THU-FRI 2/10-11/22

•Russia begins major military exercises in Belarus Thursday, which Western leaders fear could be cover for launching an invasion against Ukraine to the south (WaPo). The exercises are scheduled to run for 10 days.

•The Department of Homeland Security warns that a semi-truck convoy of drivers protesting COVID-19 lockdown rules and vaccination may attempt to blockade streets surrounding SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles Sunday where the L.A. Rams and Cincinnati Bengals will play Super Bowl LVI. The blockade would mimic truckers’ protests held in Canada in recent weeks (NPR).

Annual Inflation Rate Hits 7.5% -- The Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% in January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday, for an annual rate of 7.5%. That’s up a half percentage point over the annual rate for the 12 months of 2021, which already was the highest U.S. inflation since 1982. Largest contributors are the usual suspects; Both food and energy prices rose 0.9% in January, with shelter also up sharply. 

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1/6 Committee Subpoenas Navarro – Until he described on MSNBC the “Green Bay Sweep,” a plan to overturn the November 2020 presidential election results by challenging Electoral College ballots in six battleground states, Peter Navarro might be best known as the failed San Diego politician and University of California-Irvine professor who found his way into the Trump administration as the proponent of strict, un-Republican-like trade policy toward China. Thanks to his open boasting about the plan, Navarro has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. (We’ll pause while you utter “duh.”) The committee sees Navarro, who was the Trump administration’s director of trade and manufacturing policy as central to the plot to overturn the election of Joe Biden, according to NPR’s Morning Edition. And they can also see Navarro holding forth last year on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber.

Navarro has responded with Trumpian fervor, calling the 1/6 panel “domestic terrorists” and claiming executive privilege, which of course neither the ex-president nor he have. 

Note: There are many books on the shelves about the Trump administration, and Navarro’s In Trump Time: My Journal of America’s Plague Year published in 2021 is one of them. Now Navarro might sell a few more copies, as it apparently details this coup plot in its pages. 

Political Trivia 1: According to Ballotpedia [ballotpedia.org], the Trump-Pence organization petitioned Wisconsin Elections Commission on November 18, 2020, for recounts in Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County, and the Trump campaign sent the state elections commission $3 million to pay for the recount. On November 27 and November 29 Milwaukee and Dane counties, respectively, announced the results of their recounts: Joe Biden received 87 more votes. 

Sports Trivia: The “Green Bay Sweep” is better known among football afficionados as the “Packers Sweep” or the “Lombardi Sweep,” in which the running back takes a handoff behind the line of scrimmage before turning upfield behind lead blockers (Wikipedia). 

Political Trivia 2: Richard Nixon famously considered Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi as his 1968 running mate, though Lombardi was a registered Democrat. 

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More of the Same from Trump – The defeated former president said in a statement released Thursday that the recent transfer of White House documents to the National Archives and Records Administration from Mar-a-Lago was “no big deal,” The Hillreports. The Trump administration records, you might recall from news reports earlier this week, belong to the American public, not Donald J. Trump.

Speaking of a minority of the American public: Trump earlier hit back against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) criticism of the Republican National Committee’s censure of Republican panelists on the House Select Committee investigation of the January 6 insurrection, in a release Wednesday, according to The Hill. McConnell “does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters. He did nothing to fight for his constituents and stop the most fraudulent election in American history.”

And so the fight over the soul of the GOP continues.

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash