#MAGA shutdown
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[The Daily Don]
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
More good news today for Bidenomics, as the gross domestic product report for the second quarter showed annualized growth of 2.4%, higher than projected, and inflation rose at a slower pace of 2.6%, down from last quarter and well below projections. Economic analyst Steven Rattner noted that as of the second quarter, “the US economy is over 6% larger than it was before COVID (after adjusting for inflation). At this point in the recovery from the Great Recession, 2011, the economy was just 0.7% larger than it had been in 2007.”
Both consumer spending and business investment, which is up 7.7% in real annualized terms, drove this growth. Business spending makes up a much smaller share of gross domestic product, but it drives future jobs and growth, and much of this growth is in manufacturing facilities. In keeping with that trend, the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturer, First Solar, announced today that it will build a fifth factory in the U.S. as alternative energy technology takes off. This commitment brings to more than $2.8 billion the amount First Solar has invested in the U.S. to ramp up production.
While so-called Bidenomics is designed to rebuild the middle class, the administration is also trying to reestablish fair ground rules for corporate behavior. Yesterday, the Departments of Justice, Commerce, and Treasury invited American businesses to come forward voluntarily if they think they might have violated U.S. sanctions, export controls, or other national security laws by sharing sensitive technology or helping sanctioned individuals launder money. Coming forward “can provide significant mitigation of civil or criminal liability,” the note says.
It highlighted the anti–money laundering and sanctions whistleblower program in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
While many of us were watching the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., to see if an indictment was forthcoming against former president Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a different set of charges appeared tonight. Special counsel Jack Smith brought additional charges against Trump in connection with his retention of classified documents.
The new indictment alleges that Trump plotted to delete video from security cameras near the storage room where he had stored boxes containing classified documents, and did so after the Department of Justice subpoenaed that footage. That effort to delete the video involved a third co-conspirator, Carlos De Oliveira, who has been added to the case.
De Oliveira is a former valet at the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property who became property manager there in January 2022. Allegedly, he told another Trump employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and that the conversation should stay between the two of them.
In the Washington Post, legal columnist Ruth Marcus wrote, “The alleged conduct—yes, even after all these years of watching Trump flagrantly flout norms—is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Trump allegedly conspired with others to destroy evidence.” If the allegations hold up, “the former president is a common criminal—and an uncommonly stupid one.”
This superseding indictment reiterates the material from the original indictment, and as I reread it, it still blows my mind that Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence).
It sounds like he was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.
The Justice Department has asked again for a protective order to protect the classified information at the heart of this case. In their request, they explained that, among other things, Trump wanted to be able to discuss that classified information with his lawyers outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a room protected against electronic surveillance and data leakage.
Former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Peter Strzok noted that there is “[n]o better demonstration of Trump’s abject lack of understanding of—and disregard for—classified info and national security. He is *asking the Court* to waive the requirements for classified info that EVERY OTHER SINGLE CLEARANCE HOLDER IN THE UNITED STATES must follow.”
The Senate today passed the $886 billion annual defense bill by a strong bipartisan margin of 86 to 11 after refusing to load it up with all the partisan measures Republican extremists added to the House bill. Now negotiators from the House and the Senate will try to hash out a compromise measure, but the bills are so far apart it is not clear they will be able to create a bipartisan compromise. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has passed on a bipartisan basis for more than 60 years.
The extremists in the House Republican conference continue to revolt against House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal with the administration to raise the debt ceiling. They insist the future cuts to which McCarthy agreed are not steep enough, and demand more. This has sparked fighting among House Republicans; Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo suggests that McCarthy’s new willingness to consider impeaching President Biden might be an attempt to cut a deal with the extremists.
As the Senate is controlled by Democrats, the fight among the House Republicans threatens a much larger fight between the chambers because Democratic senators will not accept the demands of the extremist Republican representatives.
The House left for its August recess today without passing 11 of the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government after September, setting up the conditions for a government shutdown this fall if they cannot pass the bills and negotiate with the Senate in the short time frame they’ve left. Far-right Republicans don’t much care, apparently. Representative Bob Good (R-VA) told reporters this week, “We should not fear a government shutdown… Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”
Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA), the second ranking Democrat in the House, disagreed. “The Republican conference is saying they are sending us home for six weeks without funding the government? That we have one bill…out of 12 completed because extremists are holding your conference hostage, and that’s not the full story: the extremists are holding the American people hostage. We will have twelve days…when we return to fund the government, to live up to the job the American people sent us here to do. This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown, and for what? In pursuit of a national abortion ban? Is that what we are doing here?
“The American people see through this. They know who is fighting for them, fighting for solutions…. Your time is coming. The American people are watching. They are going to demand accountability. We should be staying here, completing these appropriations bills, stripping out the toxic, divisive, bigoted riders that have been put on these bills and get[ting] back to work for freedom and for our economy and the American family.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#J.Douquette#Daily Don#Letters from an American#Heather cox Richardson#MAGA shutdown#government shutdown#Biden Administration#working for the American people
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#Government shutdown#government#shutdown#Republican#Republicans#GOP#MAGA#Donald Trump#Trump#workers#worker
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“In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said there are "quite a few" lawmakers supporting her motion to vacate House Speaker Mike Johnson, though she did not specify exactly how many members are backing her.
“I have a number that have committed, but there’s also a large number that have already expressed to me a huge sigh of relief," she added.
She said she hasn’t talked to Johnson yet, but said the speaker is “negotiating from weakness” and that she doesn’t see a scenario where she will back off raising the motion to vacate. Still, she argued she is “being very respectful to the members of our conference,” and won’t disrupt investigations or other committee work.
Greene reiterated that she does not have a timeline for when she will bring the motion up, but said she hopes to use the House’s two-week break.
“What I'm hoping for is for all of our Republican members to be able to have time to think and reflect over this break, for us to be able to come back together and start the conversation of who is capable and willing to lead this Republican majority," she said.
Greene said that the government funding bill that passed in the House on Friday was a “complete departure” of “everything we stand for,” referring to the Republican party.
"We cannot move forward having a Republican speaker of the House that is doing the bidding of Democrats, that is allowing Chuck Schumer to drive our legislation, bringing bills to the floor that the White House cannot wait to sign into law, and doesn't stop the border crisis and the invasion that's happening every single day to our country," Greene said.”
#marjorie traitor greene#maga mike johnson#republican assholes#government spending bill#republicans want a government shutdown#Marjorie 3 toes wants to vacate House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson
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House Republicans have failed to pass a last-ditch funding bill, making a government shutdown starting this Sunday, October 1, almost certain.
A shutdown will delay disaster recovery projects, cancer research, and more, while forcing federal employees to work without pay.
All five government shutdowns in the past 30 years occurred when Republicans had control of the House, and four of those were when the GOP had full control of Congress.
This is what REPUBLICANS TRIED TO PASS TODAY:
House GOP wanted to advance a bill that cuts by at least 30%:
- Housing subsidies 4 poor
- Medical research 4 cancer etc
- SSA offices
- Nutrition aid 4 pregnant moms
- Head Start
- EPA
- NASA
- Justice Dept
- LIHEAP
- Toxic waste cleanup
- & much more
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We are roughly 60 hours away from a government shutdown, which will cost a lot of people a lot of money, because the MAGA House GOP can't get their act together. BUT, they have time to talk about an impeachment of Biden, even though THEIR OWN WITNESS has said they don't have any evidence to impeach. What an embarrassing 💩 show. This is entirely 100% on the MAGA GOP in the House. Even the GOP in the Senate knows this is insanity.
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They are a mess.
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House conservative demands stall efforts to avert shutdown | The Hill
#the hill#us news#united states news#us news source#united states house of representatives#government shutdown#spending bill#government funding#US Republicans#maga republicans#an onyx void reports
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😡😡
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Lawmakers have 11 legislative days to fund the government and avert a shutdown. But the far-right have been making it clear over the lengthy recess that they will continue to hold spending bills hostage until they get their various demands – which range from spending cuts to abortion restrictions to impeachment – are met.
For weeks before the August recess, MAGA House Republicans handicapped typically uneventful appropriations committee meetings and turned them into battle grounds over their party’s manufactured culture wars and far-right grievances.
MAGA Republicans tried to attach anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ amendments to the bills and claimed they wanted to cut government spending to pre-COVID levels. But instead they’ve created a handful of appropriations bills, some of which haven’t passed out of committee yet, that are dead on arrival in the Senate.
McCarthy Caves To Far-Right, Directs House Committees To Open Baseless Impeachment Inquiry Into Biden
These fucking idiots.
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
September 19, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
House Republicans appear to be barreling toward a government shutdown, unable to agree even to debate a bill to fund the military. That rejection made Republican leadership pull from the floor a continuing resolution to fund the government into October. Extremist members simply refuse to agree to any bill that doesn’t cave to their demands. And, as NBC News reporters note, “The House [Republican] chaos is worse than it may appear.” The bills over which they are currently fighting cannot possibly pass the Senate. Government funding ends on September 30.
And so a small minority of extremists are threatening to shut down our government. Such a shutdown would have global as well as domestic repercussions: the Pentagon warned that a government shutdown would disrupt U.S. military aid to Ukraine, including training for military forces. Hamstringing our ability to help Ukraine stand against Russia, refusing to fund the Pentagon, and Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military promotions that has left more than 300 top military positions vacant all undermine our national security. This is an astonishing position for Republicans, who used to pride themselves on their support for the military.
That such a small number of extremists can shut down our country speaks to the power of voting. Four days ago, Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off a month-long tour of college campuses to mobilize younger voters to “fight for our freedoms.” Today is National Voter Registration Day, and in Reading, Pennsylvania, she noted that young people have spent their whole lives in the climate crisis, have seen the Supreme Court stop recognizing the constitutional right to abortion, and have spent their earlier years practicing active shooter drills. They are now stepping up to lead the country toward solutions.
Harris told a cheering, overflow audience at the Reading Area Community College that voting “determines whether the person who is holding elected office is going to fight for your freedoms and rights or not. Whether that be the freedom that you should have to just be free from attack, free from hate, free from gun violence, free from bias, free to love who you love and be open about it, free to have access to the ballot box without people obstructing your ability to exercise your civic right to vote, in terms of who will be the people holding elected office and leading your country.”
The political power of young voters will be important in determining the outcome of the 2024 elections. In Pennsylvania today, Democratic governor Josh Shapiro announced automatic voter registration when people are getting or renewing a driver’s license. The governor tweeted: “We got traffic moving on I-95 in just 12 days. We delivered universal free breakfast for 1.7 million students. And today, we implemented automatic voter registration. There’s more to do, but we’re getting stuff done in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
In Congress today, the Democrats, led by Representative Terri Sewell (D-AL) reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which passed the House in 2021 but was stopped by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
This measure would restore and modernize the 1965 Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted it. Until that decision, Congress had regularly reauthorized the Voting Rights Act on a bipartisan basis, but as soon as the decision was handed down, Republican-dominated state legislatures passed voter suppression laws, gerrymandered their states, and closed polling sites, measures that made it more difficult for Black Americans, many of whom backed Democrats, to vote. In the decade since the decision, Sewell noted, at least 29 states have passed a total of almost 100 laws restricting voting.
Sewell represents Selma, Alabama, where civil rights activist and, later, Georgia representative John R. Lewis was beaten by law enforcement officers when he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge with other civil rights activists marching for the right to vote. She noted, “Generations of Americans—many in my hometown of Selma, Alabama—marched, fought, and even died for the equal right of all Americans to vote. But today, their legacy and our very democracy are under attack as MAGA extremists target voters with new laws to restrict voting access. Ten years after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the fight for voting rights has never been more urgent.”
The reason for voter suppression was made clear again today when, in a pattern that has continued since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, no longer recognizing the constitutional right to abortion, Democrats won two elections. In New Hampshire, Democrat Hal Rafter flipped a state House seat formerly held by a Republican. And in Pennsylvania, Democrat Lindsay Powell won a special election in Pittsburgh, enabling Democrats to hold control of the Pennsylvania House.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Letters from an American#Heather Cox Richardson#House Republicans#Government Shutdown#corruption caucus#MAGA extremists#voter suppression#US Military
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I just saw that Emmer is the current gop nominee. What do you think his chances are? He appears to be one of the saner gop (which isn’t saying much when the vast majority barely pretend at wanting to govern and would rather just attack anyone who is even a centimeter more to the left then they are). Part of me really hopes he just says screw the freedom caucus and maga crowd and decides to work the the democrats so we can have a semi functional government for a bit.
He's already doomed. He voted to certify the 2020 election and he supports aid to Ukraine (don't get me wrong, he's terrible on every other policy because he's a Republican) and this alone makes him "too moderate." Even though he signed onto the stupid lawsuit to throw out all votes in swing states filed by the felonious Texas AG Ken Paxton in December 2020. Trump has been railing at him on Truth Social and that means he's toast. I'd be surprised if he even got as far as a floor vote, and it's clear the Freedom Caucus immediately turned on him after Daddy Trump yanked the leash.
The Republicans don't want a speaker. They have no interest in electing a speaker. They will keep causing this chaos over and over, even while we're more than halfway through the emergency 45-day funding stopgap. They will, in all probability, let it run out and shut down the government sooner than elect a speaker, because they think a shutdown will be bad for Biden and/or they can pull their usual trick of Blaming The Democrats for it. I suspect it will be ESPECIALLY hard to sell this time, but the media will try to help.
Yet again: these people don't want to govern. They don't want to do anything except fight each other and scream about Real Conservatives. They want the government to be paralyzed (especially since they think it will somehow slow/stop the progress of the criminal cases against Trump). This is a massive mafia racket doing its damndest to protect its orange crime boss, who continues to sabotage the US government with the assistance of his loyal minions. It will be the same for Emmer and anyone else, so. Yeah.
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"The problem is — and I will keep banging this drum as long as I have to — Biden’s incoherence on Israel and Palestine is both morally unforgivable and bad political strategy. He is bleeding support not only from young people, Arab-Americans, and others incensed with his continued support for a genocidal war machine, but also from pro-Israel moderates and Never Trump conservatives who are enraged at his furtive and contradictory efforts to ever-so-slightly rein that war machine in. I’ll give more details about that incoherence below. For now, I’ll just say that by trying to make everyone a little happy, he is making no one happy, as the pile of Palestinian corpses grows at his feet.
But that’s the narrow part of the question in the context of American politics. The bigger issue for me is why Biden’s management of the human catastrophe in Gaza is so salient. My answer is that it points to the larger and even more consequential failures of liberal politics over the last four to eight years.
....the heart of Biden’s failure to both recognize and confront the actual danger facing democracy. In a recent In These Times essay titled “Antifacism after Gaza,” the Italian philosopher Alberto Toscano subtly tweaked leftist Democratic politicians for whom “the threat of Trumpian despotism blunted opposition” to Biden’s Israel policy: “There is a bitter irony in granting primacy to the national fight against fascism over the campaign to stop a U.S.-funded genocide when the current Israeli government — in its exterminationist rhetoric, patronage of racist militias, colonizing drive and ultranationalism — fits textbook definitions of fascism far more neatly than any other contemporary regime.”
The campus protests would have been another opportunity for Biden to show his commitment to democratic and pro-social ideals. I’m not saying he had to support the protesters or their aims — they are, after all, in large part protesting him. But no one made Biden take the further step of employing reactionary talking points about the protests being fonts of antisemitism and supposedly genocidal rhetoric, or repeating memeified claims about “Jewish students” being “blocked, harrassed, attacked, while walking to class” — questionable claims that have been weaponized to justify state and vigilante violence against demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights.2 Biden repeated those claims on May 7, Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet he said nothing about the weeks of wanton anti-demonstrator violence by both police and unhinged pro-Israel counterprotesters. In fact, instead of condemning the episodic police state, he is pushing a new plan to funnel $37 billion more to police departments and hire 100,000 more cops.
The political problem here should be obvious. How do you explain to a student who just watched, say, the NYPD throw their friends down a flight of stairs for participating in a nonviolent protest — acts committed without so a peep of condemnation from the president — that a vote for him is a vote against fascism?
Nor is Gaza the only place Biden and the Democrats keep undermining their claim to being the antifascist party. The president has repeatedly pleaded with Trump to work with him in passing a MAGA-like immigration bill: one that prioritized enforcement, detention, and “shutdown” measures over, for instance, pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants or those who came as children. When Trump didn’t take Biden’s obvious political bait, the president tried running even further to his right. Biden can insist, as he did at the State of the Union, that he “will not demonize immigrants” or endorse Trump’s Hitlerian cant about “poisoning the blood of our country.” But by adopting reactionary fearmongering about the need to “secure the border” above all else, all that remains of a message to voters is that even squishy libs think the fascists have a point about immigration — it’s just that they aren’t willing to do more to stop it.
The connection between state violence at home and genocide abroad isn’t lost on the students. Popular chants connect the dispossession and killing in Palestine to U.S. policy in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Latin America, as well as immigration policy here: “From Palestine to Mexico / border walls have got to go.” As Toscano notes, protesters at the University of Texas chanted at the Austin police: “APD! KKK! / IDF! They’re all the same!” — connecting domestic policing and racism to the Israeli military. And indeed, that connection isn’t purely theoretical: thousands of U.S. police officers have received direct training from the Israeli military on crowd control, use of force, and surveillance in recent decades, including the NYPD, and yes, the Austin police as well.
#us politics#us fascism#us imperialism#us immigration#solidarity#collective liberation#state repression#state violence#surveillance state#white supremecy#palestine#free palestine#settler police#settler colonialism#settler violence#student protests#student activism
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« As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one. »
— Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL-23), former director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, commenting at the shambolic House impeachment inquiry chaired by MAGA Rep. James Comer (R-KY-01).
Among other things, a Republican witness, Prof. Jonathan Turley, had just testified that there was no evidence of impeachable offenses.
Jared Moskowitz was on a roll on Thursday. Watch it for the quote, stay for the white board.
youtube
But wait, there's more!
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30) weighed in by decrying the total lack of evidence against Joe Biden while pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans who have ignored Donald Trump's non-stop crime spree.
youtube
House Republicans are hoping that their "revenge impeachment" will distract Americans from the upcoming Republican government shutdown this weekend. Instead, Thursday's hearing just reminded everybody what a fiasco this year of GOP House control has been.
EDIT: Rep. Jasmine Crockett's party affiliation has been corrected from the original post.
#impeachment inquiry#hearings#us house of representatives#jared moskowitz#fl-23#jasmine crockett#tx-30#james comer#ky-01#jonathan turley#republican fiasco
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