
The judge, Lewis J. Liman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, has yet to detail what specific sanctions Mr. Giuliani faces. But being held in contempt could possibly hinder the former mayor’s attempts to hang onto his Palm Beach, Fla., condo.
Mr. Giuliani’s assets include a 10-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; a 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible; a collection of 26 designer watches; and rare Yankees collectibles, the most valuable of which might be a signed and framed Joe DiMaggio jersey.your times access
He is due back in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 16 to argue that his Palm Beach condo should be exempt from the seizure, because it is his primary residence. But Mr. Giuliani has failed repeatedly to answer questions that could prove his residency.
The court ruled that Mr. Giuliani had obstructed the election workers’ attempts to determine Mr. Giuliani’s real primary residence, which for years had been the cooperative apartment on East 66th Street in Manhattan.
Judge Liman, who has appeared frustrated at Mr. Giuliani’s shifting rationale for the omissions, ruled that his failure to comply will permit the court to draw negative conclusions about his Florida residency status, which could hobble his defense.
“The defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” Judge Liman said, adding that he was unmoved by the former mayor’s argument that he was overwhelmed with court requests, including charges in two criminal cases and several other civil actions. “The fact that he is a busy person and relied on others is not an excuse,” he said.President Joe Biden delivers a speech on the U.S. economy and “Bidenomics”, Thursday, September 14, 2023, at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz) image caption
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: It’s January 6th. Trump Won, William Kristol, Jan. 6, 2025. George Orwell wrote that in our day “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So let me restate the obvious: January 6, 2021 is a day that should live in infamy.
But for the next four years January 6th won’t live in infamy. Because in two weeks the man who incited January 6th, the man who now excuses it—no, celebrates it—will be sworn in as our next president.
So the obvious if unpleasant fact is that today we as a nation are in a worse condition, facing a more ominous future, than we faced four years ago.
The mob violence of January 6th was awful. That it was incited by the president of the United States made it worse. That it was the capstone of a more comprehensive effort by President Trump and his apparatchiks to overturn the election results and to stay in power made the date even more deserving of infamy.
But the attempted auto-coup failed. We made it through the dangerous period from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021. The guardrails held. President Trump left office. President Biden succeeded him, and tried to restore normalcy.
To his credit, he’s still trying. The outgoing president has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post lamenting that “an unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite—even erase—the history” of January 6th, and urging us not to forget what happened.
But the fact is that the unrelenting effort of Trump and his supporters has, as of now, succeeded. It’s telling that nowhere in his article does President Biden mention the name of the person who has been behind the effort to “rewrite—even erase” the history of January 6th. Presumably he thought it uncivil or inappropriate to attack his successor by name two weeks before he takes over.
But Biden’s silence about Trump merely brings home the extent of Trump’s success. The January 6th truther-in-chief will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new Trump administration will be presidential pardons or commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not? Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in prison?
Some of the more respectable supporters of the new administration are aware of how distasteful this will be. The Wall Street Journal editorial page frets that “pardoning such crimes would send an awful message about [Trump’s] view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.”
But that is Trump’s view. Indeed, it’s his oft-expressed view. Indeed, he ran for office on this view—and won. The fact that some establishment types have chosen to close their eyes to this isn’t his fault.
What can be done? Here in the United States, there are thankfully many sources of possible resistance, ranging from others in government—at both the federal and state level—to institutions in the private sector and civil society. They all have a role to play in the fight against the whitewashing of history and the erasure of truth.
But in the near term, it is the Senate of the United States that can do the most to help. It is the Senate that has to choose whether to confirm Trump’s cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees. It is Senate committees that can hold hearings and get those nominees on the record on January 6th.
All senators have to do is to ask the nominees whether they agree with what President Trump said on January 7, 2021—that what happened on January 6th was a “heinous attack” and that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”
Senators can ask this of all nominees. And Senators can refuse to confirm at least some of the January 6th deniers, especially those nominated to important positions in law enforcement and national security.
One nominee particularly deserving of decisive rejection is Kash Patel, selected to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an important article this morning, Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen lay out evidence that clearly shows why Patel is unfit to serve as FBI director. They show in great detail that Patel has embraced and promulgated false conspiracy theories not just about January 6th in general, but about the very organization he’s been nominated to lead.
The authors conclude, “That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.”
Will it be? Will the United States Senate permit Trump to install a full-on January 6th truther as head of the FBI? Or will some Republican senators put country before party, enabling the Senate to set up some roadblocks to our steep descent on a path towards an Orwellian and authoritarian future?
To fight for the future of democracy, we need pro-democracy news media. That’s what we’re building here. Help us grow by becoming a Bulwark+ member.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: How ‘My Kevin’ Helped, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 6, 2025. As Bill notes, Trump’s successful retcon of January 6th was the long, slow work of a lot of willing contributors. But it’s worth taking a moment today to look back on one of the most crucial links in that chain: then-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s 2021 decision not to cooperate with establishing an independent commission to investigate the ransacking of the Capitol by Trump’s mob.
In the months immediately following the attack, Republicans were still having trouble letting go of the horror they’d felt as they watched that day unfold. There was considerable talk of a bipartisan commission, modeled on the one empaneled after 9/11. As leader, McCarthy, right, blessed Rep. John Katko, the GOP ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, to strike a deal with committee chair Bennie Thompson on forming just such a committee.
Katko, a moderate New York Republican with a prosecutorial background and a national security focus, had been among the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the attack. The deal he and Thompson struck spoke to a desire to present a united front against the lawlessness of that day. It also contained significant incentives for Republicans. Democrats were then in power in the House, but the commission would not have made the GOP junior partners: Pelosi and McCarthy would appoint an equal number of members, and Republicans would have equal access to investigative tools like subpoenas.
“We must do everything we can to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again,” Katko said in a statement at the time. “An independent, bipartisan commission will remove politicization of the conversation and focus solely on the facts and circumstances surrounding the security breach at the Capitol as well as other instances of violence relevant to such a review.”
But while Katko and Thompson were negotiating, McCarthy’s spine was bending. Just a few months after the attack, it was already becoming plain to him that the Republican base’s devotion to Trump was going to outlast their momentary horror over the attempted insurrection. Rep. Liz Cheney, previously his third-in-command in House leadership, had already been ousted over her refusal to stop clearly and loudly prosecuting the case against Trump; after initially supporting her, McCarthy ultimately played along as Republicans kicked her to the curb.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Pete Hegseth Claims the Pledge of Allegiance Is a Forgery Used to Replace God, J.D. Wolf, Jan. 5, 2025. Trump’s nominee to run the military believes the flag and the Pledge were used to boot God from schools.
In June 2022, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, made remarks at the Ronald Reagan Library suggesting that the Pledge of Allegiance and the American flag were used by “progressives” to replace God and biblical truths in schools with nationalism.
Hegseth argued that the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were used as a "forgery" by progressives to substitute allegiance to the state for faith:
“The progressives had the targeting of our youngest minds on their mind from the very beginning.
They knew they had to remove the one immovable object inside American civic life and in Western civilization if their schemes were to ever catch on.
And they understood that a moveable object was God, was faith and that it was at the centerpiece of the American classroom since the founding, and they had to replace it. The way we describe it is, to keep the Indiana Jones analogy going, it's like when you're trying to grab a precious artifact, but it's on a pressure plate. And if you're gonna, if you take that artifact off the pressure plate, the alarm bells go off.
If they had removed God immediately a hundred years ago, the parents, the culture, the communities, the churches would have revolted.
And so they openly wrote in The New Republic and other publications, and this is the research that David did, they openly discussed how do we remove God from the classrooms?
That's the immovable object, and they ultimately landed on a forgery, which the culture, at the time, was willing to accept, which effectively was allegiance to the state.
It was the flag. It was a new pledge, a pledge of allegiance written by a socialist that didn't say under God when it was originally written.
I love the flag. I've proudly said the Pledge of Allegiance today at the beginning. I revere it.
For them, it was a new idea around which they could get society cohere that was more malleable than nationalism being more malleable than biblical truth, because when you have biblical truth and objective truth, you can't move people off of that.
Hegseth officeLiquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking AllegationsRead More
However, the historical timeline doesn’t support this view. The Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Christian minister Francis Bellamy, was designed to promote patriotism, not to secularize schools or replace religious practice.Pete Hegseth at the Ronald Reagan Library
At the time, public schools still included prayer, and it wasn’t until the early 1960s that the Supreme Court ruled against state-sponsored prayers and Bible readings. Meanwhile, the Pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942 and was used in schools beforehand.
Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg, right, Trump The Felon, Incoherent GOP Economic Plans Already Falling.
Morning all. We’ve talked about how the road ahead is going to be full of hard days. This is one of them. Stay strong.
On Friday Trump posted this on Truth Social:
Biden gave Liz Cheney a Medal yesterday, even though she has proven to be totally corrupt. She, “Bennie” Thompson, and the rest of the Unselect Committee, destroyed and deleted all evidence from their crooked investigation of January 6th. Cheney has the distinction of losing her Congressional seat by the largest margin in History! The people of Wyoming understood how bad for our Country she was, but Biden rewarded her only because she hated “TRUMP.” She’s a Warmonger of low intelligence. All she wants to do is kill people in “Endless Wars,” with no gain other than to defense companies. Liz Cheney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, Bennie Thompson, and the rest of these dishonest Thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the help which was offered for security. She is responsible, and admitted as much, for all to see, on her daughter’s tape. They have destroyed the lives of many people, and are rewarded by getting Biden Fake Medals. This is not America. January 20th cannot come fast enough. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Here is how she responded:
Here’s what I wrote to you in my very first post after the 2024 election:
While I am going to go slow, listen, and take my time I do have a few initial thoughts this morning about where we are now and where we are going, together……
Over the past few years we, our country, our leaders, Merrick Garland, the Harris SuperPAC and many, many others failed to adequately indict Trump and explain what an unprecedented threat he was. A rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon was just elected President. The relentless normalization of his extremism, madness and ugliness, the legacy media’s complicity in reporting on the race not the stakes, was a collective failure of enormous consequence.
Related to point one, I still think many on our side and in the establishment simply do not understand the nature of the conflict America finds itself in today. Trump and his global allies are playing a different game than we are used to. They have invented a whole new deeply illiberal game with all sorts of new pieces and rules. We have been slow, dangerously and recklessly, slow in recognizing how the rules of the game have changed.
It’s why whatever happens next, it is time for the Democratic Party’s generational wheel to turn and for new leaders who are not steeped in and hobbled by old ways to take the helm. We are facing a new battlefield, and more contemporary strategies, tactics, alliances and leaders are required in this next stage of the fight. Now is a time for re-invention, re-imagination, and risk-taking. We need to build a new politics for the American center-left, a more modern one, one more suited to the opportunities and challenges in front of us, a more “networked” one as my friend Joe Trippi would say.
The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Trump is likely to scale back his reckless, inflationary tariff plans:
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers….
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive.
This is a significant development for Republicans have been counting on the revenue of broad, across the board tariffs to make up revenue lost from their plutocratic tax cutting plans. Less revenue means higher deficits and much more trouble inside his already deeply unstable governing coalition. Trump’s team is working furiously to try to prevent Trump’s incoherent and reckless economic agenda from being implemented as he promised, for it’s inherent dangers are already starting to unravel the strong economy he’s inheriting; which in turn is putting the entire early Trump 2.0 project at risk.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: GOP faces INSTANT KARMA over Trump’s DAY 1 PLAN, Ben Meiselas, Jan. 6, 2025. MeidasTouch MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans in panic mode that they can’t make good on Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
Donald J. Trump, who has described himself in semi-religious terms and imagry as "The Chosen One."
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary: What Is Trump Doing With A January 19th Rally? Lance F Rosen, Jan. 4, 2025. Just what you would expect of a stochastic terrorist.
It should be obvious. He is calling in his movement of extremists comprised of QAnons and Nazis, psychotic fundamentalists and bonkers conspirophiles in an outdoor version of his pre-election Madison Square Garden hate-fest.
And his purpose? To essentially deliver the threat of a mailed fist to Congress, not just to the Democrats but to any lingering dissidents within his own party.
Lance’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
What he is conveying as his message with this rally is, in effect, "If you dare to oppose me on the deportations, the budget, my plans to use the military domestically, or try anything to obstruct my nominees, I will send my mob after you and they will get you, wherever you are."
That is his purpose. It's not a photo op. It's not to prove he can draw big crowds. It is a message to all, including the January 18th pro-democracy rally attendees, that there will be blood.
You will see it in the faces of the people there. Don't be surprised if there is violence, though I expect Presidential security and reinforcements will be there in force, therefore not likely. The relevant point is that he now has official immunity, and will be pardoning the January 6th criminals to augment his private army of Brownshirts.
The media has dropped any reference to the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally which Trump organized because for the most part they have been broken by a barrage of terroristic threats from Trump to pull their licenses and shut them down, to use government agencies to investigate and destroy them, to acquire them through hostile takeovers, or to incite stochastic terrorism against their ownership and editors. That is why you've heard nothing about the Madison Square Garden version of Trump, and instead are getting drowned by mindless coverage of the juvenile squabbles within the GOP.
So, if you were curious about this rally, now you know what it is. He is taking a page from his mentor who used to have them at Nuremberg. And don't be surprised if the staging of it looks eerily similar to this.
New York Times, As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle, Reid J. Epstein, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The race to lead the Democratic National Committee centers on the favorites, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, but the party’s infighting over them looks nothing like a broad reckoning with its 2024 defeats.
Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.
The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.
Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.
Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 5, 2025. President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
The terrorist attack by an American man who said he had joined ISIS that killed 14 people in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day served as a reminder that the Islamic State, which Mr. Trump likes to boast he defeated during his previous term, remains a threat and an inspiration to radicalized lone wolves. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are daunting challenges even without U.S. troops engaged in combat there.
Thanks in part to Covid relief spending by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself. Families remain pressed by the cost of living, including housing, health care and college tuition. The cost of gasoline, while down from its peak, is still about 70 cents per gallon higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Moreover, Americans remain as divided as they have been in many years — politically, ideologically, economically, racially and culturally. As healthy as the country may be economically and otherwise, a variety of scholars, surveys and other indicators suggest that America is struggling to come together behind a common view of its national identity, either at home or abroad.
Indeed, many Americans do not perceive the country to be doing as well as the data suggests, either because they do not see it in their own lives, they do not trust the statistics or they accept the dystopian view promoted by Mr. Trump and amplified by a fragmented, choose-your-own-news media and online ecosphere.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Is the “Scarlet F” coming to Trump? Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 4, 2025. What is the legal significance of Trump being a convicted felon? Most of America’s laws punishing convicted felons long after they’ve gotten out of jail or otherwise finished their sentences date back to the use of felony convictions in the old South to disenfranchise Black people. These include losing your ability to vote, to hold certain types of jobs, and even to own a gun. (Almost all of the states where ex-felons can’t vote are former Confederate states, which have disenfranchised over 5 million people, most nonwhite, this way.)
It appears that a loophole in Florida’s law, which forbids felons with unpaid fines from voting, will let Trump continue to cast a ballot in that state because he was convicted out-of-state (NY) rather than by a Florida court. Will he have to surrender the gun he reportedly owns? Will there be any consequence at all for him? Judge Merchan will have the first final say (I say “first” because Trump will appeal) and it’ll be interesting to see if the press focuses on Trump’s response or Merchan’s opinion, which is virtually certain to point out that Trump’s conviction is for criminally manipulating the 2016 election. I’m betting they won’t use the phrase “election interference” at all, but stay tuned…
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 3, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, Jan. 4, 2025. Today a new Congress, the 119th, came into session. As Annie Karni of the New York Times noted, Americans had a rare view into the floor action of the House because the party in control sets the rules for what parts of the House floor viewers can see. Without a speaker, there is no party in charge to set the rules, so the C-SPAN cameras recording the day could move as their operators wished.
Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. All eyes were on the House, where Republicans will hold 219 seats. Initially, though, that number will be 218: The seat to which Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was elected will be empty since he resigned from the previous Congress and, after the House Ethics Committee released a report saying there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had broken state and federal laws, apparently decided to focus on his new media show rather than return to the House. When the clerk announced that Gaetz would not take a seat in the 119th Congress, applause broke out.
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Man killed in Cybertruck explosion, Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was active-duty U.S. Army soldier, officials say (Alcides Antunes photo via Reuters and PBS).
New York Times, New Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear, Jacey Fortin and Jesus Jiménez, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Officials said they used data from Tesla charging stations to chart the driver’s dayslong journey from Colorado to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
It was difficult, at first, for the authorities to identify the driver of the Tesla truck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning. By the time the flames were extinguished, he had been burned beyond recognition.
But as investigators pored over the charred remains of his ruined rented vehicle, a 2024 Cybertruck, they discovered some clues to the driver’s background and his intentions: some guns, a military ID, fuel and many fireworks.
And on Thursday, the authorities said that they had found something else: The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the driver’s head, the county coroner ruled.
“Am I comfortable calling it a suicide mission?” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in response to a reporter’s question at a Thursday news briefing. “I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other labels.”
New York Times, Cybertruck Driver Shot Himself in Head Before Vegas Blast, Jacey Fortin, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The man who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning shot himself in the head immediately before the vehicle was engulfed by fire, the authorities said on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The authorities are still working to determine exactly what happened, and what the motivation was for the incident, which injured seven people. Here is what we know so far.
Trump / GOP Transition News
Axios, Mike Johnson reelected as speaker after brief revolt, Andrew Solender, Jan. 3-4, 2025. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected as the speaker of the House on Friday, securing the gavel on the first ballot.
Why it matters: Johnson appeared imperiled as three Republicans initially voted against him — enough to sink him on the first ballot.
After a roughly 45-minute standoff, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) switched to voting for Johnson, giving him the 218 votes he needed to secure the gavel without a multi-ballot fight. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the lone defector, voting for Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), while all Democrats voted for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Politico, Judge turns down Jan. 6 felon’s request to attend Trump inauguration at invitation of GOP lawmakers, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2025. It’s the second time a federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration.A bird flies framed by security fencing in front of the U.S. Capitol.
A federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 felony defendant’s request for permission to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite a personal invitation from members of the Utah congressional delegation.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Russell Taylor’s “unusually grave” conduct at the Capitol — which included recruiting “fighters” to descend on the Capitol, wearing armor, carrying weapons and helping others push past a police line — did not warrant the “immense privilege” of attending an inauguration.
“It would not be appropriate for the Court to grant permission to attend such a hallowed event to someone who carried weapons and threatened police officers in an attempt to thwart the last Inauguration, and who openly glorified ‘[i]nsurrection’ against the United States,” Lamberth wrote in a five-page decision.
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, is the second federal judge to deny a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, turned down a request Thursday from a felony defendant charged with unleashing chemical spray at a police officer.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, approved a misdemeanor defendant’s request to attend the inauguration, and several other requests are pending. The Justice Department has largely opposed such requests, saying it would be improper to subject Capitol police to facing the very people who stood against them four years ago.
Taylor’s is the only request that was publicly endorsed by members of Congress.
Former Utah representative Chris Stewart, who wrote to Lamberth on behalf of three current members of Utah’s congressional delegation, asked the judge’s permission for Taylor to attend as their guest.
“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote last month. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”
Despite the charges against him, Taylor’s case was complex. He quickly pleaded guilty for his crimes, acknowledged his wrongdoing and became an early cooperator with prosecutors, even testifying at the trial of an alleged co-conspirator. Lamberth sentenced Taylor to a term of probation and praised him as a model defendant. Under the terms of Taylor’s three-year probation, he must receive permission to travel to Washington.
Lamberth acknowledged Stewart’s praise for Taylor, but said he had already considered those factors when he gave Taylor a lenient sentence.
Washington Post, Biden awards Liz Cheney a presidential medal for challenging Jan. 6 attack, Maeve Reston, Jan. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The president honored one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics less than three weeks before Trump is set to take office a second time.
President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics at a White House ceremony less than three weeks before Trump is set to reclaim the presidency.Get the latest election news and results
The medal, given to those who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country, is the nation’s second-highest award, after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Biden also gave the medal to Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), who along with Cheney led the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The attendees at the ceremony in the East Room — composed largely of Democratic lawmakers and aides, along with friends and relatives of the honorees — rose to give Cheney a standing ovation as she took the stage to accept the medal, later doing the same for Thompson. Biden alluded to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and pointedly mentioned the “free and fair election of 2020” in his brief remarks before bestowing the medals, but did not mention Trump by name.
Biden noted that he has previously honored “law enforcement officers who defended our Capitol on January 6th and the state and local election officials, elected leaders who defended the free and fair election 2020.”
“Today we celebrate a new group of Americans who dedicated their careers to serving our democracy in other essential ways.”
He spoke of the deep polarization within America, saying the country’s courage and optimism have been tested but have endured. “Our empathy that fuels our common project of our willingness to see each other not as enemies, but as fellow Americans,” he said.
Eighteen other Americans were honored as well at Thursday’s ceremony, but the inclusion of two lawmakers who were so vocal in attacking Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election made the event especially notable. It took place in the same White House that Trump vacated and will soon reoccupy, and was hosted by the president whose victory Trump sought to challenge.
Washington Post, Investigation: How ISIS inspires violence, from a Taylor Swift concert plot to New Orleans carnage, Souad Mekhennet and Joby Warrick, Jan. 3, 2025. In the Bourbon Street rampage, a foiled attack on a European pop concert and other attacks, a pattern of self-radicalization breeds terrorists influenced by ISIS.
New York Times, Biden Blocks Japanese Bid for U.S. Steel, Alan Rappeport, Jan. 3, 2025. President Biden is said to believe the sale poses a threat to national security. The decision would be an extraordinary use of executive power.
President Biden moved to block the $14 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel of Japan in an announcement on Friday based on grounds that the sale posed a threat to national security.
The decision was an extraordinary use of executive power, particularly for a president who is just weeks from leaving office. It is also a departure from America’s long-established culture of open investment, one that could have wide-ranging implications for the U.S. economy. Although the politics of the move were clear, Mr. Biden emphasized that he was acting to protect national security.
“It is my solemn responsibility as president to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Friday morning. “And it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company.”
Mr. Biden’s move to stop the transaction could cause foreign investors to rethink the wisdom of acquiring American firms in sensitive industries that are based in politically important states. It could also roil relations with Japan, a close ally of the United States and one of America’s largest sources of foreign investment.
The president’s decision to block the deal came after a federal committee reviewing the transaction opted to not make a formal recommendation about whether the takeover should be allowed to proceed, according to letters sent to the companies and the White House last month.
New York Times, John Thune Takes Charge in the Senate, Ushering in a New Leadership Era, Carl Hulse, Jan. 3, 2025. The South Dakota conservative is the first new chief of the Senate G.O.P. in nearly 20 years. He will have to manage President-elect Trump’s demands.
John Thune won election to the Senate in 2004 by conquering Senator Tom Daschle, the powerful Democratic majority leader, only to quickly face a 
mortal threat to his political future when a major Air Force base in his state was threatened with closure.
He beat back the effort and saved Ellsworth Air Force Base, a financial engine in his largely rural state, keeping his job and learning valuable lessons that have helped power his rise in the Senate.
Now the South Dakota Republican has ascended to the top and will become majority leader in the new Congress that convenes on Friday, but he is again facing an early challenge and a major threat to his political standing.
Mr. Thune’s task this time is to juggle President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demands, the competing desires of 53 G.O.P. senators and a formidable legislative agenda. It starts with shepherding multiple baggage-laden Trump nominees to confirmation in the closely divided Senate, where he can afford to lose no more than three Republican votes if Democrats hold together in opposition.
Politico, House rules would make it harder to oust speaker in next Congress, Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill, Jan. 2, 2024 (print ed.). The rules package raises the threshold for triggering a vote from one GOP member to nine.Republicans will make it harder to remove the speaker in the 119th Congress under a rules package unveiled Wednesday.
The proposed rules package would require nine GOP members to back making a motion to vacate to trigger a vote on ousting the speaker. That’s an 
increase from the current rule, which allows any single GOP member to force a vote.
The deal to increase the threshold was negotiated in November by members of the House Freedom Caucus and the small business-oriented Main Street Caucus last year — an agreement that was first reported by POLITICO. Even after a vote is triggered, it still requires the support of a majority of the House in order for a speaker to be removed.
The release of the rules package, which includes proposed changes to the House’s general order of operations, comes ahead of Friday’s start to the new Congress. Republicans will need to formally adopt the package on the House floor, which they can’t do until they elect a speaker. In addition to the change to the motion to vacate, the rules package also tweaks the names of two House committees, allows committees to adopt rules on electronic voting, and tees up votes on 12 GOP bills including legislation related to immigration, voter ID and transgender student athletes. Inclusion of one of those bills, related to the International Criminal Court, is already drawing pushback from some members of the House GOP’s right flank.
Speaker Mike Johnson, during a recent Fox News interview, predicted that he will have the votes to become speaker despite his party’s thin margin. But Johnson has yet to lock down the votes he’ll need from his conference. Republicans are expected to have a 219-215 majority at the start of the new Congress, meaning Johnson must have nearly unanimous support from GOP lawmakers to win the gavel.
Washington Post, Trump endorses Mike Johnson ahead of what could be a prolonged House speaker fight, Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro and Meryl Kornfield, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). House Republicans have said for weeks that Donald Trump would have the final say on whether Johnson keeps the gavel or is replaced.
President-elect Donald Trump gave House Republican lawmakers a directive on Monday, days before what is expected to become an embattled speakership fight: Support Mike Johnson’s reelection.
In a lengthy post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump argued that Republicans should “NOT BLOW THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY WHICH WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN” by voters to immediately govern, which would require Johnson (R-Louisiana), right, to be swiftly reelected as House speaker on Friday.Get the latest election news and results
“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote.
But not all Republicans are following Trump’s directive, testing the GOP’s narrow majority and foreshadowing a prolonged fight on the House floor Friday.
“I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) posted on X. “We’ve seen Johnson partner with the democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.”
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More U.S. Legal News
Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson, left, author, attorney and former professor, Jan. 4, 2025. Bill Ackman, above, asks, “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?” It’s a child’s question—or anyone with no knowledge of criminal justice—but here an expert answers it.
Seth AbramsonJan 4 QUESTION from far-right billionaire BILL ACKMAN: “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?”
We know this question is asked in bad faith, because a billionaire like Ackman has lawyers and other advisers who could answer this extremely basic question for him almost immediately.
There’s no reason to broadcast the question to his 1.6 million Twitter followers other than to spread three far-right canards that every criminal justice professional knows to be false: New York City is a dangerous large city (it is actually a very, very safe large city); prosecutors are by and large progressive (by and large, prosecutors are extremely conservative by instinct, politics, and professional-advancement planning); and violent crime is now out of control (it is plummeting).
Nevertheless here’s an ANSWER from criminal defense attorney Seth Abramson:
On a criminal record, each charge a person has ever faced is a separate arrest entry—so if, on a single date of offense, a person is arrested on ten charges, that may well show as ten arrests even though all of those arrests were for a single course of conduct.
Because over 95% of criminal cases are resolved by a defendant taking responsibility for their actions and accepting a plea deal—that’s right, the overwhelming majority of those arrested aren’t like Donald Trump and seek no more than a just punishment for what they are accused of doing—police and prosecutors prepare in advance for this known eventuality by habitually wildly overcharging cases. The theory behind this is that the more charges you can pile on someone, the more likelihood (because each charge carries its own penalty, which can be assessed consecutively to all other penalties) they will enter into a plea agreement with the government and thus spare taxpayers the cost (and government agents the time) of a full-blown criminal trial.
The result of this is that even a rather minor incident will often lead to a very large number of more-or-less redundant charges and an extremely filled-up arrest record.
I’ve seen and personally represented defendants with 50+ arrests from just two dates of offense—meaning just two actions that were deemed by the arresting officers to be criminal. Bill Ackman is also aware of such a situation, given that his political hero, Donald Trump, technically was arrested on 34 felonies as part of a single course of conduct (though in Trump’s case these crimes spanned months, which is actually far worse than what we see with unpremeditated street crimes born of transient anger).
And of course arrests aren’t convictions. While arrests show up on an arrest record, many arrests result in nolle prosequi withdrawals of the charges by prosecutors for reasons ranging from a witness recantation to a plea deal that involves some charges being withdrawn, from the evidence ultimately gathered by police not sustaining the charges the arresting officers originally believed could be sustained to a prosecutor deciding (but this is rare) that the case was overcharged and that is was unfair to the defendant.
Short of charges being withdrawn voluntarily by the government, they may also be “kicked” (dismissed) by judges because (say) witnesses fail to appear in court, certain evidence was illegally seized, the government has botched the collection or testing of the evidence in a way that infringes upon the defendant’s constitutional rights, or a whole host of other reasons—including, notably, a “not guilty” verdict by a jury of the defendant’s peers after a trial.
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Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg
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President Joe Biden awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton on Saturday. (Washington Post photo by Annabelle Gordon).
Washington Post, Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Soros, Ralph Lauren and others, Maeve Restonand Rachel Tashjian, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The star-studded list of recipients includes several philanthropists, Democratic politicians and high-profile donors.
President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a star-studded list of celebrities, donors and former politicians on Saturday, bestowing the nation’s highest civilian honor on some of the country’s best-known names and others who were integral in securing the victory of Biden and other Democrats in recent elections.Get the latest election news and results
Several of the medal recipients have been outspoken critics of President-elect Donald Trump, and Biden’s decision to honor them is yet another way in which he is trying to affirm institutions central to democracy. The honorees included 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, billionaire donor George Soros, actor Michael J. Fox and Democratic political icons including Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968.
“You inspire. You bring healing and joy to so many lives that otherwise wouldn’t be touched,” Biden said during the ceremony at the White House. “You answer the call to serve and lead others to do the same thing, and you defend the values of America, even when they’re under attack, which they have been as of late.”Biden awards Medals of Freedom0:45President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jan. 4 to 19 celebrities including Bono, José Andrés, Hillary Clinton and Magic Johnson. (Video: The Washington Post)
The medal is the highest civilian honor, given to individuals who have “made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”
Politico Magazine, ‘Dark Money’ Is Tainting Washington Think Tanks. A New Report Shows It’s Worse Than You Think, Michael Schaffer, Jan. 3, 2025. Foreign governments are throwing millions at D.C. think tanks.
Washington’s think-tank industry, which sets the terms of debate for so much of American policymaking, is floating on a sea of foreign-government and Pentagon-contractor dollars.
That’s the conclusion of a brand-new report out this morning and shared with me by a pair of scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that officially eschews foreign-government money — and delights in tweaking the Beltway foreign-affairs establishment.
Among other things, the paper says that the top 50 think tanks took in some $110 million over the past five years from foreign governments and related entities, including nearly $17 million from the United Arab Emirates, the largest single foreign donor. Leading Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, kicked in nearly $35 million over the same period.
The Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution topped the list of foreign-government beneficiaries, taking in nearly $21 million and over $17 million, respectively. All in all, 54 different governments contributed to the industry, a list largely made up of pro-western democracies but also including fantastically wealthy authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Most disturbingly, the report makes clear that the numbers it cites may only be partial: Unlike traditional PACs or registered foreign agents, think tanks don’t have to disclose where their money comes from. Researching the study, co-authors Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout told me, meant poring through the organizations’ annual reports in hopes that information would be voluntarily shared.
“More than a third of the top foreign policy think tanks in the US don’t disclose any donor information,” said Freeman. The category encompasses 18 of the 50 biggest think tanks, including highly-regarded Beltway stalwarts like the American Enterprise Institute or the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We really have no clue whatsoever who is funding them. We call these organizations dark money think tanks.”
That particular loaded term — lifted from the secretive political groups legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — is no accident.
According to Freeman and Cleveland-Stout, the typical think tank in 2024 looks a lot more like an advocacy group than a university. The paper doesn’t get into analyzing whether specific white papers were bought and paid for, but the implication is clear: Between media appearances, Congressional testimony and serving as mini governments-in-waiting for whatever party is out of power, the organizations do a lot to shape the political conversation, or at least set the boundaries of what views Washington deems respectable.
As such, they say, Americans have a vested interest in knowing who’s underwriting the opinions.
There are a couple of problems with that ask. One is the U.S. Constitution, which rightly makes it hard for the government to simply order a private organization to open up its books. The second is the self-conception of a lot of think tanks, which often cast themselves as high-minded research organizations rather than outfits involved in the grubby business of lobbying. This mindset underlies some of the reluctance to just lay out the finances voluntarily.
I think it’s time to get over that. In a low-trust moment where the policy views of many think tanks are about to face unprecedented assault, they should be going above and beyond to demonstrate that they’re legit. Hiding behind their researchers’ PhDs — as if they were ivory-tower philosophy professors who couldn’t even find their way to the bursar’s office — won’t cut it.
If the end result is that think tanks’ scholarly self-conception gets muddied up a bit, that’s probably good news for Washington’s culture, even if it dents a few researchers’ egos.
New York Times, Guest Essay: James Carville: I Was Wrong About the 2024 Election. Here’s Why, James Carville is veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC,.Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.).
I thought Kamala Harris would win. I was wrong. While I’m sure we Democrats can argue that the loss wasn’t a landslide or take a little solace in our House performance, the most important thing for us now is to face that we were wrong and take action on the prevailing “why.”
I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump. I keep coming back to the same thing. We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid. We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else.
Although the U.S. economy remains the strongest in the world, with G.D.P. soaring and inflation subsiding, the American people did not settle for us being better than the rest or take that as good enough. Mr. Trump, for the first time in his political career, decisively won by seizing a swath of middle-class and low-income voters focused on the economy. Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative. The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back. Perception is everything in politics, and a lot of Americans perceive us as out to lunch on the economy — not feeling their pain or caring too much about other things instead.
To win back the economic narrative, we must focus on revving up a transformed messaging machine for the new political paradigm we now find ourselves living in. It’s about finding ways to talk to Americans about the economy that are persuasive. Repetitive. Memorable. And entirely focused on the issues that affect Americans’ everyday lives.your times access.
This starts with how we form our opposition. First of all, we have got to stop making Mr. Trump himself our main focus; he can’t be elected again. Furthermore, it’s clear many Americans do not give a rat’s tail about Mr. Trump’s indictments — even if they are justified — or about his antidemocratic impulses or about social issues if they cannot provide for themselves or their families.
Mr. Trump won the popular vote by putting the economic anger of Americans front and center. If we focus on anything else, we risk falling farther into the abyss. Our messaging machine must sharply focus on opposing the unpopular Republican economic agenda that will live on past him. Vocally oppose the party, not the person or the extremism of his movement. I don’t always agree with Wall Street, but Jamie Dimon was right when he said that Democrats’ railing against “ultra-MAGA” was insulting and politically tone-deaf. Denouncing other Americans or their leader as miscreants is not going to win elections; focusing on their economic pain will, as will contesting the Republican economic agenda.
There will be plenty to oppose. Our central message must revolve around opposing Republicans’ tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It is deeply unpopular, and we know they want to do it again. And then we attack the rest. We know Republicans will most likely skyrocket everyday costs with slapstick tariffs; they will almost certainly attempt to slash the Affordable Care Act, raising premiums on the working class; and they will probably do next to nothing to curb the cost of prescription drugs. In a truly stunning display of inhumanity, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already lacerated health care funding for Sept. 11 emergency workers and survivors. There will be much, much worse to come.
But of course, opposition is only half the coin.
While Democrats have next to no chance of passing a bold, progressive economic agenda in the next four years, what we can do is force Republicans to oppose us. We must be on the offensive with a wildly popular and populist economic agenda they cannot be for.
Let’s start by forcing them to oppose a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Let’s make Roe v. Wade an economic messaging issue and force them to block our attempts to codify it into law. And let’s take back the immigration issue by making it an economic issue and force the G.O.P. to deny bipartisan reform that expedites entry for high-performing talent and for those who will bring business into our nation. This year the Democratic Party leadership must convene and publish a creative, popular and bold economic agenda and proactively take back our economic turf. Go big, go populist, stick to economic progress and force them to oppose what they cannot be for. In unison.
Finally, Democrats must trudge headfirst with this economic agenda into the new media paradigm we now live in. I am an 80-year-old man and can see clearly that we are barreling toward a nontraditional and decentralized media environment. Podcasts are the new print newspapers and magazines. Social platforms are a social conscience. And influencers are digital stewards of that conscience. Our economic message must be sharp, crisp, clear — and we must take it right to the people. To Democratic presidential hopefuls, your auditions for 2028 should be based on two things: 1) How authentic you are on the economy and 2) how well you deliver it on a podcast.
The road ahead will not be easy, but there are no two roads to choose from. The path forward could not be more certain: We live or die by winning public perception of the economy.
Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it forever shall be.
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using hisname. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema, with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued below.
Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Bowser goes to Mar-a-Lago, says she had ‘great meeting’ with Trump, Meagan Flynn and Martin Weil, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Bowser said the two had met “to discuss our shared priorities” for Donald Trump’s second term as president.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed “shared priorities” involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the “great meeting.”
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
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New York Times, Guest Essay: What’s the Matter With Chicago? Andrew G. Biggs (senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, serving since 2016 as a presidentially appointed member of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, which has overseen the Puerto Rico government’s bankruptcy.), Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.).
The word bankruptcy has been hanging over Chicago like a storm cloud about to burst.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is the latest leader to attempt to close Chicago’s gaping fiscal gap: He proposed a $300 million property tax increase to partly fill Chicago’s $982 million projected budget deficit, only to be unanimously rejected by the City Council. The City Council narrowly passed a budget on Dec. 16, with far less in tax increases than the mayor had initially demanded.
The Windy City’s woes are the product of decades of fiscal profligacy and a cautionary tale to policymakers in every region and at every level of government: Retirement benefits are like free junk food to politicians — everyone loves them, and the bills don’t arrive until later. They can be ruinous for a city’s long-term fiscal health.
At the heart of Chicago’s deficit are decades of increasingly generous retirement benefits offered by Chicago’s leaders to more than 30,000 public employees, a politically powerful constituency. Today, a city employee retiring after 35 years with a final salary of $75,000 would receive combined pension and retiree health benefits of about $77,000.
The City government has failed to fund those pension promises fully and the bill has come due. Retirement benefits and debt service together made up 43 percent of Chicago’s budget in 2022, the highest rate of any U.S. city. Chicago spends more on debt and pensions than it does on the police and infrastructure, according to an analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian-leaning policy group. In other words, Chicago is paying for the past, not investing for the future.your times access
Chicago’s pension actuary warned in a letter to the plan’s leadership last year that “the Fund is still at risk of potential insolvency if an economic recession or investment market downturn were to occur in the near term.” (He wrote it in boldface to get policymakers to take notice.)Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Chicago owes bondholders almost $29 billion. It also faces $35 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and almost $2 billion in unfunded retiree health benefits. And these figures do not include an additional $14 billion in unfunded benefits owed to Chicago’s teachers. The watchdog group Truth in Accounting gives Chicago a grade of “F” for fiscal responsibility, ranking it 74 out of 75 cities. (New York City is last.)
City leaders may continue to ignore these warnings. If the pension fund does get close to insolvency, Chicago can most likely keep the pension checks flowing by suspending payments to bondholders. Illinois has no legal provision for Chicago to declare bankruptcy, meaning the state would be forced to rush legislation into place to prevent financial chaos.
Judging by the experience of places such as Detroit and Puerto Rico, where I serve on a federally appointed board overseeing the island government’s bankruptcy, pensions would largely be protected in the event of fiscal chaos, followed by core government operations. Nonessential government services would be reduced, and bondholders would receive what remains.
Even if Chicago can contain the political fallout locally, the economic impact would reach far beyond the city limits. Chicago is the largest city in the Midwest and the third largest nationwide. The state of Illinois, which faces vast debts of its own, is not in a position to bail out its largest city, so Congress or the Federal Reserve might have to step in to help.
Policymakers in other big American cities ought to be paying attention. Truth in Accounting gave San Francisco a fiscal grade of D, while New York’s largest-in-the-nation debt burden of $61,800 per taxpayer caused it to share a failing grade with Chicago. New York and San Francisco each already devote more than 22 percent of their total budgets to retirement benefits and debt.
One reason it’s easy to allow pension-fueled deficits to keep growing is that there are very few guardrails. State and local government pensions are unregulated by the federal government, so they operate with much lower funding standards than federal government pensions or those offered by private companies.
Like private pensions, state and local governments should be required to assume conservative returns on pension investments and to address unfunded liabilities quickly, rather than letting funding shortfalls fester over decades.
If, as in Chicago, decades of fiscal recklessness are allowed to go unchecked, changing course can be extremely painful. Chicago has increased its pension contributions significantly. But the city must pay for its $927 million in additional pension contributions by reducing other essential government functions.
The consequence is a lower level of public services for everyone. With the city police force down by over 1,600 officers since 2018, the city’s inspector general found that 49 percent of 911 calls appear to go unanswered. Chicago is already seeing the effects of this deterioration. Companies such as Boeing, United Airlines, Tyson Foods and the hedge fund Citadel have all moved operations away from Chicago in recent years, citing the business environment, public safety and governance quality among their reasons.+Andrew G Biggs is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 21, 2024 [U.S. Government Shutdown Avoided], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 22, 2024. Shortly after midnight last night, the Senate passed the continuing resolution to fund the government through March 14, 2025. The previous continuing resolution ran out at midnight, but as Bloomberg’s congressional budget reporter Steven Dennis explained, “midnight is NOT a hard deadline for a government shutdown. A shutdown occurs only when [the Office of Management and Budget] issues a shutdown order, which they traditionally will NOT issue if a bill is moving toward completion.”
President Joe Biden signed the bill this morning, praising the agreement for keeping the government open, providing urgently needed disaster relief, and providing the money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a container ship hit it in March 2024, causing it to collapse.
Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Bowser goes to Mar-a-Lago, says she had ‘great meeting’ with Trump, Meagan Flynn and Martin Weil, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Bowser said the two had met “to discuss our shared priorities” for Donald Trump’s second term as president.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed “shared priorities” involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the “great meeting.”
New York Times, Trump Weighs In on Immigrant Visa Debate but Offers Little Clarity, Ken Bensinger, Dec. 29, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump said he had used the visas for skilled workers “many times.” But he has mainly used visas for unskilled workers like housekeepers.
President-elect Donald J. Trump appeared to weigh in on Saturday on a heated debate among his supporters over the role of skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy, saying he had frequently used the visas for those workers and backed the program.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” he told The New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
But his comments — which were enthusiastically embraced by the technology industry as an endorsement — may muddy the waters because Mr. Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States for up to three years and can be extended to six years.
Instead, he has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months. Federal data show Mr. Trump’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past 20 years.
New York Times, Trump Previews Second Term in Sprawling Speech to Conservative Conference, Michael D. Shear, Dec. 22, 2024. President-elect Trump repeated false claims about immigration and the border and discussed the Panama Canal in the 90-minute address.
President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a sprawling address on Sunday that he called a “small preview of the common-sense revolution” his administration will bring, pledging to slam shut the nation’s borders, end federal regulations, lower taxes, prosecute his rivals, “stop woke” and “end the transgender lunacy.”
In a 90-minute speech at a conservative conference in Phoenix, Mr. Trump offered a triumphant view of his election victory in which he described his liberal adversaries as “befuddled” and promised that a new “golden age in America” had begun.
“We will end the occupation, and Jan. 20 will truly be liberation day in America,” Mr. Trump told thousands of people at AmericaFest, a four-day conference run by the conservative group Turning Point USA.
The president-elect’s speech was a familiar mash-up of false assertions, self-praise, fierce attacks on his adversaries and promises about how his return to power would change the country for the better.
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More On Carter Life, Legacy
Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
New York Times, Jimmy Carter (1924-2024): A Pomp-Filled Farewell for Carter With 3 Days of Tributes, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025. The nation’s leaders on Tuesday kicked off three days of tributes to Jimmy Carter, staging an elaborate pageant of Washington fanfare for a politician who disavowed the trappings of the imperial presidency and never gave up his humble Georgia roots.
Mr. Carter, who died last week at age 100, was flown to Washington and taken to the U.S. Navy Memorial downtown, then delivered to the Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. He will lie in state in the Rotunda all day Wednesday before a formal state funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
“James Earl Carter Jr. loved our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a eulogy during a solemn Capitol service attended by members of Congress, the cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomatic corps. “He lived his faith, he served the people and he left the world better than he found it. And in the end, Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.”
Former President Carter, who once banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” will lie in state at the Capitol as part of three days of elaborate ceremonies.
President Jimmy Carter and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 1978. Both saw themselves as straight shooters in a world of spinners (Photo:
Barry Thumma/Associated Press
New York Times, ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History, Peter Baker, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). President Biden is another Democrat hurt by inflation and struggling to free hostages. But Mr. Carter’s enhanced reputation post-presidency offers hope.
When President Biden appeared on camera to pay tribute to former President Jimmy Carter, he sounded almost as if he were thinking of himself in these final days in office.
“In today’s world, some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era — with honesty and character, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden said in breaking away from his Caribbean vacation on Sunday after the former president’s death. “It mattered. But I don’t believe it’s a bygone era.”
Mr. Biden, too, has been dismissed as a man of a bygone era, an old-school politician in a new-school world, an octogenarian president playing by rules he learned in the 1970s when he served in the Senate and Mr. Carter was in the White House, rules that did not help him in today’s fast-paced, smash-mouth political arena. He is, in this view, a man out of time — Mr. Carter’s time.
Washington Post, Jimmy Carter: They wrote obituaries about Carter — but died before him, Laura Wagner, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Carter’s longevity meant that some of his obit writers have by now not only left journalism but also their mortal coils.
New York Times, In Carter’s Hometown, a Long Vigil Ends With Sorrow, but Also Uplift, Rick Rojas, Christina Morales and Christian Boone, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Plains, Ga., had been bracing for the inevitable through Jimmy Carter’s ailments and nearly two years of hospice care. Still, his death “doesn’t seem real.”
The Georgia town known first and foremost as the home of Jimmy Carter had steeled itself time and again for an existence without him. First, there was his cancer diagnosis in 2015, and then the fall that broke a hip, and the disclosure almost two years ago that he had entered hospice care.
But sure enough, every time, he held on.
And so, Plains, a speck of a community tied to the 39th president for the better part of a century, awoke on Monday to a reality that, strangely enough, seemed almost as inconceivable as it was inevitable. Mr. Carter, 100, was gone. He died on Sunday at his home, the modest ranch house hidden behind the security fencing and guard stations in the center of town.
“Honestly, it doesn’t seem real,” said Philip Kurland, the owner of the Plains Trading Post, an overstuffed emporium of political memorabilia in the strip of businesses that makes up downtown. “It was inevitable, but there’s still sadness. There’s also a feeling of: Let’s celebrate a life well lived.”
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (New York Times photo by Damon Winter )
New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100, Peter Baker and Roy Reed, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but held on longer than even his family expected.
Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter on the campaign trail and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of the former president’s signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
Other than interludes in the White House and the Georgia governor’s mansion, he and his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, lived in the same simple home in Plains for most of their adult lives and each of them passed away there, Mrs. Carter in November last year.
A lifelong farmer who still worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s, Mr. Carter had long defied death and outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him. Over the years, he beat back a series of health crises, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, and repeated falls, one giving him a broken hip.
The Carter Center announced in February last year that Mr. Carter, “after a series of short hospital stays,” had decided to forgo further life-prolonging medical treatment and would receive hospice care at home.
News that he seemed to be in his final days prompted a wave of tributes and remembrances of his extended and eventful life, but even then he upended expectations by hanging on for nearly two years. He lived long enough to bid farewell to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96, culminating a marriage of 77 years.
Jimmy Carter, furthest right, is standing in the Oval Office with four of his successors. From left to right: George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former President Jimmy Carter, furthest right, in a group photo of his successors in January 2009 (New York Times photo by Doug Mills)
New York Times, Carter the Critic Didn’t Spare His Successors, Linda Qiu, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter defied the unwritten rule of former presidents: Don’t criticize the occupant of the Oval Office.
Former President Jimmy Carter grinned in the Oval Office in January 2009 for a photograph, a visible gap separating him from four of his successors. As the others stood shoulder to shoulder, he positioned himself off to the side, a hand in one pocket, as if to distance himself just slightly from that most exclusive club.
Mr. Carter had no qualms about breaking one of that club’s unwritten rules, namely that former presidents restrain their critiques of the current occupant of the Oval Office. In the four decades after leaving the White House following the 1980 election, he caused regular stirs with pointed opinions about his successors.
“He was in fights with everyone, Democrats, Republicans,” said Julian E. Zelizer, the author of “Jimmy Carter” and a historian at Princeton University, who called Mr. Carter “a maverick through and through.”
Stuart Eizenstat, a former adviser to Mr. Carter, said the former president wasn’t the type of person to just go back to Plains, Ga., and “work on carpentry and painting.”
“When he left office, he was in his mid 50s,” Mr. Eizenstat said. “He didn’t want his voice to be unheard.”
Washington Post, Carter to lie in state at Capitol, with state funeral to follow on Jan. 9, Azi Paybarahm, Dec. 30, 2024. Former presidents and other dignitaries are expected to attend the service at Washington National Cathedral where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy.
The death of former president Jimmy Carter touched off an American mourning ritual that requires quickly coordinating a sprawling group of federal officials, local partners and law enforcement, as well as elected leaders from across the political spectrum.Get the latest election news and results
Services to honor Carter will begin Jan. 4 in his home state of Georgia and conclude Jan. 9 with a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral, where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy. Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for three days, which will give members of Congress and everyday Americans the opportunity to pay their respects.
The events require a complicated choreography of protocol, ceremony and security at which official Washington excels, but the timing of Carter’s funeral presents some particular challenges. The former president died Sunday at the age of 100.
The tributes to Carter come after the New Year’s Day holiday and as Washington is experiencing a political transition, with Biden preparing to hand power to President-elect Donald Trump. Separately, a fractured House Republican majority will try to elect a speaker on Jan. 3, a process that previously took the GOP dozens of rounds of votes spread over several days of public feuding.
New York Times, After Jimmy Carter Won the Presidency, Democrats Lost the South, Richard Fausset, Dec. 30, 2024. On the day he was sworn in as governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, an ambitious white peanut farmer from rural Sumter County, announced that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
The declaration landed like the carefully calculated bomb it was intended to be in the South of 1971 — and landed Mr. Carter on the cover of Time magazine, along with the blurb, “Dixie whistles a different tune.”
But in his ensuing half-century of public life, Mr. Carter, the one-term Democratic president who died Sunday at 100, would be forced to listen rather helplessly as Republicans mostly called the tune in his native South, supported by white voters who were uncomfortable with the Democrats’ embrace of racial inclusion and abortion rights, and were attracted to the small-government, low-tax promises of the party of Ronald Reagan.
Indeed, after Mr. Carter’s ascension to the White House, the states of the old Confederacy would go on to become, with a few exceptions, a crucial base of support for Republican presidential candidates. Much of that support came from Mr. Carter’s fellow Southern evangelicals, who turned sharply away from him and the Democrats during his presidential term. They became one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs and remain so to this day.
That was part of a shift that had begun in the early 1960s, as Republicans found a way to chip and then blast away at what had been a solidly Democratic South since the end of Reconstruction. Southerners’ fealty to the party had been based on their appreciation for Roosevelt’s New Deal, and their bitterness over the 19th century Republicanism of Lincoln that helped erode the region’s strict racial hierarchies.
Yet Mr. Carter also helped to create a model for Democratic success in a South that has become increasingly Republican‚ a model that remains workable to varying degrees today. The election of 1976 was one of a number of times that a Democratic candidate has emerged with just the right balance of rhetoric and policy promises, uniting just enough white Southern progressives and white moderates in a successful coalition with Black and other minority voters.
Recent Relevant Headlines
Trump's Cases, Allies, Threats, Opponents
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using his name. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued from above.
I'm going to state publicly what I have suspected all along but have not yet divulged until now. This is my personal speculation, but I believe that a deal was made by Biden to get Trump to leave the White House and relinquish power in 2021, provided he would not be prosecuted aggressively. This, in my mind, is the only thing which solves the mystery of why did Trump even leave, and why did he agree to a transition? And I should state for the record that while I always remained critical in a principled way, I have been a strong and vocal defender of Joe Biden since he launched his candidacy in 2017, and I am not writing this to bash him. In a way, if a deal was made I understand it and his motives.
That said, all indications were that Trump would make some desperate effort at a last stand, because he stood to lose his Presidential legal shield and go to jail if he didn't. He even tried to get Netanyahu's help in launching a war with Iran at the end to fabricate a national emergency and void the election. General Milley actually called it Trump's "Reichstag Fire" and blocked it. Despite his desperation, Trump relented, and it has always been puzzling to me as to why. If there were a deal, that would explain it. We know that everything with Trump is a transaction, devoid of any motive other than self-preservation. I am certainly open to discussion if others have thoughts on it, because it is just my opinion and nothing more.
So, on our timeline, Biden came in, pledged bipartisanship and healing in his inaugural, appointed Garland under pressure from Dunns's flunky Klain, left. He (Garland) was a former DOJ prosecutor and federal judge, a plodding GOP bureaucrat and proceduralist, guaranteed to not do anything which could remotely be considered "political" in order to protect the DOJ from charges of "weaponizing Justice. Therefore when it came to not antagonizing MAGA, he was right on board with Klain's and Dunn's program.
Remember also that this was the guy who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers McVeigh and Nichols, but the religious cult and militia networks (the neo-Nazi "Christian Identity," and the Michigan militia) which housed them and actively supported their anti-government plot were let off the hook. There was a network, not just two guys, and Garland chose to not go after all of them for sedition conspiracy, only the two mentioned for the crime of the bombing. (It should be mentioned that the same Michigan militia networks that supported them were caught plotting a "citizen's arrest" of Governor Gretchen Whitmer 26 years later, which was in fact a plot to kidnap her and her cabinet, conduct mock trials and summary executions for treason, right after they were incited by Trump to storm the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to oppose covid lockdown)
Garland, once sworn in after the usual obstruction in the Senate by McConnell, (the second go-round for him after he was Obama's failed nominee for SCOTUS) did nothing for month after month about the stolen documents or J-6. Instead of going after the planners and the ringleaders, he was preoccupied with rounding up and prosecuting the thousand or so zombies used as cannon-fodder for the riot, which was just cover for the actual coup plot of Trump's Congreseional allies boiding Biden's electors. Not Trump,Meadows, Bannon, Stone, especially not Ginni Thomas. No, it was more important to nail the “horny” QAnon guy than the people who were responsible for bring the mob which left five dead DC cops and hundreds more injured.
Then the J-6 committee did such a thorough job documenting Trump's coup attempt, that Garland was literally forced to abort the "hands off" policy and started a grand jury. And once it was finally underway, all of his foot-dragging led to his "cover your ass" move of appointing a special prosecutor, Jack Smith.
Then there were shocking revelations that Trump's stolen documents included nuclear secrets which he was showing off to guests and donors at his golf club, and Biden's national security team raised the roof to convince him to pressure Garland to go after them. Garland started another investigation he didn't want in order to force Trump to give the documents up. Trump said "fuck you," ordered his lawyers to lie to the FBI, he was allowed to stall, hide some of what he had, possibly sell some of it, so Garland was forced to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and start a second grand jury (which again he never wanted) and Biden went along with him on all of it.
And to top it off, Garland incredibly insisted that Smith convene the grand jury and try the stolen documents case in Ron DeSantis' fascist hellscape of Florida, not Washington DC where the judges are more balanced than Florida's Republican hack federal appointees. No credible reason for Garland to insist Smith go to trial in Florida was ever given, aside from the fact the documents were there. He personally oversaw packing up in Washington, and had no immunity the moment Biden was sworn in. It would have been a slam dunk.
The only possible explanation is that bringing the case in Trump's home state was a sop, a buy-off to mitigate the rage and retribution factor from the Congressional MAGAts. Remember that after the Mar-aLago FBI search warrant was executed, a Trump supporter assassinated an FBI agent in Cincinnati, and there was a pattern of threats against their offices nationwide. Therefore Florida is what they went with, and almost predictibly a Trump appointed "fan-girl" known as Aileen "Loose Cannon" got jurisdiction, stalled, delayed, and after the SCOTUS immunity ruling threw out the case entirely.
This bought Trump the time he needed to let the SCOTUS step in and give him his blank check to cancel all of his cases and start making plans to deploy Seal Team Six to assassinate his political opponents. All of the cases were then pronounced DOA, including the state criminal charges in Georgia and New York.
As a consequence of Garland's malfeasance and incompetence, we now have a Führer, not a President, coming in with list in hand of his targets for bloody retribution, a person with the mental map and personality disorders of the movie character Patrick Bateman from the bloody horror novel "American Psycho." And the worst thing is that some of us wanted to believe the same thing President Biden believed, that this collection of vengeance-seeking bloodthirsty fascists who belong to a violent cult led by a psychopath could be bargained with. Or, for that matter cared even a whit about the national interest, and were really just normal good people who would come around when we got some bills passed that would mean job security and putting money in the pockets of their voters.
It is beyond me that someone with Joe's battle-tested life experiences and history of political wars in the Senate and as VP could actually have believed this. He once told Putin to his face that he had no soul. Did he really think he could horse-trade with people who were bought or sold, or had their lives threatened? Did he really believe that Trump would honor his side of any deal that was made, if one was made? I believe in redemption, but I don't cry over Hallmark movie happy endings which I know to not be real,
The intention, in my view, was never to prosecute or jail Trump, despite Jack Smith's committment to do just that. It was to use the prosecutions as leverage to contain Trump and force him to eventually drop out of the campaign. And instead he turned around and did the exact opposite. And Biden went along with the deal and Garland's do-nothingism because his "Rasputin" Anita Dunn was in his ear telling him that if Trump went on trial he would lose the "moderate MAGA" vote and therefore the whole election, and our democracy along with it.
Biden never realized how tragic his error was until Garland went after his son, then after him personally on his decade old collection of useless memorabilia in his garage, and Garland's choice for Special Prosecutor, Republican hack prosecutor Robert Hur (approved of by Gym Jordan and James Comer) wrote a long report on how there was no crime, but Biden seemed senile. All this of course to prove himself fair and non-partisan when it came time to testify in Jordan's committee to grovel for budget crumbs and defend his turf. Joe never saw it coming, like a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.
That is my reading from the outside, fwiw. Like I said it is speculation. And the tragedy regardless is that Biden's awful pragmatic decision born of a 50 year long career of centrist dealmaking with Republicans came back to haunt him because Garland offered up his son Hunter as a sacrifice to the MAGA carnivores, hoping that would "balance things out" for his Trump cases, (which again, I believe he never wanted) and prove his department was apolitical in order to keep them out of his business running the DOJ. Well...how did that all work out?
That is what I believe actually happened. At some point I think more will come out that points toward this scenario as being likely.
So, one mystery solved, which is why Biden picked Garland. Another one still remains open, which is why did Trump leave the White House in 2021, a decision he has said he regretted all along. Whatever the case, we will pay the price for President Biden's unfortunate decisions reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. He only found out at the tragic end who his real friends were, and who were his enemies, because he saw what he wanted to see and placed his trust in the wrong people at the worst possible time. He wanted to believe that McConnell and Lindsey Graham were still his friends and that they would work with him. He didn't want to see how they and others were broken by Trump.
Former President and President-elect Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case, Lola Fadulu, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed). The president-elect had asked a court to overturn the defamation judgment against him in the case, which centered on E. Jean Carroll’s account of a sexual attack in a dressing room.President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that the court should not have allowed Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.
The appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him. “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. It was unsigned but issued by a three-judge panel made up of Denny Chin and Susan Carney — appointed by President Barack Obama — as well as Myrna Perez, appointed by President Biden.
“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” Roberta Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a statement. “We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, who is set to be his White House communications director, said Mr. Trump was re-elected with an “overwhelming mandate,” and he said the American people “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
Mr. Trump was represented in the appeal by D. John Sauer, his pick for U.S. solicitor general.
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, a Florida Republican who was President-elect Trump's's first nominee to become U.S. Attorney General in a second Trump administration, is shown with Trump in a file photo via Facebook.
New York Times, Trump Transition Updates: Ethics Panel Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman and Robert Draper, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). Former Representative Matt Gaetz has been under investigation over allegations including sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
A report (here) by the House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, of regularly paying for sex, using illegal drugs and having sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. The report concluded that the actions by Mr. Gaetz — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general — violated state sexual misconduct laws, including Florida’s statutory rape law, and violated House rules. But the committee said it did not find conclusive evidence that he violated federal sex trafficking laws. Read more ›
President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Mr. Trump returns to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row. Mr. Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, but legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration.
An ethics panel report concluded that Gaetz violated state laws and House rules.
The House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general, of regularly paying for sex, possessing illegal drugs and having sexual relations with an underage girl, according to a draft of the panel’s report.
The report, which was released on Monday, found that from at least 2017 to 2020, Mr. Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; and, in 2017, “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” the report said.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), center, in a 2017 Facebook photo with friends and fellow ardent Trump supporters Roger Stone and Joel Greenberg, the latter a former Florida tax collector now imprisoned on multiple federal felony charges for sex trafficking, allegedly in part with Gaetz.
Politico, Gaetz report renews debate about how he escaped federal charges, Josh Gerstein, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The Justice Department applies federal sex-trafficking laws narrowly.
The House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz offers some hints about why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute the former Florida congressman after a wide-ranging federal investigation into whether he committed sex trafficking.
The decision likely stemmed from concerns about the strength of the evidence and the department’s history of applying sex-trafficking laws narrowly, former prosecutors said Monday.
The modern federal sex trafficking law is limited to cases involving coercion, fraud or the interstate or international movement of minors for sex. Despite its damning evidence of wide-ranging violations of law and House rules by Gaetz, the Ethics Committee report did not find those factors.
An older statute, known as the Mann Act, sweeps more broadly, but the Justice Department as a matter of discretion limits its application to particularly egregious acts of trafficking.Jeffries on Gaetz Report: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'
The most egregious allegation Gaetz faces is having sex with a 17-year-old. But the Ethics Committee report does not say that he transported or arranged for transport of the alleged victim across state lines — an important point because some connection to interstate commerce is required for it to become a federal sex-trafficking crime. The report also says the then-17-year-old told investigators she did not tell Gaetz her age at the time, and that he didn’t ask.
The report does bluntly accuse Gaetz of having violated Florida’s statutory rape law. But it concluded that a state prosecution is impossible at this point because he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old in 2017, and the state’s statute of limitations has expired.
The report also found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed other illegal conduct, including hiring prostitutes and using illicit drugs. Some of that conduct was connected to interstate commerce — but federal prosecutors likely felt it did not rise to the level of what is typically prosecuted under the relevant federal statutes.
The Mann Act is traditionally reserved “for situations where there’s severe forms of trafficking and exploitation of the victims,” said Margaret Gandy, a former federal prosecutor.
Because Gaetz’ alleged interstate and international conduct involved women over 18 and there was no suggestion of violence or duress, DOJ may not have thought it was an appropriate Mann Act case to charge, Gandy said.
“When it is exploitative and abusive, when there’s obviously physical force, coercion, duress, all those things, that makes it easy,” Gandy said. “There’s more of a gray area sometimes around some more transactional sex with consenting adults that warrants that additional pause and consideration.”
Another former federal prosecutor, Robert Bittman, agreed that the department rarely brings sex-trafficking charges in cases of consensual sex between adults, even if money changed hands.
“It’s a crime, it’s a statute on the books that they can prosecute — but it’s not a high-priority thing,” he said. “It’s not something that’s often prosecuted, and really would only be prosecuted if there are significant, other aggravating factors.”
Federal prosecutors have also historically hesitated to bring cases that involve quid-pro-quos for sex that involve things other than an explicit payment.
The Justice Department concluded its investigation into Gaetz last year. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
However, a law enforcement official said all DOJ decisions about Gaetz were made by career prosecutors. The official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, added that this has been the standard practice for the Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive investigations into political figures.
An attorney for Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment, and Gaetz directed reporters seeking comment to his social media posts.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X, contending that many of the claims in the report were inaccurate. He has repeatedly denied having sex with anyone under 18 and said money he transferred to women was to compensate girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for their travel.MOST READbiden-37249.jpg
New York Times, Trump’s Suit Over Iowa Poll Is His Latest Action Against News Media, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, David Enrich and Alan Feuer, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump sued The Des Moines Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, escalating his threats to seek retribution against the mainstream media and his political enemies.
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, right, Dec. 15, 2024. Kash Patel Is A Lunatic.
This MSNBC article by author and writer Jay Michaelson makes a strong case for Biden to carry out sweeping pre-emptive pardons to protect those targeted for revenge prosecutions by Trump and his incoming "Himmler," Kash Patel, left.
The counterarguments by legalists, MAGA fascists and several Biden-bashing liberal media pundits are fairly well refuted, and in fact shown to be bogus in each example.
Americans by and large are letting their fears affect their judgment, and are either blocking out the Trump/Patel threat to our constitutional system and targeted individuals, or have resigned themselves to it and are retreating into a psychological bunker mentality.
The only remedy is effective political action. Throwing junk memes up against your Facebook wall is no solution and represents a net negative as far as wasted time and energy.Facebook is part of the apparatus which will be deployed to identify us and pick us off, one by one. Be clear that this is a devolving Orwellian type of platform designed to neutralize Trump's political opposition.
I should not have to make this case. You all saw what Facebook did with their algorithm to spike most of the posts about Project 2025 when that became the leading issue in the campaign. And of course it was soon determined that the corporate figure who designed that algorithm in charge of so-called “community guidelines” was a Trump guy.
And now you have Zuckerberg crawling to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's bone spurs, then funding his inaugural to the tune of 1 million, with who knows what other kinds of backroom deals were struck to keep Trump off his back. Same with Bezos.
My days here are numbered. You also saw this week that my page was hijacked and I lost all but a handful of my 1400 readers. My wife posted a notice on my timeline to notify everyone that I have a new page, and how to find it. That message was removed, either by Facebook or the hijacker.
So this place is a dead end for those resisting the regime. That is where we are. I'm taking steps this weekend to backup and safeguard my Substack archive of a 1000 articles going back six years. Others who are writers and posters should consider taking similar steps to preserve their data.
Don't block on this, we are headed into dark territory.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, reportedly involving in part hush money to women ((Associated Press photo by Seth Wong). Below, the presiding judge in the case was Juan Merchon, below left.
New York Times, Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling, Ben Protess and Kate Christobek, Dec. 16, 2024. Justice Juan Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by President-elect Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Deadline, Donald Trump, On ‘Meet The Press,’ Again Pledges To Pardon January 6th Rioters, Says Liz Cheney And Other Committee Members “Should Go To Jail
Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
New York Times, U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol, Roni Caryn Rabin, Jan. 3, 2025. Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to malignancies, including breast cancer. But to label them, Congress would have to act.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general, above, said on Friday.
It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer.
Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”
But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said.
He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview.
“The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change.
Still, President-elect Donald J. Trump does not drink, and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swore off alcohol and drugs decades ago, and says he regularly attends AA meetings.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
There is no question that heavy consumption is harmful. But supporters of moderate drinking — including makers of wine, beer and spirits, and some physicians and scientists — argue that a little alcohol each day may reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States.
Newer scientific studies have criticized the methodology of earlier studies, however, and have challenged that view, which was once a consensus.
While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.
Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.
Two scientific reviews will be used to inform the updated recommendations about alcohol consumption in the federal dietary guidelines.
Five years ago, the scientific report that informed the writing of the 2020-2025 dietary guidelines acknowledged that alcohol is a carcinogen and generally unhealthy and suggested “tightening guidelines” by capping the recommendation for men at one standard drink, or 14 grams of alcohol a day.
When the final guidelines were drafted, however, there was no change in the advice that moderate drinking of up to two drinks a day for men was acceptable.
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images).
New York Times, Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? Emily Baumgaertner, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.
When President-elect Donald J. Trump mused in a recent television interview about whether vaccines cause autism — a theory that has been discredited by dozens of scientific studies — autism researchers across the country collectively sighed in frustration.
But during the interview, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Trump made one passing comment with which they could agree: “I mean, something is going on,” he said, referring to skyrocketing rates of autism. “I think somebody has to find out.”
What is going on? Autism diagnoses are undeniably on the rise in the United States — about 1 in 36 children have one, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected from 11 states, compared with 1 in 150 children in 2000 — and researchers have not yet arrived at a clear explanation. They attribute most of the surge to increased awareness of the disorder and changes in how it is classified by medical professionals. But scientists say there are other factors, genetic and environmental, that could be playing a role too.
Autism spectrum disorder, as it is officially called, is inherently wide-ranging, marked by a blend of social and communication issues, repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns that vary in severity. A mildly autistic child could simply struggle with social cues, while a child with a severe case could be nonverbal. There is no blood test or brain scan to determine who has autism, just a clinician’s observations.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Preferring Not to See, Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t exactly hidden his anti-vaccine views over the years, as hundreds of hours of video footage, numerous books, and many documentaries show. And yet, on the cusp of being considered for the top health post in the country, Senate Republicans are suggesting they’re reassured Kennedy has moderated his views based on their brief, one-on-one conversations.
“I think he’s done a good job of answering a lot of the questions about his views on vaccines,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNN after meeting with Kennedy this week. “I think he understands the values and benefit that vaccines play and have played through the years preventing disease.”
We don’t know exactly what Thune and Kennedy discussed. (Neither party opted to fill me in, although I did ask.) But come on!
Kennedy may well have denied—as he has in public for years—that he is truly “anti-vaccine.” Like many other anti-vaxxers, Kennedy prefers to be thought of as a stickler for vaccine safety.
But one would have to be deliberately obtuse or willingly naïve to think that Kennedy has suddenly seen the light about the benefits of vaccines. He has spent years arguing that the vaccines currently on the market are harming more people than they help. And he’s actively campaigning against their continued use, pending a brand-new regimen of placebo-controlled testing.
In one interview, Kennedy made the case against the measles vaccine by noting what a great time he had when he and his siblings caught the disease, which can have gruesome complications including brain swelling (you don’t say?), gastrointestinal issues and fever, sepsis, and septicemia.
“My 11 brothers and sisters, we all had measles and it was a great week” he said, describing the cure for measles as “chicken soup and vitamin A.”
He has declared that “the polio vaccine does not work” and argued that it in fact could be responsible for a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
In 2021, he told podcaster Alec Zeck that he tries to actively convince people not to get their kids vaccinated. “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not to get him vaccinated.’”
Last year, he went further while speaking to podcaster Lex Fridman: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
A few months later, in a CNN appearance, he tried to clean those comments up:
"What I meant—which was a bad use of words in this—none of the vaccines that are currently on the mandated schedule for children, the 72 vaccines for children, have ever been tested in a pre-licensing safety study. What that means is that we do not know what the risk profile is for those products."
When Kennedy argues that he just wants to “test” vaccines—or when Donald Trump says, as he did last weekend, that “there are problems” surrounding pediatric vaccination and “we’re going to find out what those problems are”—what he is saying is actually quite drastic.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Never Trumpers Were Right, Actually, Jonathan V. Last, right, Dec. 18, 2024. A response to Bret Stephens. Plus drone talk from the front lines.
Bret Stephens has a column today in which he renounces his Never Trump patrimony and castigates Trump critics for being overheated and wrong about so many things.
You should read his piece to get the full breadth of his argument. But I’ll give you a taste:
Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose. We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. We hyperventilated about his odd chumminess with Vladimir Putin. But the collusion allegations were a smear, and Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher than either Barack Obama’s or (at least until Russia invaded Ukraine) President Biden’s.
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and Promise, Corey Kilgannon, Mike Baker, Luke Broadwater and Shawn Hubler, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione, above, charged in the death of an executive in New York, was an Ivy League graduate who had recently suffered physical and psychological pain.
Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue-blazered frat buddies.
He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford University.
With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family’s thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path.
The police now believe that Mr. Mangione, 26, is the masked gunman who calmly took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a Midtown Manhattan street last week and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He was arrested in Altoona, Pa., on Monday after an employee at a McDonald’s recognized him and called the police. Officers said they found him with fake identification, a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing and a manifesto decrying the health care industry.
Later on Monday, Mr. Mangione was charged in Manhattan with murder, along with additional counts of forgery and illegal weapons possession. And in the hours after his apprehension, his baffling journey from star student to murder suspect began to come into focus.
Washington Post, Person of interest in UnitedHealthcare shooting arrested in Pa., police say, Mark Berman and Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione faces gun charges and other counts. He was denied bail after his arraignment in Altoona, Pa.police commissioner, said at a news briefing.
Thompson, 50, right, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a stunning act of early-morning violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.
Police said it appeared that the suspect they were seeking escaped the city shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement officials said they were scouring reams of video footage and tips, but they pleaded with the public for more help, sharing several images of a person they said was wanted in connection with the killing.
ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele, Josh Margolin, and Meredith Deliso, Dec. 9, 2024. Mangione, above, was located in Pennsylvania nearly a week after Brian Thompson's death.
Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus," Russell Payne, Dec, 9, 2024. Not so fast, what kind of "anti-capitalist" is praising Elon Musk and retweeting Peter Thiel?
On Monday afternoon, police announced that they had arrested a person of interest in the investigation into the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was shot outside his hotel in midtown Manhattan last week.
According to police, Luigi Mangione was arrested around 9:15 a.m. in Altoona, Pennsylvania with a ghost gun and suppressor that New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was “consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Recent Relevant Headlines
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and PromiseABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder,
More On Presidential Pardons
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
Trump in that interview also repeated favorite right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 ― that “Antifa” was behind the violence and that a man named Ray Epps actually instigated the attack.
What’s more, Trump said his pardons would also extend to those who actually pleaded guilty to assaulting officers because, in his view, the justice system is “corrupt,” and the accused were coerced into taking pleas. “Because they had no choice,” he said.
Further, the “radical” and “crazy” qualifiers for those who might not get pardons conflicts with dozens of statements at his rallies over the past three years in which he has promised to pardon all the Jan. 6 defendants.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Emptywheel, Analysis: Judge Mark Scarsi’s Umbrage: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)
Middle East Wars, Reactions
New York Times, In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under Bashar al-Assad, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Laura Boushnak, Jan. 5, 2025. Residents of Syria’s capital are picnicking on a once-forbidden mountaintop and trading dollars and imported Nescafe. They say the city seems theirs again.
Across Damascus, as in much of the country, Syrians are reclaiming, and in some cases embracing anew, spaces and freedoms that had been off limits for years under the Assad regime. There were places ordinary Syrians were not allowed to go and things that they were not permitted to say when the Assad family was in power. The country, many said, increasingly felt as if it did not belong to them.
But with the newfound sense of freedom comes some trepidation about the future under a government formed by Islamist rebels, and whether with time it might institute new restrictions and limitations.
Many Syrians are watching each decision and announcement as a harbinger of how their new rulers may govern. Last week, Syria’s de facto new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, said it could take two to three years to draft a new Constitution and up to four years to hold elections, alarming Syrians who fear they may have traded one authoritarian leader for another.New York Times, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. Tread Cautiously With Syria’s New Leaderssing money from the drivers who contribute to it. The plan will help generate $15 billion for crucial upgrades to the region’s mass transit system.
New York Times, As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Only Worsened, Aryn Baker and Abu Bakr Bashir, Dec. 28, 2024. Israel says that it tries to limit the loss of civilian life. But the dire humanitarian situation has prompted condemnation from human rights organizations.
Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.
In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.
Israel says that its target is Hamas and that it does everything possible to limit the loss of civilian life. But the increasingly dire humanitarian situation has prompted a particularly scathing chorus of condemnation from the United Nations and international human rights organizations.
Here is a closer look at three parts of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Washington Post, U.S. amplifies strikes on Yemen’s Houthis as tensions with Israel flare, Missy Ryan, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The latest round of strikes occurred as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.
The Biden administration directed new airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Tuesday, as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks struck targets in coastal Yemen and the capital, Sanaa, including a command node and facilities used for manufacturing and storing weapons. The operations, which also included strikes on Monday, destroyed radar positions and one-way aerial drones, Centcom said in a statement.
Video provided by Centcom showed aircraft taking off from the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier positioned in the Red Sea.
The strikes mark the latest salvo in a year-long U.S.-led campaign aimed at halting ongoing attacks by the Houthis, a militant group that functions as the de facto government in much of Yemen, on commercial ships and military vessels in nearby waters. The Houthis’ campaign has impaired global shipping and taken a major toll on U.S. allies reliant on related revenue.
New York Times, Investigation: Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians, Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay, Sheera Frenkel and Adam Sella (The reporters interviewed more than 100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
Fearful of another Oct. 7-style attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants. One of the deadliest attacks of the 21st century followed.
At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.
Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.
In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.
The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.
It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.
In previous conflicts with Hamas, many Israeli strikes were approved only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt. Sometimes, officers could risk killing up to five civilians and only rarely did the limit rise to 10 or above, though the actual death toll was sometimes much higher.
On Oct. 7, the military leadership changed its rules of engagement because it believed that Israel faced an existential threat, according to a senior military officer who answered questions about the order on the condition of anonymity.
New York Times, Here Are 8 Ways Israel Weakened Civilian Protections, Samuel Granados, Patrick Kingsley and Natan Odenheimer, Dec. 26, 2024. Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.The Israeli military said its air force had struck a vehicle overnight in Nuseirat with a “terrorist cell” from the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad inside. Reports about journalists being targeted were “fake claims,” Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media.
The media office of Gaza’s Hamas-run government said five journalists from Al Quds Today, a Palestinian television channel, were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcast vehicle. The channel has regularly featured Islamic Jihad leaders and promoted the group’s ideology.
The office said this brought the number of journalists killed in Gaza to 201 since the start of the war in October last year.
The vehicle, bearing the word “Press” in red letters, was hit near the gates of Al Awda Hospital, according to a post on social media from Quds News Network, another Palestinian news outlet. The Israeli military has previously said that it has never deliberately targeted journalists but that it considers members of “an organized armed group,” such as the military wing of Hamas, or those who participate in hostilities, as lawful targets.
Recent Relevant Headlines
Washington Post, Israeli government approves plan to expand settlements on occupied Golan
More Global News
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
New York Times, Elon Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 28, 2024. The world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Trump, ridiculed critics over his backing of the extremist party AfD, as Germany prepares for elections.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist.
This week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election, explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
“The traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”
Mr. Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new elections.
With four mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform, is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.
Mr. Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor in chief-designate on the same page.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeNew York Times, Taiwan Says China Has Deployed Largest Fleet of Ships in Decades
More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs
Lance Rosen Substack, The Trump Press Conference Gives Us A Clear Look Into The Abyss, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 7, 2025. I would say we have a category five emergency.
Taking Greenland by force is bad enough. It would be an attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. Technically the US would be in violation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which is what has held it together since its inception. "An attack on any member nation is an attack on all, therefore will be met with full retaliation," to paraphrase. Which of course will not under sny circumstances happen. At that precise moment, NATO is dead, the treaties notwithstanding.
This is how the forty-year long Russian asset intends to end it. He knows he will never get the NATO treaty repealed by the Senate, so this is his "work around."
At that point Ukraine is gone, and Putin will be free to establish hegemony in Europe. The US would retreat into "Fortress America," operating to conquer and colonize our hemisphere, surving through using our military to seize assets and raw materials. That is what explains his planned Panama gambit.
That is the dystopian future which the sabotage by the Democratic leadership is bringing us into, if we don't take the next 100 days to put it to a stop.
I keep telling everyone, the most important task, the key flank is derailing these nominations.
None of you that I know of is taking that up, or acting with an ounce of urgency.
What else should I say? Is anyone on board with what I am saying? We are running out of time. We have to jolt the Dem leadership into emergency actions now.
New York Times, U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese Drones, Citing National Security Concerns, Ana Swanson, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). The Commerce Department requested that companies comment on the implications of the rule by March. The final decision will fall to the Trump administration.
The Biden administration said on Thursday that it was considering a new rule that could restrict or ban Chinese drones in the United States out of national security concerns.
In a notice, the Commerce Department said the involvement of foreign adversaries — notably China and Russia — in the design, development, manufacture and supply of drones could pose “undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
The notice requested private companies to comment on the scope and implications of the rule by March 4. The decision of what restrictions to impose, if any, on Chinese and Russian drones will fall to the Trump administration.
China and Russia have shown a willingness to compromise U.S. infrastructure and security through cyberespionage, the Commerce Department said, adding that the governments could leverage their laws and political situations to “co-opt private entities for national interests.”
Beyond the use of drones by hobbyists, the devices are employed in a variety of U.S. industries. They help farmers monitor crops and spray for pests, inspect pipelines for the chemical industry, survey bridges and construction sites, and aid firefighters and other emergency responders.
But drones have evolved over the past decade to include sophisticated cameras, receivers and artificial intelligence abilities, fueling concerns that they could be turned into a useful tool for an adversarial government.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy to Win, Andrew Egger
Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Weiner went to prison but Gaetz won’t? Thom Hartmann, Dec. 28, 2024. Remember when Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, right, served 18 months in prison for texting a dick pic to an underage girl he never met or touched or paid or anything else?
Now comes Matt Gaetz and, according to a new report from the House Ethics Committee, the Republican Congressman actually paid an underage girl for sex that he then had with her in such a public part of a party house that multiple people witnessed it.
Will Gaetz similarly go to prison? Don’t count on it; Republicans are generally immune from prosecution for such crimes, particularly when their fathers are major and morbidly rich Republican movers-and-shakers and Trump is trying to pack his administration with accused rapists and predators…
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: WHOA! DOJ Drops BOMBSHELL FILING in Trump Case, Michael Popok, Dec. 31, 2024. Dec 31, 2024 Special Counsel Jack Smith and President Biden just gave Trump a New Year’s surprise, handing off the Mar a Lago appeal to the main Miami federal prosecutor, rather than dismiss it, in hopes that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Judge Cannon and her ruling that the Special Counsel is unconstitutional before the inauguration. reports.
New York Times, Guest Essay: What Judges Can Do for the Rule of Law Under Trump, Nancy Gertner, right,and Joel Cohen (Ms. Gertner is a retired federal judge. Mr. Cohen is a former federal prosecutor), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.
This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.
If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.
Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Suppose a federal district judge is asked to sign off on an eavesdropping warrant under Title III of the federal criminal law. He or she will receive one-sided (“ex parte”) submissions from prosecutors applying for search warrants (for a physical search or a wiretap), an application that the target’s attorney will not know about nor have the ability to contest.
In previous administrations, federal trial judges have had generally well-founded confidence that the Justice Department and the post-Hoover F.B.I., under presidents from either party, have not been employed to attack political enemies. Most district judges — especially those who have served as federal prosecutors, as most have — believe that the prosecutors appearing before them act with integrity, that their offices are not being manipulated to undermine those who challenged the current administration or its leader.
A judge could assume that the warrant has gone through layers of approval within the Justice Department, even reaching the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, an extremely high ranking official in the department. That judge could also be reasonably confident that very little, if anything, would be amiss after passing through the layers of the approval process, including senior department officials.
But with the astonishing comments from the president-elect and his appointments, it is reasonable to ask if judges can still assume that level of confidence in the review process. The previous assumption that prosecutions would be undertaken only against individuals suspected of committing crimes may be wrong.Editors’ PicksLin-Manuel Miranda on ‘Mufasa’ and the Secret to a Disney HitThe Trinidadian Christmas Staple Worth the Yearlong WaitHow ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (and Its Writer) Went Down in History
Now, when judges are asked to review warrant applications, or any other ex parte submissions from the government, they should do so through a different lens, much more scrupulously than ever before.
Or consider a motion to dismiss an indictment based on selective prosecution. In the usual case, prosecutors are given broad discretion, so long as there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the prosecution does not run afoul of constitutional protections.
A selective prosecution motion alleges that criminal charges were brought for reasons forbidden by the Constitution. The defendant must prove that he was singled out for prosecution when those similarly situated were not and that the prosecution was based on an impermissible reason, such as race, religion or political affiliation.
Since courts presume that the government undertakes a prosecution in good faith, the defendant’s burden of proof is typically quite heavy. The motion rarely succeeds — for example, Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss his gun case on selective prosecution grounds failed.
But what if, in Mr. Trump’s second term, the object of the prosecution is on Mr. Patel’s list, or is expressly targeted in a Trump speech? Judges should obviously not assume that prosecutors in the Trump administration are always acting in bad faith. But they should consider accusations of selective prosecution differently than they have in the past.
If a defendant in a political case raises legitimate concerns about the integrity of a case in Mr. Trump’s second term, federal judges can’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore the attorney general’s clear intentions or those of the proposed F.B.I. director.
When these individuals announce that political affiliation will influence their prosecution decisions, judges should believe them — and act accordingly.
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, teaches law, neuroscience and sentencing at Harvard Law School and is the author of “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate” and the forthcoming “Incomplete Sentences.” Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior counsel at Petrillo Klein & Boxer and the author of “Blindfolds Off: Judges on How They Decide.”
Politico Magazine, Trumpian Revenge, Campus Revolts and the Collapse of a Presidency: 24 Stories That Explain a Chaotic Year, Staff Report, Dec. 25, 2024. It has been a year of unprecedented headlines — even for an election year.
The conviction of Donald Trump. An assassination attempt just weeks later. An abrupt end to Joe Biden’s candidacy, followed by the rise and fall of Kamala Harris. It was a historically chaotic and consequential year on the campaign trail, and beyond. America saw intense protests on campus colleges over the Israel-Hamas war, a rising gender divide among the youth and the kind of widening polarization that can even fracture families.
It might have been too many events to fully process in one year, so POLITICO Magazine has you covered. Check out these 24 stories — many of them our top reads of the year — that will help you understand what just happened and what’s to come under Trump 2.0.
New York Times, Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board, Charlie Savage, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). As chair of the House Intelligence Committee (shown above), he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social media company.
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congresswho had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy.
The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.
In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Nunes — who is currently the chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform — for his counterinvestigation into the Trump-Russia inquiry in 2017-18, when Mr. Nunes led the House Intelligence Committee as a Republican congressman from California.
“While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
New York Times, Trump Names Richard Grenell for ‘Special Missions’ Role, Elizabeth Williamson, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). A combative loyalist and the president-elect’s former ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grenell had hoped to be secretary of state.
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Richard Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as his “envoy for special missions,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
A loyalist known for unbridled social media attacks on Mr. Trump’s perceived critics and many others, Mr. Grenell led a shambolic effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Nevada after Mr. Trump’s loss, and he has lobbied assiduously for a diplomatic job in the new administration.
He got his start in government before Mr. Trump’s rise, as a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under multiple presidents. But his online toxicity, foreign business contacts and tendency toward biting personal attacks on political opponents and the media turned off many centrist conservatives, helping propel him toward Mr. Trump, a man he denounced in 2016 as “dangerous.”
“Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
Mr. Grenell did not immediately reply to a texted question about his priorities for the role, which does not currently exist. Mr. Trump outlined it as: “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”
The role is a far cry from secretary of state, the job Mr. Grenell coveted, but to which Mr. Trump plans to appoint Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida. Being named for a lower-profile White House envoy job could help Mr. Grenell avoid persistent questions about his paid work for foreign clients, including luxury hotel development projects he has pursued in the Balkans with Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Grenell was ambassador to Germany. His abrasiveness and partisanship alarmed diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly after he told Breitbart London that he planned to “empower” German conservatives opposing “the failed policies of the left.”
In 2020, Mr. Trump named Mr. Grenell to temporarily replace the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, whom Mr. Trump had fired.
New York Times, An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones, Natasha Singer (Natasha Singer reported from Revere, Mass., and reviewed more than 400 student fight videos from schools in 15 states), Dec. 15, 2024. Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools.
Ricardo Martinez, an 11th grader, was in his high school lunchroom in April when a mass brawl erupted.
He watched, horrified, as a dozen teenage boys rampaged through the cafeteria, pummeling and kicking one another, overturning tables and chairs. Other students jeered and jostled to film the fight on their phones.
“It was like a stampede of videos,” said Mr. Martinez, now 18 and a senior. “Everyone was trying to get the best angle.”
But the pandemonium at Revere High School in Revere, Mass., was just beginning.
Within minutes, students in other parts of the building began receiving text messages about the lunchroom brawl. Suddenly, teachers said, dozens of riled-up teenagers started racing down hallways and careening down stairways with their phones to get to the fight.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Special counsel Jack Smith moves to dismiss Trump’s D.C. prosecution, Perry Stein and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov. 26, 2024 (print ed.). The special counsel filed a motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s election-obstruction case without prejudice, which means the case could be revived in the future.
Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Monday to dismiss the federal election interference charges against President-elect Donald Trump, putting an end to a lengthy investigation that never made it to trial.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Smith’s motion seeks to dismiss the case without prejudice, acknowledging that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. If she does that, it leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could again bring charges once Trump leaves office after his second White House term.
But legal experts said it’s possible that once Trump is in office, he could try to do something that has never been tested before: pardon himself to foreclose the possibility of legal jeopardy in the future.
Trump faces four counts related to conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results. Smith’s filing acknowledges that the Justice Department has longed believed a sitting president cannot stand trial, and says prosecutors conferred with Trump’s attorneys and that they did not oppose the request to dismiss the case.
Russia, Russian War Against Ukraine
Alexander Dugin, a far-right writer and ideologue known as “Putin’s brain,” is seen in 2016 in his studio in Moscow (Photo by Francesca Ebel of the Associated Press).
Washington Post, U.S. imposes Russia, Iran sanctions over attempted election interference, Jeff Stein, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The Treasury Department accused a Russian entity of having “manipulated a video” about a vice-presidential candidate.
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday on Iranian and Russian entities accused of trying to interfere with the U.S. 2024 elections, including by allegedly using artificial intelligence to disseminate false information.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
In its statement, Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on both a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an affiliate of Russia’s military intelligence agency over their efforts to “stoke sociopolitical tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 election.”
Treasury’s statement also said the Russian entity used AI tools to “quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network” of fake news websites and produced “baseless accusations” about a 2024 vice-presidential candidate, whom Treasury declined to identify.
Although the sanctions target relatively minor entities and are unlikely to have major economic effects, they reflect the deteriorating relationship between the United States and two of its chief geopolitical adversaries. President Joe Biden is weighing much more far-reaching sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, while President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to significantly increase economic pressure on Tehran.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Bradley Smith, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”
Sanctions were imposed on the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), a Moscow-based group founded by Aleksandr Dugin, whom Treasury had already sanctioned in 2015. Treasury accused the center of working closely with the Russian military intelligence service that “oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare” against the West. Dugin's daughter, Darya Dugina, shown in an image circulated on X by @AlexKokcharov, was another ultra nationalist killed in car bomb attack that some suspect was aimed at her father.
In its statement, Treasury said the intelligence service both directed and provided financial support to the center to influence the 2024 presidential election. With that support, Treasury said, the center maintained a network of “at least 100 websites” for its “disinformation operations,” through which it pushed false information.
“CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the Treasury statement said.
The Russian center also “manipulated a video” to “produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice-presidential candidate,” Treasury said. Treasury did not identify the video, but The Washington Post and other news organizations reported in October that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Moscow was behind a faked video and other material smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations. Separately, Microsoft researchers said this fall that Russian entities had circulated false videos on social media in which an actor accused Vice President Kamala Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run.
The sanctions also target the Cognitive Design Production Center, a subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, over its “influence operations,” according to the Treasury Department. The Justice Department previously charged three men with an alleged hack-and-leak attack against Trump’s presidential campaign.
Washington Post, Putin says he saved Russia, but a year of challenges suggests Moscow’s position is precarious, Mary Ilyushina, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Marking 25 years in office, Vladimir Putin says he has remade Russia as a sovereign power and will prevail in Ukraine, but economic and strategic setbacks complicate the picture.
When Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, resigned on New Year’s Eve in 1999, he publicly implored Vladimir Putin, his handpicked but little-known successor, to “take care of Russia.”A quarter-century later, Putin insists he has done just that — and more.
As he wrapped up his marathon year-end news conference on Dec. 19, Putin boasted that he had thwarted efforts by the United States and its Western allies to subjugate Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.
“I have not just taken care of it, but I believe we have stepped back from the edge of the abyss,” he declared, in response to a question about Yeltsin’s remark.
“I have done everything so that Russia can be an independent and sovereign state that is capable of making decisions in its interests,” Putin said, “rather than in the interests of the countries that were dragging it toward them, patting it on the back, only to use it for their own purposes.”
But as 2024 draws to a close, Russia is in a far more precarious place than Putin’s rhetoric and bravado suggest. His forces are making slow but steady advances in Ukraine, but estimates by some NATO countries suggest hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, which has dragged on for nearly three years.
Washington Post, U.S. Treasury says it was hacked by China-backed intruder, Pranshu Verma and Ellen Nakashima, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). The department told lawmakers that the breach gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday that it was hacked by a Chinese state-sponsored actor who gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents, according to a letter reviewed by The Washington Post.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The department was notified Dec. 8 by a third-party software provider, BeyondTrust, that a hacker had gained access to a security key, which allowed the intruder to override certain security protocols and access some Treasury Department office workstations and unclassified documents stored on them, according to the letter notifying the Senate Banking Committee leadership of the breach.
The Treasury Department labeled the breach a “major incident,” in line with department policy that, according to the letter, categorizes nation-state intrusions as “major.” Once Treasury was alerted to the issue, it contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and it has taken the BeyondTrust service offline, according to a Treasury spokesperson. There is no evidence the hacker still has access to Treasury systems, the spokesperson said.
New York Times, Putin Apologizes for Kazakhstan Crash but Stops Short of Taking Responsibility, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Dec. 28, 2024.President Vladimir Putin of Russia called his Azerbaijani counterpart, the Kremlin said, to apologize for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday apologized for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane this past week, breaking the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the accident that killed 38 people. He did not explicitly acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the crash.
Mr. Putin “offered his apologies” for the crash in a phone call to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the Kremlin said in a statement. Mr. Putin initiated the phone call, according to the statement, and told Mr. Aliyev “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace.”
Mr. Putin said that as the plane approached its scheduled destination of Grozny, in southern Russia, Russian air defenses had begun to repulse an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Grozny airport and others nearby, according to the Kremlin.
Aviation experts and U.S. officials believe a Russian air-defense missile may have mistakenly downed the passenger jet. The Kremlin statement stopped short of attributing the crash to a Russian missile, but in its own statement acknowledging the apology, Azerbaijan’s presidential office suggested that was indeed the cause.
New York Times, Plane Crash Investigators Focus on Russian Air Defenses as Possible Cause, Ivan Nechepurenko, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).Russian aviation authorities said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had hit a flock of birds. But some experts cast doubt on that account, pointing to footage showing apparent holes in the fuselage.Listen to this article · 5:51 min Learn more
As authorities in several countries tried to determine what caused the deadly crash of a passenger airplane in Kazakhstan, investigators and experts on Thursday were focusing on the possibility that a Russian air defense system had struck the plane.
Aviation experts cast doubt on a Russian agency’s contention that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet had hit a flock of birds, saying images of the crash site show holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared unlikely to have been caused by them.
The jet had been flying on Wednesday morning from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, at a time when drone strikes were taking place around Grozny and Russian air defense systems were responding, according to residents and local news media reports.
Two Azerbaijanis briefed on a government inquiry said that Azerbaijani officials now believe that a Russian Pantsir-S defense system damaged the plane. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Caliber, a news outlet in Azerbaijan that is close to the government, also reported that the country’s investigators believe a Russian Pantsir system was responsible.-
New York Times, Analysis: Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Engaged in Sabotage? Michael Schwirtz, Dec. 28, 2024. Russia has assembled a fleet of hundreds of vessels to covertly ship its oil. The idea of using some to cause havoc may be proving irresistible to the Kremlin.
Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.
But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.
This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.
If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.
New York Times, Finland Says Vessel Suspected of Cutting Cable May Be Part of Russia’s ‘Shadow Fleet,’ Johanna Lemola and Lynsey Chutel, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.). Finland seized an oil tanker after the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure.
The Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker on Thursday on the suspicion that it was involved in cutting vital undersea cables and said the ship might have been part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” aimed at evading Western sanctions.
In a statement, the police in Finland said the authorities had boarded the Eagle S tanker in Finnish waters. The ship, which is registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, had been sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt, when it was detained.The police said they were investigating whether the vessel was involved in the latest suspected act of sabotage on undersea infrastructure: the cutting on Wednesday of the Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish authorities said Thursday that four other cables carrying data also had been damaged. The police called the latest cable cuts “aggravated vandalism.”
The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington Post, In major shift, Zelensky appears open to negotiating an end to the war, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ellen Francis, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). A new U.S. president and battlefield realities appear to be pushing Ukraine’s leader, who had long insisted on fighting for every inch of occupied land, to the table.
As Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russia’s army on the battlefield and President-elect Donald Trump looks to broker a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelensky has in recent weeks signaled a greater willingness for negotiations to end the war — a major shift for the Ukrainian leader, who had long vowed to fight for every last inch of his country’s land.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
Zelensky’s messaging has been careful; he has not explicitly said Kyiv would agree to concessions — territorial or otherwise — even while Russia occupies more than 20 percent of Ukraine and would probably retain control of that land after any ceasefire. But after previously stating that negotiations could begin only once Moscow withdrew all its troops, Zelensky is now emphasizing the need for long-term security rather than the immediate return of territory.
Zelensky’s change in rhetoric — something Ukrainian and Western officials have noticed — can probably be attributed to a worsening situation on the front line and an incoming U.S. administration that has put future security assistance for Kyiv in doubt. Ukrainian officials throughout the first year of the war stressed the importance of reclaiming all of Ukraine’s land, including Crimea and other areas Russia has effectively ruled since 2014, as a condition for any deal.
In recent meetings with Trump and European leaders, however, Zelensky has focused more on what he has referred to as “lasting peace” for Ukraine. The top priority is securing an invite to the NATO military alliance and other security guarantees, such as the possible presence of Western peacekeepers, to prevent future Russian attacks.
Officials and analysts said Zelensky’s tone shift is probably an attempt to be more in line with Trump’s emphasis on halting the conflict. But the Ukrainian leader is also trying to ensure his country doesn’t come out empty-handed.
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Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights
Politico, Driver Rams Christmas Market in Germany, Killing at Least 2 in Suspected Attack, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 20, 2024. Video showed a car plowing into a large crowd in the city of Magdeburg. The driver, identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who worked as a doctor, was arrested
A driver plowed a vehicle into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing an adult and a small child and injuring dozens of other people in what officials indicated was a targeted attack.
The driver was arrested, the authorities said. He was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who first came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor in a small town 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.
Saudi Arabia condemned the attack in a statement by its Foreign Ministry that did not mention the suspect. “The Kingdom expresses its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims,” the statement said.
More than 65 people were injured, 14 of them severely, said Michael Reif, the spokesman for Magdeburg. The authorities say they believe it was a deliberate attack. They are working to determine a motive, said Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, where Magdeburg is the capital.your times accessHave a moment? Play these games.Connections
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“Every human life lost in this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” a visibly shaken Mr. Haseloff told reporters on Friday night.200 mi.300 km.© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Nancy Faeser, who as Germany’s interior minister is responsible for public safety, said in a statement: “The shocking act in Magdeburg a few days before Christmas hits us in the heart. We continue to fear for the lives of the seriously injured and mourn the people who were torn from life by this terrible act.”
Before leaving his post in November, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, warned that the country’s threat level was higher because of the war in Middle East.
“The danger is real and more acute than it has been in a long time,” he said at the time.
More than 1,000 temporary Christmas markets pop up every year in Germany, and they have been the target of terrorists in the past. Last month, the police in Germany arrested two teenagers suspected of exchanging plans about attacking a Christmas market, but those alleged plans appear to have nothing to do with the attack on Friday.Editors’ PicksMy Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?A Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?Skiing’s Budget Secret: It Can Be Cheaper in Europe
In 2016, an extremist rammed a truck into a crowd in Berlin, killing 13. Since then, the police have secured many Christmas markets with temporary barriers.
It remains unclear how the driver in Magdeburg was able to circumvent the barriers that were protecting the market. The car drove some 1,200 feet before it stopped, officials said.
The authorities said the driver had rented a car before plowing it into the market on the last Friday before Christmas, when it was especially crowded with visitors. Many police officers were at the site. The area around the market was closed after the episode, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack in Germany inspired additional security measures around Christmas markets thousands of miles away, in New York City.
The New York Police Department said in a statement on Friday: “The N.Y.P.D. has been closely monitoring recent events in Germany and coordinating with federal and international partners. While we have not identified any specific/credible threats to New York City at this time, resources have been deployed to various Christmas markets and other locations throughout the city out of an abundance of caution.”
The city of Magdeburg, population 240,000, used to be part of Communist East Germany. The year’s Christmas market is in the old market square, just in front of City Hall.
Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car plowing into a large crowd at the Christmas market. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.
“The reports from Magdeburg are alarming,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in social media post. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
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New York Times, Syrian Rebels Breach City of Aleppo, in Biggest Advance in Years
Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey attends a news conference outside New York City Police Department 40th Precinct, July 17, 2023, in New York. (AP File photo by Jeenah Moon).
Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations, Philip Marcelou, Dec. 22, 2024. The highest-ranking uniformed officer in the New York Police Department has resigned amid allegations he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey ’s resignation Friday night, effective immediately, according to a department statement Saturday.
Chief of Patrol John Chell will take over as interim chief of department, and Philip Rivera will assume Chell’s duties as the head of the patrol division, the NYPD said.
Late Saturday, Tisch replaced the head of the internal affairs bureau, which investigates alleged police misconduct, saying in a statement that the unit “must always be dedicated to preserving integrity and rooting out corruption in all its forms.” She appointed Edward Thompson as interim chief after Miguel Iglesias was relieved of his command.
The NYPD declined to comment on the allegations against Maddrey other than to say it “takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously and will thoroughly investigate this matter.”
A lawyer for his accuser, Lt. Quathisha Epps, said the move was overdue.
Recent Relevant Headlines
U.S. Immigration
New York Times, Trump Vowed Mass Deportations. Mexico and Central America Brace for Impact, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Jan. 7, 2025. Donald J. Trump has said that Mexico is allowing an “invasion” of migrants into the United States. But the current situation on the ground tells a different story: Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped sharply last year.
Crossings into the United States from Mexico dropped sharply last year. But countries south of the U.S. border are waiting nervously to see if President-elect Donald J. Trump orders mass deportations.
The possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers.
“We see dark times coming for the migrant community,” said Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “Anyone who falls prey to the Trump administration is now going to be devoured, chewed up and spat out.”
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U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Stock Market On Pace For Best Two Year Period This Century, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 31, 2024. The Biden Administration's economic policy is working.
The United States stock market is expected to have its best two year stretch this entire century, achieving a feat that has only happened a few times in history. According to latest numbers, the S&P 500 is set to gain over 20% this year.
This comes one year after the index rose 24%. Should these results hold, which they will for all intents and purposes, it would be the best performance for the index since 1997 and 1998.
According to statistics over the past two centuries, this type of performance by the index has only occurred three other times, in 1927 and 1928, in 1935 and 1936, and again in 1954 and 1955. This would mean that the current pace for the market is one that has been achieved only four other times in our nation's history.
In total, the S&P 500 is now up over 60% of the past two years, marking significant gains from 2022 which saw the index fall about 20%. Today's news is a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration's economic policy which has successfully ushered the United States out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is now almost certain that the economy will achieve the vaunted soft landing, ensuring that the United States stays out of a recession following extremely high inflation. It also means that the incoming Trump Administration will now be inheriting a booming, record breaking economy.
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New York Times, Opinion: Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America, Paul Krugman
Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. "‘Let’s get out of here’: Palisades residents flee fire.
An ominous fire broke out Tuesday near the Pacific Palisades — a coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles — and quickly exploded. The fire has grown to at least 2,921 acres, according to Cal Fire. Evacuation orders were issued as officials ordered residents in notoriously winding hillside neighborhoods to leave immediately.
Smoke plumes spread rapidly, moving toward structures and homes. A large swath of residences in Topanga Canyon, a woodsy, tucked-away community with one winding road in and out, are under evacuation warnings. The fire sparked amid a “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm event that is sweeping through a region that has not seen significant rain since spring. The Palisades Fire has now grown to at least 2,921 acres and is zero percent contained, according to a 6:18 p.m. update from Cal Fire. State fire officials are warning of extreme fire behavior — including short and long-range spotting — and say that wind gusts of up to 60 mph are expected to continue through Thursday. The cause is still under investigation.
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Media, High Tech, Culture, Education
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Steady, Political Opinion: Take This Billionaire, Please, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Jan. 6, 2025. Why is Jeff Bezos (shown above in a photo via Getty Imagaes) hurting, not helping, journalism?
When a journalistic institution is the one making headlines, it’s rarely good news. Such is the case for a revered American newspaper, The Washington Post. A mothership of American journalism, whose reporters helped topple an American president and inspired generations of young reporters, is listing and taking on water.
As Donald Trump and his army of “alternate” truth-tellers get ready to take the reins of government again, the country desperately needs the best and brightest journalists watching and reporting on their every move. And yet we wake to news that the Post is expected to lay off dozens more staffers the very month Trump returns to power.
The 147-year-old newspaper is apparently bleeding money, a problem of its own making. When billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos pulled the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, a reported 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. That accounts for 10% of the paper’s online audience.
“I just cancelled my Washington Post subscription. The web site asked why, and the closest option was ‘concern with the content.’ There was no option about surrendering to fascism, but that’s the real reason,” a former subscriber posted on X.
For Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Post’s financial losses are peanuts considering his $200 billion plus net worth. But his love of the paper and his passion for quality journalism seem to be shrinking.
Back in 2013, when Bezos bought the Post from the family of venerated publisher Katharine Graham, he said he wanted to transform it from a regional newspaper to a global one. He provided money — big money — to expand the newsroom and encouraged reporters to extend their reach by embracing the “gifts of the internet.”
Over the ensuing decade, his interest in the paper ebbed and flowed, but he mostly stayed out of the editorial decision-making. Then he pulled the Harris endorsement causing an exodus of top editors, opinion writers, and reporters.
But Bezos wasn’t done burnishing his rep with the former president. After the election, he pledged $1 million to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to stream it live on Amazon Prime (an additional $1 million in-kind contribution). Just before Christmas, he was seen at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring with fellow super-rich guy Elon Musk. And he has green-lit a documentary about Melania Trump to air on Prime. I’m guessing it will be what’s known in the trade as a “sweetheart profile.”
While it isn’t great that the owner of one of the most important papers in the country is cozying up to an incoming president who says he will be a dictator on “day one,” Bezos’s actions aren’t surprising. He didn’t become a billionaire by being selfless.
But on Friday, things took another turn at the Post. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes (shown above) quit in protest after a cartoon of hers (shown in draft form) was killed.
In a piece she published on Substack, Telnaes explained that “there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.”
Daily Mail, Disturbing new details show how CIA drugged and tortured Americans in secret mind control program MKUltra, Stacy Liberatore, Jan. 6, 2025. Newly declassified bombshell records of an infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured more than 60 years ago.
The collection of more than 1,200 pages detail how the CIA used induced sleep, electroshocks and 'psychic driving' on drugged subjects who were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
The subjects included criminals, mental patients and drug addicts, but also Army soldiers and average citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
A total of 144 projects were conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages detail how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and 'psychic driving,' under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and 'subjects in normal life settings' were 'unwittingly' given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
In a newly unsealed document from 1956, researchers were developing 'an anti-interrogation drug' by testing 'materials capable of producing alterations in the human central nervous system which are reflected as alterations in human behavior.'
A memo about a classified meeting showed that the CIA contemplated the possibility of testing on foreign nationals,' but decided that 'unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued' instead.Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary. He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra
Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss shown in 1953 mug shorts, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.
He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.
'Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,' Bulger penned.
'We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.'
The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: 'The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.
'These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.'
A total of 20 documents with more than 1,200 pages were declassified on December 23, published by the NSA and ProQuest.
'Despite the Agency's efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA's decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and reprogram the human mind,' shared NSA.
Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to be used against the Soviets during the Cold War.The CIA was testing drugs and other techniques on American citizens during the 1950s and 60s to develops new interrogation processes such as mind control. Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles (pictured) ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs
'We in the West, are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,' he said.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 details how the CIA's Technical Services Section (TSS) requested funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the agency's 'biological and chemical warfare program.'
Using a philanthropic organization as a 'cut-out,' the CIA partially funded 'a new research wing' of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and used part of it to conduct 'Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.'
MKULTRA, the memo states, provided research and development funding 'for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare' but did not specifically authorize funds to establish cover for these programs.The program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, performed 144 projects aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations,weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture
In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing.'
The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down.'
A 'knockout pill' was also to be developed, which would be used in 'surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.'
Another declassified document dated June 7, 1956, discusses an MKUltra subproject to be led by Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University who was known to conduct experiments on prisoners.
Pfeiffer was approved to develop 'an anti-interrogation drug' and 'tests in human volunteers.'
The objectives included administering 'large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers.'In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing'The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down'
The document does not specify the amount given, but taking large doses of the drug can induce terrifying hallucinations.
Another point was 'to evaluate the threshold dose levels in humans of a particular natural product to be supplied by [deleted].'
The supplier's name was redacted from the report, but pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed a process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954.
'[The] CIA had [LSD] in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in 'tonnage quantities' and had agreed to become the agency's supplier,' according to NSA.
The documents also show that the CIA established safehouses in 1956, which were run by narcotics agent George White 'for conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects.'
Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist and spymaster who headed the CIA in the 50s and 60s, admitted in the report that activities were 'highly unorthodox nature.'
Because of that 'it [was] 'impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent,' he wrote.
One of the last documents of the program, published in 1963, revealed researchers involved with MKUltra used radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment [sic] substances, and paramilitary devices and materials' during the secret initiative.
It focused on drug experiments conducted at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, but also 'unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.'
'It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKUltra substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations,' it reads.
As of 1960, however, the CIA was unable to develop a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill.
Also during that time, the report noted that 25 of the 144 projects 'remained in existence at present' - 1960.
While most of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church opened an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
'The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends,' Frank's 1977 report stated.
'Crises make it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.'
That report found that there were at least six subprojects that involved testing on unwitting subjects and other projects researcher 'drugs, toxins and biologicals in human tissue.'
The then-director of the CIA, Adam Stansfield Turner spoke during the investigation, saying the MKUltra's activities were more than 12 years old following the investigation.
'They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,' he added.
The investigation brought MKUltra to light, sparking public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA's unethical practices.
That led to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
Status, Paper Cuts: The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned, Oliver Darcy, Jan. 5, 2025. Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper's business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.
The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.
A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.
Poynter Center, Opinion: The new year looks the same as last year at The Washington Post, Tom Jones, Jan. 6, 2025. The Post again faces uncomfortable controversy, this time with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist quitting in protest.
Good morning, and Happy New Year. The Poynter Report is back after a holiday break. We jump right back in where we left off. That’s to say it would appear that 2025 is starting the same way 2024 ended for The Washington Post — with uncomfortable controversy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted a message on Substack that she was quitting the Post because the publication refused to publish her cartoon that showed several billionaire tech and media chief executives genuflecting at a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. One of those executives clearly was Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
Telnaes wrote, “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
Telnaes added, “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press.”
She also wrote, “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’.”
“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Post’s slogan.
In a statement to NPR media writer David Folkenflik, Post editorial page editor David Shipley said he disagreed with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.” Shipley said, “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
While that all might be true, why not just run the cartoon anyway, especially because much of the public believes there is a lot of truth in Telnaes’ cartoon? Not publishing it only reinforces that narrative.
After all, Bezos nixed a Post editorial that would endorse Kamala Harris for president, publicly congratulated Trump following his victory and had dinner with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago after the election. Killing the cartoon does come off as fishy, seeing as how news organizations, including the Post, routinely run several opinion pieces about the same topic.
The cartoon depicted Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse.
The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.”
Telnaes has been with the Post since 2008. She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001.
In a statement, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists called the Post’s decision to kill the cartoon “craven censorship” and “political cowardice.” They added, “The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper.”
The recent past has not been good at The Washington Post. Newsroom leadership has been uncertain since Sally Buzbee stepped down last June. The Post still hasn’t come up with a permanent plan for how its leadership structure will work, and is still reeling from the nixed editorial mess that resulted in staff resignations, internal criticism from some of its most respected journalists and digital subscription cancellations that Folkenflik reported totaled 300,000.More bad news at the Post
Here’s a little more bad news for the Post. They are losing three respected political reporters.
Two high-profile reporters announced they would leave the Post to join The Atlantic: Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent, and Michael Scherer, a national political reporter. And The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin reports that The Atlantic might hire more Post reporters.
Parker is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who joined the Post in 2017. Before that, she spent 11 years at The New York Times. Scherer also has been at the Post since 2017.
The Post’s loss is very much The Atlantic’s gain.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, told Mullin, “We believe in accountability journalism. We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”
Mullin added, “The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.”
Meanwhile, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Josh Dawsey is leaving the Post for The Wall Street Journal. Byers wrote that Dawsey would be a political investigations reporter and join a new Wall Street Journal D.C. reporting team that includes former Politico reporters Meridith McGraw, Olivia Beavers and Gavin Bade.
Dawsey is currently on leave from the Post to work on a book about the 2024 election. Media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his Status newsletter that Dawsey will start at the Journal in February.
Dawsey previously worked at the Journal and Politico before joining the Post in 2017. Another big loss for the Post.And even worse news at the Post …
Media reporter Oliver Darcy reported late Sunday night, “Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Darcy added, “The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.”One more …
This is sort of Post-related. Well, it involves Amazon and it has raised some eyebrows.
Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman reported, “Amazon Prime has exclusively licensed a documentary film for global theatrical and streaming release that will give viewers an ‘unprecedented behind-the-scenes look’ at First Lady Melania Trump’s life, Fox News Digital has learned. Fox News Digital has learned that the project is expected to be released globally in theaters and for streaming use in the second half of 2025. Filming for the upcoming documentary began in December 2024. The documentary will be executive produced by First Lady Melania Trump and Fernando Sulichin of New Element Media, with Brett Ratner of RatPac Entertainment serving as director.”
The Associated Press’ Lindsey Bahr writes, “The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1 million to the President-elect’s inauguration fund, and said that it would also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.”
Perhaps the most controversial part of this isn’t that Amazon is teaming up with Melania Trump, but that the director will be Brett Ratner. As The Hollywood Reporters’ Alex Weprin and Aaron Couch note, “Ratner has been in Hollywood exile since 2017, when six women accused him of sexual misconduct as part of a Los Angeles Times report. He was dropped by his agency and has not made a film since, though in recent months, he attempted to stir up interest in a fourth Rush Hour movie as a comeback vehicle, multiple sources told The Hollywood Reporter in August. Ratner denied accusations of misconduct in 2017, and no criminal charges were brought.”A troubling anniversary
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Today is Jan. 6 — the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and attacked law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
While it’s a chapter in U.S. history that many would prefer to forget, it was a dark day that should never be forgotten, especially with Trump set to become president again in just two weeks.
BBC News, Elon Musk changes his name to Kekius Maximus on X, Tom Bayly and Patrick Jackson, Jan. 1, 2025. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus."
The tech mogul - and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump - offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog - a meme that has been used by far-right groups.
The move has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin - a digital currency inspired by internet memes - that shares the same name skyrocketing.
In the past, Mr Musk has influenced crypto prices with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he had any involvement in this particular memecoin.Elon Musk A picture of Elon Musk's X profile with a picture of Kekius MaximusElon Musk
"Kekius" appears to be a Latinisation of "kek", a word roughly equivalent to "laugh out loud" popularised by gamers but now often associated with the alt right.
"Kek" is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.
Many people would link "Maximus" to the name of Russell Crowe's heroic character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius.
Mr Musk's new profile image depicts Pepe in Roman military dress holding what appears to be a game console.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Transition: Biden Acknowledges He Might Not Have Been Able to Serve Four More Years, Peter Baker, Jan. 8, 2025. President Biden insisted that he still could have beaten Donald J. Trump had he stayed in the race, but could not say he would have been vital enough to be president until age 86.
President Biden acknowledged in a new interview released on Wednesday that he might not have had the vitality to serve another four years in office, even as he insisted that he could have won re-election had he stayed in the race.
Mr. Biden, 82, who abandoned his bid for a second term in July under enormous pressure from Democrats panicked over his faltering debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump, maintained that he was still in good enough shape to run the country as he finishes his term.
“So far, so good,” he told USA Today. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
That was exactly the point many Democrats raised privately for months before the issue exploded into public view with the televised debate in June, when a frail-looking Mr. Biden struggled to finish sentences and at times appeared blank or confused.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.
All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.
Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked.”
Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
Washington Post, Elections updates: Congress counts, certifies Trump’s electoral college victory over Harris, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 6 announced the certified vote total of the 2024 presidential election during a joint session of Congress.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our National Day of Shame, William Kristol and Andrew Egger, Jan. 6, 2025. Four years later, the shock of that day is replaced by the shock of how that day has become accepted.
Washington Post, Biden urges Americans not to rewrite, or forget, Jan. 6, 2021, Matt Viser, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The president sought to contrast the peaceful transfer of power this year with what happened in 2021.
President Joe Biden, who has attempted to oversee a smooth transition by withholding criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, has grown more animated about their differences ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.Get the latest election news and results
“I think it should not be rewritten. I don’t think it should be forgotten,” he told reporters at the White House on Sunday afternoon. He expanded upon the remarks at an evening event and in a new opinion piece published Sunday night by The Washington Post.
“But I don’t think we should — if you notice, I’ve reached out to make sure the smooth transition, we’ve got to get back to basic, normal transfer of power. I don’t think we should pretend it didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking about Trump specifically, Biden added: “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy, and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it.”
It was his latest effort to remind Americans of how imperiled he views the country’s democratic norms. He also in recent days awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring her for speaking out against Trump and for investigating his actions in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump attacked Cheney on social media over the award and has suggested that she and other members of the House committee that investigated the Capitol assault “should go to jail.”
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Mike Johnson Acts Like a CHILD as Kamala Patriotically Certifies the Election, Tim Miller, Jan. 6, 2025. Tim Miller reacts to VP Kamala Harris presiding over the peaceful transfer of power as she certifies the election results on the fourth anniversary of the violent attack on the Capital.
New York Times, Giuliani Is Held in Contempt of Court in Defamation Case, Stefanos Chen, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has failed to turn over his assets to two Georgia poll workers who won a defamation lawsuit against him.
A federal judge on Monday held Rudolph W. Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of his personal assets to Georgia poll workers he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has so far failed to turn over the bulk of his personal assets as a down payment on the $148 million judgment the poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, won in a defamation lawsuit.
The judge, Lewis J. Liman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, has yet to detail what specific sanctions Mr. Giuliani faces. But being held in contempt could possibly hinder the former mayor’s attempts to hang onto his Palm Beach, Fla., condo.
Mr. Giuliani’s assets include a 10-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; a 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible; a collection of 26 designer watches; and rare Yankees collectibles, the most valuable of which might be a signed and framed Joe DiMaggio jersey.your times access
He is due back in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 16 to argue that his Palm Beach condo should be exempt from the seizure, because it is his primary residence. But Mr. Giuliani has failed repeatedly to answer questions that could prove his residency.
The court ruled that Mr. Giuliani had obstructed the election workers’ attempts to determine Mr. Giuliani’s real primary residence, which for years had been the cooperative apartment on East 66th Street in Manhattan.
Judge Liman, who has appeared frustrated at Mr. Giuliani’s shifting rationale for the omissions, ruled that his failure to comply will permit the court to draw negative conclusions about his Florida residency status, which could hobble his defense.
“The defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” Judge Liman said, adding that he was unmoved by the former mayor’s argument that he was overwhelmed with court requests, including charges in two criminal cases and several other civil actions. “The fact that he is a busy person and relied on others is not an excuse,” he said.President Joe Biden delivers a speech on the U.S. economy and “Bidenomics”, Thursday, September 14, 2023, at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz) image caption
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: It’s January 6th. Trump Won, William Kristol, Jan. 6, 2025. George Orwell wrote that in our day “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So let me restate the obvious: January 6, 2021 is a day that should live in infamy.
But for the next four years January 6th won’t live in infamy. Because in two weeks the man who incited January 6th, the man who now excuses it—no, celebrates it—will be sworn in as our next president.
So the obvious if unpleasant fact is that today we as a nation are in a worse condition, facing a more ominous future, than we faced four years ago.
The mob violence of January 6th was awful. That it was incited by the president of the United States made it worse. That it was the capstone of a more comprehensive effort by President Trump and his apparatchiks to overturn the election results and to stay in power made the date even more deserving of infamy.
But the attempted auto-coup failed. We made it through the dangerous period from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021. The guardrails held. President Trump left office. President Biden succeeded him, and tried to restore normalcy.
To his credit, he’s still trying. The outgoing president has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post lamenting that “an unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite—even erase—the history” of January 6th, and urging us not to forget what happened.
But the fact is that the unrelenting effort of Trump and his supporters has, as of now, succeeded. It’s telling that nowhere in his article does President Biden mention the name of the person who has been behind the effort to “rewrite—even erase” the history of January 6th. Presumably he thought it uncivil or inappropriate to attack his successor by name two weeks before he takes over.
But Biden’s silence about Trump merely brings home the extent of Trump’s success. The January 6th truther-in-chief will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new Trump administration will be presidential pardons or commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not? Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in prison?
Some of the more respectable supporters of the new administration are aware of how distasteful this will be. The Wall Street Journal editorial page frets that “pardoning such crimes would send an awful message about [Trump’s] view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.”
But that is Trump’s view. Indeed, it’s his oft-expressed view. Indeed, he ran for office on this view—and won. The fact that some establishment types have chosen to close their eyes to this isn’t his fault.
What can be done? Here in the United States, there are thankfully many sources of possible resistance, ranging from others in government—at both the federal and state level—to institutions in the private sector and civil society. They all have a role to play in the fight against the whitewashing of history and the erasure of truth.
But in the near term, it is the Senate of the United States that can do the most to help. It is the Senate that has to choose whether to confirm Trump’s cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees. It is Senate committees that can hold hearings and get those nominees on the record on January 6th.
All senators have to do is to ask the nominees whether they agree with what President Trump said on January 7, 2021—that what happened on January 6th was a “heinous attack” and that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”
Senators can ask this of all nominees. And Senators can refuse to confirm at least some of the January 6th deniers, especially those nominated to important positions in law enforcement and national security.
One nominee particularly deserving of decisive rejection is Kash Patel, selected to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an important article this morning, Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen lay out evidence that clearly shows why Patel is unfit to serve as FBI director. They show in great detail that Patel has embraced and promulgated false conspiracy theories not just about January 6th in general, but about the very organization he’s been nominated to lead.
The authors conclude, “That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.”
Will it be? Will the United States Senate permit Trump to install a full-on January 6th truther as head of the FBI? Or will some Republican senators put country before party, enabling the Senate to set up some roadblocks to our steep descent on a path towards an Orwellian and authoritarian future?
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The Bulwark, Political Opinion: How ‘My Kevin’ Helped, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 6, 2025. As Bill notes, Trump’s successful retcon of January 6th was the long, slow work of a lot of willing contributors. But it’s worth taking a moment today to look back on one of the most crucial links in that chain: then-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s 2021 decision not to cooperate with establishing an independent commission to investigate the ransacking of the Capitol by Trump’s mob.
In the months immediately following the attack, Republicans were still having trouble letting go of the horror they’d felt as they watched that day unfold. There was considerable talk of a bipartisan commission, modeled on the one empaneled after 9/11. As leader, McCarthy, right, blessed Rep. John Katko, the GOP ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, to strike a deal with committee chair Bennie Thompson on forming just such a committee.
Katko, a moderate New York Republican with a prosecutorial background and a national security focus, had been among the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the attack. The deal he and Thompson struck spoke to a desire to present a united front against the lawlessness of that day. It also contained significant incentives for Republicans. Democrats were then in power in the House, but the commission would not have made the GOP junior partners: Pelosi and McCarthy would appoint an equal number of members, and Republicans would have equal access to investigative tools like subpoenas.
“We must do everything we can to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again,” Katko said in a statement at the time. “An independent, bipartisan commission will remove politicization of the conversation and focus solely on the facts and circumstances surrounding the security breach at the Capitol as well as other instances of violence relevant to such a review.”
But while Katko and Thompson were negotiating, McCarthy’s spine was bending. Just a few months after the attack, it was already becoming plain to him that the Republican base’s devotion to Trump was going to outlast their momentary horror over the attempted insurrection. Rep. Liz Cheney, previously his third-in-command in House leadership, had already been ousted over her refusal to stop clearly and loudly prosecuting the case against Trump; after initially supporting her, McCarthy ultimately played along as Republicans kicked her to the curb.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Pete Hegseth Claims the Pledge of Allegiance Is a Forgery Used to Replace God, J.D. Wolf, Jan. 5, 2025. Trump’s nominee to run the military believes the flag and the Pledge were used to boot God from schools.
In June 2022, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, made remarks at the Ronald Reagan Library suggesting that the Pledge of Allegiance and the American flag were used by “progressives” to replace God and biblical truths in schools with nationalism.
Hegseth argued that the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were used as a "forgery" by progressives to substitute allegiance to the state for faith:
“The progressives had the targeting of our youngest minds on their mind from the very beginning.
They knew they had to remove the one immovable object inside American civic life and in Western civilization if their schemes were to ever catch on.
And they understood that a moveable object was God, was faith and that it was at the centerpiece of the American classroom since the founding, and they had to replace it. The way we describe it is, to keep the Indiana Jones analogy going, it's like when you're trying to grab a precious artifact, but it's on a pressure plate. And if you're gonna, if you take that artifact off the pressure plate, the alarm bells go off.
If they had removed God immediately a hundred years ago, the parents, the culture, the communities, the churches would have revolted.
And so they openly wrote in The New Republic and other publications, and this is the research that David did, they openly discussed how do we remove God from the classrooms?
That's the immovable object, and they ultimately landed on a forgery, which the culture, at the time, was willing to accept, which effectively was allegiance to the state.
It was the flag. It was a new pledge, a pledge of allegiance written by a socialist that didn't say under God when it was originally written.
I love the flag. I've proudly said the Pledge of Allegiance today at the beginning. I revere it.
For them, it was a new idea around which they could get society cohere that was more malleable than nationalism being more malleable than biblical truth, because when you have biblical truth and objective truth, you can't move people off of that.
Hegseth officeLiquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking AllegationsRead More
However, the historical timeline doesn’t support this view. The Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Christian minister Francis Bellamy, was designed to promote patriotism, not to secularize schools or replace religious practice.Pete Hegseth at the Ronald Reagan Library
At the time, public schools still included prayer, and it wasn’t until the early 1960s that the Supreme Court ruled against state-sponsored prayers and Bible readings. Meanwhile, the Pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942 and was used in schools beforehand.
Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg, right, Trump The Felon, Incoherent GOP Economic Plans Already Falling.
Morning all. We’ve talked about how the road ahead is going to be full of hard days. This is one of them. Stay strong.
On Friday Trump posted this on Truth Social:
Biden gave Liz Cheney a Medal yesterday, even though she has proven to be totally corrupt. She, “Bennie” Thompson, and the rest of the Unselect Committee, destroyed and deleted all evidence from their crooked investigation of January 6th. Cheney has the distinction of losing her Congressional seat by the largest margin in History! The people of Wyoming understood how bad for our Country she was, but Biden rewarded her only because she hated “TRUMP.” She’s a Warmonger of low intelligence. All she wants to do is kill people in “Endless Wars,” with no gain other than to defense companies. Liz Cheney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, Bennie Thompson, and the rest of these dishonest Thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the help which was offered for security. She is responsible, and admitted as much, for all to see, on her daughter’s tape. They have destroyed the lives of many people, and are rewarded by getting Biden Fake Medals. This is not America. January 20th cannot come fast enough. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Here is how she responded:
Here’s what I wrote to you in my very first post after the 2024 election:
While I am going to go slow, listen, and take my time I do have a few initial thoughts this morning about where we are now and where we are going, together……
Over the past few years we, our country, our leaders, Merrick Garland, the Harris SuperPAC and many, many others failed to adequately indict Trump and explain what an unprecedented threat he was. A rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon was just elected President. The relentless normalization of his extremism, madness and ugliness, the legacy media’s complicity in reporting on the race not the stakes, was a collective failure of enormous consequence.
Related to point one, I still think many on our side and in the establishment simply do not understand the nature of the conflict America finds itself in today. Trump and his global allies are playing a different game than we are used to. They have invented a whole new deeply illiberal game with all sorts of new pieces and rules. We have been slow, dangerously and recklessly, slow in recognizing how the rules of the game have changed.
It’s why whatever happens next, it is time for the Democratic Party’s generational wheel to turn and for new leaders who are not steeped in and hobbled by old ways to take the helm. We are facing a new battlefield, and more contemporary strategies, tactics, alliances and leaders are required in this next stage of the fight. Now is a time for re-invention, re-imagination, and risk-taking. We need to build a new politics for the American center-left, a more modern one, one more suited to the opportunities and challenges in front of us, a more “networked” one as my friend Joe Trippi would say.
The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Trump is likely to scale back his reckless, inflationary tariff plans:
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers….
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive.
This is a significant development for Republicans have been counting on the revenue of broad, across the board tariffs to make up revenue lost from their plutocratic tax cutting plans. Less revenue means higher deficits and much more trouble inside his already deeply unstable governing coalition. Trump’s team is working furiously to try to prevent Trump’s incoherent and reckless economic agenda from being implemented as he promised, for it’s inherent dangers are already starting to unravel the strong economy he’s inheriting; which in turn is putting the entire early Trump 2.0 project at risk.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: GOP faces INSTANT KARMA over Trump’s DAY 1 PLAN, Ben Meiselas, Jan. 6, 2025. MeidasTouch MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans in panic mode that they can’t make good on Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
Donald J. Trump, who has described himself in semi-religious terms and imagry as "The Chosen One."
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary: What Is Trump Doing With A January 19th Rally? Lance F Rosen, Jan. 4, 2025. Just what you would expect of a stochastic terrorist.
It should be obvious. He is calling in his movement of extremists comprised of QAnons and Nazis, psychotic fundamentalists and bonkers conspirophiles in an outdoor version of his pre-election Madison Square Garden hate-fest.
And his purpose? To essentially deliver the threat of a mailed fist to Congress, not just to the Democrats but to any lingering dissidents within his own party.
Lance’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
What he is conveying as his message with this rally is, in effect, "If you dare to oppose me on the deportations, the budget, my plans to use the military domestically, or try anything to obstruct my nominees, I will send my mob after you and they will get you, wherever you are."
That is his purpose. It's not a photo op. It's not to prove he can draw big crowds. It is a message to all, including the January 18th pro-democracy rally attendees, that there will be blood.
You will see it in the faces of the people there. Don't be surprised if there is violence, though I expect Presidential security and reinforcements will be there in force, therefore not likely. The relevant point is that he now has official immunity, and will be pardoning the January 6th criminals to augment his private army of Brownshirts.
The media has dropped any reference to the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally which Trump organized because for the most part they have been broken by a barrage of terroristic threats from Trump to pull their licenses and shut them down, to use government agencies to investigate and destroy them, to acquire them through hostile takeovers, or to incite stochastic terrorism against their ownership and editors. That is why you've heard nothing about the Madison Square Garden version of Trump, and instead are getting drowned by mindless coverage of the juvenile squabbles within the GOP.
So, if you were curious about this rally, now you know what it is. He is taking a page from his mentor who used to have them at Nuremberg. And don't be surprised if the staging of it looks eerily similar to this.
New York Times, As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle, Reid J. Epstein, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The race to lead the Democratic National Committee centers on the favorites, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, but the party’s infighting over them looks nothing like a broad reckoning with its 2024 defeats.
Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.
The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.
Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.
Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 5, 2025. President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
The terrorist attack by an American man who said he had joined ISIS that killed 14 people in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day served as a reminder that the Islamic State, which Mr. Trump likes to boast he defeated during his previous term, remains a threat and an inspiration to radicalized lone wolves. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are daunting challenges even without U.S. troops engaged in combat there.
Thanks in part to Covid relief spending by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself. Families remain pressed by the cost of living, including housing, health care and college tuition. The cost of gasoline, while down from its peak, is still about 70 cents per gallon higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Moreover, Americans remain as divided as they have been in many years — politically, ideologically, economically, racially and culturally. As healthy as the country may be economically and otherwise, a variety of scholars, surveys and other indicators suggest that America is struggling to come together behind a common view of its national identity, either at home or abroad.
Indeed, many Americans do not perceive the country to be doing as well as the data suggests, either because they do not see it in their own lives, they do not trust the statistics or they accept the dystopian view promoted by Mr. Trump and amplified by a fragmented, choose-your-own-news media and online ecosphere.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Is the “Scarlet F” coming to Trump? Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 4, 2025. What is the legal significance of Trump being a convicted felon? Most of America’s laws punishing convicted felons long after they’ve gotten out of jail or otherwise finished their sentences date back to the use of felony convictions in the old South to disenfranchise Black people. These include losing your ability to vote, to hold certain types of jobs, and even to own a gun. (Almost all of the states where ex-felons can’t vote are former Confederate states, which have disenfranchised over 5 million people, most nonwhite, this way.)
It appears that a loophole in Florida’s law, which forbids felons with unpaid fines from voting, will let Trump continue to cast a ballot in that state because he was convicted out-of-state (NY) rather than by a Florida court. Will he have to surrender the gun he reportedly owns? Will there be any consequence at all for him? Judge Merchan will have the first final say (I say “first” because Trump will appeal) and it’ll be interesting to see if the press focuses on Trump’s response or Merchan’s opinion, which is virtually certain to point out that Trump’s conviction is for criminally manipulating the 2016 election. I’m betting they won’t use the phrase “election interference” at all, but stay tuned…
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 3, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, Jan. 4, 2025. Today a new Congress, the 119th, came into session. As Annie Karni of the New York Times noted, Americans had a rare view into the floor action of the House because the party in control sets the rules for what parts of the House floor viewers can see. Without a speaker, there is no party in charge to set the rules, so the C-SPAN cameras recording the day could move as their operators wished.
Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. All eyes were on the House, where Republicans will hold 219 seats. Initially, though, that number will be 218: The seat to which Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was elected will be empty since he resigned from the previous Congress and, after the House Ethics Committee released a report saying there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had broken state and federal laws, apparently decided to focus on his new media show rather than return to the House. When the clerk announced that Gaetz would not take a seat in the 119th Congress, applause broke out.
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Man killed in Cybertruck explosion, Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was active-duty U.S. Army soldier, officials say (Alcides Antunes photo via Reuters and PBS).
New York Times, New Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear, Jacey Fortin and Jesus Jiménez, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Officials said they used data from Tesla charging stations to chart the driver’s dayslong journey from Colorado to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
It was difficult, at first, for the authorities to identify the driver of the Tesla truck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning. By the time the flames were extinguished, he had been burned beyond recognition.
But as investigators pored over the charred remains of his ruined rented vehicle, a 2024 Cybertruck, they discovered some clues to the driver’s background and his intentions: some guns, a military ID, fuel and many fireworks.
And on Thursday, the authorities said that they had found something else: The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the driver’s head, the county coroner ruled.
“Am I comfortable calling it a suicide mission?” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in response to a reporter’s question at a Thursday news briefing. “I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other labels.”
New York Times, Cybertruck Driver Shot Himself in Head Before Vegas Blast, Jacey Fortin, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The man who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning shot himself in the head immediately before the vehicle was engulfed by fire, the authorities said on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The authorities are still working to determine exactly what happened, and what the motivation was for the incident, which injured seven people. Here is what we know so far.
Trump / GOP Transition News
Washington Post, Trump says he will rename the Gulf of Mexico. Can he do that? Maegan Vazquez, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and the president-elect seemed to tie the prospective renaming to his long-standing grievances with Mexico’s handling of immigration, drug trafficking and trade.
Trump provided no additional details about how he planned to implement the name change, but the comments sparked immediate questions about whether a president has the authority to rename an international body of water and prompted at least one Republican member of Congress to draft legislation.
Axios, Mike Johnson reelected as speaker after brief revolt, Andrew Solender, Jan. 3-4, 2025. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected as the speaker of the House on Friday, securing the gavel on the first ballot.
Why it matters: Johnson appeared imperiled as three Republicans initially voted against him — enough to sink him on the first ballot.
After a roughly 45-minute standoff, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) switched to voting for Johnson, giving him the 218 votes he needed to secure the gavel without a multi-ballot fight. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the lone defector, voting for Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), while all Democrats voted for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Politico, Judge turns down Jan. 6 felon’s request to attend Trump inauguration at invitation of GOP lawmakers, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2025. It’s the second time a federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration.A bird flies framed by security fencing in front of the U.S. Capitol.
A federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 felony defendant’s request for permission to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite a personal invitation from members of the Utah congressional delegation.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Russell Taylor’s “unusually grave” conduct at the Capitol — which included recruiting “fighters” to descend on the Capitol, wearing armor, carrying weapons and helping others push past a police line — did not warrant the “immense privilege” of attending an inauguration.
“It would not be appropriate for the Court to grant permission to attend such a hallowed event to someone who carried weapons and threatened police officers in an attempt to thwart the last Inauguration, and who openly glorified ‘[i]nsurrection’ against the United States,” Lamberth wrote in a five-page decision.
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, is the second federal judge to deny a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, turned down a request Thursday from a felony defendant charged with unleashing chemical spray at a police officer.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, approved a misdemeanor defendant’s request to attend the inauguration, and several other requests are pending. The Justice Department has largely opposed such requests, saying it would be improper to subject Capitol police to facing the very people who stood against them four years ago.
Taylor’s is the only request that was publicly endorsed by members of Congress.
Former Utah representative Chris Stewart, who wrote to Lamberth on behalf of three current members of Utah’s congressional delegation, asked the judge’s permission for Taylor to attend as their guest.
“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote last month. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”
Despite the charges against him, Taylor’s case was complex. He quickly pleaded guilty for his crimes, acknowledged his wrongdoing and became an early cooperator with prosecutors, even testifying at the trial of an alleged co-conspirator. Lamberth sentenced Taylor to a term of probation and praised him as a model defendant. Under the terms of Taylor’s three-year probation, he must receive permission to travel to Washington.
Lamberth acknowledged Stewart’s praise for Taylor, but said he had already considered those factors when he gave Taylor a lenient sentence.
Washington Post, Biden awards Liz Cheney a presidential medal for challenging Jan. 6 attack, Maeve Reston, Jan. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The president honored one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics less than three weeks before Trump is set to take office a second time.
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Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson, left, author, attorney and former professor, Jan. 4, 2025. Bill Ackman, above, asks, “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?” It’s a child’s question—or anyone with no knowledge of criminal justice—but here an expert answers it.
Seth AbramsonJan 4 QUESTION from far-right billionaire BILL ACKMAN: “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?”
We know this question is asked in bad faith, because a billionaire like Ackman has lawyers and other advisers who could answer this extremely basic question for him almost immediately.
There’s no reason to broadcast the question to his 1.6 million Twitter followers other than to spread three far-right canards that every criminal justice professional knows to be false: New York City is a dangerous large city (it is actually a very, very safe large city); prosecutors are by and large progressive (by and large, prosecutors are extremely conservative by instinct, politics, and professional-advancement planning); and violent crime is now out of control (it is plummeting).
Nevertheless here’s an ANSWER from criminal defense attorney Seth Abramson:
On a criminal record, each charge a person has ever faced is a separate arrest entry—so if, on a single date of offense, a person is arrested on ten charges, that may well show as ten arrests even though all of those arrests were for a single course of conduct.
Because over 95% of criminal cases are resolved by a defendant taking responsibility for their actions and accepting a plea deal—that’s right, the overwhelming majority of those arrested aren’t like Donald Trump and seek no more than a just punishment for what they are accused of doing—police and prosecutors prepare in advance for this known eventuality by habitually wildly overcharging cases. The theory behind this is that the more charges you can pile on someone, the more likelihood (because each charge carries its own penalty, which can be assessed consecutively to all other penalties) they will enter into a plea agreement with the government and thus spare taxpayers the cost (and government agents the time) of a full-blown criminal trial.
The result of this is that even a rather minor incident will often lead to a very large number of more-or-less redundant charges and an extremely filled-up arrest record.
I’ve seen and personally represented defendants with 50+ arrests from just two dates of offense—meaning just two actions that were deemed by the arresting officers to be criminal. Bill Ackman is also aware of such a situation, given that his political hero, Donald Trump, technically was arrested on 34 felonies as part of a single course of conduct (though in Trump’s case these crimes spanned months, which is actually far worse than what we see with unpremeditated street crimes born of transient anger).
And of course arrests aren’t convictions. While arrests show up on an arrest record, many arrests result in nolle prosequi withdrawals of the charges by prosecutors for reasons ranging from a witness recantation to a plea deal that involves some charges being withdrawn, from the evidence ultimately gathered by police not sustaining the charges the arresting officers originally believed could be sustained to a prosecutor deciding (but this is rare) that the case was overcharged and that is was unfair to the defendant.
Short of charges being withdrawn voluntarily by the government, they may also be “kicked” (dismissed) by judges because (say) witnesses fail to appear in court, certain evidence was illegally seized, the government has botched the collection or testing of the evidence in a way that infringes upon the defendant’s constitutional rights, or a whole host of other reasons—including, notably, a “not guilty” verdict by a jury of the defendant’s peers after a trial.
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Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg
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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 21, 2024 [U.S. Government Shutdown Avoided], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 22, 2024. Shortly after midnight last night, the Senate passed the continuing resolution to fund the government through March 14, 2025. The previous continuing resolution ran out at midnight, but as Bloomberg’s congressional budget reporter Steven Dennis explained, “midnight is NOT a hard deadline for a government shutdown. A shutdown occurs only when [the Office of Management and Budget] issues a shutdown order, which they traditionally will NOT issue if a bill is moving toward completion.”
President Joe Biden signed the bill this morning, praising the agreement for keeping the government open, providing urgently needed disaster relief, and providing the money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a container ship hit it in March 2024, causing it to collapse.
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Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
New York Times, Jimmy Carter (1924-2024): A Pomp-Filled Farewell for Carter With 3 Days of Tributes, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025. The nation’s leaders on Tuesday kicked off three days of tributes to Jimmy Carter, staging an elaborate pageant of Washington fanfare for a politician who disavowed the trappings of the imperial presidency and never gave up his humble Georgia roots.
Mr. Carter, who died last week at age 100, was flown to Washington and taken to the U.S. Navy Memorial downtown, then delivered to the Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. He will lie in state in the Rotunda all day Wednesday before a formal state funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
“James Earl Carter Jr. loved our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a eulogy during a solemn Capitol service attended by members of Congress, the cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomatic corps. “He lived his faith, he served the people and he left the world better than he found it. And in the end, Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.”
Former President Carter, who once banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” will lie in state at the Capitol as part of three days of elaborate ceremonies.
President Jimmy Carter and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 1978. Both saw themselves as straight shooters in a world of spinners (Photo:
Barry Thumma/Associated Press
New York Times, ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History, Peter Baker, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). President Biden is another Democrat hurt by inflation and struggling to free hostages. But Mr. Carter’s enhanced reputation post-presidency offers hope.
When President Biden appeared on camera to pay tribute to former President Jimmy Carter, he sounded almost as if he were thinking of himself in these final days in office.
“In today’s world, some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era — with honesty and character, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden said in breaking away from his Caribbean vacation on Sunday after the former president’s death. “It mattered. But I don’t believe it’s a bygone era.”
Mr. Biden, too, has been dismissed as a man of a bygone era, an old-school politician in a new-school world, an octogenarian president playing by rules he learned in the 1970s when he served in the Senate and Mr. Carter was in the White House, rules that did not help him in today’s fast-paced, smash-mouth political arena. He is, in this view, a man out of time — Mr. Carter’s time.
Washington Post, Jimmy Carter: They wrote obituaries about Carter — but died before him, Laura Wagner, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Carter’s longevity meant that some of his obit writers have by now not only left journalism but also their mortal coils.
New York Times, In Carter’s Hometown, a Long Vigil Ends With Sorrow, but Also Uplift, Rick Rojas, Christina Morales and Christian Boone, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Plains, Ga., had been bracing for the inevitable through Jimmy Carter’s ailments and nearly two years of hospice care. Still, his death “doesn’t seem real.”
The Georgia town known first and foremost as the home of Jimmy Carter had steeled itself time and again for an existence without him. First, there was his cancer diagnosis in 2015, and then the fall that broke a hip, and the disclosure almost two years ago that he had entered hospice care.
But sure enough, every time, he held on.
And so, Plains, a speck of a community tied to the 39th president for the better part of a century, awoke on Monday to a reality that, strangely enough, seemed almost as inconceivable as it was inevitable. Mr. Carter, 100, was gone. He died on Sunday at his home, the modest ranch house hidden behind the security fencing and guard stations in the center of town.
“Honestly, it doesn’t seem real,” said Philip Kurland, the owner of the Plains Trading Post, an overstuffed emporium of political memorabilia in the strip of businesses that makes up downtown. “It was inevitable, but there’s still sadness. There’s also a feeling of: Let’s celebrate a life well lived.”
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (New York Times photo by Damon Winter )
New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100, Peter Baker and Roy Reed, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but held on longer than even his family expected.
Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter on the campaign trail and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of the former president’s signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
Other than interludes in the White House and the Georgia governor’s mansion, he and his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, lived in the same simple home in Plains for most of their adult lives and each of them passed away there, Mrs. Carter in November last year.
A lifelong farmer who still worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s, Mr. Carter had long defied death and outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him. Over the years, he beat back a series of health crises, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, and repeated falls, one giving him a broken hip.
The Carter Center announced in February last year that Mr. Carter, “after a series of short hospital stays,” had decided to forgo further life-prolonging medical treatment and would receive hospice care at home.
News that he seemed to be in his final days prompted a wave of tributes and remembrances of his extended and eventful life, but even then he upended expectations by hanging on for nearly two years. He lived long enough to bid farewell to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96, culminating a marriage of 77 years.
Jimmy Carter, furthest right, is standing in the Oval Office with four of his successors. From left to right: George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former President Jimmy Carter, furthest right, in a group photo of his successors in January 2009 (New York Times photo by Doug Mills)
New York Times, Carter the Critic Didn’t Spare His Successors, Linda Qiu, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter defied the unwritten rule of former presidents: Don’t criticize the occupant of the Oval Office.
Former President Jimmy Carter grinned in the Oval Office in January 2009 for a photograph, a visible gap separating him from four of his successors. As the others stood shoulder to shoulder, he positioned himself off to the side, a hand in one pocket, as if to distance himself just slightly from that most exclusive club.
Mr. Carter had no qualms about breaking one of that club’s unwritten rules, namely that former presidents restrain their critiques of the current occupant of the Oval Office. In the four decades after leaving the White House following the 1980 election, he caused regular stirs with pointed opinions about his successors.
“He was in fights with everyone, Democrats, Republicans,” said Julian E. Zelizer, the author of “Jimmy Carter” and a historian at Princeton University, who called Mr. Carter “a maverick through and through.”
Stuart Eizenstat, a former adviser to Mr. Carter, said the former president wasn’t the type of person to just go back to Plains, Ga., and “work on carpentry and painting.”
“When he left office, he was in his mid 50s,” Mr. Eizenstat said. “He didn’t want his voice to be unheard.”
Washington Post, Carter to lie in state at Capitol, with state funeral to follow on Jan. 9, Azi Paybarahm, Dec. 30, 2024. Former presidents and other dignitaries are expected to attend the service at Washington National Cathedral where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy.
The death of former president Jimmy Carter touched off an American mourning ritual that requires quickly coordinating a sprawling group of federal officials, local partners and law enforcement, as well as elected leaders from across the political spectrum.Get the latest election news and results
Services to honor Carter will begin Jan. 4 in his home state of Georgia and conclude Jan. 9 with a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral, where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy. Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for three days, which will give members of Congress and everyday Americans the opportunity to pay their respects.
The events require a complicated choreography of protocol, ceremony and security at which official Washington excels, but the timing of Carter’s funeral presents some particular challenges. The former president died Sunday at the age of 100.
The tributes to Carter come after the New Year’s Day holiday and as Washington is experiencing a political transition, with Biden preparing to hand power to President-elect Donald Trump. Separately, a fractured House Republican majority will try to elect a speaker on Jan. 3, a process that previously took the GOP dozens of rounds of votes spread over several days of public feuding.
New York Times, After Jimmy Carter Won the Presidency, Democrats Lost the South, Richard Fausset, Dec. 30, 2024. On the day he was sworn in as governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, an ambitious white peanut farmer from rural Sumter County, announced that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
The declaration landed like the carefully calculated bomb it was intended to be in the South of 1971 — and landed Mr. Carter on the cover of Time magazine, along with the blurb, “Dixie whistles a different tune.”
But in his ensuing half-century of public life, Mr. Carter, the one-term Democratic president who died Sunday at 100, would be forced to listen rather helplessly as Republicans mostly called the tune in his native South, supported by white voters who were uncomfortable with the Democrats’ embrace of racial inclusion and abortion rights, and were attracted to the small-government, low-tax promises of the party of Ronald Reagan.
Indeed, after Mr. Carter’s ascension to the White House, the states of the old Confederacy would go on to become, with a few exceptions, a crucial base of support for Republican presidential candidates. Much of that support came from Mr. Carter’s fellow Southern evangelicals, who turned sharply away from him and the Democrats during his presidential term. They became one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs and remain so to this day.
That was part of a shift that had begun in the early 1960s, as Republicans found a way to chip and then blast away at what had been a solidly Democratic South since the end of Reconstruction. Southerners’ fealty to the party had been based on their appreciation for Roosevelt’s New Deal, and their bitterness over the 19th century Republicanism of Lincoln that helped erode the region’s strict racial hierarchies.
Yet Mr. Carter also helped to create a model for Democratic success in a South that has become increasingly Republican‚ a model that remains workable to varying degrees today. The election of 1976 was one of a number of times that a Democratic candidate has emerged with just the right balance of rhetoric and policy promises, uniting just enough white Southern progressives and white moderates in a successful coalition with Black and other minority voters.
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Trump's Cases, Allies, Threats, Opponents
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using his name. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued from above.
I'm going to state publicly what I have suspected all along but have not yet divulged until now. This is my personal speculation, but I believe that a deal was made by Biden to get Trump to leave the White House and relinquish power in 2021, provided he would not be prosecuted aggressively. This, in my mind, is the only thing which solves the mystery of why did Trump even leave, and why did he agree to a transition? And I should state for the record that while I always remained critical in a principled way, I have been a strong and vocal defender of Joe Biden since he launched his candidacy in 2017, and I am not writing this to bash him. In a way, if a deal was made I understand it and his motives.
That said, all indications were that Trump would make some desperate effort at a last stand, because he stood to lose his Presidential legal shield and go to jail if he didn't. He even tried to get Netanyahu's help in launching a war with Iran at the end to fabricate a national emergency and void the election. General Milley actually called it Trump's "Reichstag Fire" and blocked it. Despite his desperation, Trump relented, and it has always been puzzling to me as to why. If there were a deal, that would explain it. We know that everything with Trump is a transaction, devoid of any motive other than self-preservation. I am certainly open to discussion if others have thoughts on it, because it is just my opinion and nothing more.
So, on our timeline, Biden came in, pledged bipartisanship and healing in his inaugural, appointed Garland under pressure from Dunns's flunky Klain, left. He (Garland) was a former DOJ prosecutor and federal judge, a plodding GOP bureaucrat and proceduralist, guaranteed to not do anything which could remotely be considered "political" in order to protect the DOJ from charges of "weaponizing Justice. Therefore when it came to not antagonizing MAGA, he was right on board with Klain's and Dunn's program.
Remember also that this was the guy who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers McVeigh and Nichols, but the religious cult and militia networks (the neo-Nazi "Christian Identity," and the Michigan militia) which housed them and actively supported their anti-government plot were let off the hook. There was a network, not just two guys, and Garland chose to not go after all of them for sedition conspiracy, only the two mentioned for the crime of the bombing. (It should be mentioned that the same Michigan militia networks that supported them were caught plotting a "citizen's arrest" of Governor Gretchen Whitmer 26 years later, which was in fact a plot to kidnap her and her cabinet, conduct mock trials and summary executions for treason, right after they were incited by Trump to storm the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to oppose covid lockdown)
Garland, once sworn in after the usual obstruction in the Senate by McConnell, (the second go-round for him after he was Obama's failed nominee for SCOTUS) did nothing for month after month about the stolen documents or J-6. Instead of going after the planners and the ringleaders, he was preoccupied with rounding up and prosecuting the thousand or so zombies used as cannon-fodder for the riot, which was just cover for the actual coup plot of Trump's Congreseional allies boiding Biden's electors. Not Trump,Meadows, Bannon, Stone, especially not Ginni Thomas. No, it was more important to nail the “horny” QAnon guy than the people who were responsible for bring the mob which left five dead DC cops and hundreds more injured.
Then the J-6 committee did such a thorough job documenting Trump's coup attempt, that Garland was literally forced to abort the "hands off" policy and started a grand jury. And once it was finally underway, all of his foot-dragging led to his "cover your ass" move of appointing a special prosecutor, Jack Smith.
Then there were shocking revelations that Trump's stolen documents included nuclear secrets which he was showing off to guests and donors at his golf club, and Biden's national security team raised the roof to convince him to pressure Garland to go after them. Garland started another investigation he didn't want in order to force Trump to give the documents up. Trump said "fuck you," ordered his lawyers to lie to the FBI, he was allowed to stall, hide some of what he had, possibly sell some of it, so Garland was forced to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and start a second grand jury (which again he never wanted) and Biden went along with him on all of it.
And to top it off, Garland incredibly insisted that Smith convene the grand jury and try the stolen documents case in Ron DeSantis' fascist hellscape of Florida, not Washington DC where the judges are more balanced than Florida's Republican hack federal appointees. No credible reason for Garland to insist Smith go to trial in Florida was ever given, aside from the fact the documents were there. He personally oversaw packing up in Washington, and had no immunity the moment Biden was sworn in. It would have been a slam dunk.
The only possible explanation is that bringing the case in Trump's home state was a sop, a buy-off to mitigate the rage and retribution factor from the Congressional MAGAts. Remember that after the Mar-aLago FBI search warrant was executed, a Trump supporter assassinated an FBI agent in Cincinnati, and there was a pattern of threats against their offices nationwide. Therefore Florida is what they went with, and almost predictibly a Trump appointed "fan-girl" known as Aileen "Loose Cannon" got jurisdiction, stalled, delayed, and after the SCOTUS immunity ruling threw out the case entirely.
This bought Trump the time he needed to let the SCOTUS step in and give him his blank check to cancel all of his cases and start making plans to deploy Seal Team Six to assassinate his political opponents. All of the cases were then pronounced DOA, including the state criminal charges in Georgia and New York.
As a consequence of Garland's malfeasance and incompetence, we now have a Führer, not a President, coming in with list in hand of his targets for bloody retribution, a person with the mental map and personality disorders of the movie character Patrick Bateman from the bloody horror novel "American Psycho." And the worst thing is that some of us wanted to believe the same thing President Biden believed, that this collection of vengeance-seeking bloodthirsty fascists who belong to a violent cult led by a psychopath could be bargained with. Or, for that matter cared even a whit about the national interest, and were really just normal good people who would come around when we got some bills passed that would mean job security and putting money in the pockets of their voters.
It is beyond me that someone with Joe's battle-tested life experiences and history of political wars in the Senate and as VP could actually have believed this. He once told Putin to his face that he had no soul. Did he really think he could horse-trade with people who were bought or sold, or had their lives threatened? Did he really believe that Trump would honor his side of any deal that was made, if one was made? I believe in redemption, but I don't cry over Hallmark movie happy endings which I know to not be real,
The intention, in my view, was never to prosecute or jail Trump, despite Jack Smith's committment to do just that. It was to use the prosecutions as leverage to contain Trump and force him to eventually drop out of the campaign. And instead he turned around and did the exact opposite. And Biden went along with the deal and Garland's do-nothingism because his "Rasputin" Anita Dunn was in his ear telling him that if Trump went on trial he would lose the "moderate MAGA" vote and therefore the whole election, and our democracy along with it.
Biden never realized how tragic his error was until Garland went after his son, then after him personally on his decade old collection of useless memorabilia in his garage, and Garland's choice for Special Prosecutor, Republican hack prosecutor Robert Hur (approved of by Gym Jordan and James Comer) wrote a long report on how there was no crime, but Biden seemed senile. All this of course to prove himself fair and non-partisan when it came time to testify in Jordan's committee to grovel for budget crumbs and defend his turf. Joe never saw it coming, like a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.
That is my reading from the outside, fwiw. Like I said it is speculation. And the tragedy regardless is that Biden's awful pragmatic decision born of a 50 year long career of centrist dealmaking with Republicans came back to haunt him because Garland offered up his son Hunter as a sacrifice to the MAGA carnivores, hoping that would "balance things out" for his Trump cases, (which again, I believe he never wanted) and prove his department was apolitical in order to keep them out of his business running the DOJ. Well...how did that all work out?
That is what I believe actually happened. At some point I think more will come out that points toward this scenario as being likely.
So, one mystery solved, which is why Biden picked Garland. Another one still remains open, which is why did Trump leave the White House in 2021, a decision he has said he regretted all along. Whatever the case, we will pay the price for President Biden's unfortunate decisions reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. He only found out at the tragic end who his real friends were, and who were his enemies, because he saw what he wanted to see and placed his trust in the wrong people at the worst possible time. He wanted to believe that McConnell and Lindsey Graham were still his friends and that they would work with him. He didn't want to see how they and others were broken by Trump.
Former President and President-elect Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case, Lola Fadulu, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed). The president-elect had asked a court to overturn the defamation judgment against him in the case, which centered on E. Jean Carroll’s account of a sexual attack in a dressing room.President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that the court should not have allowed Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.
The appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him. “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. It was unsigned but issued by a three-judge panel made up of Denny Chin and Susan Carney — appointed by President Barack Obama — as well as Myrna Perez, appointed by President Biden.
“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” Roberta Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a statement. “We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, who is set to be his White House communications director, said Mr. Trump was re-elected with an “overwhelming mandate,” and he said the American people “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
Mr. Trump was represented in the appeal by D. John Sauer, his pick for U.S. solicitor general.
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, a Florida Republican who was President-elect Trump's's first nominee to become U.S. Attorney General in a second Trump administration, is shown with Trump in a file photo via Facebook.
New York Times, Trump Transition Updates: Ethics Panel Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman and Robert Draper, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). Former Representative Matt Gaetz has been under investigation over allegations including sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
A report (here) by the House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, of regularly paying for sex, using illegal drugs and having sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. The report concluded that the actions by Mr. Gaetz — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general — violated state sexual misconduct laws, including Florida’s statutory rape law, and violated House rules. But the committee said it did not find conclusive evidence that he violated federal sex trafficking laws. Read more ›
President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Mr. Trump returns to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row. Mr. Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, but legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration.
An ethics panel report concluded that Gaetz violated state laws and House rules.
The House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general, of regularly paying for sex, possessing illegal drugs and having sexual relations with an underage girl, according to a draft of the panel’s report.
The report, which was released on Monday, found that from at least 2017 to 2020, Mr. Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; and, in 2017, “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” the report said.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), center, in a 2017 Facebook photo with friends and fellow ardent Trump supporters Roger Stone and Joel Greenberg, the latter a former Florida tax collector now imprisoned on multiple federal felony charges for sex trafficking, allegedly in part with Gaetz.
Politico, Gaetz report renews debate about how he escaped federal charges, Josh Gerstein, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The Justice Department applies federal sex-trafficking laws narrowly.
The House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz offers some hints about why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute the former Florida congressman after a wide-ranging federal investigation into whether he committed sex trafficking.
The decision likely stemmed from concerns about the strength of the evidence and the department’s history of applying sex-trafficking laws narrowly, former prosecutors said Monday.
The modern federal sex trafficking law is limited to cases involving coercion, fraud or the interstate or international movement of minors for sex. Despite its damning evidence of wide-ranging violations of law and House rules by Gaetz, the Ethics Committee report did not find those factors.
An older statute, known as the Mann Act, sweeps more broadly, but the Justice Department as a matter of discretion limits its application to particularly egregious acts of trafficking.Jeffries on Gaetz Report: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'
The most egregious allegation Gaetz faces is having sex with a 17-year-old. But the Ethics Committee report does not say that he transported or arranged for transport of the alleged victim across state lines — an important point because some connection to interstate commerce is required for it to become a federal sex-trafficking crime. The report also says the then-17-year-old told investigators she did not tell Gaetz her age at the time, and that he didn’t ask.
The report does bluntly accuse Gaetz of having violated Florida’s statutory rape law. But it concluded that a state prosecution is impossible at this point because he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old in 2017, and the state’s statute of limitations has expired.
The report also found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed other illegal conduct, including hiring prostitutes and using illicit drugs. Some of that conduct was connected to interstate commerce — but federal prosecutors likely felt it did not rise to the level of what is typically prosecuted under the relevant federal statutes.
The Mann Act is traditionally reserved “for situations where there’s severe forms of trafficking and exploitation of the victims,” said Margaret Gandy, a former federal prosecutor.
Because Gaetz’ alleged interstate and international conduct involved women over 18 and there was no suggestion of violence or duress, DOJ may not have thought it was an appropriate Mann Act case to charge, Gandy said.
“When it is exploitative and abusive, when there’s obviously physical force, coercion, duress, all those things, that makes it easy,” Gandy said. “There’s more of a gray area sometimes around some more transactional sex with consenting adults that warrants that additional pause and consideration.”
Another former federal prosecutor, Robert Bittman, agreed that the department rarely brings sex-trafficking charges in cases of consensual sex between adults, even if money changed hands.
“It’s a crime, it’s a statute on the books that they can prosecute — but it’s not a high-priority thing,” he said. “It’s not something that’s often prosecuted, and really would only be prosecuted if there are significant, other aggravating factors.”
Federal prosecutors have also historically hesitated to bring cases that involve quid-pro-quos for sex that involve things other than an explicit payment.
The Justice Department concluded its investigation into Gaetz last year. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
However, a law enforcement official said all DOJ decisions about Gaetz were made by career prosecutors. The official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, added that this has been the standard practice for the Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive investigations into political figures.
An attorney for Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment, and Gaetz directed reporters seeking comment to his social media posts.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X, contending that many of the claims in the report were inaccurate. He has repeatedly denied having sex with anyone under 18 and said money he transferred to women was to compensate girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for their travel.MOST READbiden-37249.jpg
New York Times, Trump’s Suit Over Iowa Poll Is His Latest Action Against News Media, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, David Enrich and Alan Feuer, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump sued The Des Moines Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, escalating his threats to seek retribution against the mainstream media and his political enemies.
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, right, Dec. 15, 2024. Kash Patel Is A Lunatic.
This MSNBC article by author and writer Jay Michaelson makes a strong case for Biden to carry out sweeping pre-emptive pardons to protect those targeted for revenge prosecutions by Trump and his incoming "Himmler," Kash Patel, left.
The counterarguments by legalists, MAGA fascists and several Biden-bashing liberal media pundits are fairly well refuted, and in fact shown to be bogus in each example.
Americans by and large are letting their fears affect their judgment, and are either blocking out the Trump/Patel threat to our constitutional system and targeted individuals, or have resigned themselves to it and are retreating into a psychological bunker mentality.
The only remedy is effective political action. Throwing junk memes up against your Facebook wall is no solution and represents a net negative as far as wasted time and energy.Facebook is part of the apparatus which will be deployed to identify us and pick us off, one by one. Be clear that this is a devolving Orwellian type of platform designed to neutralize Trump's political opposition.
I should not have to make this case. You all saw what Facebook did with their algorithm to spike most of the posts about Project 2025 when that became the leading issue in the campaign. And of course it was soon determined that the corporate figure who designed that algorithm in charge of so-called “community guidelines” was a Trump guy.
And now you have Zuckerberg crawling to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's bone spurs, then funding his inaugural to the tune of 1 million, with who knows what other kinds of backroom deals were struck to keep Trump off his back. Same with Bezos.
My days here are numbered. You also saw this week that my page was hijacked and I lost all but a handful of my 1400 readers. My wife posted a notice on my timeline to notify everyone that I have a new page, and how to find it. That message was removed, either by Facebook or the hijacker.
So this place is a dead end for those resisting the regime. That is where we are. I'm taking steps this weekend to backup and safeguard my Substack archive of a 1000 articles going back six years. Others who are writers and posters should consider taking similar steps to preserve their data.
Don't block on this, we are headed into dark territory.
Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Weiner went to prison but Gaetz won’t? Thom Hartmann, Dec. 28, 2024. Remember when Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, right, served 18 months in prison for texting a dick pic to an underage girl he never met or touched or paid or anything else?
Now comes Matt Gaetz and, according to a new report from the House Ethics Committee, the Republican Congressman actually paid an underage girl for sex that he then had with her in such a public part of a party house that multiple people witnessed it.
Will Gaetz similarly go to prison? Don’t count on it; Republicans are generally immune from prosecution for such crimes, particularly when their fathers are major and morbidly rich Republican movers-and-shakers and Trump is trying to pack his administration with accused rapists and predators…
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: WHOA! DOJ Drops BOMBSHELL FILING in Trump Case, Michael Popok, Dec. 31, 2024. Dec 31, 2024 Special Counsel Jack Smith and President Biden just gave Trump a New Year’s surprise, handing off the Mar a Lago appeal to the main Miami federal prosecutor, rather than dismiss it, in hopes that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Judge Cannon and her ruling that the Special Counsel is unconstitutional before the inauguration. reports.
New York Times, Guest Essay: What Judges Can Do for the Rule of Law Under Trump, Nancy Gertner, right,and Joel Cohen (Ms. Gertner is a retired federal judge. Mr. Cohen is a former federal prosecutor), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.
This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.
If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.
Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Suppose a federal district judge is asked to sign off on an eavesdropping warrant under Title III of the federal criminal law. He or she will receive one-sided (“ex parte”) submissions from prosecutors applying for search warrants (for a physical search or a wiretap), an application that the target’s attorney will not know about nor have the ability to contest.
In previous administrations, federal trial judges have had generally well-founded confidence that the Justice Department and the post-Hoover F.B.I., under presidents from either party, have not been employed to attack political enemies. Most district judges — especially those who have served as federal prosecutors, as most have — believe that the prosecutors appearing before them act with integrity, that their offices are not being manipulated to undermine those who challenged the current administration or its leader.
A judge could assume that the warrant has gone through layers of approval within the Justice Department, even reaching the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, an extremely high ranking official in the department. That judge could also be reasonably confident that very little, if anything, would be amiss after passing through the layers of the approval process, including senior department officials.
But with the astonishing comments from the president-elect and his appointments, it is reasonable to ask if judges can still assume that level of confidence in the review process. The previous assumption that prosecutions would be undertaken only against individuals suspected of committing crimes may be wrong.Editors’ PicksLin-Manuel Miranda on ‘Mufasa’ and the Secret to a Disney HitThe Trinidadian Christmas Staple Worth the Yearlong WaitHow ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (and Its Writer) Went Down in History
Now, when judges are asked to review warrant applications, or any other ex parte submissions from the government, they should do so through a different lens, much more scrupulously than ever before.
Or consider a motion to dismiss an indictment based on selective prosecution. In the usual case, prosecutors are given broad discretion, so long as there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the prosecution does not run afoul of constitutional protections.
A selective prosecution motion alleges that criminal charges were brought for reasons forbidden by the Constitution. The defendant must prove that he was singled out for prosecution when those similarly situated were not and that the prosecution was based on an impermissible reason, such as race, religion or political affiliation.
Since courts presume that the government undertakes a prosecution in good faith, the defendant’s burden of proof is typically quite heavy. The motion rarely succeeds — for example, Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss his gun case on selective prosecution grounds failed.
But what if, in Mr. Trump’s second term, the object of the prosecution is on Mr. Patel’s list, or is expressly targeted in a Trump speech? Judges should obviously not assume that prosecutors in the Trump administration are always acting in bad faith. But they should consider accusations of selective prosecution differently than they have in the past.
If a defendant in a political case raises legitimate concerns about the integrity of a case in Mr. Trump’s second term, federal judges can’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore the attorney general’s clear intentions or those of the proposed F.B.I. director.
When these individuals announce that political affiliation will influence their prosecution decisions, judges should believe them — and act accordingly.
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, teaches law, neuroscience and sentencing at Harvard Law School and is the author of “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate” and the forthcoming “Incomplete Sentences.” Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior counsel at Petrillo Klein & Boxer and the author of “Blindfolds Off: Judges on How They Decide.”
Politico Magazine, Trumpian Revenge, Campus Revolts and the Collapse of a Presidency: 24 Stories That Explain a Chaotic Year, Staff Report, Dec. 25, 2024. It has been a year of unprecedented headlines — even for an election year.
The conviction of Donald Trump. An assassination attempt just weeks later. An abrupt end to Joe Biden’s candidacy, followed by the rise and fall of Kamala Harris. It was a historically chaotic and consequential year on the campaign trail, and beyond. America saw intense protests on campus colleges over the Israel-Hamas war, a rising gender divide among the youth and the kind of widening polarization that can even fracture families.
It might have been too many events to fully process in one year, so POLITICO Magazine has you covered. Check out these 24 stories — many of them our top reads of the year — that will help you understand what just happened and what’s to come under Trump 2.0.
New York Times, Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board, Charlie Savage, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). As chair of the House Intelligence Committee (shown above), he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social media company.
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congresswho had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy.
The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.
In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Nunes — who is currently the chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform — for his counterinvestigation into the Trump-Russia inquiry in 2017-18, when Mr. Nunes led the House Intelligence Committee as a Republican congressman from California.
“While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
New York Times, Trump Names Richard Grenell for ‘Special Missions’ Role, Elizabeth Williamson, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). A combative loyalist and the president-elect’s former ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grenell had hoped to be secretary of state.
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Richard Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as his “envoy for special missions,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
A loyalist known for unbridled social media attacks on Mr. Trump’s perceived critics and many others, Mr. Grenell led a shambolic effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Nevada after Mr. Trump’s loss, and he has lobbied assiduously for a diplomatic job in the new administration.
He got his start in government before Mr. Trump’s rise, as a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under multiple presidents. But his online toxicity, foreign business contacts and tendency toward biting personal attacks on political opponents and the media turned off many centrist conservatives, helping propel him toward Mr. Trump, a man he denounced in 2016 as “dangerous.”
“Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
Mr. Grenell did not immediately reply to a texted question about his priorities for the role, which does not currently exist. Mr. Trump outlined it as: “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”
The role is a far cry from secretary of state, the job Mr. Grenell coveted, but to which Mr. Trump plans to appoint Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida. Being named for a lower-profile White House envoy job could help Mr. Grenell avoid persistent questions about his paid work for foreign clients, including luxury hotel development projects he has pursued in the Balkans with Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Grenell was ambassador to Germany. His abrasiveness and partisanship alarmed diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly after he told Breitbart London that he planned to “empower” German conservatives opposing “the failed policies of the left.”
In 2020, Mr. Trump named Mr. Grenell to temporarily replace the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, whom Mr. Trump had fired.
New York Times, An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones, Natasha Singer (Natasha Singer reported from Revere, Mass., and reviewed more than 400 student fight videos from schools in 15 states), Dec. 15, 2024. Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools.
Ricardo Martinez, an 11th grader, was in his high school lunchroom in April when a mass brawl erupted.
He watched, horrified, as a dozen teenage boys rampaged through the cafeteria, pummeling and kicking one another, overturning tables and chairs. Other students jeered and jostled to film the fight on their phones.
“It was like a stampede of videos,” said Mr. Martinez, now 18 and a senior. “Everyone was trying to get the best angle.”
But the pandemonium at Revere High School in Revere, Mass., was just beginning.
Within minutes, students in other parts of the building began receiving text messages about the lunchroom brawl. Suddenly, teachers said, dozens of riled-up teenagers started racing down hallways and careening down stairways with their phones to get to the fight.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Special counsel Jack Smith moves to dismiss Trump’s D.C. prosecution, Perry Stein and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov. 26, 2024 (print ed.). The special counsel filed a motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s election-obstruction case without prejudice, which means the case could be revived in the future.
Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Monday to dismiss the federal election interference charges against President-elect Donald Trump, putting an end to a lengthy investigation that never made it to trial.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Smith’s motion seeks to dismiss the case without prejudice, acknowledging that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. If she does that, it leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could again bring charges once Trump leaves office after his second White House term.
But legal experts said it’s possible that once Trump is in office, he could try to do something that has never been tested before: pardon himself to foreclose the possibility of legal jeopardy in the future.
Trump faces four counts related to conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results. Smith’s filing acknowledges that the Justice Department has longed believed a sitting president cannot stand trial, and says prosecutors conferred with Trump’s attorneys and that they did not oppose the request to dismiss the case.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, reportedly involving in part hush money to women ((Associated Press photo by Seth Wong). Below, the presiding judge in the case was Juan Merchon, below left.
New York Times, Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling, Ben Protess and Kate Christobek, Dec. 16, 2024. Justice Juan Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by President-elect Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Deadline, Donald Trump, On ‘Meet The Press,’ Again Pledges To Pardon January 6th Rioters, Says Liz Cheney And Other Committee Members “Should Go To Jail
Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
New York Times, U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol, Roni Caryn Rabin, Jan. 3, 2025. Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to malignancies, including breast cancer. But to label them, Congress would have to act.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general, above, said on Friday.
It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer.
Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”
But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said.
He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview.
“The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change.
Still, President-elect Donald J. Trump does not drink, and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swore off alcohol and drugs decades ago, and says he regularly attends AA meetings.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
There is no question that heavy consumption is harmful. But supporters of moderate drinking — including makers of wine, beer and spirits, and some physicians and scientists — argue that a little alcohol each day may reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States.
Newer scientific studies have criticized the methodology of earlier studies, however, and have challenged that view, which was once a consensus.
While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.
Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.
Two scientific reviews will be used to inform the updated recommendations about alcohol consumption in the federal dietary guidelines.
Five years ago, the scientific report that informed the writing of the 2020-2025 dietary guidelines acknowledged that alcohol is a carcinogen and generally unhealthy and suggested “tightening guidelines” by capping the recommendation for men at one standard drink, or 14 grams of alcohol a day.
When the final guidelines were drafted, however, there was no change in the advice that moderate drinking of up to two drinks a day for men was acceptable.
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images).
Washington Post, Democrats’ new push to stop RFK Jr.: Highlight Samoa’s measles outbreak, Dan Diamond, Jan. 8, 2025 (print ed.). They say the island’s public health crisis, which followed Kennedy’s meeting with local anti-vaccine activists, reveals the consequences of questioning vaccines.
In June 2019, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to the small Pacific island nation of Samoa, where he met with activists calling for Samoans to skip measles vaccines and opt for alternatives instead. Now that visit — and the country’s subsequent measles outbreak — are receiving new political attention, as Democrats and advocates seek to block Kennedy’s confirmation as America’s top health official.
Five months after Kennedy’s visit, Samoa declared a measles emergency, with leaders warning that vaccination levels had declined precipitously. Thousands of Samoans were infected during the outbreak, and 83 people died of the vaccine-preventable disease — an episode that Democrats say could foreshadow a future American crisis, should Kennedy be elevated to a Cabinet position and sow doubts about vaccines here. Most of Samoa’s measles deaths were in young children.
“It’s a real-life example of what this individual will [do] as the nation’s leading health-care official,” said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D), a physician who responded to Samoa’s outbreak five years ago and said he witnessed the deaths of measles-afflicted infants. Green traveled to Capitol Hill this week in a bid to sway senators by sharing his story, part of a larger effort by advocates to scuttle Kennedy’s selection as secretary of health and human services by focusing on the Samoan crisis.
New York Times, Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? Emily Baumgaertner, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Preferring Not to See, Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t exactly hidden his anti-vaccine views over the years, as hundreds of hours of video footage, numerous books, and many documentaries show. And yet, on the cusp of being considered for the top health post in the country, Senate Republicans are suggesting they’re reassured Kennedy has moderated his views based on their brief, one-on-one conversations.
“I think he’s done a good job of answering a lot of the questions about his views on vaccines,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNN after meeting with Kennedy this week. “I think he understands the values and benefit that vaccines play and have played through the years preventing disease.”
We don’t know exactly what Thune and Kennedy discussed. (Neither party opted to fill me in, although I did ask.) But come on!
Kennedy may well have denied—as he has in public for years—that he is truly “anti-vaccine.” Like many other anti-vaxxers, Kennedy prefers to be thought of as a stickler for vaccine safety.
But one would have to be deliberately obtuse or willingly naïve to think that Kennedy has suddenly seen the light about the benefits of vaccines. He has spent years arguing that the vaccines currently on the market are harming more people than they help. And he’s actively campaigning against their continued use, pending a brand-new regimen of placebo-controlled testing.
In one interview, Kennedy made the case against the measles vaccine by noting what a great time he had when he and his siblings caught the disease, which can have gruesome complications including brain swelling (you don’t say?), gastrointestinal issues and fever, sepsis, and septicemia.
“My 11 brothers and sisters, we all had measles and it was a great week” he said, describing the cure for measles as “chicken soup and vitamin A.”
He has declared that “the polio vaccine does not work” and argued that it in fact could be responsible for a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
In 2021, he told podcaster Alec Zeck that he tries to actively convince people not to get their kids vaccinated. “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not to get him vaccinated.’”
Last year, he went further while speaking to podcaster Lex Fridman: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
A few months later, in a CNN appearance, he tried to clean those comments up:
"What I meant—which was a bad use of words in this—none of the vaccines that are currently on the mandated schedule for children, the 72 vaccines for children, have ever been tested in a pre-licensing safety study. What that means is that we do not know what the risk profile is for those products."
When Kennedy argues that he just wants to “test” vaccines—or when Donald Trump says, as he did last weekend, that “there are problems” surrounding pediatric vaccination and “we’re going to find out what those problems are”—what he is saying is actually quite drastic.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Never Trumpers Were Right, Actually, Jonathan V. Last, right, Dec. 18, 2024. A response to Bret Stephens. Plus drone talk from the front lines.
Bret Stephens has a column today in which he renounces his Never Trump patrimony and castigates Trump critics for being overheated and wrong about so many things.
You should read his piece to get the full breadth of his argument. But I’ll give you a taste:
Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose. We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. We hyperventilated about his odd chumminess with Vladimir Putin. But the collusion allegations were a smear, and Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher than either Barack Obama’s or (at least until Russia invaded Ukraine) President Biden’s.
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and Promise, Corey Kilgannon, Mike Baker, Luke Broadwater and Shawn Hubler, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione, above, charged in the death of an executive in New York, was an Ivy League graduate who had recently suffered physical and psychological pain.
Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue-blazered frat buddies.
He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford University.
With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family’s thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path.
The police now believe that Mr. Mangione, 26, is the masked gunman who calmly took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a Midtown Manhattan street last week and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He was arrested in Altoona, Pa., on Monday after an employee at a McDonald’s recognized him and called the police. Officers said they found him with fake identification, a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing and a manifesto decrying the health care industry.
Later on Monday, Mr. Mangione was charged in Manhattan with murder, along with additional counts of forgery and illegal weapons possession. And in the hours after his apprehension, his baffling journey from star student to murder suspect began to come into focus.
Washington Post, Person of interest in UnitedHealthcare shooting arrested in Pa., police say, Mark Berman and Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione faces gun charges and other counts. He was denied bail after his arraignment in Altoona, Pa.police commissioner, said at a news briefing.
Thompson, 50, right, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a stunning act of early-morning violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.
Police said it appeared that the suspect they were seeking escaped the city shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement officials said they were scouring reams of video footage and tips, but they pleaded with the public for more help, sharing several images of a person they said was wanted in connection with the killing.
ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele, Josh Margolin, and Meredith Deliso, Dec. 9, 2024. Mangione, above, was located in Pennsylvania nearly a week after Brian Thompson's death.
Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus," Russell Payne, Dec, 9, 2024. Not so fast, what kind of "anti-capitalist" is praising Elon Musk and retweeting Peter Thiel?
On Monday afternoon, police announced that they had arrested a person of interest in the investigation into the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was shot outside his hotel in midtown Manhattan last week.
According to police, Luigi Mangione was arrested around 9:15 a.m. in Altoona, Pennsylvania with a ghost gun and suppressor that New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was “consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
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New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and PromiseABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder,
More On Presidential Pardons
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
Trump in that interview also repeated favorite right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 ― that “Antifa” was behind the violence and that a man named Ray Epps actually instigated the attack.
What’s more, Trump said his pardons would also extend to those who actually pleaded guilty to assaulting officers because, in his view, the justice system is “corrupt,” and the accused were coerced into taking pleas. “Because they had no choice,” he said.
Further, the “radical” and “crazy” qualifiers for those who might not get pardons conflicts with dozens of statements at his rallies over the past three years in which he has promised to pardon all the Jan. 6 defendants.
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Emptywheel, Analysis: Judge Mark Scarsi’s Umbrage: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)
Middle East Wars, Reactions
New York Times, In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under Bashar al-Assad, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Laura Boushnak, Jan. 5, 2025. Residents of Syria’s capital are picnicking on a once-forbidden mountaintop and trading dollars and imported Nescafe. They say the city seems theirs again.
Across Damascus, as in much of the country, Syrians are reclaiming, and in some cases embracing anew, spaces and freedoms that had been off limits for years under the Assad regime. There were places ordinary Syrians were not allowed to go and things that they were not permitted to say when the Assad family was in power. The country, many said, increasingly felt as if it did not belong to them.
But with the newfound sense of freedom comes some trepidation about the future under a government formed by Islamist rebels, and whether with time it might institute new restrictions and limitations.
Many Syrians are watching each decision and announcement as a harbinger of how their new rulers may govern. Last week, Syria’s de facto new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, said it could take two to three years to draft a new Constitution and up to four years to hold elections, alarming Syrians who fear they may have traded one authoritarian leader for another.New York Times, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. Tread Cautiously With Syria’s New Leaderssing money from the drivers who contribute to it. The plan will help generate $15 billion for crucial upgrades to the region’s mass transit system.
New York Times, As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Only Worsened, Aryn Baker and Abu Bakr Bashir, Dec. 28, 2024. Israel says that it tries to limit the loss of civilian life. But the dire humanitarian situation has prompted condemnation from human rights organizations.
Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.
In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.
Israel says that its target is Hamas and that it does everything possible to limit the loss of civilian life. But the increasingly dire humanitarian situation has prompted a particularly scathing chorus of condemnation from the United Nations and international human rights organizations.
Here is a closer look at three parts of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Washington Post, U.S. amplifies strikes on Yemen’s Houthis as tensions with Israel flare, Missy Ryan, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The latest round of strikes occurred as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.
The Biden administration directed new airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Tuesday, as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks struck targets in coastal Yemen and the capital, Sanaa, including a command node and facilities used for manufacturing and storing weapons. The operations, which also included strikes on Monday, destroyed radar positions and one-way aerial drones, Centcom said in a statement.
Video provided by Centcom showed aircraft taking off from the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier positioned in the Red Sea.
The strikes mark the latest salvo in a year-long U.S.-led campaign aimed at halting ongoing attacks by the Houthis, a militant group that functions as the de facto government in much of Yemen, on commercial ships and military vessels in nearby waters. The Houthis’ campaign has impaired global shipping and taken a major toll on U.S. allies reliant on related revenue.
New York Times, Investigation: Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians, Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay, Sheera Frenkel and Adam Sella (The reporters interviewed more than 100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
Fearful of another Oct. 7-style attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants. One of the deadliest attacks of the 21st century followed.
At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.
Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.
In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.
The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.
It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.
In previous conflicts with Hamas, many Israeli strikes were approved only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt. Sometimes, officers could risk killing up to five civilians and only rarely did the limit rise to 10 or above, though the actual death toll was sometimes much higher.
On Oct. 7, the military leadership changed its rules of engagement because it believed that Israel faced an existential threat, according to a senior military officer who answered questions about the order on the condition of anonymity.
New York Times, Here Are 8 Ways Israel Weakened Civilian Protections, Samuel Granados, Patrick Kingsley and Natan Odenheimer, Dec. 26, 2024. Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.The Israeli military said its air force had struck a vehicle overnight in Nuseirat with a “terrorist cell” from the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad inside. Reports about journalists being targeted were “fake claims,” Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media.
The media office of Gaza’s Hamas-run government said five journalists from Al Quds Today, a Palestinian television channel, were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcast vehicle. The channel has regularly featured Islamic Jihad leaders and promoted the group’s ideology.
The office said this brought the number of journalists killed in Gaza to 201 since the start of the war in October last year.
The vehicle, bearing the word “Press” in red letters, was hit near the gates of Al Awda Hospital, according to a post on social media from Quds News Network, another Palestinian news outlet. The Israeli military has previously said that it has never deliberately targeted journalists but that it considers members of “an organized armed group,” such as the military wing of Hamas, or those who participate in hostilities, as lawful targets.
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Washington Post, Israeli government approves plan to expand settlements on occupied Golan
More Global News
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
New York Times, Elon Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 28, 2024. The world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Trump, ridiculed critics over his backing of the extremist party AfD, as Germany prepares for elections.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist.
This week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election, explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
“The traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”
Mr. Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new elections.
With four mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform, is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.
Mr. Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor in chief-designate on the same page.
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New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeNew York Times, Taiwan Says China Has Deployed Largest Fleet of Ships in Decades
More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs
Lance Rosen Substack, The Trump Press Conference Gives Us A Clear Look Into The Abyss, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 7, 2025. I would say we have a category five emergency.
Taking Greenland by force is bad enough. It would be an attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. Technically the US would be in violation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which is what has held it together since its inception. "An attack on any member nation is an attack on all, therefore will be met with full retaliation," to paraphrase. Which of course will not under sny circumstances happen. At that precise moment, NATO is dead, the treaties notwithstanding.
This is how the forty-year long Russian asset intends to end it. He knows he will never get the NATO treaty repealed by the Senate, so this is his "work around."
At that point Ukraine is gone, and Putin will be free to establish hegemony in Europe. The US would retreat into "Fortress America," operating to conquer and colonize our hemisphere, surving through using our military to seize assets and raw materials. That is what explains his planned Panama gambit.
That is the dystopian future which the sabotage by the Democratic leadership is bringing us into, if we don't take the next 100 days to put it to a stop.
I keep telling everyone, the most important task, the key flank is derailing these nominations.
None of you that I know of is taking that up, or acting with an ounce of urgency.
What else should I say? Is anyone on board with what I am saying? We are running out of time. We have to jolt the Dem leadership into emergency actions now.
New York Times, U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese Drones, Citing National Security Concerns, Ana Swanson, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). The Commerce Department requested that companies comment on the implications of the rule by March. The final decision will fall to the Trump administration.
The Biden administration said on Thursday that it was considering a new rule that could restrict or ban Chinese drones in the United States out of national security concerns.
In a notice, the Commerce Department said the involvement of foreign adversaries — notably China and Russia — in the design, development, manufacture and supply of drones could pose “undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
The notice requested private companies to comment on the scope and implications of the rule by March 4. The decision of what restrictions to impose, if any, on Chinese and Russian drones will fall to the Trump administration.
China and Russia have shown a willingness to compromise U.S. infrastructure and security through cyberespionage, the Commerce Department said, adding that the governments could leverage their laws and political situations to “co-opt private entities for national interests.”
Beyond the use of drones by hobbyists, the devices are employed in a variety of U.S. industries. They help farmers monitor crops and spray for pests, inspect pipelines for the chemical industry, survey bridges and construction sites, and aid firefighters and other emergency responders.
But drones have evolved over the past decade to include sophisticated cameras, receivers and artificial intelligence abilities, fueling concerns that they could be turned into a useful tool for an adversarial government.
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New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy to Win, Andrew Egger
Russia, Russian War Against Ukraine
New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage, Lara Jakes, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Russia has become increasingly brazen in adopting “gray zone” attacks against Europe and the U.S., leaving officials with a dilemma: How to respond?
When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.
But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”
The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.
In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.
Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.
Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.
As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?
New York Times Magazine, Ukraine Was Outgunned. Its Solution: Small, Cheap Suicide Drones, C.J. Chivers, Photographs and Video by David Guttenfelder, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Outnumbered and desperate, the nation began hacking cheap consumer drones with explosives — bringing a brutal new form of violence to 21st-century warfare.
Known as first-person-view drones, or FPVs, the weapons have altered the human experience of war and flooded the internet with footage chronicling the desperate last seconds of lives ended by miniaircraft that transmit video of the people they pursue, then smack into them and explode.
Its camera revealed a surprise: a Russian T-80 tank parked in the foliage. A $3 million military machine had been discovered by a $400 repurposed toy.
The tank was well defended. Its crew had backed the 44-ton vehicle into undergrowth, blocking access to its vulnerable exhaust grate. Slats of reactive armor, which can thwart armor-piercing charges, bedecked its sloped front end. Its rotating turret carried a metal frame and netting, a combination derisively referred to as a cope cage, designed to snag drones and prevent warheads from making direct strikes on hulls. All its hatches were closed, blocking Prorok from flying the warhead inside.
In the past, attacking an armored vehicle with such a warhead typically required a soldier to risk exposure to take a hasty shot with a rocket-propelled grenade, sending a projectile at almost 1,000 feet per second that may not hit the vehicle at all. Weaponized FPV drones have created a new way. In the field south of Belgorod, the combination of the tank’s defensive measures and the drone’s peculiar characteristics made for an exercise that was almost surreal. Time seemed to slow down. The little drone hovered patiently before the massive military machine, rising and falling, swaying on the breeze, emitting its high-pitched buzz while Prorok flew it safely from afar, deciding his attack’s best place, which he could strike with uncanny precision.
Prorok selected the turret’s base, where armor was thinner. “Yes, yes,” Buryi said. Prorok leaned forward as he pushed the flight controller and the drone plunged into the spot. The screen went blank. Watching from the surveillance drone, Andy called out. “I see an explosion!” he said.
Alexander Dugin, a far-right writer and ideologue known as “Putin’s brain,” is seen in 2016 in his studio in Moscow (Photo by Francesca Ebel of the Associated Press).
Washington Post, U.S. imposes Russia, Iran sanctions over attempted election interference, Jeff Stein, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The Treasury Department accused a Russian entity of having “manipulated a video” about a vice-presidential candidate.
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday on Iranian and Russian entities accused of trying to interfere with the U.S. 2024 elections, including by allegedly using artificial intelligence to disseminate false information.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
In its statement, Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on both a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an affiliate of Russia’s military intelligence agency over their efforts to “stoke sociopolitical tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 election.”
Treasury’s statement also said the Russian entity used AI tools to “quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network” of fake news websites and produced “baseless accusations” about a 2024 vice-presidential candidate, whom Treasury declined to identify.
Although the sanctions target relatively minor entities and are unlikely to have major economic effects, they reflect the deteriorating relationship between the United States and two of its chief geopolitical adversaries. President Joe Biden is weighing much more far-reaching sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, while President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to significantly increase economic pressure on Tehran.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Bradley Smith, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”
Sanctions were imposed on the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), a Moscow-based group founded by Aleksandr Dugin, whom Treasury had already sanctioned in 2015. Treasury accused the center of working closely with the Russian military intelligence service that “oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare” against the West. Dugin's daughter, Darya Dugina, shown in an image circulated on X by @AlexKokcharov, was another ultra nationalist killed in car bomb attack that some suspect was aimed at her father.
In its statement, Treasury said the intelligence service both directed and provided financial support to the center to influence the 2024 presidential election. With that support, Treasury said, the center maintained a network of “at least 100 websites” for its “disinformation operations,” through which it pushed false information.
“CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the Treasury statement said.
The Russian center also “manipulated a video” to “produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice-presidential candidate,” Treasury said. Treasury did not identify the video, but The Washington Post and other news organizations reported in October that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Moscow was behind a faked video and other material smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations. Separately, Microsoft researchers said this fall that Russian entities had circulated false videos on social media in which an actor accused Vice President Kamala Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run.
The sanctions also target the Cognitive Design Production Center, a subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, over its “influence operations,” according to the Treasury Department. The Justice Department previously charged three men with an alleged hack-and-leak attack against Trump’s presidential campaign.
Washington Post, Putin says he saved Russia, but a year of challenges suggests Moscow’s position is precarious, Mary Ilyushina, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Marking 25 years in office, Vladimir Putin says he has remade Russia as a sovereign power and will prevail in Ukraine, but economic and strategic setbacks complicate the picture.
When Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, resigned on New Year’s Eve in 1999, he publicly implored Vladimir Putin, his handpicked but little-known successor, to “take care of Russia.”A quarter-century later, Putin insists he has done just that — and more.
As he wrapped up his marathon year-end news conference on Dec. 19, Putin boasted that he had thwarted efforts by the United States and its Western allies to subjugate Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.
“I have not just taken care of it, but I believe we have stepped back from the edge of the abyss,” he declared, in response to a question about Yeltsin’s remark.
“I have done everything so that Russia can be an independent and sovereign state that is capable of making decisions in its interests,” Putin said, “rather than in the interests of the countries that were dragging it toward them, patting it on the back, only to use it for their own purposes.”
But as 2024 draws to a close, Russia is in a far more precarious place than Putin’s rhetoric and bravado suggest. His forces are making slow but steady advances in Ukraine, but estimates by some NATO countries suggest hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, which has dragged on for nearly three years.
Washington Post, U.S. Treasury says it was hacked by China-backed intruder, Pranshu Verma and Ellen Nakashima, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). The department told lawmakers that the breach gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday that it was hacked by a Chinese state-sponsored actor who gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents, according to a letter reviewed by The Washington Post.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The department was notified Dec. 8 by a third-party software provider, BeyondTrust, that a hacker had gained access to a security key, which allowed the intruder to override certain security protocols and access some Treasury Department office workstations and unclassified documents stored on them, according to the letter notifying the Senate Banking Committee leadership of the breach.
The Treasury Department labeled the breach a “major incident,” in line with department policy that, according to the letter, categorizes nation-state intrusions as “major.” Once Treasury was alerted to the issue, it contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and it has taken the BeyondTrust service offline, according to a Treasury spokesperson. There is no evidence the hacker still has access to Treasury systems, the spokesperson said.
New York Times, Putin Apologizes for Kazakhstan Crash but Stops Short of Taking Responsibility, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Dec. 28, 2024.President Vladimir Putin of Russia called his Azerbaijani counterpart, the Kremlin said, to apologize for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday apologized for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane this past week, breaking the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the accident that killed 38 people. He did not explicitly acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the crash.
Mr. Putin “offered his apologies” for the crash in a phone call to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the Kremlin said in a statement. Mr. Putin initiated the phone call, according to the statement, and told Mr. Aliyev “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace.”
Mr. Putin said that as the plane approached its scheduled destination of Grozny, in southern Russia, Russian air defenses had begun to repulse an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Grozny airport and others nearby, according to the Kremlin.
Aviation experts and U.S. officials believe a Russian air-defense missile may have mistakenly downed the passenger jet. The Kremlin statement stopped short of attributing the crash to a Russian missile, but in its own statement acknowledging the apology, Azerbaijan’s presidential office suggested that was indeed the cause.
New York Times, Plane Crash Investigators Focus on Russian Air Defenses as Possible Cause, Ivan Nechepurenko, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).Russian aviation authorities said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had hit a flock of birds. But some experts cast doubt on that account, pointing to footage showing apparent holes in the fuselage.Listen to this article · 5:51 min Learn more
As authorities in several countries tried to determine what caused the deadly crash of a passenger airplane in Kazakhstan, investigators and experts on Thursday were focusing on the possibility that a Russian air defense system had struck the plane.
Aviation experts cast doubt on a Russian agency’s contention that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet had hit a flock of birds, saying images of the crash site show holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared unlikely to have been caused by them.
The jet had been flying on Wednesday morning from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, at a time when drone strikes were taking place around Grozny and Russian air defense systems were responding, according to residents and local news media reports.
Two Azerbaijanis briefed on a government inquiry said that Azerbaijani officials now believe that a Russian Pantsir-S defense system damaged the plane. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Caliber, a news outlet in Azerbaijan that is close to the government, also reported that the country’s investigators believe a Russian Pantsir system was responsible.-
New York Times, Analysis: Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Engaged in Sabotage? Michael Schwirtz, Dec. 28, 2024. Russia has assembled a fleet of hundreds of vessels to covertly ship its oil. The idea of using some to cause havoc may be proving irresistible to the Kremlin.
Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.
But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.
This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.
If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.
New York Times, Finland Says Vessel Suspected of Cutting Cable May Be Part of Russia’s ‘Shadow Fleet,’ Johanna Lemola and Lynsey Chutel, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.). Finland seized an oil tanker after the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure.
The Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker on Thursday on the suspicion that it was involved in cutting vital undersea cables and said the ship might have been part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” aimed at evading Western sanctions.
In a statement, the police in Finland said the authorities had boarded the Eagle S tanker in Finnish waters. The ship, which is registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, had been sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt, when it was detained.The police said they were investigating whether the vessel was involved in the latest suspected act of sabotage on undersea infrastructure: the cutting on Wednesday of the Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish authorities said Thursday that four other cables carrying data also had been damaged. The police called the latest cable cuts “aggravated vandalism.”
The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington Post, In major shift, Zelensky appears open to negotiating an end to the war, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ellen Francis, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). A new U.S. president and battlefield realities appear to be pushing Ukraine’s leader, who had long insisted on fighting for every inch of occupied land, to the table.
As Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russia’s army on the battlefield and President-elect Donald Trump looks to broker a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelensky has in recent weeks signaled a greater willingness for negotiations to end the war — a major shift for the Ukrainian leader, who had long vowed to fight for every last inch of his country’s land.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
Zelensky’s messaging has been careful; he has not explicitly said Kyiv would agree to concessions — territorial or otherwise — even while Russia occupies more than 20 percent of Ukraine and would probably retain control of that land after any ceasefire. But after previously stating that negotiations could begin only once Moscow withdrew all its troops, Zelensky is now emphasizing the need for long-term security rather than the immediate return of territory.
Zelensky’s change in rhetoric — something Ukrainian and Western officials have noticed — can probably be attributed to a worsening situation on the front line and an incoming U.S. administration that has put future security assistance for Kyiv in doubt. Ukrainian officials throughout the first year of the war stressed the importance of reclaiming all of Ukraine’s land, including Crimea and other areas Russia has effectively ruled since 2014, as a condition for any deal.
In recent meetings with Trump and European leaders, however, Zelensky has focused more on what he has referred to as “lasting peace” for Ukraine. The top priority is securing an invite to the NATO military alliance and other security guarantees, such as the possible presence of Western peacekeepers, to prevent future Russian attacks.
Officials and analysts said Zelensky’s tone shift is probably an attempt to be more in line with Trump’s emphasis on halting the conflict. But the Ukrainian leader is also trying to ensure his country doesn’t come out empty-handed.
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Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights
Politico, Driver Rams Christmas Market in Germany, Killing at Least 2 in Suspected Attack, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 20, 2024. Video showed a car plowing into a large crowd in the city of Magdeburg. The driver, identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who worked as a doctor, was arrested
A driver plowed a vehicle into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing an adult and a small child and injuring dozens of other people in what officials indicated was a targeted attack.
The driver was arrested, the authorities said. He was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who first came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor in a small town 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.
Saudi Arabia condemned the attack in a statement by its Foreign Ministry that did not mention the suspect. “The Kingdom expresses its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims,” the statement said.
More than 65 people were injured, 14 of them severely, said Michael Reif, the spokesman for Magdeburg. The authorities say they believe it was a deliberate attack. They are working to determine a motive, said Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, where Magdeburg is the capital.your times accessHave a moment? Play these games.Connections
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“Every human life lost in this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” a visibly shaken Mr. Haseloff told reporters on Friday night.200 mi.300 km.© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Nancy Faeser, who as Germany’s interior minister is responsible for public safety, said in a statement: “The shocking act in Magdeburg a few days before Christmas hits us in the heart. We continue to fear for the lives of the seriously injured and mourn the people who were torn from life by this terrible act.”
Before leaving his post in November, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, warned that the country’s threat level was higher because of the war in Middle East.
“The danger is real and more acute than it has been in a long time,” he said at the time.
More than 1,000 temporary Christmas markets pop up every year in Germany, and they have been the target of terrorists in the past. Last month, the police in Germany arrested two teenagers suspected of exchanging plans about attacking a Christmas market, but those alleged plans appear to have nothing to do with the attack on Friday.Editors’ PicksMy Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?A Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?Skiing’s Budget Secret: It Can Be Cheaper in Europe
In 2016, an extremist rammed a truck into a crowd in Berlin, killing 13. Since then, the police have secured many Christmas markets with temporary barriers.
It remains unclear how the driver in Magdeburg was able to circumvent the barriers that were protecting the market. The car drove some 1,200 feet before it stopped, officials said.
The authorities said the driver had rented a car before plowing it into the market on the last Friday before Christmas, when it was especially crowded with visitors. Many police officers were at the site. The area around the market was closed after the episode, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack in Germany inspired additional security measures around Christmas markets thousands of miles away, in New York City.
The New York Police Department said in a statement on Friday: “The N.Y.P.D. has been closely monitoring recent events in Germany and coordinating with federal and international partners. While we have not identified any specific/credible threats to New York City at this time, resources have been deployed to various Christmas markets and other locations throughout the city out of an abundance of caution.”
The city of Magdeburg, population 240,000, used to be part of Communist East Germany. The year’s Christmas market is in the old market square, just in front of City Hall.
Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car plowing into a large crowd at the Christmas market. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.
“The reports from Magdeburg are alarming,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in social media post. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
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Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey attends a news conference outside New York City Police Department 40th Precinct, July 17, 2023, in New York. (AP File photo by Jeenah Moon).
Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations, Philip Marcelou, Dec. 22, 2024. The highest-ranking uniformed officer in the New York Police Department has resigned amid allegations he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey ’s resignation Friday night, effective immediately, according to a department statement Saturday.
Chief of Patrol John Chell will take over as interim chief of department, and Philip Rivera will assume Chell’s duties as the head of the patrol division, the NYPD said.
Late Saturday, Tisch replaced the head of the internal affairs bureau, which investigates alleged police misconduct, saying in a statement that the unit “must always be dedicated to preserving integrity and rooting out corruption in all its forms.” She appointed Edward Thompson as interim chief after Miguel Iglesias was relieved of his command.
The NYPD declined to comment on the allegations against Maddrey other than to say it “takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously and will thoroughly investigate this matter.”
A lawyer for his accuser, Lt. Quathisha Epps, said the move was overdue.
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U.S. Immigration
New York Times, Trump Vowed Mass Deportations. Mexico and Central America Brace for Impact, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Jan. 7, 2025. Donald J. Trump has said that Mexico is allowing an “invasion” of migrants into the United States. But the current situation on the ground tells a different story: Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped sharply last year.
Crossings into the United States from Mexico dropped sharply last year. But countries south of the U.S. border are waiting nervously to see if President-elect Donald J. Trump orders mass deportations.
The possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers.
“We see dark times coming for the migrant community,” said Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “Anyone who falls prey to the Trump administration is now going to be devoured, chewed up and spat out.”
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U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Stock Market On Pace For Best Two Year Period This Century, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 31, 2024. The Biden Administration's economic policy is working.
The United States stock market is expected to have its best two year stretch this entire century, achieving a feat that has only happened a few times in history. According to latest numbers, the S&P 500 is set to gain over 20% this year.
This comes one year after the index rose 24%. Should these results hold, which they will for all intents and purposes, it would be the best performance for the index since 1997 and 1998.
According to statistics over the past two centuries, this type of performance by the index has only occurred three other times, in 1927 and 1928, in 1935 and 1936, and again in 1954 and 1955. This would mean that the current pace for the market is one that has been achieved only four other times in our nation's history.
In total, the S&P 500 is now up over 60% of the past two years, marking significant gains from 2022 which saw the index fall about 20%. Today's news is a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration's economic policy which has successfully ushered the United States out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is now almost certain that the economy will achieve the vaunted soft landing, ensuring that the United States stays out of a recession following extremely high inflation. It also means that the incoming Trump Administration will now be inheriting a booming, record breaking economy.
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New York Times, Opinion: Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America, Paul Krugman
Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. "‘Let’s get out of here’: Palisades residents flee fire.
An ominous fire broke out Tuesday near the Pacific Palisades — a coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles — and quickly exploded. The fire has grown to at least 2,921 acres, according to Cal Fire. Evacuation orders were issued as officials ordered residents in notoriously winding hillside neighborhoods to leave immediately.
Smoke plumes spread rapidly, moving toward structures and homes. A large swath of residences in Topanga Canyon, a woodsy, tucked-away community with one winding road in and out, are under evacuation warnings. The fire sparked amid a “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm event that is sweeping through a region that has not seen significant rain since spring. The Palisades Fire has now grown to at least 2,921 acres and is zero percent contained, according to a 6:18 p.m. update from Cal Fire. State fire officials are warning of extreme fire behavior — including short and long-range spotting — and say that wind gusts of up to 60 mph are expected to continue through Thursday. The cause is still under investigation.
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Media, High Tech, Culture, Education
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Steady, Political Opinion: Take This Billionaire, Please, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Jan. 6, 2025. Why is Jeff Bezos (shown above in a photo via Getty Imagaes) hurting, not helping, journalism?
When a journalistic institution is the one making headlines, it’s rarely good news. Such is the case for a revered American newspaper, The Washington Post. A mothership of American journalism, whose reporters helped topple an American president and inspired generations of young reporters, is listing and taking on water.
As Donald Trump and his army of “alternate” truth-tellers get ready to take the reins of government again, the country desperately needs the best and brightest journalists watching and reporting on their every move. And yet we wake to news that the Post is expected to lay off dozens more staffers the very month Trump returns to power.
The 147-year-old newspaper is apparently bleeding money, a problem of its own making. When billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos pulled the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, a reported 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. That accounts for 10% of the paper’s online audience.
“I just cancelled my Washington Post subscription. The web site asked why, and the closest option was ‘concern with the content.’ There was no option about surrendering to fascism, but that’s the real reason,” a former subscriber posted on X.
For Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Post’s financial losses are peanuts considering his $200 billion plus net worth. But his love of the paper and his passion for quality journalism seem to be shrinking.
Back in 2013, when Bezos bought the Post from the family of venerated publisher Katharine Graham, he said he wanted to transform it from a regional newspaper to a global one. He provided money — big money — to expand the newsroom and encouraged reporters to extend their reach by embracing the “gifts of the internet.”
Over the ensuing decade, his interest in the paper ebbed and flowed, but he mostly stayed out of the editorial decision-making. Then he pulled the Harris endorsement causing an exodus of top editors, opinion writers, and reporters.
But Bezos wasn’t done burnishing his rep with the former president. After the election, he pledged $1 million to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to stream it live on Amazon Prime (an additional $1 million in-kind contribution). Just before Christmas, he was seen at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring with fellow super-rich guy Elon Musk. And he has green-lit a documentary about Melania Trump to air on Prime. I’m guessing it will be what’s known in the trade as a “sweetheart profile.”
While it isn’t great that the owner of one of the most important papers in the country is cozying up to an incoming president who says he will be a dictator on “day one,” Bezos’s actions aren’t surprising. He didn’t become a billionaire by being selfless.
But on Friday, things took another turn at the Post. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes (shown above) quit in protest after a cartoon of hers (shown in draft form) was killed.
In a piece she published on Substack, Telnaes explained that “there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.”
Daily Mail, Disturbing new details show how CIA drugged and tortured Americans in secret mind control program MKUltra, Stacy Liberatore, Jan. 6, 2025. Newly declassified bombshell records of an infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured more than 60 years ago.
The collection of more than 1,200 pages detail how the CIA used induced sleep, electroshocks and 'psychic driving' on drugged subjects who were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
The subjects included criminals, mental patients and drug addicts, but also Army soldiers and average citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
A total of 144 projects were conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages detail how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and 'psychic driving,' under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and 'subjects in normal life settings' were 'unwittingly' given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
In a newly unsealed document from 1956, researchers were developing 'an anti-interrogation drug' by testing 'materials capable of producing alterations in the human central nervous system which are reflected as alterations in human behavior.'
A memo about a classified meeting showed that the CIA contemplated the possibility of testing on foreign nationals,' but decided that 'unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued' instead.Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary. He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra
Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss shown in 1953 mug shorts, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.
He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.
'Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,' Bulger penned.
'We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.'
The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: 'The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.
'These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.'
A total of 20 documents with more than 1,200 pages were declassified on December 23, published by the NSA and ProQuest.
'Despite the Agency's efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA's decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and reprogram the human mind,' shared NSA.
Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to be used against the Soviets during the Cold War.The CIA was testing drugs and other techniques on American citizens during the 1950s and 60s to develops new interrogation processes such as mind control. Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles (pictured) ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs
'We in the West, are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,' he said.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 details how the CIA's Technical Services Section (TSS) requested funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the agency's 'biological and chemical warfare program.'
Using a philanthropic organization as a 'cut-out,' the CIA partially funded 'a new research wing' of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and used part of it to conduct 'Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.'
MKULTRA, the memo states, provided research and development funding 'for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare' but did not specifically authorize funds to establish cover for these programs.The program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, performed 144 projects aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations,weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture
In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing.'
The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down.'
A 'knockout pill' was also to be developed, which would be used in 'surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.'
Another declassified document dated June 7, 1956, discusses an MKUltra subproject to be led by Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University who was known to conduct experiments on prisoners.
Pfeiffer was approved to develop 'an anti-interrogation drug' and 'tests in human volunteers.'
The objectives included administering 'large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers.'In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing'The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down'
The document does not specify the amount given, but taking large doses of the drug can induce terrifying hallucinations.
Another point was 'to evaluate the threshold dose levels in humans of a particular natural product to be supplied by [deleted].'
The supplier's name was redacted from the report, but pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed a process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954.
'[The] CIA had [LSD] in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in 'tonnage quantities' and had agreed to become the agency's supplier,' according to NSA.
The documents also show that the CIA established safehouses in 1956, which were run by narcotics agent George White 'for conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects.'
Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist and spymaster who headed the CIA in the 50s and 60s, admitted in the report that activities were 'highly unorthodox nature.'
Because of that 'it [was] 'impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent,' he wrote.
One of the last documents of the program, published in 1963, revealed researchers involved with MKUltra used radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment [sic] substances, and paramilitary devices and materials' during the secret initiative.
It focused on drug experiments conducted at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, but also 'unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.'
'It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKUltra substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations,' it reads.
As of 1960, however, the CIA was unable to develop a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill.
Also during that time, the report noted that 25 of the 144 projects 'remained in existence at present' - 1960.
While most of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church opened an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
'The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends,' Frank's 1977 report stated.
'Crises make it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.'
That report found that there were at least six subprojects that involved testing on unwitting subjects and other projects researcher 'drugs, toxins and biologicals in human tissue.'
The then-director of the CIA, Adam Stansfield Turner spoke during the investigation, saying the MKUltra's activities were more than 12 years old following the investigation.
'They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,' he added.
The investigation brought MKUltra to light, sparking public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA's unethical practices.
That led to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
Status, Paper Cuts: The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned, Oliver Darcy, Jan. 5, 2025. Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper's business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.
The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.
A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.
Poynter Center, Opinion: The new year looks the same as last year at The Washington Post, Tom Jones, Jan. 6, 2025. The Post again faces uncomfortable controversy, this time with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist quitting in protest.
Good morning, and Happy New Year. The Poynter Report is back after a holiday break. We jump right back in where we left off. That’s to say it would appear that 2025 is starting the same way 2024 ended for The Washington Post — with uncomfortable controversy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted a message on Substack that she was quitting the Post because the publication refused to publish her cartoon that showed several billionaire tech and media chief executives genuflecting at a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. One of those executives clearly was Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
Telnaes wrote, “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
Telnaes added, “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press.”
She also wrote, “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’.”
“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Post’s slogan.
In a statement to NPR media writer David Folkenflik, Post editorial page editor David Shipley said he disagreed with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.” Shipley said, “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
While that all might be true, why not just run the cartoon anyway, especially because much of the public believes there is a lot of truth in Telnaes’ cartoon? Not publishing it only reinforces that narrative.
After all, Bezos nixed a Post editorial that would endorse Kamala Harris for president, publicly congratulated Trump following his victory and had dinner with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago after the election. Killing the cartoon does come off as fishy, seeing as how news organizations, including the Post, routinely run several opinion pieces about the same topic.
The cartoon depicted Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse.
The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.”
Telnaes has been with the Post since 2008. She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001.
In a statement, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists called the Post’s decision to kill the cartoon “craven censorship” and “political cowardice.” They added, “The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper.”
The recent past has not been good at The Washington Post. Newsroom leadership has been uncertain since Sally Buzbee stepped down last June. The Post still hasn’t come up with a permanent plan for how its leadership structure will work, and is still reeling from the nixed editorial mess that resulted in staff resignations, internal criticism from some of its most respected journalists and digital subscription cancellations that Folkenflik reported totaled 300,000.More bad news at the Post
Here’s a little more bad news for the Post. They are losing three respected political reporters.
Two high-profile reporters announced they would leave the Post to join The Atlantic: Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent, and Michael Scherer, a national political reporter. And The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin reports that The Atlantic might hire more Post reporters.
Parker is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who joined the Post in 2017. Before that, she spent 11 years at The New York Times. Scherer also has been at the Post since 2017.
The Post’s loss is very much The Atlantic’s gain.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, told Mullin, “We believe in accountability journalism. We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”
Mullin added, “The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.”
Meanwhile, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Josh Dawsey is leaving the Post for The Wall Street Journal. Byers wrote that Dawsey would be a political investigations reporter and join a new Wall Street Journal D.C. reporting team that includes former Politico reporters Meridith McGraw, Olivia Beavers and Gavin Bade.
Dawsey is currently on leave from the Post to work on a book about the 2024 election. Media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his Status newsletter that Dawsey will start at the Journal in February.
Dawsey previously worked at the Journal and Politico before joining the Post in 2017. Another big loss for the Post.And even worse news at the Post …
Media reporter Oliver Darcy reported late Sunday night, “Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Darcy added, “The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.”One more …
This is sort of Post-related. Well, it involves Amazon and it has raised some eyebrows.
Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman reported, “Amazon Prime has exclusively licensed a documentary film for global theatrical and streaming release that will give viewers an ‘unprecedented behind-the-scenes look’ at First Lady Melania Trump’s life, Fox News Digital has learned. Fox News Digital has learned that the project is expected to be released globally in theaters and for streaming use in the second half of 2025. Filming for the upcoming documentary began in December 2024. The documentary will be executive produced by First Lady Melania Trump and Fernando Sulichin of New Element Media, with Brett Ratner of RatPac Entertainment serving as director.”
The Associated Press’ Lindsey Bahr writes, “The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1 million to the President-elect’s inauguration fund, and said that it would also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.”
Perhaps the most controversial part of this isn’t that Amazon is teaming up with Melania Trump, but that the director will be Brett Ratner. As The Hollywood Reporters’ Alex Weprin and Aaron Couch note, “Ratner has been in Hollywood exile since 2017, when six women accused him of sexual misconduct as part of a Los Angeles Times report. He was dropped by his agency and has not made a film since, though in recent months, he attempted to stir up interest in a fourth Rush Hour movie as a comeback vehicle, multiple sources told The Hollywood Reporter in August. Ratner denied accusations of misconduct in 2017, and no criminal charges were brought.”A troubling anniversary
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Today is Jan. 6 — the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and attacked law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
While it’s a chapter in U.S. history that many would prefer to forget, it was a dark day that should never be forgotten, especially with Trump set to become president again in just two weeks.
BBC News, Elon Musk changes his name to Kekius Maximus on X, Tom Bayly and Patrick Jackson, Jan. 1, 2025. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus."
The tech mogul - and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump - offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog - a meme that has been used by far-right groups.
The move has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin - a digital currency inspired by internet memes - that shares the same name skyrocketing.
In the past, Mr Musk has influenced crypto prices with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he had any involvement in this particular memecoin.Elon Musk A picture of Elon Musk's X profile with a picture of Kekius MaximusElon Musk
"Kekius" appears to be a Latinisation of "kek", a word roughly equivalent to "laugh out loud" popularised by gamers but now often associated with the alt right.
"Kek" is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.
Many people would link "Maximus" to the name of Russell Crowe's heroic character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius.
Mr Musk's new profile image depicts Pepe in Roman military dress holding what appears to be a game console.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Jan. 7
Breaking News
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Other Top Headlines
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox RichardsonThe Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom HartmannPolitico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler
More On U.S. Presidential Vote Certification
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Trump / GOP Transition News, Commentary
More U.S. Legal News
Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson
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Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: President Biden Signs Social Security Fairness Act; The bipartisan legislation enhances benefits for millions of Americans , Aaron ParnasWashington Post, Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Soros, Ralph Lauren and others
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Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
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New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case
U.S. Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images)
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Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations
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New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board
Breaking News
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Judge Cannon blocks release, for now, of special counsel report on Trump classified-documents case, Perry Stein, Jan. 7, 2025. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon barred special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from sharing the report while a federal appeals court weighs whether making it public would unfairly harm Donald Trump’s two codefendants.
The federal judge in Florida who dismissed the case against Donald Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a report detailing the findings of that investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon,right, barred Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting” the long-awaited report or any drafts or conclusions from it while a federal appeals court in Atlanta weighs an emergency motion from two of the president-elect’s former co-defendants. The co-defendants said releasing the report would unfairly prejudice them. Their motion cited a letter from Trump’s attorneys which also argued that the release of Smith’s findings was not in the public interest and would interfere with his presidency and his presidential transition.
Earlier Tuesday, Smiths’ office told the court that Garland might not make the classified documents part of the report public. The report is two volumes. One volume details prosecutors’ findings in the classified documents case, and the other focuses on the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Donald Trump’s lawyers have read special counsel Jack Smith’s draft report detailing the findings of his two investigations of the incoming president and are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire Smith and block the report’s public release.
It is the latest effort by the president-elect to quash the remnants of the four criminal cases he has faced over the past two years.
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
New York Times, An Emboldened Trump Suggests U.S. Territorial Expansion, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025. Speaking from his private Florida club, President-elect Trump refused to rule out using force to retake the Panama Canal and to claim Greenland. Mr. Trump also refused to give a straight answer on whether he would pardon any of the Jan. 6 rioters.
In an hourlong news conference at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned by treaty in the late 1990s, and acquire Greenland, which Mr. Trump said was necessary for U.S. national security. Read more ›
Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and instead pivoted to criticism of the F.B.I. In his opening comments, he announced a multibillion-dollar plan to build data centers in multiple states bankrolled by investors from Dubai. He then repeatedly attacked President Biden and other foes.
The House passed its first bill of the new Congress, a measure to increase deportations that requires mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting, and lets states sue the federal government when immigrants who could have been detained commit crimes. Four dozen Democrats joined all Republicans to pass the measure; the Senate is expected to take up identical legislation on Friday.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, plans to meet this week with Republican senators seen as potentially key votes in his confirmation process, and some Democrats who have signaled openness to parts of his agenda. Among the lawmakers he is set to hold sessions with on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a spokeswoman, are Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is set to lead the Senate health committee, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a more moderate member of the conference.
Trump’s team just sent out an email quoting him at the news conference as saying that on Jan. 6 rioters went to the Capitol “with not one gun.” That’s simply not true. Prosecutors have charged and convicted several people with carrying firearms that day.
Trump says he does not want to see a default over the debt ceiling. “All I want to see is no default,” he said, adding nobody knows what would happen if the U.S. does not pay its bills. “I just want to see an extension.”
Hopium Chronicles, Political Opinion: Trump Goes Full On Authoritarian, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Dem Party And Our Electeds.
Good afternoon all. I had a morning post almost done when we started getting all sorts of news: Cannon blocking the Smith report, Trump filing an emergency injunction to stop the Friday sentencing for his 34 felonies, Meta joining the MAGA movement and the many different story lines from Trump’s batshit crazy press conference.
For time and space purposes I will address these new developments tomorrow, but do want to say one thing now: Trump’s repeated threats against the sovereign nations of Canada, Greenland and Panama are a direct attack on the post WWII American-led global order.
Our support of Ukraine has been a means of protecting the foundational principle of that order -- the unquestioned sovereignty of all nations -- one that Russia has violated by its invasion. Trump’s clear flouting of this foundational principle of the modern world -- not ruling out direct military seizure, like Russia in Ukraine -- could be interpreted as his walking away from this global system that has made America prosperous, safe and free.
It is also a way of providing cover and justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and future acts by autocrats around the world. Coupled with Musk’s escalating attacks on the pro-Western, pro-US governments of Canada, Germany and the UK the new Trump regime seems hellbent on helping Russia and China forge a post-American global system, one built on force and dominion and not freedom and democracy. Here’s the clip:
Friends, this is ugly, ugly stuff and he isn’t even President yet. This is going to be a hard, hard four years. We need to prepare ourselves.
Legal Schnauzer, New York Times reports that Judge Aileen Cannon plans to make another pro-Trump ruling, but experts say she likely lacks jurisdiction to make such a move, Roger Shuler, Jan. 7, 2025. The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, of Florida, intended to issue an order that would temporarily block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on the criminal investigation of President-Elect Donald Trump.
The order would be in line with Cannon's history of making dubious rulings that favor Trump, the president who nominated her for the federal bench. By this afternoon, legal experts were stating that Cannon probably does not have authority to make such a ruling, according to a report at Raw Story (RS) under the headline "'No basis': Experts believe Aileen Cannon may not have power to block Jack Smith report." RS's Brad Reed writes:
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday (1/7/25) questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," Rubin said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making -- that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report -- is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin was not the only expert to take issue with Cannon's plans. Reed reports:
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th. then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee, and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
Other Top Stories
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle. Behind the vice president sat the newly reelected speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), who was a key player in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election: he lied about fraud; recruited colleagues to join a lawsuit challenging the election results from the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; and, after the January 6 riot, challenged the counting of certified votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.
After the session concluded, Harris told reporters: “Well, today was…obviously, a very important day, and it was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“And today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included, today, performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America will have their votes counted, that those votes matter, and that they will determine, then, the outcome of an election.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it—every single person, their willingness to fight for and respect the importance of our democracy. Otherwise, it is very fragile and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis.
“And today, America’s democracy stood.”
Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.
Excerpt Continued Below.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion:, Release Jack Smith’s ReportI, Bill Kristol, right, Jan. 7, 2025. The outgoing administration shouldn’t play along with the whitewashing of January 6th.
You can never really tell which of the wacky ideas that Trump spins up will end up forgotten in a few days and which will lodge like a splinter in his brain forever. During his first term, “We’re gonna buy Greenland” seemed like it belonged to the former category. Now, it seems he’s making it a top administration priority.
“I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” Trump wrote yesterday. “My son, Don Jr, and various representatives, will be traveling there to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights. Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Last night, Donald Trump’s lawyers demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his two investigations, one on Trump and January 6th, the other on Trump’s handling of the classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago.
The attorney general will surely refuse Trump’s demand. Justice Department regulations require special counsels to submit reports explaining their legal decisions at the end of their investigations. Just as Garland last year released Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, he’ll make public—with appropriate redactions—Smith’s report on Trump. (For that matter, we can also expect the attorney general to release special counsel David Weiss’s final report on his investigation of the now-pardoned Hunter Biden.)
Trump’s demand that Smith’s report be suppressed is a useful reminder that he really hates truthful accounts of January 6th, even if—especially if—they are based on testimony under oath from many different individuals, including many who worked for him. Recall Trump’s fear and loathing of the House January 6th Committee.
The loathing is, I suppose, easily understandable. Politicians don’t like scrutiny. And they especially don’t like criticism. And those who’ve gone so far as to commit sordid and likely criminal acts don’t like to see their disreputable behavior exposed.
But one senses that in addition to the hatred and the loathing, there’s an element of fear. Why?
Trump won. Smith’s report won’t change that. And in any case, his entire propaganda machine is ready to attack the report as the product of a biased Biden Justice Department and a Trump-hating special prosecutor. The report will have no immediate effect on public opinion, nor on the successes or failures of the opening days of Trump’s presidency.
Still, Trump knows how crucial his rewriting of the history of January 6th was to his victory in November. If most Republicans had held to their original judgment of January 6th as a day of shame—if they had continued to believe that it was what Trump the very next day called a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy”—Trump would not have been the 2024 GOP nominee. If most Americans had thought January 6th not just an unfortunate event but a disqualifying disgrace, Trump wouldn’t have won the general election.
The whitewashing of January 6th was key to Trump’s political comeback.
And Trump has the sense—and I think he’s right about this—that he must make sure that January 6th stays whitewashed for the sake of his political success going forward.
In the mid-twentieth century, Southern segregationists could have chosen simply to defend their policies as appropriate for then-current circumstances. They did make such arguments. But they also understood that in politics, present legitimacy depends on past origins. It was important to advocates of 20th century policies of racial discrimination that those policies were defended against the backdrop of the nobility of the Southern effort in the “War Between the States,” the depredations of Reconstruction, and the historic legitimacy of states’ rights.
So Trump too will continue to seek to rewrite the history of January 6th. He’ll pardon those who stormed the Capitol. He’ll fill the ranks of his administration with January 6th truthers. His administration will attack those, from Liz Cheney to Jack Smith, who’ve sought to hold him accountable. Trump’s more respectable apologists won’t go all the way with him in celebrating January 6th, but they’ll ignore or minimize or excuse what happened.
In a sense, the release now of Smith’s report will simply signify the failure of the effort, over the last four years, of accountability and truth-telling about January 6th. It will be the last gasp, for now, of a lost cause.
But, as T.S. Eliot remarked, “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory.”
Who knows if or when such a victory will come? But if American politics is ever to return to a condition of civic and political health, it will need to embrace an honest account of January 6th.
Which is why we need the release of the special counsel’s report.
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream, Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 7, 2025. Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he’s sworn in on January 20th.
Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent billions to convince us to make that choice.
As you’re reading these words, billionaires from America and around the world are making pilgrimages to his shabby golf motel to kiss our upcoming billionaire president’s ass and hand him envelopes with $1 million checks that represent a few hours (at most) of income for most of them or their companies.
Meanwhile, our billionaire president-in-waiting is packing his cabinet — the heads of all of the most important federal agencies — with even more billionaires. This is all being celebrated over on billionaire-owned Fox “News” and on billionaire-owned hate radio networks, as well as in the billionaire-owned Washington Post, LA Times, and the roughly half of American local newspapers owned by billionaire hedge funds.
Other countries enjoy benefits like free healthcare and college; modern mass transit; and affordable housing, food, and drugs.
They also have inexpensive internet and phone service without companies listening in and selling their information, schools that don’t even need to mention school shooters, and streets and parks filled with pedestrians and children instead of tents for the homeless.
Additionally, they benefit from renewable electricity that gets cheaper every year while cleaning their environment.
We, on the other hand, have the world‘s largest collection of billionaires.
New York Times, Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term, Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac, Jan. 7, 2025. The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies. Zuckerberg conceded there would be more ‘bad stuff’ on his sites.
Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.
The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Here’s what to know:
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Proof, Investigtive Commentary: Elon Musk Aims to Start a Race War in the United Kingdom. Is the United States His Next Target? Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 7, 2025. Somehow this message isn’t crossing international boundaries with the alacrity or the urgency it needs to: Elon Musk is now a global threat, and his actions will cause mass violence in the near term.
The amount of gall required for a South African-born Canadian-American with no meaningful liberal arts education—no background in History, Political Science, or Law—to blithely declare that “civil war is inevitable” in the United Kingdom, and to send that hyperventilating warning to literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide on a social media platform he’s rigged to elevate his voice above others is staggering.
Historically, those few with a significant enough global profile to influence politics in nations not their own avoid doing so at all costs—first, because it’s not their business to do otherwise, and second because interfering with foreign countries may harm the efforts of the U.S. government to conduct international diplomacy.
For this reason, we generally associate public or illicit attempts to meddle in the affairs of other nations with conduct that is not just improper but possibly illegal, and usually the province of hostile intelligence agencies exclusively.
One of the only men on Earth with the gall to ignore this basic precept of being part of a civilization and species is Elon Musk, who Proof has in the past covered as he derangedly went to war with the nation of Brazil. Again, such conduct is even more gall-encrusted and galling when the perpetrator, as with Musk, knows virtually nothing at all about the countries he tries to meddle with.
This staggering quantity of gall makes it even more likely that the dire warning (some would say threat) Mr. Musk has lately issued about a civil war in the United Kingdom is wildly inaccurate. The more evidently someone is a malignant narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur, a martyr complex, and a streak of fascist cruelty that runs through almost every word they utter, the more likely they have also fallen short in yet another watchword of a successfully completed liberal arts education: media literacy.
Simply put, even if Elon Musk were finally willing to educate himself on the domestic politics of other nations, it’s not clear that he has the temperament, patience, wisdom, or information-science skills to actually do so. It’s for these and other reasons that he has become the world’s largest firehose of disinformation—a fact, not a supposition; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here—and in very short order his actions are going to accrue a massive worldwide death toll.
Will it be in the United Kingdom, where Musk is trying to stoke a race war in which non-white immigrants are murdered by the tens of thousands by roving Christofascist mobs whose leaders and enablers and advocates he’s openly cheering on? Will it be in the United States, where Musk is about to become co-president and routinely spreads lies about race relations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)?
Will it be in Germany, where Musk is now an open advocate of that nation’s neo-Nazi political party? Will it be in Ukraine, where Musk’s products are being used to kill innocents as the Starlink chief himself (a) does nothing to stop it in a timely fashion and (b) secretly communicates with the author of these war crimes, Vladimir Putin, on a regular basis?
We don’t know. Maybe all of these places will see a sudden additional death-toll spike that Elon Musk is uniquely responsible for and—in a world with rule of law—would face consequences for, also.
But we live in this world, where Musk even appearing in court when ordered to do so is wholly optional for him, so seven things are perfectly clear, now: (1) Musk is going to get people killed; (2) he knows he’s going to get people killed; (3) he’s not going to take any time whatsoever to educate himself on the issues he insists on writing about without any relevant expertise; (4) he’s not going to stop trying to enflame passions and spread disinformation on these subjects, because he ultimately doesn’t care at all about the issues themselves—not child rape or war crimes or government spending in the United States—except to the extent that his taking the positions he takes accrues geopolitical power and influence to him (partly directly, partly indirectly, through the implicit threat of his inciting involvement in any future conflagrations) and pleases his apparently superheated, quivering personal animus toward women, non-whites, Jews, migrants, and the LGBTQIA2S+ community; (5) he won’t face consequences for his actions in the United States or anywhere else; (6) he’s well aware that he won’t face any consequence for his actions, which is precisely why they’ll continue unabated no matter how many people they kill; (7) and there’s nothing natively inside the man—no humility, leadership skills, empathy, temperance, patience, or generosity of spirit—that will organically cause him to stop what he’s doing once the mass killing starts
.Those who don’t understand yet that Musk is an unscrupulous bad actor on the world stage whose only aims are wealth and authority—the exact opposite of the mythos his fawning amanuensis Walter Isaacson is now pushing—are going to learn in the next few weeks and months what it means for Earth’s most powerful nation to transfer its powers wholesale to someone who not only wants to control all of Earth but actually has a scheme and the resources to accomplish it.
Musk’s ostensible focus is manned missions to Mars—a planet humans will never occupy in any significant numbers, but which fiction gives Musk a way to rally support for and attention to himself and divert resources from helping those on Earth who need help but who Musk doesn’t wish to see helped—when in fact his supposed Mars focus is simply the most chilling example yet of grifting MAGA influencers’ abiding “every accusation is a confession” principle.
Elon says he’s focused on control of Mars because he’s actually focused on control of Earth. It’s likely Musk cares little about Mars at all, given that he has been told again and again and again by scientists—each and every day, for the last twenty years—that the planet is uninhabitable and can never be made otherwise at scale. While Mars may yet be a useful outpost for scattered scientific research—if still not the best use (at all) of precious research resources—and while it could host mining operations designed solely to make Musk the world’s first centi-trillionaire (indeed, the Boring Company exists only for that prospective purpose, not the terrestrial purposes Mr. Musk falsely claimes), it will never harbor a significant human civilian settlement, nor should it.
The money Musk is funneling from U.S. taxpayers and, soon enough, directly from the federal budget using DOGE as his instrument, is money that would be infinitely more valuable here on Earth—for instance, to ensure that our ecosystem doesn’t collapse, killing over a billion humans on Earth in an entirely foreseeable way. So we must see the broader “project” of Elon Musk as one whose endgame enriches him and harms or actively endangers everyone who’s not him. The non-MAGA argument for his plans being a net positive for humanity has in recent years not just dimmed, but evaporated.
Yet the fact that Musk spent almost 300 million to elect Trump and his allies through PACs, and another $44 billion for the purchase of Twitter—which he now admits was a purchase with political aims (contrary to everything he told Americans at the time)—means that the Republican Party will more or less give him the keys to America now.
Those who thought that the GOP doing so would only endanger America are learning now that in fact this Republican cowardice and venality is going to endanger—indeed, already is endangering—the whole world.
Washington Post, N.Y. judge denies Trump effort to block sentencing in hush money case, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 7, 2025. Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a New York judge, above, to stop Trump’s sentencing scheduled for Friday on his convictions for falsifying business documents.
The judge overseeing President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case on Monday rejected a request by Trump lawyers to delay sentencing this week pending an appeal.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that Trump’s arguments related to presidential immunity were recycled from previous failed attempts and legally improper. The sentencing remained scheduled for Friday, he wrote.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Merchan ruled last week that a sentence would be imposed ahead of Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, which would make Trump the first president who is a felon.
The Trump attorneys filed a 17-page legal notice asserting that Merchan had no choice but to halt the proceedings. They argued that all events in the case must be automatically paused “by operation of federal constitutional law.”
Washington Post, The New Administration Exclusive:Trump aides ready ‘universal’ tariff plans — with one key change, Jeff Stein, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Aides are looking at universal import duties, but only on certain sectors, among the first big moves of the presidency.
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers.
As a candidate, Trump called for “universal” tariffs of as high as 10 or 20 percent on everything imported into the United States. Many economists warned that such plans could cause price shocks, and many Republicans in Congress might have criticized them.
Two weeks before Trump takes office, his aides are still discussing plans to impose import duties on goods from every country, the people said. But rather than apply tariffs to all imports, the current discussions center on imposing them only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security — a shift that would jettison a key aspect of Trump’s campaign pledge, at least for now, said the people, who cautioned that no decisions have been finalized and that planning remains in flux. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive. But consideration of universal tariffs of some kind still reflects the Trump team’s determination to implement measures that can’t be easily circumvented by having products shipped via a third country.
New York Times, The Jan. 6 Rioters, 4 Years Later, Alan Feuer, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Hundreds accused of nonviolent crimes during the attack on the Capitol have wrapped up their cases.
In the past four years, nearly 1,600 people have been prosecuted in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some were accused of felonies like assault or seditious conspiracy and are still in prison. But hundreds charged with lesser crimes have wrapped up their cases and returned to their lives.
Jan. 6 was a turning point for everyone involved. In breaching the Capitol, a mob of Trump loyalists caused millions of dollars in damage, injured more than 140 police officers and, for the first time in American history, chased lawmakers away from their duty to certify a presidential election.
The attack also prompted the largest single investigation the Justice Department has ever undertaken, leading to arrests in all 50 states. Ever since, the defendants have been held to account in Washington’s federal courthouse, blocks away from the Capitol itself, for their roles in undermining a bedrock of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.
While some have come to regret their actions on that day, others do not. At best, they say they have seen the realities of the criminal justice system, becoming more sympathetic to the plights of others facing prosecution. At worst, they remain convinced that the system treated them unfairly, hardened by their brushes with the law.
Washington Post, The fate of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants depends on Trump, Robert Klemko, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman, Sarah Cahlan, Clara Ence Morseand Hannah Dormido, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The incoming president has pledged to pardon many defendants accused or convicted of crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Washington Post, U.S. Capitol Police chief opposes pardons for assaults against police, Spencer S. Hsu, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Pardoning people who assault police would send a message that the safety of officers does not matter and could risk politicizing the law enforcement of violent protests, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in an exclusive interview Sunday on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Manger declined to comment about President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to grant clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, about 600 of whom were charged with felony assault or obstruction of police during a civil disorder. But in his first public remarks as chief of the 2,300-member department on the broader subject, he decried what he said was the wiping away of accountability for attacks against law enforcement.
“What message does that send? What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?” Manger said after swearing in officers to help secure Congress’s certification of the 2024 election on Monday.
New York Times, Harris Faces an Awkward Election Task: Certifying the Vote She Lost, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The vice president will preside over Congress on Monday as it counts the Electoral College votes finalizing her defeat by Donald J. Trump.
The vice presidency comes with plenty of indignities, but probably none greater than the one Kamala Harris will endure on Monday when she presides over the certification of her defeat.
Under the Constitution, the vice president takes the gavel when the two houses of Congress meet to formally count the Electoral College votes for president. While not every vice president has chosen to fulfill the duty, Ms. Harris has indicated that she will carry out the task, no doubt painful, of declaring that Donald J. Trump beat her.
Awkward and unpleasant as it may be for Ms. Harris, whose own political future remains uncertain, it is set to be a calmer and less death-defying experience than four years ago when Mr. Trump refused to accept defeat and struggled to hold on to power after voters decided to throw him out of office. A mob he inspired marched on the Capitol and stormed the building to stop Vice President Mike Pence from fulfilling the duty that now falls to Ms. Harris.
Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to cast doubt on the election but has instead accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to pressure the Justice Department, members of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officials to reverse the vote she lost, as Mr. Trump did four years ago.
New York Times, Trump Transition: ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6, Dan Barry and Alan Feuer, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). President-elect Trump and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack, spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom.
In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the United States Capitol to once again take the presidential oath of office. As the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceful transfer of power unfolds, he will stand where the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, took place, largely in his name.
Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with clubs, chemical irritants and other weapons. To his left, the spot where roaring rioters and outnumbered police officers fought hand to hand. To his right, where the prostrate body of a dying woman was jostled in the bloody fray.
And before him, a dozen marble steps descending to a lectern adorned with the presidential seal. The same steps where, four years earlier, Trump flags were waved above the frenzied crowd and wielded like spears; where an officer was dragged facedown to be beaten with an American flag on a pole and another was pulled into the scrum to be kicked and stomped.
In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s volatile political career seemed over, his incendiary words before the riot rattling the leaders of his own Republican Party. Myriad factors explain his stunning resurrection, but not least of them is how effectively he and his loyalists have laundered the history of Jan. 6, turning a political nightmare into a political asset.
What began as a strained attempt to absolve Mr. Trump of responsibility for Jan. 6 gradually took hold, as his allies in Congress and the media played down the attack and redirected blame to left-wing plants, Democrats and even the government. Violent rioters — prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned — somehow became patriotic martyrs.
This inverted interpretation defied what the country had watched unfold, but it neatly fit the persecution narrative that binds Mr. Trump to many of his faithful. Once he committed to running again for president, he doubled down on flipping the script about the riot and its blowback, including a congressional inquiry and two criminal indictments against him, as part of an orchestrated victimization.
That day was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But with his return to office, Mr. Trump now has the platform to further rinse and spin the Capitol attack into what he has called “a day of love.” He has vowed to pardon rioters in the first hour of his new administration, while his congressional supporters are pushing for criminal charges against those who investigated his actions on that chaotic day.
New York Times, Flurry of Announcements Signals That Trump Family Will Keep Making Deals, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Alan Blinder, Jan. 7, 2025. Even before the start of the new administration, there has been repeated blurring of lines between the federal government efforts and Trump family businesses.
Associated Pres via Politico, North Carolina justices block certification of election outcome in race for one of its own seats, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs speaks to reporters.
North Carolina’s highest court blocked on Tuesday the certification of a November election result for one of its own seats so it can review legal arguments by a trailing candidate who contends over 60,000 ballots that were cast shouldn’t be counted.
The decision by the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court to issue the temporary stay is a setback for Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs. Election results show Riggs ahead of GOP challenger Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast.The video player is currently playing an ad. Top Stories from POLITICOSkip Ad
The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.
The State Board of Elections dismissed last month Griffin’s written protests challenging the ballots. That initiated a timeline in which the board would issue a certificate confirming Riggs’ election this Friday — ending the litigation — unless a court stepped in.
Tuesday’s order stops such certification and tells Griffin and the board to file legal briefs with the justices over the next two weeks.
Lawyers for Griffin, who is a judge on the intermediate-level state Court of Appeals, initially asked the state Supreme Court to intervene three weeks ago. But the elections board quickly moved the matter to federal court, saying Griffin’s appeals involved matters of federal voting and voting rights laws.
Griffin disagreed, and so did U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who on Monday returned the case to the state Supreme Court. Myers — a nominee to the bench by Donald Trump — wrote that Griffin’s protests raised “unsettled questions of state law” and had tenuous connections to federal law.
Hours later, Griffin’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court for the temporary stay, which the court granted.
“In the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election,” Tuesday’s order read.
The order said that Riggs recused herself from the matter and that Associate Justice Anita Earls, the other Democrat on the court, opposed the stay in part because the “public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”
Politico, Canada’s Parliament to shut down until March 24, Mike Blanchfield, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.Justin Trudeau waits on the front steps of Parliament Hill.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau era is coming to an end.
Abandoned by a majority of his caucus, the three-term prime minister, right, announced Monday that he plans to step down as prime minister and as the leader of his party, the latest in a global line of sinking incumbents.
Trudeau also announced that Canada’s Parliament would shut down until March 24, and that he has asked the Liberal party to begin the search for a new leader.
The announcement adds chaos to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and a looming trade war.
New York Times, Genocide Committed by Paramilitary Group in Sudan, U.S. Says, Declan Walsh, Jan. 7, 2025. A paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s army in a brutal civil war committed massacres and rape that amounted to genocide, the secretary of state said.
The United States on Tuesday accused a Sudanese paramilitary group and its proxies of committing genocide, singling them out in a conflict of unchecked brutality and drawing fresh attention to the scale of atrocities being perpetrated in Africa’s largest war.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting against Sudan’s military had committed acts of genocide, including a fearsome wave of ethnically targeted violence in the western region of Darfur.
The Treasury Department backed the determination of genocide with a raft of sanctions targeting the R.S.F.’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, as well as seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, the group’s main foreign sponsor, that have traded in weapons and gold on his behalf.
“The R.S.F. and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement. “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
JIP Editor's Note:
Critics say the Biden administration, rather than empowering civilian leaders, prioritized working with the two rival generals, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, right, the head of Sudan’s army, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, left, a paramilitary chief generally known as "Hemetti," even after they carried out a military coup together in 2021.
Senior American diplomats “made the mistake of coddling the generals, accepting their irrational demands and treating them as natural political actors,” said Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, an adviser to Sudan’s deposed prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. “This fed their lust for power and their illusion of legitimacy.”
Washington Post, Elon Musk goes global with his playbook for political influence, Cat Zakrzewski, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The X owner and tech billionaire has boosted far-right figures in Britain, Germany and Canada with a blizzard of social media posts in recent days.
In the first three days of 2025, Elon Musk commandeered global politics through dozens of rapid-fire, often inflammatory posts to his 210 million followers on X.
The world’s richest person called for the release of a jailed British far-right extremist. He shared a post pressing King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and order a new general election, as he posted memes and a flurry of attacks directed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Musk accused Starmer of failing to prosecute“rape gangs” more than a decade ago, a child exploitation scandal that has prompted Britain’s Conservative Party to call for a full national inquiry.
Musk reposted a message from Rupert Lowe, a politician in the Reform UK party who serves in Parliament and who said he spent Friday talking to rape gang victims.
“Victims, past and present, don’t need ‘thoughts and prayers’ from politicians, they need justice,” Lowe said. “We will fight for that in Parliament.”
Musk also briefly turned his attention to the United States’ northern neighbor and praised an interview with Pierre Poilievre, a populist firebrand who leads Canada’s Conservative Party. Musk said that next week he would live-stream a conversation with Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party he has endorsed ahead of that country’s snap elections in February.
Last year, Musk dominated U.S. politics, using his deep war chest and X microphone to boost Donald Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 elections. As the GOP prepares to retake control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Musk has emerged more powerful than ever. His fortune has exploded, and he has a perch as Trump’s right-hand man, weighing in on his Cabinet choices and joining his conversations with global leaders.
In the new year, Musk is flexing his political muscle on the global stage as well. He appears to be applying a playbook similar to the one he used to disrupt American politics, now boosting conservative politicians in the governments of the United States’ top allies. But his disregard for the veracity of his posts and his elevation of far-right and extremist figures have alarmed liberal leaders around the world.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” Health Minister Andrew Gwynne said during a Friday interview with the British radio station LBC.
The long-running British child exploitation scandals that Musk has seized on have become a rallying point for Reform UK, a right-wing populist party. An independent review in 2022 found that local government agencies in the town of Oldham, England, had left children vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
That review followed an earlier probe in 2014 that found an estimated 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham, England, over 15-plus years. According to the report, most perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, and some in the town said they were nervous about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being seen as racist.
Although these historical cases of abuse go back decades, right-leaning outlet GB News laid blame this week with the ruling Labour Party, reporting that minister Jess Phillips had recently rejected a request for the national government to conduct a further investigation into the Oldham “grooming gangs.”
Politico, Elon Musk’s European political meddling is ‘worrying,’ says Norway’s PM, Ketrin Jochecová, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). European backlash grows against billionaire ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Monday he found it “worrying” that a billionaire social media owner like Elon Musk is inserting himself into the politics of other countries.
Musk, a key ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has been on a social media rampage over the holidays, endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, repeatedly denouncing the U.K.’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and even torpedoing his relationship with British hard-right chief Nigel Farage.
“I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not how it should be between democracies and allies,” Støre told public broadcaster NRK.
Støre was responding to a question on whether he is worried about potential interference from Musk in Norwegian elections.
“If we were to see it in Norway, I hope and assume that a united Norwegian political environment would warn and distance itself from it,” Støre added.
Støre’s comments are part of a mainstream political backlash against Musk, in which German political leaders have argued that the Tesla entrepreneur’s AfD endorsement amounted to election interference.
Musk has announced he will hold a live discussion this week with the AfD’s chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, on X ahead of Germany’s snap election on Feb. 23.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, involving in part hush money to women (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).
New York Times, Trump Seeks to Halt His Criminal Sentencing in New York, Ben Protess, Jan. 6, 2025. A Manhattan judge has already indicated that he will spare Donald Trump from jail time, but the president-elect is seeking to avoid the criminal proceeding.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has signaled that he plans to mount a full-scale legal offensive to stave off his criminal sentencing in New York, seeking a last-minute reprieve before becoming the first president who is a convicted felon.
With the sentencing scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have implored the judge overseeing his case to postpone the proceeding, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.
Although that request is most likely doomed — the judge, Juan M. Merchan, was the one who scheduled the sentencing — Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed in the filing that they planned to escalate their effort. If the judge does not pause the sentencing by 2 p.m. on Monday, the filing said, Mr. Trump will “seek an emergency appellate review.”
Hoping to persuade a New York appeals court to intervene, Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to file a civil action against Justice Merchan and seek to freeze the sentencing, according to the filing. It is unclear when they will file that action with the appellate court, but it could come as soon as Monday.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
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New York Times, Trump Has Reeled in More Than $200 Million Since Election Day, Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The president-elect has boasted about the donations for his inauguration, library and political activities from those seeking favor or perhaps in some cases, atonement.
Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.
It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him following the violence by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump has promised to gut the “deep state” and made various promises to industry supporters. Among the pledged donors for the inaugural events are Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon and Meta, along with cryptocurrency firms.
The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration, according to three people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: 2025: The year American Oligarchy officially begins? Thom Hartmann, Jan. 4, 2025. I’m an unpaid volunteer member of the board of directors of a nonprofit that’s making use of a multi-million-dollar endowment, and working with their professional investment advisors over the years has given me insight into some of the ways the morbidly rich get richer, faster, and in ways impossible for average people: there are multiple types of investments and investment advisors that are only accessible to people or organizations that can pony up millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.
Thus, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, Elon Musk (for example) went from being worth $25 billion in 2020 to $428 billion a few weeks ago. During that same time, Jeff Bezos (who apparently just censored a Washington Post comic showing him bowing down and handing a bag of money to Trump) reportedly went from $113 billion to $235 billion; similarly, three heirs to the Walmart fortune reportedly went, during the same period, from $161 billion to $317 billion. We see a similar phenomenon with members of Congress using inside information to trade stocks, something that would land you or me in jail.
Thus (as I often note here at Hartmann Report), the rich are truly getting richer while average working people have been in a downward spiral ever since Ronald Reagan’s “Revolution” changed the rules (particularly the tax rules, but also around monopolies, etc.) that once kept obscene wealth in check. Now we have a convicted criminal billionaire about to be sworn in as president with the richest cabinet in American (and, perhaps, world) history, all with an agenda of making the rich even richer. (It’s worth noting — something almost always ignored by the mainstream press — that Trump’s conviction was for using his fortune for election interference leading to a stolen 2016 election; by hiding his affair with Stormy Daniels he kept information away from the public that he believed could have led to his loss that year.)
Oligarchy is generally defined as a form of governance in which the state has been captured by the morbidly rich and the powers and institutions of government are then turned to make the rich even richer while insulating oligarchs from legal strictures, at the same time impoverishing and punishing working people and the poor. As I detailed in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the biggest problem with oligarchy is that it’s an extremely unstable form of government and usually is only transitional (typically lasting fewer than two generations). Average people, realizing they’re being robbed blind, rise up and demand change, sometimes causing oligarchy to flip back to democracy (as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s) or flipping the nation into tyranny when the oligarchs decide to use the military and police powers of government to hold onto their wealth and power (Chile, Hungary, Russia, Iraq, Egypt, Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, etc.).
The big question for Americans as we enter this new period of full-blown oligarchy is whether this generation’s oligarchs will have more success than those in the 1930s and 1850s. They seem to have learned the lessons of history and are now emulating Putin, Orbán, etc., in using lawfare and big money to intimidate or purchase outright the media; this will make a transition back to democracy — like the ones Lincoln and Roosevelt led when the media landscape (and its ownership) was far more diverse — far more difficult. And, as we just saw with the election of Mike Johnson as Speaker, nothing happens in the House without the approval of the billionaires.
The next four years — and, in particular, the next two — will probably decide the fate of America’s form of government for the next several generations. This is no time to check out; to the contrary, it’s the most important moment in our lifetimes to stand up, speak out, and build progressive political institutions while supporting the few brave progressive politicians still standing after the billionaire and AIPAC attacks in the last election.
New York Times, Russia Targets West With Drones, Exploding Parcels and Sabotage, Lara Jakes, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Russia has become increasingly brazen in adopting “gray zone” attacks against Europe and the U.S., leaving officials with a dilemma: How to respond?
When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.
But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”
The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.
In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.
Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.
Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.
As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?
Washington Post, Trump sentencing sets up an unusual scene ahead of his inauguration, Marianne LeVine, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Just 10 days before he is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump will have to appear before a judge to be sentenced on his 34 felony convictions.
Days before his second inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump faces the uncomfortable prospect of appearing — in person or virtually — before a New York state judge to be sentenced for his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.Get the latest election news and results
The court appearance, scheduled for Friday, offers yet another reminder of the legal woes that dogged Trump as he mounted his third bid for the White House. It also cements a distinction that he shares with none of his predecessors: He will be the first serving president who is also a felon. No previous president has been convicted of a felony, let alone summoned before a judge just days before their inauguration.
While New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said he will not sentence Trump to jail time, the appearance will be an opportunity for the judge to denounce what he has called the “premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world.”
“It’s a reminder that we live, politically speaking, in a split-screen America,” said Tim Naftali, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “For some Americans, [Trump’s] legal difficulties were a reason to vote for him because it deepened their sense that they, like him, were victims.”
“The fact that the procession to the inauguration will include yet another trip to court, it’s consistent with the peculiarities of Donald Trump’s return to power,” Naftali added.
In the hours after Merchan upheld Trump’s conviction and scheduled his sentencing, the president-elect railed against the judge, his political opponents, and the federal justice system that his appointees will soon oversee.
At 8:43 p.m. Friday, Trump complained on social media that he was “the only Political Opponent in American History not allowed to defend myself.” At 7:29 Saturday morning, he was back at it, describing Merchan as “corrupt” and “crooked” and calling for him to be “disbarred.”
New York Times Magazine, Ukraine Was Outgunned. Its Solution: Small, Cheap Suicide Drones, C.J. Chivers, Photographs and Video by David Guttenfelder, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). Outnumbered and desperate, the nation began hacking cheap consumer drones with explosives — bringing a brutal new form of violence to 21st-century warfare.
Known as first-person-view drones, or FPVs, the weapons have altered the human experience of war and flooded the internet with footage chronicling the desperate last seconds of lives ended by miniaircraft that transmit video of the people they pursue, then smack into them and explode.
Its camera revealed a surprise: a Russian T-80 tank parked in the foliage. A $3 million military machine had been discovered by a $400 repurposed toy.
The tank was well defended. Its crew had backed the 44-ton vehicle into undergrowth, blocking access to its vulnerable exhaust grate. Slats of reactive armor, which can thwart armor-piercing charges, bedecked its sloped front end. Its rotating turret carried a metal frame and netting, a combination derisively referred to as a cope cage, designed to snag drones and prevent warheads from making direct strikes on hulls. All its hatches were closed, blocking Prorok from flying the warhead inside.
In the past, attacking an armored vehicle with such a warhead typically required a soldier to risk exposure to take a hasty shot with a rocket-propelled grenade, sending a projectile at almost 1,000 feet per second that may not hit the vehicle at all. Weaponized FPV drones have created a new way. In the field south of Belgorod, the combination of the tank’s defensive measures and the drone’s peculiar characteristics made for an exercise that was almost surreal. Time seemed to slow down. The little drone hovered patiently before the massive military machine, rising and falling, swaying on the breeze, emitting its high-pitched buzz while Prorok flew it safely from afar, deciding his attack’s best place, which he could strike with uncanny precision.
Prorok selected the turret’s base, where armor was thinner. “Yes, yes,” Buryi said. Prorok leaned forward as he pushed the flight controller and the drone plunged into the spot. The screen went blank. Watching from the surveillance drone, Andy called out. “I see an explosion!” he said.
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More U.S. Political Commentary
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 6,2025 [U.S. Congressional Election Certification], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian and author, Jan.7, 2025. In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.
The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.
All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.
Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked.”
Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
But McConnell appeared reluctant to see Trump impeached. He delayed the Senate trial of the House’s charge of “incitement of insurrection” until Biden was president, then pressed for Trump’s acquittal on the grounds that he was no longer president. Even before that February 2021 acquittal, then–House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—who had had a shouting match with Trump on January 6 in which he allegedly begged Trump to call off his supporters and yelled that the rioters were “trying to f*cking kill me!”—traveled to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago to get him to support Republican candidates in the 2022 election.
Their hunger to keep Trump’s voters began the process of whitewashing Trump’s attempt to overturn our democracy. At the same time, those Republicans who had either participated in the scheme or gone along with it continued to defend their behavior. As time passed, they downplayed the violence of January 6. As early as May 2021, some began to claim it was less a deadly attack than a “normal tourist visit.”
When the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol began to collect testimony and evidence, Trump and fellow Republicans did all they could to discredit it. As it became clear that Trump would win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, they worked to exonerate him from wrongdoing and accused the Democrats of misleading Americans about the events of that day.
In February 2021, McConnell defended his vote to acquit Trump of inciting insurrection by promising the courts would take care of him. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen,” he said, “still liable for everything he did while in office, [and] didn't get away with anything yet…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
But while more than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes associated with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and many of Trump’s lawyers and advisors have been disbarred or faced charges, Trump has managed to avoid legal accountability by using every possible means to delay the federal case brought against him for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
And now, with the help of a compliant Supreme Court stacked with three of his own appointees, he has gained the immunity McConnell said he did not have. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court handed down the aptly named Donald Trump v. United States decision, establishing that sitting presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the scope of their official duties. Before the new, slimmer set of charges brought after this decision could go forward, voters reelected Trump to the presidency, triggering the Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
As Republicans whitewashed January 6 and the legal system failed to hold Trump to account, the importance of Trump’s attack on our democracy seemed to fade. Even the Trump v. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which undermined the key principle that all Americans are equal before the law by declaring Trump above it, got less attention than its astonishingly revolutionary position warranted, coming as it did just four days after President Joe Biden looked and sounded old in a televised presidential debate.
As the 2024 election approached, Trump rewrote the events of January 6 so completely that he began calling it “a day of love.” He said those found guilty of crimes related to January 6 were “political prisoners” and vowed to pardon them on his first day in office. Dan Barry and Alan Feuer noted in the New York Times today that Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, referring to “the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th,” claims that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.”
And yet, today, Trump’s lawyers wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding he prevent the public release of the final report written by special counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They say it would disrupt the presidential transition by “giving rise to a media storm of false and unfair criticism” and interfere with presidential immunity by diverting Trump’s time and energy.
Having reviewed the two-volume report, the lawyers objected to its claim that Trump and others “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort,” that Trump was “the head of the criminal conspiracies,” that he hatched a “criminal design,” and that he “violated multiple federal criminal laws.” They also took issue with the “baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings.”
They conclude that releasing Smith’s report “would not ‘be in the public interest.’”
Washington Post, Elections updates: Congress counts, certifies Trump’s electoral college victory over Harris, Staff Reports, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 6 announced the certified vote total of the 2024 presidential election during a joint session of Congress.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our National Day of Shame, William Kristol and Andrew Egger, Jan. 6, 2025. Four years later, the shock of that day is replaced by the shock of how that day has become accepted.
Washington Post, Biden urges Americans not to rewrite, or forget, Jan. 6, 2021, Matt Viser, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). The president sought to contrast the peaceful transfer of power this year with what happened in 2021.
President Joe Biden, who has attempted to oversee a smooth transition by withholding criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, has grown more animated about their differences ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.Get the latest election news and results
“I think it should not be rewritten. I don’t think it should be forgotten,” he told reporters at the White House on Sunday afternoon. He expanded upon the remarks at an evening event and in a new opinion piece published Sunday night by The Washington Post.
“But I don’t think we should — if you notice, I’ve reached out to make sure the smooth transition, we’ve got to get back to basic, normal transfer of power. I don’t think we should pretend it didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking about Trump specifically, Biden added: “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy, and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it.”
It was his latest effort to remind Americans of how imperiled he views the country’s democratic norms. He also in recent days awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring her for speaking out against Trump and for investigating his actions in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump attacked Cheney on social media over the award and has suggested that she and other members of the House committee that investigated the Capitol assault “should go to jail.”
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Mike Johnson Acts Like a CHILD as Kamala Patriotically Certifies the Election, Tim Miller, Jan. 6, 2025. Tim Miller reacts to VP Kamala Harris presiding over the peaceful transfer of power as she certifies the election results on the fourth anniversary of the violent attack on the Capital.
New York Times, Giuliani Is Held in Contempt of Court in Defamation Case, Stefanos Chen, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has failed to turn over his assets to two Georgia poll workers who won a defamation lawsuit against him.
A federal judge on Monday held Rudolph W. Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of his personal assets to Georgia poll workers he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has so far failed to turn over the bulk of his personal assets as a down payment on the $148 million judgment the poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, won in a defamation lawsuit.
The judge, Lewis J. Liman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, has yet to detail what specific sanctions Mr. Giuliani faces. But being held in contempt could possibly hinder the former mayor’s attempts to hang onto his Palm Beach, Fla., condo.
Mr. Giuliani’s assets include a 10-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; a 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible; a collection of 26 designer watches; and rare Yankees collectibles, the most valuable of which might be a signed and framed Joe DiMaggio jersey.your times access
He is due back in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 16 to argue that his Palm Beach condo should be exempt from the seizure, because it is his primary residence. But Mr. Giuliani has failed repeatedly to answer questions that could prove his residency.
The court ruled that Mr. Giuliani had obstructed the election workers’ attempts to determine Mr. Giuliani’s real primary residence, which for years had been the cooperative apartment on East 66th Street in Manhattan.
Judge Liman, who has appeared frustrated at Mr. Giuliani’s shifting rationale for the omissions, ruled that his failure to comply will permit the court to draw negative conclusions about his Florida residency status, which could hobble his defense.
“The defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” Judge Liman said, adding that he was unmoved by the former mayor’s argument that he was overwhelmed with court requests, including charges in two criminal cases and several other civil actions. “The fact that he is a busy person and relied on others is not an excuse,” he said.President Joe Biden delivers a speech on the U.S. economy and “Bidenomics”, Thursday, September 14, 2023, at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz) image caption
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: It’s January 6th. Trump Won, William Kristol, Jan. 6, 2025. George Orwell wrote that in our day “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So let me restate the obvious: January 6, 2021 is a day that should live in infamy.
But for the next four years January 6th won’t live in infamy. Because in two weeks the man who incited January 6th, the man who now excuses it—no, celebrates it—will be sworn in as our next president.
So the obvious if unpleasant fact is that today we as a nation are in a worse condition, facing a more ominous future, than we faced four years ago.
The mob violence of January 6th was awful. That it was incited by the president of the United States made it worse. That it was the capstone of a more comprehensive effort by President Trump and his apparatchiks to overturn the election results and to stay in power made the date even more deserving of infamy.
But the attempted auto-coup failed. We made it through the dangerous period from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021. The guardrails held. President Trump left office. President Biden succeeded him, and tried to restore normalcy.
To his credit, he’s still trying. The outgoing president has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post lamenting that “an unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite—even erase—the history” of January 6th, and urging us not to forget what happened.
But the fact is that the unrelenting effort of Trump and his supporters has, as of now, succeeded. It’s telling that nowhere in his article does President Biden mention the name of the person who has been behind the effort to “rewrite—even erase” the history of January 6th. Presumably he thought it uncivil or inappropriate to attack his successor by name two weeks before he takes over.
But Biden’s silence about Trump merely brings home the extent of Trump’s success. The January 6th truther-in-chief will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new Trump administration will be presidential pardons or commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not? Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in prison?
Some of the more respectable supporters of the new administration are aware of how distasteful this will be. The Wall Street Journal editorial page frets that “pardoning such crimes would send an awful message about [Trump’s] view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.”
But that is Trump’s view. Indeed, it’s his oft-expressed view. Indeed, he ran for office on this view—and won. The fact that some establishment types have chosen to close their eyes to this isn’t his fault.
What can be done? Here in the United States, there are thankfully many sources of possible resistance, ranging from others in government—at both the federal and state level—to institutions in the private sector and civil society. They all have a role to play in the fight against the whitewashing of history and the erasure of truth.
But in the near term, it is the Senate of the United States that can do the most to help. It is the Senate that has to choose whether to confirm Trump’s cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees. It is Senate committees that can hold hearings and get those nominees on the record on January 6th.
All senators have to do is to ask the nominees whether they agree with what President Trump said on January 7, 2021—that what happened on January 6th was a “heinous attack” and that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”
Senators can ask this of all nominees. And Senators can refuse to confirm at least some of the January 6th deniers, especially those nominated to important positions in law enforcement and national security.
One nominee particularly deserving of decisive rejection is Kash Patel, selected to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an important article this morning, Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen lay out evidence that clearly shows why Patel is unfit to serve as FBI director. They show in great detail that Patel has embraced and promulgated false conspiracy theories not just about January 6th in general, but about the very organization he’s been nominated to lead.
The authors conclude, “That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.”
Will it be? Will the United States Senate permit Trump to install a full-on January 6th truther as head of the FBI? Or will some Republican senators put country before party, enabling the Senate to set up some roadblocks to our steep descent on a path towards an Orwellian and authoritarian future?
To fight for the future of democracy, we need pro-democracy news media. That’s what we’re building here. Help us grow by becoming a Bulwark+ member.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: How ‘My Kevin’ Helped, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 6, 2025. As Bill notes, Trump’s successful retcon of January 6th was the long, slow work of a lot of willing contributors. But it’s worth taking a moment today to look back on one of the most crucial links in that chain: then-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s 2021 decision not to cooperate with establishing an independent commission to investigate the ransacking of the Capitol by Trump’s mob.
In the months immediately following the attack, Republicans were still having trouble letting go of the horror they’d felt as they watched that day unfold. There was considerable talk of a bipartisan commission, modeled on the one empaneled after 9/11. As leader, McCarthy, right, blessed Rep. John Katko, the GOP ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, to strike a deal with committee chair Bennie Thompson on forming just such a committee.
Katko, a moderate New York Republican with a prosecutorial background and a national security focus, had been among the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the attack. The deal he and Thompson struck spoke to a desire to present a united front against the lawlessness of that day. It also contained significant incentives for Republicans. Democrats were then in power in the House, but the commission would not have made the GOP junior partners: Pelosi and McCarthy would appoint an equal number of members, and Republicans would have equal access to investigative tools like subpoenas.
“We must do everything we can to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again,” Katko said in a statement at the time. “An independent, bipartisan commission will remove politicization of the conversation and focus solely on the facts and circumstances surrounding the security breach at the Capitol as well as other instances of violence relevant to such a review.”
But while Katko and Thompson were negotiating, McCarthy’s spine was bending. Just a few months after the attack, it was already becoming plain to him that the Republican base’s devotion to Trump was going to outlast their momentary horror over the attempted insurrection. Rep. Liz Cheney, previously his third-in-command in House leadership, had already been ousted over her refusal to stop clearly and loudly prosecuting the case against Trump; after initially supporting her, McCarthy ultimately played along as Republicans kicked her to the curb.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Pete Hegseth Claims the Pledge of Allegiance Is a Forgery Used to Replace God, J.D. Wolf, Jan. 5, 2025. Trump’s nominee to run the military believes the flag and the Pledge were used to boot God from schools.
In June 2022, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, made remarks at the Ronald Reagan Library suggesting that the Pledge of Allegiance and the American flag were used by “progressives” to replace God and biblical truths in schools with nationalism.
Hegseth argued that the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were used as a "forgery" by progressives to substitute allegiance to the state for faith:
“The progressives had the targeting of our youngest minds on their mind from the very beginning.
They knew they had to remove the one immovable object inside American civic life and in Western civilization if their schemes were to ever catch on.
And they understood that a moveable object was God, was faith and that it was at the centerpiece of the American classroom since the founding, and they had to replace it. The way we describe it is, to keep the Indiana Jones analogy going, it's like when you're trying to grab a precious artifact, but it's on a pressure plate. And if you're gonna, if you take that artifact off the pressure plate, the alarm bells go off.
If they had removed God immediately a hundred years ago, the parents, the culture, the communities, the churches would have revolted.
And so they openly wrote in The New Republic and other publications, and this is the research that David did, they openly discussed how do we remove God from the classrooms?
That's the immovable object, and they ultimately landed on a forgery, which the culture, at the time, was willing to accept, which effectively was allegiance to the state.
It was the flag. It was a new pledge, a pledge of allegiance written by a socialist that didn't say under God when it was originally written.
I love the flag. I've proudly said the Pledge of Allegiance today at the beginning. I revere it.
For them, it was a new idea around which they could get society cohere that was more malleable than nationalism being more malleable than biblical truth, because when you have biblical truth and objective truth, you can't move people off of that.
Hegseth officeLiquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking AllegationsRead More
However, the historical timeline doesn’t support this view. The Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Christian minister Francis Bellamy, was designed to promote patriotism, not to secularize schools or replace religious practice.Pete Hegseth at the Ronald Reagan Library
At the time, public schools still included prayer, and it wasn’t until the early 1960s that the Supreme Court ruled against state-sponsored prayers and Bible readings. Meanwhile, the Pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942 and was used in schools beforehand.
Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary, January 6th - Another Day That Will Live In Infamy, Simon Rosenberg, right, Trump The Felon, Incoherent GOP Economic Plans Already Falling.
Morning all. We’ve talked about how the road ahead is going to be full of hard days. This is one of them. Stay strong.
On Friday Trump posted this on Truth Social:
Biden gave Liz Cheney a Medal yesterday, even though she has proven to be totally corrupt. She, “Bennie” Thompson, and the rest of the Unselect Committee, destroyed and deleted all evidence from their crooked investigation of January 6th. Cheney has the distinction of losing her Congressional seat by the largest margin in History! The people of Wyoming understood how bad for our Country she was, but Biden rewarded her only because she hated “TRUMP.” She’s a Warmonger of low intelligence. All she wants to do is kill people in “Endless Wars,” with no gain other than to defense companies. Liz Cheney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, Bennie Thompson, and the rest of these dishonest Thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the help which was offered for security. She is responsible, and admitted as much, for all to see, on her daughter’s tape. They have destroyed the lives of many people, and are rewarded by getting Biden Fake Medals. This is not America. January 20th cannot come fast enough. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Here is how she responded:
Here’s what I wrote to you in my very first post after the 2024 election:
While I am going to go slow, listen, and take my time I do have a few initial thoughts this morning about where we are now and where we are going, together……
Over the past few years we, our country, our leaders, Merrick Garland, the Harris SuperPAC and many, many others failed to adequately indict Trump and explain what an unprecedented threat he was. A rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon was just elected President. The relentless normalization of his extremism, madness and ugliness, the legacy media’s complicity in reporting on the race not the stakes, was a collective failure of enormous consequence.
Related to point one, I still think many on our side and in the establishment simply do not understand the nature of the conflict America finds itself in today. Trump and his global allies are playing a different game than we are used to. They have invented a whole new deeply illiberal game with all sorts of new pieces and rules. We have been slow, dangerously and recklessly, slow in recognizing how the rules of the game have changed.
It’s why whatever happens next, it is time for the Democratic Party’s generational wheel to turn and for new leaders who are not steeped in and hobbled by old ways to take the helm. We are facing a new battlefield, and more contemporary strategies, tactics, alliances and leaders are required in this next stage of the fight. Now is a time for re-invention, re-imagination, and risk-taking. We need to build a new politics for the American center-left, a more modern one, one more suited to the opportunities and challenges in front of us, a more “networked” one as my friend Joe Trippi would say.
The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Trump is likely to scale back his reckless, inflationary tariff plans:
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
If implemented, the emerging plans would pare back the most sweeping elements of Trump’s campaign plans but still would be likely to upend global trade and carry major consequences for the U.S. economy and consumers….
The potential change reflects a recognition that Trump’s initial plans — which would have been immediately noticeable in the price of food imports and cheap consumer electronics — could prove politically unpopular and disruptive.
This is a significant development for Republicans have been counting on the revenue of broad, across the board tariffs to make up revenue lost from their plutocratic tax cutting plans. Less revenue means higher deficits and much more trouble inside his already deeply unstable governing coalition. Trump’s team is working furiously to try to prevent Trump’s incoherent and reckless economic agenda from being implemented as he promised, for it’s inherent dangers are already starting to unravel the strong economy he’s inheriting; which in turn is putting the entire early Trump 2.0 project at risk.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: GOP faces INSTANT KARMA over Trump’s DAY 1 PLAN, Ben Meiselas, Jan. 6, 2025. MeidasTouch MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans in panic mode that they can’t make good on Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
Donald J. Trump, who has described himself in semi-religious terms and imagry as "The Chosen One."
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary: What Is Trump Doing With A January 19th Rally? Lance F Rosen, Jan. 4, 2025. Just what you would expect of a stochastic terrorist.
It should be obvious. He is calling in his movement of extremists comprised of QAnons and Nazis, psychotic fundamentalists and bonkers conspirophiles in an outdoor version of his pre-election Madison Square Garden hate-fest.
And his purpose? To essentially deliver the threat of a mailed fist to Congress, not just to the Democrats but to any lingering dissidents within his own party.
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What he is conveying as his message with this rally is, in effect, "If you dare to oppose me on the deportations, the budget, my plans to use the military domestically, or try anything to obstruct my nominees, I will send my mob after you and they will get you, wherever you are."
That is his purpose. It's not a photo op. It's not to prove he can draw big crowds. It is a message to all, including the January 18th pro-democracy rally attendees, that there will be blood.
You will see it in the faces of the people there. Don't be surprised if there is violence, though I expect Presidential security and reinforcements will be there in force, therefore not likely. The relevant point is that he now has official immunity, and will be pardoning the January 6th criminals to augment his private army of Brownshirts.
The media has dropped any reference to the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally which Trump organized because for the most part they have been broken by a barrage of terroristic threats from Trump to pull their licenses and shut them down, to use government agencies to investigate and destroy them, to acquire them through hostile takeovers, or to incite stochastic terrorism against their ownership and editors. That is why you've heard nothing about the Madison Square Garden version of Trump, and instead are getting drowned by mindless coverage of the juvenile squabbles within the GOP.
So, if you were curious about this rally, now you know what it is. He is taking a page from his mentor who used to have them at Nuremberg. And don't be surprised if the staging of it looks eerily similar to this.
New York Times, As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle, Reid J. Epstein, Jan. 6, 2025 (print ed.). The race to lead the Democratic National Committee centers on the favorites, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, but the party’s infighting over them looks nothing like a broad reckoning with its 2024 defeats.
Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.
The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.
Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.
Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.
New York Times, Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story, Peter Baker, Jan. 5, 2025. President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. And the United States clearly faces some major challenges that will confront Mr. Trump as he retakes power.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
The terrorist attack by an American man who said he had joined ISIS that killed 14 people in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day served as a reminder that the Islamic State, which Mr. Trump likes to boast he defeated during his previous term, remains a threat and an inspiration to radicalized lone wolves. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are daunting challenges even without U.S. troops engaged in combat there.
Thanks in part to Covid relief spending by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself. Families remain pressed by the cost of living, including housing, health care and college tuition. The cost of gasoline, while down from its peak, is still about 70 cents per gallon higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Moreover, Americans remain as divided as they have been in many years — politically, ideologically, economically, racially and culturally. As healthy as the country may be economically and otherwise, a variety of scholars, surveys and other indicators suggest that America is struggling to come together behind a common view of its national identity, either at home or abroad.
Indeed, many Americans do not perceive the country to be doing as well as the data suggests, either because they do not see it in their own lives, they do not trust the statistics or they accept the dystopian view promoted by Mr. Trump and amplified by a fragmented, choose-your-own-news media and online ecosphere.
The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Is the “Scarlet F” coming to Trump? Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 4, 2025. What is the legal significance of Trump being a convicted felon? Most of America’s laws punishing convicted felons long after they’ve gotten out of jail or otherwise finished their sentences date back to the use of felony convictions in the old South to disenfranchise Black people. These include losing your ability to vote, to hold certain types of jobs, and even to own a gun. (Almost all of the states where ex-felons can’t vote are former Confederate states, which have disenfranchised over 5 million people, most nonwhite, this way.)
It appears that a loophole in Florida’s law, which forbids felons with unpaid fines from voting, will let Trump continue to cast a ballot in that state because he was convicted out-of-state (NY) rather than by a Florida court. Will he have to surrender the gun he reportedly owns? Will there be any consequence at all for him? Judge Merchan will have the first final say (I say “first” because Trump will appeal) and it’ll be interesting to see if the press focuses on Trump’s response or Merchan’s opinion, which is virtually certain to point out that Trump’s conviction is for criminally manipulating the 2016 election. I’m betting they won’t use the phrase “election interference” at all, but stay tuned…
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 3, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, Jan. 4, 2025. Today a new Congress, the 119th, came into session. As Annie Karni of the New York Times noted, Americans had a rare view into the floor action of the House because the party in control sets the rules for what parts of the House floor viewers can see. Without a speaker, there is no party in charge to set the rules, so the C-SPAN cameras recording the day could move as their operators wished.
Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. All eyes were on the House, where Republicans will hold 219 seats. Initially, though, that number will be 218: The seat to which Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was elected will be empty since he resigned from the previous Congress and, after the House Ethics Committee released a report saying there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had broken state and federal laws, apparently decided to focus on his new media show rather than return to the House. When the clerk announced that Gaetz would not take a seat in the 119th Congress, applause broke out.
Mass Terror Attacks, Threats In U.S.
Man killed in Cybertruck explosion, Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was active-duty U.S. Army soldier, officials say (Alcides Antunes photo via Reuters and PBS).
New York Times, New Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear, Jacey Fortin and Jesus Jiménez, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Officials said they used data from Tesla charging stations to chart the driver’s dayslong journey from Colorado to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
It was difficult, at first, for the authorities to identify the driver of the Tesla truck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning. By the time the flames were extinguished, he had been burned beyond recognition.
But as investigators pored over the charred remains of his ruined rented vehicle, a 2024 Cybertruck, they discovered some clues to the driver’s background and his intentions: some guns, a military ID, fuel and many fireworks.
And on Thursday, the authorities said that they had found something else: The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the driver’s head, the county coroner ruled.
“Am I comfortable calling it a suicide mission?” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in response to a reporter’s question at a Thursday news briefing. “I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other labels.”
New York Times, Cybertruck Driver Shot Himself in Head Before Vegas Blast, Jacey Fortin, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). Military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The man who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning shot himself in the head immediately before the vehicle was engulfed by fire, the authorities said on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, military officials identified the driver as an Army master sergeant who had been on leave from active duty.
The authorities are still working to determine exactly what happened, and what the motivation was for the incident, which injured seven people. Here is what we know so far.
Trump / GOP Transition News
Axios, Mike Johnson reelected as speaker after brief revolt, Andrew Solender, Jan. 3-4, 2025. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected as the speaker of the House on Friday, securing the gavel on the first ballot.
Why it matters: Johnson appeared imperiled as three Republicans initially voted against him — enough to sink him on the first ballot.
After a roughly 45-minute standoff, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) switched to voting for Johnson, giving him the 218 votes he needed to secure the gavel without a multi-ballot fight. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the lone defector, voting for Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), while all Democrats voted for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Politico, Judge turns down Jan. 6 felon’s request to attend Trump inauguration at invitation of GOP lawmakers, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2025. It’s the second time a federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration.A bird flies framed by security fencing in front of the U.S. Capitol.
A federal judge has denied a Jan. 6 felony defendant’s request for permission to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite a personal invitation from members of the Utah congressional delegation.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Russell Taylor’s “unusually grave” conduct at the Capitol — which included recruiting “fighters” to descend on the Capitol, wearing armor, carrying weapons and helping others push past a police line — did not warrant the “immense privilege” of attending an inauguration.
“It would not be appropriate for the Court to grant permission to attend such a hallowed event to someone who carried weapons and threatened police officers in an attempt to thwart the last Inauguration, and who openly glorified ‘[i]nsurrection’ against the United States,” Lamberth wrote in a five-page decision.
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, is the second federal judge to deny a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to attend Trump’s inauguration. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, turned down a request Thursday from a felony defendant charged with unleashing chemical spray at a police officer.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, approved a misdemeanor defendant’s request to attend the inauguration, and several other requests are pending. The Justice Department has largely opposed such requests, saying it would be improper to subject Capitol police to facing the very people who stood against them four years ago.
Taylor’s is the only request that was publicly endorsed by members of Congress.
Former Utah representative Chris Stewart, who wrote to Lamberth on behalf of three current members of Utah’s congressional delegation, asked the judge’s permission for Taylor to attend as their guest.
“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote last month. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”
Despite the charges against him, Taylor’s case was complex. He quickly pleaded guilty for his crimes, acknowledged his wrongdoing and became an early cooperator with prosecutors, even testifying at the trial of an alleged co-conspirator. Lamberth sentenced Taylor to a term of probation and praised him as a model defendant. Under the terms of Taylor’s three-year probation, he must receive permission to travel to Washington.
Lamberth acknowledged Stewart’s praise for Taylor, but said he had already considered those factors when he gave Taylor a lenient sentence.
Washington Post, Biden awards Liz Cheney a presidential medal for challenging Jan. 6 attack, Maeve Reston, Jan. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The president honored one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics less than three weeks before Trump is set to take office a second time.
President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, honoring one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics at a White House ceremony less than three weeks before Trump is set to reclaim the presidency.Get the latest election news and results
The medal, given to those who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country, is the nation’s second-highest award, after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Biden also gave the medal to Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), who along with Cheney led the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The attendees at the ceremony in the East Room — composed largely of Democratic lawmakers and aides, along with friends and relatives of the honorees — rose to give Cheney a standing ovation as she took the stage to accept the medal, later doing the same for Thompson. Biden alluded to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and pointedly mentioned the “free and fair election of 2020” in his brief remarks before bestowing the medals, but did not mention Trump by name.
Biden noted that he has previously honored “law enforcement officers who defended our Capitol on January 6th and the state and local election officials, elected leaders who defended the free and fair election 2020.”
“Today we celebrate a new group of Americans who dedicated their careers to serving our democracy in other essential ways.”
He spoke of the deep polarization within America, saying the country’s courage and optimism have been tested but have endured. “Our empathy that fuels our common project of our willingness to see each other not as enemies, but as fellow Americans,” he said.
Eighteen other Americans were honored as well at Thursday’s ceremony, but the inclusion of two lawmakers who were so vocal in attacking Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election made the event especially notable. It took place in the same White House that Trump vacated and will soon reoccupy, and was hosted by the president whose victory Trump sought to challenge.
Washington Post, Investigation: How ISIS inspires violence, from a Taylor Swift concert plot to New Orleans carnage, Souad Mekhennet and Joby Warrick, Jan. 3, 2025. In the Bourbon Street rampage, a foiled attack on a European pop concert and other attacks, a pattern of self-radicalization breeds terrorists influenced by ISIS.
New York Times, Biden Blocks Japanese Bid for U.S. Steel, Alan Rappeport, Jan. 3, 2025. President Biden is said to believe the sale poses a threat to national security. The decision would be an extraordinary use of executive power.
President Biden moved to block the $14 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel of Japan in an announcement on Friday based on grounds that the sale posed a threat to national security.
The decision was an extraordinary use of executive power, particularly for a president who is just weeks from leaving office. It is also a departure from America’s long-established culture of open investment, one that could have wide-ranging implications for the U.S. economy. Although the politics of the move were clear, Mr. Biden emphasized that he was acting to protect national security.
“It is my solemn responsibility as president to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Friday morning. “And it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company.”
Mr. Biden’s move to stop the transaction could cause foreign investors to rethink the wisdom of acquiring American firms in sensitive industries that are based in politically important states. It could also roil relations with Japan, a close ally of the United States and one of America’s largest sources of foreign investment.
The president’s decision to block the deal came after a federal committee reviewing the transaction opted to not make a formal recommendation about whether the takeover should be allowed to proceed, according to letters sent to the companies and the White House last month.
New York Times, John Thune Takes Charge in the Senate, Ushering in a New Leadership Era, Carl Hulse, Jan. 3, 2025. The South Dakota conservative is the first new chief of the Senate G.O.P. in nearly 20 years. He will have to manage President-elect Trump’s demands.
John Thune won election to the Senate in 2004 by conquering Senator Tom Daschle, the powerful Democratic majority leader, only to quickly face a mortal threat to his political future when a major Air Force base in his state was threatened with closure.
He beat back the effort and saved Ellsworth Air Force Base, a financial engine in his largely rural state, keeping his job and learning valuable lessons that have helped power his rise in the Senate.
Now the South Dakota Republican has ascended to the top and will become majority leader in the new Congress that convenes on Friday, but he is again facing an early challenge and a major threat to his political standing.
Mr. Thune’s task this time is to juggle President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demands, the competing desires of 53 G.O.P. senators and a formidable legislative agenda. It starts with shepherding multiple baggage-laden Trump nominees to confirmation in the closely divided Senate, where he can afford to lose no more than three Republican votes if Democrats hold together in opposition.
Politico, House rules would make it harder to oust speaker in next Congress, Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill, Jan. 2, 2024 (print ed.). The rules package raises the threshold for triggering a vote from one GOP member to nine.Republicans will make it harder to remove the speaker in the 119th Congress under a rules package unveiled Wednesday.
The proposed rules package would require nine GOP members to back making a motion to vacate to trigger a vote on ousting the speaker. That’s an increase from the current rule, which allows any single GOP member to force a vote.
The deal to increase the threshold was negotiated in November by members of the House Freedom Caucus and the small business-oriented Main Street Caucus last year — an agreement that was first reported by POLITICO. Even after a vote is triggered, it still requires the support of a majority of the House in order for a speaker to be removed.
The release of the rules package, which includes proposed changes to the House’s general order of operations, comes ahead of Friday’s start to the new Congress. Republicans will need to formally adopt the package on the House floor, which they can’t do until they elect a speaker. In addition to the change to the motion to vacate, the rules package also tweaks the names of two House committees, allows committees to adopt rules on electronic voting, and tees up votes on 12 GOP bills including legislation related to immigration, voter ID and transgender student athletes. Inclusion of one of those bills, related to the International Criminal Court, is already drawing pushback from some members of the House GOP’s right flank.
Speaker Mike Johnson, during a recent Fox News interview, predicted that he will have the votes to become speaker despite his party’s thin margin. But Johnson has yet to lock down the votes he’ll need from his conference. Republicans are expected to have a 219-215 majority at the start of the new Congress, meaning Johnson must have nearly unanimous support from GOP lawmakers to win the gavel.
Washington Post, Trump endorses Mike Johnson ahead of what could be a prolonged House speaker fight, Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro and Meryl Kornfield, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). House Republicans have said for weeks that Donald Trump would have the final say on whether Johnson keeps the gavel or is replaced.
President-elect Donald Trump gave House Republican lawmakers a directive on Monday, days before what is expected to become an embattled speakership fight: Support Mike Johnson’s reelection.
In a lengthy post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump argued that Republicans should “NOT BLOW THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY WHICH WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN” by voters to immediately govern, which would require Johnson (R-Louisiana), right, to be swiftly reelected as House speaker on Friday.Get the latest election news and results
“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote.
But not all Republicans are following Trump’s directive, testing the GOP’s narrow majority and foreshadowing a prolonged fight on the House floor Friday.
“I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) posted on X. “We’ve seen Johnson partner with the democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.”
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Proof, Investigative Commentary: New Q&A Series, No. 1: Answering Some Extremely Easy Questions Asked By the Worst-Informed and Most Disingenuous Far-Right Billionaires on Earth, Seth Abramson, left, author, attorney and former professor, Jan. 4, 2025. Bill Ackman, above, asks, “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?” It’s a child’s question—or anyone with no knowledge of criminal justice—but here an expert answers it.
Seth AbramsonJan 4 QUESTION from far-right billionaire BILL ACKMAN: “How can someone with 53 prior arrests continue to be on the NYC streets?”
We know this question is asked in bad faith, because a billionaire like Ackman has lawyers and other advisers who could answer this extremely basic question for him almost immediately.
There’s no reason to broadcast the question to his 1.6 million Twitter followers other than to spread three far-right canards that every criminal justice professional knows to be false: New York City is a dangerous large city (it is actually a very, very safe large city); prosecutors are by and large progressive (by and large, prosecutors are extremely conservative by instinct, politics, and professional-advancement planning); and violent crime is now out of control (it is plummeting).
Nevertheless here’s an ANSWER from criminal defense attorney Seth Abramson:
On a criminal record, each charge a person has ever faced is a separate arrest entry—so if, on a single date of offense, a person is arrested on ten charges, that may well show as ten arrests even though all of those arrests were for a single course of conduct.
Because over 95% of criminal cases are resolved by a defendant taking responsibility for their actions and accepting a plea deal—that’s right, the overwhelming majority of those arrested aren’t like Donald Trump and seek no more than a just punishment for what they are accused of doing—police and prosecutors prepare in advance for this known eventuality by habitually wildly overcharging cases. The theory behind this is that the more charges you can pile on someone, the more likelihood (because each charge carries its own penalty, which can be assessed consecutively to all other penalties) they will enter into a plea agreement with the government and thus spare taxpayers the cost (and government agents the time) of a full-blown criminal trial.
The result of this is that even a rather minor incident will often lead to a very large number of more-or-less redundant charges and an extremely filled-up arrest record.
I’ve seen and personally represented defendants with 50+ arrests from just two dates of offense—meaning just two actions that were deemed by the arresting officers to be criminal. Bill Ackman is also aware of such a situation, given that his political hero, Donald Trump, technically was arrested on 34 felonies as part of a single course of conduct (though in Trump’s case these crimes spanned months, which is actually far worse than what we see with unpremeditated street crimes born of transient anger).
And of course arrests aren’t convictions. While arrests show up on an arrest record, many arrests result in nolle prosequi withdrawals of the charges by prosecutors for reasons ranging from a witness recantation to a plea deal that involves some charges being withdrawn, from the evidence ultimately gathered by police not sustaining the charges the arresting officers originally believed could be sustained to a prosecutor deciding (but this is rare) that the case was overcharged and that is was unfair to the defendant.
Short of charges being withdrawn voluntarily by the government, they may also be “kicked” (dismissed) by judges because (say) witnesses fail to appear in court, certain evidence was illegally seized, the government has botched the collection or testing of the evidence in a way that infringes upon the defendant’s constitutional rights, or a whole host of other reasons—including, notably, a “not guilty” verdict by a jury of the defendant’s peers after a trial.
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President Joe Biden awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton on Saturday. (Washington Post photo by Annabelle Gordon).
Washington Post, Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Soros, Ralph Lauren and others, Maeve Restonand Rachel Tashjian, Jan. 5, 2025 (print ed.). The star-studded list of recipients includes several philanthropists, Democratic politicians and high-profile donors.
President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a star-studded list of celebrities, donors and former politicians on Saturday, bestowing the nation’s highest civilian honor on some of the country’s best-known names and others who were integral in securing the victory of Biden and other Democrats in recent elections.Get the latest election news and results
Several of the medal recipients have been outspoken critics of President-elect Donald Trump, and Biden’s decision to honor them is yet another way in which he is trying to affirm institutions central to democracy. The honorees included 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, billionaire donor George Soros, actor Michael J. Fox and Democratic political icons including Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968.
“You inspire. You bring healing and joy to so many lives that otherwise wouldn’t be touched,” Biden said during the ceremony at the White House. “You answer the call to serve and lead others to do the same thing, and you defend the values of America, even when they’re under attack, which they have been as of late.”Biden awards Medals of Freedom0:45President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jan. 4 to 19 celebrities including Bono, José Andrés, Hillary Clinton and Magic Johnson. (Video: The Washington Post)
The medal is the highest civilian honor, given to individuals who have “made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”
Politico Magazine, ‘Dark Money’ Is Tainting Washington Think Tanks. A New Report Shows It’s Worse Than You Think, Michael Schaffer, Jan. 3, 2025. Foreign governments are throwing millions at D.C. think tanks.
Washington’s think-tank industry, which sets the terms of debate for so much of American policymaking, is floating on a sea of foreign-government and Pentagon-contractor dollars.
That’s the conclusion of a brand-new report out this morning and shared with me by a pair of scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that officially eschews foreign-government money — and delights in tweaking the Beltway foreign-affairs establishment.
Among other things, the paper says that the top 50 think tanks took in some $110 million over the past five years from foreign governments and related entities, including nearly $17 million from the United Arab Emirates, the largest single foreign donor. Leading Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, kicked in nearly $35 million over the same period.
The Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution topped the list of foreign-government beneficiaries, taking in nearly $21 million and over $17 million, respectively. All in all, 54 different governments contributed to the industry, a list largely made up of pro-western democracies but also including fantastically wealthy authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Most disturbingly, the report makes clear that the numbers it cites may only be partial: Unlike traditional PACs or registered foreign agents, think tanks don’t have to disclose where their money comes from. Researching the study, co-authors Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout told me, meant poring through the organizations’ annual reports in hopes that information would be voluntarily shared.
“More than a third of the top foreign policy think tanks in the US don’t disclose any donor information,” said Freeman. The category encompasses 18 of the 50 biggest think tanks, including highly-regarded Beltway stalwarts like the American Enterprise Institute or the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We really have no clue whatsoever who is funding them. We call these organizations dark money think tanks.”
That particular loaded term — lifted from the secretive political groups legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — is no accident.
According to Freeman and Cleveland-Stout, the typical think tank in 2024 looks a lot more like an advocacy group than a university. The paper doesn’t get into analyzing whether specific white papers were bought and paid for, but the implication is clear: Between media appearances, Congressional testimony and serving as mini governments-in-waiting for whatever party is out of power, the organizations do a lot to shape the political conversation, or at least set the boundaries of what views Washington deems respectable.
As such, they say, Americans have a vested interest in knowing who’s underwriting the opinions.
There are a couple of problems with that ask. One is the U.S. Constitution, which rightly makes it hard for the government to simply order a private organization to open up its books. The second is the self-conception of a lot of think tanks, which often cast themselves as high-minded research organizations rather than outfits involved in the grubby business of lobbying. This mindset underlies some of the reluctance to just lay out the finances voluntarily.
I think it’s time to get over that. In a low-trust moment where the policy views of many think tanks are about to face unprecedented assault, they should be going above and beyond to demonstrate that they’re legit. Hiding behind their researchers’ PhDs — as if they were ivory-tower philosophy professors who couldn’t even find their way to the bursar’s office — won’t cut it.
If the end result is that think tanks’ scholarly self-conception gets muddied up a bit, that’s probably good news for Washington’s culture, even if it dents a few researchers’ egos.
New York Times, Guest Essay: James Carville: I Was Wrong About the 2024 Election. Here’s Why, James Carville is veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC,.Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.).
I thought Kamala Harris would win. I was wrong. While I’m sure we Democrats can argue that the loss wasn’t a landslide or take a little solace in our House performance, the most important thing for us now is to face that we were wrong and take action on the prevailing “why.”
I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump. I keep coming back to the same thing. We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid. We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else.
Although the U.S. economy remains the strongest in the world, with G.D.P. soaring and inflation subsiding, the American people did not settle for us being better than the rest or take that as good enough. Mr. Trump, for the first time in his political career, decisively won by seizing a swath of middle-class and low-income voters focused on the economy. Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative. The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back. Perception is everything in politics, and a lot of Americans perceive us as out to lunch on the economy — not feeling their pain or caring too much about other things instead.
To win back the economic narrative, we must focus on revving up a transformed messaging machine for the new political paradigm we now find ourselves living in. It’s about finding ways to talk to Americans about the economy that are persuasive. Repetitive. Memorable. And entirely focused on the issues that affect Americans’ everyday lives.your times access.
This starts with how we form our opposition. First of all, we have got to stop making Mr. Trump himself our main focus; he can’t be elected again. Furthermore, it’s clear many Americans do not give a rat’s tail about Mr. Trump’s indictments — even if they are justified — or about his antidemocratic impulses or about social issues if they cannot provide for themselves or their families.
Mr. Trump won the popular vote by putting the economic anger of Americans front and center. If we focus on anything else, we risk falling farther into the abyss. Our messaging machine must sharply focus on opposing the unpopular Republican economic agenda that will live on past him. Vocally oppose the party, not the person or the extremism of his movement. I don’t always agree with Wall Street, but Jamie Dimon was right when he said that Democrats’ railing against “ultra-MAGA” was insulting and politically tone-deaf. Denouncing other Americans or their leader as miscreants is not going to win elections; focusing on their economic pain will, as will contesting the Republican economic agenda.
There will be plenty to oppose. Our central message must revolve around opposing Republicans’ tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It is deeply unpopular, and we know they want to do it again. And then we attack the rest. We know Republicans will most likely skyrocket everyday costs with slapstick tariffs; they will almost certainly attempt to slash the Affordable Care Act, raising premiums on the working class; and they will probably do next to nothing to curb the cost of prescription drugs. In a truly stunning display of inhumanity, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already lacerated health care funding for Sept. 11 emergency workers and survivors. There will be much, much worse to come.
But of course, opposition is only half the coin.
While Democrats have next to no chance of passing a bold, progressive economic agenda in the next four years, what we can do is force Republicans to oppose us. We must be on the offensive with a wildly popular and populist economic agenda they cannot be for.
Let’s start by forcing them to oppose a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Let’s make Roe v. Wade an economic messaging issue and force them to block our attempts to codify it into law. And let’s take back the immigration issue by making it an economic issue and force the G.O.P. to deny bipartisan reform that expedites entry for high-performing talent and for those who will bring business into our nation. This year the Democratic Party leadership must convene and publish a creative, popular and bold economic agenda and proactively take back our economic turf. Go big, go populist, stick to economic progress and force them to oppose what they cannot be for. In unison.
Finally, Democrats must trudge headfirst with this economic agenda into the new media paradigm we now live in. I am an 80-year-old man and can see clearly that we are barreling toward a nontraditional and decentralized media environment. Podcasts are the new print newspapers and magazines. Social platforms are a social conscience. And influencers are digital stewards of that conscience. Our economic message must be sharp, crisp, clear — and we must take it right to the people. To Democratic presidential hopefuls, your auditions for 2028 should be based on two things: 1) How authentic you are on the economy and 2) how well you deliver it on a podcast.
The road ahead will not be easy, but there are no two roads to choose from. The path forward could not be more certain: We live or die by winning public perception of the economy.
Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it forever shall be.
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using hisname. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema, with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued below.
Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Bowser goes to Mar-a-Lago, says she had ‘great meeting’ with Trump, Meagan Flynn and Martin Weil, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Bowser said the two had met “to discuss our shared priorities” for Donald Trump’s second term as president.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed “shared priorities” involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the “great meeting.”
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
More Political News, Commentary
New York Times, Guest Essay: What’s the Matter With Chicago? Andrew G. Biggs (senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, serving since 2016 as a presidentially appointed member of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, which has overseen the Puerto Rico government’s bankruptcy.), Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.).
The word bankruptcy has been hanging over Chicago like a storm cloud about to burst.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is the latest leader to attempt to close Chicago’s gaping fiscal gap: He proposed a $300 million property tax increase to partly fill Chicago’s $982 million projected budget deficit, only to be unanimously rejected by the City Council. The City Council narrowly passed a budget on Dec. 16, with far less in tax increases than the mayor had initially demanded.
The Windy City’s woes are the product of decades of fiscal profligacy and a cautionary tale to policymakers in every region and at every level of government: Retirement benefits are like free junk food to politicians — everyone loves them, and the bills don’t arrive until later. They can be ruinous for a city’s long-term fiscal health.
At the heart of Chicago’s deficit are decades of increasingly generous retirement benefits offered by Chicago’s leaders to more than 30,000 public employees, a politically powerful constituency. Today, a city employee retiring after 35 years with a final salary of $75,000 would receive combined pension and retiree health benefits of about $77,000.
The City government has failed to fund those pension promises fully and the bill has come due. Retirement benefits and debt service together made up 43 percent of Chicago’s budget in 2022, the highest rate of any U.S. city. Chicago spends more on debt and pensions than it does on the police and infrastructure, according to an analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian-leaning policy group. In other words, Chicago is paying for the past, not investing for the future.your times access
Chicago’s pension actuary warned in a letter to the plan’s leadership last year that “the Fund is still at risk of potential insolvency if an economic recession or investment market downturn were to occur in the near term.” (He wrote it in boldface to get policymakers to take notice.)Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Chicago owes bondholders almost $29 billion. It also faces $35 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and almost $2 billion in unfunded retiree health benefits. And these figures do not include an additional $14 billion in unfunded benefits owed to Chicago’s teachers. The watchdog group Truth in Accounting gives Chicago a grade of “F” for fiscal responsibility, ranking it 74 out of 75 cities. (New York City is last.)
City leaders may continue to ignore these warnings. If the pension fund does get close to insolvency, Chicago can most likely keep the pension checks flowing by suspending payments to bondholders. Illinois has no legal provision for Chicago to declare bankruptcy, meaning the state would be forced to rush legislation into place to prevent financial chaos.
Judging by the experience of places such as Detroit and Puerto Rico, where I serve on a federally appointed board overseeing the island government’s bankruptcy, pensions would largely be protected in the event of fiscal chaos, followed by core government operations. Nonessential government services would be reduced, and bondholders would receive what remains.
Even if Chicago can contain the political fallout locally, the economic impact would reach far beyond the city limits. Chicago is the largest city in the Midwest and the third largest nationwide. The state of Illinois, which faces vast debts of its own, is not in a position to bail out its largest city, so Congress or the Federal Reserve might have to step in to help.
Policymakers in other big American cities ought to be paying attention. Truth in Accounting gave San Francisco a fiscal grade of D, while New York’s largest-in-the-nation debt burden of $61,800 per taxpayer caused it to share a failing grade with Chicago. New York and San Francisco each already devote more than 22 percent of their total budgets to retirement benefits and debt.
One reason it’s easy to allow pension-fueled deficits to keep growing is that there are very few guardrails. State and local government pensions are unregulated by the federal government, so they operate with much lower funding standards than federal government pensions or those offered by private companies.
Like private pensions, state and local governments should be required to assume conservative returns on pension investments and to address unfunded liabilities quickly, rather than letting funding shortfalls fester over decades.
If, as in Chicago, decades of fiscal recklessness are allowed to go unchecked, changing course can be extremely painful. Chicago has increased its pension contributions significantly. But the city must pay for its $927 million in additional pension contributions by reducing other essential government functions.
The consequence is a lower level of public services for everyone. With the city police force down by over 1,600 officers since 2018, the city’s inspector general found that 49 percent of 911 calls appear to go unanswered. Chicago is already seeing the effects of this deterioration. Companies such as Boeing, United Airlines, Tyson Foods and the hedge fund Citadel have all moved operations away from Chicago in recent years, citing the business environment, public safety and governance quality among their reasons.+Andrew G Biggs is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 21, 2024 [U.S. Government Shutdown Avoided], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 22, 2024. Shortly after midnight last night, the Senate passed the continuing resolution to fund the government through March 14, 2025. The previous continuing resolution ran out at midnight, but as Bloomberg’s congressional budget reporter Steven Dennis explained, “midnight is NOT a hard deadline for a government shutdown. A shutdown occurs only when [the Office of Management and Budget] issues a shutdown order, which they traditionally will NOT issue if a bill is moving toward completion.”
President Joe Biden signed the bill this morning, praising the agreement for keeping the government open, providing urgently needed disaster relief, and providing the money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a container ship hit it in March 2024, causing it to collapse.
Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Bowser goes to Mar-a-Lago, says she had ‘great meeting’ with Trump, Meagan Flynn and Martin Weil, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Bowser said the two had met “to discuss our shared priorities” for Donald Trump’s second term as president.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed “shared priorities” involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the “great meeting.”
New York Times, Trump Weighs In on Immigrant Visa Debate but Offers Little Clarity, Ken Bensinger, Dec. 29, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump said he had used the visas for skilled workers “many times.” But he has mainly used visas for unskilled workers like housekeepers.
President-elect Donald J. Trump appeared to weigh in on Saturday on a heated debate among his supporters over the role of skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy, saying he had frequently used the visas for those workers and backed the program.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” he told The New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
But his comments — which were enthusiastically embraced by the technology industry as an endorsement — may muddy the waters because Mr. Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States for up to three years and can be extended to six years.
Instead, he has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months. Federal data show Mr. Trump’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past 20 years.
New York Times, Trump Previews Second Term in Sprawling Speech to Conservative Conference, Michael D. Shear, Dec. 22, 2024. President-elect Trump repeated false claims about immigration and the border and discussed the Panama Canal in the 90-minute address.
President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a sprawling address on Sunday that he called a “small preview of the common-sense revolution” his administration will bring, pledging to slam shut the nation’s borders, end federal regulations, lower taxes, prosecute his rivals, “stop woke” and “end the transgender lunacy.”
In a 90-minute speech at a conservative conference in Phoenix, Mr. Trump offered a triumphant view of his election victory in which he described his liberal adversaries as “befuddled” and promised that a new “golden age in America” had begun.
“We will end the occupation, and Jan. 20 will truly be liberation day in America,” Mr. Trump told thousands of people at AmericaFest, a four-day conference run by the conservative group Turning Point USA.
The president-elect’s speech was a familiar mash-up of false assertions, self-praise, fierce attacks on his adversaries and promises about how his return to power would change the country for the better.
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More On Carter Life, Legacy
Jimmy Carter's family watches the transfer ceremony at U.S. Navy Memorial as the band plays "Hail to The Chief" on January 7, 2025.
New York Times, Jimmy Carter (1924-2024): A Pomp-Filled Farewell for Carter With 3 Days of Tributes, Peter Baker, Jan. 7, 2025. The nation’s leaders on Tuesday kicked off three days of tributes to Jimmy Carter, staging an elaborate pageant of Washington fanfare for a politician who disavowed the trappings of the imperial presidency and never gave up his humble Georgia roots.
Mr. Carter, who died last week at age 100, was flown to Washington and taken to the U.S. Navy Memorial downtown, then delivered to the Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. He will lie in state in the Rotunda all day Wednesday before a formal state funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
“James Earl Carter Jr. loved our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a eulogy during a solemn Capitol service attended by members of Congress, the cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomatic corps. “He lived his faith, he served the people and he left the world better than he found it. And in the end, Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.”
Former President Carter, who once banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” will lie in state at the Capitol as part of three days of elaborate ceremonies.
President Jimmy Carter and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 1978. Both saw themselves as straight shooters in a world of spinners (Photo:
Barry Thumma/Associated Press
New York Times, ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History, Peter Baker, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). President Biden is another Democrat hurt by inflation and struggling to free hostages. But Mr. Carter’s enhanced reputation post-presidency offers hope.
When President Biden appeared on camera to pay tribute to former President Jimmy Carter, he sounded almost as if he were thinking of himself in these final days in office.
“In today’s world, some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era — with honesty and character, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden said in breaking away from his Caribbean vacation on Sunday after the former president’s death. “It mattered. But I don’t believe it’s a bygone era.”
Mr. Biden, too, has been dismissed as a man of a bygone era, an old-school politician in a new-school world, an octogenarian president playing by rules he learned in the 1970s when he served in the Senate and Mr. Carter was in the White House, rules that did not help him in today’s fast-paced, smash-mouth political arena. He is, in this view, a man out of time — Mr. Carter’s time.
Washington Post, Jimmy Carter: They wrote obituaries about Carter — but died before him, Laura Wagner, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Carter’s longevity meant that some of his obit writers have by now not only left journalism but also their mortal coils.
New York Times, In Carter’s Hometown, a Long Vigil Ends With Sorrow, but Also Uplift, Rick Rojas, Christina Morales and Christian Boone, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Plains, Ga., had been bracing for the inevitable through Jimmy Carter’s ailments and nearly two years of hospice care. Still, his death “doesn’t seem real.”
The Georgia town known first and foremost as the home of Jimmy Carter had steeled itself time and again for an existence without him. First, there was his cancer diagnosis in 2015, and then the fall that broke a hip, and the disclosure almost two years ago that he had entered hospice care.
But sure enough, every time, he held on.
And so, Plains, a speck of a community tied to the 39th president for the better part of a century, awoke on Monday to a reality that, strangely enough, seemed almost as inconceivable as it was inevitable. Mr. Carter, 100, was gone. He died on Sunday at his home, the modest ranch house hidden behind the security fencing and guard stations in the center of town.
“Honestly, it doesn’t seem real,” said Philip Kurland, the owner of the Plains Trading Post, an overstuffed emporium of political memorabilia in the strip of businesses that makes up downtown. “It was inevitable, but there’s still sadness. There’s also a feeling of: Let’s celebrate a life well lived.”
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (New York Times photo by Damon Winter )
New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100, Peter Baker and Roy Reed, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but held on longer than even his family expected.
Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter on the campaign trail and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of the former president’s signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
Other than interludes in the White House and the Georgia governor’s mansion, he and his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, lived in the same simple home in Plains for most of their adult lives and each of them passed away there, Mrs. Carter in November last year.
A lifelong farmer who still worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s, Mr. Carter had long defied death and outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him. Over the years, he beat back a series of health crises, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, and repeated falls, one giving him a broken hip.
The Carter Center announced in February last year that Mr. Carter, “after a series of short hospital stays,” had decided to forgo further life-prolonging medical treatment and would receive hospice care at home.
News that he seemed to be in his final days prompted a wave of tributes and remembrances of his extended and eventful life, but even then he upended expectations by hanging on for nearly two years. He lived long enough to bid farewell to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96, culminating a marriage of 77 years.
Jimmy Carter, furthest right, is standing in the Oval Office with four of his successors. From left to right: George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former President Jimmy Carter, furthest right, in a group photo of his successors in January 2009 (New York Times photo by Doug Mills)
New York Times, Carter the Critic Didn’t Spare His Successors, Linda Qiu, Dec. 30, 2024 (print ed.). Jimmy Carter defied the unwritten rule of former presidents: Don’t criticize the occupant of the Oval Office.
Former President Jimmy Carter grinned in the Oval Office in January 2009 for a photograph, a visible gap separating him from four of his successors. As the others stood shoulder to shoulder, he positioned himself off to the side, a hand in one pocket, as if to distance himself just slightly from that most exclusive club.
Mr. Carter had no qualms about breaking one of that club’s unwritten rules, namely that former presidents restrain their critiques of the current occupant of the Oval Office. In the four decades after leaving the White House following the 1980 election, he caused regular stirs with pointed opinions about his successors.
“He was in fights with everyone, Democrats, Republicans,” said Julian E. Zelizer, the author of “Jimmy Carter” and a historian at Princeton University, who called Mr. Carter “a maverick through and through.”
Stuart Eizenstat, a former adviser to Mr. Carter, said the former president wasn’t the type of person to just go back to Plains, Ga., and “work on carpentry and painting.”
“When he left office, he was in his mid 50s,” Mr. Eizenstat said. “He didn’t want his voice to be unheard.”
Washington Post, Carter to lie in state at Capitol, with state funeral to follow on Jan. 9, Azi Paybarahm, Dec. 30, 2024. Former presidents and other dignitaries are expected to attend the service at Washington National Cathedral where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy.
The death of former president Jimmy Carter touched off an American mourning ritual that requires quickly coordinating a sprawling group of federal officials, local partners and law enforcement, as well as elected leaders from across the political spectrum.Get the latest election news and results
Services to honor Carter will begin Jan. 4 in his home state of Georgia and conclude Jan. 9 with a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral, where President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy. Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for three days, which will give members of Congress and everyday Americans the opportunity to pay their respects.
The events require a complicated choreography of protocol, ceremony and security at which official Washington excels, but the timing of Carter’s funeral presents some particular challenges. The former president died Sunday at the age of 100.
The tributes to Carter come after the New Year’s Day holiday and as Washington is experiencing a political transition, with Biden preparing to hand power to President-elect Donald Trump. Separately, a fractured House Republican majority will try to elect a speaker on Jan. 3, a process that previously took the GOP dozens of rounds of votes spread over several days of public feuding.
New York Times, After Jimmy Carter Won the Presidency, Democrats Lost the South, Richard Fausset, Dec. 30, 2024. On the day he was sworn in as governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, an ambitious white peanut farmer from rural Sumter County, announced that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
The declaration landed like the carefully calculated bomb it was intended to be in the South of 1971 — and landed Mr. Carter on the cover of Time magazine, along with the blurb, “Dixie whistles a different tune.”
But in his ensuing half-century of public life, Mr. Carter, the one-term Democratic president who died Sunday at 100, would be forced to listen rather helplessly as Republicans mostly called the tune in his native South, supported by white voters who were uncomfortable with the Democrats’ embrace of racial inclusion and abortion rights, and were attracted to the small-government, low-tax promises of the party of Ronald Reagan.
Indeed, after Mr. Carter’s ascension to the White House, the states of the old Confederacy would go on to become, with a few exceptions, a crucial base of support for Republican presidential candidates. Much of that support came from Mr. Carter’s fellow Southern evangelicals, who turned sharply away from him and the Democrats during his presidential term. They became one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs and remain so to this day.
That was part of a shift that had begun in the early 1960s, as Republicans found a way to chip and then blast away at what had been a solidly Democratic South since the end of Reconstruction. Southerners’ fealty to the party had been based on their appreciation for Roosevelt’s New Deal, and their bitterness over the 19th century Republicanism of Lincoln that helped erode the region’s strict racial hierarchies.
Yet Mr. Carter also helped to create a model for Democratic success in a South that has become increasingly Republican‚ a model that remains workable to varying degrees today. The election of 1976 was one of a number of times that a Democratic candidate has emerged with just the right balance of rhetoric and policy promises, uniting just enough white Southern progressives and white moderates in a successful coalition with Black and other minority voters.
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Trump's Cases, Allies, Threats, Opponents
Lance's Substack, Political Opinion: Biden's Worst Decision, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 1, 2024. Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
Thanks to Will Bunch (published here) we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upona Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.
Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, left, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using his name. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."
The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy, which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.
Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter (shown above in a June 2024 photo) demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David (which he wouldn't).
I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?
Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.
Excerpt continued from above.
I'm going to state publicly what I have suspected all along but have not yet divulged until now. This is my personal speculation, but I believe that a deal was made by Biden to get Trump to leave the White House and relinquish power in 2021, provided he would not be prosecuted aggressively. This, in my mind, is the only thing which solves the mystery of why did Trump even leave, and why did he agree to a transition? And I should state for the record that while I always remained critical in a principled way, I have been a strong and vocal defender of Joe Biden since he launched his candidacy in 2017, and I am not writing this to bash him. In a way, if a deal was made I understand it and his motives.
That said, all indications were that Trump would make some desperate effort at a last stand, because he stood to lose his Presidential legal shield and go to jail if he didn't. He even tried to get Netanyahu's help in launching a war with Iran at the end to fabricate a national emergency and void the election. General Milley actually called it Trump's "Reichstag Fire" and blocked it. Despite his desperation, Trump relented, and it has always been puzzling to me as to why. If there were a deal, that would explain it. We know that everything with Trump is a transaction, devoid of any motive other than self-preservation. I am certainly open to discussion if others have thoughts on it, because it is just my opinion and nothing more.
So, on our timeline, Biden came in, pledged bipartisanship and healing in his inaugural, appointed Garland under pressure from Dunns's flunky Klain, left. He (Garland) was a former DOJ prosecutor and federal judge, a plodding GOP bureaucrat and proceduralist, guaranteed to not do anything which could remotely be considered "political" in order to protect the DOJ from charges of "weaponizing Justice. Therefore when it came to not antagonizing MAGA, he was right on board with Klain's and Dunn's program.
Remember also that this was the guy who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers McVeigh and Nichols, but the religious cult and militia networks (the neo-Nazi "Christian Identity," and the Michigan militia) which housed them and actively supported their anti-government plot were let off the hook. There was a network, not just two guys, and Garland chose to not go after all of them for sedition conspiracy, only the two mentioned for the crime of the bombing. (It should be mentioned that the same Michigan militia networks that supported them were caught plotting a "citizen's arrest" of Governor Gretchen Whitmer 26 years later, which was in fact a plot to kidnap her and her cabinet, conduct mock trials and summary executions for treason, right after they were incited by Trump to storm the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to oppose covid lockdown)
Garland, once sworn in after the usual obstruction in the Senate by McConnell, (the second go-round for him after he was Obama's failed nominee for SCOTUS) did nothing for month after month about the stolen documents or J-6. Instead of going after the planners and the ringleaders, he was preoccupied with rounding up and prosecuting the thousand or so zombies used as cannon-fodder for the riot, which was just cover for the actual coup plot of Trump's Congreseional allies boiding Biden's electors. Not Trump,Meadows, Bannon, Stone, especially not Ginni Thomas. No, it was more important to nail the “horny” QAnon guy than the people who were responsible for bring the mob which left five dead DC cops and hundreds more injured.
Then the J-6 committee did such a thorough job documenting Trump's coup attempt, that Garland was literally forced to abort the "hands off" policy and started a grand jury. And once it was finally underway, all of his foot-dragging led to his "cover your ass" move of appointing a special prosecutor, Jack Smith.
Then there were shocking revelations that Trump's stolen documents included nuclear secrets which he was showing off to guests and donors at his golf club, and Biden's national security team raised the roof to convince him to pressure Garland to go after them. Garland started another investigation he didn't want in order to force Trump to give the documents up. Trump said "fuck you," ordered his lawyers to lie to the FBI, he was allowed to stall, hide some of what he had, possibly sell some of it, so Garland was forced to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and start a second grand jury (which again he never wanted) and Biden went along with him on all of it.
And to top it off, Garland incredibly insisted that Smith convene the grand jury and try the stolen documents case in Ron DeSantis' fascist hellscape of Florida, not Washington DC where the judges are more balanced than Florida's Republican hack federal appointees. No credible reason for Garland to insist Smith go to trial in Florida was ever given, aside from the fact the documents were there. He personally oversaw packing up in Washington, and had no immunity the moment Biden was sworn in. It would have been a slam dunk.
The only possible explanation is that bringing the case in Trump's home state was a sop, a buy-off to mitigate the rage and retribution factor from the Congressional MAGAts. Remember that after the Mar-aLago FBI search warrant was executed, a Trump supporter assassinated an FBI agent in Cincinnati, and there was a pattern of threats against their offices nationwide. Therefore Florida is what they went with, and almost predictibly a Trump appointed "fan-girl" known as Aileen "Loose Cannon" got jurisdiction, stalled, delayed, and after the SCOTUS immunity ruling threw out the case entirely.
This bought Trump the time he needed to let the SCOTUS step in and give him his blank check to cancel all of his cases and start making plans to deploy Seal Team Six to assassinate his political opponents. All of the cases were then pronounced DOA, including the state criminal charges in Georgia and New York.
As a consequence of Garland's malfeasance and incompetence, we now have a Führer, not a President, coming in with list in hand of his targets for bloody retribution, a person with the mental map and personality disorders of the movie character Patrick Bateman from the bloody horror novel "American Psycho." And the worst thing is that some of us wanted to believe the same thing President Biden believed, that this collection of vengeance-seeking bloodthirsty fascists who belong to a violent cult led by a psychopath could be bargained with. Or, for that matter cared even a whit about the national interest, and were really just normal good people who would come around when we got some bills passed that would mean job security and putting money in the pockets of their voters.
It is beyond me that someone with Joe's battle-tested life experiences and history of political wars in the Senate and as VP could actually have believed this. He once told Putin to his face that he had no soul. Did he really think he could horse-trade with people who were bought or sold, or had their lives threatened? Did he really believe that Trump would honor his side of any deal that was made, if one was made? I believe in redemption, but I don't cry over Hallmark movie happy endings which I know to not be real,
The intention, in my view, was never to prosecute or jail Trump, despite Jack Smith's committment to do just that. It was to use the prosecutions as leverage to contain Trump and force him to eventually drop out of the campaign. And instead he turned around and did the exact opposite. And Biden went along with the deal and Garland's do-nothingism because his "Rasputin" Anita Dunn was in his ear telling him that if Trump went on trial he would lose the "moderate MAGA" vote and therefore the whole election, and our democracy along with it.
Biden never realized how tragic his error was until Garland went after his son, then after him personally on his decade old collection of useless memorabilia in his garage, and Garland's choice for Special Prosecutor, Republican hack prosecutor Robert Hur (approved of by Gym Jordan and James Comer) wrote a long report on how there was no crime, but Biden seemed senile. All this of course to prove himself fair and non-partisan when it came time to testify in Jordan's committee to grovel for budget crumbs and defend his turf. Joe never saw it coming, like a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.
That is my reading from the outside, fwiw. Like I said it is speculation. And the tragedy regardless is that Biden's awful pragmatic decision born of a 50 year long career of centrist dealmaking with Republicans came back to haunt him because Garland offered up his son Hunter as a sacrifice to the MAGA carnivores, hoping that would "balance things out" for his Trump cases, (which again, I believe he never wanted) and prove his department was apolitical in order to keep them out of his business running the DOJ. Well...how did that all work out?
That is what I believe actually happened. At some point I think more will come out that points toward this scenario as being likely.
So, one mystery solved, which is why Biden picked Garland. Another one still remains open, which is why did Trump leave the White House in 2021, a decision he has said he regretted all along. Whatever the case, we will pay the price for President Biden's unfortunate decisions reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. He only found out at the tragic end who his real friends were, and who were his enemies, because he saw what he wanted to see and placed his trust in the wrong people at the worst possible time. He wanted to believe that McConnell and Lindsey Graham were still his friends and that they would work with him. He didn't want to see how they and others were broken by Trump.
Former President and President-elect Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.
New York Times, Trump Loses Appeal of Carroll’s $5 Million Award in Sex-Abuse Case, Lola Fadulu, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed). The president-elect had asked a court to overturn the defamation judgment against him in the case, which centered on E. Jean Carroll’s account of a sexual attack in a dressing room.President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that the court should not have allowed Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.
The appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him. “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. It was unsigned but issued by a three-judge panel made up of Denny Chin and Susan Carney — appointed by President Barack Obama — as well as Myrna Perez, appointed by President Biden.
“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” Roberta Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a statement. “We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, who is set to be his White House communications director, said Mr. Trump was re-elected with an “overwhelming mandate,” and he said the American people “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
Mr. Trump was represented in the appeal by D. John Sauer, his pick for U.S. solicitor general.
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, a Florida Republican who was President-elect Trump's's first nominee to become U.S. Attorney General in a second Trump administration, is shown with Trump in a file photo via Facebook.
New York Times, Trump Transition Updates: Ethics Panel Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman and Robert Draper, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). Former Representative Matt Gaetz has been under investigation over allegations including sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
A report (here) by the House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, of regularly paying for sex, using illegal drugs and having sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. The report concluded that the actions by Mr. Gaetz — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general — violated state sexual misconduct laws, including Florida’s statutory rape law, and violated House rules. But the committee said it did not find conclusive evidence that he violated federal sex trafficking laws. Read more ›
President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Mr. Trump returns to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row. Mr. Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, but legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration.
An ethics panel report concluded that Gaetz violated state laws and House rules.
The House Ethics Committee accused former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former pick for attorney general, of regularly paying for sex, possessing illegal drugs and having sexual relations with an underage girl, according to a draft of the panel’s report.
The report, which was released on Monday, found that from at least 2017 to 2020, Mr. Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; and, in 2017, “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” the report said.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), center, in a 2017 Facebook photo with friends and fellow ardent Trump supporters Roger Stone and Joel Greenberg, the latter a former Florida tax collector now imprisoned on multiple federal felony charges for sex trafficking, allegedly in part with Gaetz.
Politico, Gaetz report renews debate about how he escaped federal charges, Josh Gerstein, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The Justice Department applies federal sex-trafficking laws narrowly.
The House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz offers some hints about why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute the former Florida congressman after a wide-ranging federal investigation into whether he committed sex trafficking.
The decision likely stemmed from concerns about the strength of the evidence and the department’s history of applying sex-trafficking laws narrowly, former prosecutors said Monday.
The modern federal sex trafficking law is limited to cases involving coercion, fraud or the interstate or international movement of minors for sex. Despite its damning evidence of wide-ranging violations of law and House rules by Gaetz, the Ethics Committee report did not find those factors.
An older statute, known as the Mann Act, sweeps more broadly, but the Justice Department as a matter of discretion limits its application to particularly egregious acts of trafficking.Jeffries on Gaetz Report: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'
The most egregious allegation Gaetz faces is having sex with a 17-year-old. But the Ethics Committee report does not say that he transported or arranged for transport of the alleged victim across state lines — an important point because some connection to interstate commerce is required for it to become a federal sex-trafficking crime. The report also says the then-17-year-old told investigators she did not tell Gaetz her age at the time, and that he didn’t ask.
The report does bluntly accuse Gaetz of having violated Florida’s statutory rape law. But it concluded that a state prosecution is impossible at this point because he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old in 2017, and the state’s statute of limitations has expired.
The report also found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed other illegal conduct, including hiring prostitutes and using illicit drugs. Some of that conduct was connected to interstate commerce — but federal prosecutors likely felt it did not rise to the level of what is typically prosecuted under the relevant federal statutes.
The Mann Act is traditionally reserved “for situations where there’s severe forms of trafficking and exploitation of the victims,” said Margaret Gandy, a former federal prosecutor.
Because Gaetz’ alleged interstate and international conduct involved women over 18 and there was no suggestion of violence or duress, DOJ may not have thought it was an appropriate Mann Act case to charge, Gandy said.
“When it is exploitative and abusive, when there’s obviously physical force, coercion, duress, all those things, that makes it easy,” Gandy said. “There’s more of a gray area sometimes around some more transactional sex with consenting adults that warrants that additional pause and consideration.”
Another former federal prosecutor, Robert Bittman, agreed that the department rarely brings sex-trafficking charges in cases of consensual sex between adults, even if money changed hands.
“It’s a crime, it’s a statute on the books that they can prosecute — but it’s not a high-priority thing,” he said. “It’s not something that’s often prosecuted, and really would only be prosecuted if there are significant, other aggravating factors.”
Federal prosecutors have also historically hesitated to bring cases that involve quid-pro-quos for sex that involve things other than an explicit payment.
The Justice Department concluded its investigation into Gaetz last year. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
However, a law enforcement official said all DOJ decisions about Gaetz were made by career prosecutors. The official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, added that this has been the standard practice for the Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive investigations into political figures.
An attorney for Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment, and Gaetz directed reporters seeking comment to his social media posts.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X, contending that many of the claims in the report were inaccurate. He has repeatedly denied having sex with anyone under 18 and said money he transferred to women was to compensate girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for their travel.MOST READbiden-37249.jpg
New York Times, Trump’s Suit Over Iowa Poll Is His Latest Action Against News Media, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, David Enrich and Alan Feuer, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump sued The Des Moines Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, escalating his threats to seek retribution against the mainstream media and his political enemies.
Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, right, Dec. 15, 2024. Kash Patel Is A Lunatic.
This MSNBC article by author and writer Jay Michaelson makes a strong case for Biden to carry out sweeping pre-emptive pardons to protect those targeted for revenge prosecutions by Trump and his incoming "Himmler," Kash Patel, left.
The counterarguments by legalists, MAGA fascists and several Biden-bashing liberal media pundits are fairly well refuted, and in fact shown to be bogus in each example.
Americans by and large are letting their fears affect their judgment, and are either blocking out the Trump/Patel threat to our constitutional system and targeted individuals, or have resigned themselves to it and are retreating into a psychological bunker mentality.
The only remedy is effective political action. Throwing junk memes up against your Facebook wall is no solution and represents a net negative as far as wasted time and energy.Facebook is part of the apparatus which will be deployed to identify us and pick us off, one by one. Be clear that this is a devolving Orwellian type of platform designed to neutralize Trump's political opposition.
I should not have to make this case. You all saw what Facebook did with their algorithm to spike most of the posts about Project 2025 when that became the leading issue in the campaign. And of course it was soon determined that the corporate figure who designed that algorithm in charge of so-called “community guidelines” was a Trump guy.
And now you have Zuckerberg crawling to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's bone spurs, then funding his inaugural to the tune of 1 million, with who knows what other kinds of backroom deals were struck to keep Trump off his back. Same with Bezos.
My days here are numbered. You also saw this week that my page was hijacked and I lost all but a handful of my 1400 readers. My wife posted a notice on my timeline to notify everyone that I have a new page, and how to find it. That message was removed, either by Facebook or the hijacker.
So this place is a dead end for those resisting the regime. That is where we are. I'm taking steps this weekend to backup and safeguard my Substack archive of a 1000 articles going back six years. Others who are writers and posters should consider taking similar steps to preserve their data.
Don't block on this, we are headed into dark territory.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a blue suit, sits with his attorneys shortly before arraignment in New York City's state court on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to the 2016 presidential campaign season, reportedly involving in part hush money to women ((Associated Press photo by Seth Wong). Below, the presiding judge in the case was Juan Merchon, below left.
New York Times, Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling, Ben Protess and Kate Christobek, Dec. 16, 2024. Justice Juan Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by President-elect Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Deadline, Donald Trump, On ‘Meet The Press,’ Again Pledges To Pardon January 6th Rioters, Says Liz Cheney And Other Committee Members “Should Go To Jail
Public Health, RFK Jr., Healthcare CEO's Murder
New York Times, U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol, Roni Caryn Rabin, Jan. 3, 2025. Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to malignancies, including breast cancer. But to label them, Congress would have to act.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general, above, said on Friday.
It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer.
Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”
But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said.
He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview.
“The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change.
Still, President-elect Donald J. Trump does not drink, and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swore off alcohol and drugs decades ago, and says he regularly attends AA meetings.
Excerpt Continued From Above.
There is no question that heavy consumption is harmful. But supporters of moderate drinking — including makers of wine, beer and spirits, and some physicians and scientists — argue that a little alcohol each day may reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States.
Newer scientific studies have criticized the methodology of earlier studies, however, and have challenged that view, which was once a consensus.
While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.
Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.
Two scientific reviews will be used to inform the updated recommendations about alcohol consumption in the federal dietary guidelines.
Five years ago, the scientific report that informed the writing of the 2020-2025 dietary guidelines acknowledged that alcohol is a carcinogen and generally unhealthy and suggested “tightening guidelines” by capping the recommendation for men at one standard drink, or 14 grams of alcohol a day.
When the final guidelines were drafted, however, there was no change in the advice that moderate drinking of up to two drinks a day for men was acceptable.
President-elect Donald Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Photo via Getty Images).
New York Times, Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? Emily Baumgaertner, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.
When President-elect Donald J. Trump mused in a recent television interview about whether vaccines cause autism — a theory that has been discredited by dozens of scientific studies — autism researchers across the country collectively sighed in frustration.
But during the interview, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Trump made one passing comment with which they could agree: “I mean, something is going on,” he said, referring to skyrocketing rates of autism. “I think somebody has to find out.”
What is going on? Autism diagnoses are undeniably on the rise in the United States — about 1 in 36 children have one, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected from 11 states, compared with 1 in 150 children in 2000 — and researchers have not yet arrived at a clear explanation. They attribute most of the surge to increased awareness of the disorder and changes in how it is classified by medical professionals. But scientists say there are other factors, genetic and environmental, that could be playing a role too.
Autism spectrum disorder, as it is officially called, is inherently wide-ranging, marked by a blend of social and communication issues, repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns that vary in severity. A mildly autistic child could simply struggle with social cues, while a child with a severe case could be nonverbal. There is no blood test or brain scan to determine who has autism, just a clinician’s observations.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Preferring Not to See, Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t exactly hidden his anti-vaccine views over the years, as hundreds of hours of video footage, numerous books, and many documentaries show. And yet, on the cusp of being considered for the top health post in the country, Senate Republicans are suggesting they’re reassured Kennedy has moderated his views based on their brief, one-on-one conversations.
“I think he’s done a good job of answering a lot of the questions about his views on vaccines,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNN after meeting with Kennedy this week. “I think he understands the values and benefit that vaccines play and have played through the years preventing disease.”
We don’t know exactly what Thune and Kennedy discussed. (Neither party opted to fill me in, although I did ask.) But come on!
Kennedy may well have denied—as he has in public for years—that he is truly “anti-vaccine.” Like many other anti-vaxxers, Kennedy prefers to be thought of as a stickler for vaccine safety.
But one would have to be deliberately obtuse or willingly naïve to think that Kennedy has suddenly seen the light about the benefits of vaccines. He has spent years arguing that the vaccines currently on the market are harming more people than they help. And he’s actively campaigning against their continued use, pending a brand-new regimen of placebo-controlled testing.
In one interview, Kennedy made the case against the measles vaccine by noting what a great time he had when he and his siblings caught the disease, which can have gruesome complications including brain swelling (you don’t say?), gastrointestinal issues and fever, sepsis, and septicemia.
“My 11 brothers and sisters, we all had measles and it was a great week” he said, describing the cure for measles as “chicken soup and vitamin A.”
He has declared that “the polio vaccine does not work” and argued that it in fact could be responsible for a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
In 2021, he told podcaster Alec Zeck that he tries to actively convince people not to get their kids vaccinated. “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not to get him vaccinated.’”
Last year, he went further while speaking to podcaster Lex Fridman: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
A few months later, in a CNN appearance, he tried to clean those comments up:
"What I meant—which was a bad use of words in this—none of the vaccines that are currently on the mandated schedule for children, the 72 vaccines for children, have ever been tested in a pre-licensing safety study. What that means is that we do not know what the risk profile is for those products."
When Kennedy argues that he just wants to “test” vaccines—or when Donald Trump says, as he did last weekend, that “there are problems” surrounding pediatric vaccination and “we’re going to find out what those problems are”—what he is saying is actually quite drastic.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Never Trumpers Were Right, Actually, Jonathan V. Last, right, Dec. 18, 2024. A response to Bret Stephens. Plus drone talk from the front lines.
Bret Stephens has a column today in which he renounces his Never Trump patrimony and castigates Trump critics for being overheated and wrong about so many things.
You should read his piece to get the full breadth of his argument. But I’ll give you a taste:
Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose. We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. We hyperventilated about his odd chumminess with Vladimir Putin. But the collusion allegations were a smear, and Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher than either Barack Obama’s or (at least until Russia invaded Ukraine) President Biden’s.
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and Promise, Corey Kilgannon, Mike Baker, Luke Broadwater and Shawn Hubler, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione, above, charged in the death of an executive in New York, was an Ivy League graduate who had recently suffered physical and psychological pain.
Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue-blazered frat buddies.
He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford University.
With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family’s thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path.
The police now believe that Mr. Mangione, 26, is the masked gunman who calmly took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a Midtown Manhattan street last week and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He was arrested in Altoona, Pa., on Monday after an employee at a McDonald’s recognized him and called the police. Officers said they found him with fake identification, a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing and a manifesto decrying the health care industry.
Later on Monday, Mr. Mangione was charged in Manhattan with murder, along with additional counts of forgery and illegal weapons possession. And in the hours after his apprehension, his baffling journey from star student to murder suspect began to come into focus.
Washington Post, Person of interest in UnitedHealthcare shooting arrested in Pa., police say, Mark Berman and Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Luigi Mangione faces gun charges and other counts. He was denied bail after his arraignment in Altoona, Pa.police commissioner, said at a news briefing.
Thompson, 50, right, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a stunning act of early-morning violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.
Police said it appeared that the suspect they were seeking escaped the city shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement officials said they were scouring reams of video footage and tips, but they pleaded with the public for more help, sharing several images of a person they said was wanted in connection with the killing.
ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele, Josh Margolin, and Meredith Deliso, Dec. 9, 2024. Mangione, above, was located in Pennsylvania nearly a week after Brian Thompson's death.
Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus," Russell Payne, Dec, 9, 2024. Not so fast, what kind of "anti-capitalist" is praising Elon Musk and retweeting Peter Thiel?
On Monday afternoon, police announced that they had arrested a person of interest in the investigation into the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was shot outside his hotel in midtown Manhattan last week.
According to police, Luigi Mangione was arrested around 9:15 a.m. in Altoona, Pennsylvania with a ghost gun and suppressor that New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was “consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Recent Relevant Headlines
New York Times, Suspect in C.E.O.’s Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and PromiseABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder,
More On Presidential Pardons
Huff Post, Investigation: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets, S.V. Date and Arthur Delaney, Dec. 27, 2024. A HuffPost analysis of Jan. 6 cases finds that 83% of those given a year or more in prison committed acts of violence.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.
All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.
“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”
Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.
Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.
All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.
“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. ... Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.
In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.
Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”
But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.
Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.
Trump in that interview also repeated favorite right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 ― that “Antifa” was behind the violence and that a man named Ray Epps actually instigated the attack.
What’s more, Trump said his pardons would also extend to those who actually pleaded guilty to assaulting officers because, in his view, the justice system is “corrupt,” and the accused were coerced into taking pleas. “Because they had no choice,” he said.
Further, the “radical” and “crazy” qualifiers for those who might not get pardons conflicts with dozens of statements at his rallies over the past three years in which he has promised to pardon all the Jan. 6 defendants.
Relevant Recent Headlines
Emptywheel, Analysis: Judge Mark Scarsi’s Umbrage: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)
Middle East Wars, Reactions
New York Times, In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under Bashar al-Assad, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Laura Boushnak, Jan. 5, 2025. Residents of Syria’s capital are picnicking on a once-forbidden mountaintop and trading dollars and imported Nescafe. They say the city seems theirs again.
Across Damascus, as in much of the country, Syrians are reclaiming, and in some cases embracing anew, spaces and freedoms that had been off limits for years under the Assad regime. There were places ordinary Syrians were not allowed to go and things that they were not permitted to say when the Assad family was in power. The country, many said, increasingly felt as if it did not belong to them.
But with the newfound sense of freedom comes some trepidation about the future under a government formed by Islamist rebels, and whether with time it might institute new restrictions and limitations.
Many Syrians are watching each decision and announcement as a harbinger of how their new rulers may govern. Last week, Syria’s de facto new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, said it could take two to three years to draft a new Constitution and up to four years to hold elections, alarming Syrians who fear they may have traded one authoritarian leader for another.New York Times, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. Tread Cautiously With Syria’s New Leaderssing money from the drivers who contribute to it. The plan will help generate $15 billion for crucial upgrades to the region’s mass transit system.
New York Times, As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Only Worsened, Aryn Baker and Abu Bakr Bashir, Dec. 28, 2024. Israel says that it tries to limit the loss of civilian life. But the dire humanitarian situation has prompted condemnation from human rights organizations.
Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.
In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.
Israel says that its target is Hamas and that it does everything possible to limit the loss of civilian life. But the increasingly dire humanitarian situation has prompted a particularly scathing chorus of condemnation from the United Nations and international human rights organizations.
Here is a closer look at three parts of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Washington Post, U.S. amplifies strikes on Yemen’s Houthis as tensions with Israel flare, Missy Ryan, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The latest round of strikes occurred as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.
The Biden administration directed new airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Tuesday, as the United States and its ally Israel struggle to halt a campaign of regional assaults by the Iranian-backed militant group.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks struck targets in coastal Yemen and the capital, Sanaa, including a command node and facilities used for manufacturing and storing weapons. The operations, which also included strikes on Monday, destroyed radar positions and one-way aerial drones, Centcom said in a statement.
Video provided by Centcom showed aircraft taking off from the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier positioned in the Red Sea.
The strikes mark the latest salvo in a year-long U.S.-led campaign aimed at halting ongoing attacks by the Houthis, a militant group that functions as the de facto government in much of Yemen, on commercial ships and military vessels in nearby waters. The Houthis’ campaign has impaired global shipping and taken a major toll on U.S. allies reliant on related revenue.
New York Times, Investigation: Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians, Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay, Sheera Frenkel and Adam Sella (The reporters interviewed more than 100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
Fearful of another Oct. 7-style attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants. One of the deadliest attacks of the 21st century followed.
At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.
Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.
In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.
The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.
It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.
In previous conflicts with Hamas, many Israeli strikes were approved only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt. Sometimes, officers could risk killing up to five civilians and only rarely did the limit rise to 10 or above, though the actual death toll was sometimes much higher.
On Oct. 7, the military leadership changed its rules of engagement because it believed that Israel faced an existential threat, according to a senior military officer who answered questions about the order on the condition of anonymity.
New York Times, Here Are 8 Ways Israel Weakened Civilian Protections, Samuel Granados, Patrick Kingsley and Natan Odenheimer, Dec. 26, 2024. Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.The Israeli military said its air force had struck a vehicle overnight in Nuseirat with a “terrorist cell” from the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad inside. Reports about journalists being targeted were “fake claims,” Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media.
The media office of Gaza’s Hamas-run government said five journalists from Al Quds Today, a Palestinian television channel, were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcast vehicle. The channel has regularly featured Islamic Jihad leaders and promoted the group’s ideology.
The office said this brought the number of journalists killed in Gaza to 201 since the start of the war in October last year.
The vehicle, bearing the word “Press” in red letters, was hit near the gates of Al Awda Hospital, according to a post on social media from Quds News Network, another Palestinian news outlet. The Israeli military has previously said that it has never deliberately targeted journalists but that it considers members of “an organized armed group,” such as the military wing of Hamas, or those who participate in hostilities, as lawful targets.
Recent Relevant Headlines
Washington Post, Israeli government approves plan to expand settlements on occupied Golan
More Global News
Washington Post, Russia’s gas supply to Europe halted after Ukraine transit deal expires, Francesca Ebel and David L. Stern, Jan. 1, 2024. Ukraine, which had allowed Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve Europe while fighting Moscow’s invasion since 2022, refused to renew the deal.
Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.
New York Times, Elon Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 28, 2024. The world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Trump, ridiculed critics over his backing of the extremist party AfD, as Germany prepares for elections.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist.
This week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election, explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
“The traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”
Mr. Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new elections.
With four mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform, is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.
Mr. Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor in chief-designate on the same page.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeNew York Times, Taiwan Says China Has Deployed Largest Fleet of Ships in Decades
More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs
Lance Rosen Substack, The Trump Press Conference Gives Us A Clear Look Into The Abyss, Lance F Rosen, Jan. 7, 2025. I would say we have a category five emergency.
Taking Greenland by force is bad enough. It would be an attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. Technically the US would be in violation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which is what has held it together since its inception. "An attack on any member nation is an attack on all, therefore will be met with full retaliation," to paraphrase. Which of course will not under sny circumstances happen. At that precise moment, NATO is dead, the treaties notwithstanding.
This is how the forty-year long Russian asset intends to end it. He knows he will never get the NATO treaty repealed by the Senate, so this is his "work around."
At that point Ukraine is gone, and Putin will be free to establish hegemony in Europe. The US would retreat into "Fortress America," operating to conquer and colonize our hemisphere, surving through using our military to seize assets and raw materials. That is what explains his planned Panama gambit.
That is the dystopian future which the sabotage by the Democratic leadership is bringing us into, if we don't take the next 100 days to put it to a stop.
I keep telling everyone, the most important task, the key flank is derailing these nominations.
None of you that I know of is taking that up, or acting with an ounce of urgency.
What else should I say? Is anyone on board with what I am saying? We are running out of time. We have to jolt the Dem leadership into emergency actions now.
New York Times, U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese Drones, Citing National Security Concerns, Ana Swanson, Jan. 3, 2025 (print ed.). The Commerce Department requested that companies comment on the implications of the rule by March. The final decision will fall to the Trump administration.
The Biden administration said on Thursday that it was considering a new rule that could restrict or ban Chinese drones in the United States out of national security concerns.
In a notice, the Commerce Department said the involvement of foreign adversaries — notably China and Russia — in the design, development, manufacture and supply of drones could pose “undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
The notice requested private companies to comment on the scope and implications of the rule by March 4. The decision of what restrictions to impose, if any, on Chinese and Russian drones will fall to the Trump administration.
China and Russia have shown a willingness to compromise U.S. infrastructure and security through cyberespionage, the Commerce Department said, adding that the governments could leverage their laws and political situations to “co-opt private entities for national interests.”
Beyond the use of drones by hobbyists, the devices are employed in a variety of U.S. industries. They help farmers monitor crops and spray for pests, inspect pipelines for the chemical industry, survey bridges and construction sites, and aid firefighters and other emergency responders.
But drones have evolved over the past decade to include sophisticated cameras, receivers and artificial intelligence abilities, fueling concerns that they could be turned into a useful tool for an adversarial government.
Relevant Recent Headlines
New York Times, Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Canada and Mexico, Potentially Crippling TradeThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy to Win, Andrew Egger
Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies
The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Weiner went to prison but Gaetz won’t? Thom Hartmann, Dec. 28, 2024. Remember when Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, right, served 18 months in prison for texting a dick pic to an underage girl he never met or touched or paid or anything else?
Now comes Matt Gaetz and, according to a new report from the House Ethics Committee, the Republican Congressman actually paid an underage girl for sex that he then had with her in such a public part of a party house that multiple people witnessed it.
Will Gaetz similarly go to prison? Don’t count on it; Republicans are generally immune from prosecution for such crimes, particularly when their fathers are major and morbidly rich Republican movers-and-shakers and Trump is trying to pack his administration with accused rapists and predators…
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: WHOA! DOJ Drops BOMBSHELL FILING in Trump Case, Michael Popok, Dec. 31, 2024. Dec 31, 2024 Special Counsel Jack Smith and President Biden just gave Trump a New Year’s surprise, handing off the Mar a Lago appeal to the main Miami federal prosecutor, rather than dismiss it, in hopes that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Judge Cannon and her ruling that the Special Counsel is unconstitutional before the inauguration. reports.
New York Times, Guest Essay: What Judges Can Do for the Rule of Law Under Trump, Nancy Gertner, right,and Joel Cohen (Ms. Gertner is a retired federal judge. Mr. Cohen is a former federal prosecutor), Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).
President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.
This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.
If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.
Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Suppose a federal district judge is asked to sign off on an eavesdropping warrant under Title III of the federal criminal law. He or she will receive one-sided (“ex parte”) submissions from prosecutors applying for search warrants (for a physical search or a wiretap), an application that the target’s attorney will not know about nor have the ability to contest.
In previous administrations, federal trial judges have had generally well-founded confidence that the Justice Department and the post-Hoover F.B.I., under presidents from either party, have not been employed to attack political enemies. Most district judges — especially those who have served as federal prosecutors, as most have — believe that the prosecutors appearing before them act with integrity, that their offices are not being manipulated to undermine those who challenged the current administration or its leader.
A judge could assume that the warrant has gone through layers of approval within the Justice Department, even reaching the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, an extremely high ranking official in the department. That judge could also be reasonably confident that very little, if anything, would be amiss after passing through the layers of the approval process, including senior department officials.
But with the astonishing comments from the president-elect and his appointments, it is reasonable to ask if judges can still assume that level of confidence in the review process. The previous assumption that prosecutions would be undertaken only against individuals suspected of committing crimes may be wrong.Editors’ PicksLin-Manuel Miranda on ‘Mufasa’ and the Secret to a Disney HitThe Trinidadian Christmas Staple Worth the Yearlong WaitHow ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (and Its Writer) Went Down in History
Now, when judges are asked to review warrant applications, or any other ex parte submissions from the government, they should do so through a different lens, much more scrupulously than ever before.
Or consider a motion to dismiss an indictment based on selective prosecution. In the usual case, prosecutors are given broad discretion, so long as there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the prosecution does not run afoul of constitutional protections.
A selective prosecution motion alleges that criminal charges were brought for reasons forbidden by the Constitution. The defendant must prove that he was singled out for prosecution when those similarly situated were not and that the prosecution was based on an impermissible reason, such as race, religion or political affiliation.
Since courts presume that the government undertakes a prosecution in good faith, the defendant’s burden of proof is typically quite heavy. The motion rarely succeeds — for example, Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss his gun case on selective prosecution grounds failed.
But what if, in Mr. Trump’s second term, the object of the prosecution is on Mr. Patel’s list, or is expressly targeted in a Trump speech? Judges should obviously not assume that prosecutors in the Trump administration are always acting in bad faith. But they should consider accusations of selective prosecution differently than they have in the past.
If a defendant in a political case raises legitimate concerns about the integrity of a case in Mr. Trump’s second term, federal judges can’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore the attorney general’s clear intentions or those of the proposed F.B.I. director.
When these individuals announce that political affiliation will influence their prosecution decisions, judges should believe them — and act accordingly.
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, teaches law, neuroscience and sentencing at Harvard Law School and is the author of “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate” and the forthcoming “Incomplete Sentences.” Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior counsel at Petrillo Klein & Boxer and the author of “Blindfolds Off: Judges on How They Decide.”
Politico Magazine, Trumpian Revenge, Campus Revolts and the Collapse of a Presidency: 24 Stories That Explain a Chaotic Year, Staff Report, Dec. 25, 2024. It has been a year of unprecedented headlines — even for an election year.
The conviction of Donald Trump. An assassination attempt just weeks later. An abrupt end to Joe Biden’s candidacy, followed by the rise and fall of Kamala Harris. It was a historically chaotic and consequential year on the campaign trail, and beyond. America saw intense protests on campus colleges over the Israel-Hamas war, a rising gender divide among the youth and the kind of widening polarization that can even fracture families.
It might have been too many events to fully process in one year, so POLITICO Magazine has you covered. Check out these 24 stories — many of them our top reads of the year — that will help you understand what just happened and what’s to come under Trump 2.0.
New York Times, Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board, Charlie Savage, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). As chair of the House Intelligence Committee (shown above), he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social media company.
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congresswho had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy.
The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.
In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Nunes — who is currently the chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform — for his counterinvestigation into the Trump-Russia inquiry in 2017-18, when Mr. Nunes led the House Intelligence Committee as a Republican congressman from California.
“While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
New York Times, Trump Names Richard Grenell for ‘Special Missions’ Role, Elizabeth Williamson, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). A combative loyalist and the president-elect’s former ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grenell had hoped to be secretary of state.
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Richard Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as his “envoy for special missions,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
A loyalist known for unbridled social media attacks on Mr. Trump’s perceived critics and many others, Mr. Grenell led a shambolic effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Nevada after Mr. Trump’s loss, and he has lobbied assiduously for a diplomatic job in the new administration.
He got his start in government before Mr. Trump’s rise, as a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under multiple presidents. But his online toxicity, foreign business contacts and tendency toward biting personal attacks on political opponents and the media turned off many centrist conservatives, helping propel him toward Mr. Trump, a man he denounced in 2016 as “dangerous.”
“Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.
Mr. Grenell did not immediately reply to a texted question about his priorities for the role, which does not currently exist. Mr. Trump outlined it as: “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”
The role is a far cry from secretary of state, the job Mr. Grenell coveted, but to which Mr. Trump plans to appoint Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida. Being named for a lower-profile White House envoy job could help Mr. Grenell avoid persistent questions about his paid work for foreign clients, including luxury hotel development projects he has pursued in the Balkans with Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Grenell was ambassador to Germany. His abrasiveness and partisanship alarmed diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly after he told Breitbart London that he planned to “empower” German conservatives opposing “the failed policies of the left.”
In 2020, Mr. Trump named Mr. Grenell to temporarily replace the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, whom Mr. Trump had fired.
New York Times, An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones, Natasha Singer (Natasha Singer reported from Revere, Mass., and reviewed more than 400 student fight videos from schools in 15 states), Dec. 15, 2024. Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools.
Ricardo Martinez, an 11th grader, was in his high school lunchroom in April when a mass brawl erupted.
He watched, horrified, as a dozen teenage boys rampaged through the cafeteria, pummeling and kicking one another, overturning tables and chairs. Other students jeered and jostled to film the fight on their phones.
“It was like a stampede of videos,” said Mr. Martinez, now 18 and a senior. “Everyone was trying to get the best angle.”
But the pandemonium at Revere High School in Revere, Mass., was just beginning.
Within minutes, students in other parts of the building began receiving text messages about the lunchroom brawl. Suddenly, teachers said, dozens of riled-up teenagers started racing down hallways and careening down stairways with their phones to get to the fight.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Special counsel Jack Smith moves to dismiss Trump’s D.C. prosecution, Perry Stein and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov. 26, 2024 (print ed.). The special counsel filed a motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s election-obstruction case without prejudice, which means the case could be revived in the future.
Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Monday to dismiss the federal election interference charges against President-elect Donald Trump, putting an end to a lengthy investigation that never made it to trial.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Smith’s motion seeks to dismiss the case without prejudice, acknowledging that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. If she does that, it leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could again bring charges once Trump leaves office after his second White House term.
But legal experts said it’s possible that once Trump is in office, he could try to do something that has never been tested before: pardon himself to foreclose the possibility of legal jeopardy in the future.
Trump faces four counts related to conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results. Smith’s filing acknowledges that the Justice Department has longed believed a sitting president cannot stand trial, and says prosecutors conferred with Trump’s attorneys and that they did not oppose the request to dismiss the case.
Russia, Russian War Against Ukraine
Alexander Dugin, a far-right writer and ideologue known as “Putin’s brain,” is seen in 2016 in his studio in Moscow (Photo by Francesca Ebel of the Associated Press).
Washington Post, U.S. imposes Russia, Iran sanctions over attempted election interference, Jeff Stein, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The Treasury Department accused a Russian entity of having “manipulated a video” about a vice-presidential candidate.
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday on Iranian and Russian entities accused of trying to interfere with the U.S. 2024 elections, including by allegedly using artificial intelligence to disseminate false information.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
In its statement, Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on both a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an affiliate of Russia’s military intelligence agency over their efforts to “stoke sociopolitical tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 election.”
Treasury’s statement also said the Russian entity used AI tools to “quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network” of fake news websites and produced “baseless accusations” about a 2024 vice-presidential candidate, whom Treasury declined to identify.
Although the sanctions target relatively minor entities and are unlikely to have major economic effects, they reflect the deteriorating relationship between the United States and two of its chief geopolitical adversaries. President Joe Biden is weighing much more far-reaching sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, while President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to significantly increase economic pressure on Tehran.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Bradley Smith, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”
Sanctions were imposed on the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), a Moscow-based group founded by Aleksandr Dugin, whom Treasury had already sanctioned in 2015. Treasury accused the center of working closely with the Russian military intelligence service that “oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare” against the West. Dugin's daughter, Darya Dugina, shown in an image circulated on X by @AlexKokcharov, was another ultra nationalist killed in car bomb attack that some suspect was aimed at her father.
In its statement, Treasury said the intelligence service both directed and provided financial support to the center to influence the 2024 presidential election. With that support, Treasury said, the center maintained a network of “at least 100 websites” for its “disinformation operations,” through which it pushed false information.
“CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the Treasury statement said.
The Russian center also “manipulated a video” to “produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice-presidential candidate,” Treasury said. Treasury did not identify the video, but The Washington Post and other news organizations reported in October that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Moscow was behind a faked video and other material smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations. Separately, Microsoft researchers said this fall that Russian entities had circulated false videos on social media in which an actor accused Vice President Kamala Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run.
The sanctions also target the Cognitive Design Production Center, a subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, over its “influence operations,” according to the Treasury Department. The Justice Department previously charged three men with an alleged hack-and-leak attack against Trump’s presidential campaign.
Washington Post, Putin says he saved Russia, but a year of challenges suggests Moscow’s position is precarious, Mary Ilyushina, Jan. 1, 2024 (print ed.). Marking 25 years in office, Vladimir Putin says he has remade Russia as a sovereign power and will prevail in Ukraine, but economic and strategic setbacks complicate the picture.
When Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, resigned on New Year’s Eve in 1999, he publicly implored Vladimir Putin, his handpicked but little-known successor, to “take care of Russia.”A quarter-century later, Putin insists he has done just that — and more.
As he wrapped up his marathon year-end news conference on Dec. 19, Putin boasted that he had thwarted efforts by the United States and its Western allies to subjugate Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.
“I have not just taken care of it, but I believe we have stepped back from the edge of the abyss,” he declared, in response to a question about Yeltsin’s remark.
“I have done everything so that Russia can be an independent and sovereign state that is capable of making decisions in its interests,” Putin said, “rather than in the interests of the countries that were dragging it toward them, patting it on the back, only to use it for their own purposes.”
But as 2024 draws to a close, Russia is in a far more precarious place than Putin’s rhetoric and bravado suggest. His forces are making slow but steady advances in Ukraine, but estimates by some NATO countries suggest hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, which has dragged on for nearly three years.
Washington Post, U.S. Treasury says it was hacked by China-backed intruder, Pranshu Verma and Ellen Nakashima, Dec. 31, 2024 (print ed.). The department told lawmakers that the breach gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday that it was hacked by a Chinese state-sponsored actor who gained access to government workstations and unclassified documents, according to a letter reviewed by The Washington Post.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The department was notified Dec. 8 by a third-party software provider, BeyondTrust, that a hacker had gained access to a security key, which allowed the intruder to override certain security protocols and access some Treasury Department office workstations and unclassified documents stored on them, according to the letter notifying the Senate Banking Committee leadership of the breach.
The Treasury Department labeled the breach a “major incident,” in line with department policy that, according to the letter, categorizes nation-state intrusions as “major.” Once Treasury was alerted to the issue, it contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and it has taken the BeyondTrust service offline, according to a Treasury spokesperson. There is no evidence the hacker still has access to Treasury systems, the spokesperson said.
New York Times, Putin Apologizes for Kazakhstan Crash but Stops Short of Taking Responsibility, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Dec. 28, 2024.President Vladimir Putin of Russia called his Azerbaijani counterpart, the Kremlin said, to apologize for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday apologized for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane this past week, breaking the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the accident that killed 38 people. He did not explicitly acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the crash.
Mr. Putin “offered his apologies” for the crash in a phone call to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the Kremlin said in a statement. Mr. Putin initiated the phone call, according to the statement, and told Mr. Aliyev “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace.”
Mr. Putin said that as the plane approached its scheduled destination of Grozny, in southern Russia, Russian air defenses had begun to repulse an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Grozny airport and others nearby, according to the Kremlin.
Aviation experts and U.S. officials believe a Russian air-defense missile may have mistakenly downed the passenger jet. The Kremlin statement stopped short of attributing the crash to a Russian missile, but in its own statement acknowledging the apology, Azerbaijan’s presidential office suggested that was indeed the cause.
New York Times, Plane Crash Investigators Focus on Russian Air Defenses as Possible Cause, Ivan Nechepurenko, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.).Russian aviation authorities said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had hit a flock of birds. But some experts cast doubt on that account, pointing to footage showing apparent holes in the fuselage.Listen to this article · 5:51 min Learn more
As authorities in several countries tried to determine what caused the deadly crash of a passenger airplane in Kazakhstan, investigators and experts on Thursday were focusing on the possibility that a Russian air defense system had struck the plane.
Aviation experts cast doubt on a Russian agency’s contention that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet had hit a flock of birds, saying images of the crash site show holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared unlikely to have been caused by them.
The jet had been flying on Wednesday morning from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, at a time when drone strikes were taking place around Grozny and Russian air defense systems were responding, according to residents and local news media reports.
Two Azerbaijanis briefed on a government inquiry said that Azerbaijani officials now believe that a Russian Pantsir-S defense system damaged the plane. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Caliber, a news outlet in Azerbaijan that is close to the government, also reported that the country’s investigators believe a Russian Pantsir system was responsible.-
New York Times, Analysis: Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Engaged in Sabotage? Michael Schwirtz, Dec. 28, 2024. Russia has assembled a fleet of hundreds of vessels to covertly ship its oil. The idea of using some to cause havoc may be proving irresistible to the Kremlin.
Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.
But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.
This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.
If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.
New York Times, Finland Says Vessel Suspected of Cutting Cable May Be Part of Russia’s ‘Shadow Fleet,’ Johanna Lemola and Lynsey Chutel, Dec. 27, 2024 (print ed.). Finland seized an oil tanker after the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure.
The Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker on Thursday on the suspicion that it was involved in cutting vital undersea cables and said the ship might have been part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” aimed at evading Western sanctions.
In a statement, the police in Finland said the authorities had boarded the Eagle S tanker in Finnish waters. The ship, which is registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, had been sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt, when it was detained.The police said they were investigating whether the vessel was involved in the latest suspected act of sabotage on undersea infrastructure: the cutting on Wednesday of the Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish authorities said Thursday that four other cables carrying data also had been damaged. The police called the latest cable cuts “aggravated vandalism.”
The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington Post, In major shift, Zelensky appears open to negotiating an end to the war, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ellen Francis, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). A new U.S. president and battlefield realities appear to be pushing Ukraine’s leader, who had long insisted on fighting for every inch of occupied land, to the table.
As Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russia’s army on the battlefield and President-elect Donald Trump looks to broker a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelensky has in recent weeks signaled a greater willingness for negotiations to end the war — a major shift for the Ukrainian leader, who had long vowed to fight for every last inch of his country’s land.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
Zelensky’s messaging has been careful; he has not explicitly said Kyiv would agree to concessions — territorial or otherwise — even while Russia occupies more than 20 percent of Ukraine and would probably retain control of that land after any ceasefire. But after previously stating that negotiations could begin only once Moscow withdrew all its troops, Zelensky is now emphasizing the need for long-term security rather than the immediate return of territory.
Zelensky’s change in rhetoric — something Ukrainian and Western officials have noticed — can probably be attributed to a worsening situation on the front line and an incoming U.S. administration that has put future security assistance for Kyiv in doubt. Ukrainian officials throughout the first year of the war stressed the importance of reclaiming all of Ukraine’s land, including Crimea and other areas Russia has effectively ruled since 2014, as a condition for any deal.
In recent meetings with Trump and European leaders, however, Zelensky has focused more on what he has referred to as “lasting peace” for Ukraine. The top priority is securing an invite to the NATO military alliance and other security guarantees, such as the possible presence of Western peacekeepers, to prevent future Russian attacks.
Officials and analysts said Zelensky’s tone shift is probably an attempt to be more in line with Trump’s emphasis on halting the conflict. But the Ukrainian leader is also trying to ensure his country doesn’t come out empty-handed.
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Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights
Politico, Driver Rams Christmas Market in Germany, Killing at Least 2 in Suspected Attack, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dec. 20, 2024. Video showed a car plowing into a large crowd in the city of Magdeburg. The driver, identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who worked as a doctor, was arrested
A driver plowed a vehicle into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing an adult and a small child and injuring dozens of other people in what officials indicated was a targeted attack.
The driver was arrested, the authorities said. He was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who first came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor in a small town 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.
Saudi Arabia condemned the attack in a statement by its Foreign Ministry that did not mention the suspect. “The Kingdom expresses its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims,” the statement said.
More than 65 people were injured, 14 of them severely, said Michael Reif, the spokesman for Magdeburg. The authorities say they believe it was a deliberate attack. They are working to determine a motive, said Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, where Magdeburg is the capital.your times accessHave a moment? Play these games.Connections
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“Every human life lost in this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” a visibly shaken Mr. Haseloff told reporters on Friday night.200 mi.300 km.© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Nancy Faeser, who as Germany’s interior minister is responsible for public safety, said in a statement: “The shocking act in Magdeburg a few days before Christmas hits us in the heart. We continue to fear for the lives of the seriously injured and mourn the people who were torn from life by this terrible act.”
Before leaving his post in November, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, warned that the country’s threat level was higher because of the war in Middle East.
“The danger is real and more acute than it has been in a long time,” he said at the time.
More than 1,000 temporary Christmas markets pop up every year in Germany, and they have been the target of terrorists in the past. Last month, the police in Germany arrested two teenagers suspected of exchanging plans about attacking a Christmas market, but those alleged plans appear to have nothing to do with the attack on Friday.Editors’ PicksMy Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?A Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?Skiing’s Budget Secret: It Can Be Cheaper in Europe
In 2016, an extremist rammed a truck into a crowd in Berlin, killing 13. Since then, the police have secured many Christmas markets with temporary barriers.
It remains unclear how the driver in Magdeburg was able to circumvent the barriers that were protecting the market. The car drove some 1,200 feet before it stopped, officials said.
The authorities said the driver had rented a car before plowing it into the market on the last Friday before Christmas, when it was especially crowded with visitors. Many police officers were at the site. The area around the market was closed after the episode, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack in Germany inspired additional security measures around Christmas markets thousands of miles away, in New York City.
The New York Police Department said in a statement on Friday: “The N.Y.P.D. has been closely monitoring recent events in Germany and coordinating with federal and international partners. While we have not identified any specific/credible threats to New York City at this time, resources have been deployed to various Christmas markets and other locations throughout the city out of an abundance of caution.”
The city of Magdeburg, population 240,000, used to be part of Communist East Germany. The year’s Christmas market is in the old market square, just in front of City Hall.
Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car plowing into a large crowd at the Christmas market. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.
“The reports from Magdeburg are alarming,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in social media post. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
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New York Times, Syrian Rebels Breach City of Aleppo, in Biggest Advance in Years
Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health
NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey attends a news conference outside New York City Police Department 40th Precinct, July 17, 2023, in New York. (AP File photo by Jeenah Moon).
Associated Press, Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations, Philip Marcelou, Dec. 22, 2024. The highest-ranking uniformed officer in the New York Police Department has resigned amid allegations he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey ’s resignation Friday night, effective immediately, according to a department statement Saturday.
Chief of Patrol John Chell will take over as interim chief of department, and Philip Rivera will assume Chell’s duties as the head of the patrol division, the NYPD said.
Late Saturday, Tisch replaced the head of the internal affairs bureau, which investigates alleged police misconduct, saying in a statement that the unit “must always be dedicated to preserving integrity and rooting out corruption in all its forms.” She appointed Edward Thompson as interim chief after Miguel Iglesias was relieved of his command.
The NYPD declined to comment on the allegations against Maddrey other than to say it “takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously and will thoroughly investigate this matter.”
A lawyer for his accuser, Lt. Quathisha Epps, said the move was overdue.
Recent Relevant Headlines
U.S. Immigration
New York Times, Trump Vowed Mass Deportations. Mexico and Central America Brace for Impact, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Jan. 7, 2025. Donald J. Trump has said that Mexico is allowing an “invasion” of migrants into the United States. But the current situation on the ground tells a different story: Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped sharply last year.
Crossings into the United States from Mexico dropped sharply last year. But countries south of the U.S. border are waiting nervously to see if President-elect Donald J. Trump orders mass deportations.
The possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers.
“We see dark times coming for the migrant community,” said Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “Anyone who falls prey to the Trump administration is now going to be devoured, chewed up and spat out.”
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U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Stock Market On Pace For Best Two Year Period This Century, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 31, 2024. The Biden Administration's economic policy is working.
The United States stock market is expected to have its best two year stretch this entire century, achieving a feat that has only happened a few times in history. According to latest numbers, the S&P 500 is set to gain over 20% this year.
This comes one year after the index rose 24%. Should these results hold, which they will for all intents and purposes, it would be the best performance for the index since 1997 and 1998.
According to statistics over the past two centuries, this type of performance by the index has only occurred three other times, in 1927 and 1928, in 1935 and 1936, and again in 1954 and 1955. This would mean that the current pace for the market is one that has been achieved only four other times in our nation's history.
In total, the S&P 500 is now up over 60% of the past two years, marking significant gains from 2022 which saw the index fall about 20%. Today's news is a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration's economic policy which has successfully ushered the United States out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is now almost certain that the economy will achieve the vaunted soft landing, ensuring that the United States stays out of a recession following extremely high inflation. It also means that the incoming Trump Administration will now be inheriting a booming, record breaking economy.
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New York Times, Opinion: Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America, Paul Krugman
Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space
Washington Post, Pacific Palisades fire erupts, spurring evacuations in California amid strong winds, Staff Report, Jan. 7, 2025. "‘Let’s get out of here’: Palisades residents flee fire.
An ominous fire broke out Tuesday near the Pacific Palisades — a coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles — and quickly exploded. The fire has grown to at least 2,921 acres, according to Cal Fire. Evacuation orders were issued as officials ordered residents in notoriously winding hillside neighborhoods to leave immediately.
Smoke plumes spread rapidly, moving toward structures and homes. A large swath of residences in Topanga Canyon, a woodsy, tucked-away community with one winding road in and out, are under evacuation warnings. The fire sparked amid a “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm event that is sweeping through a region that has not seen significant rain since spring. The Palisades Fire has now grown to at least 2,921 acres and is zero percent contained, according to a 6:18 p.m. update from Cal Fire. State fire officials are warning of extreme fire behavior — including short and long-range spotting — and say that wind gusts of up to 60 mph are expected to continue through Thursday. The cause is still under investigation.
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Media, High Tech, Culture, Education
New York Times, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship C.E.O., Joins Meta’s Board, Kate Conger, Jan. 7, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. White, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, further strengthens the social media giant’s connections with the incoming administration.
Mark Zuckerberg, right, said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.
Meta is adding Mr. White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald J. Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.CAGE-MATCH POLITICSHow Donald Trump helped transform U.F.C. into a cultural powerhouse.
In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.Mr. Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Mr. Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, the chief executive of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have massive opportunities ahead in A.I., wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
Steady, Political Opinion: Take This Billionaire, Please, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Dan Rather and Team Steady, Jan. 6, 2025. Why is Jeff Bezos (shown above in a photo via Getty Imagaes) hurting, not helping, journalism?
When a journalistic institution is the one making headlines, it’s rarely good news. Such is the case for a revered American newspaper, The Washington Post. A mothership of American journalism, whose reporters helped topple an American president and inspired generations of young reporters, is listing and taking on water.
As Donald Trump and his army of “alternate” truth-tellers get ready to take the reins of government again, the country desperately needs the best and brightest journalists watching and reporting on their every move. And yet we wake to news that the Post is expected to lay off dozens more staffers the very month Trump returns to power.
The 147-year-old newspaper is apparently bleeding money, a problem of its own making. When billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos pulled the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, a reported 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. That accounts for 10% of the paper’s online audience.
“I just cancelled my Washington Post subscription. The web site asked why, and the closest option was ‘concern with the content.’ There was no option about surrendering to fascism, but that’s the real reason,” a former subscriber posted on X.
For Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Post’s financial losses are peanuts considering his $200 billion plus net worth. But his love of the paper and his passion for quality journalism seem to be shrinking.
Back in 2013, when Bezos bought the Post from the family of venerated publisher Katharine Graham, he said he wanted to transform it from a regional newspaper to a global one. He provided money — big money — to expand the newsroom and encouraged reporters to extend their reach by embracing the “gifts of the internet.”
Over the ensuing decade, his interest in the paper ebbed and flowed, but he mostly stayed out of the editorial decision-making. Then he pulled the Harris endorsement causing an exodus of top editors, opinion writers, and reporters.
But Bezos wasn’t done burnishing his rep with the former president. After the election, he pledged $1 million to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to stream it live on Amazon Prime (an additional $1 million in-kind contribution). Just before Christmas, he was seen at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring with fellow super-rich guy Elon Musk. And he has green-lit a documentary about Melania Trump to air on Prime. I’m guessing it will be what’s known in the trade as a “sweetheart profile.”
While it isn’t great that the owner of one of the most important papers in the country is cozying up to an incoming president who says he will be a dictator on “day one,” Bezos’s actions aren’t surprising. He didn’t become a billionaire by being selfless.
But on Friday, things took another turn at the Post. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes (shown above) quit in protest after a cartoon of hers (shown in draft form) was killed.
In a piece she published on Substack, Telnaes explained that “there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.”
Daily Mail, Disturbing new details show how CIA drugged and tortured Americans in secret mind control program MKUltra, Stacy Liberatore, Jan. 6, 2025. Newly declassified bombshell records of an infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured more than 60 years ago.
The collection of more than 1,200 pages detail how the CIA used induced sleep, electroshocks and 'psychic driving' on drugged subjects who were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
The subjects included criminals, mental patients and drug addicts, but also Army soldiers and average citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
A total of 144 projects were conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages detail how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and 'psychic driving,' under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and 'subjects in normal life settings' were 'unwittingly' given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
In a newly unsealed document from 1956, researchers were developing 'an anti-interrogation drug' by testing 'materials capable of producing alterations in the human central nervous system which are reflected as alterations in human behavior.'
A memo about a classified meeting showed that the CIA contemplated the possibility of testing on foreign nationals,' but decided that 'unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued' instead.Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary. He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra
Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, a former organized crime boss shown in 1953 mug shorts, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.
He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.
'Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,' Bulger penned.
'We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.'
The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: 'The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.
'These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.'
A total of 20 documents with more than 1,200 pages were declassified on December 23, published by the NSA and ProQuest.
'Despite the Agency's efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA's decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and reprogram the human mind,' shared NSA.
Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to be used against the Soviets during the Cold War.The CIA was testing drugs and other techniques on American citizens during the 1950s and 60s to develops new interrogation processes such as mind control. Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles (pictured) ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs
'We in the West, are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,' he said.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 details how the CIA's Technical Services Section (TSS) requested funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the agency's 'biological and chemical warfare program.'
Using a philanthropic organization as a 'cut-out,' the CIA partially funded 'a new research wing' of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and used part of it to conduct 'Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.'
MKULTRA, the memo states, provided research and development funding 'for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare' but did not specifically authorize funds to establish cover for these programs.The program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, performed 144 projects aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations,weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture
In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing.'
The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down.'
A 'knockout pill' was also to be developed, which would be used in 'surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.'
Another declassified document dated June 7, 1956, discusses an MKUltra subproject to be led by Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University who was known to conduct experiments on prisoners.
Pfeiffer was approved to develop 'an anti-interrogation drug' and 'tests in human volunteers.'
The objectives included administering 'large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers.'In 1955, the secret program listed 17 'materials and methods' that the division was working on, including substances that 'promote illogical thinking, would help individuals to endure 'privation, torture and coercion during interrogation' and attempts at 'brain-washing'The list also featured substances that would 'produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure' or that 'produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down'
The document does not specify the amount given, but taking large doses of the drug can induce terrifying hallucinations.
Another point was 'to evaluate the threshold dose levels in humans of a particular natural product to be supplied by [deleted].'
The supplier's name was redacted from the report, but pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed a process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954.
'[The] CIA had [LSD] in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in 'tonnage quantities' and had agreed to become the agency's supplier,' according to NSA.
The documents also show that the CIA established safehouses in 1956, which were run by narcotics agent George White 'for conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects.'
Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist and spymaster who headed the CIA in the 50s and 60s, admitted in the report that activities were 'highly unorthodox nature.'
Because of that 'it [was] 'impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent,' he wrote.
One of the last documents of the program, published in 1963, revealed researchers involved with MKUltra used radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment [sic] substances, and paramilitary devices and materials' during the secret initiative.
It focused on drug experiments conducted at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, but also 'unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.'
'It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKUltra substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations,' it reads.
As of 1960, however, the CIA was unable to develop a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill.
Also during that time, the report noted that 25 of the 144 projects 'remained in existence at present' - 1960.
While most of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church opened an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
'The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends,' Frank's 1977 report stated.
'Crises make it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.'
That report found that there were at least six subprojects that involved testing on unwitting subjects and other projects researcher 'drugs, toxins and biologicals in human tissue.'
The then-director of the CIA, Adam Stansfield Turner spoke during the investigation, saying the MKUltra's activities were more than 12 years old following the investigation.
'They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,' he added.
The investigation brought MKUltra to light, sparking public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA's unethical practices.
That led to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
Status, Paper Cuts: The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned, Oliver Darcy, Jan. 5, 2025. Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper's business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.
The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.
A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.
Poynter Center, Opinion: The new year looks the same as last year at The Washington Post, Tom Jones, Jan. 6, 2025. The Post again faces uncomfortable controversy, this time with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist quitting in protest.
Good morning, and Happy New Year. The Poynter Report is back after a holiday break. We jump right back in where we left off. That’s to say it would appear that 2025 is starting the same way 2024 ended for The Washington Post — with uncomfortable controversy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted a message on Substack that she was quitting the Post because the publication refused to publish her cartoon that showed several billionaire tech and media chief executives genuflecting at a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. One of those executives clearly was Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
Telnaes wrote, “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
Telnaes added, “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press.”
She also wrote, “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’.”
“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Post’s slogan.
In a statement to NPR media writer David Folkenflik, Post editorial page editor David Shipley said he disagreed with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.” Shipley said, “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
While that all might be true, why not just run the cartoon anyway, especially because much of the public believes there is a lot of truth in Telnaes’ cartoon? Not publishing it only reinforces that narrative.
After all, Bezos nixed a Post editorial that would endorse Kamala Harris for president, publicly congratulated Trump following his victory and had dinner with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago after the election. Killing the cartoon does come off as fishy, seeing as how news organizations, including the Post, routinely run several opinion pieces about the same topic.
The cartoon depicted Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse.
The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.”
Telnaes has been with the Post since 2008. She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001.
In a statement, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists called the Post’s decision to kill the cartoon “craven censorship” and “political cowardice.” They added, “The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper.”
The recent past has not been good at The Washington Post. Newsroom leadership has been uncertain since Sally Buzbee stepped down last June. The Post still hasn’t come up with a permanent plan for how its leadership structure will work, and is still reeling from the nixed editorial mess that resulted in staff resignations, internal criticism from some of its most respected journalists and digital subscription cancellations that Folkenflik reported totaled 300,000.More bad news at the Post
Here’s a little more bad news for the Post. They are losing three respected political reporters.
Two high-profile reporters announced they would leave the Post to join The Atlantic: Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent, and Michael Scherer, a national political reporter. And The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin reports that The Atlantic might hire more Post reporters.
Parker is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who joined the Post in 2017. Before that, she spent 11 years at The New York Times. Scherer also has been at the Post since 2017.
The Post’s loss is very much The Atlantic’s gain.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, told Mullin, “We believe in accountability journalism. We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”
Mullin added, “The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.”
Meanwhile, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Josh Dawsey is leaving the Post for The Wall Street Journal. Byers wrote that Dawsey would be a political investigations reporter and join a new Wall Street Journal D.C. reporting team that includes former Politico reporters Meridith McGraw, Olivia Beavers and Gavin Bade.
Dawsey is currently on leave from the Post to work on a book about the 2024 election. Media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his Status newsletter that Dawsey will start at the Journal in February.
Dawsey previously worked at the Journal and Politico before joining the Post in 2017. Another big loss for the Post.And even worse news at the Post …
Media reporter Oliver Darcy reported late Sunday night, “Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Darcy added, “The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.”One more …
This is sort of Post-related. Well, it involves Amazon and it has raised some eyebrows.
Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman reported, “Amazon Prime has exclusively licensed a documentary film for global theatrical and streaming release that will give viewers an ‘unprecedented behind-the-scenes look’ at First Lady Melania Trump’s life, Fox News Digital has learned. Fox News Digital has learned that the project is expected to be released globally in theaters and for streaming use in the second half of 2025. Filming for the upcoming documentary began in December 2024. The documentary will be executive produced by First Lady Melania Trump and Fernando Sulichin of New Element Media, with Brett Ratner of RatPac Entertainment serving as director.”
The Associated Press’ Lindsey Bahr writes, “The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1 million to the President-elect’s inauguration fund, and said that it would also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.”
Perhaps the most controversial part of this isn’t that Amazon is teaming up with Melania Trump, but that the director will be Brett Ratner. As The Hollywood Reporters’ Alex Weprin and Aaron Couch note, “Ratner has been in Hollywood exile since 2017, when six women accused him of sexual misconduct as part of a Los Angeles Times report. He was dropped by his agency and has not made a film since, though in recent months, he attempted to stir up interest in a fourth Rush Hour movie as a comeback vehicle, multiple sources told The Hollywood Reporter in August. Ratner denied accusations of misconduct in 2017, and no criminal charges were brought.”A troubling anniversary
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Today is Jan. 6 — the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and attacked law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
While it’s a chapter in U.S. history that many would prefer to forget, it was a dark day that should never be forgotten, especially with Trump set to become president again in just two weeks.
BBC News, Elon Musk changes his name to Kekius Maximus on X, Tom Bayly and Patrick Jackson, Jan. 1, 2025. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus."
The tech mogul - and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump - offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog - a meme that has been used by far-right groups.
The move has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin - a digital currency inspired by internet memes - that shares the same name skyrocketing.
In the past, Mr Musk has influenced crypto prices with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he had any involvement in this particular memecoin.Elon Musk A picture of Elon Musk's X profile with a picture of Kekius MaximusElon Musk
"Kekius" appears to be a Latinisation of "kek", a word roughly equivalent to "laugh out loud" popularised by gamers but now often associated with the alt right.
"Kek" is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.
Many people would link "Maximus" to the name of Russell Crowe's heroic character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius.
Mr Musk's new profile image depicts Pepe in Roman military dress holding what appears to be a game console.
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