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Dec. 2024 News (Pt. 5)

 

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Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative December 2024 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this. 

 

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dec. 24

Top Headlines

 

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.

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.

 

More On Trump's Billionaire Allies, Their Rants & Their Contracts

 

Opposition To Trump

 

Trump Transition News, Commentary

 

More U.S. Political Commentary

 

Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats

 

More On U.S. Public Health, Transition, Fears

 

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).

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)

 

More On Health Care CEO's Murder

 

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More U.S. Legal News

 

More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections

 

More On Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel,  Lebanon


 

syria prisons NYTAt the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared (New York Times photo).At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared (New York Times photo).

 

More On South Korean Crisis

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More On U.S. Foreign Policy, Defense, Tariffs

 

More On Presidential Pardons, Cases

 

Russian War Against Ukraine

 

Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights

 

U.S. Defense, Foreign Policy, Security

 

U.S. Immigration

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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).

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).


U.S. Economy, Jobs, Pensions

 

Energy, Environment, Transportation, Climate Change, Disasters

 

Media, High-Tech, Culture, Education

 

 

Top Stories

 

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.

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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition Live 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 U.S. House logopick 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 facing trial on multiple federal felony charges alleging sex trafficking.

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.

politico CustomThe 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'

U.S. House logoThe 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 research shows the massive hole Dems are in Kay Granger is residing in assisted-living facility, her son tells Dallas publication In Arizona speech, Trump jokes Musk is ‘not going to be president’ Trump’s big Mike Johnson decision Ethics report alleges Gaetz paid 17-year-old for sex

Chris Dorworth, the former Florida state representative at whose home Gaetz allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old, denounced the report and said its release was an act of retaliation against Gaetz for helping to bring down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“This is clearly a congressional hit job. It is painfully clear these women are lying,” Dorworth wrote on X. “This is a shakedown that caught fire because Matt kicked Kevin McCarthy out of his job. This DID NOT HAPPEN. Every thing they said about me being there and witnessing any of it is a lie.”

Last month, Donald Trump announced that he planned to nominate Gaetz as attorney general — a post that would have put him in charge of the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated him. Gaetz promptly resigned his House seat, but eight days after Trump’s announcement, Gaetz threw in the towel on his AG bid after it became clear he lacked the votes to be confirmed.

Some former DOJ officials cautioned that the feds’ decision not to bring a criminal case does not amount to the “exoneration” Gaetz has repeatedly claimed.

“Generally speaking, the Justice Department’s decision to not charge an individual doesn’t mean that he or she didn’t commit wrongdoing,” former DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said. “Criminal prosecution is a high bar that relies on a variety of factors — evidence, witnesses, etc. Bottom line: No charges does not equal full exoneration.”

The Mann Act, originally passed in 1910 and formally called the White-Slave Traffic Act, made it a crime to cross state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The phrase about immoral activity was used by some prosecutors to target interracial couples as well as LGBTQ people.

washington post logoWashington Post, Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office, Mark Berman and Matt Viser, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The president changed the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without parole, saying he was convinced “that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

President Joe Biden on Monday is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row to life without parole, taking the unprecedented step ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose incoming administration is widely expected to restart executions.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

Opponents of capital punishment have been urging Biden to use his final weeks in office to empty federal death row before Trump reclaims the White House. Trump is a longtime supporter of the death penalty, and his first administration carried out 13 federal executions.

Biden’s sweeping decision, which marks the first presidential commutation of a death sentence since 2017, still keeps three people on federal death row, those the president said were involved in cases of “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement explaining his decision.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Across the nation, more than half of the approximately 2,100 prisoners with death sentences are incarcerated in jurisdictions where executions are on hold. Many appear likely to die without seeing the inside of an execution chamber, raising fundamental questions about the American justice system.

Biden’s decision to intervene in even one death penalty case caps a remarkable turnaround for him on this issue. A longtime advocate for the death penalty, Biden ran for the presidency in 2020 as an opponent who pledged to try to end its use.

washington post logoWashington Post, The New Administration: Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media, Sarah Ellison and Jeremy Barr, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). A recent settlement with ABC News and a cascade of lawsuits against media entities from Donald Trump and his allies have spurred concerns that his efforts could undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his administration.

For many years, Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to sue the press but often didn’t follow through. When he did, he almost always lost.

trump 2024But Trump’s recent settlement with ABC News and a cascade of lawsuits and other complaints against media entities from him and his allies signal a ramped-up campaign from the president-elect. Together, the actions have spurred concerns that his efforts could drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration, which Trump has promised will take revenge on those he perceives as having wronged him.Get the latest election news and results

“The law in this country hasn’t really changed, but what has changed is that the atmosphere and hostility to the press is intense, and that emboldens plaintiffs of all kinds,” said David Korzenik, a media defense lawyer at the boutique Miller Korzenik Sommers Rayman LLP.

The pressure from Trump and his allies on the media is already growing and will continue to intensify, according to two Trump aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive internal deliberations.

In the two months before the presidential election, Trump attacked the media more than 100 times in public speeches or other remarks. The week before Election Day, Trump threatened to sue the New York Times, his campaign lodged a Federal Election Commission complaint against The Washington Post, and he sued CBS News for editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in a way he said was deceptive. Those media outlets have defended their work.

washington post logoWashington Post, Billionaire financier picked for deputy defense secretary, John Hudson, Michael Kranish and Dan Diamond, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday night that he will nominate Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire political supporter who has been involved in the defense contracting business, to serve as deputy defense secretary.Get the latest election news and results

trump 2024Trump made the announcement on social media amid continued uncertainty about whether his choice for top Defense Department post, Pete Hegseth, has enough support for confirmation in the Senate.

Department of Defense SealFeinberg is the co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which has invested in hypersonic missiles and previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp, a company that was acquired by another defense firm, Amentum, in 2020.

During the first Trump administration, Feinberg led the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides the U.S. leader advice on intelligence assessments and estimates and counterintelligence matters. In his announcement Sunday night on Truth Social, Trump said Feinberg is “an extremely successful businessman” who will “help Make the Pentagon Great Again.”

Feinberg, who has been a reclusive Wall Street executive, is likely to be questioned about whether there is any conflict arising from his work in defense contracting matters and whether he is qualified to play such a major role in helping run the Pentagon.

The deputy defense secretary typically manages day-to-day operations of the massive bureaucracy with a combined workforce of more than 3 million service members and civilian employees. The search for a capable No. 2 took on heightened significance as lawmakers weigh the pick of Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, to be defense secretary.

The Post reported earlier this month that allegations against Hegseth of excessive drinking have shadowed his career.

In addition, Hegseth’s attorney has said that Hegseth paid an undisclosed sum to a woman who alleged that he raped her in 2017 at a California event for Republican women. The local police and district attorney looked into the allegation and brought no charges against Hegseth. The attorney said that a consensual sexual encounter took place, that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” and that the woman was the aggressor.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Democrats shouldn’t try to find ‘common ground’ with Trump, Jennifer Rubin, right, Dec. 23, 2024. Unwise, premature and jennifer rubin new headshotembarrassing outreach from what is supposed to be the opposition.

A depressingly high number of elected Democrats are declaring their intent to find “common ground” with President-elect Donald Trump and his crackpot Cabinet picks. Their naive, tone-deaf declarations epitomize an infatuation with bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. Sometimes, it’s better not to bend the knee before the bidding even gets underway.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

trump 2024Democrats strain credulity if they imagine they can find common ground with someone who vows, among other mind-boggling schemes, to imprison opponents, deploy the military against immigrants, snatch the power of the purse from Congress and pay for tax cuts for billionaires with cuts to entitlements and other programs that serve ordinary Americans. (What would common ground even look like? Deport just 5.5 million people, not 11 million? Cut Social Security only a little bit?)

The fruitless search for nonexistent common ground instantaneously normalizes Trump. Democrats should not propound the dubious assertion that Trump can operate rationally and in good faith. Mouthing this platitude makes Democrats look weak, foolish and unprepared to stand up to an authoritarian agenda.

Moreover, what is the point of declaring their “common ground” aspirations now? Similar aspirational statements were made before MAGA Republicans reneged on the budget deal (later giving up the effort to suspend the debt ceiling when Democrats stood their ground). That should be a wake-up call: There is no bargaining with people who break deals. Democrats must not be in the position of chasing after Republicans. They will find themselves negotiating against themselves to reach the mythical “common ground.”

ny times logoNew 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.

washington post logoWashington 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.

ukraine flagZelensky’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.

washington post logoWashington Postukraine flag, Five months on, Ukraine clings to Kursk amid doubts over operation, Siobhán O'Grady, Kostiantyn Khudov and Serhiy Morgunov, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Outnumbered Ukrainian troops are clinging to a section of Russian territory in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations.

washington post logoWashington Post, Under Biden, a generational shift in U.S. views of Israel, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 23, 2024.  Support for Israel was once widespread across the American political spectrum. The Biden presidency has widened a deepening rift among Democrats.

In late November, the White House and its allies scrambled to kill a Senate measure blocking three weapons shipments to Israel — a delicate move, since the measure was led or sponsored by senators close to Biden, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland).Get the latest election news and results

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to plead that the measure would embolden Hamas at precisely the wrong moment. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) called senators into his office, one by one, to urge a no vote. The influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee launched a blitz of online ads targeting the measure’s supporters.

Yet 19 senators — more than a third of all senators who caucus with Democrats — voted for at least part of Sanders’s proposal, sending an unprecedented message of dissatisfaction with Biden’s Middle East policy from his own party. It was the first time Congress had ever voted on blocking arms sales to Israel, and the White House was unable to head it off.

The episode highlights a fundamental transformation in America’s relations with Israel, a shift that began years ago but has exploded under Biden with the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. His response has contributed to a splintering in his party that is likely to be part of his legacy, though one he may not wish for, as the politics of Israel in America are unlikely ever to be the same.

washington post logoWashington Post, In the shadows of Arizona’s data center boom, thousands live without power, Pranshu Verma, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.). As data centers drain America’s power grids, a fierce battle is being waged for electricity. On Navajo Nation land, many are on the losing end.

Living on one of the largest swaths of land in America without electric power, Thomasina Nez’s entire life is a scramble to complete basic tasks.

To take a hot shower, she must wait for buckets of water to come to a boil on a small propane stove outside her wood-framed roundhouse. To make meals, she relies mostly on canned goods because unrefrigerated produce rots quickly in the Arizona heat. It’s a struggle to stay warm at night, because she refuses to use her coal-powered heater after its fumes killed her two dogs.

A fierce battle for electric power is being waged across the nation, and Nez is one of thousands of people who have wound up on the losing end. Amid a boom in data centers, the energy-intensive warehouses that run supercomputers for Big Tech companies, Arizona is racing to increase electricity production. In February, the state utility board approved an 8 percent rate hike to bolster power infrastructure throughout the state, where data centers are popping up faster than almost anywhere in the United States. But it rejected a plan to bring electricity to parts of the Navajo Nation land, concluding that electric customers should not be asked to foot the nearly $4 million bill.

“We’ve been without [power] for quite a long time,” said Nez, who lives separately from her teenage children so they have electricity to complete their schoolwork. Tech companies “already have it,” she said, “and for them to get more power, it’s kind of not right.”

Nicole Garcia, a spokeswoman for Arizona’s utility board the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), said it did not approve the Navajo aid provision because of “concerns about how the funds would be used,” adding that customers are not “responsible for extending electricity to all tribal areas of the state.”

Ann Porter, a spokesperson for the power company Arizona Public Service (APS), said that its process for raising rates is “backward-looking.” The organization aims to “recover money we’ve already spent and better align with the cost to maintain a reliable energy grid for Arizona.”

After a years-long courtship of Big Tech by local politicians, power companies and utility regulators eager for the promise of tax revenue and jobs, the strain on Arizona’s power grid is already apparent. Often, vulnerable communities are paying the price. While Nez and her neighbors lost a shot at getting power, the historically Black town of Randolph, almost 60 miles south of Phoenix, faces the expansion of a massive natural gas plant that emits particulate matter linked to asthma and lung cancer.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time, David E. Sanger and Lisa Friedman, Dec. 24, 2024 (print ed.).  In recent days the president-elect has called for asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, showing that his “America First” philosophy has an expansionist dimension.

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,’' an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Not surprisingly, the government of Greenland immediately rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, as it did in 2019, when he first floated the idea. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said in a statement. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”Editors’ Picks7 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This WeekA Hanukkah-Ready Recipe That Does Everything RightStaffers at The Times on the Books They Enjoyed in 2024

The Danish prime minister’s office was more circumspect, writing in a statement that the government was “looking forward to working with the new administration” and offering no further comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

After Mr. Trump brought up the Panama Canal again in a speech on Sunday, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, said in a video that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be.” He added: “Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.”

But the president-elect’s statements — and the not-so-subtle threats behind them — were another reminder that his version of “America First” is not an isolationist creed.

His aggressive interpretation of the phrase evokes the expansionism, or colonialism, of President Theodore Roosevelt, who took control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. And it reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.

Mr. Trump has often suggested that he does not always see the sovereignty of other nations’ borders as sacrosanct. When Russia invaded Ukraine, his first response was not a condemnation of the blatant land grab, but rather the observation that President Vladimir V. Putin’s move was an act of “genius.”

Even now, as Mr. Trump seeks a deal to end the war in Ukraine, he has never said that the country’s borders must be restored, a key demand of the United States and NATO — he has only promised a “deal” to end the fighting.

In the cases of Greenland and Panama, both commercial and national security interests are at play.

Mr. Trump’s desire for Greenland was made explicit in the first term, when a wealthy New York friend of his, Ronald S. Lauder, the New York cosmetics heir, put the idea in his head.

In the Trump White House in 2019, the National Security Council was suddenly delving into the details of how the United States would pull off a land acquisition of that size. Mr. Trump kept pressing the point with Denmark, which consistently rebuffed him.

Mr. Trump was not the first president to make the case: Harry S. Truman wanted to buy Greenland after World War II, as part of a Cold War strategy for boxing out Soviet forces. Mr. Trump can make a parallel argument, especially as Russia, China and the United States jockey for control of Arctic routes for commercial shipping and naval assets.

Arctic experts did not dismiss Mr. Trump’s Greenland bid as a joke.

“Not that many people are laughing about it now,” said Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defense College in Denmark who focuses on Arctic security.

Mr. Jacobsen noted that the reaction in Denmark to Mr. Trump’s latest bid had been one of fury (one Danish politician called it “an unusually strange way to be an ally”). But, he said, Greenlanders — who have long sought independence — may seek to use Mr. Trump’s interest as an opportunity to further strengthen economic ties with the United States.

Since 2009, Greenland has had the right to declare its independence, but the vast territory of about 56,000 people is still heavily dependent on Denmark and has never chosen to pursue that path. Mr. Trump’s interest could give Greenland an opening for more U.S. investments, including in tourism or rare earth mining, he said.

“Was it crazy when the U.S. acquired Alaska? Was it crazy when the U.S. built the Panama Canal?” asked Sherri Goodman, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow with the Wilson Center Polar Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Ms. Goodman, whose book “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security” centers in part on the Arctic, said the United States did have a strong interest in ensuring that China in particular does not develop a strong presence in Greenland.

Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic have grown, and in 2018 it laid out plans to build infrastructure and develop shipping lanes opened by climate change. Ms. Goodman said the United States should continue to prevent China from gaining a foothold in the doorstep to North America, but said Greenlanders must decide their own fate.

“We want to have all those territories proximate to our own mainland territory to protect us and also to prevent an adversary from using it to our strategic disadvantage,” Ms. Goodman said. “On the other hand, there is international law and international order and sovereignty, and Greenland is still a part of Denmark.”

When it comes to Panama, Mr. Trump may also hold a distant personal grudge.

In 2018, Panamanian police officers ousted the Trump Organization from the Trump International Hotel in Panama City after a protracted legal battle between the president-elect’s family and the majority owner of the property. The Trump name subsequently came down. The company had held a contract to manage the property.

David L. Goldwyn, who served at the State Department under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, noted that Greenland has tremendous undeveloped natural resources, including more than 43 of the 50 so-called critical rare earth elements used to make electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean technology.

 

dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpets: For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

 

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school. (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school.  (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: They took the children: U.S. created Indian boarding schools to destroy cultures and seize land, Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Originally published May 29, 2024. From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government separated Native American children from their families to eradicate their cultures, assimilate them into White society and seize tribal land.

European settlers waged war against Native Americans for centuries, decimating tribes through violence and spreading disease. By the 1800s, the U.S. government continued to grapple with what it called the “Indian problem.”

The government wanted tribal land for settlers and needed to justify taking it. If Native Americans adopted Western ways of education and farming, officials said, they would need less land.

The following nine slides are a summary of U.S. policies to “civilize” Native American children. Read more of The Post’s investigation that reveals decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests at boarding schools, and documents the deaths of more than 3,100 students.

U.S. officials ordered Native American children to be removed from their homes and sent to remote boarding schools. As one of the first boarding school founders said, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: More than 3,100 children died at Indian boarding schools. Hundreds are buried at or near the schools they attended, Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Andrew Ba Tran, Nilo Tabrizy and Jahi Chikwendiu, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.).  The Native American students died between 1828 and 1970, a Post investigation found — three times as many as the U.S. previously reported.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department earlier this year. The Post found that more than 800 of those students are buried in cemeteries at or near the schools they attended, underscoring how, in many cases, children’s bodies were never sent home to their families or tribes.

The Post’s investigation found the deaths by drawing on hundreds of thousands of government documents that also revealed how children were beaten and harshly punished if they did not adhere to strict rules in the classroom — and in the fields, laundry rooms, kitchens or workshops where they often were forced to spend half their days.

“These were not schools,” said Judi Gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose relatives were sent to Indian boarding schools. “They were prison camps. They were work camps.”

The causes of death included infectious diseases, malnutrition and accidents, records show. Dozens died in suspicious circumstances, and in some instances the records provide indications of abuse or mistreatment that likely resulted in children’s deaths. A 10-year-old boy was fatally shot in 1912 at an Alaska school, a newspaper reported. A girl in Oregon “fell from a high window there & was brought home a corpse” in 1887, according to a teacher’s diary.

The findings show gaps in the federal government’s official accounting of what happened to Native American children who were wrested from their homes in the name of assimilation. They come as many tribes — long denied the chance to mourn and bury their dead — are seeking to find their ancestors’ remains and return them home.

But doing so is complicated by poor recordkeeping and uncertainty about the locations of many burial sites. While some cemeteries, like the one at Carlisle that held Almeda’s remains, are marked, others are hidden, neglected or have been paved over.


dick durbin speaking screenshot

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, shown above, said in a statement.

Politico, Senate Democrats render a verdict on Supreme Court ethics, Josh Gerstein, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.).  Sen. Dick Durbin says justices have lost the trust of American people by failing to disclose gifts and other ethical lapses.The U.S. Supreme Court is seen.

politico CustomSenate Democrats wrapped up their extensive investigation of Supreme Court justices’ ethics practices Saturday, issuing a report blasting two conservative justices for accepting expensive gifts from wealthy benefactors and slamming Chief Justice John Roberts for a lackadaisical response to ethical lapses by his colleagues.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said in a statement. “Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest, it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

The report levels its most strident criticism at Justice Clarence Thomas, alleging that he received gifts totaling millions of dollars since he joined the high court in 1991. “The number, value, and extravagance by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report says.

Many of the trips, including one Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas took by yacht and private jet in Indonesia in 2019 as a guest of billionaire developer Harlan Crow, were unearthed by ProPublica last year. However, the Senate Democrats claimed credit for turning up two previously unknown trips Crow treated Thomas to closer to home in New York, including one by yacht.

The report also alleges that Justice Samuel Alito failed to comply with federal law when he didn’t include on his annual financial disclosure form a private plane flight and lodging expenses for a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 that was paid for by a billionaire hedge fund operator, Paul Singer.

Thomas and Alito have said they generally complied with guidance the courts gave judges at the time, which used a broad definition of “personal hospitality” that could encompass travel by boat or private airplane.

In addition to criticizing the justices, the Senate report took particular aim at the Judicial Conference of the United States, a policy-making body run by federal judges that sets ethics guidelines and advises on how to apply them. It tweaked the rules about personal hospitality last year and in September, but that did not satisfy Democratic senators.

“To date, the Judicial Conference has failed to adequately respond to the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis,” the report says.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards. So long as Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to act, we must push for a legislative solution to this crisis to restore trust in the highest court,” Durbin said.

However, the prospects for such legislation are dim. In July 2023, Durbin’s committee approved a bill to mandate the court’s adoption of an ethics code and create an enforcement mechanism involving lower-court judges in reviewing complaints.

 

bashar al Assad 2024 horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, Deception and Betrayal: Inside the Final Days of the Assad Regime, Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.).  President Bashar al-Assad, above, who wielded force over Syria for more than two decades, fled the country under the cover of night — and a fake political address.

Bashar al-Assad left his country so secretively that some of his aides remained in the palace hours after he had left, waiting for a speech that never came, the insider said. After midnight, word came that the president was gone, and they fled in a panic, leaving the palace gates wide open for the rebels who would storm in a few hours later.

syria new flag 2024Mr. al-Assad’s fall brought to a sudden end his family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on Syria, causing jubilation among his victims and enemies, scrambling the strategic map of the Middle East and setting Syria off on a new, uncertain trajectory.

During his final days in power, Mr. al-Assad pleaded for foreign military help from Russia, Iran and Iraq to no avail as his military’s own intelligence service documented his forces’ collapse in real time, according to secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

Diplomats from a half-dozen countries sought ways to push him from power peacefully in order to spare the ancient city of Damascus a bloody battle for control, according to four regional officials involved in the talks. One proposal, an official said, was that he pass power to his military chief, effectively submitting to a coup.

 

More  On Trump's Billionaire Allies, Their Rants & Their Contracts

 

dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpetsTimothy Snyder, For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

Excerpt Continued From Above.

Musk himself is obviously completely unconcerned by the results of elections; it means nothing to him that people voted for Trump. Indeed, the fact that he was able to use a meaninglessly small portion of his wealth to get Trump in office can only breed contempt of both the man and his electorate.

Trump's current public humiliation of Trump may very well be part of a plan. Make the man look weak; and then make him look crazy; and then invoke Article 25 of the Constitution and put him to bed. I am not saying that I am sure that this will happen: but rather that it is the kind of thing that would be normal in a Mump regime but would be all but unthinkable in a "presidency" or an "administration."

Trump is a fake rich person, and Musk is the richest person on earth (except, possibly, Putin). Trump is crazy like an improv comedian, but Musk is crazy like a guy with satellites. Musk surely understands, even if Trump does not, that the welter of policies we will see in the first six months of the Mump regime will be contradictory and chaotic.

Where does popular sentiment go when tariffs increase prices, as they must? When Canada and Mexico enforce countermeasures which push prices still higher? And when government spending on deportations (which would, at least as planned, cost about a trillion dollars) also brings inflation?

And that is just one example. Will Americans actually like a defense department and an FBI designed for domestic conflict? If all of this goes crazily wrong, Trump will be to blame. It is at least worth considering the possibility that Musk foresees all this.

At the moment, left-wing commentators laugh that J.D. Vance has disappeared from public view, displaced by Musk. Thinking of a Mump regime helps us to see Vance's absence differently. There cannot be MAGA without Trump, but there can be Mump without Trump. For Musk and for kindred oligarchs, Vance is a more natural ally than Trump. He speaks their language and seems to believe the libertarian-fascist amalgam according to which government itself is doomed and therefor a strong man must rule. Vance was chosen by the oligarchs to be vice-president.

In the two scenarios above -- Musk drives Trump visibly crazy; six months of chaos is blamed on Trump-- Vance would be the successor. Staying in the background for now thus makes perfect sense for Vance. A quiet Vance does not look crazy, and is not tainted by Trump's six months of chaos. He is available when Musk is ready to move on from Trump.

As Musk once tweeted, "we will coup whoever we want." Whoever we want.

We also need a term like "the Mump regime" to classify Republicans. It offers a vocabulary that helps us to sort people out according to their involvement in and fealty towards Musk. The people who are active in the Mump regime are mumpers. The people who go along are mumpets.

But not all Republicans are mumpers, only a select few -- and, indeed, Musk and Trump and Vance lack a traditional Republican background. The mumpers are a select group, like a politburo: a few people, who can brought in and pushed out. Those beyond the small circle of mumpers who support the Mump regime are mumpets, a much broader group.

Plenty of Republicans follow Musk. But these are not the same people, exactly, who would follow Trump. And as we have seen from recent votes on the shutdown, there are Republican elected officials who are not mumpets. Not all Republicans actually want to see Congress rendered obsolete by one-man rule and the United States cease to exist as a republic.

With terms like "Mump regime," "mumpers," and "mumpets" we can parse the present reality and prepare for the future much better than we can with "presidential administration," "Republicans," or "MAGA."

"Mump regime" also gives us adjectives, like "mumpy," "mumpier," or "mumpified." Beyond domestic politics, it can help us towards understanding (topic for another post) the United States as "the sick man of the world" in foreign policy, as we will likely be.

Musk is right that he is bringing something new; what he is not bringing is a tyranny so great that we cannot think for ourselves and name things for ourselves. Indeed, holding tyranny back begins with just that.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Depressing the Vote with Money in Politics, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. thom hartmann newThis week: "The Hidden History of the War on Voting: The Republican War against your right to vote. Over the next few months the entire book will be here, new chapters posted every Sunday, for subscribers to read at no cost. If you want to get a physical book to mark up or share with others, just click on the picture above, visit your local bookstore, or check your favorite online seller.

Money in politics has a long and ignominious history.

thom hartmann war on votingCorruption by money of individual politicians, and of the legislative process as a whole, hit three peaks in the history of our nation: during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, the Roaring Twenties in the last century, and the years since 2010 when the Supreme Court struck down numerous campaign finance and good-government laws, throwing the doors open to corporate and billionaire cash with its Citizens United decision.

The Gilded Age excesses led to the Tillman Act of 1907, which made it a federal felony for a corporation to donate money or anything of value to a campaign for federal office. It was gutted by Citizens United.

lewis powell 1976 official portraitThe political corruption of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations led directly to the great crash of 1929, causing most corporations to pull back from the political arena until the 1970s, when Lewis Powell (shown at right as a Supreme Court justice in 1976) revived it with his infamous memo to billionaires and corporate CEOs.

After the Watergate investigations revealed Nixon’s bribery and other scandals, Congress passed numerous reforms of money in politics, although the Supreme Court struck down the most consequential of them; and as long as there’s a conservative majority of at least five votes on the Court, that’s unlikely to change.

Therefore, this is the situation today

:• A billionaire oligarch, Rupert Murdoch, programs his very own television news network to promote the interests of the billionaire class with such effectiveness that average working people are repeating billionaire-helpful memes like “cut regulations,” “shrink government,” and “cut taxes”— policies that will cause more working people and their children to get sick and/or die; will transfer more money and power from we, the people, to a few oligarchs; and will lower working-class wages over time.113

• A small group of billionaires have funneled so much money into our political sphere that “normal” Republicans like former US senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker point out that they couldn’t get elected in today’s environment because they’d face primary challengers funded by right-wing billionaires.

• The corporate media (including online media), heavily influenced by the roughly $1 billion that the Koch network, Sheldon Adelson, the Mercers, etc., poured through their advertising coffers and into their profits in the last presidential election, won’t even mention in their “news” reporting that billionaire oligarchs are mainly calling the tunes in American politics, particularly in the GOP.

• Former president Jimmy Carter pointed out on my radio show that the United States “is now an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery,” in part as a result of the right-wing Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.114

• Nobody in corporate media—even on the “corporate left”—is willing to explicitly point out how billionaires and the companies that made them rich control and define the boundaries of “acceptable” political debate in our country.

• Thus, there’s no honest discussion in American media of why the GOP denies climate change (to profit petro-billionaires), no discussion of the daily damage being done to our consumer and workplace protections, and no discussion of the horrors being inflicted on our public lands and environment by GOP appointees

.• There’s not even a discussion of the major issue animating American politics just one century ago: corporate mergers and how they damage small business and small towns.

Although it’s been this way before in American history, it wasn’t within our lifetimes. The last time the morbidly rich had this much power in American politics was in the 1920s, when an orgy of tax cutting and deregulation of banking led to the Republican Great Depression.

Our nation now faces a massive crisis provoked by the loss of democratic representation for the majority of the American electorate. Neither party today does much of anything for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, as so clearly demonstrated by a 2014 study out of Princeton showing that the likelihood of legislation passing that represented the interests of that bottom 90 percent was equivalent, statistically, to white noise.

The predictable—and tragic for our republic—result is massive voter apathy and a loss of voter engagement.

 

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Political advocacy: Scenes from President Musk’s shutdown-that-wasn’ty, Jeff  Tiedrich, right, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Welcome to a perfectly normal weekend in the good old US of A.

United States President-Elect Elon Musk was definitely one of those jeff tiedrichkids who woke up early on Christmas morning, ran downstairs, grabbed his presents from under the tree, frantically ripped the wrapping off — and immediately smashed the shit out of each and every one of his new toys.

You know this is a fact, because when handed the biggest toy of his life — the entire country of America — the very first thing President-Elect Musk tried to do was break it.

President Musk and his Vice Presidential mascot Donny Convict done fucked up bigtime.

The Space Nazi wanted to shut down the government, because governments are inconvenient things that keep him from doing everything he wants. Donny wanted the debt ceiling shitcanned, so he could give economy-destroying tax cuts to his plutocrat pals. Neither of them got their way, and all they have to show for their efforts is a huge crack in their autocratic bromance.

This business of referring to the Space Nazi as ‘President Musk’ is really getting under Donny’s preternaturally thin skin.

“CNN confirmed on-air just now that top Trump aides are furiously calling journalists to insist that Elon Musk has been following the orders of Trump rather than the other way around. As predicted, Trump is horrified and enraged at the idea that Musk is now seen as the President of the United States.”

Donny cannot handle being the butt of a joke — and he definitely can’t handle the perception that he’s not the alpha dog calling all the shots.

Remember, this broken-inside narcissist is all about his public image. Donny needs to appear all-powerful. Elon isn’t supposed to be the one making headlines. Elon is supposed to be the grateful supplicant with tears of gratitude welling up in his eyes, as he goes ‘sir! sir! no one has ever governed as wisely as you. how do you do it? sir!’

it’s only a matter of time before these two have a thermonuclear breakup — and then we can all throw our heads back and laugh as Dear Leader tells his new FBI Director Krazee Eyes Kash to look into Elon’s finances.

Here’s a perfectly normal thing that Vice President Trump did last night.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend (Dec. 19-21, 2024). Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.He posted a threat to send the military down to Panama and seize their canal if Panama doesn’t lower the fees it charges ships using the canal.

I have a question: which sewer clown put this bug up Donny’s ass — and who wrote this multi-hundred-word post for him? Because look at this guy.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend. Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.

I guarantee you that Donny is barely aware that the Panama Canal exists. There’s no way that he carries any knowledge of its purpose or history in his big vacant pumpkin head.

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: When Corporations Kneel: How CEOs Are Funding America’s Dangerous Shift to Fascism, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 17, 2024. thom hartmann newFrom Disney to big business: Corporations are aligning with Trump to avoid punishment and secure their place in the authoritarian future…

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

— Donald Trump, Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as: “fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

disney logoWhen Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trumpian Attitude at the Heart of the Gaetz Report, David Firestone, Dec. 23, 2024. There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice.

Trump wanted to give that position to a man who paid at least half a dozen women for sex, according to the report, which was made public on Monday. And the violation of Florida’s prostitution law isn’t even the real depravity; the committee took pains to detail the underlying implication of his actions: “Representative Gaetz took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.”

Trump wanted to give the Justice Department to a man the committee says committed the statutory rape of a 17-year-old girl. A man who is accused of setting up a phony email account at his office in the House to buy illegal drugs and who then used the drugs to facilitate sexual misconduct. A man who accepted impermissible gifts and plane trips, according to the report, and who used the power of his office to help a woman with whom he was having sex. A man whose conduct, according to his own colleagues of both parties, “reflects discreditably upon the House.”

And of course, on Trump himself.

Nonetheless, when you read through the details, you can see the commonality between the two men, and the reasons Trump held Gaetz in high esteem. It’s not just the contempt for women as disposable commodities for hire or plunder; it’s the contempt for the law.your times accessHave a moment?

Gaetz fought the committee’s investigation at every turn, and the report’s appendices are full of letters from him dripping with disdain at the process, completely indignant that he should even be asked to account for his actions. He blames his enemies in Washington for his plight, he blames the press, he says Democrats have done much worse, and he just lies and lies, denying allegations that are fully documented elsewhere in the text.

The report says Gaetz refused to supply the committee with the exculpatory evidence that he claimed he had and refused to respond to subpoenas. His assertions “were nothing more than attempts to delay the committee’s investigation,” the report said. And then there were his attempts to bully witnesses against him. “The committee had serious concerns that Representative Gaetz might retaliate against individuals who cooperated with the committee,” the report said.

Does that sound familiar? It’s a summary of the conduct we’ve seen from the president-elect for years, whenever the law tries to make him responsible for his conduct. In many ways, these two men think the same way about authority, and in that sense, Gaetz would have been an ideal attorney general for the next administration.Editors’ PicksIn Search of Sauna Nirvana Around Lake Superior‘Before We Got to the Park, Kali Mentioned the Northern Lights’7 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

Politico, Biden vetoes bill that would have created dozens of new federal judge slots, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 23, 2024. The president didn’t want to hand Trump a chance to appoint more judges.President Joe Biden is pictured speaking.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden has vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have added dozens of new federal judge positions in the coming years.

The president had threatened to veto the bill because he didn’t want to give the president-elect new appointment opportunities, according to one of the outgoing president’s closest allies.

“The House of Representatives’ hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated,” Biden wrote in a letter to Congress.

Democrats had roundly faulted House Republicans for waiting until after the results of the November elections — won by President-elect Donald Trump — to pass the legislation. As authored, the bill would award some 66 new federal judicial slots over the next three presidential terms.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously in August. It cleared the House on a largely party-line vote earlier in December.

Democrats have been seeking ways to insulate the federal judiciary from Trump’s desires to move it further to the right, including by denying the incoming president further vacancies to fill in the bench.

The bill’s lead Senate sponsor, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), was sharply critical of the veto.

 

 

djt elon musk washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year, Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.).  Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices around 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.

As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.

Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.

Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

“Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance Transition. He described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”

Musk launched his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he abandoned a graduate program at Stanford to found a start-up later called Zip2 that created online city guides. It was sold for about $300 million in 1999.

He went on to co-found an online banking company, X.com, that merged with another start-up to create PayPal. Auction site eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney, former journalism professor, Dec. 14, 2024. A viral Bluesky thread introduced tens of seth abramson graphicthousands around the world to a first glimpse of a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk. Here—in a single essay—is some of what the world just learned.

seth abramson proof logoElon Musk may be an unelected plutocrat, but in six weeks he’ll become co-President of the United States. Unfortunately, many people around the world are only just now beginning to research who Musk really is—not the mythos he spent decades carefully weaving about himself like a cloak, but the hard realities that define the actual man.

Most of what people think they know about Elon Musk is manifestly false. This essay, written by an Elon Musk biographer and based on OSINT research, reveals the truth—or at least a significant part of it. Rest assured that none of what remains is any better.

I’ve been a Musk biographer for two years now. In that time I’ve published hundreds and hundreds of pages of professionally researched content about the man—well over a book’s worth—here at Proof, an independent media outlet at Substack that ranks as a Top 25 U.S. Politics substack worldwide.

The longest report that I’ve published about Elon Musk so far is March 28. It’s a novella in and of itself, despite being just one of many fully sourced reports on Musk authored by a bestselling historian and biographer whose focus before now was the political career—and political scandals—of Donald Trump.

As you will soon see, the parallels between the lives of Trump and Musk are jarring.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Opposition To Trump

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Why is President Musk endorsing the “German neo-Nazi Party”?,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Both thom hartmann newPresident Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are in deep with the Chinese Communist Party (which has given millions to the Trump family and where Musk makes roughly half of his Tesla cars and many of his billions) and Vladimir Putin (both are reported to have had multiple phone calls and other communications with the Russian dictator over the past two years, including Musk cutting off Starlink internet access for Ukrainian drones that were supposed to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea).

Musk this week also endorsed the Nazi-infested German racist, far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and in the past has endorsed other European hard-right politicians and parties including in France and the UK.

Putin’s involved in a major effort to disrupt democratic governments around the world, mainly through using social media and video channels, and it increasingly appears that an anti-democracy coalition is forming here that includes several American and other rightwing billionaires and the Trump operation.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat expands on this extensively in her excellent Lucid newsletter this week; it’s well worth the read (and subscribing to).

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul (R-Crackpot) has suggested Republicans in the House should make Musk their Speaker (and third in the line of succession for the presidency), an idea that’s been endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. The Constitution doesn’t have a citizenship requirement or election requirement for the job, so it’s a real possibility, although probably wouldn’t get the necessary votes if Johnson is taken down.

No matter what, though, unless Musk and Trump get into some sort of major personality conflict (which I consider unlikely; Trump just wants to play golf and be loved, while Musk wants to get involved, presumably to protect the billions he gets in federal government grants and subsidies), it looks like the Muskrat is going to be America’s new overlord regardless of having or not having any official position.

 

steve bannon rally source unstatedThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Bannon: Kash Patel Will Absolutely Investigate The People Named In His Book, Tim Miller, Dec. 20, 2024. A tough break for those hoping that the likely next FBI director may moderate if confirmed

bulwark logo big shipDonald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, right, is dead serious when it comes to investigating the political enemies who he listed in his book “Government Gangsters,” according to Trump’s on-again-off-again adviser Steve Bannon (shown above in a file photo).

kash patel headshot smile“Kash didn’t try to hide the football. Steve Bannon didn’t try,” Bannon asserted, speaking in the third person during a one-on-one interview with The Bulwark following his speech to Americafest, a yearly gathering of MAGA diehards hosted by Turning Point USA.

“He made a fucking movie that’s called Government Gangsters and the first guy is Merrick Garland ok. And Lisa Monaco’s in there who the nation doesn’t know, we’re trying to make these people famous. So no. First of all, it has to happen. Number two, it's going to happen.”

FBI logoAmong those who would have a clear understanding of Patel’s intentions, Bannon stands high up on the list. He worked with Patel on the documentary that accompanied Patel’s book. He has also routinely hosted Patel on his podcast. His comments serve as a stark contrast to how congressional Republicans have talked up Patel’s nomination by portraying him more as a force of reform at the FBI. Patel will need 50 votes in the Senate in order to be confirmed.

Bannon’s remarks, delivered during a wide-ranging interview, came after I expressed concern that Patel might use the powers of the FBI to target political foes in the shadows without accountability. Bannon asserted that it shouldn't be concerning, not because Patel would moderate his desire to ensnare political foes of President Trump but because he would do so right out in the open.

“Transparency and sunlight is our friend,” Bannon said before ruminating on the importance of Patel’s poorly written but politically potent book.

“I would say Kash’s book is more typing than writing, ok” Bannon quipped. “It’s not a literary thing. But when you see it, it’s so in your face and at the end he lists on eight pages people from the deep state that need to be investigated. … So I think it’s pretty transparent.”

Bannon was adamant that Patel’s forthcoming investigations would not be about political revenge but, rather, an important cleansing of institutions that Trump and the MAGA movement believe are fundamentally broken. Bannon himself served a four-month sentence in Danbury federal correctional institution for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“These investigations and all that, it's not for personal retribution. I would be the person then at the forefront since I spent four months in a federal prison and I could care less. [Prison] actually was very empowering for me,” he said. “We can never allow again to happen what happened. The debanking, the deplatforming, the coming after President Trump. You have to get to the bottom of it.”

Among the investigations Bannon specifically expected from Patel were ones that look into the supposed “fedsurrection” on January 6th (a conspiracy that the FBI was behind the attack on the Capitol, which I covered back in 2023) and the purported “vast criminal conspiracy” against President-elect Trump. A recent watchdog report found that there were 26 FBI informants—and no undercover employees—at the Capitol on January 6th. None were authorized to enter the building or otherwise break the law.

“I think there will be a massive investigation. The vast criminal conspiracy, including the medias,’ what was it Andrew Weissman and all those FBI guys that work on MSNBC, I think there will be big investigations into all these people, I just do. I think there is going to be a huge investigation, I believe, into 2020. I think it's going to be a huge investigation on January 6th, the fedsurrection, I think it's going to be a huge investigation about the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump.”

Lance's Substack, Political Commentary:The Democrats And Media (With A Few Exceptions) Are Not In The Real World, Or Are Lying Through Their Teeth, lance rosenLance F Rosen,  Dec. 22, 2024. Trump has been obsessed with having the power to use the military domestically to crush his enemies since he entered politics. Remember that he told General Kelly "Hitler did some good things," and later "I wish my Generals were as loyal to me as Hitler's were for him."

He knows that his program will produce rioting and violence in reaction, because that is what he and his team of fascist thugs want. He said as much when discussing the mass deportations, which he said would be "bloody." His worldview was literally influenced by reading Hitler's speeches, and being mentored by his KKK- supporting father.

djt roy cohn file

His other influences were J. Edgar Hoover, The John Birch Society, Nixon and Roy Cohn (shown above at  right), who was Joe McCarthy's lawyer and later the Gambino mob family lawyer. When Nixon ok'd the Governor of Ohio James Rhodes deploying the National Guard in 1971 to Kent State University and those students were shot, that put an end to anti-war demonstrations for the most part, while the draft-evading bone spur victim Trump supported it fully and never forgot the lesson from that. It was a formative event for him. Ordering protesters shot amounts to a psycho-sexual obsession which he has always carried, because the thrill of putting people to death who oppose him stands at the center of his aspirational fantasy life.

So his personal history is a road map for what he intends to do. He wanted to use the military to shoot social justice protesters in June of 2020 but Secretary Of Defense Esper and JCOS Chairman General Milley blocked him. (Remember he symbolically put the Missouri would-be vigilante gun brandishing couple on the RNC speakers list) This is one reason Trump will put Milley on trial for treason and try to have him executed. The point being there won't be anyone in this incoming White House team like Generals Milley and Kelly with the balls and honesty to oppose him.

The ruling by SCOTUS on immunity said that the President has the power to order Seal Team Six to murder his opponents because it is considered an "official act." The only conservative Justice who fussed a little bit was Barrett, but that was just an ass-covering dance routine which amounts to nothing. And be sure that Trump and Musk, along with their compliant Attorney General Bondi intend to push the envelope as far as possible starting the moment this blasphemous lunatic puts his hand on that Bible and lies like a pig when he swears to uphold the Constitution.

Trump has consulted with Vladimir Putin for years in direct conversations, (the number of which is both substantial but unknown) asking him for advice on many things. During the George Floyd demonstrations in front of the White House, a scared shitless Trump called him to ask how he would handle it. Reportedly Putin told him in effect, "you can't let people think that you appear weak." That was roughly when he tried to invoke the 1807 Act and deploy the military, and became the infamous "bunker boy" who descended into his underground lair, just like Hitler in his final days, to scream at his Generals and give out orders to non-existent Army groups.

So these commentators who are cheerleading for GOP moderates and celebrating their factional brawls, in effect watching all of this, both-sidesing most of his nominees, "eating popcorn" and arguing that there should be "no worries," that the moderates and MAGAs will devour each other, that Trump will become envious of Musk and dump him, are absolutely in a delusional fantasy state. None of those things, even to the extent they are real, will succeed in stopping the Trump fascist counterrevolution against democracy.

We are still in the transition, and everything changes when these maniacs get their hands on the reins of government. The Democratic establishment and media, with a few exceptions, are spinning every possible political scenario to give people the excuse to sit on the sidelines and watch, because they are themselves too scared to face what Trump will do or act upon it.

Trump loves violence. He is an adjudicated rapist. He derived a sexual thrill watching his supporters on TV beating Capitol Police to death on January 6th. He egged on his campaign rally attendees last Summer to physically attack the press covering his speech when he actually praised one nut who tried to do just that after a Trump rant that the press were "the enemies of the people."

So most of the political spin people are consuming is meant to help them avoid thinking about the day of reckoning on January 20th, "Day One," where he pledged to invoke the 1807 Act for the national "border" emergency."

It is similar to how Hitler used the contrived "Reichstag Fire" emergency to suspend the Weimar Constitution, as he plans to deploy the military and US law enforcement to "Democrat cities" in blue states to start the mass roundup. And the point of it is not just to imprison and deport immigrants. It is to provoke opposition by his political adversaries so he can have a pretext for arresting them and putting them in jail.

 

eric adams horizontal 2024This is why the corrupt craven Mayor Adams of New York, above, is bending over to lick Trump's bone spurs in exchange for a pardon. New York is likely to be second on the list for Trump's domestic invasions by the military after Chicago. The mass deportations are in fact intended as a cover for his "retribution" campaign against everyone who ever stood in his way, prosecuted him, or criticized him.

Seriously, what else do people think is being discussed as an operational plan? They have already mapped all of this out in Project 2025, but our opposition "leadership" are acting like the blind fools who read Hitler's Mein Kampf in the 1920's and 30's and said "he can't be serious, nobody would ever try to do something like that...especially not that incompetent clown." Yes, people actually said that.

The media is afraid of being shut down and being given the same treatment. So Bezos caved on the Harris endorsement, ABC paid Trump a ransom to leave them off his retribution list, and the media kingpins are lining up to give Trump millions for the inaugural, hoping that paying out a little "protection" like a frightened store owner to a local gang leader would buy them some safety and time.

And our problem now is that our people are putting more energy into thinking about their personal survival and possibly leaving the US than are thinking about how to resist Trump's plans. So they are sitting at home on their phones and tablets posting memes and cheering for the "moderate" Republicans whose heads are all going to be stuffed and mounted at Mar-a-Lago in three months.

The fear factor is what is running the show right now. We are going to have to take a page from the 1960's Civil Rights movement when they organized and stood up to Jim Crow, Klan lynchings, firebombings, police brutality in the form of mass arrests, attack dogs, fire hosing and tear gassing. We are there, because we have the power-hungry insane son of a Klansman and a doubly insane son of a pro-Apartheid Afrikkaner, both of whom are fanboys of the Putin dictatorship in Russia, coming in to run the White House.

The Democratic strategy as it now stands is to lay back and let it all happen, because they think Trump will have to own his destruction and carnage and this will propel the Democrats victory in the mid-terms, and after that "on to 2028."

This is more or less what the German Social Democrats did in 1932-33. They said "let Hitler have his run, and he'll make such a mess of things that we will come back to power in the next elections."

The next German election came 12 years later, after a Holocaust and world war that left 50 million dead, half the world in rubble, with tens of millions displaced and made into refugees.

This is what the so-called Democratic leadership is doing, repeating step by step the catastrophically tragic decisions of those delusional fools who paved the way for Hitler.

I refuse to lie to my readers to help them feel reassured, or to keep up morale. I am glad when I hear from people who appreciate that and have the guts to do some tough reading and face these difficult problems.

I have no "plan" on what to do, other than stating that there has to be one and that those who refuse to change their proven dysfunctional strategies which are leading us to Hell need to get out of the way and make room for those who want to fight, and fight effectively, instead of just "letting it all happen" and trying to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Think about what I said about what Trump and Musk intend to do. And ask yourselves, is sending out cards and letters commensurate with that? Does hyping Mitch McConnell and other Republicans as Trump opposition leaders mean a damned thing, knowing what Trump intends to do with his immunity power on "day one?"

The first step toward fighting and defeating this insanity is to face reality. My job is to serve it up to my readers in heaping portions, and to help our new leadership come forward in response to it.

Those who can't handle it should take a break or leave. It's only going to increase in intensity once the shit show starts. It is decision time.

Rolling Stone: The race for DNC Chair is becoming a referendum on the influence of billionaire donors in the Democratic Party, Tessa Stuart, Dec. 20, 2024. The Race for DNC Chair Is a Midwest Nice Fight

rolling stone logoFour candidates have declared their intention to compete for chair of the Democratic National Committee, but as the race heats up, an aggressively polite, exceedingly Midwestern cold war has broken out between factions backing the two state party chairs in the race: Ben Wikler of Wisconsin and Ken Martin of Minnesota.

To a casual observer, Wikler may look like the frontrunner in this race. He has scooped up endorsements from the Progressive Change Campaign democratic donkey logoCommittee, MoveOn.org (where he worked before taking over WisDems), and the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, which extolled his virtues in a lengthy Politico op-ed. The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg declared in a recent column, "If Anyone Can Save the Democrats, It's Ben Wikler."

dnc square logoAnd just last week, Wikler stopped by The Daily Show, where his appearance was praised by Pod Save America host Jon Favreau. "I've rarely seen Jon Stewart so impressed with a political guest (though I can't say I'm surprised he's a Wikler fan - so many of us are)," Favreau posted on X.

But DNC chair is a position voted on by 448 party insiders, roughly one-quarter of whom are state chairs and vice chairs. Among that group, Wikler's peers, the qualities that have made him a darling of the media -- his prodigious fundraising ability, relationships with donors and celebrities, and messaging ability -- have engendered resentments that could torpedo his bid to head the national party.

In conversations with Rolling Stone, current or former state party chairs expressed frustration at the outsize attention and money Wikler has attracted relative to his record as chair, and they raised questions about whether, as chair of the national party, he would be able to stand up to the ultra-wealthy donors he has courted during his tenure helming the Wisconsin party.

reid hoffman xWikler's relationship with billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, right,  -- who has previously sought to privatize state parties' prized voter files -- was of particular concern to several people. Hoffman, records show, has personally donated a little less than $9 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since Wikler took over.

Wikler's chief rival is his neighbor Ken Martin, the longstanding chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Since he took over in 2011, the DFL has never lost a statewide race, Democrats have gained full control of the state government twice, and advanced a slate of progressive policy priorities.

Among the half dozen current and former state party chairs whom Rolling Stone spoke with for this story, everyone agreed it was critical for the next DNC chair to have experience as a state party chair, and each praised Wikler and Martin as smart and capable. But where Martin, who heads the association of state party chairs, was universally complimented for the efforts he made to help fellow chairs, Wikler's peers described him as less than generous when it came to sharing contacts and other resources. (A representative for Wikler pointed out that assisting other chairs is part of Martin's mandate in his role heading the Association of Democratic State Chairs, and insisted that Wikler makes efforts to share his contacts, but that it was ultimately up to the person in question if they will allow him to share their information with others.)

Simmering in the background of the fight between Wikler, Martin, and their proxies is the reality that the state parties have seen their power recede dramatically over the last 16 years, ever since Barack Obama created his own 50-state nonprofit apparatus, Organizing For America. Today, most parties' main source of funding is a meager stipend from the DNC: between $12,000 to $15,000 to cover all of their operations every month. (That's up from $2,500 a month a matter of years ago.)

For most chairs, the work is hard, it is thankless, and the pay isn't just bad, but nonexistent - a completely volunteer position.

Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary: Trump's Very Bad Week, Part II, Simon Rosenberg, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Last night the Democrats swooped in and simon rosenberg twitterhelped a struggling GOP pass bills in the House and Senate to keep the government open through March. President Biden has just signed the measure and we will all be able to head off for the Holidays without worrying about what chaos Trump and Elon and MAGA may bring. For now, at least.

The bloom has come off the post-election Trumpian rose. The essential ugliness of his project that is often discounted or obscured in our daily discourse became the story this week. The warning signs about the chaos he will bring and the damage he will do to the country are now there for all to see and are impossible to ignore. Let’s review:

Trump is already unraveling the strong economy he is inheriting. Markets and our allies are not happy.

As has been well covered by economists and journalists, Trump’s economic agenda of tariffs and mass deportations will raise prices, re-ignite inflation, slow economic growth and increase the deficit. This week the Fed and financial markets started coming to terms that the US government may, in a month, start implementing an agenda that unravels the current strong and stable US economy and undermines the broader global economy that has made the US and the world so prosperous in recent decades. Due to concerns about Trump’s inflationary agenda the Fed announced a more “hawkish” position and is scaling back its interest rate cut ambitions in 2025. Mortgage rates are already rising. The stock market indices lost ground in the past two weeks. All of a sudden the strong and stable US economy is looking a bit wobbly - due to fears of what Trump may do.

It is likely now that Trump’s agenda is already damaging the US economy even before he takes office will spur calls from other Republicans and US business leaders for Trump to scale back or curtail his inflationary plans. Trump’s economic honeymoon ended this week, as his dangerous plans started being taken seriously by the US government and the markets. It is my hope that President Biden writes the next President a letter in the coming days urging him to back off his reckless economic agenda and preserve and protect the remarkable economy he is inheriting. The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s ongoing and aggressive tariff threats have already angered our closest allies and largest trading partners in Canada, Mexico and Europe. Trade wars and retaliatory tariffs would not just increase prices on every day goods, re-igniting inflation and harm the people Trump vowed to protect, it would weaken the Western alliance and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free. M

e and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free.

The very first paragraph of the Intelligence Community’s January 2017 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election read:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

What Trump is doing now should also be seen an escalation to undermine the “US-led liberal democratic order.” The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s Maniacal Efforts To Throw The Country Into Chaos Were Rebuffed By His Own Party. Trump’s legislative and political miscalculations this week were among the most significant I’ve seen in my 32 years here in DC. He was goaded into coming out against the must pass bi-partisan bill and crashing the US government by a lie-infused Elon Musk, and then added his own wild demands for ending the debt ceiling. The replacement bill Trump supported failed due to Republican -- not Democratic -- opposition on Thursday. Then last night his party along with Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March without the one thing he demanded -- a suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling, something he told Republicans they needed to fight for and keep the government shut until they won.

Trump was politically weakened this week, and it was all impulsive, reckless, self-inflicted wounds. He followed Elon, a bomb-throwing pro-Russia extremist, and got terribly burned. Speaker Johnson was also weakened, and the Republican Party, looked immature, foolish and not ready to govern. This was a fucking disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and the media is being remarkably direct in saying so this morning. Here’s Axios’ lead story today.

Recent Trumpian/MAGA stumbles:

  • John Thune was elected to be Senate majority leader, despite a fevered push by Trump allies to elect Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) He didn't even make it past the first round of votes.
  • Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was forced to withdraw from consideration to be attorney general. Despite being celebrated by some in Trump's orbit, the votes weren't there from Senate Republicans.
  • 38 House Republicans defied Trump by voting against a short-term spending deal he explicitly asked for. Congressional Republicans went against Trump's wishes again by voting for a spending bill that didn't include an increase in the country's debt ceiling.

For Trump to have put himself into a position of taking such a huge and consequential loss before even becoming President is big-time, holy-shit, political incompetence and is being see that way all across this city. It has weakened him with the very people he needs to pass his agenda passed and get his outrageous nominees through. It has been a stunning -- and encouraging -- few days.

elon musk sideviewIn this spirit  people are starting to come to terms with the dangers and recklessness of Trumpism -- recognizing that it isn’t just “locker room talk” or that there are actually bullets in the gun -- we are learning today that the man who committed the lethal terrorist attack in Germany yesterday was a devout follower of Elon Musk.

ny times logoNew York Times, One Way Democrats Want to Gain Votes: Talk Up Their Faith, Katie Glueck, Dec. 22, 2024. In a party that has grown less religious, some prominent Democrats say discussing their deepest beliefs can be an authentic way to connect.

As the Democratic Party wanders in the post-election wilderness after the bruising defeats of 2024, some of its newer leaders are tapping into an ancient form of connection: religion.

In Texas, a young lawmaker who could run statewide is urging his fellow white progressives to embrace discussions of faith in politics.

In Georgia, a Black pastor and U.S. senator is reclaiming religious language from those on the right who, he suggests, have twisted it to their own ends.

And in Pennsylvania, the Jewish governor’s faith is a central part of his public identity, evident in his campaign advertising and his major speeches — and even at a recent Christmas tree lighting.

“If y’all have not seen ‘National Lampoon Christmas Vacation,’ take it from this Jewish guy,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said as he addressed a holiday celebration in Harrisburg, Pa., this month. “You better go and rent that movie.”

While President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has often carried a rosary and playfully crossed himself, he long stood out in an increasingly secular Democratic Party.

But with his exit from public life nearing, a small but prominent cast of Scripture-quoting, religiously observant Democratic politicians — many of them poised to command national attention over the next four years — is signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule.

 

More U.S. Political Commentary

 

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump

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.  heather cox richardson cnnShortly 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.

“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted. But it rejects the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires that Republicans sought, and it ensures the government can continue to operate at full capacity,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s good news for the American people, especially as families gather to celebrate this holiday season.”

Passing continuing resolutions to fund the government is usually unremarkable, but this fight showed some lines that will stretch into the future.

First of all, it showed the unprecedented influence of billionaire private individual Elon Musk over the Republicans who in 2025 will control the United States government. Musk has a strong financial interest in the outcome of discussions, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he had included Musk as well as President-elect Trump in the negotiation of the original bipartisan funding bill.

Then Musk blew up the agreement by issuing what was an apparent threat to fund primary challengers to any Republican who voted for it. He apparently scuttled the measure on his own hook, since Trump took about thirteen hours to respond to his torpedoing it.

Musk expressed willingness to leave the government unfunded for a month, apparently unconcerned that a shutdown would send hundreds of thousands of government workers deemed nonessential into temporary leave without pay. This would include about 800,000 civilian employees of the Pentagon, about 17,000 people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and those who staff the nation’s national parks, national monuments, and other federal sites.

Federal workers considered essential would have to continue to work without pay. These essential workers include air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers. Military personnel would also have to continue to work without pay.

Taking away paychecks is always wrenching, but to do it right before the winter holidays would devastate families. It would hurt the economy, too, since for many retailers the holiday season is when their sales are highest. Musk—who doesn’t answer to any constituents—seemed untroubled at the idea of hurting ordinary Americans. ″‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” he tweeted.

In the end, Congress passed a bill much like the one Musk scuttled, but one of the provisions that Congress stripped out of the old bill was extraordinarily important to Musk. As David Dayen explained in The Prospect, the original agreement had an “outbound investment” provision that restricted the ability of Americans to invest in technology factories in China. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) had collaborated on the measure, hoping to keep cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as well as the jobs they would create, in America rather than let companies move them to China.

As Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) explained, Musk is building big factories in China and wants to build an AI data center there, even though it could endanger U.S. security. McGovern charged that Musk’s complaints about the spending in the bill were cover for his determination to tank the provision that would limit his ability to move technology and business to China. And, he noted, it worked. The outbound investment provision was stripped out of the bill before it passed.

In The Prospect, Robert Kuttner explained this huge win for Musk, as well as other provisions that were stripped from the bill before it passed. After years of fighting, Tami Luhby of CNN explained, Congress agreed to reform the system in which pharmacy benefit managers act as middlemen between pharmaceutical companies and insurers, employers, and government officials. The original bill increased transparency and provided that pharmacy benefit managers would be compensated with flat fees rather than compensation tied to the price of drugs. The measures related to pharmacy benefit managers were stripped out of the measure that passed.

That lost reform shows another line that will stretch into the future: Trump’s team is working for big business. As Kuttner puts it, Trump, who is allegedly a populist leader, tanked a bipartisan spending bill in order to shield the Chinese investments of the richest man in the world and to protect the profits of second-largest pharmacy benefit manager UnitedHealth Group, the corporation for which murdered executive Brian Thompson worked.

Other measures stripped from the original bill were five different bills to combat childhood cancer. The idea that sick children were among the first victims of the funding showdown sparked widespread outrage. While the Senate did not return the entire $190 million worth of funding to the continuing resolution, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) pushed the chamber to pass the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, devoting $63 million to extend the original measure that was passed in 2014 in honor of a Virginia girl who advocated for cancer funding until her death in 2013 at the age of ten. Representative Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) had shepherded the measure through the House in November, when it received only four no votes, all from Republicans.

The Senate also passed a measure repealing two laws that have curtailed Social Security benefits for teachers, firefighters, local police officers, and other public sector workers.

Finally, the struggle over the continuing resolution shows, once again, that Trump is weaker than his team claims. While Musk got the Chinese investment restrictions stripped out of the final bill, Congress passed the measure without Trump’s demand for freedom from the debt ceiling in it. This failure comes after Senate Republicans rejected Trump’s choice for Senate majority leader and after his first nominee for attorney general, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), had so little support he was forced to withdraw from consideration.

Trump has been angling to get Florida governor Ron DeSantis to name his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Florida senatorship that will be vacated if Senator Marco Rubio becomes secretary of state, despite her lack of any previous experience in elected office. But that plan, too, seems to have gone awry.

Today, Lara Trump announced: “After an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many, I have decided to remove my name from consideration for the United States Senate.”

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Biden Sets PERFECT TRAP for Trump before DAY 1, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little mtn meidas touch networkgun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer.MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on President Biden laying traps to stop Trump for implementing his dangerous agenda.

Politico Magazine, The Political World Just Lost its Last Bipartisan Meeting Place, Jonathan Martin, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little gun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer. David Axelrod’s podcast was the last place where members of the opposite party could sit down and share ideas.

politico CustomAt a moment when members of the opposite party rarely appear together on television, most political interviews are fleeting and the election may have doomed the last digital town square, David Axelrod’s podcast was an oasis.

Now, after a remarkable 605 shows over more than nine years, Axelrod is concluding his program by interviewing his fellow Chicagoan, Rahm Emanuel.

I’m sad to see “The Axe Files” go, in part because it’s more essential now than ever.

Yes, it was respectful and it generated more light than heat. There were no food fights. But I come to praise Axe, not bury him in a shroud of bygone-day nostalgia for civil discourse.

What made the program so compelling — and unique in this period — was that he had candid, deeply personal and extended interviews with the leading figures in both parties. Where else can that combination be found today?

I should disclose here that Axelrod also had on a range of figures from the media, along with other walks of life, and I sat for a session in 2016. That’s the right word because the show was always equal parts therapy session and journalistic inquiry.

Axelrod doesn’t have psychiatric training — that I know of — but he was once a superb political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He’s got ink in his DNA and that came through in every program, when he’d try to make news or at least prompt reflection. I could always tell he hated the shows where his guests showed up with talking points. (Been there!)

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 20, 2024 [GOP Power Vacuum], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 21, 2024. This evening the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for three months. The measure will fund the government at current levels halfway through March. It also appropriates $100 billion in disaster aid for regions hit by the storms and fires of the summer and fall, as well as $10 billion for farmers.

Getting to this agreement has exposed the power vacuum in the Republican Party and thus a crisis in the government of the United States.

This fight over funding has been brewing since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2023. From their first weeks in office, when they launched the longest fight over a House speaker since 1860, the Republicans were bitterly divided. MAGA Republicans want to slash government so deeply that it will no longer be able to regulate business, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights. Establishment Republicans also want to cut the government, but they recognize that with Democrats in charge of the Senate and a Democratic president, they cannot get everything they want.

As Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post recounted, when the nation hit the debt ceiling in spring 2023, Republicans used it to demand that the Democrats cut the budget back to 2022 levels. Democrats objected that they had raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times under Trump and that Republicans had agreed to the budget to which the new Republicans were demanding cuts.

The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped micromanaging the instruments the Treasury used to borrow money and instead simply set a debt limit. That procedure began to be a political weapon after the tax cuts first during President George W. Bush’s term and then under President Donald Trump reduced government revenues to 16.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product while spending has risen to nearly 23%. This gap means the country must borrow money to meet its budget appropriations, eventually hitting the ceiling.

Today, social media exploded with the realization that an unelected billionaire from South Africa who apparently supports fascism was able to intimidate Republican legislators into doing his bidding. In this last week, Trump has threatened former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) with prosecution for her work as a member of Congress and has sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was unfavorable to him before the November election. Those actions are classic authoritarian moves to consolidate power, but to those not paying close attention they were perhaps less striking than the reality that Musk appears to have taken over for Trump as the incoming president.

As CNN’s Erin Burnett pointed out “the world’s richest man, right now, holding the country hostage,” Democrats worked to call attention to this crisis. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) said: “We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time the Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”

Republicans, too, seemed dismayed at Musk’s power. Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him, but I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.”

Tonight the House passed a measure much like the one Musk and Trump had undermined, funding the government and providing the big-ticket disaster and farm relief but not raising or getting rid of the debt ceiling. According to Jennifer Scholtes of Politico, Republican leadership tried to get party members on board by promising to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion early in 2025 while also cutting $2.5 trillion in “mandatory” spending, which covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP nutrition assistance.

The fiasco of the past few days is a political blow to Trump. Musk overshadowed him, and when Trump demanded that Republicans free him from the debt ceiling, they ignored him.

Politico, Johnson hits unsteady point of his speakership at the worst time, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney, Dec. 21, 2024. One Republican has already vowed to oppose him due to the spending fiasco, and he can’t afford to lose another due to his incredibly thin majority.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), right .

politico Custommike johnson oHouse conservatives are putting Speaker Mike Johnson on notice: He has work to do if he wants to keep his job.

The Louisiana Republican is at his weakest point after he was caught between President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the right flank of his party in a bruising fight over spending that just barely averted a government shutdown.Politico, Trump's man in the Vatican, President-elect Donald Trump said

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Trump is already walking back his promises. Why don't the headlines simply say, "He Lied"??? Thom thom hartmann newHartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. The main promise Trump made to American voters before the election was that he’d “immediately” lower grocery and other prices.

Anybody with even a tiny bit of civics education knows that’s nearly impossible; the president doesn’t control any agency or have any power other than the bully pulpit to affect marketplace prices. Just ask Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were both one-term presidents largely because of inflation. Nonetheless, Trump repeated that promise over and over and voters believed him. Now, as Todd Beeton points out in his excellent Big Picture newsletter, Trump has dismissed this promise as something he never really intended to do because, as noted, it’s simply not possible. When asked on Meet The Press if he’d keep his promise to lower prices, he replied bluntly, “I can’t promise anything.” Right. He’d also promised he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 and their plans to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other popular government programs; now he’s stocking his administration with the actual authors of that document. He’d also promised to end the Ukraine war the day after his election; now it just looks like he’s going to leave that democratic nation and its millions of people to the tender mercies of Russia’s brutal tyrant and his rapist soldiers. Finally, Trump promised not to attack Social Security with his campaign sending out literally millions of flyers to homes in swing states saying he’d protect the program; that’s already in the crapper as the DOGE caucus and Musk’s people are examining the program for cutbacks. Republican Rep. Greg Lopez went so far as to bluntly tell Social Security Works’ president Alex Lawson, ‘there will be some cuts’ to Social Security. The three areas where it appears Trump may keep his promises are putting an anti-vaccine crackpot in charge of our vaccine programs, cutting more taxes for his billionaire donors, and setting out on a revenge spree once he controls the Justice Department. This is going to get ugly fast.

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Republicans in Congress kick the can down the road to March,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Democrats in thom hartmann newthe House and Senate pitched in and helped pass a stopgap funding continuing resolution to keep the government open until March.

It does not include the lifting of the debt ceiling which Trump and Musk wanted to prepare for the next round of borrowing trillions from American taxpayers to give to their billionaire friends as tax cuts. Nor did it cut entitlement programs, which so pissed off rightwing Republicans that 34 of them voted against the bill. But those corrupt Republicans who love the morbidly rich and hate average Americans haven’t given up hope; here’s the operant sentence from the article in today’s Washington Post about the vote: “[Johnson] proposed a handshake deal with fiscal hawks in his own party to try next year to slash mandatory spending — programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ health care and food stamps — by at least $2.5 trillion while raising the debt cap by $1.5 trillion, according to three people familiar with the details.” That’s how they plan to get to a $4 trillion tax cut transfer of wealth from all of us to the top 1% this coming spring: Get your popcorn.

 

pete hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Senate Passes Pediatric Cancer Research Funding, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 21, 2024. This funding was passed despite Republicans taking it out of the House Continuing Resolution

mtn meidas touch networkOvernight, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund pediatric cancer research that was originally stripped from the House Continuing Resolution to keep the government.

Previously, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was included in a deal in the House as part of the bill to keep the government open.

There was bipartisan support for this legislation until Elon Musk and Donald Trump stepped in, at which point Republicans removed the cancer funding from the updated continuing resolution.

At the same time, Senator Rand Paul was blocking the bill from moving forward as a stand alone bill in the United States Senate.

For a while it seemed as though this critical cancer research funding would not be included in any final continuing resolution given the Republican Party's opposition in the House. But, overnight, the United States Senate passed the bill via unanimous consent after Paul dropped his objections to the bill.

As a result, the bill will head to the President's desk who will likely sign the bill into law and ensure funding goes to the National Institute of Health for pediatric cancer research.

Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer's leadership, continue to push to pass the bill despite the failures of the House of Representatives.

 

Trump Transition News, Commentary

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Picks a Former Treasury Official as His Top Economist, Lisa Friedman, Dec. 22, 2024.  Stephen Miran, who served during Donald Trump’s first term and now works at a hedge fund, has accused the Biden administration of manipulating markets.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he was choosing Stephen Miran, who served in the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers.

“Steve will work with the rest of my Economic team to deliver a Great Economic Boom that lifts up all Americans,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement on social media.

The Council of Economic Advisers is a panel of experts that historically has operated within the White House, providing the president with advice on domestic and international economic policy.

Mr. Miran, whose role requires Senate confirmation, was a senior adviser for economic policy at the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, a role that included advising on fiscal support during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009politico CustomPresident-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

Politico, Trump taps critic of Pope Francis for Vatican ambassadorship, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 20, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

politico CustomIn a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Burch will face a Senate confirmation process, but it is unlikely he will encounter stiff resistance from Republicans, as his views aren’t considered controversial in the party.

trump 2024Burch would be far from the first ambassador to the Holy See with a political background. Presidents from both parties have selected former elected officials who are practicing Catholics such as President Joe Biden picking Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Trump picked political activist Callista Gingrich in his first term. He also wouldn't be the first to have ideological or theological disagreements with the church.

But none of the picks to helm the Vatican to date would come into the role with as much a digital record of criticizing church leadership. On social media, Burch has criticized Francis’ leadership and shared the writings of some right-wing clerics who are critical of him. In 2023, he insinuated that church leaders were collaborating with controversial U.S. law enforcement probes into parishes that celebrated the Catholic Mass in Latin, a practice that was phased out decades ago for liturgy in local languages.

Writing on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

At the time, Burch defended geofencing as needed to “reach our fellow Catholics in the pews” and “ensure that our fellow Catholic voters get the facts and hear the truth — not the latest lies peddled by the media.”

 

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Mother Jones Magazine, Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda, david corn newDavid Corn, right, Dec. 16, 2024. It’s going to get very ugly.

"Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this FBI logomoment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now."

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Politico, The Catholics in Trump’s administration could take GOP in whole new direction, Megan Messerly, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The president-elect has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions.

politico CustomJoe Biden will leave the White House in January as only the second Catholic to occupy it. But a number of Catholics are expected to soon fill the ranks of Donald Trump’s administration.

Trump, who was raised as a Presbyterian but now considers himself non-denominational, has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions in his administration, including his own vice president JD Vance, left, a Catholic convert, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, rfk jr mouth openhis pick for Health and Human Services Secretary.

Their faith could play a direct role in shaping public policy, from pro-union policies and new tariffs to expanding the child jd vancetax credit and more tightly regulating the food and drug industries — and also help carve a new path forward for the Republican Party.

In interviews, several conservative practicing Catholic leaders said they see a close alignment between many of Trump’s second-term policy priorities and a conservative read of Catholic social teaching, which goes far beyond abortion. It’s also focused on promoting marriage and having children, giving parents wide discretion on everything from school content to health care and empowering non-governmental institutions like churches and nonprofit organizations for social support.

“No one’s walking into the administration ready to mount a crusade or anything,” said Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. But “there’s a very specific sort of Catholic paradigm that you may begin to see.”

trump 2024It comes after decades of influence of a more individualistic evangelical Protestantism on the Republican Party that, among other things, strongly embraced individual liberty and free market capitalism.

“The market is not an end unto itself. The market has a purpose — and that is to create a free and flourishing society. If the family is not doing well, society is not doing well. We need to make sure our public policy is helping family to function,” Bovard added.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

In his nearly decade of political prominence, Trump has already dramatically reshaped the GOP, and it’s clear that the Republican Party’s future likely won’t be found in Ronald Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism, which was fiscally conservative, socially conservative and hawkish.

Where Republicans have long been skeptical of government intervention, some in the party increasingly see the government as a tool to reshape social policy. Republicans who long embraced “pro-life” policies, like restricting abortion access and supporting crisis pregnancy centers, are now leaning into a broader set of what they call pro-family policies that range from tax policies encouraging people to get married and have children to restrictions on kids accessing online porn. They are also now starting to turn a skeptical eye toward big businesses, including Big Pharma, Big Ag and Big Tech.

ny times logoNew York Times, News Analysis: Why Wray’s Resignation May Signal a Shift in F.B.I. Tradition, Devlin Barrett, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.).  Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher christopher wray oin a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director changes with the administration.

trump 2024Christopher A. Wray, right, had considered resigning as F.B.I. director before. More than once, confronted with angry demands from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, he contemplated calling it quits.

When Mr. Wray on Wednesday announced his intent to do so, it was because he believed staying on the job into a second Trump term risked significant disruptions to the work force and its mission.

Justice Department log circularMr. Trump had already declared his plan to replace him with Kash Patel, a tough-talking loyalist who has vowed to force out bureau leaders and empty its Washington headquarters.

In conceding to the reality of raw power, Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director is more of a political post that changes with the administration.

For decades, F.B.I. directors have been appointed to 10-year terms to insulate them from the shifting winds of politics. Few F.B.I. directors stay a full decade, and the circumstances of Mr. Wray’s departure after seven years suggest that insulation has worn thin.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein, Dec. 14, 2024 Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logotrump 2024President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

Mr. Trump has long said that people he claims have wronged him should be prosecuted, including President Biden and his family; Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents; and Liz Cheney, the former representative from Wyoming who helped lead the House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power in 2020.

In recent months, he has filed various legal actions against the media that amount to a warning shot about what sort of retaliation journalists, in particular, might face.

As he prepares to take office again, Mr. Trump will have at his disposal the levers of government, a Republican Party that is more pliant than it was four years ago and a well-funded external political apparatus.

“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” said Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law whose book, “Actual Malice,” is about the Supreme Court’s most famous defamation case. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”

Ms. Barbas added that prevailing in court may be beside the point. The lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening,” she said.

Many of Mr. Trump’s lawsuits go nowhere, including one that accused Hillary Clinton and a group of other Democrats of being part of a racketeering conspiracy against him. That particular suit resulted in nearly $1 million in fines issued by the judge against Mr. Trump’s lawyer.

 

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Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, lance rosenright, 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.

kash patel headshot smileThe 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 logoFacebook 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.

mark zuckerberg G8 summit deauville wAnd 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.

 

 

Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts in historic indictment linked to Stormy Daniels hush money probe (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).

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.

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ny times logoNew 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.

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if the decision withstands an appeal, Mr. Trump could become the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, criticized the ruling, calling it “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.”

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Imagesand TNS).

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Images and TNS).

 

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair.

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.

Politico Magazine, Opinion: You Should Worry About Kash Patel Running the FBI, Ankush Khardori, Dec. 14, 2024. The days of J. Edgar Hoover may be over, but kash patel headshot smilePatel’s nomination is deeply worrisome all the same.t national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

politico CustomSome key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close.

Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” Trump told NBC News that the members of the Jan. 6 committee should “go to jail” (even as he claimed that he would not direct his appointees to prosecute them). And his plan to install Kash Patel, right, as FBI director was made easier after Christopher Wray, himself a Trump appointee, announced he would resign despite having more than two years left on his term.

Trump’s decision to nominate Patel has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump. (A Trump transition spokesperson said, “Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic director.”)

trump 2024Many observers, including former federal law enforcement officials, oppose Patel’s nomination on the grounds that he would likely use the FBI to pursue Trump’s political opponents and that he might substantially corrupt the culture and professionalism of the bureau. To some, Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.

Patel clearly lacks the qualifications, experience and temperament to lead the agency. But how worried should the American public really be about him at the helm of the FBI?

The truth is that there are stronger internal and external safeguards in place against law enforcement abuses than during the Hoover era. He will indeed face some constraints because of the culture and bureaucracy of the FBI. But they may not contain him. And he will have plenty of opportunity to damage the bureau and its work — and to use and abuse the FBI for political ends. His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.

ny times logoNew York Times, Young Republicans Gather, Ready to Make America Vengeful Again, Shawn McCreesh, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). At a gala on Wall Street for the New York Young Republican Club, attendees were looking forward to retribution from the next Trump era, and musing on another run in 2028.  Late Sunday night, in a banquet hall inside the grand old Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street, the Republican operative Stephen K. Bannon was putting on one of his over-the-top, apocalyptic performances.

It was the annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — prom for pro-Trump provocateurs — and Mr. Bannon, 71, was the keynote speaker. Standing onstage, beneath soaring Corinthian columns and a vaulted ceiling, he looked out upon a sea of baby-faced acolytes in black tie and outlined the way forward for them and for the Trump restoration.

Donald J. Trump “is a leader of all the people,” Mr. Bannon said. “He’s got a kind heart and big soul. But that’s not us, right? We want retribution. And we’re going to get retribution.” The Young Republicans cheered.

Mr. Bannon added: “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28? Come on, man!” And they all roared some more.

Asked later if he thought Mr. Bannon was being serious about Mr. Trump making an unconstitutional run for a third term in 2028, the club’s 30-year-old leader, Gavin Wax, waved it off. “I think that was more of a light-handed remark to make fun and be a little jovial, but let’s focus on these four years and making the best of it,” he said.

That’s often how it goes with this crowd of Trump true believers. Like the man himself, they say outrageous things, and nobody knows how seriously to take them. They often don’t even seem to know how seriously to take themselves.


A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: F.B.I. Director to Step Down, Adam Goldman and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Wray told F.B.I. employees he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

christopher wray oThe F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, right, told bureau employees on Wednesday that he intended in January, bowing to the reality that President-elect Donald J. Trump had publicly declared his desire to replace him.

Mr. Wray made the disclosure while addressing employees Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Wray added that he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

FBI logoThe announcement comes after Mr. Trump said in late November that he intended to nominate Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist, to run the F.B.I., and more than two years before Mr. Wray’s 10-year term would have expired.

Over more than seven years, Mr. Wray oversaw one of the most consequential and tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history, juggling high-profile criminal investigations of political figures, heated congressional inquiries and two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump.

Even as he fended off Mr. Trump’s relentless criticisms of the F.B.I., Mr. Wray supervised a wide array of national security issues that included terrorism, escalating cyberattacks and threats from geopolitical rivals like China, Iran and Russia. He also had to grapple with a spate of mass shootings and the rise of right-wing extremism while managing an agency with 35,000 employees and a budget of more than $10 billion.

ICE logoBut it was the bureau’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump that almost certainly cut short Mr. Wray’s tenure.

His F.B.I. repeatedly investigated Mr. Trump, including by searching the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents, examining his widespread efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and delving into the possible links between his 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence operatives engaged in election interference.

“He invaded Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Trump told NBC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”

Justice Department log circularUnder Mr. Wray’s watch, agents also investigated the current president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his handling of sensitive records after he left the vice presidency. They undertook several other politically charged cases that made the agency the subject of sharp partisan scrutiny, including its inquiry into Hunter Biden.

In the face of intense political cajoling, second-guessing and condemnation, Mr. Wray frequently urged his agents to “keep calm and tackle hard,” and preached a strict adherence to the investigative process that has been the agency’s calling card for decades.

His apparent successor could not be more different. Mr. Patel, a former federal prosecutor and public defender, is a fierce critic of the F.B.I. and has vowed to fire its leadership, empty its headquarters and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.”

“If Kash gets in, he’ll be taking somebody’s place, and that somebody is the man you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said in the interview with NBC News, referring to Mr. Wray.

Mr. Wray became the bureau’s eighth director in August 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey from the job in 2017 in the middle of the Russia investigation.

At the start, Mr. Trump called Mr. Wray “a man of impeccable credentials.” But the president quickly soured on him.

Mr. Wray withstood extraordinary pressure from Mr. Trump to leverage the powers of law enforcement to damage his perceived enemies and later to play down the threats of right-wing violent extremism and Russian election interference.

The rift between the men grew as Mr. Wray waved off false claims the president peddled about voter fraud and left-wing extremists. His tenure became increasingly tenuous after William P. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, in part because he had fallen out of favor with the president. Mr. Barr was said to have argued against firing the F.B.I. director, shielding Mr. Wray from Mr. Trump’s fury.

Mr. Trump’s allies also took aim at Mr. Wray, faulting him for not speaking out vociferously against the Russia investigation or the botched wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser.

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump publicly declared that Mr. Wray should resign, and it was clear his antipathy had only intensified, partly because of the 2022 search of his Florida home.

After an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa., Mr. Trump lashed out at the F.B.I. because the bureau did not definitively say he had been shot in the ear.

“No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

In leaving before Mr. Trump is sworn in, Mr. Wray may avoid the kind of public standoff that marked some firings during the first Trump administration. kash patel headshot smilekash patel gangsters coverBut the turbulence at the F.B.I. is all but certain to continue if Mr. Patel, right (and author of the book Government Gangsters, shown at left, is confirmed and Mr. Trump tries to make sweeping changes at the agency.

Mr. Trump has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute his perceived enemies, whom he accuses of unfairly prosecuting him. He has also called for investigations of prosecutors, judges and politicians.

In his first term, Mr. Trump sought to weigh in on F.B.I. operations and at times expressed frustration that presidents typically stayed out of the bureau’s business.

“I am not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said in 2017. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Health Care Exec's Murder

Senate in November. ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus,

ny times logoNew 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 logoWashington 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.

brian thompsonThompson, 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?

salon LogoOn 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.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Public Health, Scandal, #MeToo, Trafficking, Abortion.

 

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).

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

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 bulwark logo big shiphealth 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!

trump 2024Kennedy 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 jonathan v lastfront lines.

bulwark logo big shipBret 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.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

rfk jr california unnamed

 

U.S. Law, Cases, Courts

ny times logoNew York Times, Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say, Charlie Savage, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two more trips from a wealthy patron was included in a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ny times logoNew York Times, Top Uniformed N.Y.P.D. Officer Resigns After Abuse Allegations, Hurubie Meko, Maria Cramer and William K. Rashbaum, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Jeffrey Maddrey traded sexual favors for overtime, according to a report from The New York Post. He had previously been accused of harassment on the job.

New York City’s top uniformed police officer, the chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, setting off local and federal investigations and extending years of turmoil at the Police Department.

The former chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it, according to a statement from the department on Saturday.

Mayor Eric Adams had vocally supported Mr. Maddrey, a close ally, as recently as October. But on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the mayor, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said that he was working with Commissioner Tisch to conduct a “separate departmentwide review to ensure no high-ranking officers are using their power inappropriately.”

“We are deeply disturbed by these allegations and the N.Y.P.D. is investigating this matter,” Ms. Mamelak Altus said.

ny times logoNew York Times, They Made Over $100,000 in Overtime. Now the N.Y.P.D. Is Cracking Down, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Eliza Shapiro, Dec. 22, 2024. Commissioner Jessica Tisch has reassigned at least 29 officers. Some worked under Jeffrey Maddrey, who was accused of demanding sex from a subordinate.

Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year. The moves come as investigators are scrutinizing accusations that Jeffrey Maddrey, the department’s former highest-ranking uniformed officer, demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for overtime.

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.

Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.

Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.Federal investigators have joined a city Department of Investigation inquiry into the provision of overtime and the allegations of misconduct against Mr. Maddrey, who resigned on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter. The F.B.I. declined to comment on Sunday. The Manhattan district attorney is also investigating.

ny times logoNew York Times, Suspect Is Held After Woman Set on Fire in Subway Car Dies, Police Say, Johnny Diaz and Sara Ruberg, Dec. 22, 2024. The  victim had been seated in a subway car at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn when a man set her on fire.

Early Sunday morning, a man calmly approached a woman who was sitting motionless and possibly dozing on a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station and, without saying anything, lit the woman’s clothes on fire, engulfing her in deadly flames in seconds, the police said.

The man then watched from a bench on the subway platform as officers and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire.

The woman, who had not yet been identified as of Sunday night, was pronounced dead at the scene. Hours later, the man was taken into custody in connection with the fatal attack while riding another F train.

Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said at a news conference on Sunday evening that the police apprehended someone they believe “carried out one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being, and it took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

The man was found with a lighter, the police commissioner said. The man, who was not publicly identified, emigrated from Guatemala to the United States in 2018, Chief Gulotta said.

Last year, overall crime in the transit system dropped nearly 3 percent compared with 2022 as the number of daily riders rose by 14 percent.

According to a Dec. 18 news release from the governor’s office, subway crime was down 42 percent since 2021 while ridership has increased 148 percent.

washington post logoWashington Post, Senate confirms 2 Biden judicial nominees, boosting total over Trump, Tobi Raji, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). President Joe Biden’s diverse cohort of judges includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other U.S. president.

The Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s last two judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, surpassing Donald Trump’s first-term total of 234 judges even as the president-elect’s second term will afford him the chance to make many more judicial appointments.Get the latest election news and results

Benjamin J. Cheeks was confirmed to a seat in the Southern District of California by a vote of 49-47. Serena R. Murillo was confirmed to the Central District of California by the same vote count. Cheeks and Murillo are the 234th and 235th judges confirmed under Biden.

Their confirmations add to a diverse cohort of judges nominated by Biden that includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other president in U.S. history.

“We have people who are from all across America and who resemble America,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a news conference with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee after Cheeks and Murillo’s confirmations. “Our courts are stronger. Our courts are better. They reflect our country.”

A former magistrate judge, Cheeks is the 63rd Black judge confirmed during the Biden administration, setting a record for the most Black judges confirmed during a presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Murillo, who previously served as a Superior Court judge, is the 150th woman and 24th Latina judge confirmed under Biden, according to the group.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Former FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov Pleads Guilty To Lying About Biden Family, Jordy Meiselas, Dec. 16, 2024. Smirnov lied about a bribery scheme that became a critical part of the Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden.

mtn meidas touch networkAlexander Smirnov has officially pled guilty to lying about a bribery scheme that involved President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican attempt to impeach President Biden.

Smirnov entered a guilty plea to a felony charge related to the fake bribery story along with other criminal tax charges related to his concealment of millions of dollars of income.

In 2020, Smirnov first made claims that the Bidens had been involved in a bribery scheme related to Burisma and Ukraine. At the same time, Smirnov expressed bias about President Biden as a candidate.

An FBI office investigated Smirnov's allegations but closed the case in August 2020, and there has been no evidence that President Biden acted corruptly or accepted any bribes as President or Vice President.

At the time, it was unknown that Smirnov's allegations were the basis of a Republican attempt to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. And we now know that the story premising the impeachment inquiry was false.

Prosecutors agreed to a deal with Smirnov and recommended that he serve between four and six years in prison. The ultimate sentencing decision will be made by a federal judge at a later date.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Diaz, a 2010 Obama appointee, found that given its context, Ponsor’s article could be read “as a commentary on partisan issues and as a call for Justice Alito’s recusal.” Diaz closed the complaint because Ponsor acknowledged violating the rules, apologized for his actions and said he would seek ethics advice before doing any further outside writing.

“With the benefit of an objective perspective, I realize now that my criticism of the ethical judgment of a Supreme Court Justice might have had the effect of undermining the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judicial system,” Ponsor said in a letter appended to Diaz’s order.

Ponsor, who also wrote a 2023 opinion column titled “A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?”, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mike Davis, the activist and Trump ally who filed a complaint that triggered the review, said he was satisfied. “The courts and Judge Ponsor took this seriously. I accept his apology letter at face value,” said Davis, founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for conservative judges.

Critics of the Supreme Court were less sanguine.

“Justice Alito currently faces no consequences for his public commentary and actions that cast doubt on his impartiality, but the judge who raised legitimate concerns about these ethical lapses is disciplined in response to a complaint by a political activist with an axe to grind,” said a Durbin spokesman, Josh Sorbe.

Alito didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in May he wrote a three-page letter declining to recuse himself from the Jan. 6 cases. He said then it was his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who flew various flags at their homes, a practice he disfavored and had no part in. Under the Supreme Court’s recently adopted ethics code, each justice evaluates his or her own conduct. Alito determined that he would remain on those cases because his impartiality couldn’t reasonably be questioned.

Alito joined the majority in both Jan. 6 cases, limiting the charges against rioters and extending criminal immunity for former presidents.

washington post logoWashington Post, Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter, Sarah Blaskey, Patrick Marley, Hannah Natanson and Reis Thebault, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Court records show Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow’s parents had divorced and remarried multiple times.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others at her small Christian school here Monday had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy.You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

wisconsin map with largest cities CustomNatalie Rupnow, who also went by Samantha, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after police say she opened fire in a study hall classroom at Abundant Life Christian School.

The academy’s tight-knit community was still stunned Tuesday, grieving the student and teacher who were killed and searching for answers to explain the latest act of violence to strike an American campus.

Police have released few details about Rupnow beyond her name, and they said they were investigating a possible motive behind the shooting. With much still unknown, a Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.

“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference, where he asked the public for patience as authorities investigated Rupnow’s social media activity and state of mind leading up to the rampage.

The teen is one of just nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by The Post. She is also among the younger recent shooters: Just over a month removed from her 15th birthday, she was about a year younger than the median age of school shooters. And the violence unfolded at a small K-12 school with a religious affiliation, an uncommon site for such incidents, researchers say.

“A lot of this is quite surprising,” said Jillian Peterson, the executive director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center at Hamline University.

Rupnow’s mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Police said they have been cooperating with the investigation.

Rupnow’s father is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter, according to a review of his Facebook profile. The Post confirmed the account as Jeff Rupnow’s by verifying its authenticity with a person who attended school with him and by comparing the page’s contents to public records.

His posts celebrate his daughter’s achievements, such as the time she earned a purple belt in karate, and mark big life moments, like the day he bought a house. But one post, from August, has attracted more scrutiny than others.

In it, a photo appears to show Natalie Rupnow wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range, which her father identifies as North Bristol Sportsman’s Club in nearby Sun Prairie. In a comment accompanying the post, Jeff Rupnow wrote that he and his daughter had joined the club early this year and “we have been loving all every second of it!”

In the photograph, Natalie Rupnow is wearing a T-shirt bearing the letters “KMFDM,” an apparent reference to the German rock band whose lyrics were posted on the website of one of the shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Authorities declined to comment on social media posts, saying they were still investigating Natalie Rupnow’s online activity. Police have not disclosed how Rupnow was able to acquire the handgun they say she used in Monday’s shooting.

“How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?” Barnes, the police chief, said Monday, adding that his team was working with federal authorities to answer that question. He did not elaborate at the news conference Tuesday.

washington post logoWashington Post, Supreme Court to hear challenge to a TikTok ban in U.S., scheduling arguments for January, Ann E. Marimow and Eva Dou, Dec. 18, 2024. The justices said they will quickly take up the constitutionality of a federal law that would shutter TikTok next month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.

The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.Get the latest election news and results

In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

TikTok had asked the high court to intervene before Jan. 19, the deadline Congress set for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or be barred in the United States. The company wants the justices to put on hold a lower-court ruling that clears the way for the law, which was signed by President Joe Biden.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has suggested he could try to retain access to the app, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the ban-or-sale law.

Lawmakers passed the measure in response to concerns from U.S. officials that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

washington post logoWashington Post, Syphilis ravaged Renaissance Europe but may have origins in Americas, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Dec. 18, 2024.  For centuries, scientists have disputed the origins of the disease. A new study of ancient DNA suggests it emerged in the Americas before Columbus arrived.

In 1495, a devastating infection began to sweep across Europe, causing pustules and sores to erupt on people’s bodies and faces. Accusatory finger-pointing about the scourge, syphilis, began almost immediately. The Italians called it “the French disease”; the French called it “the Neapolitan disease”; the Russians called it “the Polish disease.”You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

The sexually transmitted disease remains a public health menace today, despite the fact that it is easily cured with antibiotics. But the scientific debate still rages about the ancient origins of syphilis — including why the wave of illness that swamped Renaissance Europe was so virulent.

Did syphilis initially emerge in the Americas and arrive in Europe in early 1493 when explorer Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, in the reverse of so many other illnesses that wiped out Indigenous peoples? Or was it a much older “pre-Columbian” disease that has been infecting humanity much longer — one that flew under the radar, perhaps mistaken for leprosy or another ailment in Medieval Europe?

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, an international team studied ancient DNA harvested from lesion-ridden bones or teeth of five people who lived in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Mexico either before or around the time of Columbus. They found that early versions of the microbe, Treponema pallidum, that causes syphilis and related diseases were already diverse and widespread. Their analysis suggests that syphilis emerged in the Americas within the last 8,000 years and spread across the globe fueled by European colonization.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump to nominate ex-NFL star Herschel Walker as Bahamas ambassador, Staff Reports, Dec. 18, 2024. President-elect Donald herschel walker hill tvTrump plans to nominate Herschel Walker, the former professional football player and Heisman Trophy winner who lost a scandal-trump 2024ridden bid for Senate in 2022, as ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump, meanwhile, moved closer to returning to the White House as the electoral college convened in all 50 states Tuesday and elected him to be the 47th president of the United States over Vice President Kamala Harris by a vote of 312 to 226.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. repatriates three Guantánamo detainees, leaving 27 at prison, Karen DeYoung Dec. 18, 2024. Two Malaysians charged with Southeast Asia bombings will serve additional sentences in their own country; a Kenyan charged with belonging to al-Qaeda in East Africa was sent home.

Three of the last remaining 30 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention center have been repatriated to their home countries — two to Malaysia and one to Kenya, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

Malaysians Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pleaded guilty in January before a U.S. military commission to charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses as lieutenants of the man known as Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia blamed for a number of deadly bombing attacks in the region in the early 2000s.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

They were arrested in 2003 in Thailand along with Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Encep Nurjaman. All three were held in the CIA’s “black sites,” a secret overseas prison network, until 2006, when they were transferred to Guantánamo.

As part of a plea agreement, the two Malaysians agreed in January to provide depositions for use in proceedings against Nurjaman and will serve additional “confinement for approximately five years” in their home country, according to a Pentagon statement issued after their scheduled departure early Wednesday.

The third repatriated prisoner, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, was sent to Kenya on Tuesday. Arrested by Kenyan authorities in 2007 and accused of belonging to al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, Bajabu was among the last five detainees to arrive at the U.S. facility in Cuba, established after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, that once held hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda operatives.

 

lina khan resized ftc

washington post logoWashington Post, FTC issues rules requiring hotels, ticket sellers to reveal ‘junk fees,’ Tony Romm, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). The industries must display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers or face potential federal punishment.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued long-awaited rules requiring companies to display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers, rather than hiding any extra charges — often called “junk fees” — until the very end of the checkout process.

The new regulations, which are slated to take effect next year, seek to crack down on “bait and switch” pricing practices, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan, who said the agency has received a groundswell of complaints about service charges, amenity fees and a raft of other potentially obscure, last-minute additions to consumers’ bills.

The FTC’s rules still allow companies to impose fees, so long as they are clearly displayed. The agency also focused its prohibition on just the lodging and live-event industries, not the fuller array of firms — from airlines to internet giants — that have similarly stoked public anger.

While the FTC initially proposed broader regulations, Khan narrowed the agency’s scope in a bid to secure bipartisan support among her five-member commission, which approved the proposal on a 4-1 vote. The lone opponent was Andrew Ferguson, a Republican, whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate to lead the FTC next year.

It is unclear how Ferguson would enforce the agency’s hidden-fees ban if he is confirmed by the Senate. In a dissenting statement, he blasted the agency for issuing rules “it will never enforce,” with Trump set to take office in January, but did not say how he might approach the issue as chairman.

Politico, Fetterman: Patel pledged to not go after political enemies, Mia McCarthy, Sen-elect John Curtis said he also talked with the FBI pick on the subject. “So I'm not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that's never going to happen,”Sen. John Fetterman, right, said when asked about Kash Patel’s past comments pledging to go after Trump’s enemies.

politico CustomKash Patel, right, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, kash patel headshot smileclaimed he would not go after his political enemies to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), despite Patel’s past claims that he would.

In an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that Patel told him he would not use the FBI to go after Trump’s enemies, despite his comments vowing to go after such people.

“So I’m not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that’s never going to happen,” Fetterman said when asked by host Jonathan Karl about Patel’s past comments pledging to go after political enemies. “That’s not it … that’s what he claims.”

trump 2024When Patel was nominated, a quote from him on a 2023 podcast interview with Steve Bannon was widely circulated. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel told Bannon then. Patel’s 2022 book, “Government Gangsters,” listed 60 potential targets for a new Trump administration.


john fetterman lt govFetterman, right, one of the few Democratic senators who has been meeting with Trump’s Cabinet picks, said he has no regrets about meeting with some of the controversial selections. He added that he learned a lot about Patel from his meeting, including that he used to be a public defender and his own family’s immigration story.

“There is going to be some [nominees] that I will vote yes, and there’s some, maybe that I’ll vote no,” Fetterman said. “But nobody can accuse me of just saying I had a closed mind, or I just said no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who will be sworn into Sen. Mitt Romney’s Senate seat in the new year, said that he discussed PaFBI logotel being blind to political affiliation in his new role.

“For me, one of the most important things that I needed to hear from Kash is that he would be blind to political affiliation, because I know some of the things that he said and that have been attributed to him,” Curtis said, also in an interview with Karl on “This Week.”

He added, “And I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats and we had some very specific conversations about that. And I wanted to make sure that he would be blind to that.”

When asked about Republicans claiming every senator should get in line with Trump and support his Cabinet picks because he has a mandate, Curtis said his son had brought up a similar concern at Thanksgiving.

“I did get more votes than him in Utah. Does that give me a mandate?’” Curtis said he told his son.

washington post logoWashington Post, The ‘perfect’ predator: How a police chief groomed a Texas town, Jenn Abelson, Alice Li, Jessica Contrera, Tucker Harris and Carolyn Van Houten, Dec. 18, 2024. The people of Maypearl, Texas, trusted Police Chief Kevin Coffey. Then they learned he was a sexual predator with a troubled past.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police Seek Motive in Shooting at Wisconsin Christian School, Julie Bosman, Dan Simmons, Mitch Smith and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 17, 2024 (print  ed.).  It’s not clear if the shooter, a student, targeted the teenage student and a teacher who were killed at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, the police said. At least six others were injured. Survivors described a fearful ordeal.

A teenage student opened fire at a Christian school in Madison, Wis., on Monday, killing another student and a teacher, the authorities said. At least six other people were injured in the shooting at the school, Abundant Life, where the youngest students fled from the building into the cold without coats, holding each others’ hands for safety.

Madison police identified the shooter on Monday night as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by Samantha. She was a student at the school, said the police chief, Shon F. Barnes, at an evening news conference. She was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital, and the evidence suggested she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Barnes said.

washington post logoWashington Post, In Ohio, an immigrant community prepares for Trump’s crackdown, Joanna Slater, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations could target places like Painesville, a small city in northeastern Ohio whose population has been transformed by immigration.

Veronica Isabel Dahlberg looked out at dozens of familiar faces gathered in a new community center on a recent Monday evening, all of them anxious for answers she didn’t have.

What would happen to the immigrants and farmworkers in this swath of northeastern Ohio?You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

Dahlberg, who has worked with the community for nearly three decades, couldn’t say whether President-elect Donald Trump would follow through on his pledge to carry out mass deportations. But she reminded the audience what his first term looked like here.

The ramped-up deportations, not of “bad guys” or criminals, but mothers and fathers pulled over for routine traffic stops. The people so frightened of being detained they sought sanctuary in local churches. The raids on a flower nursery and meat processing plant in the region.

What was coming would be at least as bad and possibly much worse, Dahlberg thought. She had read about Trump’s promises to build detention camps and use the military to expand deportations. She wondered who she could count on to help. As the head of HOLA Ohio, a local nonprofit, she had built relationships with elected officials, employers, police officers and school administrators.

“I don’t believe that they would just stand by and let our community get destroyed,” she said.

She paused. “But I could be wrong.”

Across the country, immigration advocates are racing to prepare for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants that could be unlike anything the nation has witnessed in decades. Trump has promised to deport the country’s undocumented residents, a population estimated to number 11 million people as of 2022, according to the most recent data available. Such an operation would face considerable hurdles: during Trump’s first term, deportations peaked at 347,240 in the 2019 fiscal year.

The consequences of Trump’s new push will unfold not just in areas close to the southern border or in major metropolises, but in places like Painesville, a small city of 20,000 near the shore of Lake Erie whose population has been transformed in recent decades by immigration, primarily from Mexico.

An estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Ohio. Most of those in Painesville have been in the country for more than a decade, mirroring the national trend, and nearly all of them live in “mixed-status” families — families that also include U.S.-born children, naturalized citizens or legal immigrants.

For such families, deportations nearly always separate parents from their children. Dahlberg saw it happen dozens of times in Trump’s first term. Last month, during her presentation at the community center, she reviewed the details of those cases.

ny times logoNew York Times, Carlos Watson, Ozy Media Co-Founder, Is Sentenced to Almost 10 Years in Prison, Danielle Kaye, Dec. 16, 2024. A federal jury in July found Mr. Watson, who started the digital media company in 2013, guilty of trying to defraud investors and lenders.

Carlos Watson, a co-founder of the now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, was sentenced on Monday to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders by lying about the company’s finances.

The sentence came five months after a federal jury convicted Mr. Watson and Ozy Media of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The jury also convicted Mr. Watson of identity theft, following a two-month trial during which witnesses detailed an impersonated phone call, fabricated contracts and misleading claims about Ozy’s earnings from 2018 to 2021.

Mr. Watson, who had pleaded not guilty and continued to assert his innocence up until his sentence of 116 months, faced a maximum of 37 years in prison. Government prosecutors had requested a 17-year sentence and $65.6 million in forfeiture to the government, though exactly how much Ozy will have to forfeit has yet to be determined.

“The fact that we’re here in this circumstance is tragic,” said Judge Eric Komitee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who presided over the case and imposed the sentence. “But it’s a tragedy of Mr. Watson’s own making.”

Politico, Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 16, 2024. A circuit court judge out of North Carolina rescinded his planned retirement, prompting GOP outrage.Anthony Adragna

With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased.

Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. His name vanished from a list of pending vacancies over the weekend, joining two district court judges in North Carolina — Algenon Marbley and Max Cogburn — in pulling back their decisions once it became clear President Joe Biden would not be able to appoint their successors.

In a letter to Biden, Wynn wrote “that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service” on the bench. All three were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Their decisions serve to deny Trump further bench vacancies to fill as he hopes to capitalize on his push to move the federal judiciary rightward. Though judges routinely time retirements to allow a desired president to appoint their successors, the GOP backlash has been consistent and heated.

lina khan resized ftcBig, The Newsletter of Antitrust, Monopoly Round-Up Commentary: FTC Revives the "Magna Carta of Small Business," Matt Stoller, right, Dec. 15, 2024. The matt stollerFederal Trade Commission went after the middleman economy. Plus, Kid Rock may keep the Ticketmaster antitrust suit alive, and other news of the week.

There’s lots of monopoly related news this week, like Kid Rock lobbying against Ticketmaster, Trump musing on eliminating the FDIC that protects against bank runs, and recriminations as Kroger and Albertsons execs point fingers at each other while desperately trying to not get fired. That part of the round-up is after the paywall.

The big news itself of the week is that the Federal Trade Commission finally attacked illegal price discrimination, after forty years of neglect. The FTC used an old and often neglect antitrust law, the Robinson-Patman Act, to sue a dominant liquor distributor you’ve likely never heard of, a company called Southern Glazer. Somewhere, Wright Patman is smiling down upon Federal Trade Commissioners Lina Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, and Rebecca Kelly-Slaughter for this historic move. And it is historic.

Southern Glazer is the tenth largest private company in the U.S., with $26 billion of revenue, and it is the exclusive distributor in certain states of a host of liquors, such as Hennessy, Tanqueray, Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Grey Goose, Jameson, and Johnnie Walker. And the FTC’s allegation is Southern Glazer gives better prices to big stores than small ones.

Since at least 2018 and continuing today, Southern has repeatedly discriminated in price between disfavored independent purchasers—which include neighborhood grocery stores, local convenience stores, and independently owned wine and spirits shops—and favored large chain purchasers of wine and spirits, such as Total Wine & More, Costco, and Kroger.

Still, the allegation doesn’t sound, on first blush, illegal. I mean, doesn’t a business have the right to choose its prices? And also, on some level, who cares? Don’t big stores just get volume discounts? That’s just how things work, right?

Well, no. Price discrimination, like gambling, usury, or even liquor itself, is the kind of political question that used to provoke deep reservoirs of anger and righteousness, a touchstone of the American character. “Let’s keep Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe,” said Wright Patman in 1940, noting that consolidation wrought by price discrimination had the potential to turn America fascist. He was not alone. “I would rather have thieves and gangsters than chain stores in Louisiana,” echoed Huey Long. Chain stores, wrote Louis Brandeis in 1933, were “converting independent tradesmen into clerks” and “sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns.”

Former FTC Chair Paul Rand Dixon once said of the law barring price discrimination, “I think it compares favorably with the Magna Carta or the Sherman Act.” Heady stuff.

From the other side, the antitrust bar has always hated the Robinson-Patman Act. Robert Bork called it the “Typhoid Mary of Antitrust,” Herb Hovenkamp said it was “irritating to almost anyone who is serious about antitrust,” and law professor Jerrold G. Van Cise said it was a “roughly hewn, unfinished block of legislative phraseology.” Its revival was a point of bitterness at last year’s American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring conference, prompting sputtering at FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who defended the use of the law. To understand the debate, let’s start with why Walmart is so cheap. It’s not because it’s some super efficient entity, it’s simply because it gets better prices from producers and distributors. Walmart sells something like 8-10% of all groceries in America, so when Walmart says jump, its suppliers ask how high? We routinely hear from independent stores and chains that they buy from their wholesaler for more than Walmart sells at retail, which is impossible unless Walmart is just getting better pricing for the same good.

And it’s not just the little guy who suffers, of course. Take the Kroger-Albertsons failed merger. One of the nuggets that came out in the case is that Albertsons, a massive supermarket chain, buys basic staples wholesale for less than Walmart sells it retail. Albertsons, even though it’s really really big, is a relative minnow, and sought to sell itself off rather than try and compete.

Price discrimination is the reason that Walmart and Amazon exist as the giants they are. Between 1997 and 2012, after we had stopped enforcing the law, roughly 108,000 local grocers and other retailers disappeared and rural poverty skyrocketed. The rise of Walmart stores, which are a result of Walmart getting better prices than rivals, even spurred a jump in obesity.

 I bring up this dynamic all the time on BIG. The prevalence of price discrimination is a key reason we had shortages during Covid, why our shipping industry is a cartel, why drug prices are out of control, why small businesses are dying, why bike stores are consolidated, and why radicalism is the order of the day in politics.

From the other side, antitrust lawyers and executives think the law is unworkable and ridiculous. They think businesses must charge different prices to different customers, there are rebates, fees, bundles, and a whole set of arrangements that simply cannot be subjected to micro-management by a law like the Robinson-Patman Act. But their real argument is that they believe it’s their right to discriminate among customers and suppliers. Might makes right.

So what happens now? Well the vote to bring the case was 3-2, with the two Republicans opposed. However, Andrew Ferguson, who will be the new chair, wrote in his dissent that he supports the use of the Robinson-Patman Act, and another Republican FTC nominee, Mark Meador, also supports enforcing the law. Ferguson’s objection to the case was due to his belief that the case wasn’t particularly strong, but it would be unusual to withdraw a case brought by a previous administration. Is it a strong case? Probably. The FTC complaint is based on a 2022 private case that is going to trial in 2026, brought by a law firm that is generally well-respected and specializes in the law.

Much of the FTC’s complaint is redacted, but it seems pretty clear that Southern Glazer was engaged in price discrimination. I mean, the law was a dead letter for decades, so it would be weird if corporations across the economy weren’t violating it.At any rate, I’m guessing we’ll see more private and state enforcement around this law, and adjacent state laws.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 15, 2024 [Safe Drinking Water Act, Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author, Dec. 15, heather cox richardson cnn2024. Tomorrow, December 16, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, signed into law on December 16, 1974, by President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican.

The measure required the Environmental Protection Agency to set maximum contaminant levels for drinking water and required states to comply with them. It protected the underground sources of drinking water and called for emergency measures to protect public health if a dangerous contaminant either was in or was likely to enter a public water system.

trump 2024To conduct research on clean drinking water and provide grants for states to clean up their systems, Congress authorized appropriations of $15 million in 1975, $25 million in 1976, and $35 million in 1977.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was one of the many laws passed in the 1970s after the environmental movement, sparked after Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring explored the effect of toxic chemicals on living organisms, had made Americans aware of the dangers of pollution in the environment.

That awareness had turned to anger by 1969, when in January a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Then, in June, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

In February 1970, Republican President Richard M. Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.” He called for “fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and

By 2015, almost 77 million Americans lived in regions whose water systems did not meet the safety standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, more than 2 million Americans did not have running water, and many more rely on wells or small systems not covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act.

The Biden administration began to address the problem with an investment of about $22 billion to upgrade the nation’s water systems. The money removed lead pipes, upgraded wastewater and sewage systems, and addressed the removal of so-called forever chemicals and proposed a new standard for acceptable measures of them.

What this will mean in the future is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to increase production of oil and gas—although it is currently at an all-time high—and such projects are often slowed by environmental regulations. On Tuesday, December 10, he posted on social media, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

“[B]y ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival,” Trump’s Republican predecessor Nixon told the nation in 1970. “While adopting laws prohibiting injury to person or property, we have freely allowed injury to our shared surroundings.” When he signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”—

Politico, Anti-slavery movement charts its path forward, Emily Schultheis, Dec. 14, 2024. An unlikely setback in progressive California has activists working to remove slavery exceptions from state constitutions grappling with the best way to draft future ballot measures.A California prison inmate with the Prison Industry Authority cleans one of the newly installed headstones.

politico CustomThe national movement to close a so-called slavery loophole in state constitutions was riding a wave of momentum after voters in eight states — including deep-red Alabama and Tennessee — removed exceptions to post-Civil War bans on slavery and involuntary servitude.

But the movement was handed an unexpected defeat this year in progressive California, where the failure of a ballot measure explicitly packaged as a ban on forced prison labor has left activists nationwide grappling with how best to draft such constitutional amendments in the up to 14 states where they could appear on ballots in 2026.

The movement’s lawyers want detailed language delineating what constitutes involuntary servitude so courts can be compelled to defend prisoners’ rights against forced labor. At the same time, campaigners confronting voters breaking right on questions of criminal justice want to see simply worded anti-slavery provisions free of specifics about what they mean for the incarcerated people who stand to benefit.

“That’s been a big part of our fight, making sure the language is correct,” said Dennis Febo, the New Jersey-based lead organizer for the Abolish Slavery National Network. “The more we’ve done on this question, the more we understand how complicated it is.”

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden Commutes the Sentences of 1,500 Americans, a Record for One Day, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mark Landler, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Many of those being granted clemency had been placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

Justice Department log circularThe commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

Politico, Biden commutes nearly 1,500 sentences, promises ‘more steps in the weeks ahead,’  Andrew Howard, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoned another 39, the most ever in a single day, the White House announced on Thursday.

The White House said in its announcement that those receiving clemency “have shown successful rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” The 39 pardon recipients had all committed non-violent crimes, and the commutations were for people who were placed in home confinement during the pandemic.

Justice Department log circular“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

Following Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, he faced pressure from some Democrats, as well as outside advocacy groups, to use his clemency powers more widely before his term ends in January. Biden indicated in his statement that he “will take more steps in the weeks ahead.” “My Administration will continue reviewing clemency petitions to advance equal justice under the law, promote public safety, support rehabilitation and reentry, and provide meaningful second chances.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who was one of the Democrats pressuring Biden to issue pardons, praised the president’s decision, calling it a “meaningful and historic action.”

“Thanks to President Biden, today a near 1,500 families will have their lives changed forever and I congratulate each and every family on this new beginning,” she said in a statement.

Still, Pressley is pushing for more clemency actions before Biden’s term ends.

“With 39 days remaining in his presidency, President Biden has the power to continue to use his clemency authority to change and save the lives of many, many other Americans behind the wall,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and it is a matter of legacy.”

The progressive group Popular Democracy in Action struck a similar tone, praising Biden’s decision but also telling the president “do not stop now.”

Politico, Watchdog faults DOJ in Trump’s first term for secretly obtaining records of lawmakers and journalists, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 11, 2024 (print ed.).. During leak investigations, Trump’s DOJ obtained phone and email records of two House Democrats and dozens of congressional staffers.

politico CustomThe Justice Department during Donald Trump’s first term failed to comply with its own procedures when it sought journalists’ phone and email records in leak investigations, according to a DOJ watchdog report released Tuesday.

Justice Department log circularAnd the department never conducted any high-level review as it swept up the records of 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic House members, the report found.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, left, said he also found no evidence that federal prosecutors got express approval from then-Attorney General Bill Barr or told federal courts that the subpoenas were for records of lawmakers and their aides, despite the michael horwitz headshotpotential for the probes to intrude on legitimate oversight efforts by Congress.

Obtaining the records of lawmakers and their staff during criminal investigations “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Horowitz wrote in his 91-page report.

Barr told POLITICO in 2021 that he did not know the Justice Department sought any lawmaker’s records in the leak probes, which involved disclosures about the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page and ties between that campaign and Russia.

Barr declined to be interviewed by Horowitz’s team, but the report says investigators found no indication the issuance of subpoenas for lawmakers or their aides was raised to Barr’s level. Indeed, the report concludes that — at the time — there was no policy in place to require added review of subpoenas and similar demands for information about lawmakers and their staff.

The inspector general launched the review in June 2021 after President Joe Biden took office and press reports revealed that investigators probing leaks of classified information obtained court orders to access phone records of two prominent Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Horowitz said the Justice Department’s decision to include Schiff and Swalwell in the investigation was based on a claim from a Democratic staffer who suspected them of having a role in the leak of classified intelligence. The department later determined that the staffer’s contentions lacked any “evidentiary support” and were found to be “of uncertain credibility.”

Horowitz’s report, which does not identify the lawmakers by name, did not turn up indications that the two outspoken Trump critics were targeted because of their political views or affiliation.

“We did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors who issued the compulsory process we reviewed,” the report said.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration also faced scrutiny for efforts to access the email account of then-House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel. Patel, who is now Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has long decried the intrusion by Justice Department officials, which he claimed was retaliation for his effort to undermine the investigation of Trump’s 2016 ties to Russia.

Last year, Patel sued top Justice Department officials over the grand jury subpoena, and his suit was dismissed in September by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

Patel was one of the 43 congressional staffers whose phone or email logs were pursued by investigators — a number higher than previously known. The review found that 21 of them were affiliated with Democrats, 20 with Republicans and two were in nonpartisan positions. The Justice Department did not seek or obtain the content of their communications, but only details such as which phone numbers or email accounts they were in contact with and when, Horowitz found.

Around the same time the existence of subpoenas aimed at lawmakers was reported, it emerged that prosecutors also sought phone or email records for journalists at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN as part of the same leak investigations.

Barr did approve the subpoenas aimed at reporters, but the department never convened an internal panel that a policy in place at the time said should examine all such requests, the watchdog report found.

“This deviation from the Department’s own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the vital role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” Horowitz wrote.

Biden called the tactic aimed at reporters “simply wrong” and vowed it would not continue under his administration. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo banning the practice and he later formalized that policy in DOJ regulations.

Horowitz was particularly critical of the Justice Department’s handling of gag orders it obtained on companies like Apple and Google. Those orders prevented the firms from telling targets about the demands.

Last year, the Justice Department issued a policy on subpoenas aimed at lawmakers, requiring high-level approvals at DOJ. Horowitz’s report reveals that DOJ quietly updated that policy again in September after getting a draft of the review. Among the latest requirements: Prosecutors must inform the judge or magistrate that the requests target a member of Congress or congressional staff.

The incoming Trump administration is expected to roll back the protections Garland adopted for journalists and perhaps even to eliminate earlier limits Democratic and Republican administrations had put on such demands. Legislation pending in Congress could block those moves, but last month Trump urged Republican lawmakers to “kill” the measure, known as the PRESS Act.

Horowitz said the past and current policies encourage prosecutors to seek lawmakers’ records because getting subpoenas for journalists’ emails or phone records required high-level approval, which has been basically impossible to get since 2021. He noted that even the latest Justice Department policy doesn’t require prosecutors to exhaust other avenues before demanding email and phone providers turn over lawmakers’ records.

Most of the leaks did not result in criminal charges, but one staffer swept up in one round of phone and email records searches — Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe — pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his dealings with journalists. A judge sentenced Wolfe to two months in prison.

Another long-awaited report is expected from Horowitz’s office in the coming days: a review of the Justice Department’s actions in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. That review has been pending for nearly four years. Horowitz recently acknowledged that work on it was frozen for about two years while prosecutors pursued some of the most serious criminal cases stemming from the attack.

Horowitz’s release of the long-awaited investigations comes as Horowitz and other inspectors general across the government face the possibility of being removed or even fired by the incoming Trump administration. Some Trump allies have urged him to install his own appointees in the independent watchdog roles at federal agencies, although traditionally most inspectors general have not resigned during a change of administration or of partisan control of the White House.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have vowed to oppose any attempt by Trump to oust the experienced watchdogs.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manchin and Welch Introduce Amendment for SCOTUS Term Limits, Troy Matthews Dec 10, 2024. 70% of Americans favor ending lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices.

Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices. The move is aimed at restoring confidence in the Court, as the approval rating for SCOTUS is at its lowest point in history, with only 16% of Americans reporting "a great deal of confidence" in the highest Court.

The Manchin-Welch amendment would impose single 18-year, non-renewable terms for Supreme Court justices. Each 18-year term would be staggered every two years. Current justices will not be held to term limits, but blocks of 18-year terms will begin to cycle every two years once the amendment is ratified. When a current justice retires, their replacement will be assigned the remainder of the current 18-year block, until every justice on the Court is term limited.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manhattan Prosecutors Oppose Dismissing Trump's Criminal Case, Aaron Parnas Dec 10, 2024. Prosecutors are pressing forward with the case even with Trump becoming President again.

This afternoon, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has filed an opposition to Donald Trump's request to immediately vacate the guilty verdicts against him and to dismiss the criminal case given the results of the November 5th election. Prosecutors had been considering whether to make this move for several weeks, and have officially decided to oppose any dismissal on several grounds.

First, prosecutors argue that the Manhattan court should reject Trump's motion to immediately dismiss the case given the fact that he has not yet been sworn in and does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution while President-elect.

The opposition goes on to highlight how even after he is sworn into office, the case should not be dismissed because the temporary immunity Trump will enjoy over the next four years does not justify wiping out the jury's verdict, especially as Trump's team does not dispute that the 34 felonies he was convicted of deal with purely unofficial conduct.

Prosecutors note that "at most, [Trump] should receive temporary accommodations during his presidency to prevent this criminal case form meaningfully interfering with his official decision-making."

Prosecutors listed several alternative remedies to a complete dismissal including a stay of proceedings during his term in office if judgment is not entered before January 20th. The decision will now ultimately be up to Justice Merchan who will decide whether or not to dismiss the criminal charges against Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Penny Verdict, a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Crime and Mental Illness, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024. A New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. Republican politicians hailed the verdict. But some New Yorkers found it deeply disturbing.

Outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday, a scuffle broke out among demonstrators, their chants amplified over bullhorns.

On one side were supporters of Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was charged with fatally choking a fellow subway rider, Jordan Neely, on an uptown F train last year. They held signs, including one that said, “Daniel Penny deserves a prize not a prison.” On the other side were people protesting on behalf of Mr. Neely. Upset, they grabbed a sign and ripped it up.

As the sides exchanged barbs and police officers erected a barrier to separate them, inside the courthouse 12 New Yorkers were coming to a unanimous decision. Mr. Penny, they concluded, was not guilty.

If the death of Mr. Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who had struggled with mental health problems, had left New Yorkers unnerved and divided, the verdict quickly became yet another flashpoint in the nation’s debate over how best to address issues of crime and justice, homelessness and mental illness.

Republican political figures including Vice President-elect JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised the jury and criticized the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for pursuing the case.

“Thank God justice was done in this case,” Mr. Vance said on social media. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Penny a hero who deserved a medal.

But in New York, some found the verdict deeply troubling. “This decision highlights a deep-seated societal discomfort with unhoused individuals in need of support, and effectively green-lights ‘vigilante justice’ against the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” leaders of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus said in a statement.

Recent Relevant Headlines

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

 

More On Presidential Pardons

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden must ignore pardon myths and protect Patel’s and Trump’s targets, Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 17, 2024. Patel issued unprecedented threats. Biden must respond.

Since President Joe Biden began seriously considering an amnesty for people at risk of retribution from President-elect Donald Trump and his FBI pick (who comes armed with an enemies list), the pearl clutching and myth-spinning about pardons have spread. Biden should pay attention to history and case law, not misinformed critics.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The first myth: A broad amnesty would be unprecedented, an intrusion into the rule of law. That is categorically false. More than a dozen presidents dating back to George Washington have granted amnesty to a defined, large group of Americans. As legal scholar Frank O. Bowman III pointed out:

George Washington issued pardons in 1794 to defuse the lingering tensions of the defeated Whiskey Rebellion. President Andrew Johnson made extensive (and controversial) use of the pardon power to civilly rehabilitate former Confederates. A century later, Gerald Ford issued a conditional amnesty and Jimmy Carter a full pardon to Vietnam draft evaders.

Presidential amnesties for categories of people have been commonplace. After Washington, President John Adams issued a broad pardon for those involved in the Fries Rebellion in 1799 in Pennsylvania (i.e., prosecutions of “any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection”). With a small exception, President James Buchanan, for example, pardoned Brigham Young and his Mormon followers who had engaged in a conflict with the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland also issued pardons to Mormon polygamists.

The White House Historical Association recounts that presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Warren G. Harding granted amnesty or commutation to various groups of Americans — citizens convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for Jefferson, and 24 political prisoners (including Eugene V. Debs) for Harding.

Moreover, the association explains, “As decided in Ex Parte Garland (1866), presidents may issue pardons at any time after the commission of a federal offense, even before federal charges have been filed or a sentence has been imposed.”)

What is entirely unique is that an incoming president and a would-be FBI director nominee have explicitly named people and groups (e.g., prosecutors) they want to go after. To meet that unique threat, Biden should issue amnesty to the most vulnerable group of Americans: witnesses against Trump whom Trump and Kash Patel have already threatened.

The second myth: Some people might not want amnesty. Again, this is not a valid reason to refuse to extend it to those who very much do want and need protection. Some individuals enjoy immunity from prosecution on other grounds so won’t need additional protection; they would be excluded from the amnesty. House members on the Jan. 6 committee immune under the speech and debate clause, along with and federal and state prosecutors operating under the color of law, almost certainly cannot be prosecuted.

But that leaves some ordinary Americans, primarily witnesses and those who provided material to courts, grand juries, Congress and federal investigators, to twist in the wind. It’s small comfort that such people would eventually be exonerated. Criminal trials and appeals can cost millions of dollars and ruin reputations as well as likely increase the physical threats many of these figures already face.

The third myth: Amnesty would not completely protect the recipients. It is correct that such an amnesty would not protect recipients from criminal investigation for future conduct, from civil suits or from IRS audits. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of a rogue, irresponsible president-elect empowering intended nominees to seek vengeance. However, by limiting the pardon to a discrete group of people, making clear this is essentially a witness protection program to insulate the recipients from Trump’s wrath, Biden can spare some conscientious citizens and alert the public to the dangers Trump and Patel pose.

The fourth myth: Accepting amnesty is an admission of guilt. This is false. The most recent case on the scope of pardons, 2021’s Lorance v. Commandant, held that the defendant’s acceptance of a full and unconditional presidential pardon did not amount to an admission of guilt, and therefore the defendant did not waive his habeas rights upon acceptingit.

Lorance also dealt with a common misperception concerning a Supreme Court case, 1915’s Burdick v. United States, which seemed to suggest that accepting a pardon constituted “a confession” of guilt. However, Lorance explained that that statement referred to how the pardon recipient might feel. In other words, though acceptance might make the recipient “look guilty” in the eyes of some, it does not make the recipient legally guilty.

Biden in his amnesty statement can underscore that acceptance is no admission of wrongdoing but rather confirmation that the incoming president poses extreme and unprecedented threats to political enemies — something indicative of an authoritarian regime, not a great democracy.

The fifth myth: This would open the door to pardon abuses by Trump and/or mar Biden’s legacy. The first is laughable given Trump’s pardon track record (e.g., Michael Flynn, Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and his plans to pardon those convicted of violent crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. He needs no excuse to flout democratic norms. (By the way, Biden might not have considered amnesty had not Trump recently repeated his threats and chosen Patel for FBI director with barely a whisper of complaint from Republicans. If Trump renounced revenge and found a fit nominee, none of this might be necessary.)

As for Biden, his Hunter Biden pardon statement explained that he acted because “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” It certainly follows that he should act to keep raw politics — unabashedly announced in advance — from leading to a miscarriage of justice.

If ordinary citizens face retribution for daring to testify against powerful bullies, few will do so. To preserve the justice system, to encourage people to provide evidence, Biden should grant them amnesty — in effect setting up a witness protection program. It is the least he can do for selfless Americans.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s clemency for ‘kids for cash’ judge is a big mistake, Heather Long, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). It’s also yet another reminder of how broken the presidential pardon process is.

My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week. The White House portrayed the mass clemency as a historic moment for justice. But Conahan’s commutation only underscores how broken the presidential pardon clemency is.

I don’t know much about most of the people on Biden’s list, but I do know a fair amount about Conahan. I started my career as a journalist in Pennsylvania and had a front-row seat when the scheme — one of the worst corruption scandals in U.S. juvenile justice history — came to light in 2008 and 2009.

Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full. In total, they received more than $2.8 million, court documents show. They didn’t do this a handful of times. They did it to more than 2,500 juveniles over five years.

And the worst part? To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

They finally got caught only because one distraught family contacted the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit legal aid group in Philadelphia. In an early example of data sleuthing, the center compared the numbers with those of the 66 other counties in Pennsylvania and realized something very wrong was occurring in Luzerne County. It unearthed that half of these youngsters had no legal representation, and 60 percent were removed from their homes. That’s how the judges got away with it for so long: There was literally no one watching.

The revelations shook the state. The story broke as the Great Recession was in full swing, with high unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Luzerne County is a proud coal-mining community full of Catholic churches that sell delicious Polish pierogi out of their basements. But the community had fallen on hard times as coal’s reign was ending. The judges were getting rich by exploiting — and making harder — the struggles of working-class families.

In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and Ciavarella to 28 years for racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other crimes. A lot of Pennsylvanians didn’t think that was sufficient punishment. I was deputy opinion editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. We named the Juvenile Law Center Pennsylvania’s “Best of 2009” — our version of Time magazine’s person of the year award. The center not only uncovered the scandal; it also successfully pushed the state Supreme Court to clear the records of more than 2,200 of its victims.

The White House portrayed last week’s clemency decisions as helping nonviolent offenders who had done sufficient time and remediation. In 2020, as pandemic raged, Conahan successfully petitioned to be released to home monitoring in Florida due to a high risk of complications if he contracted the virus. This year, he sought an early end to his sentence. Now 72, Conahan was supposed to serve until the summer of 2026. He told the judge he had reformed and helped others in prison with their cases. But Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani denied Conahan’s request, arguing that he had done “irrevocable harm” to his victims and that releasing him early “would undermine respect for the law and would not adequately deter such conduct.”

When I reached out to the White House, an administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them. The plan was clemency for nonviolent offenders who were seen as low-risk and had been released to home confinement after a legal review process.

That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency “absolutely wrong.” Some victims are speaking out in shock. There’s similar disbelief in Illinois that Rita Crundwell — the former comptroller of the city of Dixon who orchestrated a $54 million embezzlement scheme — was also on Biden’s sentence-reduction list. Crundwell was supposed to serve time until 2028.

 

hunter biden beard

Emptywheel, Analysis: You Can’t Pardon America’s Way Out of Trump’s Assault on Rule of Law, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Dec. 6, 2024. The NYT has matched Jonathan Martin’s marcy wheelerreporting that Biden’s aides are considering pardoning some subset of the people who will be targeted by Trump.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Smart lefty commentators are embracing the concept.

With the possible exception of Mark Milley, I think this is an exceedingly stupid idea. It’s the kind of magical pony thinking that led people to demand Merrick Garland, with no effort from them, make Trump go away, thereby ceding the ground for Trump to claim he was prosecuted in a witch hunt.

And it won’t work.

Biden’s pardon won’t even save Hunter Biden

Start with the fact that Biden’s pardon won’t even save his own son.

Sure, it’ll save him from going to prison for the crimes for which he was convicted. But it might not even insulate him and his team from further harassment. That’s true, first of all, because prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation — no doubt facilitated by the House investigation into Hunter — into whether Kevin Morris’ support for Hunter in 2020, as he was trying to sustain sobriety, amounted to a campaign benefit for Joe Biden.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections

ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Full Social Security Benefits for Public Sector Retirees, Maya C. Miller, Dec. 21, 2024. The Senate passed bipartisan legislation early Saturday that would give full Social Security benefits to a group of public sector retirees who currently receive them at a reduced level, sending the bill to President Biden.

The vote to clear the measure was a lopsided 76 to 20, reflecting the broad popularity of an effort to allow approximately more than 2.8 million public pension recipients — some of them teachers, firefighters and police officers — to collect Social Security benefits at the same level as other beneficiaries.

The House passed the bill by a wide margin of 327 to 75 last month after a bipartisan group of lawmakers forced it to the floor, and President-elect Donald J. Trump recently threw his support behind it.

social security administrationThe rapid and resounding approval of the measure, which would cost nearly $196 billion over a decade, was notable at a time when Congress is in a protracted dispute over spending and debt, with Republicans promising huge cuts and members of both parties routinely lamenting the ballooning of the nation’s debt.

The bill eliminates two provisions set up decades ago to shore up Social Security’s solvency. Projections show the Social Security fund will run out of money in 2038 and, if no action is taken before then, beneficiaries would see a 27 percent cut in benefits. Passage of the measure speeds up that timeline by six months.

Twenty-seven Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The two provisions were designed to prevent what is known as “double dipping” on retirement benefits by certain public employees and their relatives.

It primarily affects two groups. One is public employees who receive pensions that are exempt from Social Security payroll taxes, but who also worked at least 10 years in jobs that required them to pay into the system. Such workers appear in the Social Security system as though they earned far less over their lifetimes than they actually did, and since the program pays more to low earners, they receive a larger retirement benefit than they otherwise would. Another is people who receive public pensions but also become eligible for Social Security survivor benefits upon the death of a spouse or family member.

Under the current law, both groups face a reduction in their benefits. The legislation on its way to enactment would allow them to receive the full amount.

“We have spent decades working to pass this legislation, and tonight is a victory for all the public servants who will finally get the Social Security they have earned,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was a lead co-sponsor of the bill. The bill marked Mr. Brown’s final legislative achievement, after he lost a brutal and expensive re-election bid last month.Editors’ Picks‘Getting Your Pink Back:’ How Moms Felt Like Themselves Again After Having a BabyA Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?If You Can See the Tree, There Is Room for More Decorations

“Tonight, Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into,” he said.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a lead sponsor of the measure, framed the issue as a “long overdue” matter of fairness affecting teachers, firefighters and police officers as well as some federal employees who were hired before 1984, when the federal pension system was brought under the Social Security system.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Ms. Collins cited one of her constituents, a retired female schoolteacher who had to return to work at age 72 after her husband’s death to make financial ends meet. The woman’s husband was a Navy veteran who paid into Social Security for 40 years, but since she received a public pension from the school system, her surviving spousal benefits through Social Security were reduced by two-thirds.

 

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Gaetz report to be released by House Ethics Committee, in a reversal for the panel, Jacqueline Alemany and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 19, 2024 (print ed.). The release is expected within the week. The long-running investigation is focused on allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use by Matt Gaetz, above left  and below right, a former congressman.

The House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) this week, a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to release the results of a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.

matt gaetz officialThe panel voted this month to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers take their final vote for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. CNN first reported on the panel’s secret vote to release its report.

U.S. House logoThe committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general. A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, meaning that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.

The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. The Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation shortly thereafter — and days before the committee was expected to meet to vote on the release of the investigation.

Rep. Michael Guest (Mississippi), the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or Trump’s nominee, but Democrats still pushed for its release.

Justice Department log circularHouse Republicans successfully quashed a resolution introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote to make the report public and another resolution by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) that asked the panel to preserve all documents investigating Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges in a 2022 trafficking investigation.

But the House Ethics Committee investigation, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.

Politico, Sentencing closes chapter for Oath Keeper seeking redemption after Jan. 6, Kyle Cheney, Dec. 20, 2024. Joshua James pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy but later became a crucial cooperator for prosecutors.People waving flags storm the U.S. Capitol.

politico CustomA member of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy was sentenced Friday to three years of probation for extensive cooperation with prosecutors. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Joshua James earned his Purple Heart in 2007, when an IED tore through a bridge he was crossing in Baghdad — leaving him severely wounded with a traumatic brain injury.

He returned his medal to the government in a manila envelope after pleading guilty to scheming with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, to keep Donald Trump in office by force after the 2020 election.

James’ arc from war hero to central player in a seditious conspiracy — and his bid for redemption by cooperating to help convict dozens of his former compatriots — formed the backdrop Friday of a sentencing hearing that also served as a somber coda to the Justice Department’s four-year quest to punish those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The institutions that protected democracy on Jan. 6 cannot and will not forget,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards, who cast James’ sentencing as a chance to “cement” the threat to democracy in America’s “long-term national memory” and to “turn the page and allow this country to start to heal.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged the wrenching conflict of James’ life, calling him a “true American hero” who was led astray.

For James’ extraordinary cooperation, Mehta sentenced him to three years of probation. And the judge used his remarks to highlight the dozens of Jan. 6 defendants who are military veterans and have described being left to endure emotional and physical traumas with limited support.

But James, he said, ultimately made his own decision to “turn against democracy” and join the Oath Keepers in a plot to violently prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

“That is what people need to wrap their heads around,” Mehta said, “about how close we came — on a knife’s edge — between what happened on Jan. 6, which was bad enough, and something far worse.”

James joined the Oath Keepers in 2017 but his involvement intensified in 2020 when he became a close ally of Rhodes, who Mehta has repeatedly described as an ongoing threat to the country. Rhodes, the judge said, preyed on disaffected members of the military and enlisted them in his far-right project to keep Trump in power by force.

James, who led the group’s Alabama chapter, became a top ally in that effort, encouraging others to bring weapons to Washington ahead of Jan. 6, where they were ostensibly traveling to provide security for top Trump allies. James was assigned to protect longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and James was with Stone on the morning of Jan. 6.

But after pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, James and other Oath Keepers raced across the city to join the melee, forcing their way into the Capitol rotunda and clashing with police.

“This is my fucking building! This is not yours! This is my Capitol!” James shouted amid the chaos.

A tearful James apologized profusely for his conduct, describing himself as “deeply ashamed and embarrassed for my actions in the Capitol.”

“What I did was not an expression of patriotism,” James said.

Mehta emphasized that James’ gravest crime was not his actions in the Capitol but his weekslong plotting with Rhodes, a plan that included amassing an arsenal of firearms in the D.C. suburbs that Rhodes could deploy at a moment’s notice.

After his arrest, James quickly began cooperating with prosecutors and became the first Jan. 6 defendant to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy, a decision prosecutors credited with leading several other Oath Keepers to follow suit.

James never testified in any of the subsequent Oath Keepers trials — including Rhodes’ — which Edwards said was in part because James’ traumatic brain injury made him volatile when in stressful situations.

James’ lawyer, Joan Robin, emphasized that James’ cooperation — particularly after his guilty plea became public — led to threats against him and his family, the loss of his military benefits and his military honors, including the Purple Heart he once considered his proudest achievement.

The medal for his Army service, Robin said, was “sent to my office in a small manila envelope” to be forfeited to the government.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: The road back to power for Democrats, Rahm Emanuel (right, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, a Democrat and former Mayor of Chicago and rahm emanuel wChief of Staff to President Obama), Dec. 17, 2024. It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity. Talk about missing the moment.

This groundswell of resentment had been simmering for years. Trump just seized on it. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that he also drew support from large numbers of Democrats’ own “coalition of the ascendant” — minorities, young urbanites and women so successfully mobilized by President Barack Obama. From 2020 to 2024, Trump doubled his share of the Black vote to 16 percent, while the Latino vote rose from 35 percent to 43 percent.

To many voters, the nation’s elite has overseen a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful. And for the first time in American history, there is a generation of voters who believe that their children won’t be better off than them.

The disenchantment started in 2003 with the Iraq War, dubbed a “disaster” by Vice President-elect JD Vance. Sold on deceit and deception, with thousands of Americans dead, damaged and disfigured, the conflict’s architects now sit on corporate boards and hold chairs at prestigious universities. So much for justice.

A handful of years later, “liar loans” and unchecked greed led to the collapse of the global financial system, with homes and small businesses lost and livelihoods destroyed. Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention. It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some had called for at the time.

Why would an American electorate put its faith in the same establishment that had overseen two calamitous events, with those responsible getting off scot-free? The bonds of trust between the establishment and the public had been severed, and too many in our party failed to appreciate it.

In fact, during the pandemic, Democrats abandoned their antiestablishment credentials and enthusiastically morphed into the establishment. In “following the science,” we shuttered schools and the economy.

Meanwhile, our language and priorities have reinforced the “aloof elite” stereotype. With inflation stinging, school absenteeism skyrocketing and students’ academic scores plummeting, Democrats consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools and adopted terms such as “care economy” and “Latinx” to win over voters. It was a hermetically sealed conversation with ourselves, and we appeared much as we sounded: distant and detached.

Trump, on the other hand, captured the underlying zeitgeist. Rather than using his messaging against the Kamala Harris of 2024, he depicted her as the senator of the 2020 primaries, whose positions left her looking out of touch. Sure, his unfiltered words were crude — and often derogatory — but they reflected people’s feelings of abandonment.

Democrats have been here before. The road back out of the wilderness begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it. We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.

With everyone from Big Oil to Big Pharma lining up for their share of the spoils, we will need to be strategic in how we strip away Trump’s populist veneer. By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected.

Second, we can no longer tiptoe around the issues that have people worried. Crime, immigration, homelessness and a fentanyl crisis are, understandably, on the minds of millions. When car jackings are up and everything in pharmacies is locked down, you can’t recite crime statistics to deny people’s everyday experiences.

Americans want to see respect for the laws that govern our borders and to live in communities that are safe and secure. That shouldn’t be hard to appreciate. People prefer order over disorder. Trump was successful on these issues because his words tapped the public’s frustration. Ours communicated permissiveness.

Third, if Democrats are to be relevant again, finding and supporting the right candidates for the 2026 midterm elections will be critical. In 2006, 2008 and 2018, we recruited candidates whose biographies conveyed authenticity. They were war veterans, sheriffs, small business owners and former football players. Crucially, they weren’t career politicians.

The strategy worked again last month, with Democrats flipping six House seats in New York and California. Candidates such as Derek Tran, a son of Vietnamese refugees and an Army veteran, and aerospace executive George Whitesides had credentials that lent them legitimacy and receptivity among swing voters. The personal is political.

November was a jarring reminder that misjudging the mood of a nation can be catastrophic. If Democrats are to make the most of the next election, they must ready their message and messengers, abandon failed orthodoxies and embrace strategies with a record of delivering seats, success and real prosperity.

d weakened the country and gave Hamas an opening. Absent from both story lines was the profound failure of Mr. Netanyahu to protect the border.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming, Heather Knight and Kate Selig, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Some Republicans say it is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their calls for one, and California will soon consider its position.

As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.

The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.

But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.

Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.

Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.

“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.

Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican from West Texas and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been a leading convention proponent. He has introduced legislation that would require the head of the National Archives to track state applications and has said that a convention should have been called in 1979 when, he believes, enough states had requested one.

Since 2016, the year Mr. Trump was elected president the first time, nine states that had Democratic-controlled legislatures have been concerned enough that they rescinded their decades-old requests for constitutional amendments, sometimes with support from their fellow Republican legislators. They feared that they were leaving open the door for a Republican-led Congress and state legislatures to pursue a conservative revision of the laws underpinning national governance.

The founding fathers set almost no rules governing how such a constitutional convention would work. Article V of the Constitution says that the document can be amended if legislatures in two-thirds of states — now 34 out of 50 — agree to convene for the purpose. But it does not set guidelines for how the gathering would function. If the convention produces a proposed amendment, the change would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Following last month’s election, 28 state legislatures will be controlled by Republicans, 18 by Democrats and the rest will be split, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The founding document does not say whether 34 states need to agree on the specific amendment topic or whether signaling that they want a convention for any reason is enough to trigger proceedings. There is no explanation of whether each state at the convention would get one vote or more, whether topics not on the agenda can be raised, whether lobbyists or special interest groups could participate, or who would referee disagreements. Constitutional scholars are unclear how even the most basic questions would be resolved.

More than 34 states appear to have standing requests to change the Constitution, some dating back more than 150 years, according to the Article 5 Library, a bare-bones website that scholars pointed to as the best known repository of applications to change the Constitution.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Says He Would Consider Pardoning Eric Adams, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald J. Trump’s comment reflects an unusual relationship that Mr. Adams, the New York mayor, has encouraged as his federal corruption trial nears.

The question has hung over New York City politics for months: If Mayor Eric Adams was convicted on federal corruption charges, would Donald J. Trump pardon him?

On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would consider it.

Mr. Trump was asked at a wide-ranging news conference in Florida whether he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, and he replied yes. The president-elect said that the mayor of New York had been treated “pretty unfairly” by federal prosecutors.

“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.

The mayor is accused of receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of travel benefits from Turkish officials over several years, including flight upgrades on Turkish Airlines. Mr. Adams was also accused of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and helping obtain approvals for a new Turkish Consulate despite fire safety concerns.

Mr. Adams has found a political ally in Mr. Trump, a Republican who has defended Mr. Adams and said that both men were “persecuted” by federal prosecutors.

The mayor said at a news conference on Monday held shortly after Mr. Trump’s comments that he should not have been charged.

“I have an attorney that is going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”

The mayor’s defense lawyer, Alex Spiro, has also represented Elon Musk, a top adviser and donor to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Adams added that both Mr. Trump and President Biden agreed with him that the Justice Department has been politicized — an argument Mr. Adams has made in the past in reference to Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: McConnell has the chutzpah to complain about Trump’s ‘America First,’ Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 15, 2024. Mitch McConnell bears great responsibility for the return of Trump and his foreign policy.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Progressives should defend Biden’s legacy to protect their future, E.J. Dionne Jr.,,right, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Trump’s victory should ej dionne w open necknot be used to erase Biden’s policy achievements.

Besides the president and his staff, who should care about how Joe Biden’s policy legacy is judged? Everyone who believes that government should invest in the future and defend the interests of workers and those stuck at the bottom of the income heap — that’s who.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The trickiest problem for Democrats and progressives in the coming months will not be finding a new electoral strategy. There’s plenty of time for that, and the 2024 outcome was close enough to allow multiple paths to the White House. A far more pressing imperative is to prevent Donald Trump’s victory from discrediting Biden’s genuinely impressive accomplishments and the course he set for the country, which was broadly correct.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein,  Dec. 17, 2024. Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logoPresident-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

trump 2024Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

nancy pelosi horizontal uncredited older Custom

ny times logoNew York Times, Nancy Pelosi Has Hip Replacement Surgery After Fall, Karoun Demirjian, Dec. 14, 2024. Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, had hip replacement surgery on Saturday after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said in a statement.

ny times logoNew York Times, What We Know About Drone Sightings in New Jersey and New York, Alyce McFadden, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Reports of flying objects continue to occur throughout the region. State and local officials say they do not pose a threat but have provided few answers.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Agriculture Department to Require Testing of U.S. Milk Supply for Bird Flu Virus, Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes, Dec. 7, 2024 (print ed.). The new rules call for testing unpasteurized milk from dairies across the country and for farm owners to provide details that would help officials identify and track cases more easily.

Politico, Federal judge preserves Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions, Bianca Quilantan, Dec. 6, 2024. A federal judge argues that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.An entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Maryland, is seen.

politico CustomA federal judge on Friday upheld the U.S. Naval Academy’s consideration of race in admissions arguing that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.

The ruling is an early blow to Students for Fair Admissions’ latest attempt to extend the scope of its Supreme Court win against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that gutted the use of race in college admissions. The ruling also comes while the Naval Academy’s admissions process is underway for its next class.

Politico, Eric Adams doesn’t rule out switch to the GOP: ‘Cancel me,’ Joe Anuta,  Dec. 6, 2024. The New York City mayor has been at odds with national Democrats over immigration.Eric Adams walks in a parade.

politico CustomNew York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has taken a soft touch with President-elect Donald Trump, left open the possibility of switching to the Republican Party in a pair of Friday morning interviews.

Adams was a member of the GOP from 1995 through 2002, and was asked during an appearance on NY1 whether he would return to the party. He did not rule out the possibility.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Middle East Wars, Reactions

Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syrian Rebels Storm Another Major City, Ben Hubbard, Dec. 5, 2024. Opposition forces advanced on the city of Hama as their startling offensive moved quickly in the direction of the capital, Damascus.

Syrian rebels stormed into the city of Hama on Thursday as government forces withdrew, bringing the rebels one step closer to the capital Damascus, the seat of power of President Bashar al-Assad.

The swift advance on Hama, one of Syria’s largest cities, and the retreat of government forces were confirmed by both the rebels and the government. The advance came just days after the rebels extended their control over Aleppo, a major hub in northern Syria.

In a video circulated by the rebel group leading the offensive, their leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, jubilantly calls for the rebels to push on toward other Syrian cities, including the capital.

“The people of Homs, prepare yourselves,” he said in the video, which his group said was filmed on Wednesday. “The people of Damascus, the people of Dara’a, the people of Deir al Zour. Victory for all, God willing.” The New York Times could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video or when it was filmed.

The sudden rebel advance has shifted the front lines in Syria’s 13-year-old civil war for the first time in years, adding a new layer of unpredictability to a conflict that has ravaged the country, opened voids exploited by jihadist groups, drawn in world powers including Russia and the United States and created a long-term refugee crisis for neighboring countries.

Hama is one of the few major Syrian cities where rebels had yet to seize significant control during the civil war, which began with a popular uprising aimed at ousting Mr. al-Assad in 2011.

The city’s name is synonymous with one of the most notorious massacres in the Middle East. In 1982, security forces serving the president’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, massacred thousands of people there during an anti-government uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

ny times logoNew York Times, Fighting Rages in Syria as Rebels Advance, Muhammad Haj Kadour and Vivian Yee, Dec. 1, 2024. Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad control the Aleppo airport and are attacking Hama, local officials and a U.K.-based war monitor say.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Power Vacuum in Gaza Could Empower Warlords and Gangs, Amanda Taub, Dec. 1, 2024. Hamas's weakened position could leave the territory without any governing institutions, our columnist writes.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police and Protesters Clash in Georgian Capital, Cassandra Vinograd, Dec. 1, 2024. The government’s decision to suspend its bid for European Union membership has driven thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Protesters clashed with the police in the Republic of Georgia’s capital late Saturday during the third consecutive night of demonstrations over the government’s suspension of its bid to join the European Union.

georgia country regional mapThousands of people have rallied in the capital, Tbilisi, since Thursday night after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the country was putting the process of E.U. accession on hold until 2028 and would decline all grants from the bloc. The police have responded with water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades.

georgia country flag mapGeorgia’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday morning that protests overnight had “evolved into violence.” It claimed that protesters “threw pyrotechnics” and “ignited objects” toward police officers and at Parliament, causing a fire to break out. Windows were smashed by “stones and various objects,” the ministry added in a statement, saying that protesters also had damaged protective iron barriers around the building.

georgia republic mapMore than 100 people had been arrested as of Saturday night, according to the ministry, which also said that several police officers were wounded and that 42 of its employees had been injured since the protests began.

The Associated Press reported that its journalists had seen police officers chasing and beating protesters; it was not immediately clear how many protesters suffered injuries.

Georgia has been gripped by political crisis since the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream party in October’s parliamentary elections. The governing party has been pivoting Georgia more toward Russia and China. Georgia’s opposition, which says the election was rigged and has boycotted the new sitting of Parliament, seeks closer ties with the West.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).

 

Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon

 

syria prisons NYTny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak (as shown above), Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Bibi Netanyahu Is Failing Ever Upward, Noa Landau (the deputy editor in chief of Haaretz), Dec. 19, 2024. Just before Thanksgiving, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an unusual set of arrest warrants: one for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one for his former defense minister Yoav Gallant and one for the deceased Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif. Each man is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The warrant for Mr. Netanyahu calls for any of the 124 countries that are signatories to the I.C.C. to arrest the Israeli leader should he arrive on their soil. And yet in Israel, the threat has made only the barest ripple on the domestic front. Israelis seemed far more concerned by how, more than two weeks earlier, on the night of the American election, Mr. Netanyahu took advantage of a distracted Washington and fired Mr. Gallant, the last remaining political centrist in his cabinet. Thousands of Israeli protesters took to the streets over the dismissal, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv with bonfires and shouting, “Bibi is a traitor!”

The protests weren’t just about Mr. Gallant, or even the kind of war he led as defense minister. They were about Mr. Netanyahu himself, a man who has overtly put his own political survival above his nation again and again. Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu has risen, phoenixlike, from the political ashes of the nation’s greatest security failure on Oct. 7, 2023, to become a bolder, more aggressive version of himself — a man willing to ignore longtime allies, including many American Jews, brush off international opprobrium and shed a long history of war skepticism in favor of a full-blown, multifront regional war. Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria are now badly damaged. The last (original) man standing is Mr. Netanyahu, something few would have predicted one year ago.

Mr. Netanyahu managed to wait out the Biden administration’s unsuccessful efforts to bring an end to the war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and curtail civilians’ bloodshed. With Donald Trump poised to re-enter the White House, ushering in a slate of new regional envoys who show no interest in limiting Israel, it seems Mr. Netanyahu’s gamble has paid off. Even finally being forced to take the witness stand in his trial for corruption, which began this month, does not seem to have dimmed his political power — as shown in recent polls.

The Israeli prime minister’s endurance can be traced back to several political factors, including a decade of echo-chamber building within Israeli media and Bibi’s own sophisticated and cynical exploitation of Israelis’ deep yearning for unity after Oct. 7. But perhaps the strongest force keeping Mr. Netanyahu in power is the most basic: his fractured, increasingly nonexistent opposition. The vast majority of those who loathe him as a leader do not oppose the war itself, nor the way it has been conducted. They want him out of power but they have no coherent alternative vision. For the past year, all Mr. Netanyahu has had to do was hold on to power — and pass the blame.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.

Since Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu and his inner circle of advisers, ministers and supporters have successfully deflected their own responsibility and culpability for the nation’s worst security breach in its 76-year history. A day after the Hamas attacks, some Netanyahu supporters started planting the idea within his political base that the catastrophic security failure that led to Hamas’s murder of more than 1,200 people was the fault of his opponents. Over the course of the year before, tens of thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to reject the prime minister’s efforts to meddle with the independence of the judiciary and threaten to stop volunteering for military reserve duty if the judicial overhaul bills he was proposing were approved. Social media users floated gross conspiracies about anti-Netanyahu military officials assisting Hamas.

This message was dispersed on several media outlets that are part of a new digital Netanyahu-sympathetic ecosystem, including Channel 14, a would-be version of Fox News. As Israeli society has swung ever rightward, it has developed a media world that reflects back to itself the messages it would like to promote. These messages appear on pro-Netanyahu social media accounts, like-minded Telegram channels and closed WhatsApp groups — and are then rebroadcast on TV and radio.

All the while, Mr. Netanyahu has been openly blaming the rest of the media for being biased against him. Two of his corruption and criminal cases are about the prime minister’s alleged attempts to receive favorable coverage in the media. (He has denied wrongdoing.) His cabinet has made moves to privatize and potentially shut down the public broadcaster’s television and radio departments. And in late November, as punishment for coverage of Oct. 7 deemed too critical, as well as for comments made by the publisher of Ha’aretz, my newspaper, at an event, his cabinet approved a slate of sanctions against Ha’aretz, forbidding any government advertising and canceling subscriptions for state workers.

Pro-Netanyahu propaganda efforts were quickly referred to as the “poison machine” by the Israeli opposition — both political parties and civil society. But, as I have written for Ha’aretz, there was a “honey machine” at work at the same time. One after another, coordinated initiatives and petitions emerged in Israel with a mission to promote ideas of “unity,” “reconciliation” and preventing “division” within society. The seemingly disparate agendas — the undercurrent of blatant propaganda and the tide of false optimism — shared the thesis that the political rift in the months leading up to Oct. 7 ha

washington post logoWashington Post, Middle East Conflict: Biden team uses fall of Assad to defend Mideast record; critics say it doesn’t eclipse horrors in Gaza, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The Biden administration is seeking to reframe a beleaguered policy as a success.

The White House is seizing on the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to mount a new defense of its often criticized policy in Gaza and the wider Middle East, arguing that President Joe Biden’s staunch support of Israel and his approach to the region paved the way for events that ultimately led to Assad’s ouster and could bring a new era of cooperation.Get the latest election news and results

Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza is viewed by progressives and a growing number of Democrats as a major foreign policy failure, with some in the party saying his unwillingness to rein in Israel and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will tarnish his long-term legacy. Biden and his aides are now working to reframe his largely unconditional support of Israel as a resounding success, saying it led to the weakening of two powerful militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which in turn made the fall of Assad possible.

Many Middle East experts and analysts agree that the Biden administration deserves credit for preventing an all-out regional war that could have drawn in the United States directly, and for providing Israel with military aid that helped it degrade Hezbollah and Hamas. But they also say the administration’s narrative assigns too much credit to the United States for events that were largely driven by actors in the region.

And humanitarian groups say that however beneficial Assad’s fall, it does not eclipse the death and devastation in Gaza. During the war, the Biden administration repeatedly said Israel was not doing nearly enough to limit civilian casualties, but did little to pressure the country to change course. Israel has now sealed off northern Gaza and may be preparing for an indefinite occupation there, diplomats said, while some 2 million Palestinians are crammed into the southern half of the tiny enclave amid destitute conditions as aid remains sharply limited.

washington post logoWashington Post, Turkey using ‘war on terror’ tactics, such as abductions and secret detentions, on critics in other countries, Greg Miller, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Turkey has drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism post-9/11 playbook to go after exiled political enemies, in particular the Gulen movement.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptThe primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

ny times logoNew York Times, United States in Direct Contact With Rebels Who Took Over Syria, Michael Crowley, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Steven Erlanger, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was communicating with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel faction, despite its designation as a terrorist group.

The United States has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad a week ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday.

His remarks were the first official confirmation that Washington is communicating with a group that it designated a terrorist organization several years ago but whose behavior Washington hopes to influence now that the group controls Syria’s interim government.

“We’ve been in contact with H.T.S. and with other parties” in Syria, Mr. Blinken said, referring to the rebel group, after a meeting with Arab ministers in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss how to assist Syria’s political transition.

He said that the United States had communicated a set of governing principles that it is urging Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to adopt, including respect for human rights and rejecting extremism. The United States has also stressed the importance of finding and returning Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist kidnapped in Syria seven years ago.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: With Iran’s guard down, the U.S. and Israel face an urgent choice, David Ignatius, Dec. 14, 2024. Israel’s former defense minister says there is “a window to act” — and the clock is ticking.

Iran appears to be at the most precarious moment in its modern history. Its proxy armies have been crushed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. And it appears to be nearly naked to attack after a wave of pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on its air defense system in October.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

“We showed that Iran is vulnerable,” argued Yoav Gallant, who was Israel’s defense minister and led most of this year’s military campaigns against Iran and its proxies. Gallant explained during a briefing with me in Washington this week that Israel’s devastating but relatively little-discussed bombing campaign on Oct. 26 created “a window to act against Iran” before it produces a nuclear weapon.

U.S. decisions about how to exploit Iran’s weakness — whether by negotiating a binding nuclear agreement or, failing that, taking decisive military action — will fall to President-elect Donald Trump. Asked last month about the possibility of war with Iran after he takes office on Jan. 20, Trump told Time magazine, ominously, that “anything can happen.”

Global attention has shifted to Trump, but senior Biden administration officials tell me they also recognize the opportunity ahead for “coercive diplomacy” about nuclear issues with a weakened Iran. Though Israel played the decisive role in humbling Iran, President Joe Biden provided an important backstop by deploying U.S. carriers, planes, submarines and other forces.

Israel’s Oct. 26 assault was calculated to leave Iran unprotected against a future attack. An astonishing wave of 120 jets took part in the raid, an Israeli military source said. The Israeli planes targeted air defense radars and antiaircraft batteries protecting Tehran as well as key factories producing fuel for Iranian ballistic missiles. The attack was in retaliation for Iran’s Oct. 1 bombardment of Israel with about 200 ballistic missiles — but the planning began many months before.

 

syria new flag 2024

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, Dec. 14, 2024. At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

But amid the celebrations, the country has also found itself in the opening chapter of a nationwide reckoning over the horrors that Syrians endured under Mr. al-Assad’s government as they come face to face with the network of prisons, police stations and torture chambers at the center of his family’s brutal rule.

In that time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were swallowed up by the Assad security forces’ vast apparatus. Over the past 13 years, after the failed rebel uprising and subsequent civil war, Mr. al-Assad wielded the long arms of that system as never before to stamp out every last inkling of dissent.

Protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers and students were snatched from their shops, plucked from university classrooms and yanked from their cars at checkpoints by the secret police — never to be heard from again.

Many ended up in Sednaya, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus that was often the last place detainees were dumped after months of interrogation in other detention centers. The sprawling prison with three wings became a haunting symbol of Mr. al-Assad’s ruthlessness and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.

Tens of thousands of people were crammed into the overcrowded cells, tortured, beaten and deprived of food and water. More than 30,000 detainees were killed, many executed in mass hangings, according to rights groups. Amnesty International called Sednaya a “human slaughterhouse.”

Their relatives lived in an agonizing limbo for years, unsure if their loved ones were alive. They went to local security officials every few months to beg for information and paid thousands of dollars in bribes to government officials to track down their relatives’ whereabouts. If security officers told them their disappeared relative was dead, many refused to believe them.

“They were liars,” one woman, Aziza Mohammed Deek, said of those in Mr. al-Assad’s government. “They were all liars.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

“The talks will focus on supporting a comprehensive, Syria-led political process aimed at achieving a transitional solution,” the Jordanian statement said. A later statement on Saturday said the meeting was about to begin. It made no mention of any Syrian representative to attend.

Turkey has emerged in recent days with greater influence, given its years of support for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that led the offensive out of its bases in the northwest in recent weeks to take power.

The Turkish government made plans this week to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which has been closed for almost 13 years, and it also conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a threat.

On Friday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, issued a stark warning to members of the Kurdish militia that controls northeastern Syria, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

“It is our strategic target to eliminate the YPG,” he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV. He said that any members who are not Syrian should leave the country as soon as possible, and added: “The entire command level of YPG should leave the country too. The remaining ones should continue living as they lay down their weapons.’’

The Kurdish-led forces in Syria have been key partners with the United States in the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria. The U.S. and Turkey are NATO allies.

Turkey, at the same time, has funded and trained a Syrian rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped it fight Kurdish-led forces in the country.

The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia accused the United States this week of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria.

Mr. Blinken is in Jordan as part of a tour of the Middle East that has included stops in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as the United States assesses the fallout from Mr. al-Bashar’s ouster.

American officials have expressed concern that instability across Syria, where various armed groups with competing agendas are active, could threaten its neighbors.

The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of Islamic State, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and took years to defeat.

Israel has also seized an opportunity created by the collapse of the Assad dynasty, bombing weapons stores and other targets in Syria to eliminate what it says are potential threats and also seizing territory in the country near the disputed Golan Heights.

Syria on Friday condemned Israel’s attack and called on the United Nations Security Council to compel the Israeli government to cease any further attacks.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Koussay Aldahhak, said the Security Council should “compel Israel to respect international law,” and not allow it to benefit from Syria’s transition.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

The Russian military appeared to be packing up equipment at one of its most critical bases in Syria on Friday, in what could be a prelude to Moscow’s military withdrawal from an important strategic foothold in the Middle East.

The movements of Russian equipment came as jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

People celebrating the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty waved revolutionary flags and posed for photographs with friends as one of the largest crowds in memory filled the marble courtyard of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where al-Assad security forces had long suppressed antigovernment demonstrations with brutal violence. Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the country’s newfound sense of liberty; in Damascus and in Idlib, a city that has long been rebel territory, people sang, “Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

The largely celebratory mood in Damascus, the capital, belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders as they try to bring order to a country wracked by sectarian divisions, the bloody legacy of the Assad era and the competing interests of an array of armed groups that fought in a 13-year civil war that human rights groups estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Also on Friday, Travis Timmerman, an American citizen who was found outside Damascus earlier this week, was handed over to U.S. forces by Syrian opposition representatives. Mr. Timmerman, who said he had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power, is now in Jordan, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Politico, Has Syrian rebel leader al-Golani really shaken off his al Qaeda past? Jamie Dettmer, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The leopard claims he has changed his spots, but will he bring stability to the devastated nation

politico CustomIn the not so distant past, Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, shown at right in a U.S. State Department photo, sported a long unkempt beard, wore a style of turban favored by jihadis and looked like he was auditioning for the role of a young Osama bin Laden.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptBut the man who toppled the regime of Bashar Assad on Sunday cuts a very different figure today. Like a political chameleon, he wears green fatigues in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or preppy blazers and chinos, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He even recently dropped his nom de guerre and reverted to using his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a.

But how convincing is the makeover? Should Syrians be worried that a man who once made the pledge of allegiance — or bay’ah — to al Qaeda, and fought Western forces in Iraq, is now the most powerful man in their country, and is poised to play a major role in the transition from the 54-year-long autocracy of the Assad dynasty?

He could even lead the country.

Is this a case where the apparel really does proclaim the man? Has the Damascus medical school dropout genuinely transitioned from being a jihadi, or is his embrace of toleration a ruse?

Those are the questions Western leaders and officials are also grappling with as they plot their next steps. France and Germany have promptly agreed to work with the Syrian opposition groups that took power in Damascus, while the U.S. and Britain are deliberating whether to delist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main insurgent Islamist faction led by al-Golani that swept into Damascus, as a terrorist organization.

For now, everyone is watching and waiting, piecing together clues about who al-Golani really is and what future HTS has planned for Syria — an inclusive, democratic one embracing the country’s diversity, its religious sects and ethnic minorities, including Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurds; or an Islamist state that oppresses, restricts and elevates the Sunni majority? Or somewhere in-between?

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Live Updates: Israel Says Its Troops Will Stay in Seized Territory for Now, Aaron Boxerman and Michael Crowley, Dec. 12, 2024. Here are the latest developments.

As countries in the Middle East and beyond work out how to respond to the sudden fall of the Assad government, Israel said on Thursday that its military would stay in Syrian territory it seized until “a new force” was established that met its security demands.

“The collapse of the Syrian regime created a vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a statement. “Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities.”

Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli soldiers would deploy in Syrian territory only “temporarily,” but did not give any clear timeline for their departure.

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South Korean Crisis

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, South Korea’s President Is Impeached Over Martial Law Crisis, Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young, Victoria Kim and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Celebrations broke out in Seoul after lawmakers voted to oust President Yoon Suk Yeol, right. He vowed to fight removal in the country’s Constitutional Court.

yoon suk yeol wSouth Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, suspending him from office after his stunning declaration of martial law earlier this month caused widespread outrage and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office.

Excerpt Continued Below.

ny times logoNew York Times, How the President Alienated South Korea, One Group at a Time, Agnes Chang and Pablo Robles, Dec. 15, , (print ed.).  Ever since Yoon Suk Yeol took office, the public had been infuriated with near-constant scandals and unpopular decisions. Angry rice farmers. Striking doctors. A $2,200 Dior bag.

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, may have sealed his political fate on Dec. 3, when he declared martial law, triggering public outrage. And on Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach Mr. Yoon, who was then suspended from office.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: The Warning from Seoul: Democracy at Risk in an Age of Authoritarian Power, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 4, 2024. How thom hartmann newYoon’s State of Emergency and Trump’s Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as “South Korea’s Donald Trump.” A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women’s rights, “reforming” their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours.

In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations’ abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that’s now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

Of all the events in world news over the past weeks — even more than the escalation of Putin’s murderous crimes against Ukraine — Trump and his authoritarian colleagues down at Mar-a-Lago are probably carefully watching what’s happening to Yoon and gaming out how a similar “emergency” action here in America might be recalibrated to have ultimate success.

Yoon has now backed down in the face of opposition from the South Korean parliament; he couldn’t get one single vote from his own party in Parliament, and is now facing demands that he resign or be impeached.

The challenges Yoon faced included a 17% approval rating, the legislature having been captured by the opposition party, and, most importantly, that he had never forced the members of his own party to degrade themselves and perform acts of obedience in front of him.

Thus, when he tried this strongman move of declaring a state of emergency but had not, in fact, first set himself up as a strongman, it failed.

Trump’s goal will be to avoid Yoon’s outcome and instead — like Putin and Orbán did in Russia and Hungary — ensure there won’t be any meaningful opposition within the GOP to his most extreme measures when they come.

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ny times logoNew York Times, After the Military Took Power in Niger, Terrorist Attacks Increased, Elian Peltier, Dec. 22, 2024. Killings by insurgents have surged since the military staged a coup, expelled U.S. and European troops, and stopped negotiations with Islamist groups.

ny times logoNew York Times, Detention Is Ordered for Suspect in Christmas Market Killings in Germany, Christopher F. Schuetze and Melissa Eddy, Dec. 22, 2024.  The authorities said they were struggling to understand the motives for the attack with a car in the eastern city of Magdeburg, in which a 9-year-old boy was among the five victims.

A judge on Sunday ordered a man suspected of killing five people by driving a car into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany to remain in detention as the authorities worked to understand the motives behind an attack that has stunned the country.

The victims in the assault on the market, which took place in the eastern city of Magdeburg on Friday night, were a 9-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75, the Magdeburg police said in a statement on Sunday.

More than 200 others were wounded, 41 of them seriously, in the attack that shattered the peace of Germany’s Christmas season, which is celebrated in hundreds of outdoor markets round the country.

The suspect, identified as Taleb A. in keeping with German privacy laws, was questioned on Saturday, security officials said. The authorities have described him as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades.

In social media posts, the doctor had criticized Germany for what he called the authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, according to German news media. A security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that those reports were accurate.

The doctor also expressed support on social media for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party and reposted comments by the group’s leaders warning of the threat of Islamic law’s being imposed in Germany.

washington post logoWashington Post, German Christmas market attack toll rises to five dead, over 200 injured, Victoria Bisset, Kelsey Ables and Souad Mekhennet, Dec. 21, 2024. The suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, an official said.

At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, German leaders said Saturday, hours after authorities identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

ny times logoNew York Times, German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe, Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, deepening the political turbulence in one of the continent’s most powerful country.

The German government collapsed on Monday as Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament, deepening a crisis of leadership across Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges.

The war in Ukraine has escalated, with Russia issuing increasing dire threats against Kyiv and its supporters. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. The government of France — Germany’s partner in leading Europe — fell earlier this month.

And now, Europe’s largest economy will be in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.

On Monday, German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.

bulwark logo big shipThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: WTF Is Happening In Canada? 51st State? Trudeau on the Outs? Bowing to Trump? Dec. 16, 2024. canadian flagTim Miller is joined by JJMcCullough to breakdown what's going on in Canada, from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigning to Donald Trump's tariff plans, and Trump's taunts at Justin Trudeau about making Canada an America

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Hails a SoftBank Investment That Echoes 2016, Maureen Farrell and Michael J. de la Merced, /Dec. 16, 2024. President-elect Trump announced that the Japanese technology company SoftBank had pledged to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first news conference since the election covered a wide range of topics, but it began with an eye-catching pledge: a $100 billion investment in the United States by SoftBank, a Japanese technology company.

Standing beside SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump announced a pledge that echoed a $50 billion commitment SoftBank made after his victory in 2016. That promise was followed by investments in a host of fledgling startups — some that surged and others that ran into trouble, including the co-working company WeWork and a company called Zume that used robots to make pizza.

According to Mr. Trump, SoftBank’s investment is intended to create 100,000 jobs. Trump transition officials said the investment will focus on technology and artificial intelligence over the next four years.

SoftBank doesn’t have $100 billion in cash on hand. The money is expected to come partly from its balance sheet but also from money raised alongside partners, according to a person familiar with SoftBank’s plans.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria’s New Leader Calls on Countries to Drop Terror Designation, Ben Hubbard, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Thomas Fuller, Dec. 16, 2024.  Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that swept into Damascus last week and ousted the Assad regime, urged the United States and other nations to remove sanctions imposed on the country, saying in an interview on Monday that all constraints needed to be lifted so that Syria could rebuild.

The rebel leader spoke in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on the same day that Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, seemed to break his silence about his decision to flee to Russia. In a statement posted to social media accounts he had used while in office, Mr. al-Assad said he had wanted to stay and fight, but was evacuated by Russian forces as the rebels bore down on the city.

ny times logoNew York Times, Putin Stays Silent on Syria, With Russia’s Future There in Question, Anton Troianovski, Dec. 16, 2024. In a televised meeting with his top military brass, Vladimir Putin left Syria unmentioned and made it clear that winning in Ukraine was his top priority.

For an hour on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin and his defense minister presided over a televised, annual meeting of the Russian military’s top brass. They held forth on NATO, Ukraine and issues as obscure as mortgages for service members.

But one topic went unmentioned: Syria.

Mr. Putin has yet to say anything in public about the collapse of his close ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria more than a week ago, even as Russia struggles to salvage what influence it can in the Middle East. The silence underscores the uncertainty surrounding the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria — and the overwhelming priority for the Kremlin that the war in Ukraine has become.

Mr. al-Assad’s fall is a painful topic right now in Moscow, said Anton Mardasov, a Moscow-based military analyst focusing on the Middle East. “It’s better not to say anything.”

Things were very different just a year ago, when Sergei K. Shoigu, then the defense minister, boasted at the same annual meeting that Russian troops remained deployed both in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-populated enclave that Azerbaijan recaptured from Armenia last year.

  • New York Times, U.S. Says Its Airstrikes Killed 12 Islamic State Operatives in Syria, Dec. 16, 2024.

ny times logoNew York Times, Tice’s Mother Asks Netanyahu for Pause in Syria Strikes Amid Search for Son, Adam Entous and Patrick Kingsley, Dec. 16, 2024. 

The mother of the missing American journalist Austin Tice has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a letter that her family has “credible information” that Mr. Tice may be held in a prison outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, and urged the Israelis to pause military strikes in the area to allow rescuers to search the site.

Mr. Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, said in the letter, dated Dec. 14 and addressed to Mr. Netanyahu, that the prison was under a Syrian military museum in the mountainous Mount Qasioun area and had a tunnel that was connected to a neighborhood and a government palace.

“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” Ms. Tice wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence.”

Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government’s lead envoy for hostage affairs, confirmed he had received the letter, and he said that he was coordinating on a daily basis with U.S. officials, including Roger D. Carstens, the U.S. government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“We will do everything possible in assisting the United States of America to bring the hostages and missing persons back home,” Mr. Hirsch said.

Mr. Tice was abducted in 2012 outside Damascus as the country descended into civil war. The United States has said it believes he was being held by the government of Bashar al-Assad. The Assad regime had long maintained that it was not holding Mr. Tice and had no information about him.

ny times logoNew York Times, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Resigns, in Blow to Trudeau’s Hold on Power, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Ian Austen, Dec. 16, 2024.  The departure of Chrystia Freeland poses a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada prepares for the incoming Trump administration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hold on power was threatened on Monday after the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration resigned abruptly, in a stinging rebuke to the country’s leader.

The high-profile departure of the minister, Chrystia Freeland, comes at a treacherous moment for Canada. President-elect Donald J. Trump has warned that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless the two countries do more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the United States.

Ms. Freeland, who has helped steer the Trudeau government through many challenges, had been playing a prominent role in forming Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition.

In her letter of resignation, Ms. Freeland accused Mr. Trudeau, who is deeply unpopular at home, of engaging in “costly political gimmicks” instead of focusing on countering the grave threat of tariffs.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds Feared Dead After Cyclone Hits French Islands Off Africa, Aurelien BreedenAmelia Nierenberg and Isabella Kwai, Dec. 16, 2024. Officials Officials in the archipelago of Mayotte said the number of people killed by Tropical Cyclone Chido could be much higher than the 21 now confirmed dead.

Marine Le Pen

ny times logoNew York Times, France’s Marine Le Pen Takes Aim at the Top, Adam Nossiter, Dec. 10, 2024. After helping to oust the prime minister last week, the far-right leader, above, has made clear her next target is President Emmanuel Macron.

The one-on-one duel that has shaped French political life for nearly a decade ratcheted up a notch last week, with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen claiming one big scalp, and giving notice of going after a bigger one, President Emmanuel Macron.

No one doubted that she was calling the shots. Yet by Monday, Mr. Macron, right, had relegated Ms. Le Pen and her party, the anti-immigrant National Rally, to emmanuel marcon twitter“pariah” — her word — status. He did not deign to meet with her in his search for a new prime minister to replace the one she had largely ousted last week.

Leaders of other parties had tête-à-têtes with Mr. Macron at the presidential palace; but not Ms. Le Pen, who was excluded because she is part of the “anti-Republican front” — his words.

That could turn out to be a big mistake. Last week, Ms. Le Pen announced the demise of the hapless prime minister, Michel Barnier, in Parliament; sure enough he was overthrown in a no-confidence vote soon after.

Mr. Barnier had tried to force through a budget proposal without a vote, and above all he had barely consulted with Ms. Le Pen, who has the largest bloc French Flagof parliamentarians and cannot be ignored.

She has suggested successive Macron governments could fall, until he steps down — making clear she is after a more consequential trophy: the president himself.

Mr. Macron was barely off the plane from Saudi Arabia as she spoke last Wednesday night. As the bemused parliamentarians listened, she promised “deliverance” for France from its woes, “maybe, very soon.”

That seemed as much promise as threat.

It all rested on one man’s decision, she said, avoiding Mr. Macron’s name while suggesting she was pushing him toward the exit. Her target was clear.

“It’s up to the person concerned, by himself, to decide whether he should stay,” she said. “It’s on his conscience, to determine whether he should sacrifice public policy, and France’s fate, for the sake of his own pride.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis: Netanyahu Finally Takes the Stand in His Corruption Trial, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Dec. 10, 2024. Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a trial that began four years ago. He has denied the charges.

Outside the courthouse, he is one of the most powerful men in the Middle East, overseeing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, its occupation of southern Lebanon and recent strikes in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterAs he stepped into a cramped and sweltering underground courtroom in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel morphed into the defendant in Case 67104-01-20 — charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.

Israel Flag“Like everyone who is brought to the witness stand, you are charged with speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Rivka Friedman-Feldman, one of three judges hearing the case.

An audience of roughly 100 journalists, lawmakers, government ministers and lawyers craned their necks to catch his response.

“I have waited eight years for this moment — to tell the truth, the truth as I remember it,” replied Mr. Netanyahu, gripping the sides of a wooden lectern as he stood to the left of the judges.

It was a humbling moment — a sitting prime minister, forced to answer accusations of graft, before a courtroom filled with his peers. It was also a moment Mr. Netanyahu seemed determined to transcend.

“I am shocked by the magnitude of this absurdity,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“I am the prime minister, I am running a country, I am running a war,” he continued. “I am not occupying myself with my future, but rather with that of the state of Israel.”

For nearly a decade, the corruption charges against Mr. Netanyahu have divided Israel, leading to years of political turmoil. The electorate has been roughly evenly split on the question of whether Mr. Netanyahu should remain in office while he stands trial — a dynamic that has created an electoral stalemate, leading to five elections in less than four years.

Apart from a brief court appearance to plead not guilty in 2021, Mr. Netanyahu had rarely been affected by the day-to-day proceedings of the trial.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent years interviewing witnesses instead of the defendant himself. The hearing on Tuesday — 1,661 days since the trial began — was set to be Mr. Netanyahu’s first full day in court.

Mr. Netanyahu had sought to delay his testimony by several months, arguing that his management of the war campaign had disrupted his preparations. But the court agreed to a postponement of only a few days.

While his appearance on Tuesday provided a crescendo in the judicial process, it was also, to many Israelis, anti-climactic. The charges against Mr. Netanyahu have been a part of Israeli discourse for so long that the spectacle of a prime minister on trial no longer seems as shocking as it once did.

“The public has completely accepted the idea that we have a sitting prime minister who has been investigated, indicted and is now on trial — even in the middle of a war,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst who attended the hearing on Tuesday.

“What would have been unimaginable 10 years ago has been completely normalized,” she added.

Mr. Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate but related cases. The charges center on claims that he gave regulatory favors and diplomatic support to prominent businessmen in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage.

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seth hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: {December 11 [Human Rights Day History, Implications] Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Dec. 11, 2024. Today is heather cox richardson cnnHuman Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-six years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948 the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, including the horrors of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Greece was in the middle of a civil war, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans.

In the midst of these dangerous trends, the member countries of the United Nations came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.The United Nations itself was only three years old. Representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, had formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Part of the mission of the U.N. was “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to construct the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit.

The UDHR remains aspirational, but it is a vital part of the rules-based order that restrains leaders from human rights abuses, giving victims a language and a set of principles to condemn mistreatment. Before 1948 that language and those principles were unimaginable.

In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China Bans Rare Mineral Exports to the U.S., David Pierson, Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson, Dec. 4, 2024 (print ed.). The China Flagmove comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.

China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States, an escalation of the tech war between the world’s two biggest powers. The move comes a day after the Biden administration tightened Chinese access to advanced American technology.

The ban signals Beijing’s willingness to engage in supply chain warfare by blocking the export of important components used to make valuable products, like weaponry and semiconductors.

Politico, Trump threatens BRICS nations with 100 percent tariff, Ari Hawkins, Nov. 30, 2024. Trump also said: “There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Trudeau Flies to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Nov. 29, 2024. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the first G-7 leader to visit since the election. He is under pressure to persuade President-elect Trump to back down from his tariff threat.

canadian flagThe visit makes Mr. Trudeau the first foreign head of government from the Group of 7, a key forum of global coordination consisting of the world’s wealthiest democracies, to visit the president-elect.

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump were to dine together on Friday evening, one official said, along with a delegation of senior Trump allies poised for top trade and security positions in his new administration.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump, Mexican president talk border, migrant caravans amid tariff threats, Mary Beth Sheridan and Niha Masih, Nov. 29, 2024 (print ed.). Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to impose tariffs and she hinted at retaliation in a letter.

claudia sheinbaum w 2024Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, left, assured President-elect Donald Trump in a phone call Wednesday that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the U.S.-Mexican border, after Trump’s threat earlier this week to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from her country if it could not halt irregular migrants and fentanyl from crossing the U.S. border.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

mexico flag1“We discussed the Mexican strategy for the phenomenon of migration, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at our northern border, because we deal with them in Mexico,” Sheinbaum wrote on X after the call.

She described the conversation as “excellent.” Trump, posting about the call on Truth Social, his social media platform, said the conversation was “very productive.”

The conciliatory tone on both sides followed a tense exchange Tuesday: In a letter, Sheinbaum responded angrily to Trump’s tariff warning, threatening tariffs of her own. But they diverged in how they described the conversation.

Trump said Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico,” which would mean “effectively closing our Southern Border.” In a second post he said this would be come into effect immediately, prompting another tweet from Sheinbaum in which she said: “Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges,” adding that her country would offer assistance to migrants, including caravans, before they could reach the northern border. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy, Michael Crowley, Nov. 29, 2024. The  world is braced for disruption from President-elect Trump, but he may find more common ground with President Biden than many assume.

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

trump 2024Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

ny times logoNew York Times, How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter, Agnes Chang and Keith Bradsher, Nov. 29, 2024. President-elect Trump has promised to impose new tariffs, but they are unlikely to undercut China’s dominance given its advantages in automaking.

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Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies

 

devan nunes hearing Custom

ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

richard grenell oPresident-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.

trump 2024A 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Burkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 12, 2024. The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

washington post logoWashington 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.

Justice Department log circularSmith’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.

 

More On U.S.Government Shutdown Threats

 

 

Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg photo via Vanity Fair)

Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg file photo via Vanity Fair)

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down, Williaml Kristol and Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. We knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.

bulwark logo big shipPer NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend. . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

New York Times, Congress Approves Spending Extension, Ending Shutdown Crisis, Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The Senate passed the measure, sending it to President Biden’s desk, shortly after the midnight deadline for government funding to lapse.

The Senate approved a spending measure early Saturday to keep government money flowing through mid-March, sending it to President Biden for his expected signature and closing a chaotic endgame in Congress minutes after federal funding had lapsed.

U.S. House logoThe 85-to-11 Senate vote followed earlier House passage of the legislation, which also provided $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The action pushed major spending decisions into 2025 and the first months of the incoming Trump administration and a fully Republican-controlled Congress.

The White House said that President Biden would sign the measure on Saturday and that no agencies would shut down despite the technical lapse in funding.

The end to days of shutdown drama came after House Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.

The measure that ultimately passed kept dollars flowing to federal agencies and prevented a prolonged funding lapse that could have led to government disruptions just days before the holidays.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the final product was not all Democrats wanted, but avoided a crisis.

“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families,” Mr. Schumer said, citing “emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters” as well as no suspension of the limits on federal borrowing. He added that it would “keep the government open with no draconian cuts.”

The legislation also extends farm programs for one year and provides $10 billion in direct aid for farmers.

  • Washington Post, Biden signs stopgap funding bill, but congressional fight to continue, Maegan Vazquez and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The incoming Congress, which will be controlled by Republicans, is still expected to face bruising battles over government funding in Trump’s second term.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Russian War Against Ukraine

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Says It Assassinated Russian General in Moscow, Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.). Igor Kirillov, who was in charge of Russia’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed by a bomb on a street in the capital.

ukraine flagA general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces was killed by a bomb on a Moscow street on Tuesday, in one of the most brazen assassinations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

igor kirillov wThe general, Igor Kirillov, 54, right, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.

The S.B.U. considered General Kirillov a legitimate target, the official said.

russian flagA day before the general’s killing, Ukraine had accused him of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian troops had dropped ammunition with toxic compounds onto Ukrainian positions in efforts to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches.

According to the Russian military, the division that General Kirillov oversaw carries out specialized tasks like protecting Russian troops when chemical and nuclear weapons are used, as well as offensive operations like attacks with incendiary weapons.

ny times logoNew York Times, Who Was Gen. Igor Kirillov? Staff Report, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.).  The general had faced sanctions for using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of Russia’s military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed on Tuesday by a bomb in Moscow, the Russian authorities said.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.How was he killed?

General Kirillov, 54, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

The explosion occurred at about 6:12 a.m. and shattered windows in a building across the street, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.Why was he targeted?

russian flagA day before his killing, Ukraine had accused General Kirillov of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian forces had used chemical weapons on the battlefield more than 4,800 times since the war began, on General Kirillov’s orders. Russia denied Ukraine’s accusations during a July meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Ukraine has said the chemical weapons used by Russia often include combat grenades equipped with the irritant chemical agents CS and CN. Those tear gases, most commonly used by riot police officers to control crowds, are banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty ratified by more than 150 countries, including Russia.

The U.S. State Department said this spring that Russia had used chloropicrin, a choking agent widely used in World War I, as well as tear gas on the battlefield. Britain imposed sanctions on General Kirillov this fall, citing his responsibility in deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

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

politico CustomA 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.

german flagThe 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.”

NBC News, Russian oil tankers split in two by strong storms in the Black Sea, Dec. 15, 2024.

Enforcer News, Massive Russian Ships SINK In Black Sea; MAJOR Rescue Operation Underway, Dec. 15, 2024. Today, 2 Massive Russian Ships have sunk in the Black Sea resulting in a major disaster for the Russians as they mount a full-scale rescue operation to save the men onboard.

The ships were carrying thousands of tons of petroleum (estimated at 5,000 tons apiece)which if fully released into the sea, would result in the worst disaster in the history of the Black Sea.

Putin is furious and demanding answers from top officials. We also received news that Ukraine attacked the special forces headquarters in Grozny, Chechnya with a full size Ukrainian FoxBat drone which evaded all of Ramzan Kadyrov's air defenses. Meanwhile we also received news from the Ukrainians that the North Korean soldiers are taking extremely heavy losses as they begin to retreat/run in major swarms from the frontline. We also got some news coming out of Syria as well. Please like and subscribe for more daily short war updates!

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

burkino fasoBurkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Brazilian Police Arrest Close Ally of Ex-President Bolsonaro, Official Says, Ana Ionova, Dec. 14, 2024. Gen. Walter Braga Netto was Jair Bolsonaro’s running mate. The arrest was for meddling in an investigation into a plot to stage a coup, the police said.

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested Gen. Walter Braga Netto, a close ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his running mate in 2022, according to a police official, accusing him of meddling in their investigation into a plot to stage a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election.

The federal police said in a statement that they had carried out an arrest and two search warrants against people for “hindering the free production of evidence during the criminal proceedings.”

The police official confirmed that General Braga Netto was the target of the arrest, which the police said in the statement was “to prevent the repetition of illegal actions.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. The targets of the search warrants were not identified.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

 

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).

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).

ap logoAssociated 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.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

The lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

texas mapUnder shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

 

 

pete hegseth collage djt

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trouble Began When #MeToo Became #ChurchToo, David French, right, Dec. 15, 2024. l When did we know that the #MeToodavid french cropped moment was truly over?

At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.

But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.

Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense (shown above and at left), had paid an accuser to pete hegseth tatoo religion newssettle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.

ryan lizza olivia nuzzi rfk jr

Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., above right, who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, center, ,a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job (and disputed with her ex, reporter Ryan Lizza, while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.

I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.

Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.

All that happened before my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein. But the early wave of #MeToo revelations was heavily concentrated in traditionally liberal institutions.

When #MeToo became #ChurchToo, though, that was the beginning of the end. In a remarkably short period of time, the narrative changed. No longer was sexual abuse and exploitation a “Hollywood problem” or a “secular problem,” it was also an evangelical problem, and it was a problem in many of the most important institutions of the church.

 

southern baptist convention logo

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, faced a sexual abuse “apocalypse,” a series of scandals that my friend Russell Moore, the former head of the S.B.C.’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called “a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.”

jerry falwell jr resized wife assistant

Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, faced its own sexual scandals. Its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., stepped liberty university sealaside after a sordid series of allegations that involved him, his wife and a pool-boy-turned-business associate [and his wife's assistant, shown above].

At the same time that the school was sheltering a corrupt president, it was also mishandling claims of sex abuse against students, including by turning the school’s code of conduct, called the Liberty Way, against sex abuse victims. If they’d violated a school policy, by drinking, for example, that could be used against them in the schools’ disciplinary proceedings.

The hypocrisy was stark. The Christian president of a Christian university was imposing standards on students — including victims of abuse — that he was flouting himself.

There’s an easy answer for understanding the end of #MeToo, one that has the benefit of being largely true — American society (including the American church) is still rife with misogyny. As with race, the fact that America has come quite far in respecting the legal rights of women does not mean that we don’t still have far to go to achieve true cultural equality and respect.

But misogyny was never a complete explanation, especially given the fact that sex abuse isn’t confined to men abusing women and girls. Something else is at work, something that also represents a deep and profound moral flaw. A person might value vulnerable people in the abstract — or might even declare a strong commitment to justice — but very few people will sacrifice anything they truly value to correct an injustice that doesn’t involve them immediately and directly.

My wife’s story helped me understand. When she was 12 years old, a vacation Bible schoolteacher abused her in her own home. Decades later, her pastor, by then retired, told her that the same person had abused at least a dozen other women and girls in the church.

The abuser was never held accountable — either by church leaders or law enforcement. Instead, he moved to a town in Kentucky and became a high school girls’ basketball coach. He lost his teaching certificate in 2023 after there were multiple reports of misconduct.

The abuser’s father was a powerful person in the church and in Nancy’s small town. Confronting his son carried a cost, and the simple fact is that very few people were willing to bear that cost, including people who were very close to Nancy. Not even their love for her could overcome their fear of the social risk.

Yes, people want justice. They want abuse to stop, but they also don’t want to poison their relationships with friends and colleagues or undermine their social status. They don’t want to say no to kids who ask to go back to their favorite summer camp. They don’t want to lose an election. Any sacrifice, no matter how attenuated, is too much.

That’s a bleak truth — one that is very hard to face — and so there is a temptation to rationalize, to say that #MeToo was a valuable movement until it went too far. Rationalizations are often rooted in a measure of truth. At its height, #MeToo was too quick to rush to judgment, too reliant on rumors and too dismissive of due process, especially due process on campus.

Even so, one can and should be able to raise awareness of a terrible social evil without undermining fundamental fairness or discarding constitutional values.

There are always excessive responses to genuine problems, and the existence of the excessive response shouldn’t blind us to the underlying reality. The fact that defunding the police was a terrible idea — or that rioters burned buildings during the summer of 2020, for example — doesn’t mean that American police officers have no problems with brutality.

And so here we are, with the nation about to be led by a man found liable for sexual abuse, with key members of his chosen senior team beset by their own gross scandals, voted into office on the strength of overwhelming white evangelical support (according to 2024 exit polls, he won white evangelicals by 65 points and lost everyone else by 18 points). And all too many Christians still celebrate his victory — and their indispensable support — as a triumph of good over evil.

When I was younger and more naïve, I wondered why so many historical injustices persisted for so long in the United States. Now I have my answer.

 

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Crystal Mangum, who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, says she lied, Jenna West, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). / Crystal Mangum, a woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, publicly said for the first time that she lied about the allegations.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Mangum said on an episode of the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat” released this week. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me.”

The episode was recorded in November at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum is serving time after being convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend in April 2011.

crystal mason mugshot Custom“I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” Mangum told podcast host Kat DePasquale about the Duke case, “and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was regardless.”

The Duke case made national headlines after Mangum, a Black woman, accused lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann of raping her at a party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. It caused the cancellation of the lacrosse team’s 2006 season, and Duke forced coach Mike Pressler to resign.

The North Carolina attorney general’s office reviewed the case and declared Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann innocent in 2007. The attorney general’s office said the charges should not have been brought against the three players and there was no DNA or evidence to corroborate the allegations.

District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for ethics violations, including making false statements and lying about withholding evidence. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Mangum for making false allegations.

Also in 2007, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke for the school’s handling of the allegations.

“I want them to know that I love them, and they didn’t deserve that, and I hope that they can forgive me,” Mangum said of the players.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general, right, opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

ken paxton mugThe lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

Under shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

In a statement on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said that she was “committed to maintaining New York’s status as a safe harbor for all who seek abortion care.”

“Make no mistake,” she added. “I will do everything in my power to enforce the laws of New York State.”

Ms. Ziegler said that the case could play out in several ways. She said that New York’s shield law had a provision that allows the doctor being sued, or possibly the state, to countersue against Texas, so the case could end up with dueling lawsuits.

If, as expected, the case ends up in federal court, she said, Texas might argue that shield laws cannot be enforced because the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution requires states to respect other states’ laws. But, Ms. Ziegler said, some legal experts who support shield laws say the laws constitute a “public policy exception” to that clause.

The use of abortion medication has grown since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. One study found that medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions.More in U.S.

Already, abortion providers have become concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be revived by the incoming Trump administration. The law, which has been rarely enforced, prohibits the mailing of “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials, like pornography, or any item “intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion.”

In 2022, the Justice Department concluded that abortion medication could be sent by mail if the sender did not intend for the recipient to use them unlawfully. Abortion opponents have been pushing for the incoming administration to rescind that interpretation and say that the act bans all mailing of abortion pills.

In the Texas suit, Mr. Paxton said that Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., provided two medications to a 20-year-old woman in Texas that “resulted in a medical abortion” over the summer. The two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, are widely used together to end pregnancies up to 12 weeks.

In July, the woman asked the “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room because of “severe bleeding,” and it was there that he first learned that she was nine weeks pregnant, according to the lawsuit.

The man “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage,” the suit said, and he went back to their home in Collin County, where he “discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.”ImagePiles of white pills on a table. Two hands wearing medical gloves are on the table, and one is hovering over a pile.Misoprostol, which is used to end pregnancies.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times

Dr. Carpenter specializes in reproductive health and is a co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that assists doctors in states where abortion is legal with interstate telemedicine in order to “close the abortion accessibility gap,” according to the group’s website.

She is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas, according to the suit. A colleague of Dr. Carpenter’s said on Friday that Dr. Carpenter would not be commenting on the case.

But the colleague, Dr. Linda Prine, who has been open about prescribing abortion pills under New York’s shield law, said: “Maggie has been providing legally protected abortion care, protected by the State of New York, to people who are greatly in need. Texas has no jurisdiction over us in New York State. Abortion is a human right.”

Mr. Paxton said he was seeking to have the court stop Dr. Carpenter from continuing to provide abortion medication to patients in Texas, and to apply Texas’ ban on abortion to her. The ban carries a penalty of at least $100,000 for each violation.

It was not clear how Mr. Paxton would seek to enforce the state law against a New York doctor. His office did not respond to a request to discuss the suit.

David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who has helped draft and lobby for shield laws, including New York’s, said the suit was precisely what the shield laws were meant to cover.

“Texas has no jurisdiction over Maggie Carpenter,” Mr. Cohen said. “She is not physically present there. The courts cannot order her to do anything, and they cannot get the assistance of the New York courts to order her to do anything because of the shield law.”

But anti-abortion groups were already celebrating the legal challenge.

“If Texas wins, this case could open the door for the state to take further legal action against one of the largest organizations in the illegal abortion cartel: Aid Access,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, referring to the Europe-based organization that has been at the forefront of telemedicine abortion and has shield-law providers in several states.

Katie Daniel, the director of legal affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded Mr. Paxton for “leading the charge to hold out-of-state abortion businesses accountable for preying on Texas’ unborn children and their mothers.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Paxton has tried to stretch Texas’ ban beyond state borders. He fought in court this year to reverse a rule by the Biden administration that prevents investigators from inspecting the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortions. It was not clear if Mr. Paxton had been seeking such records.

Ms. Ziegler says the new lawsuit also sets up an interstate battle that is “kind of giving the lie to the whole idea that each state is going to be left to do its own thing,” she said. “That was the winning recipe for the G.O.P. — every state can make its own policy.”

But with abortion pills being mailed across state lines, she said, the conflicts between conservative and liberal states don’t go away. Instead, they become heightened.

“The whole ‘each state is going to leave each other state alone’ thing is not an accurate depiction of what any of the states are doing or want to do,” she said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Polygamist Sect in Arizona Gets 50 Years in Child Sex Ring Case, Michael Levenson, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., right, who claimed to have more than 20 “wives” including 10 “brides” under 18, pleaded guilty in April to two felony conspiracy charges.

samuel batemanThe self-proclaimed leader of a polygamist sect in Arizona who amassed more than 20 “wives,” including 10 “brides” under 18, was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison in connection with what prosecutors described as an interstate child sexual abuse ring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Federal prosecutors said that the man, Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., led a group that victimized girls as young as 9.

Using his status as a self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. Bateman forced his child “brides” to participate in sexual activities with him and with other adult men and women, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

ny times logoNew York Times, Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of a New York subway car. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.

Daniel Penny, a former Marine who choked a fellow subway rider on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, ending a case that had come to exemplify New York City’s post-pandemic struggles.

The jurors decided that Mr. Penny’s actions were not criminal when he held the rider, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold as the two men struggled on the floor of a subway car on May 1, 2023. Mr. Neely, who was homeless and had a history of mental illness, had strode through the subway car that afternoon, yelling at passengers and frightening them, according to witnesses.

After the forewoman announced the verdict, the courtroom erupted, with some people cheering the outcome and others responding with anger.

Upon hearing the words “not guilty,” Mr. Penny’s lawyer, Thomas A. Kenniff, slapped his palm on the defense table and turned to hug Mr. Penny, who had a large grin on his face. Another of his lawyers, Steven Raiser, stood and kissed his client on the cheek.

Mr. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, lashed out at supporters of Mr. Penny, and the judge asked him to leave the room.

The jurors had spent more than three days trying to come to a unanimous decision on whether Mr. Penny, 26, was guilty of manslaughter — a higher charge — in the death of Mr. Neely, 30. On Friday, the jurors sent two notes to the judge overseeing the trial saying that they had deadlocked.

After the jurors — seven women and five men — sent the first note that morning, the judge, Maxwell T. Wiley, instructed them to resume their deliberations. When the jurors sent the second note in the afternoon, telling Justice Wiley that they were still unable to reach an agreement, he granted the prosecution’s request to dismiss the charge. He sent the jurors home for the weekend, telling them to prepare to begin deliberating on the lesser djt michael cohen disloyalcharge, criminally negligent homicide, on Monday. Ultimately, they decided to acquit Mr. Penny.

The decision was a defeat for the office of Alvin L. Bragg, left, Manhattan’s district attorney. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bragg said that the jury “has now spoken.”

“We deeply respect the jury process and we respect their verdict,” he said.

In his statement, Mr. Bragg also noted that prosecutors and their families had been “besieged with hate and threats — on social media, by phone and over email” throughout the trial. “Simply put, this is unacceptable, and everyone, no matter your opinion on this case, should condemn it,” he said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Youth Pastor Is Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades, Billy Witz, Nov. 27, 2024. Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.

The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.

The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.

“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.

Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.

A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.

Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Immigration

ICE logo

washington post logoWashington Post, Immigration: Hundreds more migrants have died in Rio Grande crossings than U.S., Mexico reported, Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez, Dec. 8, 2024. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have texas mapdrowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

washington post logoWashington Post, Many targeted for removal by Trump can’t be deported, ICE data shows, Nick Miro, Dec. 8, 2024. Nearly half of the 1.4 million people in the U.S. immigration system who have pending deportation orders cannot be sent back to their home countries, according to internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, posing one of several looming obstacles to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for a mass removal campaign.

Some orders can’t be carried out because the would-be deportee’s home country won’t take them or limits cooperation with ICE. Others identified for deportation are serving prison terms, or have received a reprieve or deferral from an immigration judge, due to a medical condition, a credible persecution threat or another extenuating factor.

An array of other logistical and legal impediments also could constrain mass deportations, according to current and former ICE officials.

Trump promises to brush aside hurdles and mount a campaign modeled after the harsh roundups of the Eisenhower administration, when the U.S. government expelled hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to Mexico.

“We will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said on the campaign trail.

Trump’s aides describe the anticipated campaign as an enforcement blitz that will leverage the power and resources of the U.S. military to roll back the effect of record numbers of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden. Criminals and those with outstanding deportation orders will be the administration’s priority as of Trump’s inauguration, Jan. 20, aides say.

 

glenn youngkin wins

washington post logoWashington Post, Youngkin: Jordanians ‘crashed’ Quantico. Feds: It was an Amazon delivery, Laura Vozzella and Salvador Rizzo, Dec. 8, 2024.   Virginia’s governor, shown above in a file photo, has used the arrest of two undocumented men who misunderstood directions to stop at a check-in station to inflame fears over illegal immigration.

There are two versions of a May 3 incident at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia involving two Jordanian men, both undocumented immigrants, who pulled up to the entrance in a box truck.

commerce dept logoThere’s the mundane account given by federal prosecutors about some confusion over where to check in during an Amazon delivery stop. And there’s the one that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has been telling for the past six months that makes it sound like two foreigners stormed the gates at the fortified military installation.

“We have folks that have crashed the — illegal immigrants — that have crashed the front gate at Quantico in a box truck, trying to gain access to Quantico,” Youngkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Oct. 14 in one of multiple national television appearances — plus speeches at the National Republican Convention and a rally in Virginia with then-Republican nominee Donald Trump — where he has invoked the episode to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies.

Federal prosecutors — who initially charged the pair with misdemeanor trespassing, but later dropped those charges — say that, while the Jordanians were in the country illegally and are in the process of being deported, they did not crash the gate or intend to do any harm at Quantico.

Mohammad Dabous, working for an Amazon subcontractor, was trying to make a delivery to the post office in the town of Quantico, which can only be accessed through the gates of the military base, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Amico, who handled the case, said in a court filing. Hasan Hamdan was a passenger in the truck.

“Marine Corps … agents spoke with Mr. Dabous’s supervisor at the subcontractor delivery company, who confirmed Mr. Dabous’s employment and verified the scheduled authorized delivery to the Northern Virginia town of Quantico on May 3, 2024,” Amico wrote in a motion filed Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The same filing noted that neither man had any known terrorist links. “The FBI has not identified any national security concerns regarding either defendant,” wrote Amico, who also said he consulted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Neither defendant is on the watch list.”

Quantico officials issued Dabous and Hamdan citations for trespassing, a petty offense punishable by a maximum six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. They then turned the pair over to ICE because of their immigration status. The men were later released on bond from ICE custody.

The U.S. attorney’s office dropped the charges Oct. 3, but the deportation proceedings continue.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions

washington post logoWashington Post, Skyrocketing car-insurance premiums are pushing inflation higher, Andrew Ackerman and Federica Cocco, Dec. 14, 2024. Auto insurance costs in particular are making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult.

Soaring insurance premiums, particularly for autos, are fueling rising consumer price

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space

ny times logoNew York Times, Automakers Thrived in the Pandemic. Many Are Now Struggling, Jack Ewing, Dec. 15, 2024. A few years ago, automakers were celebrating record profits as the pandemic created shortages of new cars, allowing them to raise prices. Now the hangover is setting in.

Nissan, the Japanese automaker, is laying off 9,000 employees. Volkswagen is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time. The chief executive of the U.S. and European automaker Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Peugeot, Fiat and other brands, quit after sales tumbled. Even luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz are struggling.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Media, High Tech, Culture, Education

 

llewellyn king photo logoWhite House Chronicle, Opinion: The Crisis in Journalism — More Reporting Needed , Llewellyn King, Dec. 21, 2024. There is a lot of dither about the future of journalism. Make no mistake, it is the essential commodity.

If you know what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine or Syria, it is because brave journalists told you. Not the government, not some academic institution, not artificial intelligence, and not hearsay from your friends or from a political party.

The crisis in journalism isn’t that it failed analytically in the last election, or that we — an irregular army of individualists — failed, but that journalism has run out of money and its political enemies have found that the courts (and the fear of libel prosecution) can terrorize the companies that own the media.

peter thiel twitter smileIn 2016, the gossipy site Gawker was sued by the pro wrestler and political figure Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was financed by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, left.

Now come two suits, filed by President-elect Donald Trump: One that he won against ABC News, and one to be filed against the ICE logoDes Moines Register. It is reported that conservative interests plan a series of these legal interventions against the media.

This will have a frightening effect on news coverage. When there is fear of prosecution, there is less likely to be investigative news coverage.

So far, the most troublesome of the prosecutions has been the one against ABC News. The network caved in early. It agreed to abc news logo colorpay $15 million plus legal fees into a fund for what will be the first Trump presidential library.

Could it be that ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney wants good relations with the incoming administration?

However, a much bigger problem faces the media than the fear of prosecution. It is that the old media, led by local and regional newspapers, is dying. Although there are thousands of podcasts, they don’t take up the slack.

You could listen to an awful lot of podcasts and not know what is going on. State houses and local courts aren’t being covered. The sanitizing effect of press surveillance has been withdrawn and, frankly, God help the poor defendants in a local court where there is a disproportionate desire to plead cases, to avoid honest trials even when there is conspicuous doubt.

I never tire of repeating what Dan Raviv, former CBS News correspondent, said to me once, “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so. However, there is a problem: Journalism needs to be concentrated in a newspaper or a broadcast outlet where there is enough revenue to do the job. Otherwise, you get what I think of as the upside-down pyramid of more and more commentary, based on less and less reporting.

We are awash in commentary, some of it very good and some of it trash. It is all based on news gathered by those news organizations that can afford to employ a phalanx of reporters.

Regional newspapers used to have Washington bureaus and foreign bureaus. At one time, the Baltimore Sun had 12 overseas bureaus. Now it has none.

This is the story nationwide. Fewer people actually cover the news, digging, checking and telling us what they have found.

Throughout the history of journalism, technology has been disruptive, sometimes advantageously and sometimes less so. Modern printing presses developed at the end of the 19th century were important boosters, as was the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884.

On the negative side, television killed off evening papers, and podcasts are taking a toll on radio. Now, the internet and tech companies have siphoned off most of the revenue that supported newspapers, radio and television.

As one can’t have a free and fair society without vibrant journalism, we clearly need a new paradigm which is internet-based news organizations that are large enough and rich enough to do the job in the time-honored way with reporters asking questions, whether it is at the courthouse, the White House or on the battlefield.

There is a clear choice: News and informed analysis, or rumor and conspiracy.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. Read this column on: White House Chronicle or Inside Sources.

Going Deep with Russ Baker via Substack, Investigative Commentary on The Epoch Times: Epic Crimes: The Spectacular Grift of a Trump Propaganda Rag, russ baker new head and shouldersRuss Baker, right, best-selling author, longtime media critic and founder of the WhoWhatWhy investigative reporting site. June 9, 2024, republished Dec. 22, 2024. Their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable.

In case you missed this extraordinary story: A highly visible “news organization” that is a key backer of Donald Trump and continuous source of disinformation turns out to be… run by criminals.

Here are quick details:

The Epoch Timesepoch times, a strange publication that, backed by a religious cult, started small and grew explosively into a behemoth of disinformation, was involved with large-scale money laundering.

The CFO and unnamed members of his “Make Money Online” team are charged with money laundering and bank fraud between 2020 and 2024. The transnational scheme involved using cryptocurrency to buy crime proceeds — fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and prepaid debit cards — at a discount and depositing the money into bank accounts opened with stolen personal identification, then transferring the money into Epoch Times accounts. This stratagem had the effect of hiding the criminal activities that generated the funds in the first place.

But their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable: their unconscionable spreading of disinformation on deadly diseases, and deadly climate change, and their propagandistic promotion of the man whose rule would perpetuate these possibly fatal conditions.

And their reach is wide and deep. The Epoch Times was the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself — until Facebook banned it in 2019. As NBC News put it, “By hiding its multimillion-dollar dark money ad spend, the organization bypassed Facebook’s political advertising transparency rules.” Yet the ads continued to run, but under other names — e.g., Honest Paper, Patriots of America, Pure American Journalism — until they, too, were disabled.

I know these maniacs — to whose madness there is, unfortunately, a determined method — because they fill my inbox with constant, grotesque lies on a nonstop, turbocharged basis. I’ve never seen anything like it, and, given what I see daily, that’s saying a lot. Stop the Steal. Photo credit: ATTRIBUTION_GOES_HERE

I bring up the Epoch Times indictment as a coda to last week’s examination of the criminal mindset increasingly taking over the Republican Party and a significant portion of the populace.

This week only underlined that point: One of America’s two political parties has turned largely into a refuge for those inclined toward committing illegal, immoral, and unethical acts — or at least refusing to speak openly against them.

Committing crimes, cheating, lying, stealing, harming others is… absolutely fine. Even to be admired. High five! Laugh. Drinks all around.

The criminal mindset and complete lack of a moral compass expand into a kind of gleeful lunacy that also punishes the perps, who cannot see beyond short-term, ill-gotten gains.

For the rest of us, it feels like being strapped into the back seat of a car being driven at high speed by Thelma and Louise.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., always available for his disinformation cameo, says The Epoch Times is among his most trusted news sources: “They’re very courageous and it’s real journalism.”

The Epoch Times’s mission, according to tax filings, is — and I love this — independent journalism, “outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, for the public benefit and to be truly responsible to society.”

The criminal levels of dishonesty exhibited by The Epoch Times are, unsurprisingly, similar to that captured in the emails the Trump campaign sends out. For example, this one, which I just received:

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

So, not only is he a criminal, but he takes himself and his crime — which had zero to do with “saving America” and everything to do with self-interest — and wraps them in the flag.

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Mediaite, Feds Indict Far-Right Media Exec in Massive Money Laundering Scheme, Alex Griffin, June 3, 2024. Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the far-right Epoch Times, was indicted Monday on charges of allegedly participating in a massive money laundering scheme.

mediaite square logoThe Southern District of New York released a statement saying, “Bill Guan, 61, of Secaucus, New Jersey, is charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and two counts of bank fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. The charges do not relate to the Media Company’s newsgathering activities.”

Justice Department log circularGuan is alleged to have laundered some $67 million in funds. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and is associated with the Chinese Falun Gong new religious movement. The paper, which is part of the Epoch Media Group, is known for its conspiratorial articles, vehement opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, and socially conservative values.

NBC News reported in late 2023, based on subscriber count, the paper has the 4th largest circulation in the U.S. “The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax record,” noted NBC of the publication’s wild success.

 

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hartford courant hqHartford Business, Former Hartford Courant HQ headed to auction block, Greg Bordonaro, Dec. 16, 2024. It could soon be the start of a new era for the Hartford Courant’s former Broad Street headquarters.

The 289,392-square-foot former home of the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper is going up for auction.

The 285 Broad St. office and industrial property has been listed on the online auction website Ten-X with a starting bid price of $700,000. The auction is scheduled for Jan. 27, 2025.

The property has been on the sales block since March 2021, when it was listed for $6 million. It was put up for sale just months after the Hartford Courant announced it would shut down its brick-and-mortar operations and continue to operate on a remote basis.

The Broad Street property is currently 23% occupied and remains the home of WTIC FOX-61. Real estate services firm Newmark is the listing broker.

The property’s current owner, according to city records, is 285 Broad Street Hartford LLC, which is controlled by Jason Piel, who lists a Stamford business address.

According to his LinkedIn page, Piel is a controller at Twenty Lake Holdings, a subsidiary of New York-based Alden Global Capital, which owns the Hartford Courant and several other U.S. newspapers.

285 Broad Street Hartford LLC acquired the property in 2018 for $6.9 million from Tribune Real Estate Holdings LLC, city records show.

According to the Ten-X listing, “285 Broad Street is a Hartford landmark,” with Class B office and industrial space that offers an “excellent value-add repositioning opportunity with the flexibility for a variety of end uses.”

The property, built in 1928, is equipped with three power feeds, three passenger elevators, two freight elevators, an atrium lobby, conference rooms, and training facilities, the listing said. It has 175,000 square feet of office space and 120,000 square feet of industrial space.

Politico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009President-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

david french croppedny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel? David French, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate. Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.

Most of us have sound enough moral instincts to reject the notion that might makes right. Power alone is not a sufficient marker of righteousness. We may watch people bow to power out of fear or awe, but yielding to power isn’t the same thing as acknowledging that it is legitimate or that it is just.

The idea that right deserves might is different and may even be more destructive. It appeals to our ambition through our virtue, which is what makes it especially treacherous. It masks its darkness. It begins with the idea that if you believe your ideas are just and right, then it’s a problem for everyone if you’re not in charge.

In that context, your own will to power is sanctified. It’s evidence not so much of your own ambition, but of your love for the community. You want what’s best for your neighbors, and what’s best for your neighbors is, well, you.

The practical objections to this mind-set are legion. How can we be so certain of our own righteousness? Even if we are right or have a superior vision of justice compared with our opponents, the quest for power can override the quest for justice.

The historical examples are too numerous to list. Give a man a sword and tell him he’s defending the cross, and there’s no end to the damage he can do.

My own attitude about Christmas has changed over the years. A day that was once purely celebratory is now also profoundly humbling. In many ways, the facts surrounding Christ’s birth are as important as the fact of Christ’s birth. How he arrived was a signal of why he arrived: to redeem hearts, not to rule nations.

Christ’s life began in a manger, and it ended on a cross. He warned his followers that a cross could come for them as well. An upside-down kingdom began with an upside-down birth. When Jesus himself is humble, how do we justify our pride?

Status News, The Sunday Spotlight: Dasha Burns dishes on why she left TV news to go all in on digital, Oliver Darcy, Dec. 22, 2024. Mentioned in this edition: Jeff Bezos, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, James Gunn, Scarlett Johansson, Barack Obama, SZA, and more.

It is not every day that a television correspondent opts to ditch the tube for a role at a digital news outlet. But that's what Dasha Burns, who was a rising star at NBC News, announced she was doing earlier this month when she joined POLITICO as White House bureau chief.

With television news facing a precipitous decline, the reality is that Burns is only simply getting ahead of her peers with the move. A large segment of the TV news industry will eventually need to make a similar transition. Nevertheless, switching gears on the early side also takes some admirable temerity.

We caught up with Burns for a conversation on her jump to digital, the less-than-stellar state of the news industry, and how she's preparing for a second Donald Trump presidency.

ny times logoNew York Times, After Oleksandr Usyk beats Tyson Fury again, what’s next for heavyweight boxing? Sarah Shephard, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). On a night that left no doubts about the exalted position of Oleksandr Usyk in boxing history, there was one question that lingered in the cool Riyadh air: what next?

Not only for the two men who have now shared 24 closely fought rounds of high-level heavyweight boxing, but for the sport’s marquee weight division. Where does it go from here, having just staged back-to-back showdowns between its two best men? When you’re standing at the top of a mountain, is there anywhere to go other than down?

The journey to this point started in Dusseldorf just over nine years ago when Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko to change the course of heavyweight history.

Prior to the night of November 28, 2015, Klitschko had ruled the division for almost a decade, dominating fights with his strength, speed and knockout power. But by the time he took on Fury, there was a desire among fans to see something — anything — change. And the Brit delivered, using his mobility, head movement and switch-hitting to outpoint a champion who failed to find his rhythm for most of the fight.

“That’s the best thing to happen to the heavyweight division in years,” tweeted former heavyweight and cruiserweight world champion David Haye after Fury’s hand was raised in victory.

washington post logoWashington Post, Congress passes RFK bill in surprise move, giving D.C. control of stadium site, Meagan Flynn, Erin Cox and Sam Fortier, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Passage of the legislation, which transfers the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has long sought to redevelop the site.ByUpdated 19 minutes ag

Congress has passed legislation giving D.C. control of RFK Stadium and allowing the city to redevelop more than 170 acres of federal property surrounding it, a political miracle that came in the twilight hours of the year’s congressional session and after almost every avenue for the legislation appeared exhausted.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

The U.S. Senate passed the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act by unanimous consent at about 1:15 a.m. Saturday — a Hail Mary action that required the support of all senators present without objection. The bill cleared the House in February on a broad bipartisan basis, and it was not immediately clear how D.C. officials and their congressional allies got all senators on board.

Passage of the legislation, which transfers control of the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who for years has sought to turn the property surrounding the decaying football stadium into a major new attraction and possibly bring the Washington Commanders back to their old home. The bill, which must still be signed by the president, will allow Bowser to formally negotiate with the Commanders — a possibility sure to excite the city’s football fans, who have not seen a home game in Washington since 1996.

“This is a win for DC, for our region, and for America,” Bowser said on X on Saturday. “Everybody loves a good comeback story – and that’s DC’s story.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East, Sharon Otterman, Dec. 22, 2024. Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.

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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.

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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition Live Updates: Ethics Panel Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman and Robert Draper, Dec. 23, 2024. 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 U.S. House logopick 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 facing trial on multiple federal felony charges alleging sex trafficking.

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. 23, 2024. The Justice Department applies federal sex-trafficking laws narrowly.

politico CustomThe 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'

U.S. House logoThe 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 research shows the massive hole Dems are in Kay Granger is residing in assisted-living facility, her son tells Dallas publication In Arizona speech, Trump jokes Musk is ‘not going to be president’ Trump’s big Mike Johnson decision Ethics report alleges Gaetz paid 17-year-old for sex

Chris Dorworth, the former Florida state representative at whose home Gaetz allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old, denounced the report and said its release was an act of retaliation against Gaetz for helping to bring down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“This is clearly a congressional hit job. It is painfully clear these women are lying,” Dorworth wrote on X. “This is a shakedown that caught fire because Matt kicked Kevin McCarthy out of his job. This DID NOT HAPPEN. Every thing they said about me being there and witnessing any of it is a lie.”

Last month, Donald Trump announced that he planned to nominate Gaetz as attorney general — a post that would have put him in charge of the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated him. Gaetz promptly resigned his House seat, but eight days after Trump’s announcement, Gaetz threw in the towel on his AG bid after it became clear he lacked the votes to be confirmed.

Some former DOJ officials cautioned that the feds’ decision not to bring a criminal case does not amount to the “exoneration” Gaetz has repeatedly claimed.

“Generally speaking, the Justice Department’s decision to not charge an individual doesn’t mean that he or she didn’t commit wrongdoing,” former DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said. “Criminal prosecution is a high bar that relies on a variety of factors — evidence, witnesses, etc. Bottom line: No charges does not equal full exoneration.”

The Mann Act, originally passed in 1910 and formally called the White-Slave Traffic Act, made it a crime to cross state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The phrase about immoral activity was used by some prosecutors to target interracial couples as well as LGBTQ people.

washington post logoWashington Post, Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office, Mark Berman and Matt Viser, Dec. 23, 2024. The president changed the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without parole, saying he was convinced “that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

President Joe Biden on Monday is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row to life without parole, taking the unprecedented step ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose incoming administration is widely expected to restart executions.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

Opponents of capital punishment have been urging Biden to use his final weeks in office to empty federal death row before Trump reclaims the White House. Trump is a longtime supporter of the death penalty, and his first administration carried out 13 federal executions.

Biden’s sweeping decision, which marks the first presidential commutation of a death sentence since 2017, still keeps three people on federal death row, those the president said were involved in cases of “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement explaining his decision.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Across the nation, more than half of the approximately 2,100 prisoners with death sentences are incarcerated in jurisdictions where executions are on hold. Many appear likely to die without seeing the inside of an execution chamber, raising fundamental questions about the American justice system.

Biden’s decision to intervene in even one death penalty case caps a remarkable turnaround for him on this issue. A longtime advocate for the death penalty, Biden ran for the presidency in 2020 as an opponent who pledged to try to end its use.

washington post logoWashington Post, The New Administration: Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media, Sarah Ellison and Jeremy Barr, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). A recent settlement with ABC News and a cascade of lawsuits against media entities from Donald Trump and his allies have spurred concerns that his efforts could undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his administration.

For many years, Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to sue the press but often didn’t follow through. When he did, he almost always lost.

trump 2024But Trump’s recent settlement with ABC News and a cascade of lawsuits and other complaints against media entities from him and his allies signal a ramped-up campaign from the president-elect. Together, the actions have spurred concerns that his efforts could drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration, which Trump has promised will take revenge on those he perceives as having wronged him.Get the latest election news and results

“The law in this country hasn’t really changed, but what has changed is that the atmosphere and hostility to the press is intense, and that emboldens plaintiffs of all kinds,” said David Korzenik, a media defense lawyer at the boutique Miller Korzenik Sommers Rayman LLP.

The pressure from Trump and his allies on the media is already growing and will continue to intensify, according to two Trump aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive internal deliberations.

In the two months before the presidential election, Trump attacked the media more than 100 times in public speeches or other remarks. The week before Election Day, Trump threatened to sue the New York Times, his campaign lodged a Federal Election Commission complaint against The Washington Post, and he sued CBS News for editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in a way he said was deceptive. Those media outlets have defended their work.

washington post logoWashington Post, Billionaire financier picked for deputy defense secretary, John Hudson, Michael Kranish and Dan Diamond, Dec. 23, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday night that he will nominate Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire political supporter who has been involved in the defense contracting business, to serve as deputy defense secretary.Get the latest election news and results

trump 2024Trump made the announcement on social media amid continued uncertainty about whether his choice for top Defense Department post, Pete Hegseth, has enough support for confirmation in the Senate.

Department of Defense SealFeinberg is the co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which has invested in hypersonic missiles and previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp, a company that was acquired by another defense firm, Amentum, in 2020.

During the first Trump administration, Feinberg led the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides the U.S. leader advice on intelligence assessments and estimates and counterintelligence matters. In his announcement Sunday night on Truth Social, Trump said Feinberg is “an extremely successful businessman” who will “help Make the Pentagon Great Again.”

Feinberg, who has been a reclusive Wall Street executive, is likely to be questioned about whether there is any conflict arising from his work in defense contracting matters and whether he is qualified to play such a major role in helping run the Pentagon.

The deputy defense secretary typically manages day-to-day operations of the massive bureaucracy with a combined workforce of more than 3 million service members and civilian employees. The search for a capable No. 2 took on heightened significance as lawmakers weigh the pick of Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, to be defense secretary.

The Post reported earlier this month that allegations against Hegseth of excessive drinking have shadowed his career.

In addition, Hegseth’s attorney has said that Hegseth paid an undisclosed sum to a woman who alleged that he raped her in 2017 at a California event for Republican women. The local police and district attorney looked into the allegation and brought no charges against Hegseth. The attorney said that a consensual sexual encounter took place, that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” and that the woman was the aggressor.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Democrats shouldn’t try to find ‘common ground’ with Trump, Jennifer Rubin, right, Dec. 23, 2024. Unwise, premature and jennifer rubin new headshotembarrassing outreach from what is supposed to be the opposition.

A depressingly high number of elected Democrats are declaring their intent to find “common ground” with President-elect Donald Trump and his crackpot Cabinet picks. Their naive, tone-deaf declarations epitomize an infatuation with bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. Sometimes, it’s better not to bend the knee before the bidding even gets underway.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

trump 2024Democrats strain credulity if they imagine they can find common ground with someone who vows, among other mind-boggling schemes, to imprison opponents, deploy the military against immigrants, snatch the power of the purse from Congress and pay for tax cuts for billionaires with cuts to entitlements and other programs that serve ordinary Americans. (What would common ground even look like? Deport just 5.5 million people, not 11 million? Cut Social Security only a little bit?)

The fruitless search for nonexistent common ground instantaneously normalizes Trump. Democrats should not propound the dubious assertion that Trump can operate rationally and in good faith. Mouthing this platitude makes Democrats look weak, foolish and unprepared to stand up to an authoritarian agenda.

Moreover, what is the point of declaring their “common ground” aspirations now? Similar aspirational statements were made before MAGA Republicans reneged on the budget deal (later giving up the effort to suspend the debt ceiling when Democrats stood their ground). That should be a wake-up call: There is no bargaining with people who break deals. Democrats must not be in the position of chasing after Republicans. They will find themselves negotiating against themselves to reach the mythical “common ground.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? Emily Baumgaertner, Dec. 23, 2024.  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.

washington post logoWashington Post, In major shift, Zelensky appears open to negotiating an end to the war, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ellen Francis, Dec. 23, 2024. 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.

ukraine flagZelensky’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.

washington post logoWashington Postukraine flag, Five months on, Ukraine clings to Kursk amid doubts over operation, Siobhán O'Grady, Kostiantyn Khudov and Serhiy Morgunov, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Outnumbered Ukrainian troops are clinging to a section of Russian territory in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations.

washington post logoWashington Post, Under Biden, a generational shift in U.S. views of Israel, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 23, 2024.  Support for Israel was once widespread across the American political spectrum. The Biden presidency has widened a deepening rift among Democrats.

In late November, the White House and its allies scrambled to kill a Senate measure blocking three weapons shipments to Israel — a delicate move, since the measure was led or sponsored by senators close to Biden, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland).Get the latest election news and results

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to plead that the measure would embolden Hamas at precisely the wrong moment. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) called senators into his office, one by one, to urge a no vote. The influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee launched a blitz of online ads targeting the measure’s supporters.

Yet 19 senators — more than a third of all senators who caucus with Democrats — voted for at least part of Sanders’s proposal, sending an unprecedented message of dissatisfaction with Biden’s Middle East policy from his own party. It was the first time Congress had ever voted on blocking arms sales to Israel, and the White House was unable to head it off.

The episode highlights a fundamental transformation in America’s relations with Israel, a shift that began years ago but has exploded under Biden with the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. His response has contributed to a splintering in his party that is likely to be part of his legacy, though one he may not wish for, as the politics of Israel in America are unlikely ever to be the same.

washington post logoWashington Post, In the shadows of Arizona’s data center boom, thousands live without power, Pranshu Verma, Dec. 23, 2024. As data centers drain America’s power grids, a fierce battle is being waged for electricity. On Navajo Nation land, many are on the losing end.

Living on one of the largest swaths of land in America without electric power, Thomasina Nez’s entire life is a scramble to complete basic tasks.

To take a hot shower, she must wait for buckets of water to come to a boil on a small propane stove outside her wood-framed roundhouse. To make meals, she relies mostly on canned goods because unrefrigerated produce rots quickly in the Arizona heat. It’s a struggle to stay warm at night, because she refuses to use her coal-powered heater after its fumes killed her two dogs.

A fierce battle for electric power is being waged across the nation, and Nez is one of thousands of people who have wound up on the losing end. Amid a boom in data centers, the energy-intensive warehouses that run supercomputers for Big Tech companies, Arizona is racing to increase electricity production. In February, the state utility board approved an 8 percent rate hike to bolster power infrastructure throughout the state, where data centers are popping up faster than almost anywhere in the United States. But it rejected a plan to bring electricity to parts of the Navajo Nation land, concluding that electric customers should not be asked to foot the nearly $4 million bill.

“We’ve been without [power] for quite a long time,” said Nez, who lives separately from her teenage children so they have electricity to complete their schoolwork. Tech companies “already have it,” she said, “and for them to get more power, it’s kind of not right.”

Nicole Garcia, a spokeswoman for Arizona’s utility board the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), said it did not approve the Navajo aid provision because of “concerns about how the funds would be used,” adding that customers are not “responsible for extending electricity to all tribal areas of the state.”

Ann Porter, a spokesperson for the power company Arizona Public Service (APS), said that its process for raising rates is “backward-looking.” The organization aims to “recover money we’ve already spent and better align with the cost to maintain a reliable energy grid for Arizona.”

After a years-long courtship of Big Tech by local politicians, power companies and utility regulators eager for the promise of tax revenue and jobs, the strain on Arizona’s power grid is already apparent. Often, vulnerable communities are paying the price. While Nez and her neighbors lost a shot at getting power, the historically Black town of Randolph, almost 60 miles south of Phoenix, faces the expansion of a massive natural gas plant that emits particulate matter linked to asthma and lung cancer.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time, David E. Sanger and Lisa Friedman, Dec. 23, 2024. In recent days the president-elect has called for asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, showing that his “America First” philosophy has an expansionist dimension.

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,’' an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Not surprisingly, the government of Greenland immediately rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, as it did in 2019, when he first floated the idea. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said in a statement. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”Editors’ Picks7 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This WeekA Hanukkah-Ready Recipe That Does Everything RightStaffers at The Times on the Books They Enjoyed in 2024

The Danish prime minister’s office was more circumspect, writing in a statement that the government was “looking forward to working with the new administration” and offering no further comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

After Mr. Trump brought up the Panama Canal again in a speech on Sunday, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, said in a video that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be.” He added: “Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.”

But the president-elect’s statements — and the not-so-subtle threats behind them — were another reminder that his version of “America First” is not an isolationist creed.

His aggressive interpretation of the phrase evokes the expansionism, or colonialism, of President Theodore Roosevelt, who took control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. And it reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.

Mr. Trump has often suggested that he does not always see the sovereignty of other nations’ borders as sacrosanct. When Russia invaded Ukraine, his first response was not a condemnation of the blatant land grab, but rather the observation that President Vladimir V. Putin’s move was an act of “genius.”

Even now, as Mr. Trump seeks a deal to end the war in Ukraine, he has never said that the country’s borders must be restored, a key demand of the United States and NATO — he has only promised a “deal” to end the fighting.

In the cases of Greenland and Panama, both commercial and national security interests are at play.

Mr. Trump’s desire for Greenland was made explicit in the first term, when a wealthy New York friend of his, Ronald S. Lauder, the New York cosmetics heir, put the idea in his head.

In the Trump White House in 2019, the National Security Council was suddenly delving into the details of how the United States would pull off a land acquisition of that size. Mr. Trump kept pressing the point with Denmark, which consistently rebuffed him.

Mr. Trump was not the first president to make the case: Harry S. Truman wanted to buy Greenland after World War II, as part of a Cold War strategy for boxing out Soviet forces. Mr. Trump can make a parallel argument, especially as Russia, China and the United States jockey for control of Arctic routes for commercial shipping and naval assets.

Arctic experts did not dismiss Mr. Trump’s Greenland bid as a joke.

“Not that many people are laughing about it now,” said Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defense College in Denmark who focuses on Arctic security.

Mr. Jacobsen noted that the reaction in Denmark to Mr. Trump’s latest bid had been one of fury (one Danish politician called it “an unusually strange way to be an ally”). But, he said, Greenlanders — who have long sought independence — may seek to use Mr. Trump’s interest as an opportunity to further strengthen economic ties with the United States.

Since 2009, Greenland has had the right to declare its independence, but the vast territory of about 56,000 people is still heavily dependent on Denmark and has never chosen to pursue that path. Mr. Trump’s interest could give Greenland an opening for more U.S. investments, including in tourism or rare earth mining, he said.

“Was it crazy when the U.S. acquired Alaska? Was it crazy when the U.S. built the Panama Canal?” asked Sherri Goodman, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow with the Wilson Center Polar Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Ms. Goodman, whose book “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security” centers in part on the Arctic, said the United States did have a strong interest in ensuring that China in particular does not develop a strong presence in Greenland.

Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic have grown, and in 2018 it laid out plans to build infrastructure and develop shipping lanes opened by climate change. Ms. Goodman said the United States should continue to prevent China from gaining a foothold in the doorstep to North America, but said Greenlanders must decide their own fate.

“We want to have all those territories proximate to our own mainland territory to protect us and also to prevent an adversary from using it to our strategic disadvantage,” Ms. Goodman said. “On the other hand, there is international law and international order and sovereignty, and Greenland is still a part of Denmark.”

When it comes to Panama, Mr. Trump may also hold a distant personal grudge.

In 2018, Panamanian police officers ousted the Trump Organization from the Trump International Hotel in Panama City after a protracted legal battle between the president-elect’s family and the majority owner of the property. The Trump name subsequently came down. The company had held a contract to manage the property.

David L. Goldwyn, who served at the State Department under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, noted that Greenland has tremendous undeveloped natural resources, including more than 43 of the 50 so-called critical rare earth elements used to make electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean technology.

 

dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpets: For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

 

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school. (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school.  (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: They took the children: U.S. created Indian boarding schools to destroy cultures and seize land, Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Originally published May 29, 2024. From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government separated Native American children from their families to eradicate their cultures, assimilate them into White society and seize tribal land.

European settlers waged war against Native Americans for centuries, decimating tribes through violence and spreading disease. By the 1800s, the U.S. government continued to grapple with what it called the “Indian problem.”

The government wanted tribal land for settlers and needed to justify taking it. If Native Americans adopted Western ways of education and farming, officials said, they would need less land.

The following nine slides are a summary of U.S. policies to “civilize” Native American children. Read more of The Post’s investigation that reveals decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests at boarding schools, and documents the deaths of more than 3,100 students.

U.S. officials ordered Native American children to be removed from their homes and sent to remote boarding schools. As one of the first boarding school founders said, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: More than 3,100 children died at Indian boarding schools. Hundreds are buried at or near the schools they attended, Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Andrew Ba Tran, Nilo Tabrizy and Jahi Chikwendiu, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.).  The Native American students died between 1828 and 1970, a Post investigation found — three times as many as the U.S. previously reported.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department earlier this year. The Post found that more than 800 of those students are buried in cemeteries at or near the schools they attended, underscoring how, in many cases, children’s bodies were never sent home to their families or tribes.

The Post’s investigation found the deaths by drawing on hundreds of thousands of government documents that also revealed how children were beaten and harshly punished if they did not adhere to strict rules in the classroom — and in the fields, laundry rooms, kitchens or workshops where they often were forced to spend half their days.

“These were not schools,” said Judi Gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose relatives were sent to Indian boarding schools. “They were prison camps. They were work camps.”

The causes of death included infectious diseases, malnutrition and accidents, records show. Dozens died in suspicious circumstances, and in some instances the records provide indications of abuse or mistreatment that likely resulted in children’s deaths. A 10-year-old boy was fatally shot in 1912 at an Alaska school, a newspaper reported. A girl in Oregon “fell from a high window there & was brought home a corpse” in 1887, according to a teacher’s diary.

The findings show gaps in the federal government’s official accounting of what happened to Native American children who were wrested from their homes in the name of assimilation. They come as many tribes — long denied the chance to mourn and bury their dead — are seeking to find their ancestors’ remains and return them home.

But doing so is complicated by poor recordkeeping and uncertainty about the locations of many burial sites. While some cemeteries, like the one at Carlisle that held Almeda’s remains, are marked, others are hidden, neglected or have been paved over.


dick durbin speaking screenshot

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, shown above, said in a statement.

Politico, Senate Democrats render a verdict on Supreme Court ethics, Josh Gerstein, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.).  Sen. Dick Durbin says justices have lost the trust of American people by failing to disclose gifts and other ethical lapses.The U.S. Supreme Court is seen.

politico CustomSenate Democrats wrapped up their extensive investigation of Supreme Court justices’ ethics practices Saturday, issuing a report blasting two conservative justices for accepting expensive gifts from wealthy benefactors and slamming Chief Justice John Roberts for a lackadaisical response to ethical lapses by his colleagues.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said in a statement. “Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest, it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

The report levels its most strident criticism at Justice Clarence Thomas, alleging that he received gifts totaling millions of dollars since he joined the high court in 1991. “The number, value, and extravagance by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report says.

Many of the trips, including one Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas took by yacht and private jet in Indonesia in 2019 as a guest of billionaire developer Harlan Crow, were unearthed by ProPublica last year. However, the Senate Democrats claimed credit for turning up two previously unknown trips Crow treated Thomas to closer to home in New York, including one by yacht.

The report also alleges that Justice Samuel Alito failed to comply with federal law when he didn’t include on his annual financial disclosure form a private plane flight and lodging expenses for a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 that was paid for by a billionaire hedge fund operator, Paul Singer.

Thomas and Alito have said they generally complied with guidance the courts gave judges at the time, which used a broad definition of “personal hospitality” that could encompass travel by boat or private airplane.

In addition to criticizing the justices, the Senate report took particular aim at the Judicial Conference of the United States, a policy-making body run by federal judges that sets ethics guidelines and advises on how to apply them. It tweaked the rules about personal hospitality last year and in September, but that did not satisfy Democratic senators.

“To date, the Judicial Conference has failed to adequately respond to the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis,” the report says.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards. So long as Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to act, we must push for a legislative solution to this crisis to restore trust in the highest court,” Durbin said.

However, the prospects for such legislation are dim. In July 2023, Durbin’s committee approved a bill to mandate the court’s adoption of an ethics code and create an enforcement mechanism involving lower-court judges in reviewing complaints.

 

bashar al Assad 2024 horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, Deception and Betrayal: Inside the Final Days of the Assad Regime, Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.).  President Bashar al-Assad, above, who wielded force over Syria for more than two decades, fled the country under the cover of night — and a fake political address.

Bashar al-Assad left his country so secretively that some of his aides remained in the palace hours after he had left, waiting for a speech that never came, the insider said. After midnight, word came that the president was gone, and they fled in a panic, leaving the palace gates wide open for the rebels who would storm in a few hours later.

syria new flag 2024Mr. al-Assad’s fall brought to a sudden end his family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on Syria, causing jubilation among his victims and enemies, scrambling the strategic map of the Middle East and setting Syria off on a new, uncertain trajectory.

During his final days in power, Mr. al-Assad pleaded for foreign military help from Russia, Iran and Iraq to no avail as his military’s own intelligence service documented his forces’ collapse in real time, according to secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

Diplomats from a half-dozen countries sought ways to push him from power peacefully in order to spare the ancient city of Damascus a bloody battle for control, according to four regional officials involved in the talks. One proposal, an official said, was that he pass power to his military chief, effectively submitting to a coup.

 

More  On Trump's Billionaire Allies, Their Rants & Their Contracts

 

dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpetsTimothy Snyder, For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

Excerpt Continued From Above.

Musk himself is obviously completely unconcerned by the results of elections; it means nothing to him that people voted for Trump. Indeed, the fact that he was able to use a meaninglessly small portion of his wealth to get Trump in office can only breed contempt of both the man and his electorate.

Trump's current public humiliation of Trump may very well be part of a plan. Make the man look weak; and then make him look crazy; and then invoke Article 25 of the Constitution and put him to bed. I am not saying that I am sure that this will happen: but rather that it is the kind of thing that would be normal in a Mump regime but would be all but unthinkable in a "presidency" or an "administration."

Trump is a fake rich person, and Musk is the richest person on earth (except, possibly, Putin). Trump is crazy like an improv comedian, but Musk is crazy like a guy with satellites. Musk surely understands, even if Trump does not, that the welter of policies we will see in the first six months of the Mump regime will be contradictory and chaotic.

Where does popular sentiment go when tariffs increase prices, as they must? When Canada and Mexico enforce countermeasures which push prices still higher? And when government spending on deportations (which would, at least as planned, cost about a trillion dollars) also brings inflation?

And that is just one example. Will Americans actually like a defense department and an FBI designed for domestic conflict? If all of this goes crazily wrong, Trump will be to blame. It is at least worth considering the possibility that Musk foresees all this.

At the moment, left-wing commentators laugh that J.D. Vance has disappeared from public view, displaced by Musk. Thinking of a Mump regime helps us to see Vance's absence differently. There cannot be MAGA without Trump, but there can be Mump without Trump. For Musk and for kindred oligarchs, Vance is a more natural ally than Trump. He speaks their language and seems to believe the libertarian-fascist amalgam according to which government itself is doomed and therefor a strong man must rule. Vance was chosen by the oligarchs to be vice-president.

In the two scenarios above -- Musk drives Trump visibly crazy; six months of chaos is blamed on Trump-- Vance would be the successor. Staying in the background for now thus makes perfect sense for Vance. A quiet Vance does not look crazy, and is not tainted by Trump's six months of chaos. He is available when Musk is ready to move on from Trump.

As Musk once tweeted, "we will coup whoever we want." Whoever we want.

We also need a term like "the Mump regime" to classify Republicans. It offers a vocabulary that helps us to sort people out according to their involvement in and fealty towards Musk. The people who are active in the Mump regime are mumpers. The people who go along are mumpets.

But not all Republicans are mumpers, only a select few -- and, indeed, Musk and Trump and Vance lack a traditional Republican background. The mumpers are a select group, like a politburo: a few people, who can brought in and pushed out. Those beyond the small circle of mumpers who support the Mump regime are mumpets, a much broader group.

Plenty of Republicans follow Musk. But these are not the same people, exactly, who would follow Trump. And as we have seen from recent votes on the shutdown, there are Republican elected officials who are not mumpets. Not all Republicans actually want to see Congress rendered obsolete by one-man rule and the United States cease to exist as a republic.

With terms like "Mump regime," "mumpers," and "mumpets" we can parse the present reality and prepare for the future much better than we can with "presidential administration," "Republicans," or "MAGA."

"Mump regime" also gives us adjectives, like "mumpy," "mumpier," or "mumpified." Beyond domestic politics, it can help us towards understanding (topic for another post) the United States as "the sick man of the world" in foreign policy, as we will likely be.

Musk is right that he is bringing something new; what he is not bringing is a tyranny so great that we cannot think for ourselves and name things for ourselves. Indeed, holding tyranny back begins with just that.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Depressing the Vote with Money in Politics, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. thom hartmann newThis week: "The Hidden History of the War on Voting: The Republican War against your right to vote. Over the next few months the entire book will be here, new chapters posted every Sunday, for subscribers to read at no cost. If you want to get a physical book to mark up or share with others, just click on the picture above, visit your local bookstore, or check your favorite online seller.

Money in politics has a long and ignominious history.

thom hartmann war on votingCorruption by money of individual politicians, and of the legislative process as a whole, hit three peaks in the history of our nation: during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, the Roaring Twenties in the last century, and the years since 2010 when the Supreme Court struck down numerous campaign finance and good-government laws, throwing the doors open to corporate and billionaire cash with its Citizens United decision.

The Gilded Age excesses led to the Tillman Act of 1907, which made it a federal felony for a corporation to donate money or anything of value to a campaign for federal office. It was gutted by Citizens United.

lewis powell 1976 official portraitThe political corruption of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations led directly to the great crash of 1929, causing most corporations to pull back from the political arena until the 1970s, when Lewis Powell (shown at right as a Supreme Court justice in 1976) revived it with his infamous memo to billionaires and corporate CEOs.

After the Watergate investigations revealed Nixon’s bribery and other scandals, Congress passed numerous reforms of money in politics, although the Supreme Court struck down the most consequential of them; and as long as there’s a conservative majority of at least five votes on the Court, that’s unlikely to change.

Therefore, this is the situation today

:• A billionaire oligarch, Rupert Murdoch, programs his very own television news network to promote the interests of the billionaire class with such effectiveness that average working people are repeating billionaire-helpful memes like “cut regulations,” “shrink government,” and “cut taxes”— policies that will cause more working people and their children to get sick and/or die; will transfer more money and power from we, the people, to a few oligarchs; and will lower working-class wages over time.113

• A small group of billionaires have funneled so much money into our political sphere that “normal” Republicans like former US senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker point out that they couldn’t get elected in today’s environment because they’d face primary challengers funded by right-wing billionaires.

• The corporate media (including online media), heavily influenced by the roughly $1 billion that the Koch network, Sheldon Adelson, the Mercers, etc., poured through their advertising coffers and into their profits in the last presidential election, won’t even mention in their “news” reporting that billionaire oligarchs are mainly calling the tunes in American politics, particularly in the GOP.

• Former president Jimmy Carter pointed out on my radio show that the United States “is now an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery,” in part as a result of the right-wing Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.114

• Nobody in corporate media—even on the “corporate left”—is willing to explicitly point out how billionaires and the companies that made them rich control and define the boundaries of “acceptable” political debate in our country.

• Thus, there’s no honest discussion in American media of why the GOP denies climate change (to profit petro-billionaires), no discussion of the daily damage being done to our consumer and workplace protections, and no discussion of the horrors being inflicted on our public lands and environment by GOP appointees

.• There’s not even a discussion of the major issue animating American politics just one century ago: corporate mergers and how they damage small business and small towns.

Although it’s been this way before in American history, it wasn’t within our lifetimes. The last time the morbidly rich had this much power in American politics was in the 1920s, when an orgy of tax cutting and deregulation of banking led to the Republican Great Depression.

Our nation now faces a massive crisis provoked by the loss of democratic representation for the majority of the American electorate. Neither party today does much of anything for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, as so clearly demonstrated by a 2014 study out of Princeton showing that the likelihood of legislation passing that represented the interests of that bottom 90 percent was equivalent, statistically, to white noise.

The predictable—and tragic for our republic—result is massive voter apathy and a loss of voter engagement.

 

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Political advocacy: Scenes from President Musk’s shutdown-that-wasn’ty, Jeff  Tiedrich, right, Dec. 22-23, 2024. Welcome to a perfectly normal weekend in the good old US of A.

United States President-Elect Elon Musk was definitely one of those jeff tiedrichkids who woke up early on Christmas morning, ran downstairs, grabbed his presents from under the tree, frantically ripped the wrapping off — and immediately smashed the shit out of each and every one of his new toys.

You know this is a fact, because when handed the biggest toy of his life — the entire country of America — the very first thing President-Elect Musk tried to do was break it.

President Musk and his Vice Presidential mascot Donny Convict done fucked up bigtime.

The Space Nazi wanted to shut down the government, because governments are inconvenient things that keep him from doing everything he wants. Donny wanted the debt ceiling shitcanned, so he could give economy-destroying tax cuts to his plutocrat pals. Neither of them got their way, and all they have to show for their efforts is a huge crack in their autocratic bromance.

This business of referring to the Space Nazi as ‘President Musk’ is really getting under Donny’s preternaturally thin skin.

“CNN confirmed on-air just now that top Trump aides are furiously calling journalists to insist that Elon Musk has been following the orders of Trump rather than the other way around. As predicted, Trump is horrified and enraged at the idea that Musk is now seen as the President of the United States.”

Donny cannot handle being the butt of a joke — and he definitely can’t handle the perception that he’s not the alpha dog calling all the shots.

Remember, this broken-inside narcissist is all about his public image. Donny needs to appear all-powerful. Elon isn’t supposed to be the one making headlines. Elon is supposed to be the grateful supplicant with tears of gratitude welling up in his eyes, as he goes ‘sir! sir! no one has ever governed as wisely as you. how do you do it? sir!’

it’s only a matter of time before these two have a thermonuclear breakup — and then we can all throw our heads back and laugh as Dear Leader tells his new FBI Director Krazee Eyes Kash to look into Elon’s finances.

Here’s a perfectly normal thing that Vice President Trump did last night.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend (Dec. 19-21, 2024). Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.He posted a threat to send the military down to Panama and seize their canal if Panama doesn’t lower the fees it charges ships using the canal.

I have a question: which sewer clown put this bug up Donny’s ass — and who wrote this multi-hundred-word post for him? Because look at this guy.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend. Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.

I guarantee you that Donny is barely aware that the Panama Canal exists. There’s no way that he carries any knowledge of its purpose or history in his big vacant pumpkin head.

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: When Corporations Kneel: How CEOs Are Funding America’s Dangerous Shift to Fascism, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 17, 2024. thom hartmann newFrom Disney to big business: Corporations are aligning with Trump to avoid punishment and secure their place in the authoritarian future…

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

— Donald Trump, Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as: “fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

disney logoWhen Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trumpian Attitude at the Heart of the Gaetz Report, David Firestone, Dec. 23, 2024. There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice.

Trump wanted to give that position to a man who paid at least half a dozen women for sex, according to the report, which was made public on Monday. And the violation of Florida’s prostitution law isn’t even the real depravity; the committee took pains to detail the underlying implication of his actions: “Representative Gaetz took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.”

Trump wanted to give the Justice Department to a man the committee says committed the statutory rape of a 17-year-old girl. A man who is accused of setting up a phony email account at his office in the House to buy illegal drugs and who then used the drugs to facilitate sexual misconduct. A man who accepted impermissible gifts and plane trips, according to the report, and who used the power of his office to help a woman with whom he was having sex. A man whose conduct, according to his own colleagues of both parties, “reflects discreditably upon the House.”

And of course, on Trump himself.

Nonetheless, when you read through the details, you can see the commonality between the two men, and the reasons Trump held Gaetz in high esteem. It’s not just the contempt for women as disposable commodities for hire or plunder; it’s the contempt for the law.your times accessHave a moment?

Gaetz fought the committee’s investigation at every turn, and the report’s appendices are full of letters from him dripping with disdain at the process, completely indignant that he should even be asked to account for his actions. He blames his enemies in Washington for his plight, he blames the press, he says Democrats have done much worse, and he just lies and lies, denying allegations that are fully documented elsewhere in the text.

The report says Gaetz refused to supply the committee with the exculpatory evidence that he claimed he had and refused to respond to subpoenas. His assertions “were nothing more than attempts to delay the committee’s investigation,” the report said. And then there were his attempts to bully witnesses against him. “The committee had serious concerns that Representative Gaetz might retaliate against individuals who cooperated with the committee,” the report said.

Does that sound familiar? It’s a summary of the conduct we’ve seen from the president-elect for years, whenever the law tries to make him responsible for his conduct. In many ways, these two men think the same way about authority, and in that sense, Gaetz would have been an ideal attorney general for the next administration.Editors’ PicksIn Search of Sauna Nirvana Around Lake Superior‘Before We Got to the Park, Kali Mentioned the Northern Lights’7 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

Politico, Biden vetoes bill that would have created dozens of new federal judge slots, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 23, 2024. The president didn’t want to hand Trump a chance to appoint more judges.President Joe Biden is pictured speaking.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden has vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have added dozens of new federal judge positions in the coming years.

The president had threatened to veto the bill because he didn’t want to give the president-elect new appointment opportunities, according to one of the outgoing president’s closest allies.

“The House of Representatives’ hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated,” Biden wrote in a letter to Congress.

Democrats had roundly faulted House Republicans for waiting until after the results of the November elections — won by President-elect Donald Trump — to pass the legislation. As authored, the bill would award some 66 new federal judicial slots over the next three presidential terms.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously in August. It cleared the House on a largely party-line vote earlier in December.

Democrats have been seeking ways to insulate the federal judiciary from Trump’s desires to move it further to the right, including by denying the incoming president further vacancies to fill in the bench.

The bill’s lead Senate sponsor, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), was sharply critical of the veto.

 

 

djt elon musk washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year, Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.).  Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices around 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.

As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.

Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.

Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

“Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance Transition. He described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”

Musk launched his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he abandoned a graduate program at Stanford to found a start-up later called Zip2 that created online city guides. It was sold for about $300 million in 1999.

He went on to co-found an online banking company, X.com, that merged with another start-up to create PayPal. Auction site eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney, former journalism professor, Dec. 14, 2024. A viral Bluesky thread introduced tens of seth abramson graphicthousands around the world to a first glimpse of a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk. Here—in a single essay—is some of what the world just learned.

seth abramson proof logoElon Musk may be an unelected plutocrat, but in six weeks he’ll become co-President of the United States. Unfortunately, many people around the world are only just now beginning to research who Musk really is—not the mythos he spent decades carefully weaving about himself like a cloak, but the hard realities that define the actual man.

Most of what people think they know about Elon Musk is manifestly false. This essay, written by an Elon Musk biographer and based on OSINT research, reveals the truth—or at least a significant part of it. Rest assured that none of what remains is any better.

I’ve been a Musk biographer for two years now. In that time I’ve published hundreds and hundreds of pages of professionally researched content about the man—well over a book’s worth—here at Proof, an independent media outlet at Substack that ranks as a Top 25 U.S. Politics substack worldwide.

The longest report that I’ve published about Elon Musk so far is March 28. It’s a novella in and of itself, despite being just one of many fully sourced reports on Musk authored by a bestselling historian and biographer whose focus before now was the political career—and political scandals—of Donald Trump.

As you will soon see, the parallels between the lives of Trump and Musk are jarring.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Opposition To Trump

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Why is President Musk endorsing the “German neo-Nazi Party”?,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Both thom hartmann newPresident Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are in deep with the Chinese Communist Party (which has given millions to the Trump family and where Musk makes roughly half of his Tesla cars and many of his billions) and Vladimir Putin (both are reported to have had multiple phone calls and other communications with the Russian dictator over the past two years, including Musk cutting off Starlink internet access for Ukrainian drones that were supposed to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea).

Musk this week also endorsed the Nazi-infested German racist, far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and in the past has endorsed other European hard-right politicians and parties including in France and the UK.

Putin’s involved in a major effort to disrupt democratic governments around the world, mainly through using social media and video channels, and it increasingly appears that an anti-democracy coalition is forming here that includes several American and other rightwing billionaires and the Trump operation.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat expands on this extensively in her excellent Lucid newsletter this week; it’s well worth the read (and subscribing to).

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul (R-Crackpot) has suggested Republicans in the House should make Musk their Speaker (and third in the line of succession for the presidency), an idea that’s been endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. The Constitution doesn’t have a citizenship requirement or election requirement for the job, so it’s a real possibility, although probably wouldn’t get the necessary votes if Johnson is taken down.

No matter what, though, unless Musk and Trump get into some sort of major personality conflict (which I consider unlikely; Trump just wants to play golf and be loved, while Musk wants to get involved, presumably to protect the billions he gets in federal government grants and subsidies), it looks like the Muskrat is going to be America’s new overlord regardless of having or not having any official position.

 

steve bannon rally source unstatedThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Bannon: Kash Patel Will Absolutely Investigate The People Named In His Book, Tim Miller, Dec. 20, 2024. A tough break for those hoping that the likely next FBI director may moderate if confirmed

bulwark logo big shipDonald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, right, is dead serious when it comes to investigating the political enemies who he listed in his book “Government Gangsters,” according to Trump’s on-again-off-again adviser Steve Bannon (shown above in a file photo).

kash patel headshot smile“Kash didn’t try to hide the football. Steve Bannon didn’t try,” Bannon asserted, speaking in the third person during a one-on-one interview with The Bulwark following his speech to Americafest, a yearly gathering of MAGA diehards hosted by Turning Point USA.

“He made a fucking movie that’s called Government Gangsters and the first guy is Merrick Garland ok. And Lisa Monaco’s in there who the nation doesn’t know, we’re trying to make these people famous. So no. First of all, it has to happen. Number two, it's going to happen.”

FBI logoAmong those who would have a clear understanding of Patel’s intentions, Bannon stands high up on the list. He worked with Patel on the documentary that accompanied Patel’s book. He has also routinely hosted Patel on his podcast. His comments serve as a stark contrast to how congressional Republicans have talked up Patel’s nomination by portraying him more as a force of reform at the FBI. Patel will need 50 votes in the Senate in order to be confirmed.

Bannon’s remarks, delivered during a wide-ranging interview, came after I expressed concern that Patel might use the powers of the FBI to target political foes in the shadows without accountability. Bannon asserted that it shouldn't be concerning, not because Patel would moderate his desire to ensnare political foes of President Trump but because he would do so right out in the open.

“Transparency and sunlight is our friend,” Bannon said before ruminating on the importance of Patel’s poorly written but politically potent book.

“I would say Kash’s book is more typing than writing, ok” Bannon quipped. “It’s not a literary thing. But when you see it, it’s so in your face and at the end he lists on eight pages people from the deep state that need to be investigated. … So I think it’s pretty transparent.”

Bannon was adamant that Patel’s forthcoming investigations would not be about political revenge but, rather, an important cleansing of institutions that Trump and the MAGA movement believe are fundamentally broken. Bannon himself served a four-month sentence in Danbury federal correctional institution for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“These investigations and all that, it's not for personal retribution. I would be the person then at the forefront since I spent four months in a federal prison and I could care less. [Prison] actually was very empowering for me,” he said. “We can never allow again to happen what happened. The debanking, the deplatforming, the coming after President Trump. You have to get to the bottom of it.”

Among the investigations Bannon specifically expected from Patel were ones that look into the supposed “fedsurrection” on January 6th (a conspiracy that the FBI was behind the attack on the Capitol, which I covered back in 2023) and the purported “vast criminal conspiracy” against President-elect Trump. A recent watchdog report found that there were 26 FBI informants—and no undercover employees—at the Capitol on January 6th. None were authorized to enter the building or otherwise break the law.

“I think there will be a massive investigation. The vast criminal conspiracy, including the medias,’ what was it Andrew Weissman and all those FBI guys that work on MSNBC, I think there will be big investigations into all these people, I just do. I think there is going to be a huge investigation, I believe, into 2020. I think it's going to be a huge investigation on January 6th, the fedsurrection, I think it's going to be a huge investigation about the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump.”

Lance's Substack, Political Commentary:The Democrats And Media (With A Few Exceptions) Are Not In The Real World, Or Are Lying Through Their Teeth, lance rosenLance F Rosen,  Dec. 22, 2024. Trump has been obsessed with having the power to use the military domestically to crush his enemies since he entered politics. Remember that he told General Kelly "Hitler did some good things," and later "I wish my Generals were as loyal to me as Hitler's were for him."

He knows that his program will produce rioting and violence in reaction, because that is what he and his team of fascist thugs want. He said as much when discussing the mass deportations, which he said would be "bloody." His worldview was literally influenced by reading Hitler's speeches, and being mentored by his KKK- supporting father.

djt roy cohn file

His other influences were J. Edgar Hoover, The John Birch Society, Nixon and Roy Cohn (shown above at  right), who was Joe McCarthy's lawyer and later the Gambino mob family lawyer. When Nixon ok'd the Governor of Ohio James Rhodes deploying the National Guard in 1971 to Kent State University and those students were shot, that put an end to anti-war demonstrations for the most part, while the draft-evading bone spur victim Trump supported it fully and never forgot the lesson from that. It was a formative event for him. Ordering protesters shot amounts to a psycho-sexual obsession which he has always carried, because the thrill of putting people to death who oppose him stands at the center of his aspirational fantasy life.

So his personal history is a road map for what he intends to do. He wanted to use the military to shoot social justice protesters in June of 2020 but Secretary Of Defense Esper and JCOS Chairman General Milley blocked him. (Remember he symbolically put the Missouri would-be vigilante gun brandishing couple on the RNC speakers list) This is one reason Trump will put Milley on trial for treason and try to have him executed. The point being there won't be anyone in this incoming White House team like Generals Milley and Kelly with the balls and honesty to oppose him.

The ruling by SCOTUS on immunity said that the President has the power to order Seal Team Six to murder his opponents because it is considered an "official act." The only conservative Justice who fussed a little bit was Barrett, but that was just an ass-covering dance routine which amounts to nothing. And be sure that Trump and Musk, along with their compliant Attorney General Bondi intend to push the envelope as far as possible starting the moment this blasphemous lunatic puts his hand on that Bible and lies like a pig when he swears to uphold the Constitution.

Trump has consulted with Vladimir Putin for years in direct conversations, (the number of which is both substantial but unknown) asking him for advice on many things. During the George Floyd demonstrations in front of the White House, a scared shitless Trump called him to ask how he would handle it. Reportedly Putin told him in effect, "you can't let people think that you appear weak." That was roughly when he tried to invoke the 1807 Act and deploy the military, and became the infamous "bunker boy" who descended into his underground lair, just like Hitler in his final days, to scream at his Generals and give out orders to non-existent Army groups.

So these commentators who are cheerleading for GOP moderates and celebrating their factional brawls, in effect watching all of this, both-sidesing most of his nominees, "eating popcorn" and arguing that there should be "no worries," that the moderates and MAGAs will devour each other, that Trump will become envious of Musk and dump him, are absolutely in a delusional fantasy state. None of those things, even to the extent they are real, will succeed in stopping the Trump fascist counterrevolution against democracy.

We are still in the transition, and everything changes when these maniacs get their hands on the reins of government. The Democratic establishment and media, with a few exceptions, are spinning every possible political scenario to give people the excuse to sit on the sidelines and watch, because they are themselves too scared to face what Trump will do or act upon it.

Trump loves violence. He is an adjudicated rapist. He derived a sexual thrill watching his supporters on TV beating Capitol Police to death on January 6th. He egged on his campaign rally attendees last Summer to physically attack the press covering his speech when he actually praised one nut who tried to do just that after a Trump rant that the press were "the enemies of the people."

So most of the political spin people are consuming is meant to help them avoid thinking about the day of reckoning on January 20th, "Day One," where he pledged to invoke the 1807 Act for the national "border" emergency."

It is similar to how Hitler used the contrived "Reichstag Fire" emergency to suspend the Weimar Constitution, as he plans to deploy the military and US law enforcement to "Democrat cities" in blue states to start the mass roundup. And the point of it is not just to imprison and deport immigrants. It is to provoke opposition by his political adversaries so he can have a pretext for arresting them and putting them in jail.

 

eric adams horizontal 2024This is why the corrupt craven Mayor Adams of New York, above, is bending over to lick Trump's bone spurs in exchange for a pardon. New York is likely to be second on the list for Trump's domestic invasions by the military after Chicago. The mass deportations are in fact intended as a cover for his "retribution" campaign against everyone who ever stood in his way, prosecuted him, or criticized him.

Seriously, what else do people think is being discussed as an operational plan? They have already mapped all of this out in Project 2025, but our opposition "leadership" are acting like the blind fools who read Hitler's Mein Kampf in the 1920's and 30's and said "he can't be serious, nobody would ever try to do something like that...especially not that incompetent clown." Yes, people actually said that.

The media is afraid of being shut down and being given the same treatment. So Bezos caved on the Harris endorsement, ABC paid Trump a ransom to leave them off his retribution list, and the media kingpins are lining up to give Trump millions for the inaugural, hoping that paying out a little "protection" like a frightened store owner to a local gang leader would buy them some safety and time.

And our problem now is that our people are putting more energy into thinking about their personal survival and possibly leaving the US than are thinking about how to resist Trump's plans. So they are sitting at home on their phones and tablets posting memes and cheering for the "moderate" Republicans whose heads are all going to be stuffed and mounted at Mar-a-Lago in three months.

The fear factor is what is running the show right now. We are going to have to take a page from the 1960's Civil Rights movement when they organized and stood up to Jim Crow, Klan lynchings, firebombings, police brutality in the form of mass arrests, attack dogs, fire hosing and tear gassing. We are there, because we have the power-hungry insane son of a Klansman and a doubly insane son of a pro-Apartheid Afrikkaner, both of whom are fanboys of the Putin dictatorship in Russia, coming in to run the White House.

The Democratic strategy as it now stands is to lay back and let it all happen, because they think Trump will have to own his destruction and carnage and this will propel the Democrats victory in the mid-terms, and after that "on to 2028."

This is more or less what the German Social Democrats did in 1932-33. They said "let Hitler have his run, and he'll make such a mess of things that we will come back to power in the next elections."

The next German election came 12 years later, after a Holocaust and world war that left 50 million dead, half the world in rubble, with tens of millions displaced and made into refugees.

This is what the so-called Democratic leadership is doing, repeating step by step the catastrophically tragic decisions of those delusional fools who paved the way for Hitler.

I refuse to lie to my readers to help them feel reassured, or to keep up morale. I am glad when I hear from people who appreciate that and have the guts to do some tough reading and face these difficult problems.

I have no "plan" on what to do, other than stating that there has to be one and that those who refuse to change their proven dysfunctional strategies which are leading us to Hell need to get out of the way and make room for those who want to fight, and fight effectively, instead of just "letting it all happen" and trying to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Think about what I said about what Trump and Musk intend to do. And ask yourselves, is sending out cards and letters commensurate with that? Does hyping Mitch McConnell and other Republicans as Trump opposition leaders mean a damned thing, knowing what Trump intends to do with his immunity power on "day one?"

The first step toward fighting and defeating this insanity is to face reality. My job is to serve it up to my readers in heaping portions, and to help our new leadership come forward in response to it.

Those who can't handle it should take a break or leave. It's only going to increase in intensity once the shit show starts. It is decision time.

Rolling Stone: The race for DNC Chair is becoming a referendum on the influence of billionaire donors in the Democratic Party, Tessa Stuart, Dec. 20, 2024. The Race for DNC Chair Is a Midwest Nice Fight

rolling stone logoFour candidates have declared their intention to compete for chair of the Democratic National Committee, but as the race heats up, an aggressively polite, exceedingly Midwestern cold war has broken out between factions backing the two state party chairs in the race: Ben Wikler of Wisconsin and Ken Martin of Minnesota.

To a casual observer, Wikler may look like the frontrunner in this race. He has scooped up endorsements from the Progressive Change Campaign democratic donkey logoCommittee, MoveOn.org (where he worked before taking over WisDems), and the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, which extolled his virtues in a lengthy Politico op-ed. The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg declared in a recent column, "If Anyone Can Save the Democrats, It's Ben Wikler."

dnc square logoAnd just last week, Wikler stopped by The Daily Show, where his appearance was praised by Pod Save America host Jon Favreau. "I've rarely seen Jon Stewart so impressed with a political guest (though I can't say I'm surprised he's a Wikler fan - so many of us are)," Favreau posted on X.

But DNC chair is a position voted on by 448 party insiders, roughly one-quarter of whom are state chairs and vice chairs. Among that group, Wikler's peers, the qualities that have made him a darling of the media -- his prodigious fundraising ability, relationships with donors and celebrities, and messaging ability -- have engendered resentments that could torpedo his bid to head the national party.

In conversations with Rolling Stone, current or former state party chairs expressed frustration at the outsize attention and money Wikler has attracted relative to his record as chair, and they raised questions about whether, as chair of the national party, he would be able to stand up to the ultra-wealthy donors he has courted during his tenure helming the Wisconsin party.

reid hoffman xWikler's relationship with billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, right,  -- who has previously sought to privatize state parties' prized voter files -- was of particular concern to several people. Hoffman, records show, has personally donated a little less than $9 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since Wikler took over.

Wikler's chief rival is his neighbor Ken Martin, the longstanding chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Since he took over in 2011, the DFL has never lost a statewide race, Democrats have gained full control of the state government twice, and advanced a slate of progressive policy priorities.

Among the half dozen current and former state party chairs whom Rolling Stone spoke with for this story, everyone agreed it was critical for the next DNC chair to have experience as a state party chair, and each praised Wikler and Martin as smart and capable. But where Martin, who heads the association of state party chairs, was universally complimented for the efforts he made to help fellow chairs, Wikler's peers described him as less than generous when it came to sharing contacts and other resources. (A representative for Wikler pointed out that assisting other chairs is part of Martin's mandate in his role heading the Association of Democratic State Chairs, and insisted that Wikler makes efforts to share his contacts, but that it was ultimately up to the person in question if they will allow him to share their information with others.)

Simmering in the background of the fight between Wikler, Martin, and their proxies is the reality that the state parties have seen their power recede dramatically over the last 16 years, ever since Barack Obama created his own 50-state nonprofit apparatus, Organizing For America. Today, most parties' main source of funding is a meager stipend from the DNC: between $12,000 to $15,000 to cover all of their operations every month. (That's up from $2,500 a month a matter of years ago.)

For most chairs, the work is hard, it is thankless, and the pay isn't just bad, but nonexistent - a completely volunteer position.

Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary: Trump's Very Bad Week, Part II, Simon Rosenberg, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Last night the Democrats swooped in and simon rosenberg twitterhelped a struggling GOP pass bills in the House and Senate to keep the government open through March. President Biden has just signed the measure and we will all be able to head off for the Holidays without worrying about what chaos Trump and Elon and MAGA may bring. For now, at least.

The bloom has come off the post-election Trumpian rose. The essential ugliness of his project that is often discounted or obscured in our daily discourse became the story this week. The warning signs about the chaos he will bring and the damage he will do to the country are now there for all to see and are impossible to ignore. Let’s review:

Trump is already unraveling the strong economy he is inheriting. Markets and our allies are not happy.

As has been well covered by economists and journalists, Trump’s economic agenda of tariffs and mass deportations will raise prices, re-ignite inflation, slow economic growth and increase the deficit. This week the Fed and financial markets started coming to terms that the US government may, in a month, start implementing an agenda that unravels the current strong and stable US economy and undermines the broader global economy that has made the US and the world so prosperous in recent decades. Due to concerns about Trump’s inflationary agenda the Fed announced a more “hawkish” position and is scaling back its interest rate cut ambitions in 2025. Mortgage rates are already rising. The stock market indices lost ground in the past two weeks. All of a sudden the strong and stable US economy is looking a bit wobbly - due to fears of what Trump may do.

It is likely now that Trump’s agenda is already damaging the US economy even before he takes office will spur calls from other Republicans and US business leaders for Trump to scale back or curtail his inflationary plans. Trump’s economic honeymoon ended this week, as his dangerous plans started being taken seriously by the US government and the markets. It is my hope that President Biden writes the next President a letter in the coming days urging him to back off his reckless economic agenda and preserve and protect the remarkable economy he is inheriting. The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s ongoing and aggressive tariff threats have already angered our closest allies and largest trading partners in Canada, Mexico and Europe. Trade wars and retaliatory tariffs would not just increase prices on every day goods, re-igniting inflation and harm the people Trump vowed to protect, it would weaken the Western alliance and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free. M

e and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free.

The very first paragraph of the Intelligence Community’s January 2017 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election read:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

What Trump is doing now should also be seen an escalation to undermine the “US-led liberal democratic order.” The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s Maniacal Efforts To Throw The Country Into Chaos Were Rebuffed By His Own Party. Trump’s legislative and political miscalculations this week were among the most significant I’ve seen in my 32 years here in DC. He was goaded into coming out against the must pass bi-partisan bill and crashing the US government by a lie-infused Elon Musk, and then added his own wild demands for ending the debt ceiling. The replacement bill Trump supported failed due to Republican -- not Democratic -- opposition on Thursday. Then last night his party along with Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March without the one thing he demanded -- a suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling, something he told Republicans they needed to fight for and keep the government shut until they won.

Trump was politically weakened this week, and it was all impulsive, reckless, self-inflicted wounds. He followed Elon, a bomb-throwing pro-Russia extremist, and got terribly burned. Speaker Johnson was also weakened, and the Republican Party, looked immature, foolish and not ready to govern. This was a fucking disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and the media is being remarkably direct in saying so this morning. Here’s Axios’ lead story today.

Recent Trumpian/MAGA stumbles:

  • John Thune was elected to be Senate majority leader, despite a fevered push by Trump allies to elect Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) He didn't even make it past the first round of votes.
  • Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was forced to withdraw from consideration to be attorney general. Despite being celebrated by some in Trump's orbit, the votes weren't there from Senate Republicans.
  • 38 House Republicans defied Trump by voting against a short-term spending deal he explicitly asked for. Congressional Republicans went against Trump's wishes again by voting for a spending bill that didn't include an increase in the country's debt ceiling.

For Trump to have put himself into a position of taking such a huge and consequential loss before even becoming President is big-time, holy-shit, political incompetence and is being see that way all across this city. It has weakened him with the very people he needs to pass his agenda passed and get his outrageous nominees through. It has been a stunning -- and encouraging -- few days.

elon musk sideviewIn this spirit  people are starting to come to terms with the dangers and recklessness of Trumpism -- recognizing that it isn’t just “locker room talk” or that there are actually bullets in the gun -- we are learning today that the man who committed the lethal terrorist attack in Germany yesterday was a devout follower of Elon Musk.

ny times logoNew York Times, One Way Democrats Want to Gain Votes: Talk Up Their Faith, Katie Glueck, Dec. 22, 2024. In a party that has grown less religious, some prominent Democrats say discussing their deepest beliefs can be an authentic way to connect.

As the Democratic Party wanders in the post-election wilderness after the bruising defeats of 2024, some of its newer leaders are tapping into an ancient form of connection: religion.

In Texas, a young lawmaker who could run statewide is urging his fellow white progressives to embrace discussions of faith in politics.

In Georgia, a Black pastor and U.S. senator is reclaiming religious language from those on the right who, he suggests, have twisted it to their own ends.

And in Pennsylvania, the Jewish governor’s faith is a central part of his public identity, evident in his campaign advertising and his major speeches — and even at a recent Christmas tree lighting.

“If y’all have not seen ‘National Lampoon Christmas Vacation,’ take it from this Jewish guy,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said as he addressed a holiday celebration in Harrisburg, Pa., this month. “You better go and rent that movie.”

While President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has often carried a rosary and playfully crossed himself, he long stood out in an increasingly secular Democratic Party.

But with his exit from public life nearing, a small but prominent cast of Scripture-quoting, religiously observant Democratic politicians — many of them poised to command national attention over the next four years — is signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule.

 

More U.S. Political Commentary

 

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump

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.  heather cox richardson cnnShortly 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.

“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted. But it rejects the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires that Republicans sought, and it ensures the government can continue to operate at full capacity,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s good news for the American people, especially as families gather to celebrate this holiday season.”

Passing continuing resolutions to fund the government is usually unremarkable, but this fight showed some lines that will stretch into the future.

First of all, it showed the unprecedented influence of billionaire private individual Elon Musk over the Republicans who in 2025 will control the United States government. Musk has a strong financial interest in the outcome of discussions, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he had included Musk as well as President-elect Trump in the negotiation of the original bipartisan funding bill.

Then Musk blew up the agreement by issuing what was an apparent threat to fund primary challengers to any Republican who voted for it. He apparently scuttled the measure on his own hook, since Trump took about thirteen hours to respond to his torpedoing it.

Musk expressed willingness to leave the government unfunded for a month, apparently unconcerned that a shutdown would send hundreds of thousands of government workers deemed nonessential into temporary leave without pay. This would include about 800,000 civilian employees of the Pentagon, about 17,000 people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and those who staff the nation’s national parks, national monuments, and other federal sites.

Federal workers considered essential would have to continue to work without pay. These essential workers include air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers. Military personnel would also have to continue to work without pay.

Taking away paychecks is always wrenching, but to do it right before the winter holidays would devastate families. It would hurt the economy, too, since for many retailers the holiday season is when their sales are highest. Musk—who doesn’t answer to any constituents—seemed untroubled at the idea of hurting ordinary Americans. ″‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” he tweeted.

In the end, Congress passed a bill much like the one Musk scuttled, but one of the provisions that Congress stripped out of the old bill was extraordinarily important to Musk. As David Dayen explained in The Prospect, the original agreement had an “outbound investment” provision that restricted the ability of Americans to invest in technology factories in China. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) had collaborated on the measure, hoping to keep cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as well as the jobs they would create, in America rather than let companies move them to China.

As Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) explained, Musk is building big factories in China and wants to build an AI data center there, even though it could endanger U.S. security. McGovern charged that Musk’s complaints about the spending in the bill were cover for his determination to tank the provision that would limit his ability to move technology and business to China. And, he noted, it worked. The outbound investment provision was stripped out of the bill before it passed.

In The Prospect, Robert Kuttner explained this huge win for Musk, as well as other provisions that were stripped from the bill before it passed. After years of fighting, Tami Luhby of CNN explained, Congress agreed to reform the system in which pharmacy benefit managers act as middlemen between pharmaceutical companies and insurers, employers, and government officials. The original bill increased transparency and provided that pharmacy benefit managers would be compensated with flat fees rather than compensation tied to the price of drugs. The measures related to pharmacy benefit managers were stripped out of the measure that passed.

That lost reform shows another line that will stretch into the future: Trump’s team is working for big business. As Kuttner puts it, Trump, who is allegedly a populist leader, tanked a bipartisan spending bill in order to shield the Chinese investments of the richest man in the world and to protect the profits of second-largest pharmacy benefit manager UnitedHealth Group, the corporation for which murdered executive Brian Thompson worked.

Other measures stripped from the original bill were five different bills to combat childhood cancer. The idea that sick children were among the first victims of the funding showdown sparked widespread outrage. While the Senate did not return the entire $190 million worth of funding to the continuing resolution, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) pushed the chamber to pass the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, devoting $63 million to extend the original measure that was passed in 2014 in honor of a Virginia girl who advocated for cancer funding until her death in 2013 at the age of ten. Representative Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) had shepherded the measure through the House in November, when it received only four no votes, all from Republicans.

The Senate also passed a measure repealing two laws that have curtailed Social Security benefits for teachers, firefighters, local police officers, and other public sector workers.

Finally, the struggle over the continuing resolution shows, once again, that Trump is weaker than his team claims. While Musk got the Chinese investment restrictions stripped out of the final bill, Congress passed the measure without Trump’s demand for freedom from the debt ceiling in it. This failure comes after Senate Republicans rejected Trump’s choice for Senate majority leader and after his first nominee for attorney general, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), had so little support he was forced to withdraw from consideration.

Trump has been angling to get Florida governor Ron DeSantis to name his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Florida senatorship that will be vacated if Senator Marco Rubio becomes secretary of state, despite her lack of any previous experience in elected office. But that plan, too, seems to have gone awry.

Today, Lara Trump announced: “After an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many, I have decided to remove my name from consideration for the United States Senate.”

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Biden Sets PERFECT TRAP for Trump before DAY 1, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little mtn meidas touch networkgun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer.MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on President Biden laying traps to stop Trump for implementing his dangerous agenda.

Politico Magazine, The Political World Just Lost its Last Bipartisan Meeting Place, Jonathan Martin, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little gun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer. David Axelrod’s podcast was the last place where members of the opposite party could sit down and share ideas.

politico CustomAt a moment when members of the opposite party rarely appear together on television, most political interviews are fleeting and the election may have doomed the last digital town square, David Axelrod’s podcast was an oasis.

Now, after a remarkable 605 shows over more than nine years, Axelrod is concluding his program by interviewing his fellow Chicagoan, Rahm Emanuel.

I’m sad to see “The Axe Files” go, in part because it’s more essential now than ever.

Yes, it was respectful and it generated more light than heat. There were no food fights. But I come to praise Axe, not bury him in a shroud of bygone-day nostalgia for civil discourse.

What made the program so compelling — and unique in this period — was that he had candid, deeply personal and extended interviews with the leading figures in both parties. Where else can that combination be found today?

I should disclose here that Axelrod also had on a range of figures from the media, along with other walks of life, and I sat for a session in 2016. That’s the right word because the show was always equal parts therapy session and journalistic inquiry.

Axelrod doesn’t have psychiatric training — that I know of — but he was once a superb political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He’s got ink in his DNA and that came through in every program, when he’d try to make news or at least prompt reflection. I could always tell he hated the shows where his guests showed up with talking points. (Been there!)

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 20, 2024 [GOP Power Vacuum], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 21, 2024. This evening the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for three months. The measure will fund the government at current levels halfway through March. It also appropriates $100 billion in disaster aid for regions hit by the storms and fires of the summer and fall, as well as $10 billion for farmers.

Getting to this agreement has exposed the power vacuum in the Republican Party and thus a crisis in the government of the United States.

This fight over funding has been brewing since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2023. From their first weeks in office, when they launched the longest fight over a House speaker since 1860, the Republicans were bitterly divided. MAGA Republicans want to slash government so deeply that it will no longer be able to regulate business, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights. Establishment Republicans also want to cut the government, but they recognize that with Democrats in charge of the Senate and a Democratic president, they cannot get everything they want.

As Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post recounted, when the nation hit the debt ceiling in spring 2023, Republicans used it to demand that the Democrats cut the budget back to 2022 levels. Democrats objected that they had raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times under Trump and that Republicans had agreed to the budget to which the new Republicans were demanding cuts.

The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped micromanaging the instruments the Treasury used to borrow money and instead simply set a debt limit. That procedure began to be a political weapon after the tax cuts first during President George W. Bush’s term and then under President Donald Trump reduced government revenues to 16.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product while spending has risen to nearly 23%. This gap means the country must borrow money to meet its budget appropriations, eventually hitting the ceiling.

Today, social media exploded with the realization that an unelected billionaire from South Africa who apparently supports fascism was able to intimidate Republican legislators into doing his bidding. In this last week, Trump has threatened former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) with prosecution for her work as a member of Congress and has sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was unfavorable to him before the November election. Those actions are classic authoritarian moves to consolidate power, but to those not paying close attention they were perhaps less striking than the reality that Musk appears to have taken over for Trump as the incoming president.

As CNN’s Erin Burnett pointed out “the world’s richest man, right now, holding the country hostage,” Democrats worked to call attention to this crisis. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) said: “We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time the Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”

Republicans, too, seemed dismayed at Musk’s power. Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him, but I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.”

Tonight the House passed a measure much like the one Musk and Trump had undermined, funding the government and providing the big-ticket disaster and farm relief but not raising or getting rid of the debt ceiling. According to Jennifer Scholtes of Politico, Republican leadership tried to get party members on board by promising to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion early in 2025 while also cutting $2.5 trillion in “mandatory” spending, which covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP nutrition assistance.

The fiasco of the past few days is a political blow to Trump. Musk overshadowed him, and when Trump demanded that Republicans free him from the debt ceiling, they ignored him.

Politico, Johnson hits unsteady point of his speakership at the worst time, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney, Dec. 21, 2024. One Republican has already vowed to oppose him due to the spending fiasco, and he can’t afford to lose another due to his incredibly thin majority.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), right .

politico Custommike johnson oHouse conservatives are putting Speaker Mike Johnson on notice: He has work to do if he wants to keep his job.

The Louisiana Republican is at his weakest point after he was caught between President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the right flank of his party in a bruising fight over spending that just barely averted a government shutdown.Politico, Trump's man in the Vatican, President-elect Donald Trump said

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Trump is already walking back his promises. Why don't the headlines simply say, "He Lied"??? Thom thom hartmann newHartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. The main promise Trump made to American voters before the election was that he’d “immediately” lower grocery and other prices.

Anybody with even a tiny bit of civics education knows that’s nearly impossible; the president doesn’t control any agency or have any power other than the bully pulpit to affect marketplace prices. Just ask Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were both one-term presidents largely because of inflation. Nonetheless, Trump repeated that promise over and over and voters believed him. Now, as Todd Beeton points out in his excellent Big Picture newsletter, Trump has dismissed this promise as something he never really intended to do because, as noted, it’s simply not possible. When asked on Meet The Press if he’d keep his promise to lower prices, he replied bluntly, “I can’t promise anything.” Right. He’d also promised he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 and their plans to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other popular government programs; now he’s stocking his administration with the actual authors of that document. He’d also promised to end the Ukraine war the day after his election; now it just looks like he’s going to leave that democratic nation and its millions of people to the tender mercies of Russia’s brutal tyrant and his rapist soldiers. Finally, Trump promised not to attack Social Security with his campaign sending out literally millions of flyers to homes in swing states saying he’d protect the program; that’s already in the crapper as the DOGE caucus and Musk’s people are examining the program for cutbacks. Republican Rep. Greg Lopez went so far as to bluntly tell Social Security Works’ president Alex Lawson, ‘there will be some cuts’ to Social Security. The three areas where it appears Trump may keep his promises are putting an anti-vaccine crackpot in charge of our vaccine programs, cutting more taxes for his billionaire donors, and setting out on a revenge spree once he controls the Justice Department. This is going to get ugly fast.

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Republicans in Congress kick the can down the road to March,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Democrats in thom hartmann newthe House and Senate pitched in and helped pass a stopgap funding continuing resolution to keep the government open until March.

It does not include the lifting of the debt ceiling which Trump and Musk wanted to prepare for the next round of borrowing trillions from American taxpayers to give to their billionaire friends as tax cuts. Nor did it cut entitlement programs, which so pissed off rightwing Republicans that 34 of them voted against the bill. But those corrupt Republicans who love the morbidly rich and hate average Americans haven’t given up hope; here’s the operant sentence from the article in today’s Washington Post about the vote: “[Johnson] proposed a handshake deal with fiscal hawks in his own party to try next year to slash mandatory spending — programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ health care and food stamps — by at least $2.5 trillion while raising the debt cap by $1.5 trillion, according to three people familiar with the details.” That’s how they plan to get to a $4 trillion tax cut transfer of wealth from all of us to the top 1% this coming spring: Get your popcorn.

 

pete hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Senate Passes Pediatric Cancer Research Funding, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 21, 2024. This funding was passed despite Republicans taking it out of the House Continuing Resolution

mtn meidas touch networkOvernight, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund pediatric cancer research that was originally stripped from the House Continuing Resolution to keep the government.

Previously, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was included in a deal in the House as part of the bill to keep the government open.

There was bipartisan support for this legislation until Elon Musk and Donald Trump stepped in, at which point Republicans removed the cancer funding from the updated continuing resolution.

At the same time, Senator Rand Paul was blocking the bill from moving forward as a stand alone bill in the United States Senate.

For a while it seemed as though this critical cancer research funding would not be included in any final continuing resolution given the Republican Party's opposition in the House. But, overnight, the United States Senate passed the bill via unanimous consent after Paul dropped his objections to the bill.

As a result, the bill will head to the President's desk who will likely sign the bill into law and ensure funding goes to the National Institute of Health for pediatric cancer research.

Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer's leadership, continue to push to pass the bill despite the failures of the House of Representatives.

 

Trump Transition News, Commentary

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Picks a Former Treasury Official as His Top Economist, Lisa Friedman, Dec. 22, 2024.  Stephen Miran, who served during Donald Trump’s first term and now works at a hedge fund, has accused the Biden administration of manipulating markets.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he was choosing Stephen Miran, who served in the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers.

“Steve will work with the rest of my Economic team to deliver a Great Economic Boom that lifts up all Americans,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement on social media.

The Council of Economic Advisers is a panel of experts that historically has operated within the White House, providing the president with advice on domestic and international economic policy.

Mr. Miran, whose role requires Senate confirmation, was a senior adviser for economic policy at the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, a role that included advising on fiscal support during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

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djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009politico CustomPresident-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

Politico, Trump taps critic of Pope Francis for Vatican ambassadorship, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 20, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

politico CustomIn a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Burch will face a Senate confirmation process, but it is unlikely he will encounter stiff resistance from Republicans, as his views aren’t considered controversial in the party.

trump 2024Burch would be far from the first ambassador to the Holy See with a political background. Presidents from both parties have selected former elected officials who are practicing Catholics such as President Joe Biden picking Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Trump picked political activist Callista Gingrich in his first term. He also wouldn't be the first to have ideological or theological disagreements with the church.

But none of the picks to helm the Vatican to date would come into the role with as much a digital record of criticizing church leadership. On social media, Burch has criticized Francis’ leadership and shared the writings of some right-wing clerics who are critical of him. In 2023, he insinuated that church leaders were collaborating with controversial U.S. law enforcement probes into parishes that celebrated the Catholic Mass in Latin, a practice that was phased out decades ago for liturgy in local languages.

Writing on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

At the time, Burch defended geofencing as needed to “reach our fellow Catholics in the pews” and “ensure that our fellow Catholic voters get the facts and hear the truth — not the latest lies peddled by the media.”

 

state dept map logo Small

Mother Jones Magazine, Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda, david corn newDavid Corn, right, Dec. 16, 2024. It’s going to get very ugly.

"Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this FBI logomoment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now."

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Politico, The Catholics in Trump’s administration could take GOP in whole new direction, Megan Messerly, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The president-elect has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions.

politico CustomJoe Biden will leave the White House in January as only the second Catholic to occupy it. But a number of Catholics are expected to soon fill the ranks of Donald Trump’s administration.

Trump, who was raised as a Presbyterian but now considers himself non-denominational, has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions in his administration, including his own vice president JD Vance, left, a Catholic convert, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, rfk jr mouth openhis pick for Health and Human Services Secretary.

Their faith could play a direct role in shaping public policy, from pro-union policies and new tariffs to expanding the child jd vancetax credit and more tightly regulating the food and drug industries — and also help carve a new path forward for the Republican Party.

In interviews, several conservative practicing Catholic leaders said they see a close alignment between many of Trump’s second-term policy priorities and a conservative read of Catholic social teaching, which goes far beyond abortion. It’s also focused on promoting marriage and having children, giving parents wide discretion on everything from school content to health care and empowering non-governmental institutions like churches and nonprofit organizations for social support.

“No one’s walking into the administration ready to mount a crusade or anything,” said Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. But “there’s a very specific sort of Catholic paradigm that you may begin to see.”

trump 2024It comes after decades of influence of a more individualistic evangelical Protestantism on the Republican Party that, among other things, strongly embraced individual liberty and free market capitalism.

“The market is not an end unto itself. The market has a purpose — and that is to create a free and flourishing society. If the family is not doing well, society is not doing well. We need to make sure our public policy is helping family to function,” Bovard added.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

In his nearly decade of political prominence, Trump has already dramatically reshaped the GOP, and it’s clear that the Republican Party’s future likely won’t be found in Ronald Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism, which was fiscally conservative, socially conservative and hawkish.

Where Republicans have long been skeptical of government intervention, some in the party increasingly see the government as a tool to reshape social policy. Republicans who long embraced “pro-life” policies, like restricting abortion access and supporting crisis pregnancy centers, are now leaning into a broader set of what they call pro-family policies that range from tax policies encouraging people to get married and have children to restrictions on kids accessing online porn. They are also now starting to turn a skeptical eye toward big businesses, including Big Pharma, Big Ag and Big Tech.

ny times logoNew York Times, News Analysis: Why Wray’s Resignation May Signal a Shift in F.B.I. Tradition, Devlin Barrett, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.).  Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher christopher wray oin a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director changes with the administration.

trump 2024Christopher A. Wray, right, had considered resigning as F.B.I. director before. More than once, confronted with angry demands from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, he contemplated calling it quits.

When Mr. Wray on Wednesday announced his intent to do so, it was because he believed staying on the job into a second Trump term risked significant disruptions to the work force and its mission.

Justice Department log circularMr. Trump had already declared his plan to replace him with Kash Patel, a tough-talking loyalist who has vowed to force out bureau leaders and empty its Washington headquarters.

In conceding to the reality of raw power, Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director is more of a political post that changes with the administration.

For decades, F.B.I. directors have been appointed to 10-year terms to insulate them from the shifting winds of politics. Few F.B.I. directors stay a full decade, and the circumstances of Mr. Wray’s departure after seven years suggest that insulation has worn thin.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein, Dec. 14, 2024 Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logotrump 2024President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

 

devan nunes hearing Custom

ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats

 

iowa map

ny times logoNew 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.

Mr. Trump has long said that people he claims have wronged him should be prosecuted, including President Biden and his family; Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents; and Liz Cheney, the former representative from Wyoming who helped lead the House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power in 2020.

In recent months, he has filed various legal actions against the media that amount to a warning shot about what sort of retaliation journalists, in particular, might face.

As he prepares to take office again, Mr. Trump will have at his disposal the levers of government, a Republican Party that is more pliant than it was four years ago and a well-funded external political apparatus.

“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” said Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law whose book, “Actual Malice,” is about the Supreme Court’s most famous defamation case. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”

Ms. Barbas added that prevailing in court may be beside the point. The lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening,” she said.

Many of Mr. Trump’s lawsuits go nowhere, including one that accused Hillary Clinton and a group of other Democrats of being part of a racketeering conspiracy against him. That particular suit resulted in nearly $1 million in fines issued by the judge against Mr. Trump’s lawyer.

 

donald trump money palmer report Custom

Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, lance rosenright, 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.

kash patel headshot smileThe 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 logoFacebook 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.

mark zuckerberg G8 summit deauville wAnd 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.

 

 

Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts in historic indictment linked to Stormy Daniels hush money probe (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).

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.

juan merchan djt

ny times logoNew 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.

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if the decision withstands an appeal, Mr. Trump could become the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, criticized the ruling, calling it “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.”

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Imagesand TNS).

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Images and TNS).

 

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair.

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.

Politico Magazine, Opinion: You Should Worry About Kash Patel Running the FBI, Ankush Khardori, Dec. 14, 2024. The days of J. Edgar Hoover may be over, but kash patel headshot smilePatel’s nomination is deeply worrisome all the same.t national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

politico CustomSome key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close.

Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” Trump told NBC News that the members of the Jan. 6 committee should “go to jail” (even as he claimed that he would not direct his appointees to prosecute them). And his plan to install Kash Patel, right, as FBI director was made easier after Christopher Wray, himself a Trump appointee, announced he would resign despite having more than two years left on his term.

Trump’s decision to nominate Patel has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump. (A Trump transition spokesperson said, “Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic director.”)

trump 2024Many observers, including former federal law enforcement officials, oppose Patel’s nomination on the grounds that he would likely use the FBI to pursue Trump’s political opponents and that he might substantially corrupt the culture and professionalism of the bureau. To some, Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.

Patel clearly lacks the qualifications, experience and temperament to lead the agency. But how worried should the American public really be about him at the helm of the FBI?

The truth is that there are stronger internal and external safeguards in place against law enforcement abuses than during the Hoover era. He will indeed face some constraints because of the culture and bureaucracy of the FBI. But they may not contain him. And he will have plenty of opportunity to damage the bureau and its work — and to use and abuse the FBI for political ends. His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.

ny times logoNew York Times, Young Republicans Gather, Ready to Make America Vengeful Again, Shawn McCreesh, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). At a gala on Wall Street for the New York Young Republican Club, attendees were looking forward to retribution from the next Trump era, and musing on another run in 2028.  Late Sunday night, in a banquet hall inside the grand old Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street, the Republican operative Stephen K. Bannon was putting on one of his over-the-top, apocalyptic performances.

It was the annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — prom for pro-Trump provocateurs — and Mr. Bannon, 71, was the keynote speaker. Standing onstage, beneath soaring Corinthian columns and a vaulted ceiling, he looked out upon a sea of baby-faced acolytes in black tie and outlined the way forward for them and for the Trump restoration.

Donald J. Trump “is a leader of all the people,” Mr. Bannon said. “He’s got a kind heart and big soul. But that’s not us, right? We want retribution. And we’re going to get retribution.” The Young Republicans cheered.

Mr. Bannon added: “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28? Come on, man!” And they all roared some more.

Asked later if he thought Mr. Bannon was being serious about Mr. Trump making an unconstitutional run for a third term in 2028, the club’s 30-year-old leader, Gavin Wax, waved it off. “I think that was more of a light-handed remark to make fun and be a little jovial, but let’s focus on these four years and making the best of it,” he said.

That’s often how it goes with this crowd of Trump true believers. Like the man himself, they say outrageous things, and nobody knows how seriously to take them. They often don’t even seem to know how seriously to take themselves.


A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: F.B.I. Director to Step Down, Adam Goldman and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Wray told F.B.I. employees he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

christopher wray oThe F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, right, told bureau employees on Wednesday that he intended in January, bowing to the reality that President-elect Donald J. Trump had publicly declared his desire to replace him.

Mr. Wray made the disclosure while addressing employees Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Wray added that he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

FBI logoThe announcement comes after Mr. Trump said in late November that he intended to nominate Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist, to run the F.B.I., and more than two years before Mr. Wray’s 10-year term would have expired.

Over more than seven years, Mr. Wray oversaw one of the most consequential and tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history, juggling high-profile criminal investigations of political figures, heated congressional inquiries and two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump.

Even as he fended off Mr. Trump’s relentless criticisms of the F.B.I., Mr. Wray supervised a wide array of national security issues that included terrorism, escalating cyberattacks and threats from geopolitical rivals like China, Iran and Russia. He also had to grapple with a spate of mass shootings and the rise of right-wing extremism while managing an agency with 35,000 employees and a budget of more than $10 billion.

ICE logoBut it was the bureau’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump that almost certainly cut short Mr. Wray’s tenure.

His F.B.I. repeatedly investigated Mr. Trump, including by searching the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents, examining his widespread efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and delving into the possible links between his 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence operatives engaged in election interference.

“He invaded Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Trump told NBC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”

Justice Department log circularUnder Mr. Wray’s watch, agents also investigated the current president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his handling of sensitive records after he left the vice presidency. They undertook several other politically charged cases that made the agency the subject of sharp partisan scrutiny, including its inquiry into Hunter Biden.

In the face of intense political cajoling, second-guessing and condemnation, Mr. Wray frequently urged his agents to “keep calm and tackle hard,” and preached a strict adherence to the investigative process that has been the agency’s calling card for decades.

His apparent successor could not be more different. Mr. Patel, a former federal prosecutor and public defender, is a fierce critic of the F.B.I. and has vowed to fire its leadership, empty its headquarters and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.”

“If Kash gets in, he’ll be taking somebody’s place, and that somebody is the man you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said in the interview with NBC News, referring to Mr. Wray.

Mr. Wray became the bureau’s eighth director in August 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey from the job in 2017 in the middle of the Russia investigation.

At the start, Mr. Trump called Mr. Wray “a man of impeccable credentials.” But the president quickly soured on him.

Mr. Wray withstood extraordinary pressure from Mr. Trump to leverage the powers of law enforcement to damage his perceived enemies and later to play down the threats of right-wing violent extremism and Russian election interference.

The rift between the men grew as Mr. Wray waved off false claims the president peddled about voter fraud and left-wing extremists. His tenure became increasingly tenuous after William P. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, in part because he had fallen out of favor with the president. Mr. Barr was said to have argued against firing the F.B.I. director, shielding Mr. Wray from Mr. Trump’s fury.

Mr. Trump’s allies also took aim at Mr. Wray, faulting him for not speaking out vociferously against the Russia investigation or the botched wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser.

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump publicly declared that Mr. Wray should resign, and it was clear his antipathy had only intensified, partly because of the 2022 search of his Florida home.

After an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa., Mr. Trump lashed out at the F.B.I. because the bureau did not definitively say he had been shot in the ear.

“No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

In leaving before Mr. Trump is sworn in, Mr. Wray may avoid the kind of public standoff that marked some firings during the first Trump administration. kash patel headshot smilekash patel gangsters coverBut the turbulence at the F.B.I. is all but certain to continue if Mr. Patel, right (and author of the book Government Gangsters, shown at left, is confirmed and Mr. Trump tries to make sweeping changes at the agency.

Mr. Trump has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute his perceived enemies, whom he accuses of unfairly prosecuting him. He has also called for investigations of prosecutors, judges and politicians.

In his first term, Mr. Trump sought to weigh in on F.B.I. operations and at times expressed frustration that presidents typically stayed out of the bureau’s business.

“I am not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said in 2017. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

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More On Health Care Exec's Murder

Senate in November. ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus,

ny times logoNew 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 logoWashington 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.

brian thompsonThompson, 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?

salon LogoOn 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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Public Health, Scandal, #MeToo, Trafficking, Abortion.

 

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).

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

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 bulwark logo big shiphealth 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!

trump 2024Kennedy 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 jonathan v lastfront lines.

bulwark logo big shipBret 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.

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U.S. Law, Cases, Courts

ny times logoNew York Times, Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say, Charlie Savage, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two more trips from a wealthy patron was included in a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ny times logoNew York Times, Top Uniformed N.Y.P.D. Officer Resigns After Abuse Allegations, Hurubie Meko, Maria Cramer and William K. Rashbaum, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Jeffrey Maddrey traded sexual favors for overtime, according to a report from The New York Post. He had previously been accused of harassment on the job.

New York City’s top uniformed police officer, the chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, setting off local and federal investigations and extending years of turmoil at the Police Department.

The former chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it, according to a statement from the department on Saturday.

Mayor Eric Adams had vocally supported Mr. Maddrey, a close ally, as recently as October. But on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the mayor, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said that he was working with Commissioner Tisch to conduct a “separate departmentwide review to ensure no high-ranking officers are using their power inappropriately.”

“We are deeply disturbed by these allegations and the N.Y.P.D. is investigating this matter,” Ms. Mamelak Altus said.

ny times logoNew York Times, They Made Over $100,000 in Overtime. Now the N.Y.P.D. Is Cracking Down, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Eliza Shapiro, Dec. 22, 2024. Commissioner Jessica Tisch has reassigned at least 29 officers. Some worked under Jeffrey Maddrey, who was accused of demanding sex from a subordinate.

Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year. The moves come as investigators are scrutinizing accusations that Jeffrey Maddrey, the department’s former highest-ranking uniformed officer, demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for overtime.

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.

Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.

Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.Federal investigators have joined a city Department of Investigation inquiry into the provision of overtime and the allegations of misconduct against Mr. Maddrey, who resigned on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter. The F.B.I. declined to comment on Sunday. The Manhattan district attorney is also investigating.

ny times logoNew York Times, Suspect Is Held After Woman Set on Fire in Subway Car Dies, Police Say, Johnny Diaz and Sara Ruberg, Dec. 22, 2024. The  victim had been seated in a subway car at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn when a man set her on fire.

Early Sunday morning, a man calmly approached a woman who was sitting motionless and possibly dozing on a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station and, without saying anything, lit the woman’s clothes on fire, engulfing her in deadly flames in seconds, the police said.

The man then watched from a bench on the subway platform as officers and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire.

The woman, who had not yet been identified as of Sunday night, was pronounced dead at the scene. Hours later, the man was taken into custody in connection with the fatal attack while riding another F train.

Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said at a news conference on Sunday evening that the police apprehended someone they believe “carried out one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being, and it took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

The man was found with a lighter, the police commissioner said. The man, who was not publicly identified, emigrated from Guatemala to the United States in 2018, Chief Gulotta said.

Last year, overall crime in the transit system dropped nearly 3 percent compared with 2022 as the number of daily riders rose by 14 percent.

According to a Dec. 18 news release from the governor’s office, subway crime was down 42 percent since 2021 while ridership has increased 148 percent.

washington post logoWashington Post, Senate confirms 2 Biden judicial nominees, boosting total over Trump, Tobi Raji, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). President Joe Biden’s diverse cohort of judges includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other U.S. president.

The Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s last two judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, surpassing Donald Trump’s first-term total of 234 judges even as the president-elect’s second term will afford him the chance to make many more judicial appointments.Get the latest election news and results

Benjamin J. Cheeks was confirmed to a seat in the Southern District of California by a vote of 49-47. Serena R. Murillo was confirmed to the Central District of California by the same vote count. Cheeks and Murillo are the 234th and 235th judges confirmed under Biden.

Their confirmations add to a diverse cohort of judges nominated by Biden that includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other president in U.S. history.

“We have people who are from all across America and who resemble America,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a news conference with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee after Cheeks and Murillo’s confirmations. “Our courts are stronger. Our courts are better. They reflect our country.”

A former magistrate judge, Cheeks is the 63rd Black judge confirmed during the Biden administration, setting a record for the most Black judges confirmed during a presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Murillo, who previously served as a Superior Court judge, is the 150th woman and 24th Latina judge confirmed under Biden, according to the group.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Former FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov Pleads Guilty To Lying About Biden Family, Jordy Meiselas, Dec. 16, 2024. Smirnov lied about a bribery scheme that became a critical part of the Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden.

mtn meidas touch networkAlexander Smirnov has officially pled guilty to lying about a bribery scheme that involved President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican attempt to impeach President Biden.

Smirnov entered a guilty plea to a felony charge related to the fake bribery story along with other criminal tax charges related to his concealment of millions of dollars of income.

In 2020, Smirnov first made claims that the Bidens had been involved in a bribery scheme related to Burisma and Ukraine. At the same time, Smirnov expressed bias about President Biden as a candidate.

An FBI office investigated Smirnov's allegations but closed the case in August 2020, and there has been no evidence that President Biden acted corruptly or accepted any bribes as President or Vice President.

At the time, it was unknown that Smirnov's allegations were the basis of a Republican attempt to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. And we now know that the story premising the impeachment inquiry was false.

Prosecutors agreed to a deal with Smirnov and recommended that he serve between four and six years in prison. The ultimate sentencing decision will be made by a federal judge at a later date.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Diaz, a 2010 Obama appointee, found that given its context, Ponsor’s article could be read “as a commentary on partisan issues and as a call for Justice Alito’s recusal.” Diaz closed the complaint because Ponsor acknowledged violating the rules, apologized for his actions and said he would seek ethics advice before doing any further outside writing.

“With the benefit of an objective perspective, I realize now that my criticism of the ethical judgment of a Supreme Court Justice might have had the effect of undermining the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judicial system,” Ponsor said in a letter appended to Diaz’s order.

Ponsor, who also wrote a 2023 opinion column titled “A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?”, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mike Davis, the activist and Trump ally who filed a complaint that triggered the review, said he was satisfied. “The courts and Judge Ponsor took this seriously. I accept his apology letter at face value,” said Davis, founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for conservative judges.

Critics of the Supreme Court were less sanguine.

“Justice Alito currently faces no consequences for his public commentary and actions that cast doubt on his impartiality, but the judge who raised legitimate concerns about these ethical lapses is disciplined in response to a complaint by a political activist with an axe to grind,” said a Durbin spokesman, Josh Sorbe.

Alito didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in May he wrote a three-page letter declining to recuse himself from the Jan. 6 cases. He said then it was his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who flew various flags at their homes, a practice he disfavored and had no part in. Under the Supreme Court’s recently adopted ethics code, each justice evaluates his or her own conduct. Alito determined that he would remain on those cases because his impartiality couldn’t reasonably be questioned.

Alito joined the majority in both Jan. 6 cases, limiting the charges against rioters and extending criminal immunity for former presidents.

washington post logoWashington Post, Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter, Sarah Blaskey, Patrick Marley, Hannah Natanson and Reis Thebault, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Court records show Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow’s parents had divorced and remarried multiple times.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others at her small Christian school here Monday had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy.You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

wisconsin map with largest cities CustomNatalie Rupnow, who also went by Samantha, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after police say she opened fire in a study hall classroom at Abundant Life Christian School.

The academy’s tight-knit community was still stunned Tuesday, grieving the student and teacher who were killed and searching for answers to explain the latest act of violence to strike an American campus.

Police have released few details about Rupnow beyond her name, and they said they were investigating a possible motive behind the shooting. With much still unknown, a Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.

“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference, where he asked the public for patience as authorities investigated Rupnow’s social media activity and state of mind leading up to the rampage.

The teen is one of just nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by The Post. She is also among the younger recent shooters: Just over a month removed from her 15th birthday, she was about a year younger than the median age of school shooters. And the violence unfolded at a small K-12 school with a religious affiliation, an uncommon site for such incidents, researchers say.

“A lot of this is quite surprising,” said Jillian Peterson, the executive director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center at Hamline University.

Rupnow’s mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Police said they have been cooperating with the investigation.

Rupnow’s father is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter, according to a review of his Facebook profile. The Post confirmed the account as Jeff Rupnow’s by verifying its authenticity with a person who attended school with him and by comparing the page’s contents to public records.

His posts celebrate his daughter’s achievements, such as the time she earned a purple belt in karate, and mark big life moments, like the day he bought a house. But one post, from August, has attracted more scrutiny than others.

In it, a photo appears to show Natalie Rupnow wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range, which her father identifies as North Bristol Sportsman’s Club in nearby Sun Prairie. In a comment accompanying the post, Jeff Rupnow wrote that he and his daughter had joined the club early this year and “we have been loving all every second of it!”

In the photograph, Natalie Rupnow is wearing a T-shirt bearing the letters “KMFDM,” an apparent reference to the German rock band whose lyrics were posted on the website of one of the shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Authorities declined to comment on social media posts, saying they were still investigating Natalie Rupnow’s online activity. Police have not disclosed how Rupnow was able to acquire the handgun they say she used in Monday’s shooting.

“How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?” Barnes, the police chief, said Monday, adding that his team was working with federal authorities to answer that question. He did not elaborate at the news conference Tuesday.

washington post logoWashington Post, Supreme Court to hear challenge to a TikTok ban in U.S., scheduling arguments for January, Ann E. Marimow and Eva Dou, Dec. 18, 2024. The justices said they will quickly take up the constitutionality of a federal law that would shutter TikTok next month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.

The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.Get the latest election news and results

In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

TikTok had asked the high court to intervene before Jan. 19, the deadline Congress set for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or be barred in the United States. The company wants the justices to put on hold a lower-court ruling that clears the way for the law, which was signed by President Joe Biden.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has suggested he could try to retain access to the app, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the ban-or-sale law.

Lawmakers passed the measure in response to concerns from U.S. officials that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

washington post logoWashington Post, Syphilis ravaged Renaissance Europe but may have origins in Americas, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Dec. 18, 2024.  For centuries, scientists have disputed the origins of the disease. A new study of ancient DNA suggests it emerged in the Americas before Columbus arrived.

In 1495, a devastating infection began to sweep across Europe, causing pustules and sores to erupt on people’s bodies and faces. Accusatory finger-pointing about the scourge, syphilis, began almost immediately. The Italians called it “the French disease”; the French called it “the Neapolitan disease”; the Russians called it “the Polish disease.”You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

The sexually transmitted disease remains a public health menace today, despite the fact that it is easily cured with antibiotics. But the scientific debate still rages about the ancient origins of syphilis — including why the wave of illness that swamped Renaissance Europe was so virulent.

Did syphilis initially emerge in the Americas and arrive in Europe in early 1493 when explorer Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, in the reverse of so many other illnesses that wiped out Indigenous peoples? Or was it a much older “pre-Columbian” disease that has been infecting humanity much longer — one that flew under the radar, perhaps mistaken for leprosy or another ailment in Medieval Europe?

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, an international team studied ancient DNA harvested from lesion-ridden bones or teeth of five people who lived in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Mexico either before or around the time of Columbus. They found that early versions of the microbe, Treponema pallidum, that causes syphilis and related diseases were already diverse and widespread. Their analysis suggests that syphilis emerged in the Americas within the last 8,000 years and spread across the globe fueled by European colonization.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump to nominate ex-NFL star Herschel Walker as Bahamas ambassador, Staff Reports, Dec. 18, 2024. President-elect Donald herschel walker hill tvTrump plans to nominate Herschel Walker, the former professional football player and Heisman Trophy winner who lost a scandal-trump 2024ridden bid for Senate in 2022, as ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump, meanwhile, moved closer to returning to the White House as the electoral college convened in all 50 states Tuesday and elected him to be the 47th president of the United States over Vice President Kamala Harris by a vote of 312 to 226.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. repatriates three Guantánamo detainees, leaving 27 at prison, Karen DeYoung Dec. 18, 2024. Two Malaysians charged with Southeast Asia bombings will serve additional sentences in their own country; a Kenyan charged with belonging to al-Qaeda in East Africa was sent home.

Three of the last remaining 30 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention center have been repatriated to their home countries — two to Malaysia and one to Kenya, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

Malaysians Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pleaded guilty in January before a U.S. military commission to charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses as lieutenants of the man known as Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia blamed for a number of deadly bombing attacks in the region in the early 2000s.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

They were arrested in 2003 in Thailand along with Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Encep Nurjaman. All three were held in the CIA’s “black sites,” a secret overseas prison network, until 2006, when they were transferred to Guantánamo.

As part of a plea agreement, the two Malaysians agreed in January to provide depositions for use in proceedings against Nurjaman and will serve additional “confinement for approximately five years” in their home country, according to a Pentagon statement issued after their scheduled departure early Wednesday.

The third repatriated prisoner, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, was sent to Kenya on Tuesday. Arrested by Kenyan authorities in 2007 and accused of belonging to al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, Bajabu was among the last five detainees to arrive at the U.S. facility in Cuba, established after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, that once held hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda operatives.

 

lina khan resized ftc

washington post logoWashington Post, FTC issues rules requiring hotels, ticket sellers to reveal ‘junk fees,’ Tony Romm, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). The industries must display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers or face potential federal punishment.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued long-awaited rules requiring companies to display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers, rather than hiding any extra charges — often called “junk fees” — until the very end of the checkout process.

The new regulations, which are slated to take effect next year, seek to crack down on “bait and switch” pricing practices, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan, who said the agency has received a groundswell of complaints about service charges, amenity fees and a raft of other potentially obscure, last-minute additions to consumers’ bills.

The FTC’s rules still allow companies to impose fees, so long as they are clearly displayed. The agency also focused its prohibition on just the lodging and live-event industries, not the fuller array of firms — from airlines to internet giants — that have similarly stoked public anger.

While the FTC initially proposed broader regulations, Khan narrowed the agency’s scope in a bid to secure bipartisan support among her five-member commission, which approved the proposal on a 4-1 vote. The lone opponent was Andrew Ferguson, a Republican, whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate to lead the FTC next year.

It is unclear how Ferguson would enforce the agency’s hidden-fees ban if he is confirmed by the Senate. In a dissenting statement, he blasted the agency for issuing rules “it will never enforce,” with Trump set to take office in January, but did not say how he might approach the issue as chairman.

Politico, Fetterman: Patel pledged to not go after political enemies, Mia McCarthy, Sen-elect John Curtis said he also talked with the FBI pick on the subject. “So I'm not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that's never going to happen,”Sen. John Fetterman, right, said when asked about Kash Patel’s past comments pledging to go after Trump’s enemies.

politico CustomKash Patel, right, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, kash patel headshot smileclaimed he would not go after his political enemies to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), despite Patel’s past claims that he would.

In an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that Patel told him he would not use the FBI to go after Trump’s enemies, despite his comments vowing to go after such people.

“So I’m not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that’s never going to happen,” Fetterman said when asked by host Jonathan Karl about Patel’s past comments pledging to go after political enemies. “That’s not it … that’s what he claims.”

trump 2024When Patel was nominated, a quote from him on a 2023 podcast interview with Steve Bannon was widely circulated. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel told Bannon then. Patel’s 2022 book, “Government Gangsters,” listed 60 potential targets for a new Trump administration.


john fetterman lt govFetterman, right, one of the few Democratic senators who has been meeting with Trump’s Cabinet picks, said he has no regrets about meeting with some of the controversial selections. He added that he learned a lot about Patel from his meeting, including that he used to be a public defender and his own family’s immigration story.

“There is going to be some [nominees] that I will vote yes, and there’s some, maybe that I’ll vote no,” Fetterman said. “But nobody can accuse me of just saying I had a closed mind, or I just said no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who will be sworn into Sen. Mitt Romney’s Senate seat in the new year, said that he discussed PaFBI logotel being blind to political affiliation in his new role.

“For me, one of the most important things that I needed to hear from Kash is that he would be blind to political affiliation, because I know some of the things that he said and that have been attributed to him,” Curtis said, also in an interview with Karl on “This Week.”

He added, “And I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats and we had some very specific conversations about that. And I wanted to make sure that he would be blind to that.”

When asked about Republicans claiming every senator should get in line with Trump and support his Cabinet picks because he has a mandate, Curtis said his son had brought up a similar concern at Thanksgiving.

“I did get more votes than him in Utah. Does that give me a mandate?’” Curtis said he told his son.

washington post logoWashington Post, The ‘perfect’ predator: How a police chief groomed a Texas town, Jenn Abelson, Alice Li, Jessica Contrera, Tucker Harris and Carolyn Van Houten, Dec. 18, 2024. The people of Maypearl, Texas, trusted Police Chief Kevin Coffey. Then they learned he was a sexual predator with a troubled past.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police Seek Motive in Shooting at Wisconsin Christian School, Julie Bosman, Dan Simmons, Mitch Smith and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 17, 2024 (print  ed.).  It’s not clear if the shooter, a student, targeted the teenage student and a teacher who were killed at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, the police said. At least six others were injured. Survivors described a fearful ordeal.

A teenage student opened fire at a Christian school in Madison, Wis., on Monday, killing another student and a teacher, the authorities said. At least six other people were injured in the shooting at the school, Abundant Life, where the youngest students fled from the building into the cold without coats, holding each others’ hands for safety.

Madison police identified the shooter on Monday night as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by Samantha. She was a student at the school, said the police chief, Shon F. Barnes, at an evening news conference. She was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital, and the evidence suggested she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Barnes said.

washington post logoWashington Post, In Ohio, an immigrant community prepares for Trump’s crackdown, Joanna Slater, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations could target places like Painesville, a small city in northeastern Ohio whose population has been transformed by immigration.

Veronica Isabel Dahlberg looked out at dozens of familiar faces gathered in a new community center on a recent Monday evening, all of them anxious for answers she didn’t have.

What would happen to the immigrants and farmworkers in this swath of northeastern Ohio?You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

Dahlberg, who has worked with the community for nearly three decades, couldn’t say whether President-elect Donald Trump would follow through on his pledge to carry out mass deportations. But she reminded the audience what his first term looked like here.

The ramped-up deportations, not of “bad guys” or criminals, but mothers and fathers pulled over for routine traffic stops. The people so frightened of being detained they sought sanctuary in local churches. The raids on a flower nursery and meat processing plant in the region.

What was coming would be at least as bad and possibly much worse, Dahlberg thought. She had read about Trump’s promises to build detention camps and use the military to expand deportations. She wondered who she could count on to help. As the head of HOLA Ohio, a local nonprofit, she had built relationships with elected officials, employers, police officers and school administrators.

“I don’t believe that they would just stand by and let our community get destroyed,” she said.

She paused. “But I could be wrong.”

Across the country, immigration advocates are racing to prepare for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants that could be unlike anything the nation has witnessed in decades. Trump has promised to deport the country’s undocumented residents, a population estimated to number 11 million people as of 2022, according to the most recent data available. Such an operation would face considerable hurdles: during Trump’s first term, deportations peaked at 347,240 in the 2019 fiscal year.

The consequences of Trump’s new push will unfold not just in areas close to the southern border or in major metropolises, but in places like Painesville, a small city of 20,000 near the shore of Lake Erie whose population has been transformed in recent decades by immigration, primarily from Mexico.

An estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Ohio. Most of those in Painesville have been in the country for more than a decade, mirroring the national trend, and nearly all of them live in “mixed-status” families — families that also include U.S.-born children, naturalized citizens or legal immigrants.

For such families, deportations nearly always separate parents from their children. Dahlberg saw it happen dozens of times in Trump’s first term. Last month, during her presentation at the community center, she reviewed the details of those cases.

ny times logoNew York Times, Carlos Watson, Ozy Media Co-Founder, Is Sentenced to Almost 10 Years in Prison, Danielle Kaye, Dec. 16, 2024. A federal jury in July found Mr. Watson, who started the digital media company in 2013, guilty of trying to defraud investors and lenders.

Carlos Watson, a co-founder of the now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, was sentenced on Monday to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders by lying about the company’s finances.

The sentence came five months after a federal jury convicted Mr. Watson and Ozy Media of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The jury also convicted Mr. Watson of identity theft, following a two-month trial during which witnesses detailed an impersonated phone call, fabricated contracts and misleading claims about Ozy’s earnings from 2018 to 2021.

Mr. Watson, who had pleaded not guilty and continued to assert his innocence up until his sentence of 116 months, faced a maximum of 37 years in prison. Government prosecutors had requested a 17-year sentence and $65.6 million in forfeiture to the government, though exactly how much Ozy will have to forfeit has yet to be determined.

“The fact that we’re here in this circumstance is tragic,” said Judge Eric Komitee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who presided over the case and imposed the sentence. “But it’s a tragedy of Mr. Watson’s own making.”

Politico, Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 16, 2024. A circuit court judge out of North Carolina rescinded his planned retirement, prompting GOP outrage.Anthony Adragna

With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased.

Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. His name vanished from a list of pending vacancies over the weekend, joining two district court judges in North Carolina — Algenon Marbley and Max Cogburn — in pulling back their decisions once it became clear President Joe Biden would not be able to appoint their successors.

In a letter to Biden, Wynn wrote “that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service” on the bench. All three were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Their decisions serve to deny Trump further bench vacancies to fill as he hopes to capitalize on his push to move the federal judiciary rightward. Though judges routinely time retirements to allow a desired president to appoint their successors, the GOP backlash has been consistent and heated.

lina khan resized ftcBig, The Newsletter of Antitrust, Monopoly Round-Up Commentary: FTC Revives the "Magna Carta of Small Business," Matt Stoller, right, Dec. 15, 2024. The matt stollerFederal Trade Commission went after the middleman economy. Plus, Kid Rock may keep the Ticketmaster antitrust suit alive, and other news of the week.

There’s lots of monopoly related news this week, like Kid Rock lobbying against Ticketmaster, Trump musing on eliminating the FDIC that protects against bank runs, and recriminations as Kroger and Albertsons execs point fingers at each other while desperately trying to not get fired. That part of the round-up is after the paywall.

The big news itself of the week is that the Federal Trade Commission finally attacked illegal price discrimination, after forty years of neglect. The FTC used an old and often neglect antitrust law, the Robinson-Patman Act, to sue a dominant liquor distributor you’ve likely never heard of, a company called Southern Glazer. Somewhere, Wright Patman is smiling down upon Federal Trade Commissioners Lina Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, and Rebecca Kelly-Slaughter for this historic move. And it is historic.

Southern Glazer is the tenth largest private company in the U.S., with $26 billion of revenue, and it is the exclusive distributor in certain states of a host of liquors, such as Hennessy, Tanqueray, Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Grey Goose, Jameson, and Johnnie Walker. And the FTC’s allegation is Southern Glazer gives better prices to big stores than small ones.

Since at least 2018 and continuing today, Southern has repeatedly discriminated in price between disfavored independent purchasers—which include neighborhood grocery stores, local convenience stores, and independently owned wine and spirits shops—and favored large chain purchasers of wine and spirits, such as Total Wine & More, Costco, and Kroger.

Still, the allegation doesn’t sound, on first blush, illegal. I mean, doesn’t a business have the right to choose its prices? And also, on some level, who cares? Don’t big stores just get volume discounts? That’s just how things work, right?

Well, no. Price discrimination, like gambling, usury, or even liquor itself, is the kind of political question that used to provoke deep reservoirs of anger and righteousness, a touchstone of the American character. “Let’s keep Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe,” said Wright Patman in 1940, noting that consolidation wrought by price discrimination had the potential to turn America fascist. He was not alone. “I would rather have thieves and gangsters than chain stores in Louisiana,” echoed Huey Long. Chain stores, wrote Louis Brandeis in 1933, were “converting independent tradesmen into clerks” and “sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns.”

Former FTC Chair Paul Rand Dixon once said of the law barring price discrimination, “I think it compares favorably with the Magna Carta or the Sherman Act.” Heady stuff.

From the other side, the antitrust bar has always hated the Robinson-Patman Act. Robert Bork called it the “Typhoid Mary of Antitrust,” Herb Hovenkamp said it was “irritating to almost anyone who is serious about antitrust,” and law professor Jerrold G. Van Cise said it was a “roughly hewn, unfinished block of legislative phraseology.” Its revival was a point of bitterness at last year’s American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring conference, prompting sputtering at FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who defended the use of the law. To understand the debate, let’s start with why Walmart is so cheap. It’s not because it’s some super efficient entity, it’s simply because it gets better prices from producers and distributors. Walmart sells something like 8-10% of all groceries in America, so when Walmart says jump, its suppliers ask how high? We routinely hear from independent stores and chains that they buy from their wholesaler for more than Walmart sells at retail, which is impossible unless Walmart is just getting better pricing for the same good.

And it’s not just the little guy who suffers, of course. Take the Kroger-Albertsons failed merger. One of the nuggets that came out in the case is that Albertsons, a massive supermarket chain, buys basic staples wholesale for less than Walmart sells it retail. Albertsons, even though it’s really really big, is a relative minnow, and sought to sell itself off rather than try and compete.

Price discrimination is the reason that Walmart and Amazon exist as the giants they are. Between 1997 and 2012, after we had stopped enforcing the law, roughly 108,000 local grocers and other retailers disappeared and rural poverty skyrocketed. The rise of Walmart stores, which are a result of Walmart getting better prices than rivals, even spurred a jump in obesity.

 I bring up this dynamic all the time on BIG. The prevalence of price discrimination is a key reason we had shortages during Covid, why our shipping industry is a cartel, why drug prices are out of control, why small businesses are dying, why bike stores are consolidated, and why radicalism is the order of the day in politics.

From the other side, antitrust lawyers and executives think the law is unworkable and ridiculous. They think businesses must charge different prices to different customers, there are rebates, fees, bundles, and a whole set of arrangements that simply cannot be subjected to micro-management by a law like the Robinson-Patman Act. But their real argument is that they believe it’s their right to discriminate among customers and suppliers. Might makes right.

So what happens now? Well the vote to bring the case was 3-2, with the two Republicans opposed. However, Andrew Ferguson, who will be the new chair, wrote in his dissent that he supports the use of the Robinson-Patman Act, and another Republican FTC nominee, Mark Meador, also supports enforcing the law. Ferguson’s objection to the case was due to his belief that the case wasn’t particularly strong, but it would be unusual to withdraw a case brought by a previous administration. Is it a strong case? Probably. The FTC complaint is based on a 2022 private case that is going to trial in 2026, brought by a law firm that is generally well-respected and specializes in the law.

Much of the FTC’s complaint is redacted, but it seems pretty clear that Southern Glazer was engaged in price discrimination. I mean, the law was a dead letter for decades, so it would be weird if corporations across the economy weren’t violating it.At any rate, I’m guessing we’ll see more private and state enforcement around this law, and adjacent state laws.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 15, 2024 [Safe Drinking Water Act, Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author, Dec. 15, heather cox richardson cnn2024. Tomorrow, December 16, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, signed into law on December 16, 1974, by President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican.

The measure required the Environmental Protection Agency to set maximum contaminant levels for drinking water and required states to comply with them. It protected the underground sources of drinking water and called for emergency measures to protect public health if a dangerous contaminant either was in or was likely to enter a public water system.

trump 2024To conduct research on clean drinking water and provide grants for states to clean up their systems, Congress authorized appropriations of $15 million in 1975, $25 million in 1976, and $35 million in 1977.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was one of the many laws passed in the 1970s after the environmental movement, sparked after Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring explored the effect of toxic chemicals on living organisms, had made Americans aware of the dangers of pollution in the environment.

That awareness had turned to anger by 1969, when in January a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Then, in June, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

In February 1970, Republican President Richard M. Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.” He called for “fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and

By 2015, almost 77 million Americans lived in regions whose water systems did not meet the safety standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, more than 2 million Americans did not have running water, and many more rely on wells or small systems not covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act.

The Biden administration began to address the problem with an investment of about $22 billion to upgrade the nation’s water systems. The money removed lead pipes, upgraded wastewater and sewage systems, and addressed the removal of so-called forever chemicals and proposed a new standard for acceptable measures of them.

What this will mean in the future is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to increase production of oil and gas—although it is currently at an all-time high—and such projects are often slowed by environmental regulations. On Tuesday, December 10, he posted on social media, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

“[B]y ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival,” Trump’s Republican predecessor Nixon told the nation in 1970. “While adopting laws prohibiting injury to person or property, we have freely allowed injury to our shared surroundings.” When he signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”—

Politico, Anti-slavery movement charts its path forward, Emily Schultheis, Dec. 14, 2024. An unlikely setback in progressive California has activists working to remove slavery exceptions from state constitutions grappling with the best way to draft future ballot measures.A California prison inmate with the Prison Industry Authority cleans one of the newly installed headstones.

politico CustomThe national movement to close a so-called slavery loophole in state constitutions was riding a wave of momentum after voters in eight states — including deep-red Alabama and Tennessee — removed exceptions to post-Civil War bans on slavery and involuntary servitude.

But the movement was handed an unexpected defeat this year in progressive California, where the failure of a ballot measure explicitly packaged as a ban on forced prison labor has left activists nationwide grappling with how best to draft such constitutional amendments in the up to 14 states where they could appear on ballots in 2026.

The movement’s lawyers want detailed language delineating what constitutes involuntary servitude so courts can be compelled to defend prisoners’ rights against forced labor. At the same time, campaigners confronting voters breaking right on questions of criminal justice want to see simply worded anti-slavery provisions free of specifics about what they mean for the incarcerated people who stand to benefit.

“That’s been a big part of our fight, making sure the language is correct,” said Dennis Febo, the New Jersey-based lead organizer for the Abolish Slavery National Network. “The more we’ve done on this question, the more we understand how complicated it is.”

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden Commutes the Sentences of 1,500 Americans, a Record for One Day, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mark Landler, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Many of those being granted clemency had been placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

Justice Department log circularThe commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

Politico, Biden commutes nearly 1,500 sentences, promises ‘more steps in the weeks ahead,’  Andrew Howard, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoned another 39, the most ever in a single day, the White House announced on Thursday.

The White House said in its announcement that those receiving clemency “have shown successful rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” The 39 pardon recipients had all committed non-violent crimes, and the commutations were for people who were placed in home confinement during the pandemic.

Justice Department log circular“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

Following Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, he faced pressure from some Democrats, as well as outside advocacy groups, to use his clemency powers more widely before his term ends in January. Biden indicated in his statement that he “will take more steps in the weeks ahead.” “My Administration will continue reviewing clemency petitions to advance equal justice under the law, promote public safety, support rehabilitation and reentry, and provide meaningful second chances.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who was one of the Democrats pressuring Biden to issue pardons, praised the president’s decision, calling it a “meaningful and historic action.”

“Thanks to President Biden, today a near 1,500 families will have their lives changed forever and I congratulate each and every family on this new beginning,” she said in a statement.

Still, Pressley is pushing for more clemency actions before Biden’s term ends.

“With 39 days remaining in his presidency, President Biden has the power to continue to use his clemency authority to change and save the lives of many, many other Americans behind the wall,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and it is a matter of legacy.”

The progressive group Popular Democracy in Action struck a similar tone, praising Biden’s decision but also telling the president “do not stop now.”

Politico, Watchdog faults DOJ in Trump’s first term for secretly obtaining records of lawmakers and journalists, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 11, 2024 (print ed.).. During leak investigations, Trump’s DOJ obtained phone and email records of two House Democrats and dozens of congressional staffers.

politico CustomThe Justice Department during Donald Trump’s first term failed to comply with its own procedures when it sought journalists’ phone and email records in leak investigations, according to a DOJ watchdog report released Tuesday.

Justice Department log circularAnd the department never conducted any high-level review as it swept up the records of 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic House members, the report found.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, left, said he also found no evidence that federal prosecutors got express approval from then-Attorney General Bill Barr or told federal courts that the subpoenas were for records of lawmakers and their aides, despite the michael horwitz headshotpotential for the probes to intrude on legitimate oversight efforts by Congress.

Obtaining the records of lawmakers and their staff during criminal investigations “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Horowitz wrote in his 91-page report.

Barr told POLITICO in 2021 that he did not know the Justice Department sought any lawmaker’s records in the leak probes, which involved disclosures about the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page and ties between that campaign and Russia.

Barr declined to be interviewed by Horowitz’s team, but the report says investigators found no indication the issuance of subpoenas for lawmakers or their aides was raised to Barr’s level. Indeed, the report concludes that — at the time — there was no policy in place to require added review of subpoenas and similar demands for information about lawmakers and their staff.

The inspector general launched the review in June 2021 after President Joe Biden took office and press reports revealed that investigators probing leaks of classified information obtained court orders to access phone records of two prominent Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Horowitz said the Justice Department’s decision to include Schiff and Swalwell in the investigation was based on a claim from a Democratic staffer who suspected them of having a role in the leak of classified intelligence. The department later determined that the staffer’s contentions lacked any “evidentiary support” and were found to be “of uncertain credibility.”

Horowitz’s report, which does not identify the lawmakers by name, did not turn up indications that the two outspoken Trump critics were targeted because of their political views or affiliation.

“We did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors who issued the compulsory process we reviewed,” the report said.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration also faced scrutiny for efforts to access the email account of then-House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel. Patel, who is now Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has long decried the intrusion by Justice Department officials, which he claimed was retaliation for his effort to undermine the investigation of Trump’s 2016 ties to Russia.

Last year, Patel sued top Justice Department officials over the grand jury subpoena, and his suit was dismissed in September by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

Patel was one of the 43 congressional staffers whose phone or email logs were pursued by investigators — a number higher than previously known. The review found that 21 of them were affiliated with Democrats, 20 with Republicans and two were in nonpartisan positions. The Justice Department did not seek or obtain the content of their communications, but only details such as which phone numbers or email accounts they were in contact with and when, Horowitz found.

Around the same time the existence of subpoenas aimed at lawmakers was reported, it emerged that prosecutors also sought phone or email records for journalists at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN as part of the same leak investigations.

Barr did approve the subpoenas aimed at reporters, but the department never convened an internal panel that a policy in place at the time said should examine all such requests, the watchdog report found.

“This deviation from the Department’s own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the vital role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” Horowitz wrote.

Biden called the tactic aimed at reporters “simply wrong” and vowed it would not continue under his administration. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo banning the practice and he later formalized that policy in DOJ regulations.

Horowitz was particularly critical of the Justice Department’s handling of gag orders it obtained on companies like Apple and Google. Those orders prevented the firms from telling targets about the demands.

Last year, the Justice Department issued a policy on subpoenas aimed at lawmakers, requiring high-level approvals at DOJ. Horowitz’s report reveals that DOJ quietly updated that policy again in September after getting a draft of the review. Among the latest requirements: Prosecutors must inform the judge or magistrate that the requests target a member of Congress or congressional staff.

The incoming Trump administration is expected to roll back the protections Garland adopted for journalists and perhaps even to eliminate earlier limits Democratic and Republican administrations had put on such demands. Legislation pending in Congress could block those moves, but last month Trump urged Republican lawmakers to “kill” the measure, known as the PRESS Act.

Horowitz said the past and current policies encourage prosecutors to seek lawmakers’ records because getting subpoenas for journalists’ emails or phone records required high-level approval, which has been basically impossible to get since 2021. He noted that even the latest Justice Department policy doesn’t require prosecutors to exhaust other avenues before demanding email and phone providers turn over lawmakers’ records.

Most of the leaks did not result in criminal charges, but one staffer swept up in one round of phone and email records searches — Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe — pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his dealings with journalists. A judge sentenced Wolfe to two months in prison.

Another long-awaited report is expected from Horowitz’s office in the coming days: a review of the Justice Department’s actions in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. That review has been pending for nearly four years. Horowitz recently acknowledged that work on it was frozen for about two years while prosecutors pursued some of the most serious criminal cases stemming from the attack.

Horowitz’s release of the long-awaited investigations comes as Horowitz and other inspectors general across the government face the possibility of being removed or even fired by the incoming Trump administration. Some Trump allies have urged him to install his own appointees in the independent watchdog roles at federal agencies, although traditionally most inspectors general have not resigned during a change of administration or of partisan control of the White House.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have vowed to oppose any attempt by Trump to oust the experienced watchdogs.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manchin and Welch Introduce Amendment for SCOTUS Term Limits, Troy Matthews Dec 10, 2024. 70% of Americans favor ending lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices.

Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices. The move is aimed at restoring confidence in the Court, as the approval rating for SCOTUS is at its lowest point in history, with only 16% of Americans reporting "a great deal of confidence" in the highest Court.

The Manchin-Welch amendment would impose single 18-year, non-renewable terms for Supreme Court justices. Each 18-year term would be staggered every two years. Current justices will not be held to term limits, but blocks of 18-year terms will begin to cycle every two years once the amendment is ratified. When a current justice retires, their replacement will be assigned the remainder of the current 18-year block, until every justice on the Court is term limited.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manhattan Prosecutors Oppose Dismissing Trump's Criminal Case, Aaron Parnas Dec 10, 2024. Prosecutors are pressing forward with the case even with Trump becoming President again.

This afternoon, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has filed an opposition to Donald Trump's request to immediately vacate the guilty verdicts against him and to dismiss the criminal case given the results of the November 5th election. Prosecutors had been considering whether to make this move for several weeks, and have officially decided to oppose any dismissal on several grounds.

First, prosecutors argue that the Manhattan court should reject Trump's motion to immediately dismiss the case given the fact that he has not yet been sworn in and does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution while President-elect.

The opposition goes on to highlight how even after he is sworn into office, the case should not be dismissed because the temporary immunity Trump will enjoy over the next four years does not justify wiping out the jury's verdict, especially as Trump's team does not dispute that the 34 felonies he was convicted of deal with purely unofficial conduct.

Prosecutors note that "at most, [Trump] should receive temporary accommodations during his presidency to prevent this criminal case form meaningfully interfering with his official decision-making."

Prosecutors listed several alternative remedies to a complete dismissal including a stay of proceedings during his term in office if judgment is not entered before January 20th. The decision will now ultimately be up to Justice Merchan who will decide whether or not to dismiss the criminal charges against Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Penny Verdict, a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Crime and Mental Illness, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024. A New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. Republican politicians hailed the verdict. But some New Yorkers found it deeply disturbing.

Outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday, a scuffle broke out among demonstrators, their chants amplified over bullhorns.

On one side were supporters of Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was charged with fatally choking a fellow subway rider, Jordan Neely, on an uptown F train last year. They held signs, including one that said, “Daniel Penny deserves a prize not a prison.” On the other side were people protesting on behalf of Mr. Neely. Upset, they grabbed a sign and ripped it up.

As the sides exchanged barbs and police officers erected a barrier to separate them, inside the courthouse 12 New Yorkers were coming to a unanimous decision. Mr. Penny, they concluded, was not guilty.

If the death of Mr. Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who had struggled with mental health problems, had left New Yorkers unnerved and divided, the verdict quickly became yet another flashpoint in the nation’s debate over how best to address issues of crime and justice, homelessness and mental illness.

Republican political figures including Vice President-elect JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised the jury and criticized the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for pursuing the case.

“Thank God justice was done in this case,” Mr. Vance said on social media. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Penny a hero who deserved a medal.

But in New York, some found the verdict deeply troubling. “This decision highlights a deep-seated societal discomfort with unhoused individuals in need of support, and effectively green-lights ‘vigilante justice’ against the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” leaders of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus said in a statement.

Recent Relevant Headlines

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

 

More On Presidential Pardons

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden must ignore pardon myths and protect Patel’s and Trump’s targets, Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 17, 2024. Patel issued unprecedented threats. Biden must respond.

Since President Joe Biden began seriously considering an amnesty for people at risk of retribution from President-elect Donald Trump and his FBI pick (who comes armed with an enemies list), the pearl clutching and myth-spinning about pardons have spread. Biden should pay attention to history and case law, not misinformed critics.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The first myth: A broad amnesty would be unprecedented, an intrusion into the rule of law. That is categorically false. More than a dozen presidents dating back to George Washington have granted amnesty to a defined, large group of Americans. As legal scholar Frank O. Bowman III pointed out:

George Washington issued pardons in 1794 to defuse the lingering tensions of the defeated Whiskey Rebellion. President Andrew Johnson made extensive (and controversial) use of the pardon power to civilly rehabilitate former Confederates. A century later, Gerald Ford issued a conditional amnesty and Jimmy Carter a full pardon to Vietnam draft evaders.

Presidential amnesties for categories of people have been commonplace. After Washington, President John Adams issued a broad pardon for those involved in the Fries Rebellion in 1799 in Pennsylvania (i.e., prosecutions of “any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection”). With a small exception, President James Buchanan, for example, pardoned Brigham Young and his Mormon followers who had engaged in a conflict with the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland also issued pardons to Mormon polygamists.

The White House Historical Association recounts that presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Warren G. Harding granted amnesty or commutation to various groups of Americans — citizens convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for Jefferson, and 24 political prisoners (including Eugene V. Debs) for Harding.

Moreover, the association explains, “As decided in Ex Parte Garland (1866), presidents may issue pardons at any time after the commission of a federal offense, even before federal charges have been filed or a sentence has been imposed.”)

What is entirely unique is that an incoming president and a would-be FBI director nominee have explicitly named people and groups (e.g., prosecutors) they want to go after. To meet that unique threat, Biden should issue amnesty to the most vulnerable group of Americans: witnesses against Trump whom Trump and Kash Patel have already threatened.

The second myth: Some people might not want amnesty. Again, this is not a valid reason to refuse to extend it to those who very much do want and need protection. Some individuals enjoy immunity from prosecution on other grounds so won’t need additional protection; they would be excluded from the amnesty. House members on the Jan. 6 committee immune under the speech and debate clause, along with and federal and state prosecutors operating under the color of law, almost certainly cannot be prosecuted.

But that leaves some ordinary Americans, primarily witnesses and those who provided material to courts, grand juries, Congress and federal investigators, to twist in the wind. It’s small comfort that such people would eventually be exonerated. Criminal trials and appeals can cost millions of dollars and ruin reputations as well as likely increase the physical threats many of these figures already face.

The third myth: Amnesty would not completely protect the recipients. It is correct that such an amnesty would not protect recipients from criminal investigation for future conduct, from civil suits or from IRS audits. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of a rogue, irresponsible president-elect empowering intended nominees to seek vengeance. However, by limiting the pardon to a discrete group of people, making clear this is essentially a witness protection program to insulate the recipients from Trump’s wrath, Biden can spare some conscientious citizens and alert the public to the dangers Trump and Patel pose.

The fourth myth: Accepting amnesty is an admission of guilt. This is false. The most recent case on the scope of pardons, 2021’s Lorance v. Commandant, held that the defendant’s acceptance of a full and unconditional presidential pardon did not amount to an admission of guilt, and therefore the defendant did not waive his habeas rights upon acceptingit.

Lorance also dealt with a common misperception concerning a Supreme Court case, 1915’s Burdick v. United States, which seemed to suggest that accepting a pardon constituted “a confession” of guilt. However, Lorance explained that that statement referred to how the pardon recipient might feel. In other words, though acceptance might make the recipient “look guilty” in the eyes of some, it does not make the recipient legally guilty.

Biden in his amnesty statement can underscore that acceptance is no admission of wrongdoing but rather confirmation that the incoming president poses extreme and unprecedented threats to political enemies — something indicative of an authoritarian regime, not a great democracy.

The fifth myth: This would open the door to pardon abuses by Trump and/or mar Biden’s legacy. The first is laughable given Trump’s pardon track record (e.g., Michael Flynn, Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and his plans to pardon those convicted of violent crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. He needs no excuse to flout democratic norms. (By the way, Biden might not have considered amnesty had not Trump recently repeated his threats and chosen Patel for FBI director with barely a whisper of complaint from Republicans. If Trump renounced revenge and found a fit nominee, none of this might be necessary.)

As for Biden, his Hunter Biden pardon statement explained that he acted because “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” It certainly follows that he should act to keep raw politics — unabashedly announced in advance — from leading to a miscarriage of justice.

If ordinary citizens face retribution for daring to testify against powerful bullies, few will do so. To preserve the justice system, to encourage people to provide evidence, Biden should grant them amnesty — in effect setting up a witness protection program. It is the least he can do for selfless Americans.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s clemency for ‘kids for cash’ judge is a big mistake, Heather Long, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). It’s also yet another reminder of how broken the presidential pardon process is.

My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week. The White House portrayed the mass clemency as a historic moment for justice. But Conahan’s commutation only underscores how broken the presidential pardon clemency is.

I don’t know much about most of the people on Biden’s list, but I do know a fair amount about Conahan. I started my career as a journalist in Pennsylvania and had a front-row seat when the scheme — one of the worst corruption scandals in U.S. juvenile justice history — came to light in 2008 and 2009.

Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full. In total, they received more than $2.8 million, court documents show. They didn’t do this a handful of times. They did it to more than 2,500 juveniles over five years.

And the worst part? To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

They finally got caught only because one distraught family contacted the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit legal aid group in Philadelphia. In an early example of data sleuthing, the center compared the numbers with those of the 66 other counties in Pennsylvania and realized something very wrong was occurring in Luzerne County. It unearthed that half of these youngsters had no legal representation, and 60 percent were removed from their homes. That’s how the judges got away with it for so long: There was literally no one watching.

The revelations shook the state. The story broke as the Great Recession was in full swing, with high unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Luzerne County is a proud coal-mining community full of Catholic churches that sell delicious Polish pierogi out of their basements. But the community had fallen on hard times as coal’s reign was ending. The judges were getting rich by exploiting — and making harder — the struggles of working-class families.

In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and Ciavarella to 28 years for racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other crimes. A lot of Pennsylvanians didn’t think that was sufficient punishment. I was deputy opinion editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. We named the Juvenile Law Center Pennsylvania’s “Best of 2009” — our version of Time magazine’s person of the year award. The center not only uncovered the scandal; it also successfully pushed the state Supreme Court to clear the records of more than 2,200 of its victims.

The White House portrayed last week’s clemency decisions as helping nonviolent offenders who had done sufficient time and remediation. In 2020, as pandemic raged, Conahan successfully petitioned to be released to home monitoring in Florida due to a high risk of complications if he contracted the virus. This year, he sought an early end to his sentence. Now 72, Conahan was supposed to serve until the summer of 2026. He told the judge he had reformed and helped others in prison with their cases. But Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani denied Conahan’s request, arguing that he had done “irrevocable harm” to his victims and that releasing him early “would undermine respect for the law and would not adequately deter such conduct.”

When I reached out to the White House, an administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them. The plan was clemency for nonviolent offenders who were seen as low-risk and had been released to home confinement after a legal review process.

That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency “absolutely wrong.” Some victims are speaking out in shock. There’s similar disbelief in Illinois that Rita Crundwell — the former comptroller of the city of Dixon who orchestrated a $54 million embezzlement scheme — was also on Biden’s sentence-reduction list. Crundwell was supposed to serve time until 2028.

 

hunter biden beard

Emptywheel, Analysis: You Can’t Pardon America’s Way Out of Trump’s Assault on Rule of Law, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Dec. 6, 2024. The NYT has matched Jonathan Martin’s marcy wheelerreporting that Biden’s aides are considering pardoning some subset of the people who will be targeted by Trump.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Smart lefty commentators are embracing the concept.

With the possible exception of Mark Milley, I think this is an exceedingly stupid idea. It’s the kind of magical pony thinking that led people to demand Merrick Garland, with no effort from them, make Trump go away, thereby ceding the ground for Trump to claim he was prosecuted in a witch hunt.

And it won’t work.

Biden’s pardon won’t even save Hunter Biden

Start with the fact that Biden’s pardon won’t even save his own son.

Sure, it’ll save him from going to prison for the crimes for which he was convicted. But it might not even insulate him and his team from further harassment. That’s true, first of all, because prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation — no doubt facilitated by the House investigation into Hunter — into whether Kevin Morris’ support for Hunter in 2020, as he was trying to sustain sobriety, amounted to a campaign benefit for Joe Biden.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections

ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Full Social Security Benefits for Public Sector Retirees, Maya C. Miller, Dec. 21, 2024. The Senate passed bipartisan legislation early Saturday that would give full Social Security benefits to a group of public sector retirees who currently receive them at a reduced level, sending the bill to President Biden.

The vote to clear the measure was a lopsided 76 to 20, reflecting the broad popularity of an effort to allow approximately more than 2.8 million public pension recipients — some of them teachers, firefighters and police officers — to collect Social Security benefits at the same level as other beneficiaries.

The House passed the bill by a wide margin of 327 to 75 last month after a bipartisan group of lawmakers forced it to the floor, and President-elect Donald J. Trump recently threw his support behind it.

social security administrationThe rapid and resounding approval of the measure, which would cost nearly $196 billion over a decade, was notable at a time when Congress is in a protracted dispute over spending and debt, with Republicans promising huge cuts and members of both parties routinely lamenting the ballooning of the nation’s debt.

The bill eliminates two provisions set up decades ago to shore up Social Security’s solvency. Projections show the Social Security fund will run out of money in 2038 and, if no action is taken before then, beneficiaries would see a 27 percent cut in benefits. Passage of the measure speeds up that timeline by six months.

Twenty-seven Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The two provisions were designed to prevent what is known as “double dipping” on retirement benefits by certain public employees and their relatives.

It primarily affects two groups. One is public employees who receive pensions that are exempt from Social Security payroll taxes, but who also worked at least 10 years in jobs that required them to pay into the system. Such workers appear in the Social Security system as though they earned far less over their lifetimes than they actually did, and since the program pays more to low earners, they receive a larger retirement benefit than they otherwise would. Another is people who receive public pensions but also become eligible for Social Security survivor benefits upon the death of a spouse or family member.

Under the current law, both groups face a reduction in their benefits. The legislation on its way to enactment would allow them to receive the full amount.

“We have spent decades working to pass this legislation, and tonight is a victory for all the public servants who will finally get the Social Security they have earned,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was a lead co-sponsor of the bill. The bill marked Mr. Brown’s final legislative achievement, after he lost a brutal and expensive re-election bid last month.Editors’ Picks‘Getting Your Pink Back:’ How Moms Felt Like Themselves Again After Having a BabyA Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?If You Can See the Tree, There Is Room for More Decorations

“Tonight, Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into,” he said.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a lead sponsor of the measure, framed the issue as a “long overdue” matter of fairness affecting teachers, firefighters and police officers as well as some federal employees who were hired before 1984, when the federal pension system was brought under the Social Security system.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Ms. Collins cited one of her constituents, a retired female schoolteacher who had to return to work at age 72 after her husband’s death to make financial ends meet. The woman’s husband was a Navy veteran who paid into Social Security for 40 years, but since she received a public pension from the school system, her surviving spousal benefits through Social Security were reduced by two-thirds.

 

 

matt gaetz djt selfie facebook

washington post logoWashington Post, Gaetz report to be released by House Ethics Committee, in a reversal for the panel, Jacqueline Alemany and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 19, 2024 (print ed.). The release is expected within the week. The long-running investigation is focused on allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use by Matt Gaetz, above left  and below right, a former congressman.

The House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) this week, a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to release the results of a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.

matt gaetz officialThe panel voted this month to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers take their final vote for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. CNN first reported on the panel’s secret vote to release its report.

U.S. House logoThe committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general. A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, meaning that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.

The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. The Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation shortly thereafter — and days before the committee was expected to meet to vote on the release of the investigation.

Rep. Michael Guest (Mississippi), the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or Trump’s nominee, but Democrats still pushed for its release.

Justice Department log circularHouse Republicans successfully quashed a resolution introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote to make the report public and another resolution by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) that asked the panel to preserve all documents investigating Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges in a 2022 trafficking investigation.

But the House Ethics Committee investigation, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.

Politico, Sentencing closes chapter for Oath Keeper seeking redemption after Jan. 6, Kyle Cheney, Dec. 20, 2024. Joshua James pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy but later became a crucial cooperator for prosecutors.People waving flags storm the U.S. Capitol.

politico CustomA member of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy was sentenced Friday to three years of probation for extensive cooperation with prosecutors. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Joshua James earned his Purple Heart in 2007, when an IED tore through a bridge he was crossing in Baghdad — leaving him severely wounded with a traumatic brain injury.

He returned his medal to the government in a manila envelope after pleading guilty to scheming with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, to keep Donald Trump in office by force after the 2020 election.

James’ arc from war hero to central player in a seditious conspiracy — and his bid for redemption by cooperating to help convict dozens of his former compatriots — formed the backdrop Friday of a sentencing hearing that also served as a somber coda to the Justice Department’s four-year quest to punish those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The institutions that protected democracy on Jan. 6 cannot and will not forget,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards, who cast James’ sentencing as a chance to “cement” the threat to democracy in America’s “long-term national memory” and to “turn the page and allow this country to start to heal.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged the wrenching conflict of James’ life, calling him a “true American hero” who was led astray.

For James’ extraordinary cooperation, Mehta sentenced him to three years of probation. And the judge used his remarks to highlight the dozens of Jan. 6 defendants who are military veterans and have described being left to endure emotional and physical traumas with limited support.

But James, he said, ultimately made his own decision to “turn against democracy” and join the Oath Keepers in a plot to violently prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

“That is what people need to wrap their heads around,” Mehta said, “about how close we came — on a knife’s edge — between what happened on Jan. 6, which was bad enough, and something far worse.”

James joined the Oath Keepers in 2017 but his involvement intensified in 2020 when he became a close ally of Rhodes, who Mehta has repeatedly described as an ongoing threat to the country. Rhodes, the judge said, preyed on disaffected members of the military and enlisted them in his far-right project to keep Trump in power by force.

James, who led the group’s Alabama chapter, became a top ally in that effort, encouraging others to bring weapons to Washington ahead of Jan. 6, where they were ostensibly traveling to provide security for top Trump allies. James was assigned to protect longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and James was with Stone on the morning of Jan. 6.

But after pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, James and other Oath Keepers raced across the city to join the melee, forcing their way into the Capitol rotunda and clashing with police.

“This is my fucking building! This is not yours! This is my Capitol!” James shouted amid the chaos.

A tearful James apologized profusely for his conduct, describing himself as “deeply ashamed and embarrassed for my actions in the Capitol.”

“What I did was not an expression of patriotism,” James said.

Mehta emphasized that James’ gravest crime was not his actions in the Capitol but his weekslong plotting with Rhodes, a plan that included amassing an arsenal of firearms in the D.C. suburbs that Rhodes could deploy at a moment’s notice.

After his arrest, James quickly began cooperating with prosecutors and became the first Jan. 6 defendant to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy, a decision prosecutors credited with leading several other Oath Keepers to follow suit.

James never testified in any of the subsequent Oath Keepers trials — including Rhodes’ — which Edwards said was in part because James’ traumatic brain injury made him volatile when in stressful situations.

James’ lawyer, Joan Robin, emphasized that James’ cooperation — particularly after his guilty plea became public — led to threats against him and his family, the loss of his military benefits and his military honors, including the Purple Heart he once considered his proudest achievement.

The medal for his Army service, Robin said, was “sent to my office in a small manila envelope” to be forfeited to the government.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: The road back to power for Democrats, Rahm Emanuel (right, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, a Democrat and former Mayor of Chicago and rahm emanuel wChief of Staff to President Obama), Dec. 17, 2024. It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity. Talk about missing the moment.

This groundswell of resentment had been simmering for years. Trump just seized on it. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that he also drew support from large numbers of Democrats’ own “coalition of the ascendant” — minorities, young urbanites and women so successfully mobilized by President Barack Obama. From 2020 to 2024, Trump doubled his share of the Black vote to 16 percent, while the Latino vote rose from 35 percent to 43 percent.

To many voters, the nation’s elite has overseen a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful. And for the first time in American history, there is a generation of voters who believe that their children won’t be better off than them.

The disenchantment started in 2003 with the Iraq War, dubbed a “disaster” by Vice President-elect JD Vance. Sold on deceit and deception, with thousands of Americans dead, damaged and disfigured, the conflict’s architects now sit on corporate boards and hold chairs at prestigious universities. So much for justice.

A handful of years later, “liar loans” and unchecked greed led to the collapse of the global financial system, with homes and small businesses lost and livelihoods destroyed. Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention. It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some had called for at the time.

Why would an American electorate put its faith in the same establishment that had overseen two calamitous events, with those responsible getting off scot-free? The bonds of trust between the establishment and the public had been severed, and too many in our party failed to appreciate it.

In fact, during the pandemic, Democrats abandoned their antiestablishment credentials and enthusiastically morphed into the establishment. In “following the science,” we shuttered schools and the economy.

Meanwhile, our language and priorities have reinforced the “aloof elite” stereotype. With inflation stinging, school absenteeism skyrocketing and students’ academic scores plummeting, Democrats consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools and adopted terms such as “care economy” and “Latinx” to win over voters. It was a hermetically sealed conversation with ourselves, and we appeared much as we sounded: distant and detached.

Trump, on the other hand, captured the underlying zeitgeist. Rather than using his messaging against the Kamala Harris of 2024, he depicted her as the senator of the 2020 primaries, whose positions left her looking out of touch. Sure, his unfiltered words were crude — and often derogatory — but they reflected people’s feelings of abandonment.

Democrats have been here before. The road back out of the wilderness begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it. We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.

With everyone from Big Oil to Big Pharma lining up for their share of the spoils, we will need to be strategic in how we strip away Trump’s populist veneer. By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected.

Second, we can no longer tiptoe around the issues that have people worried. Crime, immigration, homelessness and a fentanyl crisis are, understandably, on the minds of millions. When car jackings are up and everything in pharmacies is locked down, you can’t recite crime statistics to deny people’s everyday experiences.

Americans want to see respect for the laws that govern our borders and to live in communities that are safe and secure. That shouldn’t be hard to appreciate. People prefer order over disorder. Trump was successful on these issues because his words tapped the public’s frustration. Ours communicated permissiveness.

Third, if Democrats are to be relevant again, finding and supporting the right candidates for the 2026 midterm elections will be critical. In 2006, 2008 and 2018, we recruited candidates whose biographies conveyed authenticity. They were war veterans, sheriffs, small business owners and former football players. Crucially, they weren’t career politicians.

The strategy worked again last month, with Democrats flipping six House seats in New York and California. Candidates such as Derek Tran, a son of Vietnamese refugees and an Army veteran, and aerospace executive George Whitesides had credentials that lent them legitimacy and receptivity among swing voters. The personal is political.

November was a jarring reminder that misjudging the mood of a nation can be catastrophic. If Democrats are to make the most of the next election, they must ready their message and messengers, abandon failed orthodoxies and embrace strategies with a record of delivering seats, success and real prosperity.

d weakened the country and gave Hamas an opening. Absent from both story lines was the profound failure of Mr. Netanyahu to protect the border.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming, Heather Knight and Kate Selig, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Some Republicans say it is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their calls for one, and California will soon consider its position.

As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.

The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.

But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.

Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.

Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.

“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.

Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican from West Texas and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been a leading convention proponent. He has introduced legislation that would require the head of the National Archives to track state applications and has said that a convention should have been called in 1979 when, he believes, enough states had requested one.

Since 2016, the year Mr. Trump was elected president the first time, nine states that had Democratic-controlled legislatures have been concerned enough that they rescinded their decades-old requests for constitutional amendments, sometimes with support from their fellow Republican legislators. They feared that they were leaving open the door for a Republican-led Congress and state legislatures to pursue a conservative revision of the laws underpinning national governance.

The founding fathers set almost no rules governing how such a constitutional convention would work. Article V of the Constitution says that the document can be amended if legislatures in two-thirds of states — now 34 out of 50 — agree to convene for the purpose. But it does not set guidelines for how the gathering would function. If the convention produces a proposed amendment, the change would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Following last month’s election, 28 state legislatures will be controlled by Republicans, 18 by Democrats and the rest will be split, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The founding document does not say whether 34 states need to agree on the specific amendment topic or whether signaling that they want a convention for any reason is enough to trigger proceedings. There is no explanation of whether each state at the convention would get one vote or more, whether topics not on the agenda can be raised, whether lobbyists or special interest groups could participate, or who would referee disagreements. Constitutional scholars are unclear how even the most basic questions would be resolved.

More than 34 states appear to have standing requests to change the Constitution, some dating back more than 150 years, according to the Article 5 Library, a bare-bones website that scholars pointed to as the best known repository of applications to change the Constitution.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Says He Would Consider Pardoning Eric Adams, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald J. Trump’s comment reflects an unusual relationship that Mr. Adams, the New York mayor, has encouraged as his federal corruption trial nears.

The question has hung over New York City politics for months: If Mayor Eric Adams was convicted on federal corruption charges, would Donald J. Trump pardon him?

On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would consider it.

Mr. Trump was asked at a wide-ranging news conference in Florida whether he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, and he replied yes. The president-elect said that the mayor of New York had been treated “pretty unfairly” by federal prosecutors.

“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.

The mayor is accused of receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of travel benefits from Turkish officials over several years, including flight upgrades on Turkish Airlines. Mr. Adams was also accused of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and helping obtain approvals for a new Turkish Consulate despite fire safety concerns.

Mr. Adams has found a political ally in Mr. Trump, a Republican who has defended Mr. Adams and said that both men were “persecuted” by federal prosecutors.

The mayor said at a news conference on Monday held shortly after Mr. Trump’s comments that he should not have been charged.

“I have an attorney that is going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”

The mayor’s defense lawyer, Alex Spiro, has also represented Elon Musk, a top adviser and donor to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Adams added that both Mr. Trump and President Biden agreed with him that the Justice Department has been politicized — an argument Mr. Adams has made in the past in reference to Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: McConnell has the chutzpah to complain about Trump’s ‘America First,’ Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 15, 2024. Mitch McConnell bears great responsibility for the return of Trump and his foreign policy.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Progressives should defend Biden’s legacy to protect their future, E.J. Dionne Jr.,,right, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Trump’s victory should ej dionne w open necknot be used to erase Biden’s policy achievements.

Besides the president and his staff, who should care about how Joe Biden’s policy legacy is judged? Everyone who believes that government should invest in the future and defend the interests of workers and those stuck at the bottom of the income heap — that’s who.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The trickiest problem for Democrats and progressives in the coming months will not be finding a new electoral strategy. There’s plenty of time for that, and the 2024 outcome was close enough to allow multiple paths to the White House. A far more pressing imperative is to prevent Donald Trump’s victory from discrediting Biden’s genuinely impressive accomplishments and the course he set for the country, which was broadly correct.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein,  Dec. 17, 2024. Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logoPresident-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

trump 2024Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Nancy Pelosi Has Hip Replacement Surgery After Fall, Karoun Demirjian, Dec. 14, 2024. Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, had hip replacement surgery on Saturday after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said in a statement.

ny times logoNew York Times, What We Know About Drone Sightings in New Jersey and New York, Alyce McFadden, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Reports of flying objects continue to occur throughout the region. State and local officials say they do not pose a threat but have provided few answers.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Agriculture Department to Require Testing of U.S. Milk Supply for Bird Flu Virus, Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes, Dec. 7, 2024 (print ed.). The new rules call for testing unpasteurized milk from dairies across the country and for farm owners to provide details that would help officials identify and track cases more easily.

Politico, Federal judge preserves Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions, Bianca Quilantan, Dec. 6, 2024. A federal judge argues that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.An entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Maryland, is seen.

politico CustomA federal judge on Friday upheld the U.S. Naval Academy’s consideration of race in admissions arguing that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.

The ruling is an early blow to Students for Fair Admissions’ latest attempt to extend the scope of its Supreme Court win against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that gutted the use of race in college admissions. The ruling also comes while the Naval Academy’s admissions process is underway for its next class.

Politico, Eric Adams doesn’t rule out switch to the GOP: ‘Cancel me,’ Joe Anuta,  Dec. 6, 2024. The New York City mayor has been at odds with national Democrats over immigration.Eric Adams walks in a parade.

politico CustomNew York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has taken a soft touch with President-elect Donald Trump, left open the possibility of switching to the Republican Party in a pair of Friday morning interviews.

Adams was a member of the GOP from 1995 through 2002, and was asked during an appearance on NY1 whether he would return to the party. He did not rule out the possibility.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Middle East Wars, Reactions

Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syrian Rebels Storm Another Major City, Ben Hubbard, Dec. 5, 2024. Opposition forces advanced on the city of Hama as their startling offensive moved quickly in the direction of the capital, Damascus.

Syrian rebels stormed into the city of Hama on Thursday as government forces withdrew, bringing the rebels one step closer to the capital Damascus, the seat of power of President Bashar al-Assad.

The swift advance on Hama, one of Syria’s largest cities, and the retreat of government forces were confirmed by both the rebels and the government. The advance came just days after the rebels extended their control over Aleppo, a major hub in northern Syria.

In a video circulated by the rebel group leading the offensive, their leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, jubilantly calls for the rebels to push on toward other Syrian cities, including the capital.

“The people of Homs, prepare yourselves,” he said in the video, which his group said was filmed on Wednesday. “The people of Damascus, the people of Dara’a, the people of Deir al Zour. Victory for all, God willing.” The New York Times could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video or when it was filmed.

The sudden rebel advance has shifted the front lines in Syria’s 13-year-old civil war for the first time in years, adding a new layer of unpredictability to a conflict that has ravaged the country, opened voids exploited by jihadist groups, drawn in world powers including Russia and the United States and created a long-term refugee crisis for neighboring countries.

Hama is one of the few major Syrian cities where rebels had yet to seize significant control during the civil war, which began with a popular uprising aimed at ousting Mr. al-Assad in 2011.

The city’s name is synonymous with one of the most notorious massacres in the Middle East. In 1982, security forces serving the president’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, massacred thousands of people there during an anti-government uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

ny times logoNew York Times, Fighting Rages in Syria as Rebels Advance, Muhammad Haj Kadour and Vivian Yee, Dec. 1, 2024. Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad control the Aleppo airport and are attacking Hama, local officials and a U.K.-based war monitor say.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Power Vacuum in Gaza Could Empower Warlords and Gangs, Amanda Taub, Dec. 1, 2024. Hamas's weakened position could leave the territory without any governing institutions, our columnist writes.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police and Protesters Clash in Georgian Capital, Cassandra Vinograd, Dec. 1, 2024. The government’s decision to suspend its bid for European Union membership has driven thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Protesters clashed with the police in the Republic of Georgia’s capital late Saturday during the third consecutive night of demonstrations over the government’s suspension of its bid to join the European Union.

georgia country regional mapThousands of people have rallied in the capital, Tbilisi, since Thursday night after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the country was putting the process of E.U. accession on hold until 2028 and would decline all grants from the bloc. The police have responded with water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades.

georgia country flag mapGeorgia’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday morning that protests overnight had “evolved into violence.” It claimed that protesters “threw pyrotechnics” and “ignited objects” toward police officers and at Parliament, causing a fire to break out. Windows were smashed by “stones and various objects,” the ministry added in a statement, saying that protesters also had damaged protective iron barriers around the building.

georgia republic mapMore than 100 people had been arrested as of Saturday night, according to the ministry, which also said that several police officers were wounded and that 42 of its employees had been injured since the protests began.

The Associated Press reported that its journalists had seen police officers chasing and beating protesters; it was not immediately clear how many protesters suffered injuries.

Georgia has been gripped by political crisis since the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream party in October’s parliamentary elections. The governing party has been pivoting Georgia more toward Russia and China. Georgia’s opposition, which says the election was rigged and has boycotted the new sitting of Parliament, seeks closer ties with the West.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).

 

Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon

 

syria prisons NYTny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak (as shown above), Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Bibi Netanyahu Is Failing Ever Upward, Noa Landau (the deputy editor in chief of Haaretz), Dec. 19, 2024. Just before Thanksgiving, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an unusual set of arrest warrants: one for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one for his former defense minister Yoav Gallant and one for the deceased Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif. Each man is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The warrant for Mr. Netanyahu calls for any of the 124 countries that are signatories to the I.C.C. to arrest the Israeli leader should he arrive on their soil. And yet in Israel, the threat has made only the barest ripple on the domestic front. Israelis seemed far more concerned by how, more than two weeks earlier, on the night of the American election, Mr. Netanyahu took advantage of a distracted Washington and fired Mr. Gallant, the last remaining political centrist in his cabinet. Thousands of Israeli protesters took to the streets over the dismissal, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv with bonfires and shouting, “Bibi is a traitor!”

The protests weren’t just about Mr. Gallant, or even the kind of war he led as defense minister. They were about Mr. Netanyahu himself, a man who has overtly put his own political survival above his nation again and again. Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu has risen, phoenixlike, from the political ashes of the nation’s greatest security failure on Oct. 7, 2023, to become a bolder, more aggressive version of himself — a man willing to ignore longtime allies, including many American Jews, brush off international opprobrium and shed a long history of war skepticism in favor of a full-blown, multifront regional war. Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria are now badly damaged. The last (original) man standing is Mr. Netanyahu, something few would have predicted one year ago.

Mr. Netanyahu managed to wait out the Biden administration’s unsuccessful efforts to bring an end to the war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and curtail civilians’ bloodshed. With Donald Trump poised to re-enter the White House, ushering in a slate of new regional envoys who show no interest in limiting Israel, it seems Mr. Netanyahu’s gamble has paid off. Even finally being forced to take the witness stand in his trial for corruption, which began this month, does not seem to have dimmed his political power — as shown in recent polls.

The Israeli prime minister’s endurance can be traced back to several political factors, including a decade of echo-chamber building within Israeli media and Bibi’s own sophisticated and cynical exploitation of Israelis’ deep yearning for unity after Oct. 7. But perhaps the strongest force keeping Mr. Netanyahu in power is the most basic: his fractured, increasingly nonexistent opposition. The vast majority of those who loathe him as a leader do not oppose the war itself, nor the way it has been conducted. They want him out of power but they have no coherent alternative vision. For the past year, all Mr. Netanyahu has had to do was hold on to power — and pass the blame.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.

Since Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu and his inner circle of advisers, ministers and supporters have successfully deflected their own responsibility and culpability for the nation’s worst security breach in its 76-year history. A day after the Hamas attacks, some Netanyahu supporters started planting the idea within his political base that the catastrophic security failure that led to Hamas’s murder of more than 1,200 people was the fault of his opponents. Over the course of the year before, tens of thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to reject the prime minister’s efforts to meddle with the independence of the judiciary and threaten to stop volunteering for military reserve duty if the judicial overhaul bills he was proposing were approved. Social media users floated gross conspiracies about anti-Netanyahu military officials assisting Hamas.

This message was dispersed on several media outlets that are part of a new digital Netanyahu-sympathetic ecosystem, including Channel 14, a would-be version of Fox News. As Israeli society has swung ever rightward, it has developed a media world that reflects back to itself the messages it would like to promote. These messages appear on pro-Netanyahu social media accounts, like-minded Telegram channels and closed WhatsApp groups — and are then rebroadcast on TV and radio.

All the while, Mr. Netanyahu has been openly blaming the rest of the media for being biased against him. Two of his corruption and criminal cases are about the prime minister’s alleged attempts to receive favorable coverage in the media. (He has denied wrongdoing.) His cabinet has made moves to privatize and potentially shut down the public broadcaster’s television and radio departments. And in late November, as punishment for coverage of Oct. 7 deemed too critical, as well as for comments made by the publisher of Ha’aretz, my newspaper, at an event, his cabinet approved a slate of sanctions against Ha’aretz, forbidding any government advertising and canceling subscriptions for state workers.

Pro-Netanyahu propaganda efforts were quickly referred to as the “poison machine” by the Israeli opposition — both political parties and civil society. But, as I have written for Ha’aretz, there was a “honey machine” at work at the same time. One after another, coordinated initiatives and petitions emerged in Israel with a mission to promote ideas of “unity,” “reconciliation” and preventing “division” within society. The seemingly disparate agendas — the undercurrent of blatant propaganda and the tide of false optimism — shared the thesis that the political rift in the months leading up to Oct. 7 ha

washington post logoWashington Post, Middle East Conflict: Biden team uses fall of Assad to defend Mideast record; critics say it doesn’t eclipse horrors in Gaza, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The Biden administration is seeking to reframe a beleaguered policy as a success.

The White House is seizing on the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to mount a new defense of its often criticized policy in Gaza and the wider Middle East, arguing that President Joe Biden’s staunch support of Israel and his approach to the region paved the way for events that ultimately led to Assad’s ouster and could bring a new era of cooperation.Get the latest election news and results

Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza is viewed by progressives and a growing number of Democrats as a major foreign policy failure, with some in the party saying his unwillingness to rein in Israel and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will tarnish his long-term legacy. Biden and his aides are now working to reframe his largely unconditional support of Israel as a resounding success, saying it led to the weakening of two powerful militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which in turn made the fall of Assad possible.

Many Middle East experts and analysts agree that the Biden administration deserves credit for preventing an all-out regional war that could have drawn in the United States directly, and for providing Israel with military aid that helped it degrade Hezbollah and Hamas. But they also say the administration’s narrative assigns too much credit to the United States for events that were largely driven by actors in the region.

And humanitarian groups say that however beneficial Assad’s fall, it does not eclipse the death and devastation in Gaza. During the war, the Biden administration repeatedly said Israel was not doing nearly enough to limit civilian casualties, but did little to pressure the country to change course. Israel has now sealed off northern Gaza and may be preparing for an indefinite occupation there, diplomats said, while some 2 million Palestinians are crammed into the southern half of the tiny enclave amid destitute conditions as aid remains sharply limited.

washington post logoWashington Post, Turkey using ‘war on terror’ tactics, such as abductions and secret detentions, on critics in other countries, Greg Miller, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Turkey has drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism post-9/11 playbook to go after exiled political enemies, in particular the Gulen movement.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptThe primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

ny times logoNew York Times, United States in Direct Contact With Rebels Who Took Over Syria, Michael Crowley, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Steven Erlanger, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was communicating with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel faction, despite its designation as a terrorist group.

The United States has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad a week ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday.

His remarks were the first official confirmation that Washington is communicating with a group that it designated a terrorist organization several years ago but whose behavior Washington hopes to influence now that the group controls Syria’s interim government.

“We’ve been in contact with H.T.S. and with other parties” in Syria, Mr. Blinken said, referring to the rebel group, after a meeting with Arab ministers in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss how to assist Syria’s political transition.

He said that the United States had communicated a set of governing principles that it is urging Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to adopt, including respect for human rights and rejecting extremism. The United States has also stressed the importance of finding and returning Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist kidnapped in Syria seven years ago.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: With Iran’s guard down, the U.S. and Israel face an urgent choice, David Ignatius, Dec. 14, 2024. Israel’s former defense minister says there is “a window to act” — and the clock is ticking.

Iran appears to be at the most precarious moment in its modern history. Its proxy armies have been crushed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. And it appears to be nearly naked to attack after a wave of pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on its air defense system in October.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

“We showed that Iran is vulnerable,” argued Yoav Gallant, who was Israel’s defense minister and led most of this year’s military campaigns against Iran and its proxies. Gallant explained during a briefing with me in Washington this week that Israel’s devastating but relatively little-discussed bombing campaign on Oct. 26 created “a window to act against Iran” before it produces a nuclear weapon.

U.S. decisions about how to exploit Iran’s weakness — whether by negotiating a binding nuclear agreement or, failing that, taking decisive military action — will fall to President-elect Donald Trump. Asked last month about the possibility of war with Iran after he takes office on Jan. 20, Trump told Time magazine, ominously, that “anything can happen.”

Global attention has shifted to Trump, but senior Biden administration officials tell me they also recognize the opportunity ahead for “coercive diplomacy” about nuclear issues with a weakened Iran. Though Israel played the decisive role in humbling Iran, President Joe Biden provided an important backstop by deploying U.S. carriers, planes, submarines and other forces.

Israel’s Oct. 26 assault was calculated to leave Iran unprotected against a future attack. An astonishing wave of 120 jets took part in the raid, an Israeli military source said. The Israeli planes targeted air defense radars and antiaircraft batteries protecting Tehran as well as key factories producing fuel for Iranian ballistic missiles. The attack was in retaliation for Iran’s Oct. 1 bombardment of Israel with about 200 ballistic missiles — but the planning began many months before.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, Dec. 14, 2024. At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

But amid the celebrations, the country has also found itself in the opening chapter of a nationwide reckoning over the horrors that Syrians endured under Mr. al-Assad’s government as they come face to face with the network of prisons, police stations and torture chambers at the center of his family’s brutal rule.

In that time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were swallowed up by the Assad security forces’ vast apparatus. Over the past 13 years, after the failed rebel uprising and subsequent civil war, Mr. al-Assad wielded the long arms of that system as never before to stamp out every last inkling of dissent.

Protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers and students were snatched from their shops, plucked from university classrooms and yanked from their cars at checkpoints by the secret police — never to be heard from again.

Many ended up in Sednaya, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus that was often the last place detainees were dumped after months of interrogation in other detention centers. The sprawling prison with three wings became a haunting symbol of Mr. al-Assad’s ruthlessness and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.

Tens of thousands of people were crammed into the overcrowded cells, tortured, beaten and deprived of food and water. More than 30,000 detainees were killed, many executed in mass hangings, according to rights groups. Amnesty International called Sednaya a “human slaughterhouse.”

Their relatives lived in an agonizing limbo for years, unsure if their loved ones were alive. They went to local security officials every few months to beg for information and paid thousands of dollars in bribes to government officials to track down their relatives’ whereabouts. If security officers told them their disappeared relative was dead, many refused to believe them.

“They were liars,” one woman, Aziza Mohammed Deek, said of those in Mr. al-Assad’s government. “They were all liars.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

“The talks will focus on supporting a comprehensive, Syria-led political process aimed at achieving a transitional solution,” the Jordanian statement said. A later statement on Saturday said the meeting was about to begin. It made no mention of any Syrian representative to attend.

Turkey has emerged in recent days with greater influence, given its years of support for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that led the offensive out of its bases in the northwest in recent weeks to take power.

The Turkish government made plans this week to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which has been closed for almost 13 years, and it also conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a threat.

On Friday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, issued a stark warning to members of the Kurdish militia that controls northeastern Syria, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

“It is our strategic target to eliminate the YPG,” he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV. He said that any members who are not Syrian should leave the country as soon as possible, and added: “The entire command level of YPG should leave the country too. The remaining ones should continue living as they lay down their weapons.’’

The Kurdish-led forces in Syria have been key partners with the United States in the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria. The U.S. and Turkey are NATO allies.

Turkey, at the same time, has funded and trained a Syrian rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped it fight Kurdish-led forces in the country.

The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia accused the United States this week of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria.

Mr. Blinken is in Jordan as part of a tour of the Middle East that has included stops in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as the United States assesses the fallout from Mr. al-Bashar’s ouster.

American officials have expressed concern that instability across Syria, where various armed groups with competing agendas are active, could threaten its neighbors.

The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of Islamic State, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and took years to defeat.

Israel has also seized an opportunity created by the collapse of the Assad dynasty, bombing weapons stores and other targets in Syria to eliminate what it says are potential threats and also seizing territory in the country near the disputed Golan Heights.

Syria on Friday condemned Israel’s attack and called on the United Nations Security Council to compel the Israeli government to cease any further attacks.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Koussay Aldahhak, said the Security Council should “compel Israel to respect international law,” and not allow it to benefit from Syria’s transition.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

The Russian military appeared to be packing up equipment at one of its most critical bases in Syria on Friday, in what could be a prelude to Moscow’s military withdrawal from an important strategic foothold in the Middle East.

The movements of Russian equipment came as jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

People celebrating the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty waved revolutionary flags and posed for photographs with friends as one of the largest crowds in memory filled the marble courtyard of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where al-Assad security forces had long suppressed antigovernment demonstrations with brutal violence. Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the country’s newfound sense of liberty; in Damascus and in Idlib, a city that has long been rebel territory, people sang, “Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

The largely celebratory mood in Damascus, the capital, belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders as they try to bring order to a country wracked by sectarian divisions, the bloody legacy of the Assad era and the competing interests of an array of armed groups that fought in a 13-year civil war that human rights groups estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Also on Friday, Travis Timmerman, an American citizen who was found outside Damascus earlier this week, was handed over to U.S. forces by Syrian opposition representatives. Mr. Timmerman, who said he had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power, is now in Jordan, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Politico, Has Syrian rebel leader al-Golani really shaken off his al Qaeda past? Jamie Dettmer, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The leopard claims he has changed his spots, but will he bring stability to the devastated nation

politico CustomIn the not so distant past, Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, shown at right in a U.S. State Department photo, sported a long unkempt beard, wore a style of turban favored by jihadis and looked like he was auditioning for the role of a young Osama bin Laden.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptBut the man who toppled the regime of Bashar Assad on Sunday cuts a very different figure today. Like a political chameleon, he wears green fatigues in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or preppy blazers and chinos, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He even recently dropped his nom de guerre and reverted to using his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a.

But how convincing is the makeover? Should Syrians be worried that a man who once made the pledge of allegiance — or bay’ah — to al Qaeda, and fought Western forces in Iraq, is now the most powerful man in their country, and is poised to play a major role in the transition from the 54-year-long autocracy of the Assad dynasty?

He could even lead the country.

Is this a case where the apparel really does proclaim the man? Has the Damascus medical school dropout genuinely transitioned from being a jihadi, or is his embrace of toleration a ruse?

Those are the questions Western leaders and officials are also grappling with as they plot their next steps. France and Germany have promptly agreed to work with the Syrian opposition groups that took power in Damascus, while the U.S. and Britain are deliberating whether to delist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main insurgent Islamist faction led by al-Golani that swept into Damascus, as a terrorist organization.

For now, everyone is watching and waiting, piecing together clues about who al-Golani really is and what future HTS has planned for Syria — an inclusive, democratic one embracing the country’s diversity, its religious sects and ethnic minorities, including Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurds; or an Islamist state that oppresses, restricts and elevates the Sunni majority? Or somewhere in-between?

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Live Updates: Israel Says Its Troops Will Stay in Seized Territory for Now, Aaron Boxerman and Michael Crowley, Dec. 12, 2024. Here are the latest developments.

As countries in the Middle East and beyond work out how to respond to the sudden fall of the Assad government, Israel said on Thursday that its military would stay in Syrian territory it seized until “a new force” was established that met its security demands.

“The collapse of the Syrian regime created a vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a statement. “Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities.”

Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli soldiers would deploy in Syrian territory only “temporarily,” but did not give any clear timeline for their departure.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

South Korean Crisis

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, South Korea’s President Is Impeached Over Martial Law Crisis, Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young, Victoria Kim and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Celebrations broke out in Seoul after lawmakers voted to oust President Yoon Suk Yeol, right. He vowed to fight removal in the country’s Constitutional Court.

yoon suk yeol wSouth Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, suspending him from office after his stunning declaration of martial law earlier this month caused widespread outrage and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office.

Excerpt Continued Below.

ny times logoNew York Times, How the President Alienated South Korea, One Group at a Time, Agnes Chang and Pablo Robles, Dec. 15, , (print ed.).  Ever since Yoon Suk Yeol took office, the public had been infuriated with near-constant scandals and unpopular decisions. Angry rice farmers. Striking doctors. A $2,200 Dior bag.

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, may have sealed his political fate on Dec. 3, when he declared martial law, triggering public outrage. And on Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach Mr. Yoon, who was then suspended from office.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: The Warning from Seoul: Democracy at Risk in an Age of Authoritarian Power, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 4, 2024. How thom hartmann newYoon’s State of Emergency and Trump’s Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as “South Korea’s Donald Trump.” A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women’s rights, “reforming” their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours.

In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations’ abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that’s now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

Of all the events in world news over the past weeks — even more than the escalation of Putin’s murderous crimes against Ukraine — Trump and his authoritarian colleagues down at Mar-a-Lago are probably carefully watching what’s happening to Yoon and gaming out how a similar “emergency” action here in America might be recalibrated to have ultimate success.

Yoon has now backed down in the face of opposition from the South Korean parliament; he couldn’t get one single vote from his own party in Parliament, and is now facing demands that he resign or be impeached.

The challenges Yoon faced included a 17% approval rating, the legislature having been captured by the opposition party, and, most importantly, that he had never forced the members of his own party to degrade themselves and perform acts of obedience in front of him.

Thus, when he tried this strongman move of declaring a state of emergency but had not, in fact, first set himself up as a strongman, it failed.

Trump’s goal will be to avoid Yoon’s outcome and instead — like Putin and Orbán did in Russia and Hungary — ensure there won’t be any meaningful opposition within the GOP to his most extreme measures when they come.

Relevant Recent  Headlines

 

More Global  News

ny times logoNew York Times, After the Military Took Power in Niger, Terrorist Attacks Increased, Elian Peltier, Dec. 22, 2024. Killings by insurgents have surged since the military staged a coup, expelled U.S. and European troops, and stopped negotiations with Islamist groups.

ny times logoNew York Times, Detention Is Ordered for Suspect in Christmas Market Killings in Germany, Christopher F. Schuetze and Melissa Eddy, Dec. 22, 2024.  The authorities said they were struggling to understand the motives for the attack with a car in the eastern city of Magdeburg, in which a 9-year-old boy was among the five victims.

A judge on Sunday ordered a man suspected of killing five people by driving a car into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany to remain in detention as the authorities worked to understand the motives behind an attack that has stunned the country.

The victims in the assault on the market, which took place in the eastern city of Magdeburg on Friday night, were a 9-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75, the Magdeburg police said in a statement on Sunday.

More than 200 others were wounded, 41 of them seriously, in the attack that shattered the peace of Germany’s Christmas season, which is celebrated in hundreds of outdoor markets round the country.

The suspect, identified as Taleb A. in keeping with German privacy laws, was questioned on Saturday, security officials said. The authorities have described him as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades.

In social media posts, the doctor had criticized Germany for what he called the authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, according to German news media. A security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that those reports were accurate.

The doctor also expressed support on social media for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party and reposted comments by the group’s leaders warning of the threat of Islamic law’s being imposed in Germany.

washington post logoWashington Post, German Christmas market attack toll rises to five dead, over 200 injured, Victoria Bisset, Kelsey Ables and Souad Mekhennet, Dec. 21, 2024. The suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, an official said.

At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, German leaders said Saturday, hours after authorities identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

ny times logoNew York Times, German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe, Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, deepening the political turbulence in one of the continent’s most powerful country.

The German government collapsed on Monday as Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament, deepening a crisis of leadership across Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges.

The war in Ukraine has escalated, with Russia issuing increasing dire threats against Kyiv and its supporters. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. The government of France — Germany’s partner in leading Europe — fell earlier this month.

And now, Europe’s largest economy will be in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.

On Monday, German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.

bulwark logo big shipThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: WTF Is Happening In Canada? 51st State? Trudeau on the Outs? Bowing to Trump? Dec. 16, 2024. canadian flagTim Miller is joined by JJMcCullough to breakdown what's going on in Canada, from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigning to Donald Trump's tariff plans, and Trump's taunts at Justin Trudeau about making Canada an America

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Hails a SoftBank Investment That Echoes 2016, Maureen Farrell and Michael J. de la Merced, /Dec. 16, 2024. President-elect Trump announced that the Japanese technology company SoftBank had pledged to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first news conference since the election covered a wide range of topics, but it began with an eye-catching pledge: a $100 billion investment in the United States by SoftBank, a Japanese technology company.

Standing beside SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump announced a pledge that echoed a $50 billion commitment SoftBank made after his victory in 2016. That promise was followed by investments in a host of fledgling startups — some that surged and others that ran into trouble, including the co-working company WeWork and a company called Zume that used robots to make pizza.

According to Mr. Trump, SoftBank’s investment is intended to create 100,000 jobs. Trump transition officials said the investment will focus on technology and artificial intelligence over the next four years.

SoftBank doesn’t have $100 billion in cash on hand. The money is expected to come partly from its balance sheet but also from money raised alongside partners, according to a person familiar with SoftBank’s plans.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria’s New Leader Calls on Countries to Drop Terror Designation, Ben Hubbard, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Thomas Fuller, Dec. 16, 2024.  Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that swept into Damascus last week and ousted the Assad regime, urged the United States and other nations to remove sanctions imposed on the country, saying in an interview on Monday that all constraints needed to be lifted so that Syria could rebuild.

The rebel leader spoke in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on the same day that Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, seemed to break his silence about his decision to flee to Russia. In a statement posted to social media accounts he had used while in office, Mr. al-Assad said he had wanted to stay and fight, but was evacuated by Russian forces as the rebels bore down on the city.

ny times logoNew York Times, Putin Stays Silent on Syria, With Russia’s Future There in Question, Anton Troianovski, Dec. 16, 2024. In a televised meeting with his top military brass, Vladimir Putin left Syria unmentioned and made it clear that winning in Ukraine was his top priority.

For an hour on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin and his defense minister presided over a televised, annual meeting of the Russian military’s top brass. They held forth on NATO, Ukraine and issues as obscure as mortgages for service members.

But one topic went unmentioned: Syria.

Mr. Putin has yet to say anything in public about the collapse of his close ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria more than a week ago, even as Russia struggles to salvage what influence it can in the Middle East. The silence underscores the uncertainty surrounding the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria — and the overwhelming priority for the Kremlin that the war in Ukraine has become.

Mr. al-Assad’s fall is a painful topic right now in Moscow, said Anton Mardasov, a Moscow-based military analyst focusing on the Middle East. “It’s better not to say anything.”

Things were very different just a year ago, when Sergei K. Shoigu, then the defense minister, boasted at the same annual meeting that Russian troops remained deployed both in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-populated enclave that Azerbaijan recaptured from Armenia last year.

  • New York Times, U.S. Says Its Airstrikes Killed 12 Islamic State Operatives in Syria, Dec. 16, 2024.

ny times logoNew York Times, Tice’s Mother Asks Netanyahu for Pause in Syria Strikes Amid Search for Son, Adam Entous and Patrick Kingsley, Dec. 16, 2024. 

The mother of the missing American journalist Austin Tice has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a letter that her family has “credible information” that Mr. Tice may be held in a prison outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, and urged the Israelis to pause military strikes in the area to allow rescuers to search the site.

Mr. Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, said in the letter, dated Dec. 14 and addressed to Mr. Netanyahu, that the prison was under a Syrian military museum in the mountainous Mount Qasioun area and had a tunnel that was connected to a neighborhood and a government palace.

“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” Ms. Tice wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence.”

Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government’s lead envoy for hostage affairs, confirmed he had received the letter, and he said that he was coordinating on a daily basis with U.S. officials, including Roger D. Carstens, the U.S. government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“We will do everything possible in assisting the United States of America to bring the hostages and missing persons back home,” Mr. Hirsch said.

Mr. Tice was abducted in 2012 outside Damascus as the country descended into civil war. The United States has said it believes he was being held by the government of Bashar al-Assad. The Assad regime had long maintained that it was not holding Mr. Tice and had no information about him.

ny times logoNew York Times, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Resigns, in Blow to Trudeau’s Hold on Power, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Ian Austen, Dec. 16, 2024.  The departure of Chrystia Freeland poses a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada prepares for the incoming Trump administration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hold on power was threatened on Monday after the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration resigned abruptly, in a stinging rebuke to the country’s leader.

The high-profile departure of the minister, Chrystia Freeland, comes at a treacherous moment for Canada. President-elect Donald J. Trump has warned that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless the two countries do more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the United States.

Ms. Freeland, who has helped steer the Trudeau government through many challenges, had been playing a prominent role in forming Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition.

In her letter of resignation, Ms. Freeland accused Mr. Trudeau, who is deeply unpopular at home, of engaging in “costly political gimmicks” instead of focusing on countering the grave threat of tariffs.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds Feared Dead After Cyclone Hits French Islands Off Africa, Aurelien BreedenAmelia Nierenberg and Isabella Kwai, Dec. 16, 2024. Officials Officials in the archipelago of Mayotte said the number of people killed by Tropical Cyclone Chido could be much higher than the 21 now confirmed dead.

Marine Le Pen

ny times logoNew York Times, France’s Marine Le Pen Takes Aim at the Top, Adam Nossiter, Dec. 10, 2024. After helping to oust the prime minister last week, the far-right leader, above, has made clear her next target is President Emmanuel Macron.

The one-on-one duel that has shaped French political life for nearly a decade ratcheted up a notch last week, with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen claiming one big scalp, and giving notice of going after a bigger one, President Emmanuel Macron.

No one doubted that she was calling the shots. Yet by Monday, Mr. Macron, right, had relegated Ms. Le Pen and her party, the anti-immigrant National Rally, to emmanuel marcon twitter“pariah” — her word — status. He did not deign to meet with her in his search for a new prime minister to replace the one she had largely ousted last week.

Leaders of other parties had tête-à-têtes with Mr. Macron at the presidential palace; but not Ms. Le Pen, who was excluded because she is part of the “anti-Republican front” — his words.

That could turn out to be a big mistake. Last week, Ms. Le Pen announced the demise of the hapless prime minister, Michel Barnier, in Parliament; sure enough he was overthrown in a no-confidence vote soon after.

Mr. Barnier had tried to force through a budget proposal without a vote, and above all he had barely consulted with Ms. Le Pen, who has the largest bloc French Flagof parliamentarians and cannot be ignored.

She has suggested successive Macron governments could fall, until he steps down — making clear she is after a more consequential trophy: the president himself.

Mr. Macron was barely off the plane from Saudi Arabia as she spoke last Wednesday night. As the bemused parliamentarians listened, she promised “deliverance” for France from its woes, “maybe, very soon.”

That seemed as much promise as threat.

It all rested on one man’s decision, she said, avoiding Mr. Macron’s name while suggesting she was pushing him toward the exit. Her target was clear.

“It’s up to the person concerned, by himself, to decide whether he should stay,” she said. “It’s on his conscience, to determine whether he should sacrifice public policy, and France’s fate, for the sake of his own pride.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis: Netanyahu Finally Takes the Stand in His Corruption Trial, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Dec. 10, 2024. Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a trial that began four years ago. He has denied the charges.

Outside the courthouse, he is one of the most powerful men in the Middle East, overseeing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, its occupation of southern Lebanon and recent strikes in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterAs he stepped into a cramped and sweltering underground courtroom in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel morphed into the defendant in Case 67104-01-20 — charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.

Israel Flag“Like everyone who is brought to the witness stand, you are charged with speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Rivka Friedman-Feldman, one of three judges hearing the case.

An audience of roughly 100 journalists, lawmakers, government ministers and lawyers craned their necks to catch his response.

“I have waited eight years for this moment — to tell the truth, the truth as I remember it,” replied Mr. Netanyahu, gripping the sides of a wooden lectern as he stood to the left of the judges.

It was a humbling moment — a sitting prime minister, forced to answer accusations of graft, before a courtroom filled with his peers. It was also a moment Mr. Netanyahu seemed determined to transcend.

“I am shocked by the magnitude of this absurdity,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“I am the prime minister, I am running a country, I am running a war,” he continued. “I am not occupying myself with my future, but rather with that of the state of Israel.”

For nearly a decade, the corruption charges against Mr. Netanyahu have divided Israel, leading to years of political turmoil. The electorate has been roughly evenly split on the question of whether Mr. Netanyahu should remain in office while he stands trial — a dynamic that has created an electoral stalemate, leading to five elections in less than four years.

Apart from a brief court appearance to plead not guilty in 2021, Mr. Netanyahu had rarely been affected by the day-to-day proceedings of the trial.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent years interviewing witnesses instead of the defendant himself. The hearing on Tuesday — 1,661 days since the trial began — was set to be Mr. Netanyahu’s first full day in court.

Mr. Netanyahu had sought to delay his testimony by several months, arguing that his management of the war campaign had disrupted his preparations. But the court agreed to a postponement of only a few days.

While his appearance on Tuesday provided a crescendo in the judicial process, it was also, to many Israelis, anti-climactic. The charges against Mr. Netanyahu have been a part of Israeli discourse for so long that the spectacle of a prime minister on trial no longer seems as shocking as it once did.

“The public has completely accepted the idea that we have a sitting prime minister who has been investigated, indicted and is now on trial — even in the middle of a war,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst who attended the hearing on Tuesday.

“What would have been unimaginable 10 years ago has been completely normalized,” she added.

Mr. Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate but related cases. The charges center on claims that he gave regulatory favors and diplomatic support to prominent businessmen in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage.

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More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs

 

seth hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: {December 11 [Human Rights Day History, Implications] Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Dec. 11, 2024. Today is heather cox richardson cnnHuman Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-six years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948 the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, including the horrors of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Greece was in the middle of a civil war, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans.

In the midst of these dangerous trends, the member countries of the United Nations came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.The United Nations itself was only three years old. Representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, had formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Part of the mission of the U.N. was “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to construct the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit.

The UDHR remains aspirational, but it is a vital part of the rules-based order that restrains leaders from human rights abuses, giving victims a language and a set of principles to condemn mistreatment. Before 1948 that language and those principles were unimaginable.

In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China Bans Rare Mineral Exports to the U.S., David Pierson, Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson, Dec. 4, 2024 (print ed.). The China Flagmove comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.

China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States, an escalation of the tech war between the world’s two biggest powers. The move comes a day after the Biden administration tightened Chinese access to advanced American technology.

The ban signals Beijing’s willingness to engage in supply chain warfare by blocking the export of important components used to make valuable products, like weaponry and semiconductors.

Politico, Trump threatens BRICS nations with 100 percent tariff, Ari Hawkins, Nov. 30, 2024. Trump also said: “There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Trudeau Flies to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Nov. 29, 2024. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the first G-7 leader to visit since the election. He is under pressure to persuade President-elect Trump to back down from his tariff threat.

canadian flagThe visit makes Mr. Trudeau the first foreign head of government from the Group of 7, a key forum of global coordination consisting of the world’s wealthiest democracies, to visit the president-elect.

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump were to dine together on Friday evening, one official said, along with a delegation of senior Trump allies poised for top trade and security positions in his new administration.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump, Mexican president talk border, migrant caravans amid tariff threats, Mary Beth Sheridan and Niha Masih, Nov. 29, 2024 (print ed.). Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to impose tariffs and she hinted at retaliation in a letter.

claudia sheinbaum w 2024Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, left, assured President-elect Donald Trump in a phone call Wednesday that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the U.S.-Mexican border, after Trump’s threat earlier this week to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from her country if it could not halt irregular migrants and fentanyl from crossing the U.S. border.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

mexico flag1“We discussed the Mexican strategy for the phenomenon of migration, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at our northern border, because we deal with them in Mexico,” Sheinbaum wrote on X after the call.

She described the conversation as “excellent.” Trump, posting about the call on Truth Social, his social media platform, said the conversation was “very productive.”

The conciliatory tone on both sides followed a tense exchange Tuesday: In a letter, Sheinbaum responded angrily to Trump’s tariff warning, threatening tariffs of her own. But they diverged in how they described the conversation.

Trump said Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico,” which would mean “effectively closing our Southern Border.” In a second post he said this would be come into effect immediately, prompting another tweet from Sheinbaum in which she said: “Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges,” adding that her country would offer assistance to migrants, including caravans, before they could reach the northern border. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy, Michael Crowley, Nov. 29, 2024. The  world is braced for disruption from President-elect Trump, but he may find more common ground with President Biden than many assume.

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

trump 2024Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

ny times logoNew York Times, How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter, Agnes Chang and Keith Bradsher, Nov. 29, 2024. President-elect Trump has promised to impose new tariffs, but they are unlikely to undercut China’s dominance given its advantages in automaking.

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Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies

 

devan nunes hearing Custom

ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

richard grenell oPresident-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.

trump 2024A 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Burkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 12, 2024. The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

washington post logoWashington 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.

Justice Department log circularSmith’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.

 

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Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg photo via Vanity Fair)

Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg file photo via Vanity Fair)

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down, Williaml Kristol and Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. We knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.

bulwark logo big shipPer NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend. . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

New York Times, Congress Approves Spending Extension, Ending Shutdown Crisis, Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The Senate passed the measure, sending it to President Biden’s desk, shortly after the midnight deadline for government funding to lapse.

The Senate approved a spending measure early Saturday to keep government money flowing through mid-March, sending it to President Biden for his expected signature and closing a chaotic endgame in Congress minutes after federal funding had lapsed.

U.S. House logoThe 85-to-11 Senate vote followed earlier House passage of the legislation, which also provided $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The action pushed major spending decisions into 2025 and the first months of the incoming Trump administration and a fully Republican-controlled Congress.

The White House said that President Biden would sign the measure on Saturday and that no agencies would shut down despite the technical lapse in funding.

The end to days of shutdown drama came after House Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.

The measure that ultimately passed kept dollars flowing to federal agencies and prevented a prolonged funding lapse that could have led to government disruptions just days before the holidays.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the final product was not all Democrats wanted, but avoided a crisis.

“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families,” Mr. Schumer said, citing “emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters” as well as no suspension of the limits on federal borrowing. He added that it would “keep the government open with no draconian cuts.”

The legislation also extends farm programs for one year and provides $10 billion in direct aid for farmers.

  • Washington Post, Biden signs stopgap funding bill, but congressional fight to continue, Maegan Vazquez and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The incoming Congress, which will be controlled by Republicans, is still expected to face bruising battles over government funding in Trump’s second term.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Russian War Against Ukraine

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Says It Assassinated Russian General in Moscow, Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.). Igor Kirillov, who was in charge of Russia’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed by a bomb on a street in the capital.

ukraine flagA general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces was killed by a bomb on a Moscow street on Tuesday, in one of the most brazen assassinations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

igor kirillov wThe general, Igor Kirillov, 54, right, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.

The S.B.U. considered General Kirillov a legitimate target, the official said.

russian flagA day before the general’s killing, Ukraine had accused him of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian troops had dropped ammunition with toxic compounds onto Ukrainian positions in efforts to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches.

According to the Russian military, the division that General Kirillov oversaw carries out specialized tasks like protecting Russian troops when chemical and nuclear weapons are used, as well as offensive operations like attacks with incendiary weapons.

ny times logoNew York Times, Who Was Gen. Igor Kirillov? Staff Report, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.).  The general had faced sanctions for using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of Russia’s military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed on Tuesday by a bomb in Moscow, the Russian authorities said.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.How was he killed?

General Kirillov, 54, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

The explosion occurred at about 6:12 a.m. and shattered windows in a building across the street, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.Why was he targeted?

russian flagA day before his killing, Ukraine had accused General Kirillov of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian forces had used chemical weapons on the battlefield more than 4,800 times since the war began, on General Kirillov’s orders. Russia denied Ukraine’s accusations during a July meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Ukraine has said the chemical weapons used by Russia often include combat grenades equipped with the irritant chemical agents CS and CN. Those tear gases, most commonly used by riot police officers to control crowds, are banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty ratified by more than 150 countries, including Russia.

The U.S. State Department said this spring that Russia had used chloropicrin, a choking agent widely used in World War I, as well as tear gas on the battlefield. Britain imposed sanctions on General Kirillov this fall, citing his responsibility in deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

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

politico CustomA 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.

german flagThe 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.”

NBC News, Russian oil tankers split in two by strong storms in the Black Sea, Dec. 15, 2024.

Enforcer News, Massive Russian Ships SINK In Black Sea; MAJOR Rescue Operation Underway, Dec. 15, 2024. Today, 2 Massive Russian Ships have sunk in the Black Sea resulting in a major disaster for the Russians as they mount a full-scale rescue operation to save the men onboard.

The ships were carrying thousands of tons of petroleum (estimated at 5,000 tons apiece)which if fully released into the sea, would result in the worst disaster in the history of the Black Sea.

Putin is furious and demanding answers from top officials. We also received news that Ukraine attacked the special forces headquarters in Grozny, Chechnya with a full size Ukrainian FoxBat drone which evaded all of Ramzan Kadyrov's air defenses. Meanwhile we also received news from the Ukrainians that the North Korean soldiers are taking extremely heavy losses as they begin to retreat/run in major swarms from the frontline. We also got some news coming out of Syria as well. Please like and subscribe for more daily short war updates!

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

burkino fasoBurkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Brazilian Police Arrest Close Ally of Ex-President Bolsonaro, Official Says, Ana Ionova, Dec. 14, 2024. Gen. Walter Braga Netto was Jair Bolsonaro’s running mate. The arrest was for meddling in an investigation into a plot to stage a coup, the police said.

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested Gen. Walter Braga Netto, a close ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his running mate in 2022, according to a police official, accusing him of meddling in their investigation into a plot to stage a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election.

The federal police said in a statement that they had carried out an arrest and two search warrants against people for “hindering the free production of evidence during the criminal proceedings.”

The police official confirmed that General Braga Netto was the target of the arrest, which the police said in the statement was “to prevent the repetition of illegal actions.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. The targets of the search warrants were not identified.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

 

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).

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).

ap logoAssociated 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.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

The lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

texas mapUnder shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

 

 

pete hegseth collage djt

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trouble Began When #MeToo Became #ChurchToo, David French, right, Dec. 15, 2024. l When did we know that the #MeToodavid french cropped moment was truly over?

At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.

But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.

Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense (shown above and at left), had paid an accuser to pete hegseth tatoo religion newssettle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.

ryan lizza olivia nuzzi rfk jr

Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., above right, who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, center, ,a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job (and disputed with her ex, reporter Ryan Lizza, while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.

I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.

Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.

All that happened before my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein. But the early wave of #MeToo revelations was heavily concentrated in traditionally liberal institutions.

When #MeToo became #ChurchToo, though, that was the beginning of the end. In a remarkably short period of time, the narrative changed. No longer was sexual abuse and exploitation a “Hollywood problem” or a “secular problem,” it was also an evangelical problem, and it was a problem in many of the most important institutions of the church.

 

southern baptist convention logo

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, faced a sexual abuse “apocalypse,” a series of scandals that my friend Russell Moore, the former head of the S.B.C.’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called “a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.”

jerry falwell jr resized wife assistant

Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, faced its own sexual scandals. Its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., stepped liberty university sealaside after a sordid series of allegations that involved him, his wife and a pool-boy-turned-business associate [and his wife's assistant, shown above].

At the same time that the school was sheltering a corrupt president, it was also mishandling claims of sex abuse against students, including by turning the school’s code of conduct, called the Liberty Way, against sex abuse victims. If they’d violated a school policy, by drinking, for example, that could be used against them in the schools’ disciplinary proceedings.

The hypocrisy was stark. The Christian president of a Christian university was imposing standards on students — including victims of abuse — that he was flouting himself.

There’s an easy answer for understanding the end of #MeToo, one that has the benefit of being largely true — American society (including the American church) is still rife with misogyny. As with race, the fact that America has come quite far in respecting the legal rights of women does not mean that we don’t still have far to go to achieve true cultural equality and respect.

But misogyny was never a complete explanation, especially given the fact that sex abuse isn’t confined to men abusing women and girls. Something else is at work, something that also represents a deep and profound moral flaw. A person might value vulnerable people in the abstract — or might even declare a strong commitment to justice — but very few people will sacrifice anything they truly value to correct an injustice that doesn’t involve them immediately and directly.

My wife’s story helped me understand. When she was 12 years old, a vacation Bible schoolteacher abused her in her own home. Decades later, her pastor, by then retired, told her that the same person had abused at least a dozen other women and girls in the church.

The abuser was never held accountable — either by church leaders or law enforcement. Instead, he moved to a town in Kentucky and became a high school girls’ basketball coach. He lost his teaching certificate in 2023 after there were multiple reports of misconduct.

The abuser’s father was a powerful person in the church and in Nancy’s small town. Confronting his son carried a cost, and the simple fact is that very few people were willing to bear that cost, including people who were very close to Nancy. Not even their love for her could overcome their fear of the social risk.

Yes, people want justice. They want abuse to stop, but they also don’t want to poison their relationships with friends and colleagues or undermine their social status. They don’t want to say no to kids who ask to go back to their favorite summer camp. They don’t want to lose an election. Any sacrifice, no matter how attenuated, is too much.

That’s a bleak truth — one that is very hard to face — and so there is a temptation to rationalize, to say that #MeToo was a valuable movement until it went too far. Rationalizations are often rooted in a measure of truth. At its height, #MeToo was too quick to rush to judgment, too reliant on rumors and too dismissive of due process, especially due process on campus.

Even so, one can and should be able to raise awareness of a terrible social evil without undermining fundamental fairness or discarding constitutional values.

There are always excessive responses to genuine problems, and the existence of the excessive response shouldn’t blind us to the underlying reality. The fact that defunding the police was a terrible idea — or that rioters burned buildings during the summer of 2020, for example — doesn’t mean that American police officers have no problems with brutality.

And so here we are, with the nation about to be led by a man found liable for sexual abuse, with key members of his chosen senior team beset by their own gross scandals, voted into office on the strength of overwhelming white evangelical support (according to 2024 exit polls, he won white evangelicals by 65 points and lost everyone else by 18 points). And all too many Christians still celebrate his victory — and their indispensable support — as a triumph of good over evil.

When I was younger and more naïve, I wondered why so many historical injustices persisted for so long in the United States. Now I have my answer.

 

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Crystal Mangum, who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, says she lied, Jenna West, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). / Crystal Mangum, a woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, publicly said for the first time that she lied about the allegations.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Mangum said on an episode of the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat” released this week. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me.”

The episode was recorded in November at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum is serving time after being convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend in April 2011.

crystal mason mugshot Custom“I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” Mangum told podcast host Kat DePasquale about the Duke case, “and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was regardless.”

The Duke case made national headlines after Mangum, a Black woman, accused lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann of raping her at a party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. It caused the cancellation of the lacrosse team’s 2006 season, and Duke forced coach Mike Pressler to resign.

The North Carolina attorney general’s office reviewed the case and declared Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann innocent in 2007. The attorney general’s office said the charges should not have been brought against the three players and there was no DNA or evidence to corroborate the allegations.

District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for ethics violations, including making false statements and lying about withholding evidence. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Mangum for making false allegations.

Also in 2007, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke for the school’s handling of the allegations.

“I want them to know that I love them, and they didn’t deserve that, and I hope that they can forgive me,” Mangum said of the players.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general, right, opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

ken paxton mugThe lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

Under shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

In a statement on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said that she was “committed to maintaining New York’s status as a safe harbor for all who seek abortion care.”

“Make no mistake,” she added. “I will do everything in my power to enforce the laws of New York State.”

Ms. Ziegler said that the case could play out in several ways. She said that New York’s shield law had a provision that allows the doctor being sued, or possibly the state, to countersue against Texas, so the case could end up with dueling lawsuits.

If, as expected, the case ends up in federal court, she said, Texas might argue that shield laws cannot be enforced because the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution requires states to respect other states’ laws. But, Ms. Ziegler said, some legal experts who support shield laws say the laws constitute a “public policy exception” to that clause.

The use of abortion medication has grown since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. One study found that medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions.More in U.S.

Already, abortion providers have become concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be revived by the incoming Trump administration. The law, which has been rarely enforced, prohibits the mailing of “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials, like pornography, or any item “intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion.”

In 2022, the Justice Department concluded that abortion medication could be sent by mail if the sender did not intend for the recipient to use them unlawfully. Abortion opponents have been pushing for the incoming administration to rescind that interpretation and say that the act bans all mailing of abortion pills.

In the Texas suit, Mr. Paxton said that Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., provided two medications to a 20-year-old woman in Texas that “resulted in a medical abortion” over the summer. The two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, are widely used together to end pregnancies up to 12 weeks.

In July, the woman asked the “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room because of “severe bleeding,” and it was there that he first learned that she was nine weeks pregnant, according to the lawsuit.

The man “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage,” the suit said, and he went back to their home in Collin County, where he “discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.”ImagePiles of white pills on a table. Two hands wearing medical gloves are on the table, and one is hovering over a pile.Misoprostol, which is used to end pregnancies.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times

Dr. Carpenter specializes in reproductive health and is a co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that assists doctors in states where abortion is legal with interstate telemedicine in order to “close the abortion accessibility gap,” according to the group’s website.

She is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas, according to the suit. A colleague of Dr. Carpenter’s said on Friday that Dr. Carpenter would not be commenting on the case.

But the colleague, Dr. Linda Prine, who has been open about prescribing abortion pills under New York’s shield law, said: “Maggie has been providing legally protected abortion care, protected by the State of New York, to people who are greatly in need. Texas has no jurisdiction over us in New York State. Abortion is a human right.”

Mr. Paxton said he was seeking to have the court stop Dr. Carpenter from continuing to provide abortion medication to patients in Texas, and to apply Texas’ ban on abortion to her. The ban carries a penalty of at least $100,000 for each violation.

It was not clear how Mr. Paxton would seek to enforce the state law against a New York doctor. His office did not respond to a request to discuss the suit.

David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who has helped draft and lobby for shield laws, including New York’s, said the suit was precisely what the shield laws were meant to cover.

“Texas has no jurisdiction over Maggie Carpenter,” Mr. Cohen said. “She is not physically present there. The courts cannot order her to do anything, and they cannot get the assistance of the New York courts to order her to do anything because of the shield law.”

But anti-abortion groups were already celebrating the legal challenge.

“If Texas wins, this case could open the door for the state to take further legal action against one of the largest organizations in the illegal abortion cartel: Aid Access,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, referring to the Europe-based organization that has been at the forefront of telemedicine abortion and has shield-law providers in several states.

Katie Daniel, the director of legal affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded Mr. Paxton for “leading the charge to hold out-of-state abortion businesses accountable for preying on Texas’ unborn children and their mothers.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Paxton has tried to stretch Texas’ ban beyond state borders. He fought in court this year to reverse a rule by the Biden administration that prevents investigators from inspecting the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortions. It was not clear if Mr. Paxton had been seeking such records.

Ms. Ziegler says the new lawsuit also sets up an interstate battle that is “kind of giving the lie to the whole idea that each state is going to be left to do its own thing,” she said. “That was the winning recipe for the G.O.P. — every state can make its own policy.”

But with abortion pills being mailed across state lines, she said, the conflicts between conservative and liberal states don’t go away. Instead, they become heightened.

“The whole ‘each state is going to leave each other state alone’ thing is not an accurate depiction of what any of the states are doing or want to do,” she said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Polygamist Sect in Arizona Gets 50 Years in Child Sex Ring Case, Michael Levenson, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., right, who claimed to have more than 20 “wives” including 10 “brides” under 18, pleaded guilty in April to two felony conspiracy charges.

samuel batemanThe self-proclaimed leader of a polygamist sect in Arizona who amassed more than 20 “wives,” including 10 “brides” under 18, was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison in connection with what prosecutors described as an interstate child sexual abuse ring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Federal prosecutors said that the man, Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., led a group that victimized girls as young as 9.

Using his status as a self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. Bateman forced his child “brides” to participate in sexual activities with him and with other adult men and women, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

ny times logoNew York Times, Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of a New York subway car. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.

Daniel Penny, a former Marine who choked a fellow subway rider on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, ending a case that had come to exemplify New York City’s post-pandemic struggles.

The jurors decided that Mr. Penny’s actions were not criminal when he held the rider, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold as the two men struggled on the floor of a subway car on May 1, 2023. Mr. Neely, who was homeless and had a history of mental illness, had strode through the subway car that afternoon, yelling at passengers and frightening them, according to witnesses.

After the forewoman announced the verdict, the courtroom erupted, with some people cheering the outcome and others responding with anger.

Upon hearing the words “not guilty,” Mr. Penny’s lawyer, Thomas A. Kenniff, slapped his palm on the defense table and turned to hug Mr. Penny, who had a large grin on his face. Another of his lawyers, Steven Raiser, stood and kissed his client on the cheek.

Mr. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, lashed out at supporters of Mr. Penny, and the judge asked him to leave the room.

The jurors had spent more than three days trying to come to a unanimous decision on whether Mr. Penny, 26, was guilty of manslaughter — a higher charge — in the death of Mr. Neely, 30. On Friday, the jurors sent two notes to the judge overseeing the trial saying that they had deadlocked.

After the jurors — seven women and five men — sent the first note that morning, the judge, Maxwell T. Wiley, instructed them to resume their deliberations. When the jurors sent the second note in the afternoon, telling Justice Wiley that they were still unable to reach an agreement, he granted the prosecution’s request to dismiss the charge. He sent the jurors home for the weekend, telling them to prepare to begin deliberating on the lesser djt michael cohen disloyalcharge, criminally negligent homicide, on Monday. Ultimately, they decided to acquit Mr. Penny.

The decision was a defeat for the office of Alvin L. Bragg, left, Manhattan’s district attorney. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bragg said that the jury “has now spoken.”

“We deeply respect the jury process and we respect their verdict,” he said.

In his statement, Mr. Bragg also noted that prosecutors and their families had been “besieged with hate and threats — on social media, by phone and over email” throughout the trial. “Simply put, this is unacceptable, and everyone, no matter your opinion on this case, should condemn it,” he said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Youth Pastor Is Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades, Billy Witz, Nov. 27, 2024. Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.

The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.

The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.

“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.

Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.

A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.

Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Immigration

ICE logo

washington post logoWashington Post, Immigration: Hundreds more migrants have died in Rio Grande crossings than U.S., Mexico reported, Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez, Dec. 8, 2024. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have texas mapdrowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

washington post logoWashington Post, Many targeted for removal by Trump can’t be deported, ICE data shows, Nick Miro, Dec. 8, 2024. Nearly half of the 1.4 million people in the U.S. immigration system who have pending deportation orders cannot be sent back to their home countries, according to internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, posing one of several looming obstacles to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for a mass removal campaign.

Some orders can’t be carried out because the would-be deportee’s home country won’t take them or limits cooperation with ICE. Others identified for deportation are serving prison terms, or have received a reprieve or deferral from an immigration judge, due to a medical condition, a credible persecution threat or another extenuating factor.

An array of other logistical and legal impediments also could constrain mass deportations, according to current and former ICE officials.

Trump promises to brush aside hurdles and mount a campaign modeled after the harsh roundups of the Eisenhower administration, when the U.S. government expelled hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to Mexico.

“We will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said on the campaign trail.

Trump’s aides describe the anticipated campaign as an enforcement blitz that will leverage the power and resources of the U.S. military to roll back the effect of record numbers of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden. Criminals and those with outstanding deportation orders will be the administration’s priority as of Trump’s inauguration, Jan. 20, aides say.

 

glenn youngkin wins

washington post logoWashington Post, Youngkin: Jordanians ‘crashed’ Quantico. Feds: It was an Amazon delivery, Laura Vozzella and Salvador Rizzo, Dec. 8, 2024.   Virginia’s governor, shown above in a file photo, has used the arrest of two undocumented men who misunderstood directions to stop at a check-in station to inflame fears over illegal immigration.

There are two versions of a May 3 incident at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia involving two Jordanian men, both undocumented immigrants, who pulled up to the entrance in a box truck.

commerce dept logoThere’s the mundane account given by federal prosecutors about some confusion over where to check in during an Amazon delivery stop. And there’s the one that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has been telling for the past six months that makes it sound like two foreigners stormed the gates at the fortified military installation.

“We have folks that have crashed the — illegal immigrants — that have crashed the front gate at Quantico in a box truck, trying to gain access to Quantico,” Youngkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Oct. 14 in one of multiple national television appearances — plus speeches at the National Republican Convention and a rally in Virginia with then-Republican nominee Donald Trump — where he has invoked the episode to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies.

Federal prosecutors — who initially charged the pair with misdemeanor trespassing, but later dropped those charges — say that, while the Jordanians were in the country illegally and are in the process of being deported, they did not crash the gate or intend to do any harm at Quantico.

Mohammad Dabous, working for an Amazon subcontractor, was trying to make a delivery to the post office in the town of Quantico, which can only be accessed through the gates of the military base, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Amico, who handled the case, said in a court filing. Hasan Hamdan was a passenger in the truck.

“Marine Corps … agents spoke with Mr. Dabous’s supervisor at the subcontractor delivery company, who confirmed Mr. Dabous’s employment and verified the scheduled authorized delivery to the Northern Virginia town of Quantico on May 3, 2024,” Amico wrote in a motion filed Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The same filing noted that neither man had any known terrorist links. “The FBI has not identified any national security concerns regarding either defendant,” wrote Amico, who also said he consulted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Neither defendant is on the watch list.”

Quantico officials issued Dabous and Hamdan citations for trespassing, a petty offense punishable by a maximum six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. They then turned the pair over to ICE because of their immigration status. The men were later released on bond from ICE custody.

The U.S. attorney’s office dropped the charges Oct. 3, but the deportation proceedings continue.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions

washington post logoWashington Post, Skyrocketing car-insurance premiums are pushing inflation higher, Andrew Ackerman and Federica Cocco, Dec. 14, 2024. Auto insurance costs in particular are making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult.

Soaring insurance premiums, particularly for autos, are fueling rising consumer price

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space

ny times logoNew York Times, Automakers Thrived in the Pandemic. Many Are Now Struggling, Jack Ewing, Dec. 15, 2024. A few years ago, automakers were celebrating record profits as the pandemic created shortages of new cars, allowing them to raise prices. Now the hangover is setting in.

Nissan, the Japanese automaker, is laying off 9,000 employees. Volkswagen is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time. The chief executive of the U.S. and European automaker Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Peugeot, Fiat and other brands, quit after sales tumbled. Even luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz are struggling.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Media, High Tech, Culture, Education

 

llewellyn king photo logoWhite House Chronicle, Opinion: The Crisis in Journalism — More Reporting Needed , Llewellyn King, Dec. 21, 2024. There is a lot of dither about the future of journalism. Make no mistake, it is the essential commodity.

If you know what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine or Syria, it is because brave journalists told you. Not the government, not some academic institution, not artificial intelligence, and not hearsay from your friends or from a political party.

The crisis in journalism isn’t that it failed analytically in the last election, or that we — an irregular army of individualists — failed, but that journalism has run out of money and its political enemies have found that the courts (and the fear of libel prosecution) can terrorize the companies that own the media.

peter thiel twitter smileIn 2016, the gossipy site Gawker was sued by the pro wrestler and political figure Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was financed by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, left.

Now come two suits, filed by President-elect Donald Trump: One that he won against ABC News, and one to be filed against the ICE logoDes Moines Register. It is reported that conservative interests plan a series of these legal interventions against the media.

This will have a frightening effect on news coverage. When there is fear of prosecution, there is less likely to be investigative news coverage.

So far, the most troublesome of the prosecutions has been the one against ABC News. The network caved in early. It agreed to abc news logo colorpay $15 million plus legal fees into a fund for what will be the first Trump presidential library.

Could it be that ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney wants good relations with the incoming administration?

However, a much bigger problem faces the media than the fear of prosecution. It is that the old media, led by local and regional newspapers, is dying. Although there are thousands of podcasts, they don’t take up the slack.

You could listen to an awful lot of podcasts and not know what is going on. State houses and local courts aren’t being covered. The sanitizing effect of press surveillance has been withdrawn and, frankly, God help the poor defendants in a local court where there is a disproportionate desire to plead cases, to avoid honest trials even when there is conspicuous doubt.

I never tire of repeating what Dan Raviv, former CBS News correspondent, said to me once, “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so. However, there is a problem: Journalism needs to be concentrated in a newspaper or a broadcast outlet where there is enough revenue to do the job. Otherwise, you get what I think of as the upside-down pyramid of more and more commentary, based on less and less reporting.

We are awash in commentary, some of it very good and some of it trash. It is all based on news gathered by those news organizations that can afford to employ a phalanx of reporters.

Regional newspapers used to have Washington bureaus and foreign bureaus. At one time, the Baltimore Sun had 12 overseas bureaus. Now it has none.

This is the story nationwide. Fewer people actually cover the news, digging, checking and telling us what they have found.

Throughout the history of journalism, technology has been disruptive, sometimes advantageously and sometimes less so. Modern printing presses developed at the end of the 19th century were important boosters, as was the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884.

On the negative side, television killed off evening papers, and podcasts are taking a toll on radio. Now, the internet and tech companies have siphoned off most of the revenue that supported newspapers, radio and television.

As one can’t have a free and fair society without vibrant journalism, we clearly need a new paradigm which is internet-based news organizations that are large enough and rich enough to do the job in the time-honored way with reporters asking questions, whether it is at the courthouse, the White House or on the battlefield.

There is a clear choice: News and informed analysis, or rumor and conspiracy.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. Read this column on: White House Chronicle or Inside Sources.

Going Deep with Russ Baker via Substack, Investigative Commentary on The Epoch Times: Epic Crimes: The Spectacular Grift of a Trump Propaganda Rag, russ baker new head and shouldersRuss Baker, right, best-selling author, longtime media critic and founder of the WhoWhatWhy investigative reporting site. June 9, 2024, republished Dec. 22, 2024. Their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable.

In case you missed this extraordinary story: A highly visible “news organization” that is a key backer of Donald Trump and continuous source of disinformation turns out to be… run by criminals.

Here are quick details:

The Epoch Timesepoch times, a strange publication that, backed by a religious cult, started small and grew explosively into a behemoth of disinformation, was involved with large-scale money laundering.

The CFO and unnamed members of his “Make Money Online” team are charged with money laundering and bank fraud between 2020 and 2024. The transnational scheme involved using cryptocurrency to buy crime proceeds — fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and prepaid debit cards — at a discount and depositing the money into bank accounts opened with stolen personal identification, then transferring the money into Epoch Times accounts. This stratagem had the effect of hiding the criminal activities that generated the funds in the first place.

But their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable: their unconscionable spreading of disinformation on deadly diseases, and deadly climate change, and their propagandistic promotion of the man whose rule would perpetuate these possibly fatal conditions.

And their reach is wide and deep. The Epoch Times was the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself — until Facebook banned it in 2019. As NBC News put it, “By hiding its multimillion-dollar dark money ad spend, the organization bypassed Facebook’s political advertising transparency rules.” Yet the ads continued to run, but under other names — e.g., Honest Paper, Patriots of America, Pure American Journalism — until they, too, were disabled.

I know these maniacs — to whose madness there is, unfortunately, a determined method — because they fill my inbox with constant, grotesque lies on a nonstop, turbocharged basis. I’ve never seen anything like it, and, given what I see daily, that’s saying a lot. Stop the Steal. Photo credit: ATTRIBUTION_GOES_HERE

I bring up the Epoch Times indictment as a coda to last week’s examination of the criminal mindset increasingly taking over the Republican Party and a significant portion of the populace.

This week only underlined that point: One of America’s two political parties has turned largely into a refuge for those inclined toward committing illegal, immoral, and unethical acts — or at least refusing to speak openly against them.

Committing crimes, cheating, lying, stealing, harming others is… absolutely fine. Even to be admired. High five! Laugh. Drinks all around.

The criminal mindset and complete lack of a moral compass expand into a kind of gleeful lunacy that also punishes the perps, who cannot see beyond short-term, ill-gotten gains.

For the rest of us, it feels like being strapped into the back seat of a car being driven at high speed by Thelma and Louise.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., always available for his disinformation cameo, says The Epoch Times is among his most trusted news sources: “They’re very courageous and it’s real journalism.”

The Epoch Times’s mission, according to tax filings, is — and I love this — independent journalism, “outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, for the public benefit and to be truly responsible to society.”

The criminal levels of dishonesty exhibited by The Epoch Times are, unsurprisingly, similar to that captured in the emails the Trump campaign sends out. For example, this one, which I just received:

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

So, not only is he a criminal, but he takes himself and his crime — which had zero to do with “saving America” and everything to do with self-interest — and wraps them in the flag.

Related Story:

Mediaite, Feds Indict Far-Right Media Exec in Massive Money Laundering Scheme, Alex Griffin, June 3, 2024. Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the far-right Epoch Times, was indicted Monday on charges of allegedly participating in a massive money laundering scheme.

mediaite square logoThe Southern District of New York released a statement saying, “Bill Guan, 61, of Secaucus, New Jersey, is charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and two counts of bank fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. The charges do not relate to the Media Company’s newsgathering activities.”

Justice Department log circularGuan is alleged to have laundered some $67 million in funds. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and is associated with the Chinese Falun Gong new religious movement. The paper, which is part of the Epoch Media Group, is known for its conspiratorial articles, vehement opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, and socially conservative values.

NBC News reported in late 2023, based on subscriber count, the paper has the 4th largest circulation in the U.S. “The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax record,” noted NBC of the publication’s wild success.

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009President-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

david french croppedny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel? David French, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate. Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.

Most of us have sound enough moral instincts to reject the notion that might makes right. Power alone is not a sufficient marker of righteousness. We may watch people bow to power out of fear or awe, but yielding to power isn’t the same thing as acknowledging that it is legitimate or that it is just.

The idea that right deserves might is different and may even be more destructive. It appeals to our ambition through our virtue, which is what makes it especially treacherous. It masks its darkness. It begins with the idea that if you believe your ideas are just and right, then it’s a problem for everyone if you’re not in charge.

In that context, your own will to power is sanctified. It’s evidence not so much of your own ambition, but of your love for the community. You want what’s best for your neighbors, and what’s best for your neighbors is, well, you.

The practical objections to this mind-set are legion. How can we be so certain of our own righteousness? Even if we are right or have a superior vision of justice compared with our opponents, the quest for power can override the quest for justice.

The historical examples are too numerous to list. Give a man a sword and tell him he’s defending the cross, and there’s no end to the damage he can do.

My own attitude about Christmas has changed over the years. A day that was once purely celebratory is now also profoundly humbling. In many ways, the facts surrounding Christ’s birth are as important as the fact of Christ’s birth. How he arrived was a signal of why he arrived: to redeem hearts, not to rule nations.

Christ’s life began in a manger, and it ended on a cross. He warned his followers that a cross could come for them as well. An upside-down kingdom began with an upside-down birth. When Jesus himself is humble, how do we justify our pride?

Status News, The Sunday Spotlight: Dasha Burns dishes on why she left TV news to go all in on digital, Oliver Darcy, Dec. 22, 2024. Mentioned in this edition: Jeff Bezos, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, James Gunn, Scarlett Johansson, Barack Obama, SZA, and more.

It is not every day that a television correspondent opts to ditch the tube for a role at a digital news outlet. But that's what Dasha Burns, who was a rising star at NBC News, announced she was doing earlier this month when she joined POLITICO as White House bureau chief.

With television news facing a precipitous decline, the reality is that Burns is only simply getting ahead of her peers with the move. A large segment of the TV news industry will eventually need to make a similar transition. Nevertheless, switching gears on the early side also takes some admirable temerity.

We caught up with Burns for a conversation on her jump to digital, the less-than-stellar state of the news industry, and how she's preparing for a second Donald Trump presidency.

ny times logoNew York Times, After Oleksandr Usyk beats Tyson Fury again, what’s next for heavyweight boxing? Sarah Shephard, Dec. 23, 2024 (print ed.). On a night that left no doubts about the exalted position of Oleksandr Usyk in boxing history, there was one question that lingered in the cool Riyadh air: what next?

Not only for the two men who have now shared 24 closely fought rounds of high-level heavyweight boxing, but for the sport’s marquee weight division. Where does it go from here, having just staged back-to-back showdowns between its two best men? When you’re standing at the top of a mountain, is there anywhere to go other than down?

The journey to this point started in Dusseldorf just over nine years ago when Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko to change the course of heavyweight history.

Prior to the night of November 28, 2015, Klitschko had ruled the division for almost a decade, dominating fights with his strength, speed and knockout power. But by the time he took on Fury, there was a desire among fans to see something — anything — change. And the Brit delivered, using his mobility, head movement and switch-hitting to outpoint a champion who failed to find his rhythm for most of the fight.

“That’s the best thing to happen to the heavyweight division in years,” tweeted former heavyweight and cruiserweight world champion David Haye after Fury’s hand was raised in victory.

washington post logoWashington Post, Congress passes RFK bill in surprise move, giving D.C. control of stadium site, Meagan Flynn, Erin Cox and Sam Fortier, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Passage of the legislation, which transfers the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has long sought to redevelop the site.ByUpdated 19 minutes ag

Congress has passed legislation giving D.C. control of RFK Stadium and allowing the city to redevelop more than 170 acres of federal property surrounding it, a political miracle that came in the twilight hours of the year’s congressional session and after almost every avenue for the legislation appeared exhausted.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

The U.S. Senate passed the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act by unanimous consent at about 1:15 a.m. Saturday — a Hail Mary action that required the support of all senators present without objection. The bill cleared the House in February on a broad bipartisan basis, and it was not immediately clear how D.C. officials and their congressional allies got all senators on board.

Passage of the legislation, which transfers control of the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who for years has sought to turn the property surrounding the decaying football stadium into a major new attraction and possibly bring the Washington Commanders back to their old home. The bill, which must still be signed by the president, will allow Bowser to formally negotiate with the Commanders — a possibility sure to excite the city’s football fans, who have not seen a home game in Washington since 1996.

“This is a win for DC, for our region, and for America,” Bowser said on X on Saturday. “Everybody loves a good comeback story – and that’s DC’s story.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East, Sharon Otterman, Dec. 22, 2024. Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.

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dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpets: For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

 

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school. (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

The group of 22 students who were brought from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in April 1890 stand outside a building at the Pennsylvania school.  (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: They took the children: U.S. created Indian boarding schools to destroy cultures and seize land, Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz, Updated Dec. 22, 2024 Originally published May 29, 2024. From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government separated Native American children from their families to eradicate their cultures, assimilate them into White society and seize tribal land.

European settlers waged war against Native Americans for centuries, decimating tribes through violence and spreading disease. By the 1800s, the U.S. government continued to grapple with what it called the “Indian problem.”

The government wanted tribal land for settlers and needed to justify taking it. If Native Americans adopted Western ways of education and farming, officials said, they would need less land.

The following nine slides are a summary of U.S. policies to “civilize” Native American children. Read more of The Post’s investigation that reveals decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests at boarding schools, and documents the deaths of more than 3,100 students.

U.S. officials ordered Native American children to be removed from their homes and sent to remote boarding schools. As one of the first boarding school founders said, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School students, seen in a photo taken around 1900, work in a field at the Pennsylvania school. (Library of Congress)

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: More than 3,100 children died at Indian boarding schools. Hundreds are buried at or near the schools they attended, Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Andrew Ba Tran, Nilo Tabrizy and Jahi Chikwendiu, Updated Dec. 22, 2024. The Native American students died between 1828 and 1970, a Post investigation found — three times as many as the U.S. previously reported.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department earlier this year. The Post found that more than 800 of those students are buried in cemeteries at or near the schools they attended, underscoring how, in many cases, children’s bodies were never sent home to their families or tribes.

The Post’s investigation found the deaths by drawing on hundreds of thousands of government documents that also revealed how children were beaten and harshly punished if they did not adhere to strict rules in the classroom — and in the fields, laundry rooms, kitchens or workshops where they often were forced to spend half their days.

“These were not schools,” said Judi Gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose relatives were sent to Indian boarding schools. “They were prison camps. They were work camps.”

The causes of death included infectious diseases, malnutrition and accidents, records show. Dozens died in suspicious circumstances, and in some instances the records provide indications of abuse or mistreatment that likely resulted in children’s deaths. A 10-year-old boy was fatally shot in 1912 at an Alaska school, a newspaper reported. A girl in Oregon “fell from a high window there & was brought home a corpse” in 1887, according to a teacher’s diary.

The findings show gaps in the federal government’s official accounting of what happened to Native American children who were wrested from their homes in the name of assimilation. They come as many tribes — long denied the chance to mourn and bury their dead — are seeking to find their ancestors’ remains and return them home.

But doing so is complicated by poor recordkeeping and uncertainty about the locations of many burial sites. While some cemeteries, like the one at Carlisle that held Almeda’s remains, are marked, others are hidden, neglected or have been paved over.

ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Spending Extension, Ending Shutdown Crisis, Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The Senate passed the measure, sending it to President Biden’s desk, shortly after the midnight deadline for government funding to lapse.

The Senate approved a spending measure early Saturday to keep government money flowing through mid-March, sending it to President Biden for his expected signature and closing a chaotic endgame in Congress minutes after federal funding had lapsed.

U.S. House logoThe 85-to-11 Senate vote followed earlier House passage of the legislation, which also provided $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The action pushed major spending decisions into 2025 and the first months of the incoming Trump administration and a fully Republican-controlled Congress.

The White House said that President Biden would sign the measure on Saturday and that no agencies would shut down despite the technical lapse in funding.

The end to days of shutdown drama came after House Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.

The measure that ultimately passed kept dollars flowing to federal agencies and prevented a prolonged funding lapse that could have led to government disruptions just days before the holidays.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the final product was not all Democrats wanted, but avoided a crisis.

“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families,” Mr. Schumer said, citing “emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters” as well as no suspension of the limits on federal borrowing. He added that it would “keep the government open with no draconian cuts.”

The legislation also extends farm programs for one year and provides $10 billion in direct aid for farmers.

  • Washington Post, Biden signs stopgap funding bill, but congressional fight to continue, Maegan Vazquez and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). The incoming Congress, which will be controlled by Republicans, is still expected to face bruising battles over government funding in Trump’s second term.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Wanted Shutdown to Happen on President Biden’s Watch, Not His, Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump was eager to evade responsibility for the consequences of a potential shutdown even as he blew up a bipartisan spending deal.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who derailed a bipartisan spending deal in Congress, tried on Friday to escape responsibility for the consequences, saying it would be better to let the government shut down under President Biden’s watch than to allow a politically damaging stalemate once he takes office next month.

“This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” Mr. Trump said in a social media post Friday morning. Earlier, at 1:16 a.m., Mr. Trump said he wanted Mr. Biden to be blamed for whatever political fallout might come, writing to Republicans: “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

In other words, let the blame game begin. Mr. Trump’s comment signaled that he understood the clock that was ticking. In 31 days, he will take the oath of office, returning him to power — but also to accountability — after a four-year absence.

Early Saturday, the Senate followed the House in passing a slimmed-down, temporary spending measure, extending funding into mid-March and clearing the way to keep the government open — for now.

 

 dick durbin speaking screenshot

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, shown above, said in a statement.

Politico, Senate Democrats render a verdict on Supreme Court ethics, Josh Gerstein, Dec. 21, 2024. Sen. Dick Durbin says justices have lost the trust of American people by failing to disclose gifts and other ethical lapses.The U.S. Supreme Court is seen.

politico CustomSenate Democrats wrapped up their extensive investigation of Supreme Court justices’ ethics practices Saturday, issuing a report blasting two conservative justices for accepting expensive gifts from wealthy benefactors and slamming Chief Justice John Roberts for a lackadaisical response to ethical lapses by his colleagues.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said in a statement. “Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest, it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

The report levels its most strident criticism at Justice Clarence Thomas, alleging that he received gifts totaling millions of dollars since he joined the high court in 1991. “The number, value, and extravagance by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report says.

Many of the trips, including one Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas took by yacht and private jet in Indonesia in 2019 as a guest of billionaire developer Harlan Crow, were unearthed by ProPublica last year. However, the Senate Democrats claimed credit for turning up two previously unknown trips Crow treated Thomas to closer to home in New York, including one by yacht.

The report also alleges that Justice Samuel Alito failed to comply with federal law when he didn’t include on his annual financial disclosure form a private plane flight and lodging expenses for a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 that was paid for by a billionaire hedge fund operator, Paul Singer.

Thomas and Alito have said they generally complied with guidance the courts gave judges at the time, which used a broad definition of “personal hospitality” that could encompass travel by boat or private airplane.

In addition to criticizing the justices, the Senate report took particular aim at the Judicial Conference of the United States, a policy-making body run by federal judges that sets ethics guidelines and advises on how to apply them. It tweaked the rules about personal hospitality last year and in September, but that did not satisfy Democratic senators.

“To date, the Judicial Conference has failed to adequately respond to the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis,” the report says.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards. So long as Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to act, we must push for a legislative solution to this crisis to restore trust in the highest court,” Durbin said.

However, the prospects for such legislation are dim. In July 2023, Durbin’s committee approved a bill to mandate the court’s adoption of an ethics code and create an enforcement mechanism involving lower-court judges in reviewing complaints.

 

bashar al Assad 2024 horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, Deception and Betrayal: Inside the Final Days of the Assad Regime, Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.).  President Bashar al-Assad, above, who wielded force over Syria for more than two decades, fled the country under the cover of night — and a fake political address.

Bashar al-Assad left his country so secretively that some of his aides remained in the palace hours after he had left, waiting for a speech that never came, the insider said. After midnight, word came that the president was gone, and they fled in a panic, leaving the palace gates wide open for the rebels who would storm in a few hours later.

syria new flag 2024Mr. al-Assad’s fall brought to a sudden end his family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on Syria, causing jubilation among his victims and enemies, scrambling the strategic map of the Middle East and setting Syria off on a new, uncertain trajectory.

During his final days in power, Mr. al-Assad pleaded for foreign military help from Russia, Iran and Iraq to no avail as his military’s own intelligence service documented his forces’ collapse in real time, according to secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

Diplomats from a half-dozen countries sought ways to push him from power peacefully in order to spare the ancient city of Damascus a bloody battle for control, according to four regional officials involved in the talks. One proposal, an official said, was that he pass power to his military chief, effectively submitting to a coup.

 

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dj elon musk politico

Thinking about....Commentary on Tyranny: Why is Musk-Trump the 'Mump Regime'? Timothy Snyder, right, best-selling author and Yale historian, Dec. 22, 2024. Ask the Mumpers and the timothy snyderMumpetsTimothy Snyder, For a new world we need new words.

Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.

And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.

As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.

Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.

"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broke through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.

"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.

MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.

"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.

And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.

Excerpt Continued From Above.

Musk himself is obviously completely unconcerned by the results of elections; it means nothing to him that people voted for Trump. Indeed, the fact that he was able to use a meaninglessly small portion of his wealth to get Trump in office can only breed contempt of both the man and his electorate.

Trump's current public humiliation of Trump may very well be part of a plan. Make the man look weak; and then make him look crazy; and then invoke Article 25 of the Constitution and put him to bed. I am not saying that I am sure that this will happen: but rather that it is the kind of thing that would be normal in a Mump regime but would be all but unthinkable in a "presidency" or an "administration."

Trump is a fake rich person, and Musk is the richest person on earth (except, possibly, Putin). Trump is crazy like an improv comedian, but Musk is crazy like a guy with satellites. Musk surely understands, even if Trump does not, that the welter of policies we will see in the first six months of the Mump regime will be contradictory and chaotic.

Where does popular sentiment go when tariffs increase prices, as they must? When Canada and Mexico enforce countermeasures which push prices still higher? And when government spending on deportations (which would, at least as planned, cost about a trillion dollars) also brings inflation?

And that is just one example. Will Americans actually like a defense department and an FBI designed for domestic conflict? If all of this goes crazily wrong, Trump will be to blame. It is at least worth considering the possibility that Musk foresees all this.

At the moment, left-wing commentators laugh that J.D. Vance has disappeared from public view, displaced by Musk. Thinking of a Mump regime helps us to see Vance's absence differently. There cannot be MAGA without Trump, but there can be Mump without Trump. For Musk and for kindred oligarchs, Vance is a more natural ally than Trump. He speaks their language and seems to believe the libertarian-fascist amalgam according to which government itself is doomed and therefor a strong man must rule. Vance was chosen by the oligarchs to be vice-president.

In the two scenarios above -- Musk drives Trump visibly crazy; six months of chaos is blamed on Trump-- Vance would be the successor. Staying in the background for now thus makes perfect sense for Vance. A quiet Vance does not look crazy, and is not tainted by Trump's six months of chaos. He is available when Musk is ready to move on from Trump.

As Musk once tweeted, "we will coup whoever we want." Whoever we want.

We also need a term like "the Mump regime" to classify Republicans. It offers a vocabulary that helps us to sort people out according to their involvement in and fealty towards Musk. The people who are active in the Mump regime are mumpers. The people who go along are mumpets.

But not all Republicans are mumpers, only a select few -- and, indeed, Musk and Trump and Vance lack a traditional Republican background. The mumpers are a select group, like a politburo: a few people, who can brought in and pushed out. Those beyond the small circle of mumpers who support the Mump regime are mumpets, a much broader group.

Plenty of Republicans follow Musk. But these are not the same people, exactly, who would follow Trump. And as we have seen from recent votes on the shutdown, there are Republican elected officials who are not mumpets. Not all Republicans actually want to see Congress rendered obsolete by one-man rule and the United States cease to exist as a republic.

With terms like "Mump regime," "mumpers," and "mumpets" we can parse the present reality and prepare for the future much better than we can with "presidential administration," "Republicans," or "MAGA."

"Mump regime" also gives us adjectives, like "mumpy," "mumpier," or "mumpified." Beyond domestic politics, it can help us towards understanding (topic for another post) the United States as "the sick man of the world" in foreign policy, as we will likely be.

Musk is right that he is bringing something new; what he is not bringing is a tyranny so great that we cannot think for ourselves and name things for ourselves. Indeed, holding tyranny back begins with just that.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Depressing the Vote with Money in Politics, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 22, 2024. Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. thom hartmann newThis week: "The Hidden History of the War on Voting: The Republican War against your right to vote. Over the next few months the entire book will be here, new chapters posted every Sunday, for subscribers to read at no cost. If you want to get a physical book to mark up or share with others, just click on the picture above, visit your local bookstore, or check your favorite online seller.

Money in politics has a long and ignominious history.

thom hartmann war on votingCorruption by money of individual politicians, and of the legislative process as a whole, hit three peaks in the history of our nation: during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, the Roaring Twenties in the last century, and the years since 2010 when the Supreme Court struck down numerous campaign finance and good-government laws, throwing the doors open to corporate and billionaire cash with its Citizens United decision.

The Gilded Age excesses led to the Tillman Act of 1907, which made it a federal felony for a corporation to donate money or anything of value to a campaign for federal office. It was gutted by Citizens United.

lewis powell 1976 official portraitThe political corruption of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations led directly to the great crash of 1929, causing most corporations to pull back from the political arena until the 1970s, when Lewis Powell (shown at right as a Supreme Court justice in 1976) revived it with his infamous memo to billionaires and corporate CEOs.

After the Watergate investigations revealed Nixon’s bribery and other scandals, Congress passed numerous reforms of money in politics, although the Supreme Court struck down the most consequential of them; and as long as there’s a conservative majority of at least five votes on the Court, that’s unlikely to change.

Therefore, this is the situation today

:• A billionaire oligarch, Rupert Murdoch, programs his very own television news network to promote the interests of the billionaire class with such effectiveness that average working people are repeating billionaire-helpful memes like “cut regulations,” “shrink government,” and “cut taxes”— policies that will cause more working people and their children to get sick and/or die; will transfer more money and power from we, the people, to a few oligarchs; and will lower working-class wages over time.113

• A small group of billionaires have funneled so much money into our political sphere that “normal” Republicans like former US senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker point out that they couldn’t get elected in today’s environment because they’d face primary challengers funded by right-wing billionaires.

• The corporate media (including online media), heavily influenced by the roughly $1 billion that the Koch network, Sheldon Adelson, the Mercers, etc., poured through their advertising coffers and into their profits in the last presidential election, won’t even mention in their “news” reporting that billionaire oligarchs are mainly calling the tunes in American politics, particularly in the GOP.

• Former president Jimmy Carter pointed out on my radio show that the United States “is now an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery,” in part as a result of the right-wing Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.114

• Nobody in corporate media—even on the “corporate left”—is willing to explicitly point out how billionaires and the companies that made them rich control and define the boundaries of “acceptable” political debate in our country.

• Thus, there’s no honest discussion in American media of why the GOP denies climate change (to profit petro-billionaires), no discussion of the daily damage being done to our consumer and workplace protections, and no discussion of the horrors being inflicted on our public lands and environment by GOP appointees

.• There’s not even a discussion of the major issue animating American politics just one century ago: corporate mergers and how they damage small business and small towns.

Although it’s been this way before in American history, it wasn’t within our lifetimes. The last time the morbidly rich had this much power in American politics was in the 1920s, when an orgy of tax cutting and deregulation of banking led to the Republican Great Depression.

Our nation now faces a massive crisis provoked by the loss of democratic representation for the majority of the American electorate. Neither party today does much of anything for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, as so clearly demonstrated by a 2014 study out of Princeton showing that the likelihood of legislation passing that represented the interests of that bottom 90 percent was equivalent, statistically, to white noise.

The predictable—and tragic for our republic—result is massive voter apathy and a loss of voter engagement.

 

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

U.S. President-Elect Elon Musk with Vice Presidential mascot Elect Donald Trump in Oval Office parody via Jeff Tiedrich

Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Political advocacy: Scenes from President Musk’s shutdown-that-wasn’ty, Jeff  Tiedrich, right, Dec. 22, 2024. Welcome to a perfectly normal weekend in the good old US of A.

United States President-Elect Elon Musk was definitely one of those jeff tiedrichkids who woke up early on Christmas morning, ran downstairs, grabbed his presents from under the tree, frantically ripped the wrapping off — and immediately smashed the shit out of each and every one of his new toys.

You know this is a fact, because when handed the biggest toy of his life — the entire country of America — the very first thing President-Elect Musk tried to do was break it.

President Musk and his Vice Presidential mascot Donny Convict done fucked up bigtime.

The Space Nazi wanted to shut down the government, because governments are inconvenient things that keep him from doing everything he wants. Donny wanted the debt ceiling shitcanned, so he could give economy-destroying tax cuts to his plutocrat pals. Neither of them got their way, and all they have to show for their efforts is a huge crack in their autocratic bromance.

This business of referring to the Space Nazi as ‘President Musk’ is really getting under Donny’s preternaturally thin skin.

“CNN confirmed on-air just now that top Trump aides are furiously calling journalists to insist that Elon Musk has been following the orders of Trump rather than the other way around. As predicted, Trump is horrified and enraged at the idea that Musk is now seen as the President of the United States.”

Donny cannot handle being the butt of a joke — and he definitely can’t handle the perception that he’s not the alpha dog calling all the shots.

Remember, this broken-inside narcissist is all about his public image. Donny needs to appear all-powerful. Elon isn’t supposed to be the one making headlines. Elon is supposed to be the grateful supplicant with tears of gratitude welling up in his eyes, as he goes ‘sir! sir! no one has ever governed as wisely as you. how do you do it? sir!’

it’s only a matter of time before these two have a thermonuclear breakup — and then we can all throw our heads back and laugh as Dear Leader tells his new FBI Director Krazee Eyes Kash to look into Elon’s finances.

Here’s a perfectly normal thing that Vice President Trump did last night.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend (Dec. 19-21, 2024). Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.He posted a threat to send the military down to Panama and seize their canal if Panama doesn’t lower the fees it charges ships using the canal.

I have a question: which sewer clown put this bug up Donny’s ass — and who wrote this multi-hundred-word post for him? Because look at this guy.

This is an unretouched photo (at right) taken at Motel-a-Lago this weekend. Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day.

I guarantee you that Donny is barely aware that the Panama Canal exists. There’s no way that he carries any knowledge of its purpose or history in his big vacant pumpkin head.

 

Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg photo via Vanity Fair)

Elon Musk hobnobs with Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (Bloomberg file photo via Vanity Fair)

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down, Williaml Kristol and Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. We knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.

bulwark logo big shipPer NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend. . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Kent Brockman Republicans, William Kristol, right, Dec. 19, 2024. Yesterday’s chaos on Capitol Hill was primarily a story about william bill kristol imdbDonald Trump and Elon Musk, these two unfit humans who will, more than anyone else, influence the fate of the world’s oldest democracy and only superpower over the next four years.

bulwark logo big shipBut let’s take a moment to note the other players on stage, the neglected players with minor roles, what one might call the extras. I’m speaking of course about our elected representatives—in particular our elected Republican representatives. They played their part in yesterday’s theater of the absurd, in which an agreement their own House leader had crafted to fund the government was blown up by Musk’s disapproval of it, and then Trump’s 11th-hour demand to add a debt ceiling hike to it.

Their capitulation was necessary to the success of Trump’s and Musk’s willful bullying.

One might note that these representatives actually hold current government office, unlike Trump and Musk. They have actual responsibilities, unlike Trump and Musk. Indeed they have sworn an oath to the Constitution that they will “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” they hold.

Yet, needless to say, their priority isn’t to well and faithfully discharge their duties. Their priority is to listen closely so that when Trump and Musk say, “Jump,” they promptly ask, “How high?”

They are the Kent Brockman Republicans. As you will recall, in a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, Brockman, the pompous local news anchor, was convinced that the Earth was about to be invaded and conquered by giant space ants. He fearfully announces his willingness, his eagerness, to submit to the invaders:

trump 2024One thing is for certain: There is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Brockman presumably feared for his life. Or feared the terrible torture of enraged ants. What do these Republican representatives fear?

Loss of office through primary challenges. That was Musk and Trump’s threat on social media: “Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this [support the continuing resolution to keep the government open] should, and will, be Primaried [sic].”

Is the prospect of a primary challenge as awful as being devoured by ants? Apparently so, judging from the behavior of our Republican representatives.

U.S. House logoOne could try to reason with those elected representatives, pointing out that any primaries are over a year away; that it’s unclear Trump would even follow through on this threat, let alone win scores of primaries against incumbent Republican members; that their voters may actually be more upset if they willingly shut down the government over the holidays at the behest of the world’s richest man. But making such arguments would be in vain. When fear has taken over, reason goes out the window.

The House Republicans fear their incoming insect overlords. So they capitulate to them before they’ve even taken office.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreThe World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All DownWe knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.William Kristol and Andrew EggerDec 19 READ IN APP

Per NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend, . . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

The now-dead continuing resolution that would have kept the government funded became a target of MAGA ire for a lot of fuzzy reasons, but maybe the silliest was that it would have given lawmakers their first pay raise since 2009. When a producer for Tucker Carlson accused Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) of “spearheading” that effort, Crenshaw blew up at him: “Yeah or maybe you’re a f—ing lying piece of s— . . . whatever gets you pathetic bottom feeders your click bait.”

This, of course, drew other MAGA influencers like moths to a flame: “Dan Crenshaw is the America-last, Ukraine-first war pig who doesn’t need a raise because of all the money he makes when he miraculously became a stock expert since joining Congress,” wrote the thought leader who goes by “Catturd.”

This all might sound pretty harsh, but don’t worry—this is actually just the process by which great legislation is made.

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: When Corporations Kneel: How CEOs Are Funding America’s Dangerous Shift to Fascism, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 17, 2024. thom hartmann newFrom Disney to big business: Corporations are aligning with Trump to avoid punishment and secure their place in the authoritarian future…

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

— Donald Trump, Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as: “fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

disney logoWhen Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

 

 

djt elon musk washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year, Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.).  Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices around 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.

As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.

Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.

Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

“Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance Transition. He described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”

Musk launched his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he abandoned a graduate program at Stanford to found a start-up later called Zip2 that created online city guides. It was sold for about $300 million in 1999.

He went on to co-found an online banking company, X.com, that merged with another start-up to create PayPal. Auction site eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney, former journalism professor, Dec. 14, 2024. A viral Bluesky thread introduced tens of seth abramson graphicthousands around the world to a first glimpse of a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk. Here—in a single essay—is some of what the world just learned.

seth abramson proof logoElon Musk may be an unelected plutocrat, but in six weeks he’ll become co-President of the United States. Unfortunately, many people around the world are only just now beginning to research who Musk really is—not the mythos he spent decades carefully weaving about himself like a cloak, but the hard realities that define the actual man.

Most of what people think they know about Elon Musk is manifestly false. This essay, written by an Elon Musk biographer and based on OSINT research, reveals the truth—or at least a significant part of it. Rest assured that none of what remains is any better.

I’ve been a Musk biographer for two years now. In that time I’ve published hundreds and hundreds of pages of professionally researched content about the man—well over a book’s worth—here at Proof, an independent media outlet at Substack that ranks as a Top 25 U.S. Politics substack worldwide.

The longest report that I’ve published about Elon Musk so far is March 28. It’s a novella in and of itself, despite being just one of many fully sourced reports on Musk authored by a bestselling historian and biographer whose focus before now was the political career—and political scandals—of Donald Trump.

As you will soon see, the parallels between the lives of Trump and Musk are jarring.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Opposition To Trump

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Why is President Musk endorsing the “German neo-Nazi Party”?,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Both thom hartmann newPresident Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are in deep with the Chinese Communist Party (which has given millions to the Trump family and where Musk makes roughly half of his Tesla cars and many of his billions) and Vladimir Putin (both are reported to have had multiple phone calls and other communications with the Russian dictator over the past two years, including Musk cutting off Starlink internet access for Ukrainian drones that were supposed to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea).

Musk this week also endorsed the Nazi-infested German racist, far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and in the past has endorsed other European hard-right politicians and parties including in France and the UK.

Putin’s involved in a major effort to disrupt democratic governments around the world, mainly through using social media and video channels, and it increasingly appears that an anti-democracy coalition is forming here that includes several American and other rightwing billionaires and the Trump operation.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat expands on this extensively in her excellent Lucid newsletter this week; it’s well worth the read (and subscribing to).

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul (R-Crackpot) has suggested Republicans in the House should make Musk their Speaker (and third in the line of succession for the presidency), an idea that’s been endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. The Constitution doesn’t have a citizenship requirement or election requirement for the job, so it’s a real possibility, although probably wouldn’t get the necessary votes if Johnson is taken down.

No matter what, though, unless Musk and Trump get into some sort of major personality conflict (which I consider unlikely; Trump just wants to play golf and be loved, while Musk wants to get involved, presumably to protect the billions he gets in federal government grants and subsidies), it looks like the Muskrat is going to be America’s new overlord regardless of having or not having any official position.

 

steve bannon rally source unstatedThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: Bannon: Kash Patel Will Absolutely Investigate The People Named In His Book, Tim Miller, Dec. 20, 2024. A tough break for those hoping that the likely next FBI director may moderate if confirmed

bulwark logo big shipDonald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, right, is dead serious when it comes to investigating the political enemies who he listed in his book “Government Gangsters,” according to Trump’s on-again-off-again adviser Steve Bannon (shown above in a file photo).

kash patel headshot smile“Kash didn’t try to hide the football. Steve Bannon didn’t try,” Bannon asserted, speaking in the third person during a one-on-one interview with The Bulwark following his speech to Americafest, a yearly gathering of MAGA diehards hosted by Turning Point USA.

“He made a fucking movie that’s called Government Gangsters and the first guy is Merrick Garland ok. And Lisa Monaco’s in there who the nation doesn’t know, we’re trying to make these people famous. So no. First of all, it has to happen. Number two, it's going to happen.”

FBI logoAmong those who would have a clear understanding of Patel’s intentions, Bannon stands high up on the list. He worked with Patel on the documentary that accompanied Patel’s book. He has also routinely hosted Patel on his podcast. His comments serve as a stark contrast to how congressional Republicans have talked up Patel’s nomination by portraying him more as a force of reform at the FBI. Patel will need 50 votes in the Senate in order to be confirmed.

Bannon’s remarks, delivered during a wide-ranging interview, came after I expressed concern that Patel might use the powers of the FBI to target political foes in the shadows without accountability. Bannon asserted that it shouldn't be concerning, not because Patel would moderate his desire to ensnare political foes of President Trump but because he would do so right out in the open.

“Transparency and sunlight is our friend,” Bannon said before ruminating on the importance of Patel’s poorly written but politically potent book.

“I would say Kash’s book is more typing than writing, ok” Bannon quipped. “It’s not a literary thing. But when you see it, it’s so in your face and at the end he lists on eight pages people from the deep state that need to be investigated. … So I think it’s pretty transparent.”

Bannon was adamant that Patel’s forthcoming investigations would not be about political revenge but, rather, an important cleansing of institutions that Trump and the MAGA movement believe are fundamentally broken. Bannon himself served a four-month sentence in Danbury federal correctional institution for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“These investigations and all that, it's not for personal retribution. I would be the person then at the forefront since I spent four months in a federal prison and I could care less. [Prison] actually was very empowering for me,” he said. “We can never allow again to happen what happened. The debanking, the deplatforming, the coming after President Trump. You have to get to the bottom of it.”

Among the investigations Bannon specifically expected from Patel were ones that look into the supposed “fedsurrection” on January 6th (a conspiracy that the FBI was behind the attack on the Capitol, which I covered back in 2023) and the purported “vast criminal conspiracy” against President-elect Trump. A recent watchdog report found that there were 26 FBI informants—and no undercover employees—at the Capitol on January 6th. None were authorized to enter the building or otherwise break the law.

“I think there will be a massive investigation. The vast criminal conspiracy, including the medias,’ what was it Andrew Weissman and all those FBI guys that work on MSNBC, I think there will be big investigations into all these people, I just do. I think there is going to be a huge investigation, I believe, into 2020. I think it's going to be a huge investigation on January 6th, the fedsurrection, I think it's going to be a huge investigation about the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump.”

Lance's Substack, Political Commentary:The Democrats And Media (With A Few Exceptions) Are Not In The Real World, Or Are Lying Through Their Teeth, lance rosenLance F Rosen,  Dec. 22, 2024. Trump has been obsessed with having the power to use the military domestically to crush his enemies since he entered politics. Remember that he told General Kelly "Hitler did some good things," and later "I wish my Generals were as loyal to me as Hitler's were for him."

He knows that his program will produce rioting and violence in reaction, because that is what he and his team of fascist thugs want. He said as much when discussing the mass deportations, which he said would be "bloody." His worldview was literally influenced by reading Hitler's speeches, and being mentored by his KKK- supporting father.

djt roy cohn file

His other influences were J. Edgar Hoover, The John Birch Society, Nixon and Roy Cohn (shown above at  right), who was Joe McCarthy's lawyer and later the Gambino mob family lawyer. When Nixon ok'd the Governor of Ohio James Rhodes deploying the National Guard in 1971 to Kent State University and those students were shot, that put an end to anti-war demonstrations for the most part, while the draft-evading bone spur victim Trump supported it fully and never forgot the lesson from that. It was a formative event for him. Ordering protesters shot amounts to a psycho-sexual obsession which he has always carried, because the thrill of putting people to death who oppose him stands at the center of his aspirational fantasy life.

So his personal history is a road map for what he intends to do. He wanted to use the military to shoot social justice protesters in June of 2020 but Secretary Of Defense Esper and JCOS Chairman General Milley blocked him. (Remember he symbolically put the Missouri would-be vigilante gun brandishing couple on the RNC speakers list) This is one reason Trump will put Milley on trial for treason and try to have him executed. The point being there won't be anyone in this incoming White House team like Generals Milley and Kelly with the balls and honesty to oppose him.

The ruling by SCOTUS on immunity said that the President has the power to order Seal Team Six to murder his opponents because it is considered an "official act." The only conservative Justice who fussed a little bit was Barrett, but that was just an ass-covering dance routine which amounts to nothing. And be sure that Trump and Musk, along with their compliant Attorney General Bondi intend to push the envelope as far as possible starting the moment this blasphemous lunatic puts his hand on that Bible and lies like a pig when he swears to uphold the Constitution.

Trump has consulted with Vladimir Putin for years in direct conversations, (the number of which is both substantial but unknown) asking him for advice on many things. During the George Floyd demonstrations in front of the White House, a scared shitless Trump called him to ask how he would handle it. Reportedly Putin told him in effect, "you can't let people think that you appear weak." That was roughly when he tried to invoke the 1807 Act and deploy the military, and became the infamous "bunker boy" who descended into his underground lair, just like Hitler in his final days, to scream at his Generals and give out orders to non-existent Army groups.

So these commentators who are cheerleading for GOP moderates and celebrating their factional brawls, in effect watching all of this, both-sidesing most of his nominees, "eating popcorn" and arguing that there should be "no worries," that the moderates and MAGAs will devour each other, that Trump will become envious of Musk and dump him, are absolutely in a delusional fantasy state. None of those things, even to the extent they are real, will succeed in stopping the Trump fascist counterrevolution against democracy.

We are still in the transition, and everything changes when these maniacs get their hands on the reins of government. The Democratic establishment and media, with a few exceptions, are spinning every possible political scenario to give people the excuse to sit on the sidelines and watch, because they are themselves too scared to face what Trump will do or act upon it.

Trump loves violence. He is an adjudicated rapist. He derived a sexual thrill watching his supporters on TV beating Capitol Police to death on January 6th. He egged on his campaign rally attendees last Summer to physically attack the press covering his speech when he actually praised one nut who tried to do just that after a Trump rant that the press were "the enemies of the people."

So most of the political spin people are consuming is meant to help them avoid thinking about the day of reckoning on January 20th, "Day One," where he pledged to invoke the 1807 Act for the national "border" emergency."

It is similar to how Hitler used the contrived "Reichstag Fire" emergency to suspend the Weimar Constitution, as he plans to deploy the military and US law enforcement to "Democrat cities" in blue states to start the mass roundup. And the point of it is not just to imprison and deport immigrants. It is to provoke opposition by his political adversaries so he can have a pretext for arresting them and putting them in jail.

 

eric adams horizontal 2024This is why the corrupt craven Mayor Adams of New York, above, is bending over to lick Trump's bone spurs in exchange for a pardon. New York is likely to be second on the list for Trump's domestic invasions by the military after Chicago. The mass deportations are in fact intended as a cover for his "retribution" campaign against everyone who ever stood in his way, prosecuted him, or criticized him.

Seriously, what else do people think is being discussed as an operational plan? They have already mapped all of this out in Project 2025, but our opposition "leadership" are acting like the blind fools who read Hitler's Mein Kampf in the 1920's and 30's and said "he can't be serious, nobody would ever try to do something like that...especially not that incompetent clown." Yes, people actually said that.

The media is afraid of being shut down and being given the same treatment. So Bezos caved on the Harris endorsement, ABC paid Trump a ransom to leave them off his retribution list, and the media kingpins are lining up to give Trump millions for the inaugural, hoping that paying out a little "protection" like a frightened store owner to a local gang leader would buy them some safety and time.

And our problem now is that our people are putting more energy into thinking about their personal survival and possibly leaving the US than are thinking about how to resist Trump's plans. So they are sitting at home on their phones and tablets posting memes and cheering for the "moderate" Republicans whose heads are all going to be stuffed and mounted at Mar-a-Lago in three months.

The fear factor is what is running the show right now. We are going to have to take a page from the 1960's Civil Rights movement when they organized and stood up to Jim Crow, Klan lynchings, firebombings, police brutality in the form of mass arrests, attack dogs, fire hosing and tear gassing. We are there, because we have the power-hungry insane son of a Klansman and a doubly insane son of a pro-Apartheid Afrikkaner, both of whom are fanboys of the Putin dictatorship in Russia, coming in to run the White House.

The Democratic strategy as it now stands is to lay back and let it all happen, because they think Trump will have to own his destruction and carnage and this will propel the Democrats victory in the mid-terms, and after that "on to 2028."

This is more or less what the German Social Democrats did in 1932-33. They said "let Hitler have his run, and he'll make such a mess of things that we will come back to power in the next elections."

The next German election came 12 years later, after a Holocaust and world war that left 50 million dead, half the world in rubble, with tens of millions displaced and made into refugees.

This is what the so-called Democratic leadership is doing, repeating step by step the catastrophically tragic decisions of those delusional fools who paved the way for Hitler.

I refuse to lie to my readers to help them feel reassured, or to keep up morale. I am glad when I hear from people who appreciate that and have the guts to do some tough reading and face these difficult problems.

I have no "plan" on what to do, other than stating that there has to be one and that those who refuse to change their proven dysfunctional strategies which are leading us to Hell need to get out of the way and make room for those who want to fight, and fight effectively, instead of just "letting it all happen" and trying to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Think about what I said about what Trump and Musk intend to do. And ask yourselves, is sending out cards and letters commensurate with that? Does hyping Mitch McConnell and other Republicans as Trump opposition leaders mean a damned thing, knowing what Trump intends to do with his immunity power on "day one?"

The first step toward fighting and defeating this insanity is to face reality. My job is to serve it up to my readers in heaping portions, and to help our new leadership come forward in response to it.

Those who can't handle it should take a break or leave. It's only going to increase in intensity once the shit show starts. It is decision time.

Rolling Stone: The race for DNC Chair is becoming a referendum on the influence of billionaire donors in the Democratic Party, Tessa Stuart, Dec. 20, 2024. The Race for DNC Chair Is a Midwest Nice Fight

rolling stone logoFour candidates have declared their intention to compete for chair of the Democratic National Committee, but as the race heats up, an aggressively polite, exceedingly Midwestern cold war has broken out between factions backing the two state party chairs in the race: Ben Wikler of Wisconsin and Ken Martin of Minnesota.

To a casual observer, Wikler may look like the frontrunner in this race. He has scooped up endorsements from the Progressive Change Campaign democratic donkey logoCommittee, MoveOn.org (where he worked before taking over WisDems), and the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, which extolled his virtues in a lengthy Politico op-ed. The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg declared in a recent column, "If Anyone Can Save the Democrats, It's Ben Wikler."

dnc square logoAnd just last week, Wikler stopped by The Daily Show, where his appearance was praised by Pod Save America host Jon Favreau. "I've rarely seen Jon Stewart so impressed with a political guest (though I can't say I'm surprised he's a Wikler fan - so many of us are)," Favreau posted on X.

But DNC chair is a position voted on by 448 party insiders, roughly one-quarter of whom are state chairs and vice chairs. Among that group, Wikler's peers, the qualities that have made him a darling of the media -- his prodigious fundraising ability, relationships with donors and celebrities, and messaging ability -- have engendered resentments that could torpedo his bid to head the national party.

In conversations with Rolling Stone, current or former state party chairs expressed frustration at the outsize attention and money Wikler has attracted relative to his record as chair, and they raised questions about whether, as chair of the national party, he would be able to stand up to the ultra-wealthy donors he has courted during his tenure helming the Wisconsin party.

reid hoffman xWikler's relationship with billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, right,  -- who has previously sought to privatize state parties' prized voter files -- was of particular concern to several people. Hoffman, records show, has personally donated a little less than $9 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since Wikler took over.

Wikler's chief rival is his neighbor Ken Martin, the longstanding chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Since he took over in 2011, the DFL has never lost a statewide race, Democrats have gained full control of the state government twice, and advanced a slate of progressive policy priorities.

Among the half dozen current and former state party chairs whom Rolling Stone spoke with for this story, everyone agreed it was critical for the next DNC chair to have experience as a state party chair, and each praised Wikler and Martin as smart and capable. But where Martin, who heads the association of state party chairs, was universally complimented for the efforts he made to help fellow chairs, Wikler's peers described him as less than generous when it came to sharing contacts and other resources. (A representative for Wikler pointed out that assisting other chairs is part of Martin's mandate in his role heading the Association of Democratic State Chairs, and insisted that Wikler makes efforts to share his contacts, but that it was ultimately up to the person in question if they will allow him to share their information with others.)

Simmering in the background of the fight between Wikler, Martin, and their proxies is the reality that the state parties have seen their power recede dramatically over the last 16 years, ever since Barack Obama created his own 50-state nonprofit apparatus, Organizing For America. Today, most parties' main source of funding is a meager stipend from the DNC: between $12,000 to $15,000 to cover all of their operations every month. (That's up from $2,500 a month a matter of years ago.)

For most chairs, the work is hard, it is thankless, and the pay isn't just bad, but nonexistent - a completely volunteer position.

Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary: Trump's Very Bad Week, Part II, Simon Rosenberg, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Last night the Democrats swooped in and simon rosenberg twitterhelped a struggling GOP pass bills in the House and Senate to keep the government open through March. President Biden has just signed the measure and we will all be able to head off for the Holidays without worrying about what chaos Trump and Elon and MAGA may bring. For now, at least.

The bloom has come off the post-election Trumpian rose. The essential ugliness of his project that is often discounted or obscured in our daily discourse became the story this week. The warning signs about the chaos he will bring and the damage he will do to the country are now there for all to see and are impossible to ignore. Let’s review:

Trump is already unraveling the strong economy he is inheriting. Markets and our allies are not happy.

As has been well covered by economists and journalists, Trump’s economic agenda of tariffs and mass deportations will raise prices, re-ignite inflation, slow economic growth and increase the deficit. This week the Fed and financial markets started coming to terms that the US government may, in a month, start implementing an agenda that unravels the current strong and stable US economy and undermines the broader global economy that has made the US and the world so prosperous in recent decades. Due to concerns about Trump’s inflationary agenda the Fed announced a more “hawkish” position and is scaling back its interest rate cut ambitions in 2025. Mortgage rates are already rising. The stock market indices lost ground in the past two weeks. All of a sudden the strong and stable US economy is looking a bit wobbly - due to fears of what Trump may do.

It is likely now that Trump’s agenda is already damaging the US economy even before he takes office will spur calls from other Republicans and US business leaders for Trump to scale back or curtail his inflationary plans. Trump’s economic honeymoon ended this week, as his dangerous plans started being taken seriously by the US government and the markets. It is my hope that President Biden writes the next President a letter in the coming days urging him to back off his reckless economic agenda and preserve and protect the remarkable economy he is inheriting. The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s ongoing and aggressive tariff threats have already angered our closest allies and largest trading partners in Canada, Mexico and Europe. Trade wars and retaliatory tariffs would not just increase prices on every day goods, re-igniting inflation and harm the people Trump vowed to protect, it would weaken the Western alliance and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free. M

e and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free.

The very first paragraph of the Intelligence Community’s January 2017 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election read:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

What Trump is doing now should also be seen an escalation to undermine the “US-led liberal democratic order.” The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s Maniacal Efforts To Throw The Country Into Chaos Were Rebuffed By His Own Party. Trump’s legislative and political miscalculations this week were among the most significant I’ve seen in my 32 years here in DC. He was goaded into coming out against the must pass bi-partisan bill and crashing the US government by a lie-infused Elon Musk, and then added his own wild demands for ending the debt ceiling. The replacement bill Trump supported failed due to Republican -- not Democratic -- opposition on Thursday. Then last night his party along with Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March without the one thing he demanded -- a suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling, something he told Republicans they needed to fight for and keep the government shut until they won.

Trump was politically weakened this week, and it was all impulsive, reckless, self-inflicted wounds. He followed Elon, a bomb-throwing pro-Russia extremist, and got terribly burned. Speaker Johnson was also weakened, and the Republican Party, looked immature, foolish and not ready to govern. This was a fucking disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and the media is being remarkably direct in saying so this morning. Here’s Axios’ lead story today.

Recent Trumpian/MAGA stumbles:

  • John Thune was elected to be Senate majority leader, despite a fevered push by Trump allies to elect Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) He didn't even make it past the first round of votes.
  • Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was forced to withdraw from consideration to be attorney general. Despite being celebrated by some in Trump's orbit, the votes weren't there from Senate Republicans.
  • 38 House Republicans defied Trump by voting against a short-term spending deal he explicitly asked for. Congressional Republicans went against Trump's wishes again by voting for a spending bill that didn't include an increase in the country's debt ceiling.

For Trump to have put himself into a position of taking such a huge and consequential loss before even becoming President is big-time, holy-shit, political incompetence and is being see that way all across this city. It has weakened him with the very people he needs to pass his agenda passed and get his outrageous nominees through. It has been a stunning -- and encouraging -- few days.

elon musk sideviewIn this spirit  people are starting to come to terms with the dangers and recklessness of Trumpism -- recognizing that it isn’t just “locker room talk” or that there are actually bullets in the gun -- we are learning today that the man who committed the lethal terrorist attack in Germany yesterday was a devout follower of Elon Musk.

ny times logoNew York Times, One Way Democrats Want to Gain Votes: Talk Up Their Faith, Katie Glueck, Dec. 22, 2024. In a party that has grown less religious, some prominent Democrats say discussing their deepest beliefs can be an authentic way to connect.

As the Democratic Party wanders in the post-election wilderness after the bruising defeats of 2024, some of its newer leaders are tapping into an ancient form of connection: religion.

In Texas, a young lawmaker who could run statewide is urging his fellow white progressives to embrace discussions of faith in politics.

In Georgia, a Black pastor and U.S. senator is reclaiming religious language from those on the right who, he suggests, have twisted it to their own ends.

And in Pennsylvania, the Jewish governor’s faith is a central part of his public identity, evident in his campaign advertising and his major speeches — and even at a recent Christmas tree lighting.

“If y’all have not seen ‘National Lampoon Christmas Vacation,’ take it from this Jewish guy,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said as he addressed a holiday celebration in Harrisburg, Pa., this month. “You better go and rent that movie.”

While President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has often carried a rosary and playfully crossed himself, he long stood out in an increasingly secular Democratic Party.

But with his exit from public life nearing, a small but prominent cast of Scripture-quoting, religiously observant Democratic politicians — many of them poised to command national attention over the next four years — is signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule.

 

More U.S. Political Commentary

 

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, basks in the presence of Elon Musk, center, and President-elect Donald Trump

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.  heather cox richardson cnnShortly 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.

“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted. But it rejects the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires that Republicans sought, and it ensures the government can continue to operate at full capacity,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s good news for the American people, especially as families gather to celebrate this holiday season.”

Passing continuing resolutions to fund the government is usually unremarkable, but this fight showed some lines that will stretch into the future.

First of all, it showed the unprecedented influence of billionaire private individual Elon Musk over the Republicans who in 2025 will control the United States government. Musk has a strong financial interest in the outcome of discussions, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he had included Musk as well as President-elect Trump in the negotiation of the original bipartisan funding bill.

Then Musk blew up the agreement by issuing what was an apparent threat to fund primary challengers to any Republican who voted for it. He apparently scuttled the measure on his own hook, since Trump took about thirteen hours to respond to his torpedoing it.

Musk expressed willingness to leave the government unfunded for a month, apparently unconcerned that a shutdown would send hundreds of thousands of government workers deemed nonessential into temporary leave without pay. This would include about 800,000 civilian employees of the Pentagon, about 17,000 people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and those who staff the nation’s national parks, national monuments, and other federal sites.

Federal workers considered essential would have to continue to work without pay. These essential workers include air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers. Military personnel would also have to continue to work without pay.

Taking away paychecks is always wrenching, but to do it right before the winter holidays would devastate families. It would hurt the economy, too, since for many retailers the holiday season is when their sales are highest. Musk—who doesn’t answer to any constituents—seemed untroubled at the idea of hurting ordinary Americans. ″‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” he tweeted.

In the end, Congress passed a bill much like the one Musk scuttled, but one of the provisions that Congress stripped out of the old bill was extraordinarily important to Musk. As David Dayen explained in The Prospect, the original agreement had an “outbound investment” provision that restricted the ability of Americans to invest in technology factories in China. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) had collaborated on the measure, hoping to keep cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as well as the jobs they would create, in America rather than let companies move them to China.

As Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) explained, Musk is building big factories in China and wants to build an AI data center there, even though it could endanger U.S. security. McGovern charged that Musk’s complaints about the spending in the bill were cover for his determination to tank the provision that would limit his ability to move technology and business to China. And, he noted, it worked. The outbound investment provision was stripped out of the bill before it passed.

In The Prospect, Robert Kuttner explained this huge win for Musk, as well as other provisions that were stripped from the bill before it passed. After years of fighting, Tami Luhby of CNN explained, Congress agreed to reform the system in which pharmacy benefit managers act as middlemen between pharmaceutical companies and insurers, employers, and government officials. The original bill increased transparency and provided that pharmacy benefit managers would be compensated with flat fees rather than compensation tied to the price of drugs. The measures related to pharmacy benefit managers were stripped out of the measure that passed.

That lost reform shows another line that will stretch into the future: Trump’s team is working for big business. As Kuttner puts it, Trump, who is allegedly a populist leader, tanked a bipartisan spending bill in order to shield the Chinese investments of the richest man in the world and to protect the profits of second-largest pharmacy benefit manager UnitedHealth Group, the corporation for which murdered executive Brian Thompson worked.

Other measures stripped from the original bill were five different bills to combat childhood cancer. The idea that sick children were among the first victims of the funding showdown sparked widespread outrage. While the Senate did not return the entire $190 million worth of funding to the continuing resolution, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) pushed the chamber to pass the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, devoting $63 million to extend the original measure that was passed in 2014 in honor of a Virginia girl who advocated for cancer funding until her death in 2013 at the age of ten. Representative Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) had shepherded the measure through the House in November, when it received only four no votes, all from Republicans.

The Senate also passed a measure repealing two laws that have curtailed Social Security benefits for teachers, firefighters, local police officers, and other public sector workers.

Finally, the struggle over the continuing resolution shows, once again, that Trump is weaker than his team claims. While Musk got the Chinese investment restrictions stripped out of the final bill, Congress passed the measure without Trump’s demand for freedom from the debt ceiling in it. This failure comes after Senate Republicans rejected Trump’s choice for Senate majority leader and after his first nominee for attorney general, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), had so little support he was forced to withdraw from consideration.

Trump has been angling to get Florida governor Ron DeSantis to name his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Florida senatorship that will be vacated if Senator Marco Rubio becomes secretary of state, despite her lack of any previous experience in elected office. But that plan, too, seems to have gone awry.

Today, Lara Trump announced: “After an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many, I have decided to remove my name from consideration for the United States Senate.”

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Biden Sets PERFECT TRAP for Trump before DAY 1, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little mtn meidas touch networkgun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer.MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on President Biden laying traps to stop Trump for implementing his dangerous agenda.

Politico Magazine, The Political World Just Lost its Last Bipartisan Meeting Place, Jonathan Martin, Dec. 22, 2024. The federal government has laid out a nice little gun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer. David Axelrod’s podcast was the last place where members of the opposite party could sit down and share ideas.

politico CustomAt a moment when members of the opposite party rarely appear together on television, most political interviews are fleeting and the election may have doomed the last digital town square, David Axelrod’s podcast was an oasis.

Now, after a remarkable 605 shows over more than nine years, Axelrod is concluding his program by interviewing his fellow Chicagoan, Rahm Emanuel.

I’m sad to see “The Axe Files” go, in part because it’s more essential now than ever.

Yes, it was respectful and it generated more light than heat. There were no food fights. But I come to praise Axe, not bury him in a shroud of bygone-day nostalgia for civil discourse.

What made the program so compelling — and unique in this period — was that he had candid, deeply personal and extended interviews with the leading figures in both parties. Where else can that combination be found today?

I should disclose here that Axelrod also had on a range of figures from the media, along with other walks of life, and I sat for a session in 2016. That’s the right word because the show was always equal parts therapy session and journalistic inquiry.

Axelrod doesn’t have psychiatric training — that I know of — but he was once a superb political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He’s got ink in his DNA and that came through in every program, when he’d try to make news or at least prompt reflection. I could always tell he hated the shows where his guests showed up with talking points. (Been there!)

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 20, 2024 [GOP Power Vacuum], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 21, 2024. This evening the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for three months. The measure will fund the government at current levels halfway through March. It also appropriates $100 billion in disaster aid for regions hit by the storms and fires of the summer and fall, as well as $10 billion for farmers.

Getting to this agreement has exposed the power vacuum in the Republican Party and thus a crisis in the government of the United States.

This fight over funding has been brewing since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2023. From their first weeks in office, when they launched the longest fight over a House speaker since 1860, the Republicans were bitterly divided. MAGA Republicans want to slash government so deeply that it will no longer be able to regulate business, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights. Establishment Republicans also want to cut the government, but they recognize that with Democrats in charge of the Senate and a Democratic president, they cannot get everything they want.

As Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post recounted, when the nation hit the debt ceiling in spring 2023, Republicans used it to demand that the Democrats cut the budget back to 2022 levels. Democrats objected that they had raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times under Trump and that Republicans had agreed to the budget to which the new Republicans were demanding cuts.

The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped micromanaging the instruments the Treasury used to borrow money and instead simply set a debt limit. That procedure began to be a political weapon after the tax cuts first during President George W. Bush’s term and then under President Donald Trump reduced government revenues to 16.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product while spending has risen to nearly 23%. This gap means the country must borrow money to meet its budget appropriations, eventually hitting the ceiling.

Today, social media exploded with the realization that an unelected billionaire from South Africa who apparently supports fascism was able to intimidate Republican legislators into doing his bidding. In this last week, Trump has threatened former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) with prosecution for her work as a member of Congress and has sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was unfavorable to him before the November election. Those actions are classic authoritarian moves to consolidate power, but to those not paying close attention they were perhaps less striking than the reality that Musk appears to have taken over for Trump as the incoming president.

As CNN’s Erin Burnett pointed out “the world’s richest man, right now, holding the country hostage,” Democrats worked to call attention to this crisis. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) said: “We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time the Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”

Republicans, too, seemed dismayed at Musk’s power. Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him, but I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.”

Tonight the House passed a measure much like the one Musk and Trump had undermined, funding the government and providing the big-ticket disaster and farm relief but not raising or getting rid of the debt ceiling. According to Jennifer Scholtes of Politico, Republican leadership tried to get party members on board by promising to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion early in 2025 while also cutting $2.5 trillion in “mandatory” spending, which covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP nutrition assistance.

The fiasco of the past few days is a political blow to Trump. Musk overshadowed him, and when Trump demanded that Republicans free him from the debt ceiling, they ignored him.

Politico, Johnson hits unsteady point of his speakership at the worst time, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney, Dec. 21, 2024. One Republican has already vowed to oppose him due to the spending fiasco, and he can’t afford to lose another due to his incredibly thin majority.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), right .

politico Custommike johnson oHouse conservatives are putting Speaker Mike Johnson on notice: He has work to do if he wants to keep his job.

The Louisiana Republican is at his weakest point after he was caught between President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the right flank of his party in a bruising fight over spending that just barely averted a government shutdown.Politico, Trump's man in the Vatican, President-elect Donald Trump said

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Trump is already walking back his promises. Why don't the headlines simply say, "He Lied"??? Thom thom hartmann newHartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. The main promise Trump made to American voters before the election was that he’d “immediately” lower grocery and other prices.

Anybody with even a tiny bit of civics education knows that’s nearly impossible; the president doesn’t control any agency or have any power other than the bully pulpit to affect marketplace prices. Just ask Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were both one-term presidents largely because of inflation. Nonetheless, Trump repeated that promise over and over and voters believed him. Now, as Todd Beeton points out in his excellent Big Picture newsletter, Trump has dismissed this promise as something he never really intended to do because, as noted, it’s simply not possible. When asked on Meet The Press if he’d keep his promise to lower prices, he replied bluntly, “I can’t promise anything.” Right. He’d also promised he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 and their plans to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other popular government programs; now he’s stocking his administration with the actual authors of that document. He’d also promised to end the Ukraine war the day after his election; now it just looks like he’s going to leave that democratic nation and its millions of people to the tender mercies of Russia’s brutal tyrant and his rapist soldiers. Finally, Trump promised not to attack Social Security with his campaign sending out literally millions of flyers to homes in swing states saying he’d protect the program; that’s already in the crapper as the DOGE caucus and Musk’s people are examining the program for cutbacks. Republican Rep. Greg Lopez went so far as to bluntly tell Social Security Works’ president Alex Lawson, ‘there will be some cuts’ to Social Security. The three areas where it appears Trump may keep his promises are putting an anti-vaccine crackpot in charge of our vaccine programs, cutting more taxes for his billionaire donors, and setting out on a revenge spree once he controls the Justice Department. This is going to get ugly fast.

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Republicans in Congress kick the can down the road to March,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Democrats in thom hartmann newthe House and Senate pitched in and helped pass a stopgap funding continuing resolution to keep the government open until March.

It does not include the lifting of the debt ceiling which Trump and Musk wanted to prepare for the next round of borrowing trillions from American taxpayers to give to their billionaire friends as tax cuts. Nor did it cut entitlement programs, which so pissed off rightwing Republicans that 34 of them voted against the bill. But those corrupt Republicans who love the morbidly rich and hate average Americans haven’t given up hope; here’s the operant sentence from the article in today’s Washington Post about the vote: “[Johnson] proposed a handshake deal with fiscal hawks in his own party to try next year to slash mandatory spending — programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ health care and food stamps — by at least $2.5 trillion while raising the debt cap by $1.5 trillion, according to three people familiar with the details.” That’s how they plan to get to a $4 trillion tax cut transfer of wealth from all of us to the top 1% this coming spring: Get your popcorn.

 

pete hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Senate Passes Pediatric Cancer Research Funding, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 21, 2024. This funding was passed despite Republicans taking it out of the House Continuing Resolution

mtn meidas touch networkOvernight, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund pediatric cancer research that was originally stripped from the House Continuing Resolution to keep the government.

Previously, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was included in a deal in the House as part of the bill to keep the government open.

There was bipartisan support for this legislation until Elon Musk and Donald Trump stepped in, at which point Republicans removed the cancer funding from the updated continuing resolution.

At the same time, Senator Rand Paul was blocking the bill from moving forward as a stand alone bill in the United States Senate.

For a while it seemed as though this critical cancer research funding would not be included in any final continuing resolution given the Republican Party's opposition in the House. But, overnight, the United States Senate passed the bill via unanimous consent after Paul dropped his objections to the bill.

As a result, the bill will head to the President's desk who will likely sign the bill into law and ensure funding goes to the National Institute of Health for pediatric cancer research.

Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer's leadership, continue to push to pass the bill despite the failures of the House of Representatives.

 

Trump Transition News, Commentary

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Picks a Former Treasury Official as His Top Economist, Lisa Friedman, Dec. 22, 2024.  Stephen Miran, who served during Donald Trump’s first term and now works at a hedge fund, has accused the Biden administration of manipulating markets.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he was choosing Stephen Miran, who served in the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers.

“Steve will work with the rest of my Economic team to deliver a Great Economic Boom that lifts up all Americans,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement on social media.

The Council of Economic Advisers is a panel of experts that historically has operated within the White House, providing the president with advice on domestic and international economic policy.

Mr. Miran, whose role requires Senate confirmation, was a senior adviser for economic policy at the Treasury Department during Mr. Trump’s first term, a role that included advising on fiscal support during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009politico CustomPresident-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

Politico, Trump taps critic of Pope Francis for Vatican ambassadorship, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 20, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

politico CustomIn a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Burch will face a Senate confirmation process, but it is unlikely he will encounter stiff resistance from Republicans, as his views aren’t considered controversial in the party.

trump 2024Burch would be far from the first ambassador to the Holy See with a political background. Presidents from both parties have selected former elected officials who are practicing Catholics such as President Joe Biden picking Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Trump picked political activist Callista Gingrich in his first term. He also wouldn't be the first to have ideological or theological disagreements with the church.

But none of the picks to helm the Vatican to date would come into the role with as much a digital record of criticizing church leadership. On social media, Burch has criticized Francis’ leadership and shared the writings of some right-wing clerics who are critical of him. In 2023, he insinuated that church leaders were collaborating with controversial U.S. law enforcement probes into parishes that celebrated the Catholic Mass in Latin, a practice that was phased out decades ago for liturgy in local languages.

Writing on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

At the time, Burch defended geofencing as needed to “reach our fellow Catholics in the pews” and “ensure that our fellow Catholic voters get the facts and hear the truth — not the latest lies peddled by the media.”

 

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Mother Jones Magazine, Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda, david corn newDavid Corn, right, Dec. 16, 2024. It’s going to get very ugly.

"Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this FBI logomoment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now."

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Politico, The Catholics in Trump’s administration could take GOP in whole new direction, Megan Messerly, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The president-elect has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions.

politico CustomJoe Biden will leave the White House in January as only the second Catholic to occupy it. But a number of Catholics are expected to soon fill the ranks of Donald Trump’s administration.

Trump, who was raised as a Presbyterian but now considers himself non-denominational, has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions in his administration, including his own vice president JD Vance, left, a Catholic convert, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, rfk jr mouth openhis pick for Health and Human Services Secretary.

Their faith could play a direct role in shaping public policy, from pro-union policies and new tariffs to expanding the child jd vancetax credit and more tightly regulating the food and drug industries — and also help carve a new path forward for the Republican Party.

In interviews, several conservative practicing Catholic leaders said they see a close alignment between many of Trump’s second-term policy priorities and a conservative read of Catholic social teaching, which goes far beyond abortion. It’s also focused on promoting marriage and having children, giving parents wide discretion on everything from school content to health care and empowering non-governmental institutions like churches and nonprofit organizations for social support.

“No one’s walking into the administration ready to mount a crusade or anything,” said Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. But “there’s a very specific sort of Catholic paradigm that you may begin to see.”

trump 2024It comes after decades of influence of a more individualistic evangelical Protestantism on the Republican Party that, among other things, strongly embraced individual liberty and free market capitalism.

“The market is not an end unto itself. The market has a purpose — and that is to create a free and flourishing society. If the family is not doing well, society is not doing well. We need to make sure our public policy is helping family to function,” Bovard added.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

In his nearly decade of political prominence, Trump has already dramatically reshaped the GOP, and it’s clear that the Republican Party’s future likely won’t be found in Ronald Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism, which was fiscally conservative, socially conservative and hawkish.

Where Republicans have long been skeptical of government intervention, some in the party increasingly see the government as a tool to reshape social policy. Republicans who long embraced “pro-life” policies, like restricting abortion access and supporting crisis pregnancy centers, are now leaning into a broader set of what they call pro-family policies that range from tax policies encouraging people to get married and have children to restrictions on kids accessing online porn. They are also now starting to turn a skeptical eye toward big businesses, including Big Pharma, Big Ag and Big Tech.

ny times logoNew York Times, News Analysis: Why Wray’s Resignation May Signal a Shift in F.B.I. Tradition, Devlin Barrett, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.).  Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher christopher wray oin a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director changes with the administration.

trump 2024Christopher A. Wray, right, had considered resigning as F.B.I. director before. More than once, confronted with angry demands from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, he contemplated calling it quits.

When Mr. Wray on Wednesday announced his intent to do so, it was because he believed staying on the job into a second Trump term risked significant disruptions to the work force and its mission.

Justice Department log circularMr. Trump had already declared his plan to replace him with Kash Patel, a tough-talking loyalist who has vowed to force out bureau leaders and empty its Washington headquarters.

In conceding to the reality of raw power, Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director is more of a political post that changes with the administration.

For decades, F.B.I. directors have been appointed to 10-year terms to insulate them from the shifting winds of politics. Few F.B.I. directors stay a full decade, and the circumstances of Mr. Wray’s departure after seven years suggest that insulation has worn thin.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein, Dec. 14, 2024 Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logotrump 2024President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

Mr. Trump has long said that people he claims have wronged him should be prosecuted, including President Biden and his family; Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents; and Liz Cheney, the former representative from Wyoming who helped lead the House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power in 2020.

In recent months, he has filed various legal actions against the media that amount to a warning shot about what sort of retaliation journalists, in particular, might face.

As he prepares to take office again, Mr. Trump will have at his disposal the levers of government, a Republican Party that is more pliant than it was four years ago and a well-funded external political apparatus.

“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” said Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law whose book, “Actual Malice,” is about the Supreme Court’s most famous defamation case. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”

Ms. Barbas added that prevailing in court may be beside the point. The lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening,” she said.

Many of Mr. Trump’s lawsuits go nowhere, including one that accused Hillary Clinton and a group of other Democrats of being part of a racketeering conspiracy against him. That particular suit resulted in nearly $1 million in fines issued by the judge against Mr. Trump’s lawyer.

 

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Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, lance rosenright, 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.

kash patel headshot smileThe 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 logoFacebook 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.

mark zuckerberg G8 summit deauville wAnd 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.

 

 

Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts in historic indictment linked to Stormy Daniels hush money probe (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).

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.

juan merchan djt

ny times logoNew 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.

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if the decision withstands an appeal, Mr. Trump could become the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, criticized the ruling, calling it “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.”

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Imagesand TNS).

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Images and TNS).

 

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair.

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.

Politico Magazine, Opinion: You Should Worry About Kash Patel Running the FBI, Ankush Khardori, Dec. 14, 2024. The days of J. Edgar Hoover may be over, but kash patel headshot smilePatel’s nomination is deeply worrisome all the same.t national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

politico CustomSome key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close.

Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” Trump told NBC News that the members of the Jan. 6 committee should “go to jail” (even as he claimed that he would not direct his appointees to prosecute them). And his plan to install Kash Patel, right, as FBI director was made easier after Christopher Wray, himself a Trump appointee, announced he would resign despite having more than two years left on his term.

Trump’s decision to nominate Patel has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump. (A Trump transition spokesperson said, “Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic director.”)

trump 2024Many observers, including former federal law enforcement officials, oppose Patel’s nomination on the grounds that he would likely use the FBI to pursue Trump’s political opponents and that he might substantially corrupt the culture and professionalism of the bureau. To some, Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.

Patel clearly lacks the qualifications, experience and temperament to lead the agency. But how worried should the American public really be about him at the helm of the FBI?

The truth is that there are stronger internal and external safeguards in place against law enforcement abuses than during the Hoover era. He will indeed face some constraints because of the culture and bureaucracy of the FBI. But they may not contain him. And he will have plenty of opportunity to damage the bureau and its work — and to use and abuse the FBI for political ends. His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.

ny times logoNew York Times, Young Republicans Gather, Ready to Make America Vengeful Again, Shawn McCreesh, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). At a gala on Wall Street for the New York Young Republican Club, attendees were looking forward to retribution from the next Trump era, and musing on another run in 2028.  Late Sunday night, in a banquet hall inside the grand old Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street, the Republican operative Stephen K. Bannon was putting on one of his over-the-top, apocalyptic performances.

It was the annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — prom for pro-Trump provocateurs — and Mr. Bannon, 71, was the keynote speaker. Standing onstage, beneath soaring Corinthian columns and a vaulted ceiling, he looked out upon a sea of baby-faced acolytes in black tie and outlined the way forward for them and for the Trump restoration.

Donald J. Trump “is a leader of all the people,” Mr. Bannon said. “He’s got a kind heart and big soul. But that’s not us, right? We want retribution. And we’re going to get retribution.” The Young Republicans cheered.

Mr. Bannon added: “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28? Come on, man!” And they all roared some more.

Asked later if he thought Mr. Bannon was being serious about Mr. Trump making an unconstitutional run for a third term in 2028, the club’s 30-year-old leader, Gavin Wax, waved it off. “I think that was more of a light-handed remark to make fun and be a little jovial, but let’s focus on these four years and making the best of it,” he said.

That’s often how it goes with this crowd of Trump true believers. Like the man himself, they say outrageous things, and nobody knows how seriously to take them. They often don’t even seem to know how seriously to take themselves.


A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: F.B.I. Director to Step Down, Adam Goldman and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Wray told F.B.I. employees he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

christopher wray oThe F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, right, told bureau employees on Wednesday that he intended in January, bowing to the reality that President-elect Donald J. Trump had publicly declared his desire to replace him.

Mr. Wray made the disclosure while addressing employees Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Wray added that he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

FBI logoThe announcement comes after Mr. Trump said in late November that he intended to nominate Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist, to run the F.B.I., and more than two years before Mr. Wray’s 10-year term would have expired.

Over more than seven years, Mr. Wray oversaw one of the most consequential and tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history, juggling high-profile criminal investigations of political figures, heated congressional inquiries and two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump.

Even as he fended off Mr. Trump’s relentless criticisms of the F.B.I., Mr. Wray supervised a wide array of national security issues that included terrorism, escalating cyberattacks and threats from geopolitical rivals like China, Iran and Russia. He also had to grapple with a spate of mass shootings and the rise of right-wing extremism while managing an agency with 35,000 employees and a budget of more than $10 billion.

ICE logoBut it was the bureau’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump that almost certainly cut short Mr. Wray’s tenure.

His F.B.I. repeatedly investigated Mr. Trump, including by searching the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents, examining his widespread efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and delving into the possible links between his 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence operatives engaged in election interference.

“He invaded Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Trump told NBC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”

Justice Department log circularUnder Mr. Wray’s watch, agents also investigated the current president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his handling of sensitive records after he left the vice presidency. They undertook several other politically charged cases that made the agency the subject of sharp partisan scrutiny, including its inquiry into Hunter Biden.

In the face of intense political cajoling, second-guessing and condemnation, Mr. Wray frequently urged his agents to “keep calm and tackle hard,” and preached a strict adherence to the investigative process that has been the agency’s calling card for decades.

His apparent successor could not be more different. Mr. Patel, a former federal prosecutor and public defender, is a fierce critic of the F.B.I. and has vowed to fire its leadership, empty its headquarters and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.”

“If Kash gets in, he’ll be taking somebody’s place, and that somebody is the man you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said in the interview with NBC News, referring to Mr. Wray.

Mr. Wray became the bureau’s eighth director in August 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey from the job in 2017 in the middle of the Russia investigation.

At the start, Mr. Trump called Mr. Wray “a man of impeccable credentials.” But the president quickly soured on him.

Mr. Wray withstood extraordinary pressure from Mr. Trump to leverage the powers of law enforcement to damage his perceived enemies and later to play down the threats of right-wing violent extremism and Russian election interference.

The rift between the men grew as Mr. Wray waved off false claims the president peddled about voter fraud and left-wing extremists. His tenure became increasingly tenuous after William P. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, in part because he had fallen out of favor with the president. Mr. Barr was said to have argued against firing the F.B.I. director, shielding Mr. Wray from Mr. Trump’s fury.

Mr. Trump’s allies also took aim at Mr. Wray, faulting him for not speaking out vociferously against the Russia investigation or the botched wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser.

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump publicly declared that Mr. Wray should resign, and it was clear his antipathy had only intensified, partly because of the 2022 search of his Florida home.

After an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa., Mr. Trump lashed out at the F.B.I. because the bureau did not definitively say he had been shot in the ear.

“No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

In leaving before Mr. Trump is sworn in, Mr. Wray may avoid the kind of public standoff that marked some firings during the first Trump administration. kash patel headshot smilekash patel gangsters coverBut the turbulence at the F.B.I. is all but certain to continue if Mr. Patel, right (and author of the book Government Gangsters, shown at left, is confirmed and Mr. Trump tries to make sweeping changes at the agency.

Mr. Trump has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute his perceived enemies, whom he accuses of unfairly prosecuting him. He has also called for investigations of prosecutors, judges and politicians.

In his first term, Mr. Trump sought to weigh in on F.B.I. operations and at times expressed frustration that presidents typically stayed out of the bureau’s business.

“I am not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said in 2017. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Health Care Exec's Murder

Senate in November. ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus,

ny times logoNew 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 logoWashington 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.

brian thompsonThompson, 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?

salon LogoOn 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.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Public Health, Scandal, #MeToo, Trafficking, Abortion.

 

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).

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

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 bulwark logo big shiphealth 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!

trump 2024Kennedy 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 jonathan v lastfront lines.

bulwark logo big shipBret 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.

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U.S. Law, Cases, Courts

ny times logoNew York Times, Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say, Charlie Savage, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two more trips from a wealthy patron was included in a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ny times logoNew York Times, Top Uniformed N.Y.P.D. Officer Resigns After Abuse Allegations, Hurubie Meko, Maria Cramer and William K. Rashbaum, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Jeffrey Maddrey traded sexual favors for overtime, according to a report from The New York Post. He had previously been accused of harassment on the job.

New York City’s top uniformed police officer, the chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, setting off local and federal investigations and extending years of turmoil at the Police Department.

The former chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it, according to a statement from the department on Saturday.

Mayor Eric Adams had vocally supported Mr. Maddrey, a close ally, as recently as October. But on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the mayor, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said that he was working with Commissioner Tisch to conduct a “separate departmentwide review to ensure no high-ranking officers are using their power inappropriately.”

“We are deeply disturbed by these allegations and the N.Y.P.D. is investigating this matter,” Ms. Mamelak Altus said.

ny times logoNew York Times, They Made Over $100,000 in Overtime. Now the N.Y.P.D. Is Cracking Down, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Eliza Shapiro, Dec. 22, 2024. Commissioner Jessica Tisch has reassigned at least 29 officers. Some worked under Jeffrey Maddrey, who was accused of demanding sex from a subordinate.

Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year. The moves come as investigators are scrutinizing accusations that Jeffrey Maddrey, the department’s former highest-ranking uniformed officer, demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for overtime.

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.

Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.

Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.Federal investigators have joined a city Department of Investigation inquiry into the provision of overtime and the allegations of misconduct against Mr. Maddrey, who resigned on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter. The F.B.I. declined to comment on Sunday. The Manhattan district attorney is also investigating.

ny times logoNew York Times, Suspect Is Held After Woman Set on Fire in Subway Car Dies, Police Say, Johnny Diaz and Sara Ruberg, Dec. 22, 2024. The  victim had been seated in a subway car at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn when a man set her on fire.

Early Sunday morning, a man calmly approached a woman who was sitting motionless and possibly dozing on a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station and, without saying anything, lit the woman’s clothes on fire, engulfing her in deadly flames in seconds, the police said.

The man then watched from a bench on the subway platform as officers and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire.

The woman, who had not yet been identified as of Sunday night, was pronounced dead at the scene. Hours later, the man was taken into custody in connection with the fatal attack while riding another F train.

Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said at a news conference on Sunday evening that the police apprehended someone they believe “carried out one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being, and it took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

The man was found with a lighter, the police commissioner said. The man, who was not publicly identified, emigrated from Guatemala to the United States in 2018, Chief Gulotta said.

Last year, overall crime in the transit system dropped nearly 3 percent compared with 2022 as the number of daily riders rose by 14 percent.

According to a Dec. 18 news release from the governor’s office, subway crime was down 42 percent since 2021 while ridership has increased 148 percent.

washington post logoWashington Post, Senate confirms 2 Biden judicial nominees, boosting total over Trump, Tobi Raji, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). President Joe Biden’s diverse cohort of judges includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other U.S. president.

The Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s last two judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, surpassing Donald Trump’s first-term total of 234 judges even as the president-elect’s second term will afford him the chance to make many more judicial appointments.Get the latest election news and results

Benjamin J. Cheeks was confirmed to a seat in the Southern District of California by a vote of 49-47. Serena R. Murillo was confirmed to the Central District of California by the same vote count. Cheeks and Murillo are the 234th and 235th judges confirmed under Biden.

Their confirmations add to a diverse cohort of judges nominated by Biden that includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other president in U.S. history.

“We have people who are from all across America and who resemble America,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a news conference with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee after Cheeks and Murillo’s confirmations. “Our courts are stronger. Our courts are better. They reflect our country.”

A former magistrate judge, Cheeks is the 63rd Black judge confirmed during the Biden administration, setting a record for the most Black judges confirmed during a presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Murillo, who previously served as a Superior Court judge, is the 150th woman and 24th Latina judge confirmed under Biden, according to the group.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Former FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov Pleads Guilty To Lying About Biden Family, Jordy Meiselas, Dec. 16, 2024. Smirnov lied about a bribery scheme that became a critical part of the Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden.

mtn meidas touch networkAlexander Smirnov has officially pled guilty to lying about a bribery scheme that involved President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican attempt to impeach President Biden.

Smirnov entered a guilty plea to a felony charge related to the fake bribery story along with other criminal tax charges related to his concealment of millions of dollars of income.

In 2020, Smirnov first made claims that the Bidens had been involved in a bribery scheme related to Burisma and Ukraine. At the same time, Smirnov expressed bias about President Biden as a candidate.

An FBI office investigated Smirnov's allegations but closed the case in August 2020, and there has been no evidence that President Biden acted corruptly or accepted any bribes as President or Vice President.

At the time, it was unknown that Smirnov's allegations were the basis of a Republican attempt to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. And we now know that the story premising the impeachment inquiry was false.

Prosecutors agreed to a deal with Smirnov and recommended that he serve between four and six years in prison. The ultimate sentencing decision will be made by a federal judge at a later date.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Diaz, a 2010 Obama appointee, found that given its context, Ponsor’s article could be read “as a commentary on partisan issues and as a call for Justice Alito’s recusal.” Diaz closed the complaint because Ponsor acknowledged violating the rules, apologized for his actions and said he would seek ethics advice before doing any further outside writing.

“With the benefit of an objective perspective, I realize now that my criticism of the ethical judgment of a Supreme Court Justice might have had the effect of undermining the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judicial system,” Ponsor said in a letter appended to Diaz’s order.

Ponsor, who also wrote a 2023 opinion column titled “A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?”, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mike Davis, the activist and Trump ally who filed a complaint that triggered the review, said he was satisfied. “The courts and Judge Ponsor took this seriously. I accept his apology letter at face value,” said Davis, founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for conservative judges.

Critics of the Supreme Court were less sanguine.

“Justice Alito currently faces no consequences for his public commentary and actions that cast doubt on his impartiality, but the judge who raised legitimate concerns about these ethical lapses is disciplined in response to a complaint by a political activist with an axe to grind,” said a Durbin spokesman, Josh Sorbe.

Alito didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in May he wrote a three-page letter declining to recuse himself from the Jan. 6 cases. He said then it was his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who flew various flags at their homes, a practice he disfavored and had no part in. Under the Supreme Court’s recently adopted ethics code, each justice evaluates his or her own conduct. Alito determined that he would remain on those cases because his impartiality couldn’t reasonably be questioned.

Alito joined the majority in both Jan. 6 cases, limiting the charges against rioters and extending criminal immunity for former presidents.

washington post logoWashington Post, Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter, Sarah Blaskey, Patrick Marley, Hannah Natanson and Reis Thebault, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Court records show Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow’s parents had divorced and remarried multiple times.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others at her small Christian school here Monday had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy.You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

wisconsin map with largest cities CustomNatalie Rupnow, who also went by Samantha, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after police say she opened fire in a study hall classroom at Abundant Life Christian School.

The academy’s tight-knit community was still stunned Tuesday, grieving the student and teacher who were killed and searching for answers to explain the latest act of violence to strike an American campus.

Police have released few details about Rupnow beyond her name, and they said they were investigating a possible motive behind the shooting. With much still unknown, a Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.

“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference, where he asked the public for patience as authorities investigated Rupnow’s social media activity and state of mind leading up to the rampage.

The teen is one of just nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by The Post. She is also among the younger recent shooters: Just over a month removed from her 15th birthday, she was about a year younger than the median age of school shooters. And the violence unfolded at a small K-12 school with a religious affiliation, an uncommon site for such incidents, researchers say.

“A lot of this is quite surprising,” said Jillian Peterson, the executive director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center at Hamline University.

Rupnow’s mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Police said they have been cooperating with the investigation.

Rupnow’s father is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter, according to a review of his Facebook profile. The Post confirmed the account as Jeff Rupnow’s by verifying its authenticity with a person who attended school with him and by comparing the page’s contents to public records.

His posts celebrate his daughter’s achievements, such as the time she earned a purple belt in karate, and mark big life moments, like the day he bought a house. But one post, from August, has attracted more scrutiny than others.

In it, a photo appears to show Natalie Rupnow wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range, which her father identifies as North Bristol Sportsman’s Club in nearby Sun Prairie. In a comment accompanying the post, Jeff Rupnow wrote that he and his daughter had joined the club early this year and “we have been loving all every second of it!”

In the photograph, Natalie Rupnow is wearing a T-shirt bearing the letters “KMFDM,” an apparent reference to the German rock band whose lyrics were posted on the website of one of the shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Authorities declined to comment on social media posts, saying they were still investigating Natalie Rupnow’s online activity. Police have not disclosed how Rupnow was able to acquire the handgun they say she used in Monday’s shooting.

“How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?” Barnes, the police chief, said Monday, adding that his team was working with federal authorities to answer that question. He did not elaborate at the news conference Tuesday.

washington post logoWashington Post, Supreme Court to hear challenge to a TikTok ban in U.S., scheduling arguments for January, Ann E. Marimow and Eva Dou, Dec. 18, 2024. The justices said they will quickly take up the constitutionality of a federal law that would shutter TikTok next month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.

The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.Get the latest election news and results

In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

TikTok had asked the high court to intervene before Jan. 19, the deadline Congress set for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or be barred in the United States. The company wants the justices to put on hold a lower-court ruling that clears the way for the law, which was signed by President Joe Biden.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has suggested he could try to retain access to the app, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the ban-or-sale law.

Lawmakers passed the measure in response to concerns from U.S. officials that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

washington post logoWashington Post, Syphilis ravaged Renaissance Europe but may have origins in Americas, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Dec. 18, 2024.  For centuries, scientists have disputed the origins of the disease. A new study of ancient DNA suggests it emerged in the Americas before Columbus arrived.

In 1495, a devastating infection began to sweep across Europe, causing pustules and sores to erupt on people’s bodies and faces. Accusatory finger-pointing about the scourge, syphilis, began almost immediately. The Italians called it “the French disease”; the French called it “the Neapolitan disease”; the Russians called it “the Polish disease.”You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

The sexually transmitted disease remains a public health menace today, despite the fact that it is easily cured with antibiotics. But the scientific debate still rages about the ancient origins of syphilis — including why the wave of illness that swamped Renaissance Europe was so virulent.

Did syphilis initially emerge in the Americas and arrive in Europe in early 1493 when explorer Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, in the reverse of so many other illnesses that wiped out Indigenous peoples? Or was it a much older “pre-Columbian” disease that has been infecting humanity much longer — one that flew under the radar, perhaps mistaken for leprosy or another ailment in Medieval Europe?

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, an international team studied ancient DNA harvested from lesion-ridden bones or teeth of five people who lived in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Mexico either before or around the time of Columbus. They found that early versions of the microbe, Treponema pallidum, that causes syphilis and related diseases were already diverse and widespread. Their analysis suggests that syphilis emerged in the Americas within the last 8,000 years and spread across the globe fueled by European colonization.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump to nominate ex-NFL star Herschel Walker as Bahamas ambassador, Staff Reports, Dec. 18, 2024. President-elect Donald herschel walker hill tvTrump plans to nominate Herschel Walker, the former professional football player and Heisman Trophy winner who lost a scandal-trump 2024ridden bid for Senate in 2022, as ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump, meanwhile, moved closer to returning to the White House as the electoral college convened in all 50 states Tuesday and elected him to be the 47th president of the United States over Vice President Kamala Harris by a vote of 312 to 226.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. repatriates three Guantánamo detainees, leaving 27 at prison, Karen DeYoung Dec. 18, 2024. Two Malaysians charged with Southeast Asia bombings will serve additional sentences in their own country; a Kenyan charged with belonging to al-Qaeda in East Africa was sent home.

Three of the last remaining 30 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention center have been repatriated to their home countries — two to Malaysia and one to Kenya, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

Malaysians Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pleaded guilty in January before a U.S. military commission to charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses as lieutenants of the man known as Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia blamed for a number of deadly bombing attacks in the region in the early 2000s.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

They were arrested in 2003 in Thailand along with Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Encep Nurjaman. All three were held in the CIA’s “black sites,” a secret overseas prison network, until 2006, when they were transferred to Guantánamo.

As part of a plea agreement, the two Malaysians agreed in January to provide depositions for use in proceedings against Nurjaman and will serve additional “confinement for approximately five years” in their home country, according to a Pentagon statement issued after their scheduled departure early Wednesday.

The third repatriated prisoner, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, was sent to Kenya on Tuesday. Arrested by Kenyan authorities in 2007 and accused of belonging to al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, Bajabu was among the last five detainees to arrive at the U.S. facility in Cuba, established after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, that once held hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda operatives.

 

lina khan resized ftc

washington post logoWashington Post, FTC issues rules requiring hotels, ticket sellers to reveal ‘junk fees,’ Tony Romm, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). The industries must display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers or face potential federal punishment.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued long-awaited rules requiring companies to display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers, rather than hiding any extra charges — often called “junk fees” — until the very end of the checkout process.

The new regulations, which are slated to take effect next year, seek to crack down on “bait and switch” pricing practices, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan, who said the agency has received a groundswell of complaints about service charges, amenity fees and a raft of other potentially obscure, last-minute additions to consumers’ bills.

The FTC’s rules still allow companies to impose fees, so long as they are clearly displayed. The agency also focused its prohibition on just the lodging and live-event industries, not the fuller array of firms — from airlines to internet giants — that have similarly stoked public anger.

While the FTC initially proposed broader regulations, Khan narrowed the agency’s scope in a bid to secure bipartisan support among her five-member commission, which approved the proposal on a 4-1 vote. The lone opponent was Andrew Ferguson, a Republican, whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate to lead the FTC next year.

It is unclear how Ferguson would enforce the agency’s hidden-fees ban if he is confirmed by the Senate. In a dissenting statement, he blasted the agency for issuing rules “it will never enforce,” with Trump set to take office in January, but did not say how he might approach the issue as chairman.

Politico, Fetterman: Patel pledged to not go after political enemies, Mia McCarthy, Sen-elect John Curtis said he also talked with the FBI pick on the subject. “So I'm not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that's never going to happen,”Sen. John Fetterman, right, said when asked about Kash Patel’s past comments pledging to go after Trump’s enemies.

politico CustomKash Patel, right, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, kash patel headshot smileclaimed he would not go after his political enemies to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), despite Patel’s past claims that he would.

In an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that Patel told him he would not use the FBI to go after Trump’s enemies, despite his comments vowing to go after such people.

“So I’m not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that’s never going to happen,” Fetterman said when asked by host Jonathan Karl about Patel’s past comments pledging to go after political enemies. “That’s not it … that’s what he claims.”

trump 2024When Patel was nominated, a quote from him on a 2023 podcast interview with Steve Bannon was widely circulated. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel told Bannon then. Patel’s 2022 book, “Government Gangsters,” listed 60 potential targets for a new Trump administration.


john fetterman lt govFetterman, right, one of the few Democratic senators who has been meeting with Trump’s Cabinet picks, said he has no regrets about meeting with some of the controversial selections. He added that he learned a lot about Patel from his meeting, including that he used to be a public defender and his own family’s immigration story.

“There is going to be some [nominees] that I will vote yes, and there’s some, maybe that I’ll vote no,” Fetterman said. “But nobody can accuse me of just saying I had a closed mind, or I just said no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who will be sworn into Sen. Mitt Romney’s Senate seat in the new year, said that he discussed PaFBI logotel being blind to political affiliation in his new role.

“For me, one of the most important things that I needed to hear from Kash is that he would be blind to political affiliation, because I know some of the things that he said and that have been attributed to him,” Curtis said, also in an interview with Karl on “This Week.”

He added, “And I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats and we had some very specific conversations about that. And I wanted to make sure that he would be blind to that.”

When asked about Republicans claiming every senator should get in line with Trump and support his Cabinet picks because he has a mandate, Curtis said his son had brought up a similar concern at Thanksgiving.

“I did get more votes than him in Utah. Does that give me a mandate?’” Curtis said he told his son.

washington post logoWashington Post, The ‘perfect’ predator: How a police chief groomed a Texas town, Jenn Abelson, Alice Li, Jessica Contrera, Tucker Harris and Carolyn Van Houten, Dec. 18, 2024. The people of Maypearl, Texas, trusted Police Chief Kevin Coffey. Then they learned he was a sexual predator with a troubled past.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police Seek Motive in Shooting at Wisconsin Christian School, Julie Bosman, Dan Simmons, Mitch Smith and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 17, 2024 (print  ed.).  It’s not clear if the shooter, a student, targeted the teenage student and a teacher who were killed at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, the police said. At least six others were injured. Survivors described a fearful ordeal.

A teenage student opened fire at a Christian school in Madison, Wis., on Monday, killing another student and a teacher, the authorities said. At least six other people were injured in the shooting at the school, Abundant Life, where the youngest students fled from the building into the cold without coats, holding each others’ hands for safety.

Madison police identified the shooter on Monday night as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by Samantha. She was a student at the school, said the police chief, Shon F. Barnes, at an evening news conference. She was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital, and the evidence suggested she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Barnes said.

washington post logoWashington Post, In Ohio, an immigrant community prepares for Trump’s crackdown, Joanna Slater, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations could target places like Painesville, a small city in northeastern Ohio whose population has been transformed by immigration.

Veronica Isabel Dahlberg looked out at dozens of familiar faces gathered in a new community center on a recent Monday evening, all of them anxious for answers she didn’t have.

What would happen to the immigrants and farmworkers in this swath of northeastern Ohio?You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

Dahlberg, who has worked with the community for nearly three decades, couldn’t say whether President-elect Donald Trump would follow through on his pledge to carry out mass deportations. But she reminded the audience what his first term looked like here.

The ramped-up deportations, not of “bad guys” or criminals, but mothers and fathers pulled over for routine traffic stops. The people so frightened of being detained they sought sanctuary in local churches. The raids on a flower nursery and meat processing plant in the region.

What was coming would be at least as bad and possibly much worse, Dahlberg thought. She had read about Trump’s promises to build detention camps and use the military to expand deportations. She wondered who she could count on to help. As the head of HOLA Ohio, a local nonprofit, she had built relationships with elected officials, employers, police officers and school administrators.

“I don’t believe that they would just stand by and let our community get destroyed,” she said.

She paused. “But I could be wrong.”

Across the country, immigration advocates are racing to prepare for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants that could be unlike anything the nation has witnessed in decades. Trump has promised to deport the country’s undocumented residents, a population estimated to number 11 million people as of 2022, according to the most recent data available. Such an operation would face considerable hurdles: during Trump’s first term, deportations peaked at 347,240 in the 2019 fiscal year.

The consequences of Trump’s new push will unfold not just in areas close to the southern border or in major metropolises, but in places like Painesville, a small city of 20,000 near the shore of Lake Erie whose population has been transformed in recent decades by immigration, primarily from Mexico.

An estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Ohio. Most of those in Painesville have been in the country for more than a decade, mirroring the national trend, and nearly all of them live in “mixed-status” families — families that also include U.S.-born children, naturalized citizens or legal immigrants.

For such families, deportations nearly always separate parents from their children. Dahlberg saw it happen dozens of times in Trump’s first term. Last month, during her presentation at the community center, she reviewed the details of those cases.

ny times logoNew York Times, Carlos Watson, Ozy Media Co-Founder, Is Sentenced to Almost 10 Years in Prison, Danielle Kaye, Dec. 16, 2024. A federal jury in July found Mr. Watson, who started the digital media company in 2013, guilty of trying to defraud investors and lenders.

Carlos Watson, a co-founder of the now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, was sentenced on Monday to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders by lying about the company’s finances.

The sentence came five months after a federal jury convicted Mr. Watson and Ozy Media of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The jury also convicted Mr. Watson of identity theft, following a two-month trial during which witnesses detailed an impersonated phone call, fabricated contracts and misleading claims about Ozy’s earnings from 2018 to 2021.

Mr. Watson, who had pleaded not guilty and continued to assert his innocence up until his sentence of 116 months, faced a maximum of 37 years in prison. Government prosecutors had requested a 17-year sentence and $65.6 million in forfeiture to the government, though exactly how much Ozy will have to forfeit has yet to be determined.

“The fact that we’re here in this circumstance is tragic,” said Judge Eric Komitee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who presided over the case and imposed the sentence. “But it’s a tragedy of Mr. Watson’s own making.”

Politico, Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 16, 2024. A circuit court judge out of North Carolina rescinded his planned retirement, prompting GOP outrage.Anthony Adragna

With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased.

Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. His name vanished from a list of pending vacancies over the weekend, joining two district court judges in North Carolina — Algenon Marbley and Max Cogburn — in pulling back their decisions once it became clear President Joe Biden would not be able to appoint their successors.

In a letter to Biden, Wynn wrote “that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service” on the bench. All three were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Their decisions serve to deny Trump further bench vacancies to fill as he hopes to capitalize on his push to move the federal judiciary rightward. Though judges routinely time retirements to allow a desired president to appoint their successors, the GOP backlash has been consistent and heated.

lina khan resized ftcBig, The Newsletter of Antitrust, Monopoly Round-Up Commentary: FTC Revives the "Magna Carta of Small Business," Matt Stoller, right, Dec. 15, 2024. The matt stollerFederal Trade Commission went after the middleman economy. Plus, Kid Rock may keep the Ticketmaster antitrust suit alive, and other news of the week.

There’s lots of monopoly related news this week, like Kid Rock lobbying against Ticketmaster, Trump musing on eliminating the FDIC that protects against bank runs, and recriminations as Kroger and Albertsons execs point fingers at each other while desperately trying to not get fired. That part of the round-up is after the paywall.

The big news itself of the week is that the Federal Trade Commission finally attacked illegal price discrimination, after forty years of neglect. The FTC used an old and often neglect antitrust law, the Robinson-Patman Act, to sue a dominant liquor distributor you’ve likely never heard of, a company called Southern Glazer. Somewhere, Wright Patman is smiling down upon Federal Trade Commissioners Lina Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, and Rebecca Kelly-Slaughter for this historic move. And it is historic.

Southern Glazer is the tenth largest private company in the U.S., with $26 billion of revenue, and it is the exclusive distributor in certain states of a host of liquors, such as Hennessy, Tanqueray, Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Grey Goose, Jameson, and Johnnie Walker. And the FTC’s allegation is Southern Glazer gives better prices to big stores than small ones.

Since at least 2018 and continuing today, Southern has repeatedly discriminated in price between disfavored independent purchasers—which include neighborhood grocery stores, local convenience stores, and independently owned wine and spirits shops—and favored large chain purchasers of wine and spirits, such as Total Wine & More, Costco, and Kroger.

Still, the allegation doesn’t sound, on first blush, illegal. I mean, doesn’t a business have the right to choose its prices? And also, on some level, who cares? Don’t big stores just get volume discounts? That’s just how things work, right?

Well, no. Price discrimination, like gambling, usury, or even liquor itself, is the kind of political question that used to provoke deep reservoirs of anger and righteousness, a touchstone of the American character. “Let’s keep Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe,” said Wright Patman in 1940, noting that consolidation wrought by price discrimination had the potential to turn America fascist. He was not alone. “I would rather have thieves and gangsters than chain stores in Louisiana,” echoed Huey Long. Chain stores, wrote Louis Brandeis in 1933, were “converting independent tradesmen into clerks” and “sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns.”

Former FTC Chair Paul Rand Dixon once said of the law barring price discrimination, “I think it compares favorably with the Magna Carta or the Sherman Act.” Heady stuff.

From the other side, the antitrust bar has always hated the Robinson-Patman Act. Robert Bork called it the “Typhoid Mary of Antitrust,” Herb Hovenkamp said it was “irritating to almost anyone who is serious about antitrust,” and law professor Jerrold G. Van Cise said it was a “roughly hewn, unfinished block of legislative phraseology.” Its revival was a point of bitterness at last year’s American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring conference, prompting sputtering at FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who defended the use of the law. To understand the debate, let’s start with why Walmart is so cheap. It’s not because it’s some super efficient entity, it’s simply because it gets better prices from producers and distributors. Walmart sells something like 8-10% of all groceries in America, so when Walmart says jump, its suppliers ask how high? We routinely hear from independent stores and chains that they buy from their wholesaler for more than Walmart sells at retail, which is impossible unless Walmart is just getting better pricing for the same good.

And it’s not just the little guy who suffers, of course. Take the Kroger-Albertsons failed merger. One of the nuggets that came out in the case is that Albertsons, a massive supermarket chain, buys basic staples wholesale for less than Walmart sells it retail. Albertsons, even though it’s really really big, is a relative minnow, and sought to sell itself off rather than try and compete.

Price discrimination is the reason that Walmart and Amazon exist as the giants they are. Between 1997 and 2012, after we had stopped enforcing the law, roughly 108,000 local grocers and other retailers disappeared and rural poverty skyrocketed. The rise of Walmart stores, which are a result of Walmart getting better prices than rivals, even spurred a jump in obesity.

 I bring up this dynamic all the time on BIG. The prevalence of price discrimination is a key reason we had shortages during Covid, why our shipping industry is a cartel, why drug prices are out of control, why small businesses are dying, why bike stores are consolidated, and why radicalism is the order of the day in politics.

From the other side, antitrust lawyers and executives think the law is unworkable and ridiculous. They think businesses must charge different prices to different customers, there are rebates, fees, bundles, and a whole set of arrangements that simply cannot be subjected to micro-management by a law like the Robinson-Patman Act. But their real argument is that they believe it’s their right to discriminate among customers and suppliers. Might makes right.

So what happens now? Well the vote to bring the case was 3-2, with the two Republicans opposed. However, Andrew Ferguson, who will be the new chair, wrote in his dissent that he supports the use of the Robinson-Patman Act, and another Republican FTC nominee, Mark Meador, also supports enforcing the law. Ferguson’s objection to the case was due to his belief that the case wasn’t particularly strong, but it would be unusual to withdraw a case brought by a previous administration. Is it a strong case? Probably. The FTC complaint is based on a 2022 private case that is going to trial in 2026, brought by a law firm that is generally well-respected and specializes in the law.

Much of the FTC’s complaint is redacted, but it seems pretty clear that Southern Glazer was engaged in price discrimination. I mean, the law was a dead letter for decades, so it would be weird if corporations across the economy weren’t violating it.At any rate, I’m guessing we’ll see more private and state enforcement around this law, and adjacent state laws.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 15, 2024 [Safe Drinking Water Act, Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author, Dec. 15, heather cox richardson cnn2024. Tomorrow, December 16, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, signed into law on December 16, 1974, by President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican.

The measure required the Environmental Protection Agency to set maximum contaminant levels for drinking water and required states to comply with them. It protected the underground sources of drinking water and called for emergency measures to protect public health if a dangerous contaminant either was in or was likely to enter a public water system.

trump 2024To conduct research on clean drinking water and provide grants for states to clean up their systems, Congress authorized appropriations of $15 million in 1975, $25 million in 1976, and $35 million in 1977.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was one of the many laws passed in the 1970s after the environmental movement, sparked after Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring explored the effect of toxic chemicals on living organisms, had made Americans aware of the dangers of pollution in the environment.

That awareness had turned to anger by 1969, when in January a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Then, in June, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

In February 1970, Republican President Richard M. Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.” He called for “fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and

By 2015, almost 77 million Americans lived in regions whose water systems did not meet the safety standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, more than 2 million Americans did not have running water, and many more rely on wells or small systems not covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act.

The Biden administration began to address the problem with an investment of about $22 billion to upgrade the nation’s water systems. The money removed lead pipes, upgraded wastewater and sewage systems, and addressed the removal of so-called forever chemicals and proposed a new standard for acceptable measures of them.

What this will mean in the future is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to increase production of oil and gas—although it is currently at an all-time high—and such projects are often slowed by environmental regulations. On Tuesday, December 10, he posted on social media, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

“[B]y ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival,” Trump’s Republican predecessor Nixon told the nation in 1970. “While adopting laws prohibiting injury to person or property, we have freely allowed injury to our shared surroundings.” When he signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”—

Politico, Anti-slavery movement charts its path forward, Emily Schultheis, Dec. 14, 2024. An unlikely setback in progressive California has activists working to remove slavery exceptions from state constitutions grappling with the best way to draft future ballot measures.A California prison inmate with the Prison Industry Authority cleans one of the newly installed headstones.

politico CustomThe national movement to close a so-called slavery loophole in state constitutions was riding a wave of momentum after voters in eight states — including deep-red Alabama and Tennessee — removed exceptions to post-Civil War bans on slavery and involuntary servitude.

But the movement was handed an unexpected defeat this year in progressive California, where the failure of a ballot measure explicitly packaged as a ban on forced prison labor has left activists nationwide grappling with how best to draft such constitutional amendments in the up to 14 states where they could appear on ballots in 2026.

The movement’s lawyers want detailed language delineating what constitutes involuntary servitude so courts can be compelled to defend prisoners’ rights against forced labor. At the same time, campaigners confronting voters breaking right on questions of criminal justice want to see simply worded anti-slavery provisions free of specifics about what they mean for the incarcerated people who stand to benefit.

“That’s been a big part of our fight, making sure the language is correct,” said Dennis Febo, the New Jersey-based lead organizer for the Abolish Slavery National Network. “The more we’ve done on this question, the more we understand how complicated it is.”

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden Commutes the Sentences of 1,500 Americans, a Record for One Day, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mark Landler, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Many of those being granted clemency had been placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

Justice Department log circularThe commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

Politico, Biden commutes nearly 1,500 sentences, promises ‘more steps in the weeks ahead,’  Andrew Howard, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoned another 39, the most ever in a single day, the White House announced on Thursday.

The White House said in its announcement that those receiving clemency “have shown successful rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” The 39 pardon recipients had all committed non-violent crimes, and the commutations were for people who were placed in home confinement during the pandemic.

Justice Department log circular“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

Following Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, he faced pressure from some Democrats, as well as outside advocacy groups, to use his clemency powers more widely before his term ends in January. Biden indicated in his statement that he “will take more steps in the weeks ahead.” “My Administration will continue reviewing clemency petitions to advance equal justice under the law, promote public safety, support rehabilitation and reentry, and provide meaningful second chances.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who was one of the Democrats pressuring Biden to issue pardons, praised the president’s decision, calling it a “meaningful and historic action.”

“Thanks to President Biden, today a near 1,500 families will have their lives changed forever and I congratulate each and every family on this new beginning,” she said in a statement.

Still, Pressley is pushing for more clemency actions before Biden’s term ends.

“With 39 days remaining in his presidency, President Biden has the power to continue to use his clemency authority to change and save the lives of many, many other Americans behind the wall,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and it is a matter of legacy.”

The progressive group Popular Democracy in Action struck a similar tone, praising Biden’s decision but also telling the president “do not stop now.”

Politico, Watchdog faults DOJ in Trump’s first term for secretly obtaining records of lawmakers and journalists, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 11, 2024 (print ed.).. During leak investigations, Trump’s DOJ obtained phone and email records of two House Democrats and dozens of congressional staffers.

politico CustomThe Justice Department during Donald Trump’s first term failed to comply with its own procedures when it sought journalists’ phone and email records in leak investigations, according to a DOJ watchdog report released Tuesday.

Justice Department log circularAnd the department never conducted any high-level review as it swept up the records of 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic House members, the report found.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, left, said he also found no evidence that federal prosecutors got express approval from then-Attorney General Bill Barr or told federal courts that the subpoenas were for records of lawmakers and their aides, despite the michael horwitz headshotpotential for the probes to intrude on legitimate oversight efforts by Congress.

Obtaining the records of lawmakers and their staff during criminal investigations “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Horowitz wrote in his 91-page report.

Barr told POLITICO in 2021 that he did not know the Justice Department sought any lawmaker’s records in the leak probes, which involved disclosures about the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page and ties between that campaign and Russia.

Barr declined to be interviewed by Horowitz’s team, but the report says investigators found no indication the issuance of subpoenas for lawmakers or their aides was raised to Barr’s level. Indeed, the report concludes that — at the time — there was no policy in place to require added review of subpoenas and similar demands for information about lawmakers and their staff.

The inspector general launched the review in June 2021 after President Joe Biden took office and press reports revealed that investigators probing leaks of classified information obtained court orders to access phone records of two prominent Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Horowitz said the Justice Department’s decision to include Schiff and Swalwell in the investigation was based on a claim from a Democratic staffer who suspected them of having a role in the leak of classified intelligence. The department later determined that the staffer’s contentions lacked any “evidentiary support” and were found to be “of uncertain credibility.”

Horowitz’s report, which does not identify the lawmakers by name, did not turn up indications that the two outspoken Trump critics were targeted because of their political views or affiliation.

“We did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors who issued the compulsory process we reviewed,” the report said.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration also faced scrutiny for efforts to access the email account of then-House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel. Patel, who is now Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has long decried the intrusion by Justice Department officials, which he claimed was retaliation for his effort to undermine the investigation of Trump’s 2016 ties to Russia.

Last year, Patel sued top Justice Department officials over the grand jury subpoena, and his suit was dismissed in September by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

Patel was one of the 43 congressional staffers whose phone or email logs were pursued by investigators — a number higher than previously known. The review found that 21 of them were affiliated with Democrats, 20 with Republicans and two were in nonpartisan positions. The Justice Department did not seek or obtain the content of their communications, but only details such as which phone numbers or email accounts they were in contact with and when, Horowitz found.

Around the same time the existence of subpoenas aimed at lawmakers was reported, it emerged that prosecutors also sought phone or email records for journalists at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN as part of the same leak investigations.

Barr did approve the subpoenas aimed at reporters, but the department never convened an internal panel that a policy in place at the time said should examine all such requests, the watchdog report found.

“This deviation from the Department’s own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the vital role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” Horowitz wrote.

Biden called the tactic aimed at reporters “simply wrong” and vowed it would not continue under his administration. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo banning the practice and he later formalized that policy in DOJ regulations.

Horowitz was particularly critical of the Justice Department’s handling of gag orders it obtained on companies like Apple and Google. Those orders prevented the firms from telling targets about the demands.

Last year, the Justice Department issued a policy on subpoenas aimed at lawmakers, requiring high-level approvals at DOJ. Horowitz’s report reveals that DOJ quietly updated that policy again in September after getting a draft of the review. Among the latest requirements: Prosecutors must inform the judge or magistrate that the requests target a member of Congress or congressional staff.

The incoming Trump administration is expected to roll back the protections Garland adopted for journalists and perhaps even to eliminate earlier limits Democratic and Republican administrations had put on such demands. Legislation pending in Congress could block those moves, but last month Trump urged Republican lawmakers to “kill” the measure, known as the PRESS Act.

Horowitz said the past and current policies encourage prosecutors to seek lawmakers’ records because getting subpoenas for journalists’ emails or phone records required high-level approval, which has been basically impossible to get since 2021. He noted that even the latest Justice Department policy doesn’t require prosecutors to exhaust other avenues before demanding email and phone providers turn over lawmakers’ records.

Most of the leaks did not result in criminal charges, but one staffer swept up in one round of phone and email records searches — Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe — pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his dealings with journalists. A judge sentenced Wolfe to two months in prison.

Another long-awaited report is expected from Horowitz’s office in the coming days: a review of the Justice Department’s actions in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. That review has been pending for nearly four years. Horowitz recently acknowledged that work on it was frozen for about two years while prosecutors pursued some of the most serious criminal cases stemming from the attack.

Horowitz’s release of the long-awaited investigations comes as Horowitz and other inspectors general across the government face the possibility of being removed or even fired by the incoming Trump administration. Some Trump allies have urged him to install his own appointees in the independent watchdog roles at federal agencies, although traditionally most inspectors general have not resigned during a change of administration or of partisan control of the White House.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have vowed to oppose any attempt by Trump to oust the experienced watchdogs.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manchin and Welch Introduce Amendment for SCOTUS Term Limits, Troy Matthews Dec 10, 2024. 70% of Americans favor ending lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices.

Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices. The move is aimed at restoring confidence in the Court, as the approval rating for SCOTUS is at its lowest point in history, with only 16% of Americans reporting "a great deal of confidence" in the highest Court.

The Manchin-Welch amendment would impose single 18-year, non-renewable terms for Supreme Court justices. Each 18-year term would be staggered every two years. Current justices will not be held to term limits, but blocks of 18-year terms will begin to cycle every two years once the amendment is ratified. When a current justice retires, their replacement will be assigned the remainder of the current 18-year block, until every justice on the Court is term limited.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manhattan Prosecutors Oppose Dismissing Trump's Criminal Case, Aaron Parnas Dec 10, 2024. Prosecutors are pressing forward with the case even with Trump becoming President again.

This afternoon, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has filed an opposition to Donald Trump's request to immediately vacate the guilty verdicts against him and to dismiss the criminal case given the results of the November 5th election. Prosecutors had been considering whether to make this move for several weeks, and have officially decided to oppose any dismissal on several grounds.

First, prosecutors argue that the Manhattan court should reject Trump's motion to immediately dismiss the case given the fact that he has not yet been sworn in and does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution while President-elect.

The opposition goes on to highlight how even after he is sworn into office, the case should not be dismissed because the temporary immunity Trump will enjoy over the next four years does not justify wiping out the jury's verdict, especially as Trump's team does not dispute that the 34 felonies he was convicted of deal with purely unofficial conduct.

Prosecutors note that "at most, [Trump] should receive temporary accommodations during his presidency to prevent this criminal case form meaningfully interfering with his official decision-making."

Prosecutors listed several alternative remedies to a complete dismissal including a stay of proceedings during his term in office if judgment is not entered before January 20th. The decision will now ultimately be up to Justice Merchan who will decide whether or not to dismiss the criminal charges against Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Penny Verdict, a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Crime and Mental Illness, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024. A New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. Republican politicians hailed the verdict. But some New Yorkers found it deeply disturbing.

Outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday, a scuffle broke out among demonstrators, their chants amplified over bullhorns.

On one side were supporters of Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was charged with fatally choking a fellow subway rider, Jordan Neely, on an uptown F train last year. They held signs, including one that said, “Daniel Penny deserves a prize not a prison.” On the other side were people protesting on behalf of Mr. Neely. Upset, they grabbed a sign and ripped it up.

As the sides exchanged barbs and police officers erected a barrier to separate them, inside the courthouse 12 New Yorkers were coming to a unanimous decision. Mr. Penny, they concluded, was not guilty.

If the death of Mr. Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who had struggled with mental health problems, had left New Yorkers unnerved and divided, the verdict quickly became yet another flashpoint in the nation’s debate over how best to address issues of crime and justice, homelessness and mental illness.

Republican political figures including Vice President-elect JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised the jury and criticized the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for pursuing the case.

“Thank God justice was done in this case,” Mr. Vance said on social media. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Penny a hero who deserved a medal.

But in New York, some found the verdict deeply troubling. “This decision highlights a deep-seated societal discomfort with unhoused individuals in need of support, and effectively green-lights ‘vigilante justice’ against the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” leaders of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus said in a statement.

Recent Relevant Headlines

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

Trump Cases, Convictions, Reprisals, Allies

A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

Politico, Trump promised Jan. 6 pardons. His post-election silence is making loyalists nervous, Kyle Cheney, Nov. 30, 2024. His die-hard supporters — as well as some federal judges — are left to speculate about his clemency plans.

politico CustomDonald Trump campaigned on a pledge to pardon a vast swath of supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But his silence on the matter since winning the election has begun unsettling some fervent allies awaiting even the slightest signal from Trump about how he intends to turn his campaign rhetoric into reality.

Federal judges overseeing Jan. 6 cases have been left to guess at Trump’s plans. As a result, they have allowed nearly all cases to proceed, saying Trump’s clemency plans are merely “speculative.” Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have brought a handful of new Jan. 6 felony cases since Election Day, and they’ve argued repeatedly against efforts by defendants to delay their cases to await Trump’s inauguration.

Justice Department log circularThe Justice Department has charged more than 1,500 people for their roles in the riot. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would pardon many of them. But he left the specifics unclear, and never said whether he might leave in place some prosecutions, particularly against people who assaulted police.

Now that he’s president-elect, his failure to say more has begun nagging at some of his die-hard supporters, who have engaged in a public guessing game on X about Trump’s intentions.

Politico, Trump picks Kash Patel to lead FBI, Megan Messerly, Dec. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The position will require Senate confirmation.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he has picked staunch Trump loyalist Kash Pate, shown above,l as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

politico CustomPatel, a Trump transition insider, has been one of Trump’s most visible and vocal allies, showing up at his criminal trial in Manhattan, perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He worked as chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, and has been outspoken about calling for a purge of Trump’s enemies from the Justice Department, FBI and other intelligence agencies.

ICE logoIf confirmed, Patel will replace current FBI Director Chris Wray, whom Trump nominated in 2017 after firing James Comey, cutting his 10-year term short. Wray’s term is not set to expire until 2027, so Trump will have to fire Wray to install Patel, if Wray doesn’t resign first.

FBI logoTrump, in a post to Truth Social, called Patel a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”

“He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” the president-elect added, referring to the role Patel played as a staffer in crafting House Republican responses to the investigation into Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

At the time, Patel was an aide to Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, a position that helped raise his profile in Trump’s inner circle.

Justice Department log circularPatel was also angling to be deputy director of the CIA, a position that would not have required Senate confirmation, unlike the FBI director post, which does. It’s unclear whether Patel, who is a divisive figure even among Trump loyalists, will have the votes needed in the Senate to be confirmed.

When Trump floated naming Patel deputy director of the FBI during his first administration, then-Attorney General Bill Barr responded “over my dead body,” according to reporting at the time. CIA Director Gina Haspel also threatened to quit over the CIA Logomove.

Patel is a former federal public defender and former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division. A staunch Trump defender, Patel has been assisting the president-elect in compiling a list of candidates to join the Justice Department.

Patel has also promised to investigate and potentially prosecute journalists.

“We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” Patel said last year.

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More On Presidential Pardons

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden must ignore pardon myths and protect Patel’s and Trump’s targets, Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 17, 2024. Patel issued unprecedented threats. Biden must respond.

Since President Joe Biden began seriously considering an amnesty for people at risk of retribution from President-elect Donald Trump and his FBI pick (who comes armed with an enemies list), the pearl clutching and myth-spinning about pardons have spread. Biden should pay attention to history and case law, not misinformed critics.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The first myth: A broad amnesty would be unprecedented, an intrusion into the rule of law. That is categorically false. More than a dozen presidents dating back to George Washington have granted amnesty to a defined, large group of Americans. As legal scholar Frank O. Bowman III pointed out:

George Washington issued pardons in 1794 to defuse the lingering tensions of the defeated Whiskey Rebellion. President Andrew Johnson made extensive (and controversial) use of the pardon power to civilly rehabilitate former Confederates. A century later, Gerald Ford issued a conditional amnesty and Jimmy Carter a full pardon to Vietnam draft evaders.

Presidential amnesties for categories of people have been commonplace. After Washington, President John Adams issued a broad pardon for those involved in the Fries Rebellion in 1799 in Pennsylvania (i.e., prosecutions of “any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection”). With a small exception, President James Buchanan, for example, pardoned Brigham Young and his Mormon followers who had engaged in a conflict with the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland also issued pardons to Mormon polygamists.

The White House Historical Association recounts that presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Warren G. Harding granted amnesty or commutation to various groups of Americans — citizens convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for Jefferson, and 24 political prisoners (including Eugene V. Debs) for Harding.

Moreover, the association explains, “As decided in Ex Parte Garland (1866), presidents may issue pardons at any time after the commission of a federal offense, even before federal charges have been filed or a sentence has been imposed.”)

What is entirely unique is that an incoming president and a would-be FBI director nominee have explicitly named people and groups (e.g., prosecutors) they want to go after. To meet that unique threat, Biden should issue amnesty to the most vulnerable group of Americans: witnesses against Trump whom Trump and Kash Patel have already threatened.

The second myth: Some people might not want amnesty. Again, this is not a valid reason to refuse to extend it to those who very much do want and need protection. Some individuals enjoy immunity from prosecution on other grounds so won’t need additional protection; they would be excluded from the amnesty. House members on the Jan. 6 committee immune under the speech and debate clause, along with and federal and state prosecutors operating under the color of law, almost certainly cannot be prosecuted.

But that leaves some ordinary Americans, primarily witnesses and those who provided material to courts, grand juries, Congress and federal investigators, to twist in the wind. It’s small comfort that such people would eventually be exonerated. Criminal trials and appeals can cost millions of dollars and ruin reputations as well as likely increase the physical threats many of these figures already face.

The third myth: Amnesty would not completely protect the recipients. It is correct that such an amnesty would not protect recipients from criminal investigation for future conduct, from civil suits or from IRS audits. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of a rogue, irresponsible president-elect empowering intended nominees to seek vengeance. However, by limiting the pardon to a discrete group of people, making clear this is essentially a witness protection program to insulate the recipients from Trump’s wrath, Biden can spare some conscientious citizens and alert the public to the dangers Trump and Patel pose.

The fourth myth: Accepting amnesty is an admission of guilt. This is false. The most recent case on the scope of pardons, 2021’s Lorance v. Commandant, held that the defendant’s acceptance of a full and unconditional presidential pardon did not amount to an admission of guilt, and therefore the defendant did not waive his habeas rights upon acceptingit.

Lorance also dealt with a common misperception concerning a Supreme Court case, 1915’s Burdick v. United States, which seemed to suggest that accepting a pardon constituted “a confession” of guilt. However, Lorance explained that that statement referred to how the pardon recipient might feel. In other words, though acceptance might make the recipient “look guilty” in the eyes of some, it does not make the recipient legally guilty.

Biden in his amnesty statement can underscore that acceptance is no admission of wrongdoing but rather confirmation that the incoming president poses extreme and unprecedented threats to political enemies — something indicative of an authoritarian regime, not a great democracy.

The fifth myth: This would open the door to pardon abuses by Trump and/or mar Biden’s legacy. The first is laughable given Trump’s pardon track record (e.g., Michael Flynn, Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and his plans to pardon those convicted of violent crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. He needs no excuse to flout democratic norms. (By the way, Biden might not have considered amnesty had not Trump recently repeated his threats and chosen Patel for FBI director with barely a whisper of complaint from Republicans. If Trump renounced revenge and found a fit nominee, none of this might be necessary.)

As for Biden, his Hunter Biden pardon statement explained that he acted because “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” It certainly follows that he should act to keep raw politics — unabashedly announced in advance — from leading to a miscarriage of justice.

If ordinary citizens face retribution for daring to testify against powerful bullies, few will do so. To preserve the justice system, to encourage people to provide evidence, Biden should grant them amnesty — in effect setting up a witness protection program. It is the least he can do for selfless Americans.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s clemency for ‘kids for cash’ judge is a big mistake, Heather Long, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). It’s also yet another reminder of how broken the presidential pardon process is.

My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week. The White House portrayed the mass clemency as a historic moment for justice. But Conahan’s commutation only underscores how broken the presidential pardon clemency is.

I don’t know much about most of the people on Biden’s list, but I do know a fair amount about Conahan. I started my career as a journalist in Pennsylvania and had a front-row seat when the scheme — one of the worst corruption scandals in U.S. juvenile justice history — came to light in 2008 and 2009.

Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full. In total, they received more than $2.8 million, court documents show. They didn’t do this a handful of times. They did it to more than 2,500 juveniles over five years.

And the worst part? To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

They finally got caught only because one distraught family contacted the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit legal aid group in Philadelphia. In an early example of data sleuthing, the center compared the numbers with those of the 66 other counties in Pennsylvania and realized something very wrong was occurring in Luzerne County. It unearthed that half of these youngsters had no legal representation, and 60 percent were removed from their homes. That’s how the judges got away with it for so long: There was literally no one watching.

The revelations shook the state. The story broke as the Great Recession was in full swing, with high unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Luzerne County is a proud coal-mining community full of Catholic churches that sell delicious Polish pierogi out of their basements. But the community had fallen on hard times as coal’s reign was ending. The judges were getting rich by exploiting — and making harder — the struggles of working-class families.

In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and Ciavarella to 28 years for racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other crimes. A lot of Pennsylvanians didn’t think that was sufficient punishment. I was deputy opinion editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. We named the Juvenile Law Center Pennsylvania’s “Best of 2009” — our version of Time magazine’s person of the year award. The center not only uncovered the scandal; it also successfully pushed the state Supreme Court to clear the records of more than 2,200 of its victims.

The White House portrayed last week’s clemency decisions as helping nonviolent offenders who had done sufficient time and remediation. In 2020, as pandemic raged, Conahan successfully petitioned to be released to home monitoring in Florida due to a high risk of complications if he contracted the virus. This year, he sought an early end to his sentence. Now 72, Conahan was supposed to serve until the summer of 2026. He told the judge he had reformed and helped others in prison with their cases. But Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani denied Conahan’s request, arguing that he had done “irrevocable harm” to his victims and that releasing him early “would undermine respect for the law and would not adequately deter such conduct.”

When I reached out to the White House, an administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them. The plan was clemency for nonviolent offenders who were seen as low-risk and had been released to home confinement after a legal review process.

That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency “absolutely wrong.” Some victims are speaking out in shock. There’s similar disbelief in Illinois that Rita Crundwell — the former comptroller of the city of Dixon who orchestrated a $54 million embezzlement scheme — was also on Biden’s sentence-reduction list. Crundwell was supposed to serve time until 2028.

 

hunter biden beard

Emptywheel, Analysis: You Can’t Pardon America’s Way Out of Trump’s Assault on Rule of Law, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Dec. 6, 2024. The NYT has matched Jonathan Martin’s marcy wheelerreporting that Biden’s aides are considering pardoning some subset of the people who will be targeted by Trump.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Smart lefty commentators are embracing the concept.

With the possible exception of Mark Milley, I think this is an exceedingly stupid idea. It’s the kind of magical pony thinking that led people to demand Merrick Garland, with no effort from them, make Trump go away, thereby ceding the ground for Trump to claim he was prosecuted in a witch hunt.

And it won’t work.

Biden’s pardon won’t even save Hunter Biden

Start with the fact that Biden’s pardon won’t even save his own son.

Sure, it’ll save him from going to prison for the crimes for which he was convicted. But it might not even insulate him and his team from further harassment. That’s true, first of all, because prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation — no doubt facilitated by the House investigation into Hunter — into whether Kevin Morris’ support for Hunter in 2020, as he was trying to sustain sobriety, amounted to a campaign benefit for Joe Biden.

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More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections

ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Full Social Security Benefits for Public Sector Retirees, Maya C. Miller, Dec. 21, 2024. The Senate passed bipartisan legislation early Saturday that would give full Social Security benefits to a group of public sector retirees who currently receive them at a reduced level, sending the bill to President Biden.

The vote to clear the measure was a lopsided 76 to 20, reflecting the broad popularity of an effort to allow approximately more than 2.8 million public pension recipients — some of them teachers, firefighters and police officers — to collect Social Security benefits at the same level as other beneficiaries.

The House passed the bill by a wide margin of 327 to 75 last month after a bipartisan group of lawmakers forced it to the floor, and President-elect Donald J. Trump recently threw his support behind it.

social security administrationThe rapid and resounding approval of the measure, which would cost nearly $196 billion over a decade, was notable at a time when Congress is in a protracted dispute over spending and debt, with Republicans promising huge cuts and members of both parties routinely lamenting the ballooning of the nation’s debt.

The bill eliminates two provisions set up decades ago to shore up Social Security’s solvency. Projections show the Social Security fund will run out of money in 2038 and, if no action is taken before then, beneficiaries would see a 27 percent cut in benefits. Passage of the measure speeds up that timeline by six months.

Twenty-seven Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The two provisions were designed to prevent what is known as “double dipping” on retirement benefits by certain public employees and their relatives.

It primarily affects two groups. One is public employees who receive pensions that are exempt from Social Security payroll taxes, but who also worked at least 10 years in jobs that required them to pay into the system. Such workers appear in the Social Security system as though they earned far less over their lifetimes than they actually did, and since the program pays more to low earners, they receive a larger retirement benefit than they otherwise would. Another is people who receive public pensions but also become eligible for Social Security survivor benefits upon the death of a spouse or family member.

Under the current law, both groups face a reduction in their benefits. The legislation on its way to enactment would allow them to receive the full amount.

“We have spent decades working to pass this legislation, and tonight is a victory for all the public servants who will finally get the Social Security they have earned,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was a lead co-sponsor of the bill. The bill marked Mr. Brown’s final legislative achievement, after he lost a brutal and expensive re-election bid last month.Editors’ Picks‘Getting Your Pink Back:’ How Moms Felt Like Themselves Again After Having a BabyA Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?If You Can See the Tree, There Is Room for More Decorations

“Tonight, Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into,” he said.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a lead sponsor of the measure, framed the issue as a “long overdue” matter of fairness affecting teachers, firefighters and police officers as well as some federal employees who were hired before 1984, when the federal pension system was brought under the Social Security system.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Ms. Collins cited one of her constituents, a retired female schoolteacher who had to return to work at age 72 after her husband’s death to make financial ends meet. The woman’s husband was a Navy veteran who paid into Social Security for 40 years, but since she received a public pension from the school system, her surviving spousal benefits through Social Security were reduced by two-thirds.

 

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Gaetz report to be released by House Ethics Committee, in a reversal for the panel, Jacqueline Alemany and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 19, 2024 (print ed.). The release is expected within the week. The long-running investigation is focused on allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use by Matt Gaetz, above left  and below right, a former congressman.

The House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) this week, a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to release the results of a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.

matt gaetz officialThe panel voted this month to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers take their final vote for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. CNN first reported on the panel’s secret vote to release its report.

U.S. House logoThe committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general. A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, meaning that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.

The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. The Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation shortly thereafter — and days before the committee was expected to meet to vote on the release of the investigation.

Rep. Michael Guest (Mississippi), the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or Trump’s nominee, but Democrats still pushed for its release.

Justice Department log circularHouse Republicans successfully quashed a resolution introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote to make the report public and another resolution by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) that asked the panel to preserve all documents investigating Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges in a 2022 trafficking investigation.

But the House Ethics Committee investigation, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.

Politico, Sentencing closes chapter for Oath Keeper seeking redemption after Jan. 6, Kyle Cheney, Dec. 20, 2024. Joshua James pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy but later became a crucial cooperator for prosecutors.People waving flags storm the U.S. Capitol.

politico CustomA member of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy was sentenced Friday to three years of probation for extensive cooperation with prosecutors. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Joshua James earned his Purple Heart in 2007, when an IED tore through a bridge he was crossing in Baghdad — leaving him severely wounded with a traumatic brain injury.

He returned his medal to the government in a manila envelope after pleading guilty to scheming with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, to keep Donald Trump in office by force after the 2020 election.

James’ arc from war hero to central player in a seditious conspiracy — and his bid for redemption by cooperating to help convict dozens of his former compatriots — formed the backdrop Friday of a sentencing hearing that also served as a somber coda to the Justice Department’s four-year quest to punish those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The institutions that protected democracy on Jan. 6 cannot and will not forget,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards, who cast James’ sentencing as a chance to “cement” the threat to democracy in America’s “long-term national memory” and to “turn the page and allow this country to start to heal.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged the wrenching conflict of James’ life, calling him a “true American hero” who was led astray.

For James’ extraordinary cooperation, Mehta sentenced him to three years of probation. And the judge used his remarks to highlight the dozens of Jan. 6 defendants who are military veterans and have described being left to endure emotional and physical traumas with limited support.

But James, he said, ultimately made his own decision to “turn against democracy” and join the Oath Keepers in a plot to violently prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

“That is what people need to wrap their heads around,” Mehta said, “about how close we came — on a knife’s edge — between what happened on Jan. 6, which was bad enough, and something far worse.”

James joined the Oath Keepers in 2017 but his involvement intensified in 2020 when he became a close ally of Rhodes, who Mehta has repeatedly described as an ongoing threat to the country. Rhodes, the judge said, preyed on disaffected members of the military and enlisted them in his far-right project to keep Trump in power by force.

James, who led the group’s Alabama chapter, became a top ally in that effort, encouraging others to bring weapons to Washington ahead of Jan. 6, where they were ostensibly traveling to provide security for top Trump allies. James was assigned to protect longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and James was with Stone on the morning of Jan. 6.

But after pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, James and other Oath Keepers raced across the city to join the melee, forcing their way into the Capitol rotunda and clashing with police.

“This is my fucking building! This is not yours! This is my Capitol!” James shouted amid the chaos.

A tearful James apologized profusely for his conduct, describing himself as “deeply ashamed and embarrassed for my actions in the Capitol.”

“What I did was not an expression of patriotism,” James said.

Mehta emphasized that James’ gravest crime was not his actions in the Capitol but his weekslong plotting with Rhodes, a plan that included amassing an arsenal of firearms in the D.C. suburbs that Rhodes could deploy at a moment’s notice.

After his arrest, James quickly began cooperating with prosecutors and became the first Jan. 6 defendant to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy, a decision prosecutors credited with leading several other Oath Keepers to follow suit.

James never testified in any of the subsequent Oath Keepers trials — including Rhodes’ — which Edwards said was in part because James’ traumatic brain injury made him volatile when in stressful situations.

James’ lawyer, Joan Robin, emphasized that James’ cooperation — particularly after his guilty plea became public — led to threats against him and his family, the loss of his military benefits and his military honors, including the Purple Heart he once considered his proudest achievement.

The medal for his Army service, Robin said, was “sent to my office in a small manila envelope” to be forfeited to the government.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: The road back to power for Democrats, Rahm Emanuel (right, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, a Democrat and former Mayor of Chicago and rahm emanuel wChief of Staff to President Obama), Dec. 17, 2024. It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity. Talk about missing the moment.

This groundswell of resentment had been simmering for years. Trump just seized on it. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that he also drew support from large numbers of Democrats’ own “coalition of the ascendant” — minorities, young urbanites and women so successfully mobilized by President Barack Obama. From 2020 to 2024, Trump doubled his share of the Black vote to 16 percent, while the Latino vote rose from 35 percent to 43 percent.

To many voters, the nation’s elite has overseen a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful. And for the first time in American history, there is a generation of voters who believe that their children won’t be better off than them.

The disenchantment started in 2003 with the Iraq War, dubbed a “disaster” by Vice President-elect JD Vance. Sold on deceit and deception, with thousands of Americans dead, damaged and disfigured, the conflict’s architects now sit on corporate boards and hold chairs at prestigious universities. So much for justice.

A handful of years later, “liar loans” and unchecked greed led to the collapse of the global financial system, with homes and small businesses lost and livelihoods destroyed. Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention. It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some had called for at the time.

Why would an American electorate put its faith in the same establishment that had overseen two calamitous events, with those responsible getting off scot-free? The bonds of trust between the establishment and the public had been severed, and too many in our party failed to appreciate it.

In fact, during the pandemic, Democrats abandoned their antiestablishment credentials and enthusiastically morphed into the establishment. In “following the science,” we shuttered schools and the economy.

Meanwhile, our language and priorities have reinforced the “aloof elite” stereotype. With inflation stinging, school absenteeism skyrocketing and students’ academic scores plummeting, Democrats consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools and adopted terms such as “care economy” and “Latinx” to win over voters. It was a hermetically sealed conversation with ourselves, and we appeared much as we sounded: distant and detached.

Trump, on the other hand, captured the underlying zeitgeist. Rather than using his messaging against the Kamala Harris of 2024, he depicted her as the senator of the 2020 primaries, whose positions left her looking out of touch. Sure, his unfiltered words were crude — and often derogatory — but they reflected people’s feelings of abandonment.

Democrats have been here before. The road back out of the wilderness begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it. We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.

With everyone from Big Oil to Big Pharma lining up for their share of the spoils, we will need to be strategic in how we strip away Trump’s populist veneer. By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected.

Second, we can no longer tiptoe around the issues that have people worried. Crime, immigration, homelessness and a fentanyl crisis are, understandably, on the minds of millions. When car jackings are up and everything in pharmacies is locked down, you can’t recite crime statistics to deny people’s everyday experiences.

Americans want to see respect for the laws that govern our borders and to live in communities that are safe and secure. That shouldn’t be hard to appreciate. People prefer order over disorder. Trump was successful on these issues because his words tapped the public’s frustration. Ours communicated permissiveness.

Third, if Democrats are to be relevant again, finding and supporting the right candidates for the 2026 midterm elections will be critical. In 2006, 2008 and 2018, we recruited candidates whose biographies conveyed authenticity. They were war veterans, sheriffs, small business owners and former football players. Crucially, they weren’t career politicians.

The strategy worked again last month, with Democrats flipping six House seats in New York and California. Candidates such as Derek Tran, a son of Vietnamese refugees and an Army veteran, and aerospace executive George Whitesides had credentials that lent them legitimacy and receptivity among swing voters. The personal is political.

November was a jarring reminder that misjudging the mood of a nation can be catastrophic. If Democrats are to make the most of the next election, they must ready their message and messengers, abandon failed orthodoxies and embrace strategies with a record of delivering seats, success and real prosperity.

d weakened the country and gave Hamas an opening. Absent from both story lines was the profound failure of Mr. Netanyahu to protect the border.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming, Heather Knight and Kate Selig, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Some Republicans say it is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their calls for one, and California will soon consider its position.

As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.

The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.

But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.

Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.

Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.

“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.

Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican from West Texas and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been a leading convention proponent. He has introduced legislation that would require the head of the National Archives to track state applications and has said that a convention should have been called in 1979 when, he believes, enough states had requested one.

Since 2016, the year Mr. Trump was elected president the first time, nine states that had Democratic-controlled legislatures have been concerned enough that they rescinded their decades-old requests for constitutional amendments, sometimes with support from their fellow Republican legislators. They feared that they were leaving open the door for a Republican-led Congress and state legislatures to pursue a conservative revision of the laws underpinning national governance.

The founding fathers set almost no rules governing how such a constitutional convention would work. Article V of the Constitution says that the document can be amended if legislatures in two-thirds of states — now 34 out of 50 — agree to convene for the purpose. But it does not set guidelines for how the gathering would function. If the convention produces a proposed amendment, the change would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Following last month’s election, 28 state legislatures will be controlled by Republicans, 18 by Democrats and the rest will be split, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The founding document does not say whether 34 states need to agree on the specific amendment topic or whether signaling that they want a convention for any reason is enough to trigger proceedings. There is no explanation of whether each state at the convention would get one vote or more, whether topics not on the agenda can be raised, whether lobbyists or special interest groups could participate, or who would referee disagreements. Constitutional scholars are unclear how even the most basic questions would be resolved.

More than 34 states appear to have standing requests to change the Constitution, some dating back more than 150 years, according to the Article 5 Library, a bare-bones website that scholars pointed to as the best known repository of applications to change the Constitution.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Says He Would Consider Pardoning Eric Adams, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald J. Trump’s comment reflects an unusual relationship that Mr. Adams, the New York mayor, has encouraged as his federal corruption trial nears.

The question has hung over New York City politics for months: If Mayor Eric Adams was convicted on federal corruption charges, would Donald J. Trump pardon him?

On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would consider it.

Mr. Trump was asked at a wide-ranging news conference in Florida whether he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, and he replied yes. The president-elect said that the mayor of New York had been treated “pretty unfairly” by federal prosecutors.

“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.

The mayor is accused of receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of travel benefits from Turkish officials over several years, including flight upgrades on Turkish Airlines. Mr. Adams was also accused of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and helping obtain approvals for a new Turkish Consulate despite fire safety concerns.

Mr. Adams has found a political ally in Mr. Trump, a Republican who has defended Mr. Adams and said that both men were “persecuted” by federal prosecutors.

The mayor said at a news conference on Monday held shortly after Mr. Trump’s comments that he should not have been charged.

“I have an attorney that is going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”

The mayor’s defense lawyer, Alex Spiro, has also represented Elon Musk, a top adviser and donor to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Adams added that both Mr. Trump and President Biden agreed with him that the Justice Department has been politicized — an argument Mr. Adams has made in the past in reference to Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: McConnell has the chutzpah to complain about Trump’s ‘America First,’ Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 15, 2024. Mitch McConnell bears great responsibility for the return of Trump and his foreign policy.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Progressives should defend Biden’s legacy to protect their future, E.J. Dionne Jr.,,right, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Trump’s victory should ej dionne w open necknot be used to erase Biden’s policy achievements.

Besides the president and his staff, who should care about how Joe Biden’s policy legacy is judged? Everyone who believes that government should invest in the future and defend the interests of workers and those stuck at the bottom of the income heap — that’s who.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The trickiest problem for Democrats and progressives in the coming months will not be finding a new electoral strategy. There’s plenty of time for that, and the 2024 outcome was close enough to allow multiple paths to the White House. A far more pressing imperative is to prevent Donald Trump’s victory from discrediting Biden’s genuinely impressive accomplishments and the course he set for the country, which was broadly correct.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein,  Dec. 17, 2024. Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logoPresident-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

trump 2024Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

nancy pelosi horizontal uncredited older Custom

ny times logoNew York Times, Nancy Pelosi Has Hip Replacement Surgery After Fall, Karoun Demirjian, Dec. 14, 2024. Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, had hip replacement surgery on Saturday after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said in a statement.

ny times logoNew York Times, What We Know About Drone Sightings in New Jersey and New York, Alyce McFadden, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Reports of flying objects continue to occur throughout the region. State and local officials say they do not pose a threat but have provided few answers.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Agriculture Department to Require Testing of U.S. Milk Supply for Bird Flu Virus, Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes, Dec. 7, 2024 (print ed.). The new rules call for testing unpasteurized milk from dairies across the country and for farm owners to provide details that would help officials identify and track cases more easily.

Politico, Federal judge preserves Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions, Bianca Quilantan, Dec. 6, 2024. A federal judge argues that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.An entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Maryland, is seen.

politico CustomA federal judge on Friday upheld the U.S. Naval Academy’s consideration of race in admissions arguing that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.

The ruling is an early blow to Students for Fair Admissions’ latest attempt to extend the scope of its Supreme Court win against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that gutted the use of race in college admissions. The ruling also comes while the Naval Academy’s admissions process is underway for its next class.

Politico, Eric Adams doesn’t rule out switch to the GOP: ‘Cancel me,’ Joe Anuta,  Dec. 6, 2024. The New York City mayor has been at odds with national Democrats over immigration.Eric Adams walks in a parade.

politico CustomNew York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has taken a soft touch with President-elect Donald Trump, left open the possibility of switching to the Republican Party in a pair of Friday morning interviews.

Adams was a member of the GOP from 1995 through 2002, and was asked during an appearance on NY1 whether he would return to the party. He did not rule out the possibility.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Middle East Wars, Reactions

Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syrian Rebels Storm Another Major City, Ben Hubbard, Dec. 5, 2024. Opposition forces advanced on the city of Hama as their startling offensive moved quickly in the direction of the capital, Damascus.

Syrian rebels stormed into the city of Hama on Thursday as government forces withdrew, bringing the rebels one step closer to the capital Damascus, the seat of power of President Bashar al-Assad.

The swift advance on Hama, one of Syria’s largest cities, and the retreat of government forces were confirmed by both the rebels and the government. The advance came just days after the rebels extended their control over Aleppo, a major hub in northern Syria.

In a video circulated by the rebel group leading the offensive, their leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, jubilantly calls for the rebels to push on toward other Syrian cities, including the capital.

“The people of Homs, prepare yourselves,” he said in the video, which his group said was filmed on Wednesday. “The people of Damascus, the people of Dara’a, the people of Deir al Zour. Victory for all, God willing.” The New York Times could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video or when it was filmed.

The sudden rebel advance has shifted the front lines in Syria’s 13-year-old civil war for the first time in years, adding a new layer of unpredictability to a conflict that has ravaged the country, opened voids exploited by jihadist groups, drawn in world powers including Russia and the United States and created a long-term refugee crisis for neighboring countries.

Hama is one of the few major Syrian cities where rebels had yet to seize significant control during the civil war, which began with a popular uprising aimed at ousting Mr. al-Assad in 2011.

The city’s name is synonymous with one of the most notorious massacres in the Middle East. In 1982, security forces serving the president’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, massacred thousands of people there during an anti-government uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

ny times logoNew York Times, Fighting Rages in Syria as Rebels Advance, Muhammad Haj Kadour and Vivian Yee, Dec. 1, 2024. Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad control the Aleppo airport and are attacking Hama, local officials and a U.K.-based war monitor say.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Power Vacuum in Gaza Could Empower Warlords and Gangs, Amanda Taub, Dec. 1, 2024. Hamas's weakened position could leave the territory without any governing institutions, our columnist writes.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police and Protesters Clash in Georgian Capital, Cassandra Vinograd, Dec. 1, 2024. The government’s decision to suspend its bid for European Union membership has driven thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Protesters clashed with the police in the Republic of Georgia’s capital late Saturday during the third consecutive night of demonstrations over the government’s suspension of its bid to join the European Union.

georgia country regional mapThousands of people have rallied in the capital, Tbilisi, since Thursday night after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the country was putting the process of E.U. accession on hold until 2028 and would decline all grants from the bloc. The police have responded with water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades.

georgia country flag mapGeorgia’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday morning that protests overnight had “evolved into violence.” It claimed that protesters “threw pyrotechnics” and “ignited objects” toward police officers and at Parliament, causing a fire to break out. Windows were smashed by “stones and various objects,” the ministry added in a statement, saying that protesters also had damaged protective iron barriers around the building.

georgia republic mapMore than 100 people had been arrested as of Saturday night, according to the ministry, which also said that several police officers were wounded and that 42 of its employees had been injured since the protests began.

The Associated Press reported that its journalists had seen police officers chasing and beating protesters; it was not immediately clear how many protesters suffered injuries.

Georgia has been gripped by political crisis since the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream party in October’s parliamentary elections. The governing party has been pivoting Georgia more toward Russia and China. Georgia’s opposition, which says the election was rigged and has boycotted the new sitting of Parliament, seeks closer ties with the West.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).

 

Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon

 

syria prisons NYTny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak (as shown above), Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Bibi Netanyahu Is Failing Ever Upward, Noa Landau (the deputy editor in chief of Haaretz), Dec. 19, 2024. Just before Thanksgiving, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an unusual set of arrest warrants: one for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one for his former defense minister Yoav Gallant and one for the deceased Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif. Each man is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The warrant for Mr. Netanyahu calls for any of the 124 countries that are signatories to the I.C.C. to arrest the Israeli leader should he arrive on their soil. And yet in Israel, the threat has made only the barest ripple on the domestic front. Israelis seemed far more concerned by how, more than two weeks earlier, on the night of the American election, Mr. Netanyahu took advantage of a distracted Washington and fired Mr. Gallant, the last remaining political centrist in his cabinet. Thousands of Israeli protesters took to the streets over the dismissal, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv with bonfires and shouting, “Bibi is a traitor!”

The protests weren’t just about Mr. Gallant, or even the kind of war he led as defense minister. They were about Mr. Netanyahu himself, a man who has overtly put his own political survival above his nation again and again. Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu has risen, phoenixlike, from the political ashes of the nation’s greatest security failure on Oct. 7, 2023, to become a bolder, more aggressive version of himself — a man willing to ignore longtime allies, including many American Jews, brush off international opprobrium and shed a long history of war skepticism in favor of a full-blown, multifront regional war. Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria are now badly damaged. The last (original) man standing is Mr. Netanyahu, something few would have predicted one year ago.

Mr. Netanyahu managed to wait out the Biden administration’s unsuccessful efforts to bring an end to the war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and curtail civilians’ bloodshed. With Donald Trump poised to re-enter the White House, ushering in a slate of new regional envoys who show no interest in limiting Israel, it seems Mr. Netanyahu’s gamble has paid off. Even finally being forced to take the witness stand in his trial for corruption, which began this month, does not seem to have dimmed his political power — as shown in recent polls.

The Israeli prime minister’s endurance can be traced back to several political factors, including a decade of echo-chamber building within Israeli media and Bibi’s own sophisticated and cynical exploitation of Israelis’ deep yearning for unity after Oct. 7. But perhaps the strongest force keeping Mr. Netanyahu in power is the most basic: his fractured, increasingly nonexistent opposition. The vast majority of those who loathe him as a leader do not oppose the war itself, nor the way it has been conducted. They want him out of power but they have no coherent alternative vision. For the past year, all Mr. Netanyahu has had to do was hold on to power — and pass the blame.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.

Since Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu and his inner circle of advisers, ministers and supporters have successfully deflected their own responsibility and culpability for the nation’s worst security breach in its 76-year history. A day after the Hamas attacks, some Netanyahu supporters started planting the idea within his political base that the catastrophic security failure that led to Hamas’s murder of more than 1,200 people was the fault of his opponents. Over the course of the year before, tens of thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to reject the prime minister’s efforts to meddle with the independence of the judiciary and threaten to stop volunteering for military reserve duty if the judicial overhaul bills he was proposing were approved. Social media users floated gross conspiracies about anti-Netanyahu military officials assisting Hamas.

This message was dispersed on several media outlets that are part of a new digital Netanyahu-sympathetic ecosystem, including Channel 14, a would-be version of Fox News. As Israeli society has swung ever rightward, it has developed a media world that reflects back to itself the messages it would like to promote. These messages appear on pro-Netanyahu social media accounts, like-minded Telegram channels and closed WhatsApp groups — and are then rebroadcast on TV and radio.

All the while, Mr. Netanyahu has been openly blaming the rest of the media for being biased against him. Two of his corruption and criminal cases are about the prime minister’s alleged attempts to receive favorable coverage in the media. (He has denied wrongdoing.) His cabinet has made moves to privatize and potentially shut down the public broadcaster’s television and radio departments. And in late November, as punishment for coverage of Oct. 7 deemed too critical, as well as for comments made by the publisher of Ha’aretz, my newspaper, at an event, his cabinet approved a slate of sanctions against Ha’aretz, forbidding any government advertising and canceling subscriptions for state workers.

Pro-Netanyahu propaganda efforts were quickly referred to as the “poison machine” by the Israeli opposition — both political parties and civil society. But, as I have written for Ha’aretz, there was a “honey machine” at work at the same time. One after another, coordinated initiatives and petitions emerged in Israel with a mission to promote ideas of “unity,” “reconciliation” and preventing “division” within society. The seemingly disparate agendas — the undercurrent of blatant propaganda and the tide of false optimism — shared the thesis that the political rift in the months leading up to Oct. 7 ha

washington post logoWashington Post, Middle East Conflict: Biden team uses fall of Assad to defend Mideast record; critics say it doesn’t eclipse horrors in Gaza, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The Biden administration is seeking to reframe a beleaguered policy as a success.

The White House is seizing on the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to mount a new defense of its often criticized policy in Gaza and the wider Middle East, arguing that President Joe Biden’s staunch support of Israel and his approach to the region paved the way for events that ultimately led to Assad’s ouster and could bring a new era of cooperation.Get the latest election news and results

Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza is viewed by progressives and a growing number of Democrats as a major foreign policy failure, with some in the party saying his unwillingness to rein in Israel and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will tarnish his long-term legacy. Biden and his aides are now working to reframe his largely unconditional support of Israel as a resounding success, saying it led to the weakening of two powerful militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which in turn made the fall of Assad possible.

Many Middle East experts and analysts agree that the Biden administration deserves credit for preventing an all-out regional war that could have drawn in the United States directly, and for providing Israel with military aid that helped it degrade Hezbollah and Hamas. But they also say the administration’s narrative assigns too much credit to the United States for events that were largely driven by actors in the region.

And humanitarian groups say that however beneficial Assad’s fall, it does not eclipse the death and devastation in Gaza. During the war, the Biden administration repeatedly said Israel was not doing nearly enough to limit civilian casualties, but did little to pressure the country to change course. Israel has now sealed off northern Gaza and may be preparing for an indefinite occupation there, diplomats said, while some 2 million Palestinians are crammed into the southern half of the tiny enclave amid destitute conditions as aid remains sharply limited.

washington post logoWashington Post, Turkey using ‘war on terror’ tactics, such as abductions and secret detentions, on critics in other countries, Greg Miller, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Turkey has drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism post-9/11 playbook to go after exiled political enemies, in particular the Gulen movement.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptThe primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

ny times logoNew York Times, United States in Direct Contact With Rebels Who Took Over Syria, Michael Crowley, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Steven Erlanger, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was communicating with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel faction, despite its designation as a terrorist group.

The United States has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad a week ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday.

His remarks were the first official confirmation that Washington is communicating with a group that it designated a terrorist organization several years ago but whose behavior Washington hopes to influence now that the group controls Syria’s interim government.

“We’ve been in contact with H.T.S. and with other parties” in Syria, Mr. Blinken said, referring to the rebel group, after a meeting with Arab ministers in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss how to assist Syria’s political transition.

He said that the United States had communicated a set of governing principles that it is urging Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to adopt, including respect for human rights and rejecting extremism. The United States has also stressed the importance of finding and returning Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist kidnapped in Syria seven years ago.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: With Iran’s guard down, the U.S. and Israel face an urgent choice, David Ignatius, Dec. 14, 2024. Israel’s former defense minister says there is “a window to act” — and the clock is ticking.

Iran appears to be at the most precarious moment in its modern history. Its proxy armies have been crushed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. And it appears to be nearly naked to attack after a wave of pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on its air defense system in October.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

“We showed that Iran is vulnerable,” argued Yoav Gallant, who was Israel’s defense minister and led most of this year’s military campaigns against Iran and its proxies. Gallant explained during a briefing with me in Washington this week that Israel’s devastating but relatively little-discussed bombing campaign on Oct. 26 created “a window to act against Iran” before it produces a nuclear weapon.

U.S. decisions about how to exploit Iran’s weakness — whether by negotiating a binding nuclear agreement or, failing that, taking decisive military action — will fall to President-elect Donald Trump. Asked last month about the possibility of war with Iran after he takes office on Jan. 20, Trump told Time magazine, ominously, that “anything can happen.”

Global attention has shifted to Trump, but senior Biden administration officials tell me they also recognize the opportunity ahead for “coercive diplomacy” about nuclear issues with a weakened Iran. Though Israel played the decisive role in humbling Iran, President Joe Biden provided an important backstop by deploying U.S. carriers, planes, submarines and other forces.

Israel’s Oct. 26 assault was calculated to leave Iran unprotected against a future attack. An astonishing wave of 120 jets took part in the raid, an Israeli military source said. The Israeli planes targeted air defense radars and antiaircraft batteries protecting Tehran as well as key factories producing fuel for Iranian ballistic missiles. The attack was in retaliation for Iran’s Oct. 1 bombardment of Israel with about 200 ballistic missiles — but the planning began many months before.

 

syria new flag 2024

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, Dec. 14, 2024. At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

But amid the celebrations, the country has also found itself in the opening chapter of a nationwide reckoning over the horrors that Syrians endured under Mr. al-Assad’s government as they come face to face with the network of prisons, police stations and torture chambers at the center of his family’s brutal rule.

In that time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were swallowed up by the Assad security forces’ vast apparatus. Over the past 13 years, after the failed rebel uprising and subsequent civil war, Mr. al-Assad wielded the long arms of that system as never before to stamp out every last inkling of dissent.

Protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers and students were snatched from their shops, plucked from university classrooms and yanked from their cars at checkpoints by the secret police — never to be heard from again.

Many ended up in Sednaya, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus that was often the last place detainees were dumped after months of interrogation in other detention centers. The sprawling prison with three wings became a haunting symbol of Mr. al-Assad’s ruthlessness and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.

Tens of thousands of people were crammed into the overcrowded cells, tortured, beaten and deprived of food and water. More than 30,000 detainees were killed, many executed in mass hangings, according to rights groups. Amnesty International called Sednaya a “human slaughterhouse.”

Their relatives lived in an agonizing limbo for years, unsure if their loved ones were alive. They went to local security officials every few months to beg for information and paid thousands of dollars in bribes to government officials to track down their relatives’ whereabouts. If security officers told them their disappeared relative was dead, many refused to believe them.

“They were liars,” one woman, Aziza Mohammed Deek, said of those in Mr. al-Assad’s government. “They were all liars.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

“The talks will focus on supporting a comprehensive, Syria-led political process aimed at achieving a transitional solution,” the Jordanian statement said. A later statement on Saturday said the meeting was about to begin. It made no mention of any Syrian representative to attend.

Turkey has emerged in recent days with greater influence, given its years of support for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that led the offensive out of its bases in the northwest in recent weeks to take power.

The Turkish government made plans this week to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which has been closed for almost 13 years, and it also conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a threat.

On Friday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, issued a stark warning to members of the Kurdish militia that controls northeastern Syria, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

“It is our strategic target to eliminate the YPG,” he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV. He said that any members who are not Syrian should leave the country as soon as possible, and added: “The entire command level of YPG should leave the country too. The remaining ones should continue living as they lay down their weapons.’’

The Kurdish-led forces in Syria have been key partners with the United States in the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria. The U.S. and Turkey are NATO allies.

Turkey, at the same time, has funded and trained a Syrian rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped it fight Kurdish-led forces in the country.

The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia accused the United States this week of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria.

Mr. Blinken is in Jordan as part of a tour of the Middle East that has included stops in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as the United States assesses the fallout from Mr. al-Bashar’s ouster.

American officials have expressed concern that instability across Syria, where various armed groups with competing agendas are active, could threaten its neighbors.

The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of Islamic State, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and took years to defeat.

Israel has also seized an opportunity created by the collapse of the Assad dynasty, bombing weapons stores and other targets in Syria to eliminate what it says are potential threats and also seizing territory in the country near the disputed Golan Heights.

Syria on Friday condemned Israel’s attack and called on the United Nations Security Council to compel the Israeli government to cease any further attacks.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Koussay Aldahhak, said the Security Council should “compel Israel to respect international law,” and not allow it to benefit from Syria’s transition.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

The Russian military appeared to be packing up equipment at one of its most critical bases in Syria on Friday, in what could be a prelude to Moscow’s military withdrawal from an important strategic foothold in the Middle East.

The movements of Russian equipment came as jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

People celebrating the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty waved revolutionary flags and posed for photographs with friends as one of the largest crowds in memory filled the marble courtyard of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where al-Assad security forces had long suppressed antigovernment demonstrations with brutal violence. Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the country’s newfound sense of liberty; in Damascus and in Idlib, a city that has long been rebel territory, people sang, “Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

The largely celebratory mood in Damascus, the capital, belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders as they try to bring order to a country wracked by sectarian divisions, the bloody legacy of the Assad era and the competing interests of an array of armed groups that fought in a 13-year civil war that human rights groups estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Also on Friday, Travis Timmerman, an American citizen who was found outside Damascus earlier this week, was handed over to U.S. forces by Syrian opposition representatives. Mr. Timmerman, who said he had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power, is now in Jordan, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Politico, Has Syrian rebel leader al-Golani really shaken off his al Qaeda past? Jamie Dettmer, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The leopard claims he has changed his spots, but will he bring stability to the devastated nation

politico CustomIn the not so distant past, Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, shown at right in a U.S. State Department photo, sported a long unkempt beard, wore a style of turban favored by jihadis and looked like he was auditioning for the role of a young Osama bin Laden.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptBut the man who toppled the regime of Bashar Assad on Sunday cuts a very different figure today. Like a political chameleon, he wears green fatigues in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or preppy blazers and chinos, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He even recently dropped his nom de guerre and reverted to using his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a.

But how convincing is the makeover? Should Syrians be worried that a man who once made the pledge of allegiance — or bay’ah — to al Qaeda, and fought Western forces in Iraq, is now the most powerful man in their country, and is poised to play a major role in the transition from the 54-year-long autocracy of the Assad dynasty?

He could even lead the country.

Is this a case where the apparel really does proclaim the man? Has the Damascus medical school dropout genuinely transitioned from being a jihadi, or is his embrace of toleration a ruse?

Those are the questions Western leaders and officials are also grappling with as they plot their next steps. France and Germany have promptly agreed to work with the Syrian opposition groups that took power in Damascus, while the U.S. and Britain are deliberating whether to delist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main insurgent Islamist faction led by al-Golani that swept into Damascus, as a terrorist organization.

For now, everyone is watching and waiting, piecing together clues about who al-Golani really is and what future HTS has planned for Syria — an inclusive, democratic one embracing the country’s diversity, its religious sects and ethnic minorities, including Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurds; or an Islamist state that oppresses, restricts and elevates the Sunni majority? Or somewhere in-between?

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Live Updates: Israel Says Its Troops Will Stay in Seized Territory for Now, Aaron Boxerman and Michael Crowley, Dec. 12, 2024. Here are the latest developments.

As countries in the Middle East and beyond work out how to respond to the sudden fall of the Assad government, Israel said on Thursday that its military would stay in Syrian territory it seized until “a new force” was established that met its security demands.

“The collapse of the Syrian regime created a vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a statement. “Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities.”

Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli soldiers would deploy in Syrian territory only “temporarily,” but did not give any clear timeline for their departure.

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South Korean Crisis

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, South Korea’s President Is Impeached Over Martial Law Crisis, Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young, Victoria Kim and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Celebrations broke out in Seoul after lawmakers voted to oust President Yoon Suk Yeol, right. He vowed to fight removal in the country’s Constitutional Court.

yoon suk yeol wSouth Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, suspending him from office after his stunning declaration of martial law earlier this month caused widespread outrage and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office.

Excerpt Continued Below.

ny times logoNew York Times, How the President Alienated South Korea, One Group at a Time, Agnes Chang and Pablo Robles, Dec. 15, , (print ed.).  Ever since Yoon Suk Yeol took office, the public had been infuriated with near-constant scandals and unpopular decisions. Angry rice farmers. Striking doctors. A $2,200 Dior bag.

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, may have sealed his political fate on Dec. 3, when he declared martial law, triggering public outrage. And on Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach Mr. Yoon, who was then suspended from office.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: The Warning from Seoul: Democracy at Risk in an Age of Authoritarian Power, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 4, 2024. How thom hartmann newYoon’s State of Emergency and Trump’s Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as “South Korea’s Donald Trump.” A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women’s rights, “reforming” their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours.

In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations’ abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that’s now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

Of all the events in world news over the past weeks — even more than the escalation of Putin’s murderous crimes against Ukraine — Trump and his authoritarian colleagues down at Mar-a-Lago are probably carefully watching what’s happening to Yoon and gaming out how a similar “emergency” action here in America might be recalibrated to have ultimate success.

Yoon has now backed down in the face of opposition from the South Korean parliament; he couldn’t get one single vote from his own party in Parliament, and is now facing demands that he resign or be impeached.

The challenges Yoon faced included a 17% approval rating, the legislature having been captured by the opposition party, and, most importantly, that he had never forced the members of his own party to degrade themselves and perform acts of obedience in front of him.

Thus, when he tried this strongman move of declaring a state of emergency but had not, in fact, first set himself up as a strongman, it failed.

Trump’s goal will be to avoid Yoon’s outcome and instead — like Putin and Orbán did in Russia and Hungary — ensure there won’t be any meaningful opposition within the GOP to his most extreme measures when they come.

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ny times logoNew York Times, After the Military Took Power in Niger, Terrorist Attacks Increased, Elian Peltier, Dec. 22, 2024. Killings by insurgents have surged since the military staged a coup, expelled U.S. and European troops, and stopped negotiations with Islamist groups.

ny times logoNew York Times, Detention Is Ordered for Suspect in Christmas Market Killings in Germany, Christopher F. Schuetze and Melissa Eddy, Dec. 22, 2024.  The authorities said they were struggling to understand the motives for the attack with a car in the eastern city of Magdeburg, in which a 9-year-old boy was among the five victims.

A judge on Sunday ordered a man suspected of killing five people by driving a car into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany to remain in detention as the authorities worked to understand the motives behind an attack that has stunned the country.

The victims in the assault on the market, which took place in the eastern city of Magdeburg on Friday night, were a 9-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75, the Magdeburg police said in a statement on Sunday.

More than 200 others were wounded, 41 of them seriously, in the attack that shattered the peace of Germany’s Christmas season, which is celebrated in hundreds of outdoor markets round the country.

The suspect, identified as Taleb A. in keeping with German privacy laws, was questioned on Saturday, security officials said. The authorities have described him as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades.

In social media posts, the doctor had criticized Germany for what he called the authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, according to German news media. A security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that those reports were accurate.

The doctor also expressed support on social media for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party and reposted comments by the group’s leaders warning of the threat of Islamic law’s being imposed in Germany.

washington post logoWashington Post, German Christmas market attack toll rises to five dead, over 200 injured, Victoria Bisset, Kelsey Ables and Souad Mekhennet, Dec. 21, 2024. The suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, an official said.

At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, German leaders said Saturday, hours after authorities identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

ny times logoNew York Times, German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe, Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, deepening the political turbulence in one of the continent’s most powerful country.

The German government collapsed on Monday as Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament, deepening a crisis of leadership across Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges.

The war in Ukraine has escalated, with Russia issuing increasing dire threats against Kyiv and its supporters. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. The government of France — Germany’s partner in leading Europe — fell earlier this month.

And now, Europe’s largest economy will be in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.

On Monday, German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.

bulwark logo big shipThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: WTF Is Happening In Canada? 51st State? Trudeau on the Outs? Bowing to Trump? Dec. 16, 2024. canadian flagTim Miller is joined by JJMcCullough to breakdown what's going on in Canada, from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigning to Donald Trump's tariff plans, and Trump's taunts at Justin Trudeau about making Canada an America

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Hails a SoftBank Investment That Echoes 2016, Maureen Farrell and Michael J. de la Merced, /Dec. 16, 2024. President-elect Trump announced that the Japanese technology company SoftBank had pledged to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first news conference since the election covered a wide range of topics, but it began with an eye-catching pledge: a $100 billion investment in the United States by SoftBank, a Japanese technology company.

Standing beside SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump announced a pledge that echoed a $50 billion commitment SoftBank made after his victory in 2016. That promise was followed by investments in a host of fledgling startups — some that surged and others that ran into trouble, including the co-working company WeWork and a company called Zume that used robots to make pizza.

According to Mr. Trump, SoftBank’s investment is intended to create 100,000 jobs. Trump transition officials said the investment will focus on technology and artificial intelligence over the next four years.

SoftBank doesn’t have $100 billion in cash on hand. The money is expected to come partly from its balance sheet but also from money raised alongside partners, according to a person familiar with SoftBank’s plans.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria’s New Leader Calls on Countries to Drop Terror Designation, Ben Hubbard, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Thomas Fuller, Dec. 16, 2024.  Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that swept into Damascus last week and ousted the Assad regime, urged the United States and other nations to remove sanctions imposed on the country, saying in an interview on Monday that all constraints needed to be lifted so that Syria could rebuild.

The rebel leader spoke in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on the same day that Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, seemed to break his silence about his decision to flee to Russia. In a statement posted to social media accounts he had used while in office, Mr. al-Assad said he had wanted to stay and fight, but was evacuated by Russian forces as the rebels bore down on the city.

ny times logoNew York Times, Putin Stays Silent on Syria, With Russia’s Future There in Question, Anton Troianovski, Dec. 16, 2024. In a televised meeting with his top military brass, Vladimir Putin left Syria unmentioned and made it clear that winning in Ukraine was his top priority.

For an hour on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin and his defense minister presided over a televised, annual meeting of the Russian military’s top brass. They held forth on NATO, Ukraine and issues as obscure as mortgages for service members.

But one topic went unmentioned: Syria.

Mr. Putin has yet to say anything in public about the collapse of his close ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria more than a week ago, even as Russia struggles to salvage what influence it can in the Middle East. The silence underscores the uncertainty surrounding the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria — and the overwhelming priority for the Kremlin that the war in Ukraine has become.

Mr. al-Assad’s fall is a painful topic right now in Moscow, said Anton Mardasov, a Moscow-based military analyst focusing on the Middle East. “It’s better not to say anything.”

Things were very different just a year ago, when Sergei K. Shoigu, then the defense minister, boasted at the same annual meeting that Russian troops remained deployed both in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-populated enclave that Azerbaijan recaptured from Armenia last year.

  • New York Times, U.S. Says Its Airstrikes Killed 12 Islamic State Operatives in Syria, Dec. 16, 2024.

ny times logoNew York Times, Tice’s Mother Asks Netanyahu for Pause in Syria Strikes Amid Search for Son, Adam Entous and Patrick Kingsley, Dec. 16, 2024. 

The mother of the missing American journalist Austin Tice has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a letter that her family has “credible information” that Mr. Tice may be held in a prison outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, and urged the Israelis to pause military strikes in the area to allow rescuers to search the site.

Mr. Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, said in the letter, dated Dec. 14 and addressed to Mr. Netanyahu, that the prison was under a Syrian military museum in the mountainous Mount Qasioun area and had a tunnel that was connected to a neighborhood and a government palace.

“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” Ms. Tice wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence.”

Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government’s lead envoy for hostage affairs, confirmed he had received the letter, and he said that he was coordinating on a daily basis with U.S. officials, including Roger D. Carstens, the U.S. government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“We will do everything possible in assisting the United States of America to bring the hostages and missing persons back home,” Mr. Hirsch said.

Mr. Tice was abducted in 2012 outside Damascus as the country descended into civil war. The United States has said it believes he was being held by the government of Bashar al-Assad. The Assad regime had long maintained that it was not holding Mr. Tice and had no information about him.

ny times logoNew York Times, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Resigns, in Blow to Trudeau’s Hold on Power, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Ian Austen, Dec. 16, 2024.  The departure of Chrystia Freeland poses a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada prepares for the incoming Trump administration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hold on power was threatened on Monday after the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration resigned abruptly, in a stinging rebuke to the country’s leader.

The high-profile departure of the minister, Chrystia Freeland, comes at a treacherous moment for Canada. President-elect Donald J. Trump has warned that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless the two countries do more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the United States.

Ms. Freeland, who has helped steer the Trudeau government through many challenges, had been playing a prominent role in forming Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition.

In her letter of resignation, Ms. Freeland accused Mr. Trudeau, who is deeply unpopular at home, of engaging in “costly political gimmicks” instead of focusing on countering the grave threat of tariffs.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds Feared Dead After Cyclone Hits French Islands Off Africa, Aurelien BreedenAmelia Nierenberg and Isabella Kwai, Dec. 16, 2024. Officials Officials in the archipelago of Mayotte said the number of people killed by Tropical Cyclone Chido could be much higher than the 21 now confirmed dead.

Marine Le Pen

ny times logoNew York Times, France’s Marine Le Pen Takes Aim at the Top, Adam Nossiter, Dec. 10, 2024. After helping to oust the prime minister last week, the far-right leader, above, has made clear her next target is President Emmanuel Macron.

The one-on-one duel that has shaped French political life for nearly a decade ratcheted up a notch last week, with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen claiming one big scalp, and giving notice of going after a bigger one, President Emmanuel Macron.

No one doubted that she was calling the shots. Yet by Monday, Mr. Macron, right, had relegated Ms. Le Pen and her party, the anti-immigrant National Rally, to emmanuel marcon twitter“pariah” — her word — status. He did not deign to meet with her in his search for a new prime minister to replace the one she had largely ousted last week.

Leaders of other parties had tête-à-têtes with Mr. Macron at the presidential palace; but not Ms. Le Pen, who was excluded because she is part of the “anti-Republican front” — his words.

That could turn out to be a big mistake. Last week, Ms. Le Pen announced the demise of the hapless prime minister, Michel Barnier, in Parliament; sure enough he was overthrown in a no-confidence vote soon after.

Mr. Barnier had tried to force through a budget proposal without a vote, and above all he had barely consulted with Ms. Le Pen, who has the largest bloc French Flagof parliamentarians and cannot be ignored.

She has suggested successive Macron governments could fall, until he steps down — making clear she is after a more consequential trophy: the president himself.

Mr. Macron was barely off the plane from Saudi Arabia as she spoke last Wednesday night. As the bemused parliamentarians listened, she promised “deliverance” for France from its woes, “maybe, very soon.”

That seemed as much promise as threat.

It all rested on one man’s decision, she said, avoiding Mr. Macron’s name while suggesting she was pushing him toward the exit. Her target was clear.

“It’s up to the person concerned, by himself, to decide whether he should stay,” she said. “It’s on his conscience, to determine whether he should sacrifice public policy, and France’s fate, for the sake of his own pride.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis: Netanyahu Finally Takes the Stand in His Corruption Trial, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Dec. 10, 2024. Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a trial that began four years ago. He has denied the charges.

Outside the courthouse, he is one of the most powerful men in the Middle East, overseeing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, its occupation of southern Lebanon and recent strikes in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterAs he stepped into a cramped and sweltering underground courtroom in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel morphed into the defendant in Case 67104-01-20 — charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.

Israel Flag“Like everyone who is brought to the witness stand, you are charged with speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Rivka Friedman-Feldman, one of three judges hearing the case.

An audience of roughly 100 journalists, lawmakers, government ministers and lawyers craned their necks to catch his response.

“I have waited eight years for this moment — to tell the truth, the truth as I remember it,” replied Mr. Netanyahu, gripping the sides of a wooden lectern as he stood to the left of the judges.

It was a humbling moment — a sitting prime minister, forced to answer accusations of graft, before a courtroom filled with his peers. It was also a moment Mr. Netanyahu seemed determined to transcend.

“I am shocked by the magnitude of this absurdity,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“I am the prime minister, I am running a country, I am running a war,” he continued. “I am not occupying myself with my future, but rather with that of the state of Israel.”

For nearly a decade, the corruption charges against Mr. Netanyahu have divided Israel, leading to years of political turmoil. The electorate has been roughly evenly split on the question of whether Mr. Netanyahu should remain in office while he stands trial — a dynamic that has created an electoral stalemate, leading to five elections in less than four years.

Apart from a brief court appearance to plead not guilty in 2021, Mr. Netanyahu had rarely been affected by the day-to-day proceedings of the trial.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent years interviewing witnesses instead of the defendant himself. The hearing on Tuesday — 1,661 days since the trial began — was set to be Mr. Netanyahu’s first full day in court.

Mr. Netanyahu had sought to delay his testimony by several months, arguing that his management of the war campaign had disrupted his preparations. But the court agreed to a postponement of only a few days.

While his appearance on Tuesday provided a crescendo in the judicial process, it was also, to many Israelis, anti-climactic. The charges against Mr. Netanyahu have been a part of Israeli discourse for so long that the spectacle of a prime minister on trial no longer seems as shocking as it once did.

“The public has completely accepted the idea that we have a sitting prime minister who has been investigated, indicted and is now on trial — even in the middle of a war,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst who attended the hearing on Tuesday.

“What would have been unimaginable 10 years ago has been completely normalized,” she added.

Mr. Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate but related cases. The charges center on claims that he gave regulatory favors and diplomatic support to prominent businessmen in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage.

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seth hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: {December 11 [Human Rights Day History, Implications] Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Dec. 11, 2024. Today is heather cox richardson cnnHuman Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-six years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948 the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, including the horrors of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Greece was in the middle of a civil war, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans.

In the midst of these dangerous trends, the member countries of the United Nations came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.The United Nations itself was only three years old. Representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, had formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Part of the mission of the U.N. was “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to construct the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit.

The UDHR remains aspirational, but it is a vital part of the rules-based order that restrains leaders from human rights abuses, giving victims a language and a set of principles to condemn mistreatment. Before 1948 that language and those principles were unimaginable.

In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China Bans Rare Mineral Exports to the U.S., David Pierson, Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson, Dec. 4, 2024 (print ed.). The China Flagmove comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.

China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States, an escalation of the tech war between the world’s two biggest powers. The move comes a day after the Biden administration tightened Chinese access to advanced American technology.

The ban signals Beijing’s willingness to engage in supply chain warfare by blocking the export of important components used to make valuable products, like weaponry and semiconductors.

Politico, Trump threatens BRICS nations with 100 percent tariff, Ari Hawkins, Nov. 30, 2024. Trump also said: “There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Trudeau Flies to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Nov. 29, 2024. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the first G-7 leader to visit since the election. He is under pressure to persuade President-elect Trump to back down from his tariff threat.

canadian flagThe visit makes Mr. Trudeau the first foreign head of government from the Group of 7, a key forum of global coordination consisting of the world’s wealthiest democracies, to visit the president-elect.

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump were to dine together on Friday evening, one official said, along with a delegation of senior Trump allies poised for top trade and security positions in his new administration.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump, Mexican president talk border, migrant caravans amid tariff threats, Mary Beth Sheridan and Niha Masih, Nov. 29, 2024 (print ed.). Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to impose tariffs and she hinted at retaliation in a letter.

claudia sheinbaum w 2024Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, left, assured President-elect Donald Trump in a phone call Wednesday that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the U.S.-Mexican border, after Trump’s threat earlier this week to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from her country if it could not halt irregular migrants and fentanyl from crossing the U.S. border.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

mexico flag1“We discussed the Mexican strategy for the phenomenon of migration, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at our northern border, because we deal with them in Mexico,” Sheinbaum wrote on X after the call.

She described the conversation as “excellent.” Trump, posting about the call on Truth Social, his social media platform, said the conversation was “very productive.”

The conciliatory tone on both sides followed a tense exchange Tuesday: In a letter, Sheinbaum responded angrily to Trump’s tariff warning, threatening tariffs of her own. But they diverged in how they described the conversation.

Trump said Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico,” which would mean “effectively closing our Southern Border.” In a second post he said this would be come into effect immediately, prompting another tweet from Sheinbaum in which she said: “Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges,” adding that her country would offer assistance to migrants, including caravans, before they could reach the northern border. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy, Michael Crowley, Nov. 29, 2024. The  world is braced for disruption from President-elect Trump, but he may find more common ground with President Biden than many assume.

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

trump 2024Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

ny times logoNew York Times, How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter, Agnes Chang and Keith Bradsher, Nov. 29, 2024. President-elect Trump has promised to impose new tariffs, but they are unlikely to undercut China’s dominance given its advantages in automaking.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

richard grenell oPresident-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.

trump 2024A 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Burkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 12, 2024. The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

washington post logoWashington 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.

Justice Department log circularSmith’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.

 

More On U.S.Government Shutdown Threats

washington post logoWashington Post, With shutdown deadline hours away, House GOP offers new plan without Trump’s debt limit demand, Staff Report, Dec. 20, 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Friday that the House would vote on a new spending plan without President-elect Donald Trump’s demand to suspend the debt limit.

mike johnson oEmerging from a two-hour GOP meeting, Johnson, right, said he was finalizing the details. “I’ve got one more little detail to work out, but we should be having a vote here soon.” he said, adding, “We will not have a government shutdown.”

The bill would require the support of Democrats and it was unclear whether they would agree. The legislation would extend current fiscal levels until mid-March, provide $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers and grant an extension for the farm bill which must be reauthorized.

At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.”

The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a budget-focused think tank, is calling on Congress to avert a shutdown but is also warning about the implications of raising the debt ceiling as part of any deal.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: As Musk forces a shutdown, the Trump presidency is already collapsing into chaos, Dana Milbank, right, Dec. 20, 2024.  Lies, dana milbank newestconspiracy theories and middle-of-the-night rants are no way to run a country.

They’re baaaack.

Just six weeks ago, voters elected Donald Trump by the slimmest of margins in hopes that he would lower the cost of living. But Trump quickly walked back that promise, saying “it’s very hard” to reduce prices.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

Instead, he has already returned the country to the unrelenting chaos, and the government to the ludicrous dysfunction, that dominated his first term. And he hasn’t even taken office yet. This week alone, Trump:

  • Announced, in a 3:23 a.m. social media post, his interest in annexing Canada. Spread unfounded paranoia about UFOs invading the East Coast. (“The government knows what is happening. … Something strange is going on.”)
  • Signaled, in another middle-of-the-night post, his desire to have the FBI probe prominent Trump critic Liz Cheney for violating “numerous federal laws” in the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
  • Declared that he was suing the Des Moines Register — because the Iowa newspaper’s election poll was wrong.
  • Suggested, via Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that he would limit access to abortion medication.

And then, the pièce de résistance: Trump, and the man he tapped to police government spending, Elon Musk, killed a painstakingly negotiated, bipartisan spending package at the 11th hour, sending the federal government hurtling toward a Christmas shutdown — which would be the first time the government is forced to turn out the lights since, well, the last time Trump was in charge.

ny times logoNew York Times, Government Shutdown Looms as G.O.P. Rebels Against Trump, Catie Edmondson and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 20, 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to find a spending plan that will satisfy both Republicans and Democrats. He has less than a day to do it.

With a possible government shutdown looming at day’s end, President-elect Donald J. Trump early Friday renewed his demand that Congress U.S. House logosuspend the debt ceiling, intensifying a face-off with lawmakers from his own party as Republicans run short of options before a midnight deadline.

Congress failed to pass a spending bill on Thursday night, after Republicans rejected a Trump-backed proposal that included suspending the debt limit for two years. Hours after that vote, Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to “get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling.”

“Without this, we should never make a deal,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

mike johnson oCongress has not passed any individual spending bills, and after a roller-coaster week of negotiations, it is unclear what plan could pass both the bitterly divided House and the Democratic-controlled Senate. If the House speaker, Mike Johnson, right, a Republican, cannot find a way forward before 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the government will shut down.

trump 2024Some House Republicans on Thursday night were quietly floating the idea of a very short-term funding measure — with no other provisions attached — to avert a shutdown and move the problem into January.

“There are a number of different options that the speaker is considering,” said Representative Dusty Johnson, Republican of South Dakota.

Here is what to know:

  • Thursday vote: The hastily produced plan failed by a vote of 235 to 174, with 38 Republicans and 197 Democrats voting no. Right-wing lawmakers balked at increasing the government’s borrowing limit, something many of them have long pledged not to do without spending cuts to keep the debt from ballooning further. House Democrats refused to back the deal because it would allow Mr. Trump and his allies to push through tax cuts for the wealthy.
  • republican elephant logoDefying Trump: Conservative Republicans who normally align themselves with Mr. Trump’s philosophy voted against his wishes, raising questions about his supposed hammerlock on his party. Whether this reflects some loss of his control over the party or merely a hiccup may not be known until he puts a razor-thin Republican majority to the test next year after he returns to the White House.
  • Debt ceiling: A failure to raise the borrowing limit could cause a default on the national debt. This current limit is expected to be reached in January, although many think it could be stretched into the spring. Mr. Trump has made clear that he does not want to be responsible for raising it, and wants to do it while President Biden’s in office.
  • Shutdown shock: While most government agencies have developed contingency plans for this scenario, a shutdown would have widespread effects across the United States, including travel disruptions. Benefits including Medicare and Social Security will continue without interruption because Congress authorizes them separately, with laws that do not need annual renewals.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: Republican Plan to Avoid Shutdown Fails in the House, Staff Report, Dec. 20, 2024 (print ed.). The House rejected a new Republican proposal to avert a shutdown, a day after President-elect Donald J. Trump torpedoed a spending deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson had struck with Democrats.

The new, Trump-endorsed plan would have tied an extension of government funding to a two-year suspension of the federal debt limit. Some Republicans joined Democrats in voting it down.

ny times logoNew York Times, Dozens of House Republicans Defy Trump in Test of His Grip on G.O.P., Michael D. Shear, Dec. 20, 2024 (print ed.).  Thirty-eight Republican lawmakers resisted President-elect Trump’s support of a spending and debt deal, showing that some were willing to buck his leadership.

Writing on social media, Mr. Trump had told Republicans to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” He said it was vital to pass a bill that extended spending until early next year and suspended the nation’s debt limit until 2027, well into his next term.

U.S. House logoFor the better part of a decade, that kind of dictate has usually been enough for Mr. Trump, who has methodically seized control of trump 2024the Republican Party at all levels. But with just a month left before he returns to office, Mr. Trump found out that at least some of his followers were willing to buck his leadership in the right circumstances. The rebel Republicans, combined with most House Democrats, sank that legislation, leaving the nation about a day away from a government shutdown.

The defiance came not from the handful of moderate Republicans who have previously earned the president-elect’s ire. This time, it was conservatives who would normally align themselves with Mr. Trump’s philosophy who voted against his wishes.

Steady, U.S. Political Commentary: Is Trump Really Calling the Shots? Dan Rather, Dec. 19, 2024. Just when you think it can’t get weirder or more dysfunctional …

dan rather steady logoWelcome to a preview of coming attractions — your U.S. government (not) at work. The new administration is a month away from taking office, and it feels a lot like they’re already in power … except for the small problem that there may be no government to run as a Republican-led shutdown looms.

We’ve seen this movie before, but now we have a new lead actor. Move over Donald Trump and make way for the Ambassador of Chaos, Elon Musk. It would be funny if it weren’t so troubling.

While almost every Steady these days could don the headline ‘You Can’t Make It Up,’ today’s raises the bar to new heights.

U.S. House logoNow the machinations of the U.S. Congress tend to be a pretty dry subject, but bear with me. It’s worth your time.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has spent the past few weeks working with both House Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a spending bill to keep the federal government open and running.

According to Politico, Donald Trump was given the broad strokes of the deal over the weekend, and he reportedly had no objections.

mike johnson oLate Tuesday, Johnson, right, announced a deal that would keep the government funded for three months.

Wednesday morning, a disgruntled Elon Musk began a tweet-a-thon in opposition to the spending bill. Musk, who has no official role yet, is unelected, and will not need Senate confirmation, decided he didn’t like the bill. He let everyone know it with more than 100 posts on his social media platform, X.

“SHUT IT DOWN,” Musk posted; followed by “Folks, American Democracy is in TROUBLE,” said unironically.

He falsely claimed that shutting down the government would hurt no one.

“Just close down the govt [SIC] until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days,” Musk wrote on X.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who would be furloughed and therefore not paid until there’s a deal. For context, when the government shut down for three weeks in 2018-19, the Congressional Budget Office said it cost the U.S. economy $3 billion. That estimate does not include lost productivity. But what’s a billion or three to someone worth 440?

Musk also threatened political retribution, saying he will financially back any primary opponent of Republicans in Congress who supported the original deal.

His beef with the bill is too much pork, which is the appropriation of funds for pet projects of individual House and Senate members. Pork is included in spending bills to appease members and guarantee their vote. It is how budgets are made and have been made since the dawn of American democracy.

The bill also includes $100 billion for disaster relief and billions for American farmers.

By the end of the day, Musk’s social media temper tantrum had worked. Trump, who as a reminder is not yet president, put out a statement noting his sudden displeasure with the bipartisan spending bill that he was just fine with until Musk. Long story slightly shorter, that bill is dead, as are Speaker Johnson’s chances of remaining Speaker Johnson. More on that in a minute.

Who exactly is calling the shots? It doesn’t sound like it’s the president-elect. It does sound like it is the richest man in the world, who paid an enormous amount of money to ride in Donald Trump’s sidecar.

“The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure, about this budget deal, all of a sudden Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal,” Democratic Congressman Daniel Goldman said on MSNBC.

Senator Bernie Sanders asked on X, “Are Republicans working for the American people or taking orders from ‘President Musk’?”

This morning Trump called, yes called, NBC to do damage control. During the phone interview he said he had spoken with Musk before the X owner went on his rant and that their views are “very much on track.”

So, now what? Late today, Speaker Johnson says he has a new deal, one that apparently makes Musk and Trump happy, but perhaps few others. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says it’s an unserious proposal and would be dead on arrival. The new bill is a pared-down version of the original with a debt ceiling increase.

Without boring you to the point that you scroll to the end of this piece, let me quickly explain. The debt ceiling is a limit on how much Congress can borrow to pay its bills. If the ceiling isn’t raised and the government can’t pay, it will be in default. If that happens, there will be actual hell to pay. The consequences for the U.S. economy could be catastrophic.

The Council of Economic Advisers said that if the government defaults on its obligations, “the economy would quickly shift into reverse, with the depth of the losses a function of how long the breach lasted.”

And now a twist no one expected. After Musk’s muscle flex over the continuing resolution, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee have floated the idea of Musk replacing Johnson as speaker of the House. Yup, you read that right. The Constitution does not require a speaker to be a sitting member of the House of Representatives, though every speaker has been.

Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that Musk, who is originally from South Africa, was actually in the U.S. illegally for a time after dropping out of Stanford to start a business. He later became a citizen. Who would have thought that someone who has railed against undocumented immigrants was perhaps one himself, and now could be speaker of the House … the world’s richest person, and answerable to absolutely no one?

These are serious matters for the future of our country. Strange and perilous times, my friends.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Tossed a Debt Limit Grenade Into Spending Talks. Here’s Why, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 19, 2024. President-elect Donald J. Trump injected debt limit politics into already-fraught congressional spending talks this week, urging lawmakers to lift the debt limit or abolish it entirely before he takes office next month.

U.S. House logoThe re-emergence of the debt limit comes 18 months after Republicans and Democrats staved off a fiscal crisis and agreed to suspend a cap on how much the government can borrow until after the 2024 presidential election. That was supposed to clear the decks and sidestep a politically difficult vote during the heat of campaign season.

But now the problem is waiting for Mr. Trump. As he prepares to push an agenda of tax cuts and border security, Mr. Trump fears that a debt limit fight next year could interfere. His plans are expected to cost trillions of dollars, much of which will most likely need to come from borrowed funds. A drawn-out debt limit fight next year could force Mr. Trump and Republicans to bow to the demands of Democrats and could consume the congressional calendar.

“This is a nasty TRAP set in place by the Radical Left Democrats!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday night.

Politico, GOP strikes a new spending deal that includes disaster aid and raising the debt limit, Jennifer Scholtes, Katherine Tully-McManus and Meredith Lee Hill, Dec. 19, 2024. The news caught Democrats by surprise Thursday afternoon.

politico CustomRepublicans have struck a deal on a short-term government spending patch and potential debt limit increase, according to two GOP lawmakers meeting in Speaker Mike Johnson's office Thursday afternoon.

“There is an agreement,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.). Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) confirmed there was a deal among Republicans, though the news caught House Democrats by surprise.

U.S. House logoThe plan Johnson is expected to put on the House floor later Thursday includes, according to three Republicans familiar with the deal, a stopgap measure that funds the government through mid-March, a clean farm bill extension, the $110 billion disaster aid package previously negotiated with Democrats, clean health care provision extenders and a two-year suspension of the debt limit, kicking a new deadline into January 2027.

Bice said she expects Donald Trump and Elon Musk to support the deal, after the two derailed Johnson’s plan to pass a more than 1,500-page catch-all measure he negotiated with top Democrats earlier this week to avert a government shutdown, deliver more than $100 billion in disaster aid and enact a slew of unrelated policy priorities.

The goal is for the House to vote Thursday, Bice added. The government shutdown deadline is Friday at midnight.

Given House Democrats did not appear to be read in on the deal, it wasn't immediately clear if they will support it, and Johnson will almost certainly need their votes to pass it through the chamber. Shortly after the agreement was announced, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) already said he was opposed to the plan — an attitude other conservatives are certain to share.

"It's a water-downed version of the same crappy bill people were mad about yesterday," he said on The Sean Hannity Show.

Politico, Jeffries says 'hell no' to GOP funding deal, ratcheting up chances of a shutdown, Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz, The package would need a lot of Democratic support to get out of the House.

politico CustomHouse Democrats were skeptical of an emerging Republican-led funding deal as they walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline.

“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said to reporters as he walked into the meeting.4640182134416795 07/29 sec. 279

Speaking privately to members of his caucus minutes later, Jeffries told lawmakers: “I’m not simply a no. I’m a hell no,” according to three people familiar with his remarks, granted anonymity to speak about the meeting.

Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed doubts about the legislation, which Republican leaders were teeing up for a vote Thursday evening. It would suspend the debt ceiling through early 2027, fund the government through March, and include billions in disaster relief funds, a top Democratic priority.

The vote on the bill is scheduled to come up via a process called suspension, which means it needs to meet a two-thirds vote threshold to pass. If Democrats are roundly against it, it will fail on the floor — leaving Congress without an obvious solution to avoid a shutdown.

“This was done on short notice,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, who said he was opposed. “We reached an agreement on a bipartisan basis between the respective leadership and the membership of both parties, only to have an interruption take place and then a veto occurs after the agreement has been rendered and reached.”

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk worked to spike the original deal on Wednesday, sending the House careening down an alternate path with a deadline looming.

“Elon Musk is not my constituent. My constituents are hard-working people who work very hard every day for every dime they have, and I'm sure as hell not bailing out on them in the final week,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Top Democrats weren’t involved in the drafting of the legislation, and the unveiling caught senior lawmakers by surprise.

“All I know is it was just reported by the press. We have not been involved in anything that they have done,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Appropriations Committee Democrat.

Republicans argue the burden is now on Democrats to justify any opposition to a continuing resolution — “CR” for short — that averts a government shutdown and also prevents the U.S. from defaulting on its more than $36 trillion in debt next year.

“Fundamentally, Democrats are going to have to explain why a clean CR with disaster relief, keeping the government functioning and open — and doing, by the way, exactly what they argued a year ago — why they wouldn’t support that,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said as he left Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.

Those policies are typically something Democrats would support, GOP lawmakers note, without acknowledging that backing the plan threatens Democrats’ negotiating power going forward

ny times logoNew York Times, Government Shutdown Grows Closer as Trump Tells G.O.P. to Kill Spending Deal, Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse, Dec. 19, 2024.  President-elect Trump weighed in against the spending package after Elon Musk warned Republicans not to support it, leaving the compromise on life support.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

ny times logoNew York Times, What Happens Next in the Spending Fight in Congress, Chris Cameron, Dec. 19, 2024. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s denunciation of a bipartisan spending bill all but buried that deal while leaving unclear what form a new agreement could take.

ny times logoNew York Times, Where Does a ‘Remarkable’ U.S. Economy Go From Here? Jeanna Smialek and Ana Swanson, Dec. 19, 2024. America’s economy is far outstripping its peers, but there are serious risks, including from the president-elect.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Russian War Against Ukraine

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Says It Assassinated Russian General in Moscow, Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.). Igor Kirillov, who was in charge of Russia’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed by a bomb on a street in the capital.

ukraine flagA general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces was killed by a bomb on a Moscow street on Tuesday, in one of the most brazen assassinations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

igor kirillov wThe general, Igor Kirillov, 54, right, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.

The S.B.U. considered General Kirillov a legitimate target, the official said.

russian flagA day before the general’s killing, Ukraine had accused him of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian troops had dropped ammunition with toxic compounds onto Ukrainian positions in efforts to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches.

According to the Russian military, the division that General Kirillov oversaw carries out specialized tasks like protecting Russian troops when chemical and nuclear weapons are used, as well as offensive operations like attacks with incendiary weapons.

ny times logoNew York Times, Who Was Gen. Igor Kirillov? Staff Report, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.).  The general had faced sanctions for using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of Russia’s military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed on Tuesday by a bomb in Moscow, the Russian authorities said.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.How was he killed?

General Kirillov, 54, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

The explosion occurred at about 6:12 a.m. and shattered windows in a building across the street, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.Why was he targeted?

russian flagA day before his killing, Ukraine had accused General Kirillov of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian forces had used chemical weapons on the battlefield more than 4,800 times since the war began, on General Kirillov’s orders. Russia denied Ukraine’s accusations during a July meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Ukraine has said the chemical weapons used by Russia often include combat grenades equipped with the irritant chemical agents CS and CN. Those tear gases, most commonly used by riot police officers to control crowds, are banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty ratified by more than 150 countries, including Russia.

The U.S. State Department said this spring that Russia had used chloropicrin, a choking agent widely used in World War I, as well as tear gas on the battlefield. Britain imposed sanctions on General Kirillov this fall, citing his responsibility in deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

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

politico CustomA 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.

german flagThe 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.”

NBC News, Russian oil tankers split in two by strong storms in the Black Sea, Dec. 15, 2024.

Enforcer News, Massive Russian Ships SINK In Black Sea; MAJOR Rescue Operation Underway, Dec. 15, 2024. Today, 2 Massive Russian Ships have sunk in the Black Sea resulting in a major disaster for the Russians as they mount a full-scale rescue operation to save the men onboard.

The ships were carrying thousands of tons of petroleum (estimated at 5,000 tons apiece)which if fully released into the sea, would result in the worst disaster in the history of the Black Sea.

Putin is furious and demanding answers from top officials. We also received news that Ukraine attacked the special forces headquarters in Grozny, Chechnya with a full size Ukrainian FoxBat drone which evaded all of Ramzan Kadyrov's air defenses. Meanwhile we also received news from the Ukrainians that the North Korean soldiers are taking extremely heavy losses as they begin to retreat/run in major swarms from the frontline. We also got some news coming out of Syria as well. Please like and subscribe for more daily short war updates!

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

burkino fasoBurkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Brazilian Police Arrest Close Ally of Ex-President Bolsonaro, Official Says, Ana Ionova, Dec. 14, 2024. Gen. Walter Braga Netto was Jair Bolsonaro’s running mate. The arrest was for meddling in an investigation into a plot to stage a coup, the police said.

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested Gen. Walter Braga Netto, a close ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his running mate in 2022, according to a police official, accusing him of meddling in their investigation into a plot to stage a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election.

The federal police said in a statement that they had carried out an arrest and two search warrants against people for “hindering the free production of evidence during the criminal proceedings.”

The police official confirmed that General Braga Netto was the target of the arrest, which the police said in the statement was “to prevent the repetition of illegal actions.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. The targets of the search warrants were not identified.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

 

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).

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).

ap logoAssociated 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.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

The lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

texas mapUnder shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

 

 

pete hegseth collage djt

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trouble Began When #MeToo Became #ChurchToo, David French, right, Dec. 15, 2024. l When did we know that the #MeToodavid french cropped moment was truly over?

At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.

But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.

Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense (shown above and at left), had paid an accuser to pete hegseth tatoo religion newssettle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.

ryan lizza olivia nuzzi rfk jr

Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., above right, who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, center, ,a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job (and disputed with her ex, reporter Ryan Lizza, while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.

I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.

Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.

All that happened before my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein. But the early wave of #MeToo revelations was heavily concentrated in traditionally liberal institutions.

When #MeToo became #ChurchToo, though, that was the beginning of the end. In a remarkably short period of time, the narrative changed. No longer was sexual abuse and exploitation a “Hollywood problem” or a “secular problem,” it was also an evangelical problem, and it was a problem in many of the most important institutions of the church.

 

southern baptist convention logo

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, faced a sexual abuse “apocalypse,” a series of scandals that my friend Russell Moore, the former head of the S.B.C.’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called “a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.”

jerry falwell jr resized wife assistant

Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, faced its own sexual scandals. Its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., stepped liberty university sealaside after a sordid series of allegations that involved him, his wife and a pool-boy-turned-business associate [and his wife's assistant, shown above].

At the same time that the school was sheltering a corrupt president, it was also mishandling claims of sex abuse against students, including by turning the school’s code of conduct, called the Liberty Way, against sex abuse victims. If they’d violated a school policy, by drinking, for example, that could be used against them in the schools’ disciplinary proceedings.

The hypocrisy was stark. The Christian president of a Christian university was imposing standards on students — including victims of abuse — that he was flouting himself.

There’s an easy answer for understanding the end of #MeToo, one that has the benefit of being largely true — American society (including the American church) is still rife with misogyny. As with race, the fact that America has come quite far in respecting the legal rights of women does not mean that we don’t still have far to go to achieve true cultural equality and respect.

But misogyny was never a complete explanation, especially given the fact that sex abuse isn’t confined to men abusing women and girls. Something else is at work, something that also represents a deep and profound moral flaw. A person might value vulnerable people in the abstract — or might even declare a strong commitment to justice — but very few people will sacrifice anything they truly value to correct an injustice that doesn’t involve them immediately and directly.

My wife’s story helped me understand. When she was 12 years old, a vacation Bible schoolteacher abused her in her own home. Decades later, her pastor, by then retired, told her that the same person had abused at least a dozen other women and girls in the church.

The abuser was never held accountable — either by church leaders or law enforcement. Instead, he moved to a town in Kentucky and became a high school girls’ basketball coach. He lost his teaching certificate in 2023 after there were multiple reports of misconduct.

The abuser’s father was a powerful person in the church and in Nancy’s small town. Confronting his son carried a cost, and the simple fact is that very few people were willing to bear that cost, including people who were very close to Nancy. Not even their love for her could overcome their fear of the social risk.

Yes, people want justice. They want abuse to stop, but they also don’t want to poison their relationships with friends and colleagues or undermine their social status. They don’t want to say no to kids who ask to go back to their favorite summer camp. They don’t want to lose an election. Any sacrifice, no matter how attenuated, is too much.

That’s a bleak truth — one that is very hard to face — and so there is a temptation to rationalize, to say that #MeToo was a valuable movement until it went too far. Rationalizations are often rooted in a measure of truth. At its height, #MeToo was too quick to rush to judgment, too reliant on rumors and too dismissive of due process, especially due process on campus.

Even so, one can and should be able to raise awareness of a terrible social evil without undermining fundamental fairness or discarding constitutional values.

There are always excessive responses to genuine problems, and the existence of the excessive response shouldn’t blind us to the underlying reality. The fact that defunding the police was a terrible idea — or that rioters burned buildings during the summer of 2020, for example — doesn’t mean that American police officers have no problems with brutality.

And so here we are, with the nation about to be led by a man found liable for sexual abuse, with key members of his chosen senior team beset by their own gross scandals, voted into office on the strength of overwhelming white evangelical support (according to 2024 exit polls, he won white evangelicals by 65 points and lost everyone else by 18 points). And all too many Christians still celebrate his victory — and their indispensable support — as a triumph of good over evil.

When I was younger and more naïve, I wondered why so many historical injustices persisted for so long in the United States. Now I have my answer.

 

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Crystal Mangum, who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, says she lied, Jenna West, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). / Crystal Mangum, a woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, publicly said for the first time that she lied about the allegations.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Mangum said on an episode of the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat” released this week. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me.”

The episode was recorded in November at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum is serving time after being convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend in April 2011.

crystal mason mugshot Custom“I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” Mangum told podcast host Kat DePasquale about the Duke case, “and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was regardless.”

The Duke case made national headlines after Mangum, a Black woman, accused lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann of raping her at a party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. It caused the cancellation of the lacrosse team’s 2006 season, and Duke forced coach Mike Pressler to resign.

The North Carolina attorney general’s office reviewed the case and declared Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann innocent in 2007. The attorney general’s office said the charges should not have been brought against the three players and there was no DNA or evidence to corroborate the allegations.

District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for ethics violations, including making false statements and lying about withholding evidence. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Mangum for making false allegations.

Also in 2007, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke for the school’s handling of the allegations.

“I want them to know that I love them, and they didn’t deserve that, and I hope that they can forgive me,” Mangum said of the players.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general, right, opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

ken paxton mugThe lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

Under shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

In a statement on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said that she was “committed to maintaining New York’s status as a safe harbor for all who seek abortion care.”

“Make no mistake,” she added. “I will do everything in my power to enforce the laws of New York State.”

Ms. Ziegler said that the case could play out in several ways. She said that New York’s shield law had a provision that allows the doctor being sued, or possibly the state, to countersue against Texas, so the case could end up with dueling lawsuits.

If, as expected, the case ends up in federal court, she said, Texas might argue that shield laws cannot be enforced because the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution requires states to respect other states’ laws. But, Ms. Ziegler said, some legal experts who support shield laws say the laws constitute a “public policy exception” to that clause.

The use of abortion medication has grown since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. One study found that medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions.More in U.S.

Already, abortion providers have become concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be revived by the incoming Trump administration. The law, which has been rarely enforced, prohibits the mailing of “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials, like pornography, or any item “intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion.”

In 2022, the Justice Department concluded that abortion medication could be sent by mail if the sender did not intend for the recipient to use them unlawfully. Abortion opponents have been pushing for the incoming administration to rescind that interpretation and say that the act bans all mailing of abortion pills.

In the Texas suit, Mr. Paxton said that Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., provided two medications to a 20-year-old woman in Texas that “resulted in a medical abortion” over the summer. The two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, are widely used together to end pregnancies up to 12 weeks.

In July, the woman asked the “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room because of “severe bleeding,” and it was there that he first learned that she was nine weeks pregnant, according to the lawsuit.

The man “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage,” the suit said, and he went back to their home in Collin County, where he “discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.”ImagePiles of white pills on a table. Two hands wearing medical gloves are on the table, and one is hovering over a pile.Misoprostol, which is used to end pregnancies.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times

Dr. Carpenter specializes in reproductive health and is a co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that assists doctors in states where abortion is legal with interstate telemedicine in order to “close the abortion accessibility gap,” according to the group’s website.

She is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas, according to the suit. A colleague of Dr. Carpenter’s said on Friday that Dr. Carpenter would not be commenting on the case.

But the colleague, Dr. Linda Prine, who has been open about prescribing abortion pills under New York’s shield law, said: “Maggie has been providing legally protected abortion care, protected by the State of New York, to people who are greatly in need. Texas has no jurisdiction over us in New York State. Abortion is a human right.”

Mr. Paxton said he was seeking to have the court stop Dr. Carpenter from continuing to provide abortion medication to patients in Texas, and to apply Texas’ ban on abortion to her. The ban carries a penalty of at least $100,000 for each violation.

It was not clear how Mr. Paxton would seek to enforce the state law against a New York doctor. His office did not respond to a request to discuss the suit.

David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who has helped draft and lobby for shield laws, including New York’s, said the suit was precisely what the shield laws were meant to cover.

“Texas has no jurisdiction over Maggie Carpenter,” Mr. Cohen said. “She is not physically present there. The courts cannot order her to do anything, and they cannot get the assistance of the New York courts to order her to do anything because of the shield law.”

But anti-abortion groups were already celebrating the legal challenge.

“If Texas wins, this case could open the door for the state to take further legal action against one of the largest organizations in the illegal abortion cartel: Aid Access,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, referring to the Europe-based organization that has been at the forefront of telemedicine abortion and has shield-law providers in several states.

Katie Daniel, the director of legal affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded Mr. Paxton for “leading the charge to hold out-of-state abortion businesses accountable for preying on Texas’ unborn children and their mothers.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Paxton has tried to stretch Texas’ ban beyond state borders. He fought in court this year to reverse a rule by the Biden administration that prevents investigators from inspecting the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortions. It was not clear if Mr. Paxton had been seeking such records.

Ms. Ziegler says the new lawsuit also sets up an interstate battle that is “kind of giving the lie to the whole idea that each state is going to be left to do its own thing,” she said. “That was the winning recipe for the G.O.P. — every state can make its own policy.”

But with abortion pills being mailed across state lines, she said, the conflicts between conservative and liberal states don’t go away. Instead, they become heightened.

“The whole ‘each state is going to leave each other state alone’ thing is not an accurate depiction of what any of the states are doing or want to do,” she said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Polygamist Sect in Arizona Gets 50 Years in Child Sex Ring Case, Michael Levenson, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., right, who claimed to have more than 20 “wives” including 10 “brides” under 18, pleaded guilty in April to two felony conspiracy charges.

samuel batemanThe self-proclaimed leader of a polygamist sect in Arizona who amassed more than 20 “wives,” including 10 “brides” under 18, was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison in connection with what prosecutors described as an interstate child sexual abuse ring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Federal prosecutors said that the man, Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., led a group that victimized girls as young as 9.

Using his status as a self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. Bateman forced his child “brides” to participate in sexual activities with him and with other adult men and women, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

ny times logoNew York Times, Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of a New York subway car. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.

Daniel Penny, a former Marine who choked a fellow subway rider on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, ending a case that had come to exemplify New York City’s post-pandemic struggles.

The jurors decided that Mr. Penny’s actions were not criminal when he held the rider, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold as the two men struggled on the floor of a subway car on May 1, 2023. Mr. Neely, who was homeless and had a history of mental illness, had strode through the subway car that afternoon, yelling at passengers and frightening them, according to witnesses.

After the forewoman announced the verdict, the courtroom erupted, with some people cheering the outcome and others responding with anger.

Upon hearing the words “not guilty,” Mr. Penny’s lawyer, Thomas A. Kenniff, slapped his palm on the defense table and turned to hug Mr. Penny, who had a large grin on his face. Another of his lawyers, Steven Raiser, stood and kissed his client on the cheek.

Mr. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, lashed out at supporters of Mr. Penny, and the judge asked him to leave the room.

The jurors had spent more than three days trying to come to a unanimous decision on whether Mr. Penny, 26, was guilty of manslaughter — a higher charge — in the death of Mr. Neely, 30. On Friday, the jurors sent two notes to the judge overseeing the trial saying that they had deadlocked.

After the jurors — seven women and five men — sent the first note that morning, the judge, Maxwell T. Wiley, instructed them to resume their deliberations. When the jurors sent the second note in the afternoon, telling Justice Wiley that they were still unable to reach an agreement, he granted the prosecution’s request to dismiss the charge. He sent the jurors home for the weekend, telling them to prepare to begin deliberating on the lesser djt michael cohen disloyalcharge, criminally negligent homicide, on Monday. Ultimately, they decided to acquit Mr. Penny.

The decision was a defeat for the office of Alvin L. Bragg, left, Manhattan’s district attorney. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bragg said that the jury “has now spoken.”

“We deeply respect the jury process and we respect their verdict,” he said.

In his statement, Mr. Bragg also noted that prosecutors and their families had been “besieged with hate and threats — on social media, by phone and over email” throughout the trial. “Simply put, this is unacceptable, and everyone, no matter your opinion on this case, should condemn it,” he said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Youth Pastor Is Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades, Billy Witz, Nov. 27, 2024. Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.

The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.

The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.

“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.

Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.

A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.

Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Immigration

ICE logo

washington post logoWashington Post, Immigration: Hundreds more migrants have died in Rio Grande crossings than U.S., Mexico reported, Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez, Dec. 8, 2024. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have texas mapdrowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

washington post logoWashington Post, Many targeted for removal by Trump can’t be deported, ICE data shows, Nick Miro, Dec. 8, 2024. Nearly half of the 1.4 million people in the U.S. immigration system who have pending deportation orders cannot be sent back to their home countries, according to internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, posing one of several looming obstacles to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for a mass removal campaign.

Some orders can’t be carried out because the would-be deportee’s home country won’t take them or limits cooperation with ICE. Others identified for deportation are serving prison terms, or have received a reprieve or deferral from an immigration judge, due to a medical condition, a credible persecution threat or another extenuating factor.

An array of other logistical and legal impediments also could constrain mass deportations, according to current and former ICE officials.

Trump promises to brush aside hurdles and mount a campaign modeled after the harsh roundups of the Eisenhower administration, when the U.S. government expelled hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to Mexico.

“We will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said on the campaign trail.

Trump’s aides describe the anticipated campaign as an enforcement blitz that will leverage the power and resources of the U.S. military to roll back the effect of record numbers of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden. Criminals and those with outstanding deportation orders will be the administration’s priority as of Trump’s inauguration, Jan. 20, aides say.

 

glenn youngkin wins

washington post logoWashington Post, Youngkin: Jordanians ‘crashed’ Quantico. Feds: It was an Amazon delivery, Laura Vozzella and Salvador Rizzo, Dec. 8, 2024.   Virginia’s governor, shown above in a file photo, has used the arrest of two undocumented men who misunderstood directions to stop at a check-in station to inflame fears over illegal immigration.

There are two versions of a May 3 incident at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia involving two Jordanian men, both undocumented immigrants, who pulled up to the entrance in a box truck.

commerce dept logoThere’s the mundane account given by federal prosecutors about some confusion over where to check in during an Amazon delivery stop. And there’s the one that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has been telling for the past six months that makes it sound like two foreigners stormed the gates at the fortified military installation.

“We have folks that have crashed the — illegal immigrants — that have crashed the front gate at Quantico in a box truck, trying to gain access to Quantico,” Youngkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Oct. 14 in one of multiple national television appearances — plus speeches at the National Republican Convention and a rally in Virginia with then-Republican nominee Donald Trump — where he has invoked the episode to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies.

Federal prosecutors — who initially charged the pair with misdemeanor trespassing, but later dropped those charges — say that, while the Jordanians were in the country illegally and are in the process of being deported, they did not crash the gate or intend to do any harm at Quantico.

Mohammad Dabous, working for an Amazon subcontractor, was trying to make a delivery to the post office in the town of Quantico, which can only be accessed through the gates of the military base, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Amico, who handled the case, said in a court filing. Hasan Hamdan was a passenger in the truck.

“Marine Corps … agents spoke with Mr. Dabous’s supervisor at the subcontractor delivery company, who confirmed Mr. Dabous’s employment and verified the scheduled authorized delivery to the Northern Virginia town of Quantico on May 3, 2024,” Amico wrote in a motion filed Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The same filing noted that neither man had any known terrorist links. “The FBI has not identified any national security concerns regarding either defendant,” wrote Amico, who also said he consulted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Neither defendant is on the watch list.”

Quantico officials issued Dabous and Hamdan citations for trespassing, a petty offense punishable by a maximum six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. They then turned the pair over to ICE because of their immigration status. The men were later released on bond from ICE custody.

The U.S. attorney’s office dropped the charges Oct. 3, but the deportation proceedings continue.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions

washington post logoWashington Post, Skyrocketing car-insurance premiums are pushing inflation higher, Andrew Ackerman and Federica Cocco, Dec. 14, 2024. Auto insurance costs in particular are making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult.

Soaring insurance premiums, particularly for autos, are fueling rising consumer price

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space

ny times logoNew York Times, Automakers Thrived in the Pandemic. Many Are Now Struggling, Jack Ewing, Dec. 15, 2024. A few years ago, automakers were celebrating record profits as the pandemic created shortages of new cars, allowing them to raise prices. Now the hangover is setting in.

Nissan, the Japanese automaker, is laying off 9,000 employees. Volkswagen is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time. The chief executive of the U.S. and European automaker Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Peugeot, Fiat and other brands, quit after sales tumbled. Even luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz are struggling.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Media, High Tech, Culture, Education

 

llewellyn king photo logoWhite House Chronicle, Opinion: The Crisis in Journalism — More Reporting Needed , Llewellyn King, Dec. 21, 2024. There is a lot of dither about the future of journalism. Make no mistake, it is the essential commodity.

If you know what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine or Syria, it is because brave journalists told you. Not the government, not some academic institution, not artificial intelligence, and not hearsay from your friends or from a political party.

The crisis in journalism isn’t that it failed analytically in the last election, or that we — an irregular army of individualists — failed, but that journalism has run out of money and its political enemies have found that the courts (and the fear of libel prosecution) can terrorize the companies that own the media.

peter thiel twitter smileIn 2016, the gossipy site Gawker was sued by the pro wrestler and political figure Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was financed by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, left.

Now come two suits, filed by President-elect Donald Trump: One that he won against ABC News, and one to be filed against the ICE logoDes Moines Register. It is reported that conservative interests plan a series of these legal interventions against the media.

This will have a frightening effect on news coverage. When there is fear of prosecution, there is less likely to be investigative news coverage.

So far, the most troublesome of the prosecutions has been the one against ABC News. The network caved in early. It agreed to abc news logo colorpay $15 million plus legal fees into a fund for what will be the first Trump presidential library.

Could it be that ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney wants good relations with the incoming administration?

However, a much bigger problem faces the media than the fear of prosecution. It is that the old media, led by local and regional newspapers, is dying. Although there are thousands of podcasts, they don’t take up the slack.

You could listen to an awful lot of podcasts and not know what is going on. State houses and local courts aren’t being covered. The sanitizing effect of press surveillance has been withdrawn and, frankly, God help the poor defendants in a local court where there is a disproportionate desire to plead cases, to avoid honest trials even when there is conspicuous doubt.

I never tire of repeating what Dan Raviv, former CBS News correspondent, said to me once, “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so. However, there is a problem: Journalism needs to be concentrated in a newspaper or a broadcast outlet where there is enough revenue to do the job. Otherwise, you get what I think of as the upside-down pyramid of more and more commentary, based on less and less reporting.

We are awash in commentary, some of it very good and some of it trash. It is all based on news gathered by those news organizations that can afford to employ a phalanx of reporters.

Regional newspapers used to have Washington bureaus and foreign bureaus. At one time, the Baltimore Sun had 12 overseas bureaus. Now it has none.

This is the story nationwide. Fewer people actually cover the news, digging, checking and telling us what they have found.

Throughout the history of journalism, technology has been disruptive, sometimes advantageously and sometimes less so. Modern printing presses developed at the end of the 19th century were important boosters, as was the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884.

On the negative side, television killed off evening papers, and podcasts are taking a toll on radio. Now, the internet and tech companies have siphoned off most of the revenue that supported newspapers, radio and television.

As one can’t have a free and fair society without vibrant journalism, we clearly need a new paradigm which is internet-based news organizations that are large enough and rich enough to do the job in the time-honored way with reporters asking questions, whether it is at the courthouse, the White House or on the battlefield.

There is a clear choice: News and informed analysis, or rumor and conspiracy.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. Read this column on: White House Chronicle or Inside Sources.

 

Going Deep with Russ Baker via Substack, Investigative Commentary on The Epoch Times: Epic Crimes: The Spectacular Grift of a Trump Propaganda Rag, russ baker new head and shouldersRuss Baker, right, best-selling author, longtime media critic and founder of the WhoWhatWhy investigative reporting site. June 9, 2024, republished Dec. 22, 2024. Their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable.

In case you missed this extraordinary story: A highly visible “news organization” that is a key backer of Donald Trump and continuous source of disinformation turns out to be… run by criminals.

Here are quick details:

The Epoch Timesepoch times, a strange publication that, backed by a religious cult, started small and grew explosively into a behemoth of disinformation, was involved with large-scale money laundering.

The CFO and unnamed members of his “Make Money Online” team are charged with money laundering and bank fraud between 2020 and 2024. The transnational scheme involved using cryptocurrency to buy crime proceeds — fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and prepaid debit cards — at a discount and depositing the money into bank accounts opened with stolen personal identification, then transferring the money into Epoch Times accounts. This stratagem had the effect of hiding the criminal activities that generated the funds in the first place.

But their worst crimes, sadly, are not prosecutable: their unconscionable spreading of disinformation on deadly diseases, and deadly climate change, and their propagandistic promotion of the man whose rule would perpetuate these possibly fatal conditions.

And their reach is wide and deep. The Epoch Times was the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself — until Facebook banned it in 2019. As NBC News put it, “By hiding its multimillion-dollar dark money ad spend, the organization bypassed Facebook’s political advertising transparency rules.” Yet the ads continued to run, but under other names — e.g., Honest Paper, Patriots of America, Pure American Journalism — until they, too, were disabled.

I know these maniacs — to whose madness there is, unfortunately, a determined method — because they fill my inbox with constant, grotesque lies on a nonstop, turbocharged basis. I’ve never seen anything like it, and, given what I see daily, that’s saying a lot. Stop the Steal. Photo credit: ATTRIBUTION_GOES_HERE

I bring up the Epoch Times indictment as a coda to last week’s examination of the criminal mindset increasingly taking over the Republican Party and a significant portion of the populace.

This week only underlined that point: One of America’s two political parties has turned largely into a refuge for those inclined toward committing illegal, immoral, and unethical acts — or at least refusing to speak openly against them.

Committing crimes, cheating, lying, stealing, harming others is… absolutely fine. Even to be admired. High five! Laugh. Drinks all around.

The criminal mindset and complete lack of a moral compass expand into a kind of gleeful lunacy that also punishes the perps, who cannot see beyond short-term, ill-gotten gains.

For the rest of us, it feels like being strapped into the back seat of a car being driven at high speed by Thelma and Louise.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., always available for his disinformation cameo, says The Epoch Times is among his most trusted news sources: “They’re very courageous and it’s real journalism.”

The Epoch Times’s mission, according to tax filings, is — and I love this — independent journalism, “outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, for the public benefit and to be truly responsible to society.”

The criminal levels of dishonesty exhibited by The Epoch Times are, unsurprisingly, similar to that captured in the emails the Trump campaign sends out. For example, this one, which I just received:

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

So, not only is he a criminal, but he takes himself and his crime — which had zero to do with “saving America” and everything to do with self-interest — and wraps them in the flag.

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Mediaite, Feds Indict Far-Right Media Exec in Massive Money Laundering Scheme, Alex Griffin, June 3, 2024. Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the far-right Epoch Times, was indicted Monday on charges of allegedly participating in a massive money laundering scheme.

mediaite square logoThe Southern District of New York released a statement saying, “Bill Guan, 61, of Secaucus, New Jersey, is charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and two counts of bank fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. The charges do not relate to the Media Company’s newsgathering activities.”

Justice Department log circularGuan is alleged to have laundered some $67 million in funds. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and is associated with the Chinese Falun Gong new religious movement. The paper, which is part of the Epoch Media Group, is known for its conspiratorial articles, vehement opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, and socially conservative values.

NBC News reported in late 2023, based on subscriber count, the paper has the 4th largest circulation in the U.S. “The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax record,” noted NBC of the publication’s wild success.

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009President-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

david french croppedny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel? David French, Dec. 22, 2024. Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate. Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.

Most of us have sound enough moral instincts to reject the notion that might makes right. Power alone is not a sufficient marker of righteousness. We may watch people bow to power out of fear or awe, but yielding to power isn’t the same thing as acknowledging that it is legitimate or that it is just.

The idea that right deserves might is different and may even be more destructive. It appeals to our ambition through our virtue, which is what makes it especially treacherous. It masks its darkness. It begins with the idea that if you believe your ideas are just and right, then it’s a problem for everyone if you’re not in charge.

In that context, your own will to power is sanctified. It’s evidence not so much of your own ambition, but of your love for the community. You want what’s best for your neighbors, and what’s best for your neighbors is, well, you.

The practical objections to this mind-set are legion. How can we be so certain of our own righteousness? Even if we are right or have a superior vision of justice compared with our opponents, the quest for power can override the quest for justice.

The historical examples are too numerous to list. Give a man a sword and tell him he’s defending the cross, and there’s no end to the damage he can do.

My own attitude about Christmas has changed over the years. A day that was once purely celebratory is now also profoundly humbling. In many ways, the facts surrounding Christ’s birth are as important as the fact of Christ’s birth. How he arrived was a signal of why he arrived: to redeem hearts, not to rule nations.

Christ’s life began in a manger, and it ended on a cross. He warned his followers that a cross could come for them as well. An upside-down kingdom began with an upside-down birth. When Jesus himself is humble, how do we justify our pride?

Status News, The Sunday Spotlight: Dasha Burns dishes on why she left TV news to go all in on digital, Oliver Darcy, Dec. 22, 2024. Mentioned in this edition: Jeff Bezos, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, James Gunn, Scarlett Johansson, Barack Obama, SZA, and more.

It is not every day that a television correspondent opts to ditch the tube for a role at a digital news outlet. But that's what Dasha Burns, who was a rising star at NBC News, announced she was doing earlier this month when she joined POLITICO as White House bureau chief.

With television news facing a precipitous decline, the reality is that Burns is only simply getting ahead of her peers with the move. A large segment of the TV news industry will eventually need to make a similar transition. Nevertheless, switching gears on the early side also takes some admirable temerity.

We caught up with Burns for a conversation on her jump to digital, the less-than-stellar state of the news industry, and how she's preparing for a second Donald Trump presidency.

ny times logoNew York Times, After Oleksandr Usyk beats Tyson Fury again, what’s next for heavyweight boxing? Sarah Shephard, Dec. 22, 2024. On a night that left no doubts about the exalted position of Oleksandr Usyk in boxing history, there was one question that lingered in the cool Riyadh air: what next?

Not only for the two men who have now shared 24 closely fought rounds of high-level heavyweight boxing, but for the sport’s marquee weight division. Where does it go from here, having just staged back-to-back showdowns between its two best men? When you’re standing at the top of a mountain, is there anywhere to go other than down?

The journey to this point started in Dusseldorf just over nine years ago when Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko to change the course of heavyweight history.

Prior to the night of November 28, 2015, Klitschko had ruled the division for almost a decade, dominating fights with his strength, speed and knockout power. But by the time he took on Fury, there was a desire among fans to see something — anything — change. And the Brit delivered, using his mobility, head movement and switch-hitting to outpoint a champion who failed to find his rhythm for most of the fight.

“That’s the best thing to happen to the heavyweight division in years,” tweeted former heavyweight and cruiserweight world champion David Haye after Fury’s hand was raised in victory.

washington post logoWashington Post, Congress passes RFK bill in surprise move, giving D.C. control of stadium site, Meagan Flynn, Erin Cox and Sam Fortier, Dec. 22, 2024 (print ed.). Passage of the legislation, which transfers the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has long sought to redevelop the site.ByUpdated 19 minutes ag

Congress has passed legislation giving D.C. control of RFK Stadium and allowing the city to redevelop more than 170 acres of federal property surrounding it, a political miracle that came in the twilight hours of the year’s congressional session and after almost every avenue for the legislation appeared exhausted.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

The U.S. Senate passed the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act by unanimous consent at about 1:15 a.m. Saturday — a Hail Mary action that required the support of all senators present without objection. The bill cleared the House in February on a broad bipartisan basis, and it was not immediately clear how D.C. officials and their congressional allies got all senators on board.

Passage of the legislation, which transfers control of the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who for years has sought to turn the property surrounding the decaying football stadium into a major new attraction and possibly bring the Washington Commanders back to their old home. The bill, which must still be signed by the president, will allow Bowser to formally negotiate with the Commanders — a possibility sure to excite the city’s football fans, who have not seen a home game in Washington since 1996.

“This is a win for DC, for our region, and for America,” Bowser said on X on Saturday. “Everybody loves a good comeback story – and that’s DC’s story.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East, Sharon Otterman, Dec. 22, 2024. Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.

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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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ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Spending Extension, Ending Shutdown Crisis, Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, Dec. 21, 2024. The Senate passed the measure, sending it to President Biden’s desk, shortly after the midnight deadline for government funding to lapse.

The Senate approved a spending measure early Saturday to keep government money flowing through mid-March, sending it to President Biden for his expected signature and closing a chaotic endgame in Congress minutes after federal funding had lapsed.

U.S. House logoThe 85-to-11 Senate vote followed earlier House passage of the legislation, which also provided $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The action pushed major spending decisions into 2025 and the first months of the incoming Trump administration and a fully Republican-controlled Congress.

The White House said that President Biden would sign the measure on Saturday and that no agencies would shut down despite the technical lapse in funding.

The end to days of shutdown drama came after House Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.

The measure that ultimately passed kept dollars flowing to federal agencies and prevented a prolonged funding lapse that could have led to government disruptions just days before the holidays.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the final product was not all Democrats wanted, but avoided a crisis.

“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families,” Mr. Schumer said, citing “emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters” as well as no suspension of the limits on federal borrowing. He added that it would “keep the government open with no draconian cuts.”

The legislation also extends farm programs for one year and provides $10 billion in direct aid for farmers.

  • Washington Post, Biden signs stopgap funding bill, but congressional fight to continue, Maegan Vazquez and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 21, 2024. The incoming Congress, which will be controlled by Republicans, is still expected to face bruising battles over government funding in Trump’s second term.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Wanted Shutdown to Happen on President Biden’s Watch, Not His, Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 21, 2024.  President-elect Trump was eager to evade responsibility for the consequences of a potential shutdown even as he blew up a bipartisan spending deal.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who derailed a bipartisan spending deal in Congress, tried on Friday to escape responsibility for the consequences, saying it would be better to let the government shut down under President Biden’s watch than to allow a politically damaging stalemate once he takes office next month.

“This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” Mr. Trump said in a social media post Friday morning. Earlier, at 1:16 a.m., Mr. Trump said he wanted Mr. Biden to be blamed for whatever political fallout might come, writing to Republicans: “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

In other words, let the blame game begin. Mr. Trump’s comment signaled that he understood the clock that was ticking. In 31 days, he will take the oath of office, returning him to power — but also to accountability — after a four-year absence.

Early Saturday, the Senate followed the House in passing a slimmed-down, temporary spending measure, extending funding into mid-March and clearing the way to keep the government open — for now.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Bannon: Kash Patel Will Absolutely Investigate The People Named In His Book, Tim Miller, Dec. 20, 2024. A tough break for those hoping that the likely next FBI director may moderate if confirmed

bulwark logo big shipDonald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, right, is dead serious when it comes to investigating the political enemies who he listed in his book “Government Gangsters,” according to Trump’s on-again-off-again adviser Steve Bannon.

kash patel headshot smile“Kash didn’t try to hide the football. Steve Bannon didn’t try,” Bannon asserted, speaking in the third person during a one-on-one interview with The Bulwark following his speech to Americafest, a yearly gathering of MAGA diehards hosted by Turning Point USA.

“He made a fucking movie that’s called Government Gangsters and the first guy is Merrick Garland ok. And Lisa Monaco’s in there who the nation doesn’t know, we’re trying to make these people famous. So no. First of all, it has to happen. Number two, it's going to happen.”

FBI logoAmong those who would have a clear understanding of Patel’s intentions, Bannon stands high up on the list. He worked with Patel on the documentary that accompanied Patel’s book. He has also routinely hosted Patel on his podcast. His comments serve as a stark contrast to how congressional Republicans have talked up Patel’s nomination by portraying him more as a force of reform at the FBI. Patel will need 50 votes in the Senate in order to be confirmed.

Bannon’s remarks, delivered during a wide-ranging interview, came after I expressed concern that Patel might use the powers of the FBI to target political foes in the shadows without accountability. Bannon asserted that it shouldn't be concerning, not because Patel would moderate his desire to ensnare political foes of President Trump but because he would do so right out in the open.

“Transparency and sunlight is our friend,” Bannon said before ruminating on the importance of Patel’s poorly written but politically potent book.

“I would say Kash’s book is more typing than writing, ok” Bannon quipped. “It’s not a literary thing. But when you see it, it’s so in your face and at the end he lists on eight pages people from the deep state that need to be investigated. … So I think it’s pretty transparent.”

Bannon was adamant that Patel’s forthcoming investigations would not be about political revenge but, rather, an important cleansing of institutions that Trump and the MAGA movement believe are fundamentally broken. Bannon himself served a four-month sentence in Danbury federal correctional institution for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“These investigations and all that, it's not for personal retribution. I would be the person then at the forefront since I spent four months in a federal prison and I could care less. [Prison] actually was very empowering for me,” he said. “We can never allow again to happen what happened. The debanking, the deplatforming, the coming after President Trump. You have to get to the bottom of it.”

Among the investigations Bannon specifically expected from Patel were ones that look into the supposed “fedsurrection” on January 6th (a conspiracy that the FBI was behind the attack on the Capitol, which I covered back in 2023) and the purported “vast criminal conspiracy” against President-elect Trump. A recent watchdog report found that there were 26 FBI informants—and no undercover employees—at the Capitol on January 6th. None were authorized to enter the building or otherwise break the law.

“I think there will be a massive investigation. The vast criminal conspiracy, including the medias,’ what was it Andrew Weissman and all those FBI guys that work on MSNBC, I think there will be big investigations into all these people, I just do. I think there is going to be a huge investigation, I believe, into 2020. I think it's going to be a huge investigation on January 6th, the fedsurrection, I think it's going to be a huge investigation about the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump.”

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

 

pete hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: United States Senate Passes Pediatric Cancer Research Funding, Aaron Parnas, Dec. 21, 2024. This funding was passed despite Republicans taking it out of the House Continuing Resolution

mtn meidas touch networkOvernight, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund pediatric cancer research that was originally stripped from the House Continuing Resolution to keep the government.

Previously, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was included in a deal in the House as part of the bill to keep the government open.

There was bipartisan support for this legislation until Elon Musk and Donald Trump stepped in, at which point Republicans removed the cancer funding from the updated continuing resolution.

At the same time, Senator Rand Paul was blocking the bill from moving forward as a stand alone bill in the United States Senate.

For a while it seemed as though this critical cancer research funding would not be included in any final continuing resolution given the Republican Party's opposition in the House. But, overnight, the United States Senate passed the bill via unanimous consent after Paul dropped his objections to the bill.

As a result, the bill will head to the President's desk who will likely sign the bill into law and ensure funding goes to the National Institute of Health for pediatric cancer research.

Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer's leadership, continue to push to pass the bill despite the failures of the House of Representatives.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Senate confirms 2 Biden judicial nominees, boosting total over Trump, Tobi Raji, Dec. 21, 2024. President Joe Biden’s diverse cohort of judges includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other U.S. president.

The Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s last two judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, surpassing Donald Trump’s first-term total of 234 judges even as the president-elect’s second term will afford him the chance to make many more judicial appointments.Get the latest election news and results

Benjamin J. Cheeks was confirmed to a seat in the Southern District of California by a vote of 49-47. Serena R. Murillo was confirmed to the Central District of California by the same vote count. Cheeks and Murillo are the 234th and 235th judges confirmed under Biden.

Their confirmations add to a diverse cohort of judges nominated by Biden that includes more women, minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other president in U.S. history.

“We have people who are from all across America and who resemble America,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a news conference with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee after Cheeks and Murillo’s confirmations. “Our courts are stronger. Our courts are better. They reflect our country.”

A former magistrate judge, Cheeks is the 63rd Black judge confirmed during the Biden administration, setting a record for the most Black judges confirmed during a presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Murillo, who previously served as a Superior Court judge, is the 150th woman and 24th Latina judge confirmed under Biden, according to the group.

Hopium Chronicles, Political Commentary: Trump's Very Bad Week, Part II, Simon Rosenberg, right, Dec. 21, 2024.Last night the Democrats swooped in and simon rosenberg twitterhelped a struggling GOP pass bills in the House and Senate to keep the government open through March. President Biden has just signed the measure and we will all be able to head off for the Holidays without worrying about what chaos Trump and Elon and MAGA may bring. For now, at least.

The bloom has come off the post-election Trumpian rose. The essential ugliness of his project that is often discounted or obscured in our daily discourse became the story this week. The warning signs about the chaos he will bring and the damage he will do to the country are now there for all to see and are impossible to ignore. Let’s review:

Trump is already unraveling the strong economy he is inheriting. Markets and our allies are not happy.

As has been well covered by economists and journalists, Trump’s economic agenda of tariffs and mass deportations will raise prices, re-ignite inflation, slow economic growth and increase the deficit. This week the Fed and financial markets started coming to terms that the US government may, in a month, start implementing an agenda that unravels the current strong and stable US economy and undermines the broader global economy that has made the US and the world so prosperous in recent decades. Due to concerns about Trump’s inflationary agenda the Fed announced a more “hawkish” position and is scaling back its interest rate cut ambitions in 2025. Mortgage rates are already rising. The stock market indices lost ground in the past two weeks. All of a sudden the strong and stable US economy is looking a bit wobbly - due to fears of what Trump may do.

It is likely now that Trump’s agenda is already damaging the US economy even before he takes office will spur calls from other Republicans and US business leaders for Trump to scale back or curtail his inflationary plans. Trump’s economic honeymoon ended this week, as his dangerous plans started being taken seriously by the US government and the markets. It is my hope that President Biden writes the next President a letter in the coming days urging him to back off his reckless economic agenda and preserve and protect the remarkable economy he is inheriting. The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s ongoing and aggressive tariff threats have already angered our closest allies and largest trading partners in Canada, Mexico and Europe. Trade wars and retaliatory tariffs would not just increase prices on every day goods, re-igniting inflation and harm the people Trump vowed to protect, it would weaken the Western alliance and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free. M

e and make America far less safe. What Trump is threatening would not just unravel the strong economy he inherited, it would start to unravel the entire post-WWII American led global order that has made us prosperous and kept us safe and free.

The very first paragraph of the Intelligence Community’s January 2017 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election read:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

What Trump is doing now should also be seen an escalation to undermine the “US-led liberal democratic order.” The warning signs are there for all of us to see.

Trump’s Maniacal Efforts To Throw The Country Into Chaos Were Rebuffed By His Own Party. Trump’s legislative and political miscalculations this week were among the most significant I’ve seen in my 32 years here in DC. He was goaded into coming out against the must pass bi-partisan bill and crashing the US government by a lie-infused Elon Musk, and then added his own wild demands for ending the debt ceiling. The replacement bill Trump supported failed due to Republican -- not Democratic -- opposition on Thursday. Then last night his party along with Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March without the one thing he demanded -- a suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling, something he told Republicans they needed to fight for and keep the government shut until they won.

Trump was politically weakened this week, and it was all impulsive, reckless, self-inflicted wounds. He followed Elon, a bomb-throwing pro-Russia extremist, and got terribly burned. Speaker Johnson was also weakened, and the Republican Party, looked immature, foolish and not ready to govern. This was a fucking disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and the media is being remarkably direct in saying so this morning. Here’s Axios’ lead story today.

Recent Trumpian/MAGA stumbles:

  • John Thune was elected to be Senate majority leader, despite a fevered push by Trump allies to elect Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) He didn't even make it past the first round of votes.
  • Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was forced to withdraw from consideration to be attorney general. Despite being celebrated by some in Trump's orbit, the votes weren't there from Senate Republicans.
  • 38 House Republicans defied Trump by voting against a short-term spending deal he explicitly asked for. Congressional Republicans went against Trump's wishes again by voting for a spending bill that didn't include an increase in the country's debt ceiling.

For Trump to have put himself into a position of taking such a huge and consequential loss before even becoming President is big-time, holy-shit, political incompetence and is being see that way all across this city. It has weakened him with the very people he needs to pass his agenda passed and get his outrageous nominees through. It has been a stunning -- and encouraging -- few days.

elon musk sideviewIn this spirit  people are starting to come to terms with the dangers and recklessness of Trumpism -- recognizing that it isn’t just “locker room talk” or that there are actually bullets in the gun -- we are learning today that the man who committed the lethal terrorist attack in Germany yesterday was a devout follower of Elon Musk:

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 20, 2024 [GOP Power Vacuum], Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 21, 2024. This evening the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for three months. The measure will fund the government at current levels halfway through March. It also appropriates $100 billion in disaster aid for regions hit by the storms and fires of the summer and fall, as well as $10 billion for farmers.

Getting to this agreement has exposed the power vacuum in the Republican Party and thus a crisis in the government of the United States.

This fight over funding has been brewing since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2023. From their first weeks in office, when they launched the longest fight over a House speaker since 1860, the Republicans were bitterly divided. MAGA Republicans want to slash government so deeply that it will no longer be able to regulate business, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights. Establishment Republicans also want to cut the government, but they recognize that with Democrats in charge of the Senate and a Democratic president, they cannot get everything they want.

As Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post recounted, when the nation hit the debt ceiling in spring 2023, Republicans used it to demand that the Democrats cut the budget back to 2022 levels. Democrats objected that they had raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times under Trump and that Republicans had agreed to the budget to which the new Republicans were demanding cuts.

The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped micromanaging the instruments the Treasury used to borrow money and instead simply set a debt limit. That procedure began to be a political weapon after the tax cuts first during President George W. Bush’s term and then under President Donald Trump reduced government revenues to 16.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product while spending has risen to nearly 23%. This gap means the country must borrow money to meet its budget appropriations, eventually hitting the ceiling.

Today, social media exploded with the realization that an unelected billionaire from South Africa who apparently supports fascism was able to intimidate Republican legislators into doing his bidding. In this last week, Trump has threatened former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) with prosecution for her work as a member of Congress and has sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was unfavorable to him before the November election. Those actions are classic authoritarian moves to consolidate power, but to those not paying close attention they were perhaps less striking than the reality that Musk appears to have taken over for Trump as the incoming president.

As CNN’s Erin Burnett pointed out “the world’s richest man, right now, holding the country hostage,” Democrats worked to call attention to this crisis. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) said: “We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time the Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”

Republicans, too, seemed dismayed at Musk’s power. Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him, but I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.”

Tonight the House passed a measure much like the one Musk and Trump had undermined, funding the government and providing the big-ticket disaster and farm relief but not raising or getting rid of the debt ceiling. According to Jennifer Scholtes of Politico, Republican leadership tried to get party members on board by promising to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion early in 2025 while also cutting $2.5 trillion in “mandatory” spending, which covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP nutrition assistance.

The fiasco of the past few days is a political blow to Trump. Musk overshadowed him, and when Trump demanded that Republicans free him from the debt ceiling, they ignored him.

 

 dick durbin speaking screenshot

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, shown above, said in a statement.

Politico, Senate Democrats render a verdict on Supreme Court ethics, Josh Gerstein, Dec. 21, 2024. Sen. Dick Durbin says justices have lost the trust of American people by failing to disclose gifts and other ethical lapses.The U.S. Supreme Court is seen.

politico CustomSenate Democrats wrapped up their extensive investigation of Supreme Court justices’ ethics practices Saturday, issuing a report blasting two conservative justices for accepting expensive gifts from wealthy benefactors and slamming Chief Justice John Roberts for a lackadaisical response to ethical lapses by his colleagues.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said in a statement. “Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest, it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

The report levels its most strident criticism at Justice Clarence Thomas, alleging that he received gifts totaling millions of dollars since he joined the high court in 1991. “The number, value, and extravagance by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report says.

Many of the trips, including one Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas took by yacht and private jet in Indonesia in 2019 as a guest of billionaire developer Harlan Crow, were unearthed by ProPublica last year. However, the Senate Democrats claimed credit for turning up two previously unknown trips Crow treated Thomas to closer to home in New York, including one by yacht.

The report also alleges that Justice Samuel Alito failed to comply with federal law when he didn’t include on his annual financial disclosure form a private plane flight and lodging expenses for a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 that was paid for by a billionaire hedge fund operator, Paul Singer.

Thomas and Alito have said they generally complied with guidance the courts gave judges at the time, which used a broad definition of “personal hospitality” that could encompass travel by boat or private airplane.

In addition to criticizing the justices, the Senate report took particular aim at the Judicial Conference of the United States, a policy-making body run by federal judges that sets ethics guidelines and advises on how to apply them. It tweaked the rules about personal hospitality last year and in September, but that did not satisfy Democratic senators.

“To date, the Judicial Conference has failed to adequately respond to the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis,” the report says.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards. So long as Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to act, we must push for a legislative solution to this crisis to restore trust in the highest court,” Durbin said.

However, the prospects for such legislation are dim. In July 2023, Durbin’s committee approved a bill to mandate the court’s adoption of an ethics code and create an enforcement mechanism involving lower-court judges in reviewing complaints.

Politico, Johnson hits unsteady point of his speakership at the worst time, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney, Dec. 21, 2024. One Republican has already vowed to oppose him due to the spending fiasco, and he can’t afford to lose another due to his incredibly thin majority.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), right .

politico Custommike johnson oHouse conservatives are putting Speaker Mike Johnson on notice: He has work to do if he wants to keep his job.

The Louisiana Republican is at his weakest point after he was caught between President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the right flank of his party in a bruising fight over spending that just barely averted a government shutdown.Politico, Trump's man in the Vatican, President-elect Donald Trump said

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Trump is already walking back his promises. Why don't the headlines simply say, "He Lied"??? Thom thom hartmann newHartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. The main promise Trump made to American voters before the election was that he’d “immediately” lower grocery and other prices.

Anybody with even a tiny bit of civics education knows that’s nearly impossible; the president doesn’t control any agency or have any power other than the bully pulpit to affect marketplace prices. Just ask Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were both one-term presidents largely because of inflation. Nonetheless, Trump repeated that promise over and over and voters believed him. Now, as Todd Beeton points out in his excellent Big Picture newsletter, Trump has dismissed this promise as something he never really intended to do because, as noted, it’s simply not possible. When asked on Meet The Press if he’d keep his promise to lower prices, he replied bluntly, “I can’t promise anything.” Right. He’d also promised he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 and their plans to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other popular government programs; now he’s stocking his administration with the actual authors of that document. He’d also promised to end the Ukraine war the day after his election; now it just looks like he’s going to leave that democratic nation and its millions of people to the tender mercies of Russia’s brutal tyrant and his rapist soldiers. Finally, Trump promised not to attack Social Security with his campaign sending out literally millions of flyers to homes in swing states saying he’d protect the program; that’s already in the crapper as the DOGE caucus and Musk’s people are examining the program for cutbacks. Republican Rep. Greg Lopez went so far as to bluntly tell Social Security Works’ president Alex Lawson, ‘there will be some cuts’ to Social Security. The three areas where it appears Trump may keep his promises are putting an anti-vaccine crackpot in charge of our vaccine programs, cutting more taxes for his billionaire donors, and setting out on a revenge spree once he controls the Justice Department. This is going to get ugly fast.

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Republicans in Congress kick the can down the road to March,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Democrats in thom hartmann newthe House and Senate pitched in and helped pass a stopgap funding continuing resolution to keep the government open until March.

It does not include the lifting of the debt ceiling which Trump and Musk wanted to prepare for the next round of borrowing trillions from American taxpayers to give to their billionaire friends as tax cuts. Nor did it cut entitlement programs, which so pissed off rightwing Republicans that 34 of them voted against the bill. But those corrupt Republicans who love the morbidly rich and hate average Americans haven’t given up hope; here’s the operant sentence from the article in today’s Washington Post about the vote: “[Johnson] proposed a handshake deal with fiscal hawks in his own party to try next year to slash mandatory spending — programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ health care and food stamps — by at least $2.5 trillion while raising the debt cap by $1.5 trillion, according to three people familiar with the details.” That’s how they plan to get to a $4 trillion tax cut transfer of wealth from all of us to the top 1% this coming spring: Get your popcorn.

 

More  On Trump's Billionaire Allies, Their Rants & Their Contracts

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down, Williaml Kristol and Andrew Egger, Dec. 19, 2024. We knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.

bulwark logo big shipPer NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend. . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

The Hartmann Report, Political Commentary: Why is President Musk endorsing the “German neo-Nazi Party”?,Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 21, 2024. Both thom hartmann newPresident Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are in deep with the Chinese Communist Party (which has given millions to the Trump family and where Musk makes roughly half of his Tesla cars and many of his billions) and Vladimir Putin (both are reported to have had multiple phone calls and other communications with the Russian dictator over the past two years, including Musk cutting off Starlink internet access for Ukrainian drones that were supposed to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea).

Musk this week also endorsed the Nazi-infested German racist, far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and in the past has endorsed other European hard-right politicians and parties including in France and the UK.

Putin’s involved in a major effort to disrupt democratic governments around the world, mainly through using social media and video channels, and it increasingly appears that an anti-democracy coalition is forming here that includes several American and other rightwing billionaires and the Trump operation.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat expands on this extensively in her excellent Lucid newsletter this week; it’s well worth the read (and subscribing to).

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul (R-Crackpot) has suggested Republicans in the House should make Musk their Speaker (and third in the line of succession for the presidency), an idea that’s been endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. The Constitution doesn’t have a citizenship requirement or election requirement for the job, so it’s a real possibility, although probably wouldn’t get the necessary votes if Johnson is taken down.

No matter what, though, unless Musk and Trump get into some sort of major personality conflict (which I consider unlikely; Trump just wants to play golf and be loved, while Musk wants to get involved, presumably to protect the billions he gets in federal government grants and subsidies), it looks like the Muskrat is going to be America’s new overlord regardless of having or not having any official position.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Kent Brockman Republicans, William Kristol, right, Dec. 19, 2024. Yesterday’s chaos on Capitol Hill was primarily a story about william bill kristol imdbDonald Trump and Elon Musk, these two unfit humans who will, more than anyone else, influence the fate of the world’s oldest democracy and only superpower over the next four years.

bulwark logo big shipBut let’s take a moment to note the other players on stage, the neglected players with minor roles, what one might call the extras. I’m speaking of course about our elected representatives—in particular our elected Republican representatives. They played their part in yesterday’s theater of the absurd, in which an agreement their own House leader had crafted to fund the government was blown up by Musk’s disapproval of it, and then Trump’s 11th-hour demand to add a debt ceiling hike to it.

Their capitulation was necessary to the success of Trump’s and Musk’s willful bullying.

One might note that these representatives actually hold current government office, unlike Trump and Musk. They have actual responsibilities, unlike Trump and Musk. Indeed they have sworn an oath to the Constitution that they will “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” they hold.

Yet, needless to say, their priority isn’t to well and faithfully discharge their duties. Their priority is to listen closely so that when Trump and Musk say, “Jump,” they promptly ask, “How high?”

They are the Kent Brockman Republicans. As you will recall, in a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, Brockman, the pompous local news anchor, was convinced that the Earth was about to be invaded and conquered by giant space ants. He fearfully announces his willingness, his eagerness, to submit to the invaders:

trump 2024One thing is for certain: There is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Brockman presumably feared for his life. Or feared the terrible torture of enraged ants. What do these Republican representatives fear?

Loss of office through primary challenges. That was Musk and Trump’s threat on social media: “Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this [support the continuing resolution to keep the government open] should, and will, be Primaried [sic].”

Is the prospect of a primary challenge as awful as being devoured by ants? Apparently so, judging from the behavior of our Republican representatives.

U.S. House logoOne could try to reason with those elected representatives, pointing out that any primaries are over a year away; that it’s unclear Trump would even follow through on this threat, let alone win scores of primaries against incumbent Republican members; that their voters may actually be more upset if they willingly shut down the government over the holidays at the behest of the world’s richest man. But making such arguments would be in vain. When fear has taken over, reason goes out the window.

The House Republicans fear their incoming insect overlords. So they capitulate to them before they’ve even taken office.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreThe World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All DownWe knew Elon liked strategic acquisitions. We didn’t know the spines of House Republicans came quite so cheap.William Kristol and Andrew EggerDec 19 READ IN APP

Per NBC News, the Republicans who welcomed Elon Musk into their tent as a key decision-maker and thought leader are having an excellent time:

Musk helped lead a revolt Wednesday to try to stop a bipartisan funding bill in a direct challenge to the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and others in Republican leadership who helped craft the measure. And in a remarkable turn, the revolt appeared to succeed at least for a day, throwing budget negotiations into chaos and increasing the odds of a government shutdown this weekend, . . .

Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives . . . Musk also issued a midday warning: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”

The now-dead continuing resolution that would have kept the government funded became a target of MAGA ire for a lot of fuzzy reasons, but maybe the silliest was that it would have given lawmakers their first pay raise since 2009. When a producer for Tucker Carlson accused Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) of “spearheading” that effort, Crenshaw blew up at him: “Yeah or maybe you’re a f—ing lying piece of s— . . . whatever gets you pathetic bottom feeders your click bait.”

This, of course, drew other MAGA influencers like moths to a flame: “Dan Crenshaw is the America-last, Ukraine-first war pig who doesn’t need a raise because of all the money he makes when he miraculously became a stock expert since joining Congress,” wrote the thought leader who goes by “Catturd.”

This all might sound pretty harsh, but don’t worry—this is actually just the process by which great legislation is made.

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: When Corporations Kneel: How CEOs Are Funding America’s Dangerous Shift to Fascism, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 17, 2024. thom hartmann newFrom Disney to big business: Corporations are aligning with Trump to avoid punishment and secure their place in the authoritarian future…

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

— Donald Trump, Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as: “fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

disney logoWhen Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

 

 

djt elon musk washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year, Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.).  Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices around 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.

As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.

Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.

Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

“Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance Transition. He described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”

Musk launched his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he abandoned a graduate program at Stanford to found a start-up later called Zip2 that created online city guides. It was sold for about $300 million in 1999.

He went on to co-found an online banking company, X.com, that merged with another start-up to create PayPal. Auction site eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney, former journalism professor, Dec. 14, 2024. A viral Bluesky thread introduced tens of seth abramson graphicthousands around the world to a first glimpse of a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk. Here—in a single essay—is some of what the world just learned.

seth abramson proof logoElon Musk may be an unelected plutocrat, but in six weeks he’ll become co-President of the United States. Unfortunately, many people around the world are only just now beginning to research who Musk really is—not the mythos he spent decades carefully weaving about himself like a cloak, but the hard realities that define the actual man.

Most of what people think they know about Elon Musk is manifestly false. This essay, written by an Elon Musk biographer and based on OSINT research, reveals the truth—or at least a significant part of it. Rest assured that none of what remains is any better.

I’ve been a Musk biographer for two years now. In that time I’ve published hundreds and hundreds of pages of professionally researched content about the man—well over a book’s worth—here at Proof, an independent media outlet at Substack that ranks as a Top 25 U.S. Politics substack worldwide.

The longest report that I’ve published about Elon Musk so far is March 28. It’s a novella in and of itself, despite being just one of many fully sourced reports on Musk authored by a bestselling historian and biographer whose focus before now was the political career—and political scandals—of Donald Trump.

As you will soon see, the parallels between the lives of Trump and Musk are jarring.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump Transition News, Commentary

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009politico CustomPresident-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

Politico, Trump taps critic of Pope Francis for Vatican ambassadorship, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 20, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

politico CustomIn a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Burch will face a Senate confirmation process, but it is unlikely he will encounter stiff resistance from Republicans, as his views aren’t considered controversial in the party.

trump 2024Burch would be far from the first ambassador to the Holy See with a political background. Presidents from both parties have selected former elected officials who are practicing Catholics such as President Joe Biden picking Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Trump picked political activist Callista Gingrich in his first term. He also wouldn't be the first to have ideological or theological disagreements with the church.

But none of the picks to helm the Vatican to date would come into the role with as much a digital record of criticizing church leadership. On social media, Burch has criticized Francis’ leadership and shared the writings of some right-wing clerics who are critical of him. In 2023, he insinuated that church leaders were collaborating with controversial U.S. law enforcement probes into parishes that celebrated the Catholic Mass in Latin, a practice that was phased out decades ago for liturgy in local languages.

Writing on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

At the time, Burch defended geofencing as needed to “reach our fellow Catholics in the pews” and “ensure that our fellow Catholic voters get the facts and hear the truth — not the latest lies peddled by the media.”

 

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Mother Jones Magazine, Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda, david corn newDavid Corn, right, Dec. 16, 2024. It’s going to get very ugly.

"Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this FBI logomoment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now."

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Politico, The Catholics in Trump’s administration could take GOP in whole new direction, Megan Messerly, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The president-elect has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions.

politico CustomJoe Biden will leave the White House in January as only the second Catholic to occupy it. But a number of Catholics are expected to soon fill the ranks of Donald Trump’s administration.

Trump, who was raised as a Presbyterian but now considers himself non-denominational, has nominated at least a dozen Catholics to top positions in his administration, including his own vice president JD Vance, left, a Catholic convert, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, rfk jr mouth openhis pick for Health and Human Services Secretary.

Their faith could play a direct role in shaping public policy, from pro-union policies and new tariffs to expanding the child jd vancetax credit and more tightly regulating the food and drug industries — and also help carve a new path forward for the Republican Party.

In interviews, several conservative practicing Catholic leaders said they see a close alignment between many of Trump’s second-term policy priorities and a conservative read of Catholic social teaching, which goes far beyond abortion. It’s also focused on promoting marriage and having children, giving parents wide discretion on everything from school content to health care and empowering non-governmental institutions like churches and nonprofit organizations for social support.

“No one’s walking into the administration ready to mount a crusade or anything,” said Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. But “there’s a very specific sort of Catholic paradigm that you may begin to see.”

trump 2024It comes after decades of influence of a more individualistic evangelical Protestantism on the Republican Party that, among other things, strongly embraced individual liberty and free market capitalism.

“The market is not an end unto itself. The market has a purpose — and that is to create a free and flourishing society. If the family is not doing well, society is not doing well. We need to make sure our public policy is helping family to function,” Bovard added.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

In his nearly decade of political prominence, Trump has already dramatically reshaped the GOP, and it’s clear that the Republican Party’s future likely won’t be found in Ronald Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism, which was fiscally conservative, socially conservative and hawkish.

Where Republicans have long been skeptical of government intervention, some in the party increasingly see the government as a tool to reshape social policy. Republicans who long embraced “pro-life” policies, like restricting abortion access and supporting crisis pregnancy centers, are now leaning into a broader set of what they call pro-family policies that range from tax policies encouraging people to get married and have children to restrictions on kids accessing online porn. They are also now starting to turn a skeptical eye toward big businesses, including Big Pharma, Big Ag and Big Tech.

ny times logoNew York Times, News Analysis: Why Wray’s Resignation May Signal a Shift in F.B.I. Tradition, Devlin Barrett, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.).  Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher christopher wray oin a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director changes with the administration.

trump 2024Christopher A. Wray, right, had considered resigning as F.B.I. director before. More than once, confronted with angry demands from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, he contemplated calling it quits.

When Mr. Wray on Wednesday announced his intent to do so, it was because he believed staying on the job into a second Trump term risked significant disruptions to the work force and its mission.

Justice Department log circularMr. Trump had already declared his plan to replace him with Kash Patel, a tough-talking loyalist who has vowed to force out bureau leaders and empty its Washington headquarters.

In conceding to the reality of raw power, Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director is more of a political post that changes with the administration.

For decades, F.B.I. directors have been appointed to 10-year terms to insulate them from the shifting winds of politics. Few F.B.I. directors stay a full decade, and the circumstances of Mr. Wray’s departure after seven years suggest that insulation has worn thin.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein, Dec. 14, 2024 Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logotrump 2024President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump's Cases, Allies, Vengence, Threats

 

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ny times logoNew 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.

Mr. Trump has long said that people he claims have wronged him should be prosecuted, including President Biden and his family; Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents; and Liz Cheney, the former representative from Wyoming who helped lead the House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power in 2020.

In recent months, he has filed various legal actions against the media that amount to a warning shot about what sort of retaliation journalists, in particular, might face.

As he prepares to take office again, Mr. Trump will have at his disposal the levers of government, a Republican Party that is more pliant than it was four years ago and a well-funded external political apparatus.

“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” said Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law whose book, “Actual Malice,” is about the Supreme Court’s most famous defamation case. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”

Ms. Barbas added that prevailing in court may be beside the point. The lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening,” she said.

Many of Mr. Trump’s lawsuits go nowhere, including one that accused Hillary Clinton and a group of other Democrats of being part of a racketeering conspiracy against him. That particular suit resulted in nearly $1 million in fines issued by the judge against Mr. Trump’s lawyer.

 

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Lance's Substack, Political Commentary and Opinion: Why Biden must issue Sweeping Preemptive pardons For Trump Retribution Targets, Lance F. Rosen, lance rosenright, 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.

kash patel headshot smileThe 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 logoFacebook 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.

mark zuckerberg G8 summit deauville wAnd 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.

 

 

Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts in historic indictment linked to Stormy Daniels hush money probe (Associated Press photo by Seth Wong).

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.

juan merchan djt

ny times logoNew 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.

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if the decision withstands an appeal, Mr. Trump could become the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, criticized the ruling, calling it “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.”

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Imagesand TNS).

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference to discuss his indictment of former President Donald Trump, outside the Manhattan Federal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 (Angela Weiss photo via AFP, Getty Images and TNS).

 

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair.

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.

Politico Magazine, Opinion: You Should Worry About Kash Patel Running the FBI, Ankush Khardori, Dec. 14, 2024. The days of J. Edgar Hoover may be over, but kash patel headshot smilePatel’s nomination is deeply worrisome all the same.t national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

politico CustomSome key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close.

Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” Trump told NBC News that the members of the Jan. 6 committee should “go to jail” (even as he claimed that he would not direct his appointees to prosecute them). And his plan to install Kash Patel, right, as FBI director was made easier after Christopher Wray, himself a Trump appointee, announced he would resign despite having more than two years left on his term.

Trump’s decision to nominate Patel has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump. (A Trump transition spokesperson said, “Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic director.”)

trump 2024Many observers, including former federal law enforcement officials, oppose Patel’s nomination on the grounds that he would likely use the FBI to pursue Trump’s political opponents and that he might substantially corrupt the culture and professionalism of the bureau. To some, Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.

Patel clearly lacks the qualifications, experience and temperament to lead the agency. But how worried should the American public really be about him at the helm of the FBI?

The truth is that there are stronger internal and external safeguards in place against law enforcement abuses than during the Hoover era. He will indeed face some constraints because of the culture and bureaucracy of the FBI. But they may not contain him. And he will have plenty of opportunity to damage the bureau and its work — and to use and abuse the FBI for political ends. His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.

ny times logoNew York Times, Young Republicans Gather, Ready to Make America Vengeful Again, Shawn McCreesh, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). At a gala on Wall Street for the New York Young Republican Club, attendees were looking forward to retribution from the next Trump era, and musing on another run in 2028.  Late Sunday night, in a banquet hall inside the grand old Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street, the Republican operative Stephen K. Bannon was putting on one of his over-the-top, apocalyptic performances.

It was the annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — prom for pro-Trump provocateurs — and Mr. Bannon, 71, was the keynote speaker. Standing onstage, beneath soaring Corinthian columns and a vaulted ceiling, he looked out upon a sea of baby-faced acolytes in black tie and outlined the way forward for them and for the Trump restoration.

Donald J. Trump “is a leader of all the people,” Mr. Bannon said. “He’s got a kind heart and big soul. But that’s not us, right? We want retribution. And we’re going to get retribution.” The Young Republicans cheered.

Mr. Bannon added: “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28? Come on, man!” And they all roared some more.

Asked later if he thought Mr. Bannon was being serious about Mr. Trump making an unconstitutional run for a third term in 2028, the club’s 30-year-old leader, Gavin Wax, waved it off. “I think that was more of a light-handed remark to make fun and be a little jovial, but let’s focus on these four years and making the best of it,” he said.

That’s often how it goes with this crowd of Trump true believers. Like the man himself, they say outrageous things, and nobody knows how seriously to take them. They often don’t even seem to know how seriously to take themselves.


A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: F.B.I. Director to Step Down, Adam Goldman and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Wray told F.B.I. employees he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

christopher wray oThe F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, right, told bureau employees on Wednesday that he intended in January, bowing to the reality that President-elect Donald J. Trump had publicly declared his desire to replace him.

Mr. Wray made the disclosure while addressing employees Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Wray added that he wanted to keep the focus on the bureau’s work.

FBI logoThe announcement comes after Mr. Trump said in late November that he intended to nominate Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist, to run the F.B.I., and more than two years before Mr. Wray’s 10-year term would have expired.

Over more than seven years, Mr. Wray oversaw one of the most consequential and tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history, juggling high-profile criminal investigations of political figures, heated congressional inquiries and two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump.

Even as he fended off Mr. Trump’s relentless criticisms of the F.B.I., Mr. Wray supervised a wide array of national security issues that included terrorism, escalating cyberattacks and threats from geopolitical rivals like China, Iran and Russia. He also had to grapple with a spate of mass shootings and the rise of right-wing extremism while managing an agency with 35,000 employees and a budget of more than $10 billion.

ICE logoBut it was the bureau’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump that almost certainly cut short Mr. Wray’s tenure.

His F.B.I. repeatedly investigated Mr. Trump, including by searching the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents, examining his widespread efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and delving into the possible links between his 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence operatives engaged in election interference.

“He invaded Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Trump told NBC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”

Justice Department log circularUnder Mr. Wray’s watch, agents also investigated the current president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his handling of sensitive records after he left the vice presidency. They undertook several other politically charged cases that made the agency the subject of sharp partisan scrutiny, including its inquiry into Hunter Biden.

In the face of intense political cajoling, second-guessing and condemnation, Mr. Wray frequently urged his agents to “keep calm and tackle hard,” and preached a strict adherence to the investigative process that has been the agency’s calling card for decades.

His apparent successor could not be more different. Mr. Patel, a former federal prosecutor and public defender, is a fierce critic of the F.B.I. and has vowed to fire its leadership, empty its headquarters and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.”

“If Kash gets in, he’ll be taking somebody’s place, and that somebody is the man you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said in the interview with NBC News, referring to Mr. Wray.

Mr. Wray became the bureau’s eighth director in August 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey from the job in 2017 in the middle of the Russia investigation.

At the start, Mr. Trump called Mr. Wray “a man of impeccable credentials.” But the president quickly soured on him.

Mr. Wray withstood extraordinary pressure from Mr. Trump to leverage the powers of law enforcement to damage his perceived enemies and later to play down the threats of right-wing violent extremism and Russian election interference.

The rift between the men grew as Mr. Wray waved off false claims the president peddled about voter fraud and left-wing extremists. His tenure became increasingly tenuous after William P. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, in part because he had fallen out of favor with the president. Mr. Barr was said to have argued against firing the F.B.I. director, shielding Mr. Wray from Mr. Trump’s fury.

Mr. Trump’s allies also took aim at Mr. Wray, faulting him for not speaking out vociferously against the Russia investigation or the botched wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser.

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump publicly declared that Mr. Wray should resign, and it was clear his antipathy had only intensified, partly because of the 2022 search of his Florida home.

After an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa., Mr. Trump lashed out at the F.B.I. because the bureau did not definitively say he had been shot in the ear.

“No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

In leaving before Mr. Trump is sworn in, Mr. Wray may avoid the kind of public standoff that marked some firings during the first Trump administration. kash patel headshot smilekash patel gangsters coverBut the turbulence at the F.B.I. is all but certain to continue if Mr. Patel, right (and author of the book Government Gangsters, shown at left, is confirmed and Mr. Trump tries to make sweeping changes at the agency.

Mr. Trump has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute his perceived enemies, whom he accuses of unfairly prosecuting him. He has also called for investigations of prosecutors, judges and politicians.

In his first term, Mr. Trump sought to weigh in on F.B.I. operations and at times expressed frustration that presidents typically stayed out of the bureau’s business.

“I am not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said in 2017. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Health Care Exec's Murder

Senate in November. ABC News, What we know about Luigi Mangione, Ivy League grad and suspect in CEO's murder, Salon, Alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin praised Elon Musk for battle against “woke mind virus,

ny times logoNew 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 logoWashington 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.

brian thompsonThompson, 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?

salon LogoOn 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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Public Health, Scandal, #MeToo, Trafficking, Abortion.

 

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).

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

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 bulwark logo big shiphealth 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!

trump 2024Kennedy 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 jonathan v lastfront lines.

bulwark logo big shipBret 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.

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Trump Cases, Convictions, Reprisals, Allies

A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

A scene from the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol (Reuters photo).

Politico, Trump promised Jan. 6 pardons. His post-election silence is making loyalists nervous, Kyle Cheney, Nov. 30, 2024. His die-hard supporters — as well as some federal judges — are left to speculate about his clemency plans.

politico CustomDonald Trump campaigned on a pledge to pardon a vast swath of supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But his silence on the matter since winning the election has begun unsettling some fervent allies awaiting even the slightest signal from Trump about how he intends to turn his campaign rhetoric into reality.

Federal judges overseeing Jan. 6 cases have been left to guess at Trump’s plans. As a result, they have allowed nearly all cases to proceed, saying Trump’s clemency plans are merely “speculative.” Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have brought a handful of new Jan. 6 felony cases since Election Day, and they’ve argued repeatedly against efforts by defendants to delay their cases to await Trump’s inauguration.

Justice Department log circularThe Justice Department has charged more than 1,500 people for their roles in the riot. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would pardon many of them. But he left the specifics unclear, and never said whether he might leave in place some prosecutions, particularly against people who assaulted police.

Now that he’s president-elect, his failure to say more has begun nagging at some of his die-hard supporters, who have engaged in a public guessing game on X about Trump’s intentions.

 

Politico, Trump picks Kash Patel to lead FBI, Megan Messerly, Dec. 1, 2024 (print ed.). The position will require Senate confirmation.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he has picked staunch Trump loyalist Kash Pate, shown above,l as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

politico CustomPatel, a Trump transition insider, has been one of Trump’s most visible and vocal allies, showing up at his criminal trial in Manhattan, perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He worked as chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, and has been outspoken about calling for a purge of Trump’s enemies from the Justice Department, FBI and other intelligence agencies.

ICE logoIf confirmed, Patel will replace current FBI Director Chris Wray, whom Trump nominated in 2017 after firing James Comey, cutting his 10-year term short. Wray’s term is not set to expire until 2027, so Trump will have to fire Wray to install Patel, if Wray doesn’t resign first.

FBI logoTrump, in a post to Truth Social, called Patel a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”

“He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” the president-elect added, referring to the role Patel played as a staffer in crafting House Republican responses to the investigation into Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

At the time, Patel was an aide to Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, a position that helped raise his profile in Trump’s inner circle.

Justice Department log circularPatel was also angling to be deputy director of the CIA, a position that would not have required Senate confirmation, unlike the FBI director post, which does. It’s unclear whether Patel, who is a divisive figure even among Trump loyalists, will have the votes needed in the Senate to be confirmed.

When Trump floated naming Patel deputy director of the FBI during his first administration, then-Attorney General Bill Barr responded “over my dead body,” according to reporting at the time. CIA Director Gina Haspel also threatened to quit over the CIA Logomove.

Patel is a former federal public defender and former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division. A staunch Trump defender, Patel has been assisting the president-elect in compiling a list of candidates to join the Justice Department.

Patel has also promised to investigate and potentially prosecute journalists.

“We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” Patel said last year.

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More On Presidential Pardons

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden must ignore pardon myths and protect Patel’s and Trump’s targets, Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 17, 2024. Patel issued unprecedented threats. Biden must respond.

Since President Joe Biden began seriously considering an amnesty for people at risk of retribution from President-elect Donald Trump and his FBI pick (who comes armed with an enemies list), the pearl clutching and myth-spinning about pardons have spread. Biden should pay attention to history and case law, not misinformed critics.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The first myth: A broad amnesty would be unprecedented, an intrusion into the rule of law. That is categorically false. More than a dozen presidents dating back to George Washington have granted amnesty to a defined, large group of Americans. As legal scholar Frank O. Bowman III pointed out:

George Washington issued pardons in 1794 to defuse the lingering tensions of the defeated Whiskey Rebellion. President Andrew Johnson made extensive (and controversial) use of the pardon power to civilly rehabilitate former Confederates. A century later, Gerald Ford issued a conditional amnesty and Jimmy Carter a full pardon to Vietnam draft evaders.

Presidential amnesties for categories of people have been commonplace. After Washington, President John Adams issued a broad pardon for those involved in the Fries Rebellion in 1799 in Pennsylvania (i.e., prosecutions of “any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection”). With a small exception, President James Buchanan, for example, pardoned Brigham Young and his Mormon followers who had engaged in a conflict with the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland also issued pardons to Mormon polygamists.

The White House Historical Association recounts that presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Warren G. Harding granted amnesty or commutation to various groups of Americans — citizens convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for Jefferson, and 24 political prisoners (including Eugene V. Debs) for Harding.

Moreover, the association explains, “As decided in Ex Parte Garland (1866), presidents may issue pardons at any time after the commission of a federal offense, even before federal charges have been filed or a sentence has been imposed.”)

What is entirely unique is that an incoming president and a would-be FBI director nominee have explicitly named people and groups (e.g., prosecutors) they want to go after. To meet that unique threat, Biden should issue amnesty to the most vulnerable group of Americans: witnesses against Trump whom Trump and Kash Patel have already threatened.

The second myth: Some people might not want amnesty. Again, this is not a valid reason to refuse to extend it to those who very much do want and need protection. Some individuals enjoy immunity from prosecution on other grounds so won’t need additional protection; they would be excluded from the amnesty. House members on the Jan. 6 committee immune under the speech and debate clause, along with and federal and state prosecutors operating under the color of law, almost certainly cannot be prosecuted.

But that leaves some ordinary Americans, primarily witnesses and those who provided material to courts, grand juries, Congress and federal investigators, to twist in the wind. It’s small comfort that such people would eventually be exonerated. Criminal trials and appeals can cost millions of dollars and ruin reputations as well as likely increase the physical threats many of these figures already face.

The third myth: Amnesty would not completely protect the recipients. It is correct that such an amnesty would not protect recipients from criminal investigation for future conduct, from civil suits or from IRS audits. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of a rogue, irresponsible president-elect empowering intended nominees to seek vengeance. However, by limiting the pardon to a discrete group of people, making clear this is essentially a witness protection program to insulate the recipients from Trump’s wrath, Biden can spare some conscientious citizens and alert the public to the dangers Trump and Patel pose.

The fourth myth: Accepting amnesty is an admission of guilt. This is false. The most recent case on the scope of pardons, 2021’s Lorance v. Commandant, held that the defendant’s acceptance of a full and unconditional presidential pardon did not amount to an admission of guilt, and therefore the defendant did not waive his habeas rights upon acceptingit.

Lorance also dealt with a common misperception concerning a Supreme Court case, 1915’s Burdick v. United States, which seemed to suggest that accepting a pardon constituted “a confession” of guilt. However, Lorance explained that that statement referred to how the pardon recipient might feel. In other words, though acceptance might make the recipient “look guilty” in the eyes of some, it does not make the recipient legally guilty.

Biden in his amnesty statement can underscore that acceptance is no admission of wrongdoing but rather confirmation that the incoming president poses extreme and unprecedented threats to political enemies — something indicative of an authoritarian regime, not a great democracy.

The fifth myth: This would open the door to pardon abuses by Trump and/or mar Biden’s legacy. The first is laughable given Trump’s pardon track record (e.g., Michael Flynn, Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and his plans to pardon those convicted of violent crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. He needs no excuse to flout democratic norms. (By the way, Biden might not have considered amnesty had not Trump recently repeated his threats and chosen Patel for FBI director with barely a whisper of complaint from Republicans. If Trump renounced revenge and found a fit nominee, none of this might be necessary.)

As for Biden, his Hunter Biden pardon statement explained that he acted because “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” It certainly follows that he should act to keep raw politics — unabashedly announced in advance — from leading to a miscarriage of justice.

If ordinary citizens face retribution for daring to testify against powerful bullies, few will do so. To preserve the justice system, to encourage people to provide evidence, Biden should grant them amnesty — in effect setting up a witness protection program. It is the least he can do for selfless Americans.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s clemency for ‘kids for cash’ judge is a big mistake, Heather Long, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). It’s also yet another reminder of how broken the presidential pardon process is.

My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week. The White House portrayed the mass clemency as a historic moment for justice. But Conahan’s commutation only underscores how broken the presidential pardon clemency is.

I don’t know much about most of the people on Biden’s list, but I do know a fair amount about Conahan. I started my career as a journalist in Pennsylvania and had a front-row seat when the scheme — one of the worst corruption scandals in U.S. juvenile justice history — came to light in 2008 and 2009.

Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full. In total, they received more than $2.8 million, court documents show. They didn’t do this a handful of times. They did it to more than 2,500 juveniles over five years.

And the worst part? To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

They finally got caught only because one distraught family contacted the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit legal aid group in Philadelphia. In an early example of data sleuthing, the center compared the numbers with those of the 66 other counties in Pennsylvania and realized something very wrong was occurring in Luzerne County. It unearthed that half of these youngsters had no legal representation, and 60 percent were removed from their homes. That’s how the judges got away with it for so long: There was literally no one watching.

The revelations shook the state. The story broke as the Great Recession was in full swing, with high unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Luzerne County is a proud coal-mining community full of Catholic churches that sell delicious Polish pierogi out of their basements. But the community had fallen on hard times as coal’s reign was ending. The judges were getting rich by exploiting — and making harder — the struggles of working-class families.

In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and Ciavarella to 28 years for racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other crimes. A lot of Pennsylvanians didn’t think that was sufficient punishment. I was deputy opinion editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. We named the Juvenile Law Center Pennsylvania’s “Best of 2009” — our version of Time magazine’s person of the year award. The center not only uncovered the scandal; it also successfully pushed the state Supreme Court to clear the records of more than 2,200 of its victims.

The White House portrayed last week’s clemency decisions as helping nonviolent offenders who had done sufficient time and remediation. In 2020, as pandemic raged, Conahan successfully petitioned to be released to home monitoring in Florida due to a high risk of complications if he contracted the virus. This year, he sought an early end to his sentence. Now 72, Conahan was supposed to serve until the summer of 2026. He told the judge he had reformed and helped others in prison with their cases. But Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani denied Conahan’s request, arguing that he had done “irrevocable harm” to his victims and that releasing him early “would undermine respect for the law and would not adequately deter such conduct.”

When I reached out to the White House, an administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them. The plan was clemency for nonviolent offenders who were seen as low-risk and had been released to home confinement after a legal review process.

That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency “absolutely wrong.” Some victims are speaking out in shock. There’s similar disbelief in Illinois that Rita Crundwell — the former comptroller of the city of Dixon who orchestrated a $54 million embezzlement scheme — was also on Biden’s sentence-reduction list. Crundwell was supposed to serve time until 2028.

 

hunter biden beard

Emptywheel, Analysis: You Can’t Pardon America’s Way Out of Trump’s Assault on Rule of Law, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Dec. 6, 2024. The NYT has matched Jonathan Martin’s marcy wheelerreporting that Biden’s aides are considering pardoning some subset of the people who will be targeted by Trump.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Smart lefty commentators are embracing the concept.

With the possible exception of Mark Milley, I think this is an exceedingly stupid idea. It’s the kind of magical pony thinking that led people to demand Merrick Garland, with no effort from them, make Trump go away, thereby ceding the ground for Trump to claim he was prosecuted in a witch hunt.

And it won’t work.

Biden’s pardon won’t even save Hunter Biden

Start with the fact that Biden’s pardon won’t even save his own son.

Sure, it’ll save him from going to prison for the crimes for which he was convicted. But it might not even insulate him and his team from further harassment. That’s true, first of all, because prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation — no doubt facilitated by the House investigation into Hunter — into whether Kevin Morris’ support for Hunter in 2020, as he was trying to sustain sobriety, amounted to a campaign benefit for Joe Biden.

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More U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections

ny times logoNew York Times, Congress Approves Full Social Security Benefits for Public Sector Retirees, Maya C. Miller, Dec. 21, 2024. The Senate passed bipartisan legislation early Saturday that would give full Social Security benefits to a group of public sector retirees who currently receive them at a reduced level, sending the bill to President Biden.

The vote to clear the measure was a lopsided 76 to 20, reflecting the broad popularity of an effort to allow approximately more than 2.8 million public pension recipients — some of them teachers, firefighters and police officers — to collect Social Security benefits at the same level as other beneficiaries.

The House passed the bill by a wide margin of 327 to 75 last month after a bipartisan group of lawmakers forced it to the floor, and President-elect Donald J. Trump recently threw his support behind it.

social security administrationThe rapid and resounding approval of the measure, which would cost nearly $196 billion over a decade, was notable at a time when Congress is in a protracted dispute over spending and debt, with Republicans promising huge cuts and members of both parties routinely lamenting the ballooning of the nation’s debt.

The bill eliminates two provisions set up decades ago to shore up Social Security’s solvency. Projections show the Social Security fund will run out of money in 2038 and, if no action is taken before then, beneficiaries would see a 27 percent cut in benefits. Passage of the measure speeds up that timeline by six months.

Twenty-seven Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The two provisions were designed to prevent what is known as “double dipping” on retirement benefits by certain public employees and their relatives.

It primarily affects two groups. One is public employees who receive pensions that are exempt from Social Security payroll taxes, but who also worked at least 10 years in jobs that required them to pay into the system. Such workers appear in the Social Security system as though they earned far less over their lifetimes than they actually did, and since the program pays more to low earners, they receive a larger retirement benefit than they otherwise would. Another is people who receive public pensions but also become eligible for Social Security survivor benefits upon the death of a spouse or family member.

Under the current law, both groups face a reduction in their benefits. The legislation on its way to enactment would allow them to receive the full amount.

“We have spent decades working to pass this legislation, and tonight is a victory for all the public servants who will finally get the Social Security they have earned,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was a lead co-sponsor of the bill. The bill marked Mr. Brown’s final legislative achievement, after he lost a brutal and expensive re-election bid last month.Editors’ Picks‘Getting Your Pink Back:’ How Moms Felt Like Themselves Again After Having a BabyA Woman on Our Girls’ Trip Has Grown Snarky. Can We Stop Inviting Her?If You Can See the Tree, There Is Room for More Decorations

“Tonight, Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into,” he said.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a lead sponsor of the measure, framed the issue as a “long overdue” matter of fairness affecting teachers, firefighters and police officers as well as some federal employees who were hired before 1984, when the federal pension system was brought under the Social Security system.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Ms. Collins cited one of her constituents, a retired female schoolteacher who had to return to work at age 72 after her husband’s death to make financial ends meet. The woman’s husband was a Navy veteran who paid into Social Security for 40 years, but since she received a public pension from the school system, her surviving spousal benefits through Social Security were reduced by two-thirds.

 

 

matt gaetz djt selfie facebook

washington post logoWashington Post, Gaetz report to be released by House Ethics Committee, in a reversal for the panel, Jacqueline Alemany and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 19, 2024 (print ed.). The release is expected within the week. The long-running investigation is focused on allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use by Matt Gaetz, above left  and below right, a former congressman.

The House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) this week, a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to release the results of a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.

matt gaetz officialThe panel voted this month to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers take their final vote for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. CNN first reported on the panel’s secret vote to release its report.

U.S. House logoThe committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general. A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, meaning that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.

The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. The Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation shortly thereafter — and days before the committee was expected to meet to vote on the release of the investigation.

Rep. Michael Guest (Mississippi), the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or Trump’s nominee, but Democrats still pushed for its release.

Justice Department log circularHouse Republicans successfully quashed a resolution introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote to make the report public and another resolution by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) that asked the panel to preserve all documents investigating Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges in a 2022 trafficking investigation.

But the House Ethics Committee investigation, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.

Politico, Sentencing closes chapter for Oath Keeper seeking redemption after Jan. 6, Kyle Cheney, Dec. 20, 2024. Joshua James pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy but later became a crucial cooperator for prosecutors.People waving flags storm the U.S. Capitol.

politico CustomA member of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy was sentenced Friday to three years of probation for extensive cooperation with prosecutors. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Joshua James earned his Purple Heart in 2007, when an IED tore through a bridge he was crossing in Baghdad — leaving him severely wounded with a traumatic brain injury.

He returned his medal to the government in a manila envelope after pleading guilty to scheming with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, to keep Donald Trump in office by force after the 2020 election.

James’ arc from war hero to central player in a seditious conspiracy — and his bid for redemption by cooperating to help convict dozens of his former compatriots — formed the backdrop Friday of a sentencing hearing that also served as a somber coda to the Justice Department’s four-year quest to punish those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The institutions that protected democracy on Jan. 6 cannot and will not forget,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards, who cast James’ sentencing as a chance to “cement” the threat to democracy in America’s “long-term national memory” and to “turn the page and allow this country to start to heal.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged the wrenching conflict of James’ life, calling him a “true American hero” who was led astray.

For James’ extraordinary cooperation, Mehta sentenced him to three years of probation. And the judge used his remarks to highlight the dozens of Jan. 6 defendants who are military veterans and have described being left to endure emotional and physical traumas with limited support.

But James, he said, ultimately made his own decision to “turn against democracy” and join the Oath Keepers in a plot to violently prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

“That is what people need to wrap their heads around,” Mehta said, “about how close we came — on a knife’s edge — between what happened on Jan. 6, which was bad enough, and something far worse.”

James joined the Oath Keepers in 2017 but his involvement intensified in 2020 when he became a close ally of Rhodes, who Mehta has repeatedly described as an ongoing threat to the country. Rhodes, the judge said, preyed on disaffected members of the military and enlisted them in his far-right project to keep Trump in power by force.

James, who led the group’s Alabama chapter, became a top ally in that effort, encouraging others to bring weapons to Washington ahead of Jan. 6, where they were ostensibly traveling to provide security for top Trump allies. James was assigned to protect longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and James was with Stone on the morning of Jan. 6.

But after pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, James and other Oath Keepers raced across the city to join the melee, forcing their way into the Capitol rotunda and clashing with police.

“This is my fucking building! This is not yours! This is my Capitol!” James shouted amid the chaos.

A tearful James apologized profusely for his conduct, describing himself as “deeply ashamed and embarrassed for my actions in the Capitol.”

“What I did was not an expression of patriotism,” James said.

Mehta emphasized that James’ gravest crime was not his actions in the Capitol but his weekslong plotting with Rhodes, a plan that included amassing an arsenal of firearms in the D.C. suburbs that Rhodes could deploy at a moment’s notice.

After his arrest, James quickly began cooperating with prosecutors and became the first Jan. 6 defendant to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy, a decision prosecutors credited with leading several other Oath Keepers to follow suit.

James never testified in any of the subsequent Oath Keepers trials — including Rhodes’ — which Edwards said was in part because James’ traumatic brain injury made him volatile when in stressful situations.

James’ lawyer, Joan Robin, emphasized that James’ cooperation — particularly after his guilty plea became public — led to threats against him and his family, the loss of his military benefits and his military honors, including the Purple Heart he once considered his proudest achievement.

The medal for his Army service, Robin said, was “sent to my office in a small manila envelope” to be forfeited to the government.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: The road back to power for Democrats, Rahm Emanuel (right, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, a Democrat and former Mayor of Chicago and rahm emanuel wChief of Staff to President Obama), Dec. 17, 2024. It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity. Talk about missing the moment.

This groundswell of resentment had been simmering for years. Trump just seized on it. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that he also drew support from large numbers of Democrats’ own “coalition of the ascendant” — minorities, young urbanites and women so successfully mobilized by President Barack Obama. From 2020 to 2024, Trump doubled his share of the Black vote to 16 percent, while the Latino vote rose from 35 percent to 43 percent.

To many voters, the nation’s elite has overseen a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful. And for the first time in American history, there is a generation of voters who believe that their children won’t be better off than them.

The disenchantment started in 2003 with the Iraq War, dubbed a “disaster” by Vice President-elect JD Vance. Sold on deceit and deception, with thousands of Americans dead, damaged and disfigured, the conflict’s architects now sit on corporate boards and hold chairs at prestigious universities. So much for justice.

A handful of years later, “liar loans” and unchecked greed led to the collapse of the global financial system, with homes and small businesses lost and livelihoods destroyed. Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention. It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some had called for at the time.

Why would an American electorate put its faith in the same establishment that had overseen two calamitous events, with those responsible getting off scot-free? The bonds of trust between the establishment and the public had been severed, and too many in our party failed to appreciate it.

In fact, during the pandemic, Democrats abandoned their antiestablishment credentials and enthusiastically morphed into the establishment. In “following the science,” we shuttered schools and the economy.

Meanwhile, our language and priorities have reinforced the “aloof elite” stereotype. With inflation stinging, school absenteeism skyrocketing and students’ academic scores plummeting, Democrats consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools and adopted terms such as “care economy” and “Latinx” to win over voters. It was a hermetically sealed conversation with ourselves, and we appeared much as we sounded: distant and detached.

Trump, on the other hand, captured the underlying zeitgeist. Rather than using his messaging against the Kamala Harris of 2024, he depicted her as the senator of the 2020 primaries, whose positions left her looking out of touch. Sure, his unfiltered words were crude — and often derogatory — but they reflected people’s feelings of abandonment.

Democrats have been here before. The road back out of the wilderness begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.

Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it. We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.

With everyone from Big Oil to Big Pharma lining up for their share of the spoils, we will need to be strategic in how we strip away Trump’s populist veneer. By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected.

Second, we can no longer tiptoe around the issues that have people worried. Crime, immigration, homelessness and a fentanyl crisis are, understandably, on the minds of millions. When car jackings are up and everything in pharmacies is locked down, you can’t recite crime statistics to deny people’s everyday experiences.

Americans want to see respect for the laws that govern our borders and to live in communities that are safe and secure. That shouldn’t be hard to appreciate. People prefer order over disorder. Trump was successful on these issues because his words tapped the public’s frustration. Ours communicated permissiveness.

Third, if Democrats are to be relevant again, finding and supporting the right candidates for the 2026 midterm elections will be critical. In 2006, 2008 and 2018, we recruited candidates whose biographies conveyed authenticity. They were war veterans, sheriffs, small business owners and former football players. Crucially, they weren’t career politicians.

The strategy worked again last month, with Democrats flipping six House seats in New York and California. Candidates such as Derek Tran, a son of Vietnamese refugees and an Army veteran, and aerospace executive George Whitesides had credentials that lent them legitimacy and receptivity among swing voters. The personal is political.

November was a jarring reminder that misjudging the mood of a nation can be catastrophic. If Democrats are to make the most of the next election, they must ready their message and messengers, abandon failed orthodoxies and embrace strategies with a record of delivering seats, success and real prosperity.

d weakened the country and gave Hamas an opening. Absent from both story lines was the profound failure of Mr. Netanyahu to protect the border.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming, Heather Knight and Kate Selig, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Some Republicans say it is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their calls for one, and California will soon consider its position.

As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.

The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.

But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.

Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.

Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.

“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.

Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican from West Texas and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been a leading convention proponent. He has introduced legislation that would require the head of the National Archives to track state applications and has said that a convention should have been called in 1979 when, he believes, enough states had requested one.

Since 2016, the year Mr. Trump was elected president the first time, nine states that had Democratic-controlled legislatures have been concerned enough that they rescinded their decades-old requests for constitutional amendments, sometimes with support from their fellow Republican legislators. They feared that they were leaving open the door for a Republican-led Congress and state legislatures to pursue a conservative revision of the laws underpinning national governance.

The founding fathers set almost no rules governing how such a constitutional convention would work. Article V of the Constitution says that the document can be amended if legislatures in two-thirds of states — now 34 out of 50 — agree to convene for the purpose. But it does not set guidelines for how the gathering would function. If the convention produces a proposed amendment, the change would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Following last month’s election, 28 state legislatures will be controlled by Republicans, 18 by Democrats and the rest will be split, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The founding document does not say whether 34 states need to agree on the specific amendment topic or whether signaling that they want a convention for any reason is enough to trigger proceedings. There is no explanation of whether each state at the convention would get one vote or more, whether topics not on the agenda can be raised, whether lobbyists or special interest groups could participate, or who would referee disagreements. Constitutional scholars are unclear how even the most basic questions would be resolved.

More than 34 states appear to have standing requests to change the Constitution, some dating back more than 150 years, according to the Article 5 Library, a bare-bones website that scholars pointed to as the best known repository of applications to change the Constitution.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Says He Would Consider Pardoning Eric Adams, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald J. Trump’s comment reflects an unusual relationship that Mr. Adams, the New York mayor, has encouraged as his federal corruption trial nears.

The question has hung over New York City politics for months: If Mayor Eric Adams was convicted on federal corruption charges, would Donald J. Trump pardon him?

On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would consider it.

Mr. Trump was asked at a wide-ranging news conference in Florida whether he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, and he replied yes. The president-elect said that the mayor of New York had been treated “pretty unfairly” by federal prosecutors.

“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April.

The mayor is accused of receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of travel benefits from Turkish officials over several years, including flight upgrades on Turkish Airlines. Mr. Adams was also accused of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and helping obtain approvals for a new Turkish Consulate despite fire safety concerns.

Mr. Adams has found a political ally in Mr. Trump, a Republican who has defended Mr. Adams and said that both men were “persecuted” by federal prosecutors.

The mayor said at a news conference on Monday held shortly after Mr. Trump’s comments that he should not have been charged.

“I have an attorney that is going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”

The mayor’s defense lawyer, Alex Spiro, has also represented Elon Musk, a top adviser and donor to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Adams added that both Mr. Trump and President Biden agreed with him that the Justice Department has been politicized — an argument Mr. Adams has made in the past in reference to Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: McConnell has the chutzpah to complain about Trump’s ‘America First,’ Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 15, 2024. Mitch McConnell bears great responsibility for the return of Trump and his foreign policy.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Progressives should defend Biden’s legacy to protect their future, E.J. Dionne Jr.,,right, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Trump’s victory should ej dionne w open necknot be used to erase Biden’s policy achievements.

Besides the president and his staff, who should care about how Joe Biden’s policy legacy is judged? Everyone who believes that government should invest in the future and defend the interests of workers and those stuck at the bottom of the income heap — that’s who.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The trickiest problem for Democrats and progressives in the coming months will not be finding a new electoral strategy. There’s plenty of time for that, and the 2024 outcome was close enough to allow multiple paths to the White House. A far more pressing imperative is to prevent Donald Trump’s victory from discrediting Biden’s genuinely impressive accomplishments and the course he set for the country, which was broadly correct.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses, Jacob Bogage, Jacqueline Alemany and Jeff Stein,  Dec. 17, 2024. Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains.

postal service old logoPresident-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.

trump 2024Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.

Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Nancy Pelosi Has Hip Replacement Surgery After Fall, Karoun Demirjian, Dec. 14, 2024. Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, had hip replacement surgery on Saturday after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said in a statement.

ny times logoNew York Times, What We Know About Drone Sightings in New Jersey and New York, Alyce McFadden, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Reports of flying objects continue to occur throughout the region. State and local officials say they do not pose a threat but have provided few answers.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Agriculture Department to Require Testing of U.S. Milk Supply for Bird Flu Virus, Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes, Dec. 7, 2024 (print ed.). The new rules call for testing unpasteurized milk from dairies across the country and for farm owners to provide details that would help officials identify and track cases more easily.

Politico, Federal judge preserves Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions, Bianca Quilantan, Dec. 6, 2024. A federal judge argues that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.An entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Maryland, is seen.

politico CustomA federal judge on Friday upheld the U.S. Naval Academy’s consideration of race in admissions arguing that pursuing diversity in the military is a national security interest.

The ruling is an early blow to Students for Fair Admissions’ latest attempt to extend the scope of its Supreme Court win against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that gutted the use of race in college admissions. The ruling also comes while the Naval Academy’s admissions process is underway for its next class.

Politico, Eric Adams doesn’t rule out switch to the GOP: ‘Cancel me,’ Joe Anuta,  Dec. 6, 2024. The New York City mayor has been at odds with national Democrats over immigration.Eric Adams walks in a parade.

politico CustomNew York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has taken a soft touch with President-elect Donald Trump, left open the possibility of switching to the Republican Party in a pair of Friday morning interviews.

Adams was a member of the GOP from 1995 through 2002, and was asked during an appearance on NY1 whether he would return to the party. He did not rule out the possibility.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Middle East Wars, Reactions

Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images Travis Timmerman, shown in an AFP photo via Getty Images.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syrian Rebels Storm Another Major City, Ben Hubbard, Dec. 5, 2024. Opposition forces advanced on the city of Hama as their startling offensive moved quickly in the direction of the capital, Damascus.

Syrian rebels stormed into the city of Hama on Thursday as government forces withdrew, bringing the rebels one step closer to the capital Damascus, the seat of power of President Bashar al-Assad.

The swift advance on Hama, one of Syria’s largest cities, and the retreat of government forces were confirmed by both the rebels and the government. The advance came just days after the rebels extended their control over Aleppo, a major hub in northern Syria.

In a video circulated by the rebel group leading the offensive, their leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, jubilantly calls for the rebels to push on toward other Syrian cities, including the capital.

“The people of Homs, prepare yourselves,” he said in the video, which his group said was filmed on Wednesday. “The people of Damascus, the people of Dara’a, the people of Deir al Zour. Victory for all, God willing.” The New York Times could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video or when it was filmed.

The sudden rebel advance has shifted the front lines in Syria’s 13-year-old civil war for the first time in years, adding a new layer of unpredictability to a conflict that has ravaged the country, opened voids exploited by jihadist groups, drawn in world powers including Russia and the United States and created a long-term refugee crisis for neighboring countries.

Hama is one of the few major Syrian cities where rebels had yet to seize significant control during the civil war, which began with a popular uprising aimed at ousting Mr. al-Assad in 2011.

The city’s name is synonymous with one of the most notorious massacres in the Middle East. In 1982, security forces serving the president’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, massacred thousands of people there during an anti-government uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

ny times logoNew York Times, Fighting Rages in Syria as Rebels Advance, Muhammad Haj Kadour and Vivian Yee, Dec. 1, 2024. Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad control the Aleppo airport and are attacking Hama, local officials and a U.K.-based war monitor say.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Power Vacuum in Gaza Could Empower Warlords and Gangs, Amanda Taub, Dec. 1, 2024. Hamas's weakened position could leave the territory without any governing institutions, our columnist writes.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police and Protesters Clash in Georgian Capital, Cassandra Vinograd, Dec. 1, 2024. The government’s decision to suspend its bid for European Union membership has driven thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Protesters clashed with the police in the Republic of Georgia’s capital late Saturday during the third consecutive night of demonstrations over the government’s suspension of its bid to join the European Union.

georgia country regional mapThousands of people have rallied in the capital, Tbilisi, since Thursday night after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the country was putting the process of E.U. accession on hold until 2028 and would decline all grants from the bloc. The police have responded with water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades.

georgia country flag mapGeorgia’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday morning that protests overnight had “evolved into violence.” It claimed that protesters “threw pyrotechnics” and “ignited objects” toward police officers and at Parliament, causing a fire to break out. Windows were smashed by “stones and various objects,” the ministry added in a statement, saying that protesters also had damaged protective iron barriers around the building.

georgia republic mapMore than 100 people had been arrested as of Saturday night, according to the ministry, which also said that several police officers were wounded and that 42 of its employees had been injured since the protests began.

The Associated Press reported that its journalists had seen police officers chasing and beating protesters; it was not immediately clear how many protesters suffered injuries.

Georgia has been gripped by political crisis since the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream party in October’s parliamentary elections. The governing party has been pivoting Georgia more toward Russia and China. Georgia’s opposition, which says the election was rigged and has boycotted the new sitting of Parliament, seeks closer ties with the West.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Israeli Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant (File pool photo).

 

Middle East Crises: Syria, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon

 

syria prisons NYTny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak (as shown above), Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Bibi Netanyahu Is Failing Ever Upward, Noa Landau (the deputy editor in chief of Haaretz), Dec. 19, 2024. Just before Thanksgiving, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an unusual set of arrest warrants: one for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one for his former defense minister Yoav Gallant and one for the deceased Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif. Each man is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The warrant for Mr. Netanyahu calls for any of the 124 countries that are signatories to the I.C.C. to arrest the Israeli leader should he arrive on their soil. And yet in Israel, the threat has made only the barest ripple on the domestic front. Israelis seemed far more concerned by how, more than two weeks earlier, on the night of the American election, Mr. Netanyahu took advantage of a distracted Washington and fired Mr. Gallant, the last remaining political centrist in his cabinet. Thousands of Israeli protesters took to the streets over the dismissal, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv with bonfires and shouting, “Bibi is a traitor!”

The protests weren’t just about Mr. Gallant, or even the kind of war he led as defense minister. They were about Mr. Netanyahu himself, a man who has overtly put his own political survival above his nation again and again. Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu has risen, phoenixlike, from the political ashes of the nation’s greatest security failure on Oct. 7, 2023, to become a bolder, more aggressive version of himself — a man willing to ignore longtime allies, including many American Jews, brush off international opprobrium and shed a long history of war skepticism in favor of a full-blown, multifront regional war. Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria are now badly damaged. The last (original) man standing is Mr. Netanyahu, something few would have predicted one year ago.

Mr. Netanyahu managed to wait out the Biden administration’s unsuccessful efforts to bring an end to the war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and curtail civilians’ bloodshed. With Donald Trump poised to re-enter the White House, ushering in a slate of new regional envoys who show no interest in limiting Israel, it seems Mr. Netanyahu’s gamble has paid off. Even finally being forced to take the witness stand in his trial for corruption, which began this month, does not seem to have dimmed his political power — as shown in recent polls.

The Israeli prime minister’s endurance can be traced back to several political factors, including a decade of echo-chamber building within Israeli media and Bibi’s own sophisticated and cynical exploitation of Israelis’ deep yearning for unity after Oct. 7. But perhaps the strongest force keeping Mr. Netanyahu in power is the most basic: his fractured, increasingly nonexistent opposition. The vast majority of those who loathe him as a leader do not oppose the war itself, nor the way it has been conducted. They want him out of power but they have no coherent alternative vision. For the past year, all Mr. Netanyahu has had to do was hold on to power — and pass the blame.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.

Since Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu and his inner circle of advisers, ministers and supporters have successfully deflected their own responsibility and culpability for the nation’s worst security breach in its 76-year history. A day after the Hamas attacks, some Netanyahu supporters started planting the idea within his political base that the catastrophic security failure that led to Hamas’s murder of more than 1,200 people was the fault of his opponents. Over the course of the year before, tens of thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to reject the prime minister’s efforts to meddle with the independence of the judiciary and threaten to stop volunteering for military reserve duty if the judicial overhaul bills he was proposing were approved. Social media users floated gross conspiracies about anti-Netanyahu military officials assisting Hamas.

This message was dispersed on several media outlets that are part of a new digital Netanyahu-sympathetic ecosystem, including Channel 14, a would-be version of Fox News. As Israeli society has swung ever rightward, it has developed a media world that reflects back to itself the messages it would like to promote. These messages appear on pro-Netanyahu social media accounts, like-minded Telegram channels and closed WhatsApp groups — and are then rebroadcast on TV and radio.

All the while, Mr. Netanyahu has been openly blaming the rest of the media for being biased against him. Two of his corruption and criminal cases are about the prime minister’s alleged attempts to receive favorable coverage in the media. (He has denied wrongdoing.) His cabinet has made moves to privatize and potentially shut down the public broadcaster’s television and radio departments. And in late November, as punishment for coverage of Oct. 7 deemed too critical, as well as for comments made by the publisher of Ha’aretz, my newspaper, at an event, his cabinet approved a slate of sanctions against Ha’aretz, forbidding any government advertising and canceling subscriptions for state workers.

Pro-Netanyahu propaganda efforts were quickly referred to as the “poison machine” by the Israeli opposition — both political parties and civil society. But, as I have written for Ha’aretz, there was a “honey machine” at work at the same time. One after another, coordinated initiatives and petitions emerged in Israel with a mission to promote ideas of “unity,” “reconciliation” and preventing “division” within society. The seemingly disparate agendas — the undercurrent of blatant propaganda and the tide of false optimism — shared the thesis that the political rift in the months leading up to Oct. 7 ha

washington post logoWashington Post, Middle East Conflict: Biden team uses fall of Assad to defend Mideast record; critics say it doesn’t eclipse horrors in Gaza, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). The Biden administration is seeking to reframe a beleaguered policy as a success.

The White House is seizing on the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to mount a new defense of its often criticized policy in Gaza and the wider Middle East, arguing that President Joe Biden’s staunch support of Israel and his approach to the region paved the way for events that ultimately led to Assad’s ouster and could bring a new era of cooperation.Get the latest election news and results

Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza is viewed by progressives and a growing number of Democrats as a major foreign policy failure, with some in the party saying his unwillingness to rein in Israel and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will tarnish his long-term legacy. Biden and his aides are now working to reframe his largely unconditional support of Israel as a resounding success, saying it led to the weakening of two powerful militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which in turn made the fall of Assad possible.

Many Middle East experts and analysts agree that the Biden administration deserves credit for preventing an all-out regional war that could have drawn in the United States directly, and for providing Israel with military aid that helped it degrade Hezbollah and Hamas. But they also say the administration’s narrative assigns too much credit to the United States for events that were largely driven by actors in the region.

And humanitarian groups say that however beneficial Assad’s fall, it does not eclipse the death and devastation in Gaza. During the war, the Biden administration repeatedly said Israel was not doing nearly enough to limit civilian casualties, but did little to pressure the country to change course. Israel has now sealed off northern Gaza and may be preparing for an indefinite occupation there, diplomats said, while some 2 million Palestinians are crammed into the southern half of the tiny enclave amid destitute conditions as aid remains sharply limited.

washington post logoWashington Post, Turkey using ‘war on terror’ tactics, such as abductions and secret detentions, on critics in other countries, Greg Miller, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Turkey has drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism post-9/11 playbook to go after exiled political enemies, in particular the Gulen movement.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptThe primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

ny times logoNew York Times, United States in Direct Contact With Rebels Who Took Over Syria, Michael Crowley, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Steven Erlanger, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was communicating with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel faction, despite its designation as a terrorist group.

The United States has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad a week ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday.

His remarks were the first official confirmation that Washington is communicating with a group that it designated a terrorist organization several years ago but whose behavior Washington hopes to influence now that the group controls Syria’s interim government.

“We’ve been in contact with H.T.S. and with other parties” in Syria, Mr. Blinken said, referring to the rebel group, after a meeting with Arab ministers in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss how to assist Syria’s political transition.

He said that the United States had communicated a set of governing principles that it is urging Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to adopt, including respect for human rights and rejecting extremism. The United States has also stressed the importance of finding and returning Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist kidnapped in Syria seven years ago.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: With Iran’s guard down, the U.S. and Israel face an urgent choice, David Ignatius, Dec. 14, 2024. Israel’s former defense minister says there is “a window to act” — and the clock is ticking.

Iran appears to be at the most precarious moment in its modern history. Its proxy armies have been crushed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. And it appears to be nearly naked to attack after a wave of pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on its air defense system in October.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

“We showed that Iran is vulnerable,” argued Yoav Gallant, who was Israel’s defense minister and led most of this year’s military campaigns against Iran and its proxies. Gallant explained during a briefing with me in Washington this week that Israel’s devastating but relatively little-discussed bombing campaign on Oct. 26 created “a window to act against Iran” before it produces a nuclear weapon.

U.S. decisions about how to exploit Iran’s weakness — whether by negotiating a binding nuclear agreement or, failing that, taking decisive military action — will fall to President-elect Donald Trump. Asked last month about the possibility of war with Iran after he takes office on Jan. 20, Trump told Time magazine, ominously, that “anything can happen.”

Global attention has shifted to Trump, but senior Biden administration officials tell me they also recognize the opportunity ahead for “coercive diplomacy” about nuclear issues with a weakened Iran. Though Israel played the decisive role in humbling Iran, President Joe Biden provided an important backstop by deploying U.S. carriers, planes, submarines and other forces.

Israel’s Oct. 26 assault was calculated to leave Iran unprotected against a future attack. An astonishing wave of 120 jets took part in the raid, an Israeli military source said. The Israeli planes targeted air defense radars and antiaircraft batteries protecting Tehran as well as key factories producing fuel for Iranian ballistic missiles. The attack was in retaliation for Iran’s Oct. 1 bombardment of Israel with about 200 ballistic missiles — but the planning began many months before.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Shudders as Bashar al-Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light, Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, Dec. 14, 2024. At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.

But amid the celebrations, the country has also found itself in the opening chapter of a nationwide reckoning over the horrors that Syrians endured under Mr. al-Assad’s government as they come face to face with the network of prisons, police stations and torture chambers at the center of his family’s brutal rule.

In that time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were swallowed up by the Assad security forces’ vast apparatus. Over the past 13 years, after the failed rebel uprising and subsequent civil war, Mr. al-Assad wielded the long arms of that system as never before to stamp out every last inkling of dissent.

Protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers and students were snatched from their shops, plucked from university classrooms and yanked from their cars at checkpoints by the secret police — never to be heard from again.

Many ended up in Sednaya, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus that was often the last place detainees were dumped after months of interrogation in other detention centers. The sprawling prison with three wings became a haunting symbol of Mr. al-Assad’s ruthlessness and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.

Tens of thousands of people were crammed into the overcrowded cells, tortured, beaten and deprived of food and water. More than 30,000 detainees were killed, many executed in mass hangings, according to rights groups. Amnesty International called Sednaya a “human slaughterhouse.”

Their relatives lived in an agonizing limbo for years, unsure if their loved ones were alive. They went to local security officials every few months to beg for information and paid thousands of dollars in bribes to government officials to track down their relatives’ whereabouts. If security officers told them their disappeared relative was dead, many refused to believe them.

“They were liars,” one woman, Aziza Mohammed Deek, said of those in Mr. al-Assad’s government. “They were all liars.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Antony Blinken Meeting Arab Ministers Amid Uncertainty Over Syria Transition, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in Jordan to confer with Arab foreign ministers on the ouster of the longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jordan to discuss how to assist a political transition in Syria, nearly a week after rebels toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

The abrupt demise of the Assad government has prompted celebrations in Syria along with uncertainty over how the new administration under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, can manage a transition in a country shattered by decades of war and repression.

It is a new upheaval in a region already reeling from more than a year of war and has set in motion a realignment with implications for Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as Russia, a stalwart ally of Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Blinken was expected to meet in the coastal city of Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union would also participate.

“The talks will focus on supporting a comprehensive, Syria-led political process aimed at achieving a transitional solution,” the Jordanian statement said. A later statement on Saturday said the meeting was about to begin. It made no mention of any Syrian representative to attend.

Turkey has emerged in recent days with greater influence, given its years of support for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that led the offensive out of its bases in the northwest in recent weeks to take power.

The Turkish government made plans this week to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which has been closed for almost 13 years, and it also conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a threat.

On Friday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, issued a stark warning to members of the Kurdish militia that controls northeastern Syria, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

“It is our strategic target to eliminate the YPG,” he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV. He said that any members who are not Syrian should leave the country as soon as possible, and added: “The entire command level of YPG should leave the country too. The remaining ones should continue living as they lay down their weapons.’’

The Kurdish-led forces in Syria have been key partners with the United States in the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria. The U.S. and Turkey are NATO allies.

Turkey, at the same time, has funded and trained a Syrian rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped it fight Kurdish-led forces in the country.

The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia accused the United States this week of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria.

Mr. Blinken is in Jordan as part of a tour of the Middle East that has included stops in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as the United States assesses the fallout from Mr. al-Bashar’s ouster.

American officials have expressed concern that instability across Syria, where various armed groups with competing agendas are active, could threaten its neighbors.

The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of Islamic State, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and took years to defeat.

Israel has also seized an opportunity created by the collapse of the Assad dynasty, bombing weapons stores and other targets in Syria to eliminate what it says are potential threats and also seizing territory in the country near the disputed Golan Heights.

Syria on Friday condemned Israel’s attack and called on the United Nations Security Council to compel the Israeli government to cease any further attacks.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Koussay Aldahhak, said the Security Council should “compel Israel to respect international law,” and not allow it to benefit from Syria’s transition.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russian Military Appears to Be Packing Up Some Equipment in Syria, Ben Hubbard and Raja Abdulrahim, Dec. 14, 2024. Satellite images reveal military movements that could be a possible prelude to Moscow’s withdrawal. An American found in Damascus this week was handed over to U.S. forces.

The Russian military appeared to be packing up equipment at one of its most critical bases in Syria on Friday, in what could be a prelude to Moscow’s military withdrawal from an important strategic foothold in the Middle East.

The movements of Russian equipment came as jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

People celebrating the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty waved revolutionary flags and posed for photographs with friends as one of the largest crowds in memory filled the marble courtyard of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where al-Assad security forces had long suppressed antigovernment demonstrations with brutal violence. Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the country’s newfound sense of liberty; in Damascus and in Idlib, a city that has long been rebel territory, people sang, “Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

The largely celebratory mood in Damascus, the capital, belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders as they try to bring order to a country wracked by sectarian divisions, the bloody legacy of the Assad era and the competing interests of an array of armed groups that fought in a 13-year civil war that human rights groups estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Also on Friday, Travis Timmerman, an American citizen who was found outside Damascus earlier this week, was handed over to U.S. forces by Syrian opposition representatives. Mr. Timmerman, who said he had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power, is now in Jordan, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Politico, Has Syrian rebel leader al-Golani really shaken off his al Qaeda past? Jamie Dettmer, Dec. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The leopard claims he has changed his spots, but will he bring stability to the devastated nation

politico CustomIn the not so distant past, Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, shown at right in a U.S. State Department photo, sported a long unkempt beard, wore a style of turban favored by jihadis and looked like he was auditioning for the role of a young Osama bin Laden.

abdul muhammad al jawlani state deptBut the man who toppled the regime of Bashar Assad on Sunday cuts a very different figure today. Like a political chameleon, he wears green fatigues in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or preppy blazers and chinos, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He even recently dropped his nom de guerre and reverted to using his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a.

But how convincing is the makeover? Should Syrians be worried that a man who once made the pledge of allegiance — or bay’ah — to al Qaeda, and fought Western forces in Iraq, is now the most powerful man in their country, and is poised to play a major role in the transition from the 54-year-long autocracy of the Assad dynasty?

He could even lead the country.

Is this a case where the apparel really does proclaim the man? Has the Damascus medical school dropout genuinely transitioned from being a jihadi, or is his embrace of toleration a ruse?

Those are the questions Western leaders and officials are also grappling with as they plot their next steps. France and Germany have promptly agreed to work with the Syrian opposition groups that took power in Damascus, while the U.S. and Britain are deliberating whether to delist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main insurgent Islamist faction led by al-Golani that swept into Damascus, as a terrorist organization.

For now, everyone is watching and waiting, piecing together clues about who al-Golani really is and what future HTS has planned for Syria — an inclusive, democratic one embracing the country’s diversity, its religious sects and ethnic minorities, including Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurds; or an Islamist state that oppresses, restricts and elevates the Sunni majority? Or somewhere in-between?

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria Live Updates: Israel Says Its Troops Will Stay in Seized Territory for Now, Aaron Boxerman and Michael Crowley, Dec. 12, 2024. Here are the latest developments.

As countries in the Middle East and beyond work out how to respond to the sudden fall of the Assad government, Israel said on Thursday that its military would stay in Syrian territory it seized until “a new force” was established that met its security demands.

“The collapse of the Syrian regime created a vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a statement. “Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities.”

Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli soldiers would deploy in Syrian territory only “temporarily,” but did not give any clear timeline for their departure.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

South Korean Crisis

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, South Korea’s President Is Impeached Over Martial Law Crisis, Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young, Victoria Kim and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Celebrations broke out in Seoul after lawmakers voted to oust President Yoon Suk Yeol, right. He vowed to fight removal in the country’s Constitutional Court.

yoon suk yeol wSouth Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, suspending him from office after his stunning declaration of martial law earlier this month caused widespread outrage and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office.

Excerpt Continued Below.

ny times logoNew York Times, How the President Alienated South Korea, One Group at a Time, Agnes Chang and Pablo Robles, Dec. 15, , (print ed.).  Ever since Yoon Suk Yeol took office, the public had been infuriated with near-constant scandals and unpopular decisions. Angry rice farmers. Striking doctors. A $2,200 Dior bag.

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, may have sealed his political fate on Dec. 3, when he declared martial law, triggering public outrage. And on Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach Mr. Yoon, who was then suspended from office.

 

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: The Warning from Seoul: Democracy at Risk in an Age of Authoritarian Power, Thom Hartmann, right, Dec. 4, 2024. How thom hartmann newYoon’s State of Emergency and Trump’s Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as “South Korea’s Donald Trump.” A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women’s rights, “reforming” their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours.

In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations’ abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that’s now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

Of all the events in world news over the past weeks — even more than the escalation of Putin’s murderous crimes against Ukraine — Trump and his authoritarian colleagues down at Mar-a-Lago are probably carefully watching what’s happening to Yoon and gaming out how a similar “emergency” action here in America might be recalibrated to have ultimate success.

Yoon has now backed down in the face of opposition from the South Korean parliament; he couldn’t get one single vote from his own party in Parliament, and is now facing demands that he resign or be impeached.

The challenges Yoon faced included a 17% approval rating, the legislature having been captured by the opposition party, and, most importantly, that he had never forced the members of his own party to degrade themselves and perform acts of obedience in front of him.

Thus, when he tried this strongman move of declaring a state of emergency but had not, in fact, first set himself up as a strongman, it failed.

Trump’s goal will be to avoid Yoon’s outcome and instead — like Putin and Orbán did in Russia and Hungary — ensure there won’t be any meaningful opposition within the GOP to his most extreme measures when they come.

Relevant Recent  Headlines

 

More Global  News

washington post logoWashington Post, German Christmas market attack toll rises to five dead, over 200 injured, Victoria Bisset, Kelsey Ables and Souad Mekhennet, Dec. 21, 2024. The suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, an official said.

At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, German leaders said Saturday, hours after authorities identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

Reiner Haseloff, the premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, confirmed the new toll during a visit to the scene of Friday’s incident. A child is among the dead.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who appeared alongside Haseloff, said almost 40 of the casualties “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Scholz noted that the attack took place just days before Christmas, and that normally “there is no place more peaceful or cheerful than a Christmas market.”

“What a terrible act it is, to kill and injure so many people with such brutality,” Scholz said, adding that it is important that the country “stays together” and did “not allow those who wish to sow hate” to do so.

The suspect, Abdulmohsen, who arrived in Germany in 2006, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, according to a German official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters Saturday the investigation was ongoing, and “we can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic,” according to Zeit newspaper and Reuters news agency.

Another official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said police are searching the suspect’s home and believe he may have been under the influence of drugs at the time of the attack. Abdulmohsen, who lives about 30 miles away in Bernburg, was arrested at the scene.

ny times logoNew York Times, German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe, Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Dec. 17, 2024 (print ed.). Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, deepening the political turbulence in one of the continent’s most powerful country.

The German government collapsed on Monday as Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament, deepening a crisis of leadership across Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges.

The war in Ukraine has escalated, with Russia issuing increasing dire threats against Kyiv and its supporters. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. The government of France — Germany’s partner in leading Europe — fell earlier this month.

And now, Europe’s largest economy will be in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.

On Monday, German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.

bulwark logo big shipThe Bulwark, Political Opinion: WTF Is Happening In Canada? 51st State? Trudeau on the Outs? Bowing to Trump? Dec. 16, 2024. canadian flagTim Miller is joined by JJMcCullough to breakdown what's going on in Canada, from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigning to Donald Trump's tariff plans, and Trump's taunts at Justin Trudeau about making Canada an America

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Hails a SoftBank Investment That Echoes 2016, Maureen Farrell and Michael J. de la Merced, /Dec. 16, 2024. President-elect Trump announced that the Japanese technology company SoftBank had pledged to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first news conference since the election covered a wide range of topics, but it began with an eye-catching pledge: a $100 billion investment in the United States by SoftBank, a Japanese technology company.

Standing beside SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump announced a pledge that echoed a $50 billion commitment SoftBank made after his victory in 2016. That promise was followed by investments in a host of fledgling startups — some that surged and others that ran into trouble, including the co-working company WeWork and a company called Zume that used robots to make pizza.

According to Mr. Trump, SoftBank’s investment is intended to create 100,000 jobs. Trump transition officials said the investment will focus on technology and artificial intelligence over the next four years.

SoftBank doesn’t have $100 billion in cash on hand. The money is expected to come partly from its balance sheet but also from money raised alongside partners, according to a person familiar with SoftBank’s plans.

ny times logoNew York Times, Syria’s New Leader Calls on Countries to Drop Terror Designation, Ben Hubbard, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Thomas Fuller, Dec. 16, 2024.  Ahmed al-Shara stressed diplomacy in an interview. In a statement said to be from Bashar al-Assad, he defended his decision to leave Syria for Russia.

Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that swept into Damascus last week and ousted the Assad regime, urged the United States and other nations to remove sanctions imposed on the country, saying in an interview on Monday that all constraints needed to be lifted so that Syria could rebuild.

The rebel leader spoke in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on the same day that Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, seemed to break his silence about his decision to flee to Russia. In a statement posted to social media accounts he had used while in office, Mr. al-Assad said he had wanted to stay and fight, but was evacuated by Russian forces as the rebels bore down on the city.

Mr. al-Assad said that Syria was now in the “hands of terrorism.”

The comments by the two men, the past and present faces of a country decimated by a 13-year civil war, came as the rebel alliance sought to fill the power vacuum left by the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government, and foreign governments and Syria’s minorities looked for indications of the country’s new direction.

Mr. al-Shara appears to be making rapid progress toward international recognition, with a parade of officials from the United Nations, Europe and the Middle East descending on Damascus to meet with him or reopen embassies.

ny times logoNew York Times, Putin Stays Silent on Syria, With Russia’s Future There in Question, Anton Troianovski, Dec. 16, 2024. In a televised meeting with his top military brass, Vladimir Putin left Syria unmentioned and made it clear that winning in Ukraine was his top priority.

For an hour on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin and his defense minister presided over a televised, annual meeting of the Russian military’s top brass. They held forth on NATO, Ukraine and issues as obscure as mortgages for service members.

But one topic went unmentioned: Syria.

Mr. Putin has yet to say anything in public about the collapse of his close ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria more than a week ago, even as Russia struggles to salvage what influence it can in the Middle East. The silence underscores the uncertainty surrounding the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria — and the overwhelming priority for the Kremlin that the war in Ukraine has become.

Mr. al-Assad’s fall is a painful topic right now in Moscow, said Anton Mardasov, a Moscow-based military analyst focusing on the Middle East. “It’s better not to say anything.”

Things were very different just a year ago, when Sergei K. Shoigu, then the defense minister, boasted at the same annual meeting that Russian troops remained deployed both in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-populated enclave that Azerbaijan recaptured from Armenia last year.

  • New York Times, U.S. Says Its Airstrikes Killed 12 Islamic State Operatives in Syria, Dec. 16, 2024.

ny times logoNew York Times, Tice’s Mother Asks Netanyahu for Pause in Syria Strikes Amid Search for Son, Adam Entous and Patrick Kingsley, Dec. 16, 2024. 

The mother of the missing American journalist Austin Tice has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a letter that her family has “credible information” that Mr. Tice may be held in a prison outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, and urged the Israelis to pause military strikes in the area to allow rescuers to search the site.

Mr. Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, said in the letter, dated Dec. 14 and addressed to Mr. Netanyahu, that the prison was under a Syrian military museum in the mountainous Mount Qasioun area and had a tunnel that was connected to a neighborhood and a government palace.

“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” Ms. Tice wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence.”

Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government’s lead envoy for hostage affairs, confirmed he had received the letter, and he said that he was coordinating on a daily basis with U.S. officials, including Roger D. Carstens, the U.S. government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“We will do everything possible in assisting the United States of America to bring the hostages and missing persons back home,” Mr. Hirsch said.

Mr. Tice was abducted in 2012 outside Damascus as the country descended into civil war. The United States has said it believes he was being held by the government of Bashar al-Assad. The Assad regime had long maintained that it was not holding Mr. Tice and had no information about him.

ny times logoNew York Times, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Resigns, in Blow to Trudeau’s Hold on Power, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Ian Austen, Dec. 16, 2024.  The departure of Chrystia Freeland poses a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada prepares for the incoming Trump administration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hold on power was threatened on Monday after the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration resigned abruptly, in a stinging rebuke to the country’s leader.

The high-profile departure of the minister, Chrystia Freeland, comes at a treacherous moment for Canada. President-elect Donald J. Trump has warned that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless the two countries do more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the United States.

Ms. Freeland, who has helped steer the Trudeau government through many challenges, had been playing a prominent role in forming Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition.

In her letter of resignation, Ms. Freeland accused Mr. Trudeau, who is deeply unpopular at home, of engaging in “costly political gimmicks” instead of focusing on countering the grave threat of tariffs.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds Feared Dead After Cyclone Hits French Islands Off Africa, Aurelien BreedenAmelia Nierenberg and Isabella Kwai, Dec. 16, 2024. Officials Officials in the archipelago of Mayotte said the number of people killed by Tropical Cyclone Chido could be much higher than the 21 now confirmed dead.

Marine Le Pen

ny times logoNew York Times, France’s Marine Le Pen Takes Aim at the Top, Adam Nossiter, Dec. 10, 2024. After helping to oust the prime minister last week, the far-right leader, above, has made clear her next target is President Emmanuel Macron.

The one-on-one duel that has shaped French political life for nearly a decade ratcheted up a notch last week, with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen claiming one big scalp, and giving notice of going after a bigger one, President Emmanuel Macron.

No one doubted that she was calling the shots. Yet by Monday, Mr. Macron, right, had relegated Ms. Le Pen and her party, the anti-immigrant National Rally, to emmanuel marcon twitter“pariah” — her word — status. He did not deign to meet with her in his search for a new prime minister to replace the one she had largely ousted last week.

Leaders of other parties had tête-à-têtes with Mr. Macron at the presidential palace; but not Ms. Le Pen, who was excluded because she is part of the “anti-Republican front” — his words.

That could turn out to be a big mistake. Last week, Ms. Le Pen announced the demise of the hapless prime minister, Michel Barnier, in Parliament; sure enough he was overthrown in a no-confidence vote soon after.

Mr. Barnier had tried to force through a budget proposal without a vote, and above all he had barely consulted with Ms. Le Pen, who has the largest bloc French Flagof parliamentarians and cannot be ignored.

She has suggested successive Macron governments could fall, until he steps down — making clear she is after a more consequential trophy: the president himself.

Mr. Macron was barely off the plane from Saudi Arabia as she spoke last Wednesday night. As the bemused parliamentarians listened, she promised “deliverance” for France from its woes, “maybe, very soon.”

That seemed as much promise as threat.

It all rested on one man’s decision, she said, avoiding Mr. Macron’s name while suggesting she was pushing him toward the exit. Her target was clear.

“It’s up to the person concerned, by himself, to decide whether he should stay,” she said. “It’s on his conscience, to determine whether he should sacrifice public policy, and France’s fate, for the sake of his own pride.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis: Netanyahu Finally Takes the Stand in His Corruption Trial, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Dec. 10, 2024. Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a trial that began four years ago. He has denied the charges.

Outside the courthouse, he is one of the most powerful men in the Middle East, overseeing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, its occupation of southern Lebanon and recent strikes in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterAs he stepped into a cramped and sweltering underground courtroom in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel morphed into the defendant in Case 67104-01-20 — charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.

Israel Flag“Like everyone who is brought to the witness stand, you are charged with speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Rivka Friedman-Feldman, one of three judges hearing the case.

An audience of roughly 100 journalists, lawmakers, government ministers and lawyers craned their necks to catch his response.

“I have waited eight years for this moment — to tell the truth, the truth as I remember it,” replied Mr. Netanyahu, gripping the sides of a wooden lectern as he stood to the left of the judges.

It was a humbling moment — a sitting prime minister, forced to answer accusations of graft, before a courtroom filled with his peers. It was also a moment Mr. Netanyahu seemed determined to transcend.

“I am shocked by the magnitude of this absurdity,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“I am the prime minister, I am running a country, I am running a war,” he continued. “I am not occupying myself with my future, but rather with that of the state of Israel.”

For nearly a decade, the corruption charges against Mr. Netanyahu have divided Israel, leading to years of political turmoil. The electorate has been roughly evenly split on the question of whether Mr. Netanyahu should remain in office while he stands trial — a dynamic that has created an electoral stalemate, leading to five elections in less than four years.

Apart from a brief court appearance to plead not guilty in 2021, Mr. Netanyahu had rarely been affected by the day-to-day proceedings of the trial.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent years interviewing witnesses instead of the defendant himself. The hearing on Tuesday — 1,661 days since the trial began — was set to be Mr. Netanyahu’s first full day in court.

Mr. Netanyahu had sought to delay his testimony by several months, arguing that his management of the war campaign had disrupted his preparations. But the court agreed to a postponement of only a few days.

While his appearance on Tuesday provided a crescendo in the judicial process, it was also, to many Israelis, anti-climactic. The charges against Mr. Netanyahu have been a part of Israeli discourse for so long that the spectacle of a prime minister on trial no longer seems as shocking as it once did.

“The public has completely accepted the idea that we have a sitting prime minister who has been investigated, indicted and is now on trial — even in the middle of a war,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst who attended the hearing on Tuesday.

“What would have been unimaginable 10 years ago has been completely normalized,” she added.

Mr. Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate but related cases. The charges center on claims that he gave regulatory favors and diplomatic support to prominent businessmen in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage.

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More On U.S. Foreign Policy, National Security, Tariffs

 

seth hegseth liquor stashMeidas Touch Network, Commentary: Liquor Stash Photos Bolster NBC Report on Pete Hegseth Drinking Allegations, J.D. Wolf, Dec. 20, 2024. Social media posts reveal Trump's Defense nominee stored bottles of alcohol in his office at work (as shown above via Instagram).

mtn meidas touch networkMultiple social media posts reviewed by MeidasTouch reveal that Pete Hegseth had a liquor stash in his office for years. NBC News reported that "Pete Hegseth's drinking worried colleagues at Fox News" citing 10 current and former Fox News employees as sources. Hegseth drinking“Bottoms Up”— Pete Hegseth Took Swigs from Champagne Bottle, Plunged Into the Alcoholic Beverage During Fox News BroadcastRead More

NBC News reported that "Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers." Sources told NBC News that they "smelled alcohol on him before he went on air" and heard Hegseth talking about being hungover while getting ready for a broadcast.Pete Hegseth

One person told NBC news they smelled alcohol on Hegseth last month. In response to these allegations, the Trump transition team has defended Hegseth who has been attempting to convince Republican Senators that he is fit to lead the military, even promising to not drink at all after he is sworn in.During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly show, Hegseth denied having a drinking problem and challenged everyone to check the tape for evidence that he drinks on the job or has a problem.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: {December 11 [Human Rights Day History, Implications] Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Dec. 11, 2024. Today is heather cox richardson cnnHuman Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-six years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948 the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, including the horrors of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Greece was in the middle of a civil war, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans.

In the midst of these dangerous trends, the member countries of the United Nations came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.The United Nations itself was only three years old. Representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, had formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Part of the mission of the U.N. was “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to construct the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit.

The UDHR remains aspirational, but it is a vital part of the rules-based order that restrains leaders from human rights abuses, giving victims a language and a set of principles to condemn mistreatment. Before 1948 that language and those principles were unimaginable.

In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China Bans Rare Mineral Exports to the U.S., David Pierson, Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson, Dec. 4, 2024 (print ed.). The China Flagmove comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.

China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States, an escalation of the tech war between the world’s two biggest powers. The move comes a day after the Biden administration tightened Chinese access to advanced American technology.

The ban signals Beijing’s willingness to engage in supply chain warfare by blocking the export of important components used to make valuable products, like weaponry and semiconductors.

Politico, Trump threatens BRICS nations with 100 percent tariff, Ari Hawkins, Nov. 30, 2024. Trump also said: “There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Trudeau Flies to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Nov. 29, 2024. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the first G-7 leader to visit since the election. He is under pressure to persuade President-elect Trump to back down from his tariff threat.

canadian flagThe visit makes Mr. Trudeau the first foreign head of government from the Group of 7, a key forum of global coordination consisting of the world’s wealthiest democracies, to visit the president-elect.

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump were to dine together on Friday evening, one official said, along with a delegation of senior Trump allies poised for top trade and security positions in his new administration.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump, Mexican president talk border, migrant caravans amid tariff threats, Mary Beth Sheridan and Niha Masih, Nov. 29, 2024 (print ed.). Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to impose tariffs and she hinted at retaliation in a letter.

claudia sheinbaum w 2024Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, left, assured President-elect Donald Trump in a phone call Wednesday that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the U.S.-Mexican border, after Trump’s threat earlier this week to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from her country if it could not halt irregular migrants and fentanyl from crossing the U.S. border.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

mexico flag1“We discussed the Mexican strategy for the phenomenon of migration, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at our northern border, because we deal with them in Mexico,” Sheinbaum wrote on X after the call.

She described the conversation as “excellent.” Trump, posting about the call on Truth Social, his social media platform, said the conversation was “very productive.”

The conciliatory tone on both sides followed a tense exchange Tuesday: In a letter, Sheinbaum responded angrily to Trump’s tariff warning, threatening tariffs of her own. But they diverged in how they described the conversation.

Trump said Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico,” which would mean “effectively closing our Southern Border.” In a second post he said this would be come into effect immediately, prompting another tweet from Sheinbaum in which she said: “Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges,” adding that her country would offer assistance to migrants, including caravans, before they could reach the northern border. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy, Michael Crowley, Nov. 29, 2024. The  world is braced for disruption from President-elect Trump, but he may find more common ground with President Biden than many assume.

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

trump 2024Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

ny times logoNew York Times, How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter, Agnes Chang and Keith Bradsher, Nov. 29, 2024. President-elect Trump has promised to impose new tariffs, but they are unlikely to undercut China’s dominance given its advantages in automaking.

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Trump Legal Cases, Strategies, Allies

 

devan nunes hearing Custom

ny times logoNew 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.

trump 2024The 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

richard grenell oPresident-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.

trump 2024A 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.

ny times logoNew 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024. The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, ​After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader, Choe Sang-Hun, Dec. 15, 2024. The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing challenges at home and abroad.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel Says His Impatience Nudged Japan Forward, Motoko Rich, Dec. 15, 2024. Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Burkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American, Ben Hubbard and Amelia Nierenberg, Dec. 12, 2024. The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.

 The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

washington post logoWashington 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.

Justice Department log circularSmith’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.

 

More On U.S.Government Shutdown Threats

washington post logoWashington Post, With shutdown deadline hours away, House GOP offers new plan without Trump’s debt limit demand, Staff Report, Dec. 20, 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Friday that the House would vote on a new spending plan without President-elect Donald Trump’s demand to suspend the debt limit.

mike johnson oEmerging from a two-hour GOP meeting, Johnson, right, said he was finalizing the details. “I’ve got one more little detail to work out, but we should be having a vote here soon.” he said, adding, “We will not have a government shutdown.”

The bill would require the support of Democrats and it was unclear whether they would agree. The legislation would extend current fiscal levels until mid-March, provide $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers and grant an extension for the farm bill which must be reauthorized.

At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.”

The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a budget-focused think tank, is calling on Congress to avert a shutdown but is also warning about the implications of raising the debt ceiling as part of any deal.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: As Musk forces a shutdown, the Trump presidency is already collapsing into chaos, Dana Milbank, right, Dec. 20, 2024.  Lies, dana milbank newestconspiracy theories and middle-of-the-night rants are no way to run a country.

They’re baaaack.

Just six weeks ago, voters elected Donald Trump by the slimmest of margins in hopes that he would lower the cost of living. But Trump quickly walked back that promise, saying “it’s very hard” to reduce prices.Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

Instead, he has already returned the country to the unrelenting chaos, and the government to the ludicrous dysfunction, that dominated his first term. And he hasn’t even taken office yet. This week alone, Trump:

  • Announced, in a 3:23 a.m. social media post, his interest in annexing Canada. Spread unfounded paranoia about UFOs invading the East Coast. (“The government knows what is happening. … Something strange is going on.”)
  • Signaled, in another middle-of-the-night post, his desire to have the FBI probe prominent Trump critic Liz Cheney for violating “numerous federal laws” in the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
  • Declared that he was suing the Des Moines Register — because the Iowa newspaper’s election poll was wrong.
  • Suggested, via Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that he would limit access to abortion medication.

And then, the pièce de résistance: Trump, and the man he tapped to police government spending, Elon Musk, killed a painstakingly negotiated, bipartisan spending package at the 11th hour, sending the federal government hurtling toward a Christmas shutdown — which would be the first time the government is forced to turn out the lights since, well, the last time Trump was in charge.

ny times logoNew York Times, Government Shutdown Looms as G.O.P. Rebels Against Trump, Catie Edmondson and Qasim Nauman, Dec. 20, 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to find a spending plan that will satisfy both Republicans and Democrats. He has less than a day to do it.

With a possible government shutdown looming at day’s end, President-elect Donald J. Trump early Friday renewed his demand that Congress U.S. House logosuspend the debt ceiling, intensifying a face-off with lawmakers from his own party as Republicans run short of options before a midnight deadline.

Congress failed to pass a spending bill on Thursday night, after Republicans rejected a Trump-backed proposal that included suspending the debt limit for two years. Hours after that vote, Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to “get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling.”

“Without this, we should never make a deal,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

mike johnson oCongress has not passed any individual spending bills, and after a roller-coaster week of negotiations, it is unclear what plan could pass both the bitterly divided House and the Democratic-controlled Senate. If the House speaker, Mike Johnson, right, a Republican, cannot find a way forward before 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the government will shut down.

trump 2024Some House Republicans on Thursday night were quietly floating the idea of a very short-term funding measure — with no other provisions attached — to avert a shutdown and move the problem into January.

“There are a number of different options that the speaker is considering,” said Representative Dusty Johnson, Republican of South Dakota.

Here is what to know:

  • Thursday vote: The hastily produced plan failed by a vote of 235 to 174, with 38 Republicans and 197 Democrats voting no. Right-wing lawmakers balked at increasing the government’s borrowing limit, something many of them have long pledged not to do without spending cuts to keep the debt from ballooning further. House Democrats refused to back the deal because it would allow Mr. Trump and his allies to push through tax cuts for the wealthy.
  • republican elephant logoDefying Trump: Conservative Republicans who normally align themselves with Mr. Trump’s philosophy voted against his wishes, raising questions about his supposed hammerlock on his party. Whether this reflects some loss of his control over the party or merely a hiccup may not be known until he puts a razor-thin Republican majority to the test next year after he returns to the White House.
  • Debt ceiling: A failure to raise the borrowing limit could cause a default on the national debt. This current limit is expected to be reached in January, although many think it could be stretched into the spring. Mr. Trump has made clear that he does not want to be responsible for raising it, and wants to do it while President Biden’s in office.
  • Shutdown shock: While most government agencies have developed contingency plans for this scenario, a shutdown would have widespread effects across the United States, including travel disruptions. Benefits including Medicare and Social Security will continue without interruption because Congress authorizes them separately, with laws that do not need annual renewals.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Transition: Republican Plan to Avoid Shutdown Fails in the House, Staff Report, Dec. 20, 2024 (print ed.). The House rejected a new Republican proposal to avert a shutdown, a day after President-elect Donald J. Trump torpedoed a spending deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson had struck with Democrats.

The new, Trump-endorsed plan would have tied an extension of government funding to a two-year suspension of the federal debt limit. Some Republicans joined Democrats in voting it down.

ny times logoNew York Times, Dozens of House Republicans Defy Trump in Test of His Grip on G.O.P., Michael D. Shear, Dec. 20, 2024 (print ed.).  Thirty-eight Republican lawmakers resisted President-elect Trump’s support of a spending and debt deal, showing that some were willing to buck his leadership.

Writing on social media, Mr. Trump had told Republicans to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” He said it was vital to pass a bill that extended spending until early next year and suspended the nation’s debt limit until 2027, well into his next term.

U.S. House logoFor the better part of a decade, that kind of dictate has usually been enough for Mr. Trump, who has methodically seized control of trump 2024the Republican Party at all levels. But with just a month left before he returns to office, Mr. Trump found out that at least some of his followers were willing to buck his leadership in the right circumstances. The rebel Republicans, combined with most House Democrats, sank that legislation, leaving the nation about a day away from a government shutdown.

The defiance came not from the handful of moderate Republicans who have previously earned the president-elect’s ire. This time, it was conservatives who would normally align themselves with Mr. Trump’s philosophy who voted against his wishes.

Steady, U.S. Political Commentary: Is Trump Really Calling the Shots? Dan Rather, Dec. 19, 2024. Just when you think it can’t get weirder or more dysfunctional …

dan rather steady logoWelcome to a preview of coming attractions — your U.S. government (not) at work. The new administration is a month away from taking office, and it feels a lot like they’re already in power … except for the small problem that there may be no government to run as a Republican-led shutdown looms.

We’ve seen this movie before, but now we have a new lead actor. Move over Donald Trump and make way for the Ambassador of Chaos, Elon Musk. It would be funny if it weren’t so troubling.

While almost every Steady these days could don the headline ‘You Can’t Make It Up,’ today’s raises the bar to new heights.

U.S. House logoNow the machinations of the U.S. Congress tend to be a pretty dry subject, but bear with me. It’s worth your time.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has spent the past few weeks working with both House Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a spending bill to keep the federal government open and running.

According to Politico, Donald Trump was given the broad strokes of the deal over the weekend, and he reportedly had no objections.

mike johnson oLate Tuesday, Johnson, right, announced a deal that would keep the government funded for three months.

Wednesday morning, a disgruntled Elon Musk began a tweet-a-thon in opposition to the spending bill. Musk, who has no official role yet, is unelected, and will not need Senate confirmation, decided he didn’t like the bill. He let everyone know it with more than 100 posts on his social media platform, X.

“SHUT IT DOWN,” Musk posted; followed by “Folks, American Democracy is in TROUBLE,” said unironically.

He falsely claimed that shutting down the government would hurt no one.

“Just close down the govt [SIC] until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days,” Musk wrote on X.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who would be furloughed and therefore not paid until there’s a deal. For context, when the government shut down for three weeks in 2018-19, the Congressional Budget Office said it cost the U.S. economy $3 billion. That estimate does not include lost productivity. But what’s a billion or three to someone worth 440?

Musk also threatened political retribution, saying he will financially back any primary opponent of Republicans in Congress who supported the original deal.

His beef with the bill is too much pork, which is the appropriation of funds for pet projects of individual House and Senate members. Pork is included in spending bills to appease members and guarantee their vote. It is how budgets are made and have been made since the dawn of American democracy.

The bill also includes $100 billion for disaster relief and billions for American farmers.

By the end of the day, Musk’s social media temper tantrum had worked. Trump, who as a reminder is not yet president, put out a statement noting his sudden displeasure with the bipartisan spending bill that he was just fine with until Musk. Long story slightly shorter, that bill is dead, as are Speaker Johnson’s chances of remaining Speaker Johnson. More on that in a minute.

Who exactly is calling the shots? It doesn’t sound like it’s the president-elect. It does sound like it is the richest man in the world, who paid an enormous amount of money to ride in Donald Trump’s sidecar.

“The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure, about this budget deal, all of a sudden Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal,” Democratic Congressman Daniel Goldman said on MSNBC.

Senator Bernie Sanders asked on X, “Are Republicans working for the American people or taking orders from ‘President Musk’?”

This morning Trump called, yes called, NBC to do damage control. During the phone interview he said he had spoken with Musk before the X owner went on his rant and that their views are “very much on track.”

So, now what? Late today, Speaker Johnson says he has a new deal, one that apparently makes Musk and Trump happy, but perhaps few others. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says it’s an unserious proposal and would be dead on arrival. The new bill is a pared-down version of the original with a debt ceiling increase.

Without boring you to the point that you scroll to the end of this piece, let me quickly explain. The debt ceiling is a limit on how much Congress can borrow to pay its bills. If the ceiling isn’t raised and the government can’t pay, it will be in default. If that happens, there will be actual hell to pay. The consequences for the U.S. economy could be catastrophic.

The Council of Economic Advisers said that if the government defaults on its obligations, “the economy would quickly shift into reverse, with the depth of the losses a function of how long the breach lasted.”

And now a twist no one expected. After Musk’s muscle flex over the continuing resolution, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee have floated the idea of Musk replacing Johnson as speaker of the House. Yup, you read that right. The Constitution does not require a speaker to be a sitting member of the House of Representatives, though every speaker has been.

Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that Musk, who is originally from South Africa, was actually in the U.S. illegally for a time after dropping out of Stanford to start a business. He later became a citizen. Who would have thought that someone who has railed against undocumented immigrants was perhaps one himself, and now could be speaker of the House … the world’s richest person, and answerable to absolutely no one?

These are serious matters for the future of our country. Strange and perilous times, my friends.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Tossed a Debt Limit Grenade Into Spending Talks. Here’s Why, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 19, 2024. President-elect Donald J. Trump injected debt limit politics into already-fraught congressional spending talks this week, urging lawmakers to lift the debt limit or abolish it entirely before he takes office next month.

U.S. House logoThe re-emergence of the debt limit comes 18 months after Republicans and Democrats staved off a fiscal crisis and agreed to suspend a cap on how much the government can borrow until after the 2024 presidential election. That was supposed to clear the decks and sidestep a politically difficult vote during the heat of campaign season.

But now the problem is waiting for Mr. Trump. As he prepares to push an agenda of tax cuts and border security, Mr. Trump fears that a debt limit fight next year could interfere. His plans are expected to cost trillions of dollars, much of which will most likely need to come from borrowed funds. A drawn-out debt limit fight next year could force Mr. Trump and Republicans to bow to the demands of Democrats and could consume the congressional calendar.

“This is a nasty TRAP set in place by the Radical Left Democrats!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday night.

Politico, GOP strikes a new spending deal that includes disaster aid and raising the debt limit, Jennifer Scholtes, Katherine Tully-McManus and Meredith Lee Hill, Dec. 19, 2024. The news caught Democrats by surprise Thursday afternoon.

politico CustomRepublicans have struck a deal on a short-term government spending patch and potential debt limit increase, according to two GOP lawmakers meeting in Speaker Mike Johnson's office Thursday afternoon.

“There is an agreement,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.). Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) confirmed there was a deal among Republicans, though the news caught House Democrats by surprise.

U.S. House logoThe plan Johnson is expected to put on the House floor later Thursday includes, according to three Republicans familiar with the deal, a stopgap measure that funds the government through mid-March, a clean farm bill extension, the $110 billion disaster aid package previously negotiated with Democrats, clean health care provision extenders and a two-year suspension of the debt limit, kicking a new deadline into January 2027.

Bice said she expects Donald Trump and Elon Musk to support the deal, after the two derailed Johnson’s plan to pass a more than 1,500-page catch-all measure he negotiated with top Democrats earlier this week to avert a government shutdown, deliver more than $100 billion in disaster aid and enact a slew of unrelated policy priorities.

The goal is for the House to vote Thursday, Bice added. The government shutdown deadline is Friday at midnight.

Given House Democrats did not appear to be read in on the deal, it wasn't immediately clear if they will support it, and Johnson will almost certainly need their votes to pass it through the chamber. Shortly after the agreement was announced, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) already said he was opposed to the plan — an attitude other conservatives are certain to share.

"It's a water-downed version of the same crappy bill people were mad about yesterday," he said on The Sean Hannity Show.

Politico, Jeffries says 'hell no' to GOP funding deal, ratcheting up chances of a shutdown, Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz, The package would need a lot of Democratic support to get out of the House.

politico CustomHouse Democrats were skeptical of an emerging Republican-led funding deal as they walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline.

“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said to reporters as he walked into the meeting.4640182134416795 07/29 sec. 279

Speaking privately to members of his caucus minutes later, Jeffries told lawmakers: “I’m not simply a no. I’m a hell no,” according to three people familiar with his remarks, granted anonymity to speak about the meeting.

Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed doubts about the legislation, which Republican leaders were teeing up for a vote Thursday evening. It would suspend the debt ceiling through early 2027, fund the government through March, and include billions in disaster relief funds, a top Democratic priority.

The vote on the bill is scheduled to come up via a process called suspension, which means it needs to meet a two-thirds vote threshold to pass. If Democrats are roundly against it, it will fail on the floor — leaving Congress without an obvious solution to avoid a shutdown.

“This was done on short notice,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, who said he was opposed. “We reached an agreement on a bipartisan basis between the respective leadership and the membership of both parties, only to have an interruption take place and then a veto occurs after the agreement has been rendered and reached.”

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk worked to spike the original deal on Wednesday, sending the House careening down an alternate path with a deadline looming.

“Elon Musk is not my constituent. My constituents are hard-working people who work very hard every day for every dime they have, and I'm sure as hell not bailing out on them in the final week,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Top Democrats weren’t involved in the drafting of the legislation, and the unveiling caught senior lawmakers by surprise.

“All I know is it was just reported by the press. We have not been involved in anything that they have done,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Appropriations Committee Democrat.

Republicans argue the burden is now on Democrats to justify any opposition to a continuing resolution — “CR” for short — that averts a government shutdown and also prevents the U.S. from defaulting on its more than $36 trillion in debt next year.

“Fundamentally, Democrats are going to have to explain why a clean CR with disaster relief, keeping the government functioning and open — and doing, by the way, exactly what they argued a year ago — why they wouldn’t support that,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said as he left Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.

Those policies are typically something Democrats would support, GOP lawmakers note, without acknowledging that backing the plan threatens Democrats’ negotiating power going forward

ny times logoNew York Times, Government Shutdown Grows Closer as Trump Tells G.O.P. to Kill Spending Deal, Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse, Dec. 19, 2024.  President-elect Trump weighed in against the spending package after Elon Musk warned Republicans not to support it, leaving the compromise on life support.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

ny times logoNew York Times, What Happens Next in the Spending Fight in Congress, Chris Cameron, Dec. 19, 2024. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s denunciation of a bipartisan spending bill all but buried that deal while leaving unclear what form a new agreement could take.

ny times logoNew York Times, Where Does a ‘Remarkable’ U.S. Economy Go From Here? Jeanna Smialek and Ana Swanson, Dec. 19, 2024. America’s economy is far outstripping its peers, but there are serious risks, including from the president-elect.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Russian War Against Ukraine

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Says It Assassinated Russian General in Moscow, Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.). Igor Kirillov, who was in charge of Russia’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed by a bomb on a street in the capital.

ukraine flagA general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces was killed by a bomb on a Moscow street on Tuesday, in one of the most brazen assassinations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

igor kirillov wThe general, Igor Kirillov, 54, right, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.

The S.B.U. considered General Kirillov a legitimate target, the official said.

russian flagA day before the general’s killing, Ukraine had accused him of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian troops had dropped ammunition with toxic compounds onto Ukrainian positions in efforts to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches.

According to the Russian military, the division that General Kirillov oversaw carries out specialized tasks like protecting Russian troops when chemical and nuclear weapons are used, as well as offensive operations like attacks with incendiary weapons.

ny times logoNew York Times, Who Was Gen. Igor Kirillov? Staff Report, Dec. 18, 2024 (print  ed.).  The general had faced sanctions for using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of Russia’s military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, was killed on Tuesday by a bomb in Moscow, the Russian authorities said.

An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.How was he killed?

General Kirillov, 54, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

The explosion occurred at about 6:12 a.m. and shattered windows in a building across the street, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.Why was he targeted?

russian flagA day before his killing, Ukraine had accused General Kirillov of criminal activity, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian forces had used chemical weapons on the battlefield more than 4,800 times since the war began, on General Kirillov’s orders. Russia denied Ukraine’s accusations during a July meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Ukraine has said the chemical weapons used by Russia often include combat grenades equipped with the irritant chemical agents CS and CN. Those tear gases, most commonly used by riot police officers to control crowds, are banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty ratified by more than 150 countries, including Russia.

The U.S. State Department said this spring that Russia had used chloropicrin, a choking agent widely used in World War I, as well as tear gas on the battlefield. Britain imposed sanctions on General Kirillov this fall, citing his responsibility in deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

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

politico CustomA 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.

german flagThe 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.”

NBC News, Russian oil tankers split in two by strong storms in the Black Sea, Dec. 15, 2024.

Enforcer News, Massive Russian Ships SINK In Black Sea; MAJOR Rescue Operation Underway, Dec. 15, 2024. Today, 2 Massive Russian Ships have sunk in the Black Sea resulting in a major disaster for the Russians as they mount a full-scale rescue operation to save the men onboard.

The ships were carrying thousands of tons of petroleum (estimated at 5,000 tons apiece)which if fully released into the sea, would result in the worst disaster in the history of the Black Sea.

Putin is furious and demanding answers from top officials. We also received news that Ukraine attacked the special forces headquarters in Grozny, Chechnya with a full size Ukrainian FoxBat drone which evaded all of Ramzan Kadyrov's air defenses. Meanwhile we also received news from the Ukrainians that the North Korean soldiers are taking extremely heavy losses as they begin to retreat/run in major swarms from the frontline. We also got some news coming out of Syria as well. Please like and subscribe for more daily short war updates!

ny times logoNew York Times, Security Strategy of Recruiting Cheap Militiamen Backfires in Burkina Faso, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Dec. 15, 2024. By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little respect for human rights, the military has brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

burkino fasoBurkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly three million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Captain Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Captain Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Captain Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues, Neil MacFarquhar and Justin Scheck, Dec. 15, 2024.  The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

ny times logoNew York Times, Brazilian Police Arrest Close Ally of Ex-President Bolsonaro, Official Says, Ana Ionova, Dec. 14, 2024. Gen. Walter Braga Netto was Jair Bolsonaro’s running mate. The arrest was for meddling in an investigation into a plot to stage a coup, the police said.

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested Gen. Walter Braga Netto, a close ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his running mate in 2022, according to a police official, accusing him of meddling in their investigation into a plot to stage a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election.

The federal police said in a statement that they had carried out an arrest and two search warrants against people for “hindering the free production of evidence during the criminal proceedings.”

The police official confirmed that General Braga Netto was the target of the arrest, which the police said in the statement was “to prevent the repetition of illegal actions.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. The targets of the search warrants were not identified.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Law, Cases, Courts

ny times logoNew York Times, Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say, Charlie Savage, Dec. 21, 2024. Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two more trips from a wealthy patron was included in a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ny times logoNew York Times, Top Uniformed N.Y.P.D. Officer Resigns After Abuse Allegations, Hurubie Meko, Maria Cramer and William K. Rashbaum, Dec. 21, 2024.  Jeffrey Maddrey traded sexual favors for overtime, according to a report from The New York Post. He had previously been accused of harassment on the job.

New York City’s top uniformed police officer, the chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, setting off local and federal investigations and extending years of turmoil at the Police Department.

The former chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it, according to a statement from the department on Saturday.

Mayor Eric Adams had vocally supported Mr. Maddrey, a close ally, as recently as October. But on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the mayor, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said that he was working with Commissioner Tisch to conduct a “separate departmentwide review to ensure no high-ranking officers are using their power inappropriately.”

“We are deeply disturbed by these allegations and the N.Y.P.D. is investigating this matter,” Ms. Mamelak Altus said.

washington post logoWashington Post, Congress passes RFK bill in surprise move, giving D.C. control of stadium site, Meagan Flynn, Erin Cox and Sam Fortier, Dec. 21, 2024. Passage of the legislation, which transfers the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has long sought to redevelop the site.ByUpdated 19 minutes ag

Congress has passed legislation giving D.C. control of RFK Stadium and allowing the city to redevelop more than 170 acres of federal property surrounding it, a political miracle that came in the twilight hours of the year’s congressional session and after almost every avenue for the legislation appeared exhausted.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

The U.S. Senate passed the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act by unanimous consent at about 1:15 a.m. Saturday — a Hail Mary action that required the support of all senators present without objection. The bill cleared the House in February on a broad bipartisan basis, and it was not immediately clear how D.C. officials and their congressional allies got all senators on board.

Passage of the legislation, which transfers control of the land to D.C. at no cost, is a tremendous win for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who for years has sought to turn the property surrounding the decaying football stadium into a major new attraction and possibly bring the Washington Commanders back to their old home. The bill, which must still be signed by the president, will allow Bowser to formally negotiate with the Commanders — a possibility sure to excite the city’s football fans, who have not seen a home game in Washington since 1996.

“This is a win for DC, for our region, and for America,” Bowser said on X on Saturday. “Everybody loves a good comeback story – and that’s DC’s story.”

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Former FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov Pleads Guilty To Lying About Biden Family, Jordy Meiselas, Dec. 16, 2024. Smirnov lied about a bribery scheme that became a critical part of the Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden.

mtn meidas touch networkAlexander Smirnov has officially pled guilty to lying about a bribery scheme that involved President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican attempt to impeach President Biden.

Smirnov entered a guilty plea to a felony charge related to the fake bribery story along with other criminal tax charges related to his concealment of millions of dollars of income.

In 2020, Smirnov first made claims that the Bidens had been involved in a bribery scheme related to Burisma and Ukraine. At the same time, Smirnov expressed bias about President Biden as a candidate.

An FBI office investigated Smirnov's allegations but closed the case in August 2020, and there has been no evidence that President Biden acted corruptly or accepted any bribes as President or Vice President.

At the time, it was unknown that Smirnov's allegations were the basis of a Republican attempt to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. And we now know that the story premising the impeachment inquiry was false.

Prosecutors agreed to a deal with Smirnov and recommended that he serve between four and six years in prison. The ultimate sentencing decision will be made by a federal judge at a later date.

wsj logoWall Street Journal, Judge Broke Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap, Jess Bravin, Dec. 17, 2024. Investigation concludes it was an ethics violation to question the ethics of a Supreme Court justice

Amid collapsing public confidence in U.S. courts, a federal judge has been found culpable of misconduct. The offense? Questioning the ethics of a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor published an essay in the New York Times arguing that the display of flags associated with President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA movement at Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia and New Jersey homes was a breach of public trust. The piece was unusual because judges don’t typically offer personal criticisms of a colleague in public.

According to the jurist assigned to review the matter, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., it was Ponsor who damaged the judiciary. In a previously unreported order filed last week, Diaz found that by commenting on controversial issues and criticizing Alito, Ponsor violated the code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than Supreme Court justices.

Among other transgressions, Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee who sits in Springfield, Mass., was found to violate rules against actions that “detract from the dignity” of a judge’s office and harm “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The judiciary has reason to be concerned about its perception. A Gallup survey published Tuesday found that public confidence in America’s courts had fallen by 24 percentage points since 2020, to a historic low of 35%.

That decline has come in concert with ethics controversies surrounding the Supreme Court, along with polarizing decisions that range from the justices’ elimination of abortion rights in 2022 to Trump’s conviction this year in New York state court for covering up hush money paid to an adult-film star.

Ponsor has built a larger public profile than most judges, and may best be known for writing a series of mystery novels, beginning with “The Hanging Judge.” His errant article was called “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” It followed reports in the Times that flags like those carried by pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, later were flown at Alito’s residences. Those were an inverted American flag at his Virginia house in January 2021 and the Pine Tree Flag, a Revolutionary War standard that has become popular among some far-right groups, at his New Jersey vacation home in summer 2023.

The article appeared while two Jan. 6-related cases were pending before the Supreme Court, one involving obstruction charges against some rioters and another over Trump’s immunity from prosecution for his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Some critics urged Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats who, on the same day the Ponsor article appeared, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts to request that Alito sit out those matters.

Diaz, a 2010 Obama appointee, found that given its context, Ponsor’s article could be read “as a commentary on partisan issues and as a call for Justice Alito’s recusal.” Diaz closed the complaint because Ponsor acknowledged violating the rules, apologized for his actions and said he would seek ethics advice before doing any further outside writing.

“With the benefit of an objective perspective, I realize now that my criticism of the ethical judgment of a Supreme Court Justice might have had the effect of undermining the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judicial system,” Ponsor said in a letter appended to Diaz’s order.

Ponsor, who also wrote a 2023 opinion column titled “A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?”, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mike Davis, the activist and Trump ally who filed a complaint that triggered the review, said he was satisfied. “The courts and Judge Ponsor took this seriously. I accept his apology letter at face value,” said Davis, founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for conservative judges.

Critics of the Supreme Court were less sanguine.

“Justice Alito currently faces no consequences for his public commentary and actions that cast doubt on his impartiality, but the judge who raised legitimate concerns about these ethical lapses is disciplined in response to a complaint by a political activist with an axe to grind,” said a Durbin spokesman, Josh Sorbe.

Alito didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in May he wrote a three-page letter declining to recuse himself from the Jan. 6 cases. He said then it was his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who flew various flags at their homes, a practice he disfavored and had no part in. Under the Supreme Court’s recently adopted ethics code, each justice evaluates his or her own conduct. Alito determined that he would remain on those cases because his impartiality couldn’t reasonably be questioned.

Alito joined the majority in both Jan. 6 cases, limiting the charges against rioters and extending criminal immunity for former presidents.

washington post logoWashington Post, Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter, Sarah Blaskey, Patrick Marley, Hannah Natanson and Reis Thebault, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Court records show Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow’s parents had divorced and remarried multiple times.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others at her small Christian school here Monday had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy.You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

wisconsin map with largest cities CustomNatalie Rupnow, who also went by Samantha, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after police say she opened fire in a study hall classroom at Abundant Life Christian School.

The academy’s tight-knit community was still stunned Tuesday, grieving the student and teacher who were killed and searching for answers to explain the latest act of violence to strike an American campus.

Police have released few details about Rupnow beyond her name, and they said they were investigating a possible motive behind the shooting. With much still unknown, a Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.

“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference, where he asked the public for patience as authorities investigated Rupnow’s social media activity and state of mind leading up to the rampage.

The teen is one of just nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by The Post. She is also among the younger recent shooters: Just over a month removed from her 15th birthday, she was about a year younger than the median age of school shooters. And the violence unfolded at a small K-12 school with a religious affiliation, an uncommon site for such incidents, researchers say.

“A lot of this is quite surprising,” said Jillian Peterson, the executive director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center at Hamline University.

Rupnow’s mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Police said they have been cooperating with the investigation.

Rupnow’s father is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter, according to a review of his Facebook profile. The Post confirmed the account as Jeff Rupnow’s by verifying its authenticity with a person who attended school with him and by comparing the page’s contents to public records.

His posts celebrate his daughter’s achievements, such as the time she earned a purple belt in karate, and mark big life moments, like the day he bought a house. But one post, from August, has attracted more scrutiny than others.

In it, a photo appears to show Natalie Rupnow wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range, which her father identifies as North Bristol Sportsman’s Club in nearby Sun Prairie. In a comment accompanying the post, Jeff Rupnow wrote that he and his daughter had joined the club early this year and “we have been loving all every second of it!”

In the photograph, Natalie Rupnow is wearing a T-shirt bearing the letters “KMFDM,” an apparent reference to the German rock band whose lyrics were posted on the website of one of the shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Authorities declined to comment on social media posts, saying they were still investigating Natalie Rupnow’s online activity. Police have not disclosed how Rupnow was able to acquire the handgun they say she used in Monday’s shooting.

“How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?” Barnes, the police chief, said Monday, adding that his team was working with federal authorities to answer that question. He did not elaborate at the news conference Tuesday.

washington post logoWashington Post, Supreme Court to hear challenge to a TikTok ban in U.S., scheduling arguments for January, Ann E. Marimow and Eva Dou, Dec. 18, 2024. The justices said they will quickly take up the constitutionality of a federal law that would shutter TikTok next month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.

The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.Get the latest election news and results

In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

TikTok had asked the high court to intervene before Jan. 19, the deadline Congress set for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or be barred in the United States. The company wants the justices to put on hold a lower-court ruling that clears the way for the law, which was signed by President Joe Biden.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has suggested he could try to retain access to the app, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the ban-or-sale law.

Lawmakers passed the measure in response to concerns from U.S. officials that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

washington post logoWashington Post, Syphilis ravaged Renaissance Europe but may have origins in Americas, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Dec. 18, 2024.  For centuries, scientists have disputed the origins of the disease. A new study of ancient DNA suggests it emerged in the Americas before Columbus arrived.

In 1495, a devastating infection began to sweep across Europe, causing pustules and sores to erupt on people’s bodies and faces. Accusatory finger-pointing about the scourge, syphilis, began almost immediately. The Italians called it “the French disease”; the French called it “the Neapolitan disease”; the Russians called it “the Polish disease.”You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

The sexually transmitted disease remains a public health menace today, despite the fact that it is easily cured with antibiotics. But the scientific debate still rages about the ancient origins of syphilis — including why the wave of illness that swamped Renaissance Europe was so virulent.

Did syphilis initially emerge in the Americas and arrive in Europe in early 1493 when explorer Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, in the reverse of so many other illnesses that wiped out Indigenous peoples? Or was it a much older “pre-Columbian” disease that has been infecting humanity much longer — one that flew under the radar, perhaps mistaken for leprosy or another ailment in Medieval Europe?

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, an international team studied ancient DNA harvested from lesion-ridden bones or teeth of five people who lived in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Mexico either before or around the time of Columbus. They found that early versions of the microbe, Treponema pallidum, that causes syphilis and related diseases were already diverse and widespread. Their analysis suggests that syphilis emerged in the Americas within the last 8,000 years and spread across the globe fueled by European colonization.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump to nominate ex-NFL star Herschel Walker as Bahamas ambassador, Staff Reports, Dec. 18, 2024. President-elect Donald herschel walker hill tvTrump plans to nominate Herschel Walker, the former professional football player and Heisman Trophy winner who lost a scandal-trump 2024ridden bid for Senate in 2022, as ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump, meanwhile, moved closer to returning to the White House as the electoral college convened in all 50 states Tuesday and elected him to be the 47th president of the United States over Vice President Kamala Harris by a vote of 312 to 226.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. repatriates three Guantánamo detainees, leaving 27 at prison, Karen DeYoung Dec. 18, 2024. Two Malaysians charged with Southeast Asia bombings will serve additional sentences in their own country; a Kenyan charged with belonging to al-Qaeda in East Africa was sent home.

Three of the last remaining 30 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention center have been repatriated to their home countries — two to Malaysia and one to Kenya, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

Malaysians Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pleaded guilty in January before a U.S. military commission to charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses as lieutenants of the man known as Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia blamed for a number of deadly bombing attacks in the region in the early 2000s.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

They were arrested in 2003 in Thailand along with Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Encep Nurjaman. All three were held in the CIA’s “black sites,” a secret overseas prison network, until 2006, when they were transferred to Guantánamo.

As part of a plea agreement, the two Malaysians agreed in January to provide depositions for use in proceedings against Nurjaman and will serve additional “confinement for approximately five years” in their home country, according to a Pentagon statement issued after their scheduled departure early Wednesday.

The third repatriated prisoner, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, was sent to Kenya on Tuesday. Arrested by Kenyan authorities in 2007 and accused of belonging to al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, Bajabu was among the last five detainees to arrive at the U.S. facility in Cuba, established after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, that once held hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda operatives.

 

lina khan resized ftc

washington post logoWashington Post, FTC issues rules requiring hotels, ticket sellers to reveal ‘junk fees,’ Tony Romm, Dec. 18, 2024 (print ed.). The industries must display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers or face potential federal punishment.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued long-awaited rules requiring companies to display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers, rather than hiding any extra charges — often called “junk fees” — until the very end of the checkout process.

The new regulations, which are slated to take effect next year, seek to crack down on “bait and switch” pricing practices, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan, who said the agency has received a groundswell of complaints about service charges, amenity fees and a raft of other potentially obscure, last-minute additions to consumers’ bills.

The FTC’s rules still allow companies to impose fees, so long as they are clearly displayed. The agency also focused its prohibition on just the lodging and live-event industries, not the fuller array of firms — from airlines to internet giants — that have similarly stoked public anger.

While the FTC initially proposed broader regulations, Khan narrowed the agency’s scope in a bid to secure bipartisan support among her five-member commission, which approved the proposal on a 4-1 vote. The lone opponent was Andrew Ferguson, a Republican, whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate to lead the FTC next year.

It is unclear how Ferguson would enforce the agency’s hidden-fees ban if he is confirmed by the Senate. In a dissenting statement, he blasted the agency for issuing rules “it will never enforce,” with Trump set to take office in January, but did not say how he might approach the issue as chairman.

washington post logoWashington Post, The ‘perfect’ predator: How a police chief groomed a Texas town, Jenn Abelson, Alice Li, Jessica Contrera, Tucker Harris and Carolyn Van Houten, Dec. 18, 2024. The people of Maypearl, Texas, trusted Police Chief Kevin Coffey. Then they learned he was a sexual predator with a troubled past.

ny times logoNew York Times, Police Seek Motive in Shooting at Wisconsin Christian School, Julie Bosman, Dan Simmons, Mitch Smith and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 17, 2024 (print  ed.).  It’s not clear if the shooter, a student, targeted the teenage student and a teacher who were killed at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, the police said. At least six others were injured. Survivors described a fearful ordeal.

A teenage student opened fire at a Christian school in Madison, Wis., on Monday, killing another student and a teacher, the authorities said. At least six other people were injured in the shooting at the school, Abundant Life, where the youngest students fled from the building into the cold without coats, holding each others’ hands for safety.

Madison police identified the shooter on Monday night as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by Samantha. She was a student at the school, said the police chief, Shon F. Barnes, at an evening news conference. She was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital, and the evidence suggested she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Barnes said.

Here’s what we’re covering:

  • Search for answers: The Madison police chief, Shon F. Barnes, said investigators were looking for a possible motive and had searched the suspect’s home on Monday afternoon. Family members were cooperating, he said. The chief said investigators were not yet sure if the victims had been specifically sought out by the shooter. “Whether they were targeted or not would speak to motivation, and we don’t know that answer just yet,” he said.
  • Terror inside: “Everybody started freaking out,” said Breken Ives, a sixth grader, who said he was first alerted to the shooting by an intercom message blaring: “Lockdown. This is not a drill.” His teacher quickly ordered the students into the corner, where a shooter would not be able to see them from the door. From inside the classroom, Breken could hear bangs and screaming outside.
  • Dead and injured: The police briefly reported a higher death toll during a news conference early Monday afternoon, then corrected that number in a statement, putting the toll at three including the shooter. Of the six people who were injured, Chief Barnes said that two, both students, had suffered life-threatening injuries and remained in critical condition on Monday evening. Two other victims were released from the hospital.
  • The weapon: A 9-millimeter pistol was apparently used in the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with early information gathered by investigators. Chief Barnes said that a handgun was recovered at the scene, that the police did not know anything yet about the gun’s origin but that federal investigators would help identify where and when it had been purchased.

  •  

    ap logoAssociated Press via Politico, New charges target ex-Miami congressman for lobbying on behalf of sanctioned Venezuelan tycoon, Raúl Gorrín, Staff Report,  Dec. 18, 2024. The indictment unsealed on Wednesday alleges that Rivera lobbied U.S. officials to remove sanctions. 

    A federal grand jury in Washington has returned an indictment against former Congressman David Rivera for failing to register as a foreign agent of a sanctioned Venezuelan media tycoon on whose behalf the Miami Republican allegedly lobbied the Trump administration.

    The indictment is the second set of criminal charges to examine Rivera’s relationship with Raúl Gorrín, a billionaire businessman charged in 2018 and again in 2024 with bribing senior Venezuelan officials in corrupt deals to embezzle state funds from Nicolas Maduro’s administration.

    The indictment unsealed on Wednesday alleges that Rivera, between June 2019 and April 2020, lobbied U.S. officials, including an unnamed senior official in the executive branch, to remove sanctions against Gorrín.

    Rivera was allegedly aided in that effort by another unnamed former U.S. official and resident of New York, who he allegedly paid $125,000 from the over $5.5 million he received from Gorrín or on his behalf, prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department’s National Security Division said.

    Rivera was charged with money laundering and failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required when lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of foreign individuals and companies.

    To promote his criminal activities, Rivera allegedly created fake shell companies registered in Delaware using names associated with a law firm and with the unnamed official, as well as the official’s hometown, to give the false appearance that the shell companies were legitimate, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said the official was unaware the companies were using his or her name and hometown.

    Ed Shohat, a Miami defense attorney who represents Rivera, declined to comment, saying he hadn’t had time to discuss the indictment with his client.

    ny times logoNew York Times, Supreme Court to Hear TikTok’s Challenge to Law That Could Ban It, Adam Liptak and Sapna Maheshwari, Dec. 18, 2024.  The company and its Chinese parent invoked the First Amendment in urging the justices to step in before a Jan. 19 deadline to sell or be shut down.

    The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that could ban its U.S. operations, putting the case on an exceptionally fast track that will culminate in oral arguments next month.

    In setting aside two hours for the argument on Jan. 10, the justices signaled that they viewed the questions in the case as exceptionally critical, pitting the Constitution’s protection of free expression against the government’s assertions of threats to national security.

    The court’s move came only two days after TikTok and ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, filed an emergency application asking the justices to temporarily block the law. In another break with its usual practices, the court did not ask the government to respond to the application, instead treating it as a petition seeking review and granting it.

    ny times logoNew York Times, Justices to Hear Case on South Carolina’s Bid to Defund Planned Parenthood, Adam Liptak, Dec. 18, 2024. The issue in the case is whether Medicaid beneficiaries may sue under a law that lets them choose care from any provider qualified to perform the required services.

    The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to consider whether South Carolina may eliminate Medicaid funding for any medical services offered by Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions.

    Medicaid gives federal money to states to provide medical care for poor people, but it sets some conditions. One is that eligible participants may obtain assistance from any provider qualified to perform the required services.

    Planned Parenthood clinics in Charleston and Columbia provide counseling, physical exams, contraception and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. Abortions are banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy, and, even then, federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid funding except in life-threatening circumstances or in cases of rape or incest.

    In 2018, South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, a Republican, ordered state officials to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, saying that “payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life.”

    Planned Parenthood and a patient who sought contraception sued, and a federal trial judge blocked the directive, saying that it ran afoul of Medicaid’s provision offering a free choice of provider.

    The litigation that followed was convoluted and circuitous, focusing largely on whether the provision created a right that individuals could enforce.

    In the latest decision, in March, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that the lawsuit was proper.

    “This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their health care provider,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. “Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina.”

    ny times logoNew York Times, America Lost a 20-Year Drug War in Afghanistan. The Taliban Won Theirs in 2, Azam Ahmed, Photographs by Bryan Denton,Dec. 18, 2024. To fund a war with the U.S., the Taliban reaped millions from towns trading opium, heroin and meth. Once victorious, the group crushed the trade.

washington post logoWashington Post, In Ohio, an immigrant community prepares for Trump’s crackdown, Joanna Slater, Dec. 16, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations could target places like Painesville, a small city in northeastern Ohio whose population has been transformed by immigration.

Veronica Isabel Dahlberg looked out at dozens of familiar faces gathered in a new community center on a recent Monday evening, all of them anxious for answers she didn’t have.

What would happen to the immigrants and farmworkers in this swath of northeastern Ohio?You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.

Dahlberg, who has worked with the community for nearly three decades, couldn’t say whether President-elect Donald Trump would follow through on his pledge to carry out mass deportations. But she reminded the audience what his first term looked like here.

The ramped-up deportations, not of “bad guys” or criminals, but mothers and fathers pulled over for routine traffic stops. The people so frightened of being detained they sought sanctuary in local churches. The raids on a flower nursery and meat processing plant in the region.

What was coming would be at least as bad and possibly much worse, Dahlberg thought. She had read about Trump’s promises to build detention camps and use the military to expand deportations. She wondered who she could count on to help. As the head of HOLA Ohio, a local nonprofit, she had built relationships with elected officials, employers, police officers and school administrators.

“I don’t believe that they would just stand by and let our community get destroyed,” she said.

She paused. “But I could be wrong.”

Across the country, immigration advocates are racing to prepare for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants that could be unlike anything the nation has witnessed in decades. Trump has promised to deport the country’s undocumented residents, a population estimated to number 11 million people as of 2022, according to the most recent data available. Such an operation would face considerable hurdles: during Trump’s first term, deportations peaked at 347,240 in the 2019 fiscal year.

The consequences of Trump’s new push will unfold not just in areas close to the southern border or in major metropolises, but in places like Painesville, a small city of 20,000 near the shore of Lake Erie whose population has been transformed in recent decades by immigration, primarily from Mexico.

An estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Ohio. Most of those in Painesville have been in the country for more than a decade, mirroring the national trend, and nearly all of them live in “mixed-status” families — families that also include U.S.-born children, naturalized citizens or legal immigrants.

For such families, deportations nearly always separate parents from their children. Dahlberg saw it happen dozens of times in Trump’s first term. Last month, during her presentation at the community center, she reviewed the details of those cases.

ny times logoNew York Times, Carlos Watson, Ozy Media Co-Founder, Is Sentenced to Almost 10 Years in Prison, Danielle Kaye, Dec. 16, 2024. A federal jury in July found Mr. Watson, who started the digital media company in 2013, guilty of trying to defraud investors and lenders.

Carlos Watson, a co-founder of the now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, was sentenced on Monday to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders by lying about the company’s finances.

The sentence came five months after a federal jury convicted Mr. Watson and Ozy Media of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The jury also convicted Mr. Watson of identity theft, following a two-month trial during which witnesses detailed an impersonated phone call, fabricated contracts and misleading claims about Ozy’s earnings from 2018 to 2021.

Mr. Watson, who had pleaded not guilty and continued to assert his innocence up until his sentence of 116 months, faced a maximum of 37 years in prison. Government prosecutors had requested a 17-year sentence and $65.6 million in forfeiture to the government, though exactly how much Ozy will have to forfeit has yet to be determined.

“The fact that we’re here in this circumstance is tragic,” said Judge Eric Komitee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who presided over the case and imposed the sentence. “But it’s a tragedy of Mr. Watson’s own making.”

Politico, Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term, Anthony Adragna, Dec. 16, 2024. A circuit court judge out of North Carolina rescinded his planned retirement, prompting GOP outrage.Anthony Adragna

With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased.

Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. His name vanished from a list of pending vacancies over the weekend, joining two district court judges in North Carolina — Algenon Marbley and Max Cogburn — in pulling back their decisions once it became clear President Joe Biden would not be able to appoint their successors.

In a letter to Biden, Wynn wrote “that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service” on the bench. All three were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Their decisions serve to deny Trump further bench vacancies to fill as he hopes to capitalize on his push to move the federal judiciary rightward. Though judges routinely time retirements to allow a desired president to appoint their successors, the GOP backlash has been consistent and heated.

lina khan resized ftcBig, The Newsletter of Antitrust, Monopoly Round-Up Commentary: FTC Revives the "Magna Carta of Small Business," Matt Stoller, right, Dec. 15, 2024. The matt stollerFederal Trade Commission went after the middleman economy. Plus, Kid Rock may keep the Ticketmaster antitrust suit alive, and other news of the week.

There’s lots of monopoly related news this week, like Kid Rock lobbying against Ticketmaster, Trump musing on eliminating the FDIC that protects against bank runs, and recriminations as Kroger and Albertsons execs point fingers at each other while desperately trying to not get fired. That part of the round-up is after the paywall.

The big news itself of the week is that the Federal Trade Commission finally attacked illegal price discrimination, after forty years of neglect. The FTC used an old and often neglect antitrust law, the Robinson-Patman Act, to sue a dominant liquor distributor you’ve likely never heard of, a company called Southern Glazer. Somewhere, Wright Patman is smiling down upon Federal Trade Commissioners Lina Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, and Rebecca Kelly-Slaughter for this historic move. And it is historic.

Southern Glazer is the tenth largest private company in the U.S., with $26 billion of revenue, and it is the exclusive distributor in certain states of a host of liquors, such as Hennessy, Tanqueray, Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Grey Goose, Jameson, and Johnnie Walker. And the FTC’s allegation is Southern Glazer gives better prices to big stores than small ones.

Since at least 2018 and continuing today, Southern has repeatedly discriminated in price between disfavored independent purchasers—which include neighborhood grocery stores, local convenience stores, and independently owned wine and spirits shops—and favored large chain purchasers of wine and spirits, such as Total Wine & More, Costco, and Kroger.

Still, the allegation doesn’t sound, on first blush, illegal. I mean, doesn’t a business have the right to choose its prices? And also, on some level, who cares? Don’t big stores just get volume discounts? That’s just how things work, right?

Well, no. Price discrimination, like gambling, usury, or even liquor itself, is the kind of political question that used to provoke deep reservoirs of anger and righteousness, a touchstone of the American character. “Let’s keep Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe,” said Wright Patman in 1940, noting that consolidation wrought by price discrimination had the potential to turn America fascist. He was not alone. “I would rather have thieves and gangsters than chain stores in Louisiana,” echoed Huey Long. Chain stores, wrote Louis Brandeis in 1933, were “converting independent tradesmen into clerks” and “sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns.”

Former FTC Chair Paul Rand Dixon once said of the law barring price discrimination, “I think it compares favorably with the Magna Carta or the Sherman Act.” Heady stuff.

From the other side, the antitrust bar has always hated the Robinson-Patman Act. Robert Bork called it the “Typhoid Mary of Antitrust,” Herb Hovenkamp said it was “irritating to almost anyone who is serious about antitrust,” and law professor Jerrold G. Van Cise said it was a “roughly hewn, unfinished block of legislative phraseology.” Its revival was a point of bitterness at last year’s American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring conference, prompting sputtering at FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who defended the use of the law. To understand the debate, let’s start with why Walmart is so cheap. It’s not because it’s some super efficient entity, it’s simply because it gets better prices from producers and distributors. Walmart sells something like 8-10% of all groceries in America, so when Walmart says jump, its suppliers ask how high? We routinely hear from independent stores and chains that they buy from their wholesaler for more than Walmart sells at retail, which is impossible unless Walmart is just getting better pricing for the same good.

And it’s not just the little guy who suffers, of course. Take the Kroger-Albertsons failed merger. One of the nuggets that came out in the case is that Albertsons, a massive supermarket chain, buys basic staples wholesale for less than Walmart sells it retail. Albertsons, even though it’s really really big, is a relative minnow, and sought to sell itself off rather than try and compete.

Price discrimination is the reason that Walmart and Amazon exist as the giants they are. Between 1997 and 2012, after we had stopped enforcing the law, roughly 108,000 local grocers and other retailers disappeared and rural poverty skyrocketed. The rise of Walmart stores, which are a result of Walmart getting better prices than rivals, even spurred a jump in obesity.

 I bring up this dynamic all the time on BIG. The prevalence of price discrimination is a key reason we had shortages during Covid, why our shipping industry is a cartel, why drug prices are out of control, why small businesses are dying, why bike stores are consolidated, and why radicalism is the order of the day in politics.

From the other side, antitrust lawyers and executives think the law is unworkable and ridiculous. They think businesses must charge different prices to different customers, there are rebates, fees, bundles, and a whole set of arrangements that simply cannot be subjected to micro-management by a law like the Robinson-Patman Act. But their real argument is that they believe it’s their right to discriminate among customers and suppliers. Might makes right.

So what happens now? Well the vote to bring the case was 3-2, with the two Republicans opposed. However, Andrew Ferguson, who will be the new chair, wrote in his dissent that he supports the use of the Robinson-Patman Act, and another Republican FTC nominee, Mark Meador, also supports enforcing the law. Ferguson’s objection to the case was due to his belief that the case wasn’t particularly strong, but it would be unusual to withdraw a case brought by a previous administration. Is it a strong case? Probably. The FTC complaint is based on a 2022 private case that is going to trial in 2026, brought by a law firm that is generally well-respected and specializes in the law.

Much of the FTC’s complaint is redacted, but it seems pretty clear that Southern Glazer was engaged in price discrimination. I mean, the law was a dead letter for decades, so it would be weird if corporations across the economy weren’t violating it.At any rate, I’m guessing we’ll see more private and state enforcement around this law, and adjacent state laws.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: December 15, 2024 [Safe Drinking Water Act, Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author, Dec. 15, heather cox richardson cnn2024. Tomorrow, December 16, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, signed into law on December 16, 1974, by President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican.

The measure required the Environmental Protection Agency to set maximum contaminant levels for drinking water and required states to comply with them. It protected the underground sources of drinking water and called for emergency measures to protect public health if a dangerous contaminant either was in or was likely to enter a public water system.

trump 2024To conduct research on clean drinking water and provide grants for states to clean up their systems, Congress authorized appropriations of $15 million in 1975, $25 million in 1976, and $35 million in 1977.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was one of the many laws passed in the 1970s after the environmental movement, sparked after Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring explored the effect of toxic chemicals on living organisms, had made Americans aware of the dangers of pollution in the environment.

That awareness had turned to anger by 1969, when in January a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Then, in June, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

In February 1970, Republican President Richard M. Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.” He called for “fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and

By 2015, almost 77 million Americans lived in regions whose water systems did not meet the safety standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, more than 2 million Americans did not have running water, and many more rely on wells or small systems not covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act.

The Biden administration began to address the problem with an investment of about $22 billion to upgrade the nation’s water systems. The money removed lead pipes, upgraded wastewater and sewage systems, and addressed the removal of so-called forever chemicals and proposed a new standard for acceptable measures of them.

What this will mean in the future is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to increase production of oil and gas—although it is currently at an all-time high—and such projects are often slowed by environmental regulations. On Tuesday, December 10, he posted on social media, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

“[B]y ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival,” Trump’s Republican predecessor Nixon told the nation in 1970. “While adopting laws prohibiting injury to person or property, we have freely allowed injury to our shared surroundings.” When he signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”—

Politico, Anti-slavery movement charts its path forward, Emily Schultheis, Dec. 14, 2024. An unlikely setback in progressive California has activists working to remove slavery exceptions from state constitutions grappling with the best way to draft future ballot measures.A California prison inmate with the Prison Industry Authority cleans one of the newly installed headstones.

politico CustomThe national movement to close a so-called slavery loophole in state constitutions was riding a wave of momentum after voters in eight states — including deep-red Alabama and Tennessee — removed exceptions to post-Civil War bans on slavery and involuntary servitude.

But the movement was handed an unexpected defeat this year in progressive California, where the failure of a ballot measure explicitly packaged as a ban on forced prison labor has left activists nationwide grappling with how best to draft such constitutional amendments in the up to 14 states where they could appear on ballots in 2026.

The movement’s lawyers want detailed language delineating what constitutes involuntary servitude so courts can be compelled to defend prisoners’ rights against forced labor. At the same time, campaigners confronting voters breaking right on questions of criminal justice want to see simply worded anti-slavery provisions free of specifics about what they mean for the incarcerated people who stand to benefit.

“That’s been a big part of our fight, making sure the language is correct,” said Dennis Febo, the New Jersey-based lead organizer for the Abolish Slavery National Network. “The more we’ve done on this question, the more we understand how complicated it is.”

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden Commutes the Sentences of 1,500 Americans, a Record for One Day, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mark Landler, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Many of those being granted clemency had been placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

Justice Department log circularThe commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

Politico, Biden commutes nearly 1,500 sentences, promises ‘more steps in the weeks ahead,’  Andrew Howard, Dec. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330.

politico CustomPresident Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoned another 39, the most ever in a single day, the White House announced on Thursday.

The White House said in its announcement that those receiving clemency “have shown successful rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” The 39 pardon recipients had all committed non-violent crimes, and the commutations were for people who were placed in home confinement during the pandemic.

Justice Department log circular“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

Following Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, he faced pressure from some Democrats, as well as outside advocacy groups, to use his clemency powers more widely before his term ends in January. Biden indicated in his statement that he “will take more steps in the weeks ahead.” “My Administration will continue reviewing clemency petitions to advance equal justice under the law, promote public safety, support rehabilitation and reentry, and provide meaningful second chances.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who was one of the Democrats pressuring Biden to issue pardons, praised the president’s decision, calling it a “meaningful and historic action.”

“Thanks to President Biden, today a near 1,500 families will have their lives changed forever and I congratulate each and every family on this new beginning,” she said in a statement.

Still, Pressley is pushing for more clemency actions before Biden’s term ends.

“With 39 days remaining in his presidency, President Biden has the power to continue to use his clemency authority to change and save the lives of many, many other Americans behind the wall,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and it is a matter of legacy.”

The progressive group Popular Democracy in Action struck a similar tone, praising Biden’s decision but also telling the president “do not stop now.”

Politico, Watchdog faults DOJ in Trump’s first term for secretly obtaining records of lawmakers and journalists, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 11, 2024 (print ed.).. During leak investigations, Trump’s DOJ obtained phone and email records of two House Democrats and dozens of congressional staffers.

politico CustomThe Justice Department during Donald Trump’s first term failed to comply with its own procedures when it sought journalists’ phone and email records in leak investigations, according to a DOJ watchdog report released Tuesday.

Justice Department log circularAnd the department never conducted any high-level review as it swept up the records of 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic House members, the report found.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, left, said he also found no evidence that federal prosecutors got express approval from then-Attorney General Bill Barr or told federal courts that the subpoenas were for records of lawmakers and their aides, despite the michael horwitz headshotpotential for the probes to intrude on legitimate oversight efforts by Congress.

Obtaining the records of lawmakers and their staff during criminal investigations “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Horowitz wrote in his 91-page report.

Barr told POLITICO in 2021 that he did not know the Justice Department sought any lawmaker’s records in the leak probes, which involved disclosures about the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page and ties between that campaign and Russia.

Barr declined to be interviewed by Horowitz’s team, but the report says investigators found no indication the issuance of subpoenas for lawmakers or their aides was raised to Barr’s level. Indeed, the report concludes that — at the time — there was no policy in place to require added review of subpoenas and similar demands for information about lawmakers and their staff.

The inspector general launched the review in June 2021 after President Joe Biden took office and press reports revealed that investigators probing leaks of classified information obtained court orders to access phone records of two prominent Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Horowitz said the Justice Department’s decision to include Schiff and Swalwell in the investigation was based on a claim from a Democratic staffer who suspected them of having a role in the leak of classified intelligence. The department later determined that the staffer’s contentions lacked any “evidentiary support” and were found to be “of uncertain credibility.”

Horowitz’s report, which does not identify the lawmakers by name, did not turn up indications that the two outspoken Trump critics were targeted because of their political views or affiliation.

“We did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors who issued the compulsory process we reviewed,” the report said.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration also faced scrutiny for efforts to access the email account of then-House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel. Patel, who is now Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has long decried the intrusion by Justice Department officials, which he claimed was retaliation for his effort to undermine the investigation of Trump’s 2016 ties to Russia.

Last year, Patel sued top Justice Department officials over the grand jury subpoena, and his suit was dismissed in September by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

Patel was one of the 43 congressional staffers whose phone or email logs were pursued by investigators — a number higher than previously known. The review found that 21 of them were affiliated with Democrats, 20 with Republicans and two were in nonpartisan positions. The Justice Department did not seek or obtain the content of their communications, but only details such as which phone numbers or email accounts they were in contact with and when, Horowitz found.

Around the same time the existence of subpoenas aimed at lawmakers was reported, it emerged that prosecutors also sought phone or email records for journalists at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN as part of the same leak investigations.

Barr did approve the subpoenas aimed at reporters, but the department never convened an internal panel that a policy in place at the time said should examine all such requests, the watchdog report found.

“This deviation from the Department’s own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the vital role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” Horowitz wrote.

Biden called the tactic aimed at reporters “simply wrong” and vowed it would not continue under his administration. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo banning the practice and he later formalized that policy in DOJ regulations.

Horowitz was particularly critical of the Justice Department’s handling of gag orders it obtained on companies like Apple and Google. Those orders prevented the firms from telling targets about the demands.

Last year, the Justice Department issued a policy on subpoenas aimed at lawmakers, requiring high-level approvals at DOJ. Horowitz’s report reveals that DOJ quietly updated that policy again in September after getting a draft of the review. Among the latest requirements: Prosecutors must inform the judge or magistrate that the requests target a member of Congress or congressional staff.

The incoming Trump administration is expected to roll back the protections Garland adopted for journalists and perhaps even to eliminate earlier limits Democratic and Republican administrations had put on such demands. Legislation pending in Congress could block those moves, but last month Trump urged Republican lawmakers to “kill” the measure, known as the PRESS Act.

Horowitz said the past and current policies encourage prosecutors to seek lawmakers’ records because getting subpoenas for journalists’ emails or phone records required high-level approval, which has been basically impossible to get since 2021. He noted that even the latest Justice Department policy doesn’t require prosecutors to exhaust other avenues before demanding email and phone providers turn over lawmakers’ records.

Most of the leaks did not result in criminal charges, but one staffer swept up in one round of phone and email records searches — Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe — pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his dealings with journalists. A judge sentenced Wolfe to two months in prison.

Another long-awaited report is expected from Horowitz’s office in the coming days: a review of the Justice Department’s actions in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. That review has been pending for nearly four years. Horowitz recently acknowledged that work on it was frozen for about two years while prosecutors pursued some of the most serious criminal cases stemming from the attack.

Horowitz’s release of the long-awaited investigations comes as Horowitz and other inspectors general across the government face the possibility of being removed or even fired by the incoming Trump administration. Some Trump allies have urged him to install his own appointees in the independent watchdog roles at federal agencies, although traditionally most inspectors general have not resigned during a change of administration or of partisan control of the White House.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have vowed to oppose any attempt by Trump to oust the experienced watchdogs.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manchin and Welch Introduce Amendment for SCOTUS Term Limits, Troy Matthews Dec 10, 2024. 70% of Americans favor ending lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices.

Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices. The move is aimed at restoring confidence in the Court, as the approval rating for SCOTUS is at its lowest point in history, with only 16% of Americans reporting "a great deal of confidence" in the highest Court.

The Manchin-Welch amendment would impose single 18-year, non-renewable terms for Supreme Court justices. Each 18-year term would be staggered every two years. Current justices will not be held to term limits, but blocks of 18-year terms will begin to cycle every two years once the amendment is ratified. When a current justice retires, their replacement will be assigned the remainder of the current 18-year block, until every justice on the Court is term limited.

Medias Touch Network, Commentary: Manhattan Prosecutors Oppose Dismissing Trump's Criminal Case, Aaron Parnas Dec 10, 2024. Prosecutors are pressing forward with the case even with Trump becoming President again.

This afternoon, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has filed an opposition to Donald Trump's request to immediately vacate the guilty verdicts against him and to dismiss the criminal case given the results of the November 5th election. Prosecutors had been considering whether to make this move for several weeks, and have officially decided to oppose any dismissal on several grounds.

First, prosecutors argue that the Manhattan court should reject Trump's motion to immediately dismiss the case given the fact that he has not yet been sworn in and does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution while President-elect.

The opposition goes on to highlight how even after he is sworn into office, the case should not be dismissed because the temporary immunity Trump will enjoy over the next four years does not justify wiping out the jury's verdict, especially as Trump's team does not dispute that the 34 felonies he was convicted of deal with purely unofficial conduct.

Prosecutors note that "at most, [Trump] should receive temporary accommodations during his presidency to prevent this criminal case form meaningfully interfering with his official decision-making."

Prosecutors listed several alternative remedies to a complete dismissal including a stay of proceedings during his term in office if judgment is not entered before January 20th. The decision will now ultimately be up to Justice Merchan who will decide whether or not to dismiss the criminal charges against Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Penny Verdict, a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Crime and Mental Illness, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024. A New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. Republican politicians hailed the verdict. But some New Yorkers found it deeply disturbing.

Outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday, a scuffle broke out among demonstrators, their chants amplified over bullhorns.

On one side were supporters of Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was charged with fatally choking a fellow subway rider, Jordan Neely, on an uptown F train last year. They held signs, including one that said, “Daniel Penny deserves a prize not a prison.” On the other side were people protesting on behalf of Mr. Neely. Upset, they grabbed a sign and ripped it up.

As the sides exchanged barbs and police officers erected a barrier to separate them, inside the courthouse 12 New Yorkers were coming to a unanimous decision. Mr. Penny, they concluded, was not guilty.

If the death of Mr. Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who had struggled with mental health problems, had left New Yorkers unnerved and divided, the verdict quickly became yet another flashpoint in the nation’s debate over how best to address issues of crime and justice, homelessness and mental illness.

Republican political figures including Vice President-elect JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised the jury and criticized the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for pursuing the case.

“Thank God justice was done in this case,” Mr. Vance said on social media. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Penny a hero who deserved a medal.

But in New York, some found the verdict deeply troubling. “This decision highlights a deep-seated societal discomfort with unhoused individuals in need of support, and effectively green-lights ‘vigilante justice’ against the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” leaders of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus said in a statement.

washington post logoWashington Post, Appeals court upholds nationwide TikTok ban-or-sale law, Eva Dou, Drew Harwell and Cristiano Lima-Strong, Dec. 7, 2024 (print ed.). The D.C. Court of Appeals made the expedited decision ahead of the ban’s looming Jan. 19 deadline, in a high-profile case pitting national security concerns against free speech.

tiktok logo square CustomThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday sided with the Justice Department, which argued that the U.S. government has the authority to ban TikTok based on the national security risk that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to expose Americans’ data or influence what they see. TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, is based in China.

TikTok had argued to the three-judge panel, unsuccessfully, that the ban must be struck down for infringement on the free speech rights of the app’s users and owners under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“The Government has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security,” the court wrote in its opinion.

TikTok is expected to ask the Supreme Court to take up the case before the sale deadline ends Jan. 19, or to first request that all the judges on the appeals court review the panel’s decision.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. He criticized the ban-or-sale law as being based on “inaccurate” information and said it was “resulting in the outright censorship of the American people.”

The appeals court on Friday said years-long bipartisan investigations into the app, and the government’s willingness to consider TikTok’s alternatives, weighed in favor of the law.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for a three-judge panel. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation.”

However, the judges said they rejected the government’s “ambitious argument” that the law did not “implicate the First Amendment at all,” saying that it would impose a “disproportionate burden on TikTok, an entity engaged in expressive activity.” The government had suggested that TikTok’s ownership by a foreign company left it without First Amendment rights, despite it having roughly 170 million U.S. accounts.

The D.C. Court of Appeals made the expedited decision ahead of the ban’s looming Jan. 19 deadline, in a high-profile case pitting national security concerns against free speech.By Eva Dou, Drew Harwell and Cristiano Lima-StrongUpdated 45 minutes ag

The decision sets up a potential showdown with President-elect Donald Trump. Having backed a ban during his first term in the White House, he is expected to try to halt it, people familiar with his views on the matter told The Washington Post in early November, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Recent Relevant Headlines

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

Jose Ibarra listens through an interpreter during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Nov. 20, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution pool photo by Hyosub Shin via Associated Press).

 

Sex Assault, Trafficking, #MeToo, Abortion, Women's Health

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

The lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

texas mapUnder shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

 

 

pete hegseth collage djt

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Trouble Began When #MeToo Became #ChurchToo, David French, right, Dec. 15, 2024. l When did we know that the #MeToodavid french cropped moment was truly over?

At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.

But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.

Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense (shown above and at left), had paid an accuser to pete hegseth tatoo religion newssettle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.

ryan lizza olivia nuzzi rfk jr

Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., above right, who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, center, ,a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job (and disputed with her ex, reporter Ryan Lizza, while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.

I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.

Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.

All that happened before my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein. But the early wave of #MeToo revelations was heavily concentrated in traditionally liberal institutions.

When #MeToo became #ChurchToo, though, that was the beginning of the end. In a remarkably short period of time, the narrative changed. No longer was sexual abuse and exploitation a “Hollywood problem” or a “secular problem,” it was also an evangelical problem, and it was a problem in many of the most important institutions of the church.

 

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The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, faced a sexual abuse “apocalypse,” a series of scandals that my friend Russell Moore, the former head of the S.B.C.’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called “a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.”

jerry falwell jr resized wife assistant

Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, faced its own sexual scandals. Its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., stepped liberty university sealaside after a sordid series of allegations that involved him, his wife and a pool-boy-turned-business associate [and his wife's assistant, shown above].

At the same time that the school was sheltering a corrupt president, it was also mishandling claims of sex abuse against students, including by turning the school’s code of conduct, called the Liberty Way, against sex abuse victims. If they’d violated a school policy, by drinking, for example, that could be used against them in the schools’ disciplinary proceedings.

The hypocrisy was stark. The Christian president of a Christian university was imposing standards on students — including victims of abuse — that he was flouting himself.

There’s an easy answer for understanding the end of #MeToo, one that has the benefit of being largely true — American society (including the American church) is still rife with misogyny. As with race, the fact that America has come quite far in respecting the legal rights of women does not mean that we don’t still have far to go to achieve true cultural equality and respect.

But misogyny was never a complete explanation, especially given the fact that sex abuse isn’t confined to men abusing women and girls. Something else is at work, something that also represents a deep and profound moral flaw. A person might value vulnerable people in the abstract — or might even declare a strong commitment to justice — but very few people will sacrifice anything they truly value to correct an injustice that doesn’t involve them immediately and directly.

My wife’s story helped me understand. When she was 12 years old, a vacation Bible schoolteacher abused her in her own home. Decades later, her pastor, by then retired, told her that the same person had abused at least a dozen other women and girls in the church.

The abuser was never held accountable — either by church leaders or law enforcement. Instead, he moved to a town in Kentucky and became a high school girls’ basketball coach. He lost his teaching certificate in 2023 after there were multiple reports of misconduct.

The abuser’s father was a powerful person in the church and in Nancy’s small town. Confronting his son carried a cost, and the simple fact is that very few people were willing to bear that cost, including people who were very close to Nancy. Not even their love for her could overcome their fear of the social risk.

Yes, people want justice. They want abuse to stop, but they also don’t want to poison their relationships with friends and colleagues or undermine their social status. They don’t want to say no to kids who ask to go back to their favorite summer camp. They don’t want to lose an election. Any sacrifice, no matter how attenuated, is too much.

That’s a bleak truth — one that is very hard to face — and so there is a temptation to rationalize, to say that #MeToo was a valuable movement until it went too far. Rationalizations are often rooted in a measure of truth. At its height, #MeToo was too quick to rush to judgment, too reliant on rumors and too dismissive of due process, especially due process on campus.

Even so, one can and should be able to raise awareness of a terrible social evil without undermining fundamental fairness or discarding constitutional values.

There are always excessive responses to genuine problems, and the existence of the excessive response shouldn’t blind us to the underlying reality. The fact that defunding the police was a terrible idea — or that rioters burned buildings during the summer of 2020, for example — doesn’t mean that American police officers have no problems with brutality.

And so here we are, with the nation about to be led by a man found liable for sexual abuse, with key members of his chosen senior team beset by their own gross scandals, voted into office on the strength of overwhelming white evangelical support (according to 2024 exit polls, he won white evangelicals by 65 points and lost everyone else by 18 points). And all too many Christians still celebrate his victory — and their indispensable support — as a triumph of good over evil.

When I was younger and more naïve, I wondered why so many historical injustices persisted for so long in the United States. Now I have my answer.

 

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

Crystal Mangum in 2011 (Photo by Chuck Liddy of the Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Crystal Mangum, who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, says she lied, Jenna West, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). / Crystal Mangum, a woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, publicly said for the first time that she lied about the allegations.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Mangum said on an episode of the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat” released this week. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me.”

The episode was recorded in November at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum is serving time after being convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend in April 2011.

crystal mason mugshot Custom“I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” Mangum told podcast host Kat DePasquale about the Duke case, “and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was regardless.”

The Duke case made national headlines after Mangum, a Black woman, accused lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann of raping her at a party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. It caused the cancellation of the lacrosse team’s 2006 season, and Duke forced coach Mike Pressler to resign.

The North Carolina attorney general’s office reviewed the case and declared Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann innocent in 2007. The attorney general’s office said the charges should not have been brought against the three players and there was no DNA or evidence to corroborate the allegations.

District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for ethics violations, including making false statements and lying about withholding evidence. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Mangum for making false allegations.

Also in 2007, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke for the school’s handling of the allegations.

“I want them to know that I love them, and they didn’t deserve that, and I hope that they can forgive me,” Mangum said of the players.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Mailing Abortion Pills, J. David Goodman and Pam Belluck, Dec. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The lawsuit appeared to be among the first attempts to stop doctors from mailing the medication to states that ban abortions.

The Texas attorney general, right, opened a new front in the contentious battle over access to abortion this week by suing a New York doctor for sending abortion pills into Texas. It appeared to be among the first attempts to stop the mailing of such medication into states that ban abortion.

ken paxton mugThe lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton — filed on Thursday in state court in Collin County, north of Dallas — pits the laws of Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortion, against those of New York, where lawmakers have taken steps to shield doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

Under shield laws, states like New York will refuse to cooperate with attempts by other states to prosecute or sue abortion providers who prescribe and send pills across state lines. Such laws exist in eight states and have allowed doctors there to send more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to women in states with bans.

But legal experts say they expect Texas to try to pursue its case even if it is rebuffed by New York’s law. Such an effort could wind up in federal court, potentially imperiling the ability of women in other states with bans to receive abortion pills by mail, and becoming a major test of whether states can enforce contradictory laws across state lines.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Shield doctors mailing pills into ban states was always going to be, I think, both the most consequential in terms of access to abortion and the highest risk.”

In a statement on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said that she was “committed to maintaining New York’s status as a safe harbor for all who seek abortion care.”

“Make no mistake,” she added. “I will do everything in my power to enforce the laws of New York State.”

Ms. Ziegler said that the case could play out in several ways. She said that New York’s shield law had a provision that allows the doctor being sued, or possibly the state, to countersue against Texas, so the case could end up with dueling lawsuits.

If, as expected, the case ends up in federal court, she said, Texas might argue that shield laws cannot be enforced because the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution requires states to respect other states’ laws. But, Ms. Ziegler said, some legal experts who support shield laws say the laws constitute a “public policy exception” to that clause.

The use of abortion medication has grown since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. One study found that medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions.More in U.S.

Already, abortion providers have become concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be revived by the incoming Trump administration. The law, which has been rarely enforced, prohibits the mailing of “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials, like pornography, or any item “intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion.”

In 2022, the Justice Department concluded that abortion medication could be sent by mail if the sender did not intend for the recipient to use them unlawfully. Abortion opponents have been pushing for the incoming administration to rescind that interpretation and say that the act bans all mailing of abortion pills.

In the Texas suit, Mr. Paxton said that Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., provided two medications to a 20-year-old woman in Texas that “resulted in a medical abortion” over the summer. The two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, are widely used together to end pregnancies up to 12 weeks.

In July, the woman asked the “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room because of “severe bleeding,” and it was there that he first learned that she was nine weeks pregnant, according to the lawsuit.

The man “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage,” the suit said, and he went back to their home in Collin County, where he “discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.”ImagePiles of white pills on a table. Two hands wearing medical gloves are on the table, and one is hovering over a pile.Misoprostol, which is used to end pregnancies.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times

Dr. Carpenter specializes in reproductive health and is a co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that assists doctors in states where abortion is legal with interstate telemedicine in order to “close the abortion accessibility gap,” according to the group’s website.

She is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas, according to the suit. A colleague of Dr. Carpenter’s said on Friday that Dr. Carpenter would not be commenting on the case.

But the colleague, Dr. Linda Prine, who has been open about prescribing abortion pills under New York’s shield law, said: “Maggie has been providing legally protected abortion care, protected by the State of New York, to people who are greatly in need. Texas has no jurisdiction over us in New York State. Abortion is a human right.”

Mr. Paxton said he was seeking to have the court stop Dr. Carpenter from continuing to provide abortion medication to patients in Texas, and to apply Texas’ ban on abortion to her. The ban carries a penalty of at least $100,000 for each violation.

It was not clear how Mr. Paxton would seek to enforce the state law against a New York doctor. His office did not respond to a request to discuss the suit.

David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who has helped draft and lobby for shield laws, including New York’s, said the suit was precisely what the shield laws were meant to cover.

“Texas has no jurisdiction over Maggie Carpenter,” Mr. Cohen said. “She is not physically present there. The courts cannot order her to do anything, and they cannot get the assistance of the New York courts to order her to do anything because of the shield law.”

But anti-abortion groups were already celebrating the legal challenge.

“If Texas wins, this case could open the door for the state to take further legal action against one of the largest organizations in the illegal abortion cartel: Aid Access,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, referring to the Europe-based organization that has been at the forefront of telemedicine abortion and has shield-law providers in several states.

Katie Daniel, the director of legal affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded Mr. Paxton for “leading the charge to hold out-of-state abortion businesses accountable for preying on Texas’ unborn children and their mothers.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Paxton has tried to stretch Texas’ ban beyond state borders. He fought in court this year to reverse a rule by the Biden administration that prevents investigators from inspecting the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortions. It was not clear if Mr. Paxton had been seeking such records.

Ms. Ziegler says the new lawsuit also sets up an interstate battle that is “kind of giving the lie to the whole idea that each state is going to be left to do its own thing,” she said. “That was the winning recipe for the G.O.P. — every state can make its own policy.”

But with abortion pills being mailed across state lines, she said, the conflicts between conservative and liberal states don’t go away. Instead, they become heightened.

“The whole ‘each state is going to leave each other state alone’ thing is not an accurate depiction of what any of the states are doing or want to do,” she said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Polygamist Sect in Arizona Gets 50 Years in Child Sex Ring Case, Michael Levenson, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., right, who claimed to have more than 20 “wives” including 10 “brides” under 18, pleaded guilty in April to two felony conspiracy charges.

samuel batemanThe self-proclaimed leader of a polygamist sect in Arizona who amassed more than 20 “wives,” including 10 “brides” under 18, was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison in connection with what prosecutors described as an interstate child sexual abuse ring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Federal prosecutors said that the man, Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., led a group that victimized girls as young as 9.

Using his status as a self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. Bateman forced his child “brides” to participate in sexual activities with him and with other adult men and women, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

ny times logoNew York Times, Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway, Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya, Dec. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of a New York subway car. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.

Daniel Penny, a former Marine who choked a fellow subway rider on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, ending a case that had come to exemplify New York City’s post-pandemic struggles.

The jurors decided that Mr. Penny’s actions were not criminal when he held the rider, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold as the two men struggled on the floor of a subway car on May 1, 2023. Mr. Neely, who was homeless and had a history of mental illness, had strode through the subway car that afternoon, yelling at passengers and frightening them, according to witnesses.

After the forewoman announced the verdict, the courtroom erupted, with some people cheering the outcome and others responding with anger.

Upon hearing the words “not guilty,” Mr. Penny’s lawyer, Thomas A. Kenniff, slapped his palm on the defense table and turned to hug Mr. Penny, who had a large grin on his face. Another of his lawyers, Steven Raiser, stood and kissed his client on the cheek.

Mr. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, lashed out at supporters of Mr. Penny, and the judge asked him to leave the room.

The jurors had spent more than three days trying to come to a unanimous decision on whether Mr. Penny, 26, was guilty of manslaughter — a higher charge — in the death of Mr. Neely, 30. On Friday, the jurors sent two notes to the judge overseeing the trial saying that they had deadlocked.

After the jurors — seven women and five men — sent the first note that morning, the judge, Maxwell T. Wiley, instructed them to resume their deliberations. When the jurors sent the second note in the afternoon, telling Justice Wiley that they were still unable to reach an agreement, he granted the prosecution’s request to dismiss the charge. He sent the jurors home for the weekend, telling them to prepare to begin deliberating on the lesser djt michael cohen disloyalcharge, criminally negligent homicide, on Monday. Ultimately, they decided to acquit Mr. Penny.

The decision was a defeat for the office of Alvin L. Bragg, left, Manhattan’s district attorney. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bragg said that the jury “has now spoken.”

“We deeply respect the jury process and we respect their verdict,” he said.

In his statement, Mr. Bragg also noted that prosecutors and their families had been “besieged with hate and threats — on social media, by phone and over email” throughout the trial. “Simply put, this is unacceptable, and everyone, no matter your opinion on this case, should condemn it,” he said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Youth Pastor Is Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades, Billy Witz, Nov. 27, 2024. Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.

The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.

The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.

“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.

Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.

A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.

Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Immigration

ICE logo

washington post logoWashington Post, Immigration: Hundreds more migrants have died in Rio Grande crossings than U.S., Mexico reported, Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez, Dec. 8, 2024. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have texas mapdrowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

washington post logoWashington Post, Many targeted for removal by Trump can’t be deported, ICE data shows, Nick Miro, Dec. 8, 2024. Nearly half of the 1.4 million people in the U.S. immigration system who have pending deportation orders cannot be sent back to their home countries, according to internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, posing one of several looming obstacles to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for a mass removal campaign.

Some orders can’t be carried out because the would-be deportee’s home country won’t take them or limits cooperation with ICE. Others identified for deportation are serving prison terms, or have received a reprieve or deferral from an immigration judge, due to a medical condition, a credible persecution threat or another extenuating factor.

An array of other logistical and legal impediments also could constrain mass deportations, according to current and former ICE officials.

Trump promises to brush aside hurdles and mount a campaign modeled after the harsh roundups of the Eisenhower administration, when the U.S. government expelled hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to Mexico.

“We will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said on the campaign trail.

Trump’s aides describe the anticipated campaign as an enforcement blitz that will leverage the power and resources of the U.S. military to roll back the effect of record numbers of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden. Criminals and those with outstanding deportation orders will be the administration’s priority as of Trump’s inauguration, Jan. 20, aides say.

 

glenn youngkin wins

washington post logoWashington Post, Youngkin: Jordanians ‘crashed’ Quantico. Feds: It was an Amazon delivery, Laura Vozzella and Salvador Rizzo, Dec. 8, 2024.   Virginia’s governor, shown above in a file photo, has used the arrest of two undocumented men who misunderstood directions to stop at a check-in station to inflame fears over illegal immigration.

There are two versions of a May 3 incident at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia involving two Jordanian men, both undocumented immigrants, who pulled up to the entrance in a box truck.

commerce dept logoThere’s the mundane account given by federal prosecutors about some confusion over where to check in during an Amazon delivery stop. And there’s the one that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has been telling for the past six months that makes it sound like two foreigners stormed the gates at the fortified military installation.

“We have folks that have crashed the — illegal immigrants — that have crashed the front gate at Quantico in a box truck, trying to gain access to Quantico,” Youngkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Oct. 14 in one of multiple national television appearances — plus speeches at the National Republican Convention and a rally in Virginia with then-Republican nominee Donald Trump — where he has invoked the episode to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies.

Federal prosecutors — who initially charged the pair with misdemeanor trespassing, but later dropped those charges — say that, while the Jordanians were in the country illegally and are in the process of being deported, they did not crash the gate or intend to do any harm at Quantico.

Mohammad Dabous, working for an Amazon subcontractor, was trying to make a delivery to the post office in the town of Quantico, which can only be accessed through the gates of the military base, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Amico, who handled the case, said in a court filing. Hasan Hamdan was a passenger in the truck.

“Marine Corps … agents spoke with Mr. Dabous’s supervisor at the subcontractor delivery company, who confirmed Mr. Dabous’s employment and verified the scheduled authorized delivery to the Northern Virginia town of Quantico on May 3, 2024,” Amico wrote in a motion filed Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The same filing noted that neither man had any known terrorist links. “The FBI has not identified any national security concerns regarding either defendant,” wrote Amico, who also said he consulted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Neither defendant is on the watch list.”

Quantico officials issued Dabous and Hamdan citations for trespassing, a petty offense punishable by a maximum six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. They then turned the pair over to ICE because of their immigration status. The men were later released on bond from ICE custody.

The U.S. attorney’s office dropped the charges Oct. 3, but the deportation proceedings continue.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

U.S. Jobs, Investment, Economy, Pensions

washington post logoWashington Post, Skyrocketing car-insurance premiums are pushing inflation higher, Andrew Ackerman and Federica Cocco, Dec. 14, 2024. Auto insurance costs in particular are making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult.

Soaring insurance premiums, particularly for autos, are fueling rising consumer price

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Environment, Space

ny times logoNew York Times, Automakers Thrived in the Pandemic. Many Are Now Struggling, Jack Ewing, Dec. 15, 2024. A few years ago, automakers were celebrating record profits as the pandemic created shortages of new cars, allowing them to raise prices. Now the hangover is setting in.

Nissan, the Japanese automaker, is laying off 9,000 employees. Volkswagen is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time. The chief executive of the U.S. and European automaker Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Peugeot, Fiat and other brands, quit after sales tumbled. Even luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz are struggling.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Media, High Tech, Culture, Education

 

 

llewellyn king photo logoWhite House Chronicle, Opinion: The Crisis in Journalism — More Reporting Needed , Llewellyn King, Dec. 21, 2024. There is a lot of dither about the future of journalism. Make no mistake, it is the essential commodity.

If you know what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine or Syria, it is because brave journalists told you. Not the government, not some academic institution, not artificial intelligence, and not hearsay from your friends or from a political party.

The crisis in journalism isn’t that it failed analytically in the last election, or that we — an irregular army of individualists — failed, but that journalism has run out of money and its political enemies have found that the courts (and the fear of libel prosecution) can terrorize the companies that own the media.

peter thiel twitter smileIn 2016, the gossipy site Gawker was sued by the pro wrestler and political figure Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was financed by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, left.

Now come two suits, filed by President-elect Donald Trump: One that he won against ABC News, and one to be filed against the ICE logoDes Moines Register. It is reported that conservative interests plan a series of these legal interventions against the media.

This will have a frightening effect on news coverage. When there is fear of prosecution, there is less likely to be investigative news coverage.

So far, the most troublesome of the prosecutions has been the one against ABC News. The network caved in early. It agreed to abc news logo colorpay $15 million plus legal fees into a fund for what will be the first Trump presidential library.

Could it be that ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney wants good relations with the incoming administration?

However, a much bigger problem faces the media than the fear of prosecution. It is that the old media, led by local and regional newspapers, is dying. Although there are thousands of podcasts, they don’t take up the slack.

You could listen to an awful lot of podcasts and not know what is going on. State houses and local courts aren’t being covered. The sanitizing effect of press surveillance has been withdrawn and, frankly, God help the poor defendants in a local court where there is a disproportionate desire to plead cases, to avoid honest trials even when there is conspicuous doubt.

I never tire of repeating what Dan Raviv, former CBS News correspondent, said to me once, “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so. However, there is a problem: Journalism needs to be concentrated in a newspaper or a broadcast outlet where there is enough revenue to do the job. Otherwise, you get what I think of as the upside-down pyramid of more and more commentary, based on less and less reporting.

We are awash in commentary, some of it very good and some of it trash. It is all based on news gathered by those news organizations that can afford to employ a phalanx of reporters.

Regional newspapers used to have Washington bureaus and foreign bureaus. At one time, the Baltimore Sun had 12 overseas bureaus. Now it has none.

This is the story nationwide. Fewer people actually cover the news, digging, checking and telling us what they have found.

Throughout the history of journalism, technology has been disruptive, sometimes advantageously and sometimes less so. Modern printing presses developed at the end of the 19th century were important boosters, as was the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884.

On the negative side, television killed off evening papers, and podcasts are taking a toll on radio. Now, the internet and tech companies have siphoned off most of the revenue that supported newspapers, radio and television.

As one can’t have a free and fair society without vibrant journalism, we clearly need a new paradigm which is internet-based news organizations that are large enough and rich enough to do the job in the time-honored way with reporters asking questions, whether it is at the courthouse, the White House or on the battlefield.

There is a clear choice: News and informed analysis, or rumor and conspiracy.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. Read this column on: White House Chronicle or Inside Sources.

 

donald trump apprentice color nbc

djt remote no make upPolitico, Transition of Power, Trump names ‘Apprentice’ producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the UK, Irie Sentner and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Dec. 21, 2024. Burnett is seen as the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise to the national spotlight as a high-powered Manhattan businessperson as displayed in the show (above), contrasted with more recently images as above.

Mark Burnett 2009President-elect Donald Trump (on Saturday tapped Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice,” to serve as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett, shown in a 2009 photo, formerly served as chair of MGM’s television studio and is a multi-Emmy-winning producer of several popular U.S. television shows, including “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” With “The Apprentice,” Burnett was the architect of Trump’s post-bankruptcy image — and is largely responsible for Trump’s rise in the national imagination as a high-powered Manhattan businessman.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social.

Burnett, who was born in the U.K., “will work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” Trump said. He has never held a diplomatic post.

It is unclear how Burnett’s responsibilities would differ from those of Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the court of St. James, banker and donor Warren Stephens, who would be the main U.S. diplomat based in London representing Washington in front of the U.K. government. Typically, the position is a sleepy one, as most contact between both countries’ governments occurs at the direct official level. The U.K. and U.S. also directly and fully collaborate on all matters of espionage and intelligence collection.

But the allusion to trade and investment suggests a possibility that Burnett could be tasked with promoting bilateral commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been a goal for Westminster since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.

Successive British governments have pushed for a free trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom to make up for the economic losses experienced after the U.K. left the European Union’s common market. Yet both the Trump and Biden administrations have slow-walked any discussion of a trade deal.

Most recently, President Joe Biden quashed hopes that his administration would broker a trade deal with the U.K. before the election, disappointing the government of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after encountering resistance from some Senate Democrats.

Trump advisers, however, telegraphed in 2024 that a trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. would be a key priority for the administration.

Trump’s post did not specify whether Burnett would face a Senate confirmation process. Special envoys, by law, must receive Senate confirmation, but the Biden administration has, at times, gotten around that by tweaking job descriptions. Burnett, however, would likely face little resistance from Senate Republicans as he is not seen as a polarizing figure.

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