FRI 3/25/22
Growing GOP Opposition to Brown Jackson – Support among the few Republican senators who might cross the aisle and vote for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is shrinking, The Hill reports. President Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer needs only the Senate’s 50 Democrats, but as Politico reported yesterday, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Krysten Sinema, of Arizona, are among nine perceived swing-votes.
This Just In: Friday morning, Manchin has announced he will vote to confirm Brown Jackson to SCOTUS, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Timing: With Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) having constantly grilled Brown Jackson over her child pornography case sentencing – a line of attack some pundits are connecting to QAnon conspiracy theories that conflate child sexual abuse with liberal Democrats -- and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) complaining that the nominee is not J. Michelle Childs, a federal judge in his home state, Republicans may be looking at a way to at least stretch out the vote on Brown Jackson beyond the three-week goal set by the White House.
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Meanwhile, in the Thomas Household – Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged text messages with former President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to “pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 elections,” according to The Washington Post and CBS News. The two news organizations obtained 29 text messages exchanged between “Ginni” Thomas and Meadows beginning November 10, 2020 – a week after the election and three days after Joe Biden was declared the winner – from among 2,320 texts obtained by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger III, confirmed the texts’ existence, but said “nothing about the texts messages presents any legal issue.”
Such As?: Meadows texted Thomas on November 24; “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.”
Note: Conservative religious evangelicals, including many who adhere to QAnon conspiracy theories, comprise Donald J. Trump’s most loyal base.
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Meanwhile, in English 101 -- Let’s put aside the fact that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is married to Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Ms. Thomas is an attorney in her own right. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Creighton University, a private Jesuit college in Omaha. The Jesuits, among other things, are known to be a highly intellectual order in the Catholic Church.
Which brings us to wonder how the faculty at Creighton feel about the grammatical performance that has been made public by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in reporting related to Ms. Thomas’ series of text exchanges with Meadows[CD1] in her efforts to have the 2020 presidential election overturned on behalf of Donald Trump (which could lead to a bit of wondering about how Jesuits [CD2] feel about the moral leadership of that man, but that’s a question for another time).
Excerpts of the texts include:
- “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”
- “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! The Left tastes their power!!!”
- “Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”
- “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!”
While Ms. Thomas says that she and her husband never discuss their work, one of the things that they evidently don’t talk about is the use of punctuation marks.
This seems to be the stuff of a teenager with a crush on someone rather than communication between two adults about something of immense importance.
“Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”
Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Thomas spend their time talking about bad movie remakes.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics
THU 3/24/22
Brown Jackson’s Public Hearing Ends – Day Three of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings dragged on into Wednesday evening with repeats of much of Day One’s opening statements and Day Two’s first round of Q&A. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) led a second day of interrogation of Brown Jackson’s sentencing record as a judge on child pornography cases, and her position on Critical Race Theory as a member of the parents’ board of Georgetown Day School, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued to complain about far-left dark money groups allegedly sinking his preferred nominee, J. Michelle Childs.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) countered by telling Brown Jackson, “You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
But it’s Not Quite Over: Senators continued their interviews with the SCOTUS nominee, though in private, behind closed doors.
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Meanwhile, North of the 38th Parallel -- “The United States strongly condemns the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for its test of a long-range ballistic missile. On March 10th, the United States Government publicly released information that the DPRK’s tests on February 26 and March 4, 2022 EST involved an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system. We noted that there would likely be further tests in the future. The President and his national security team are assessing the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners. This launch is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region. This action demonstrates that the DPRK continues to prioritize its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the well-being of its people. We urge all countries to hold the DPRK accountable for such violations and call on the DPRK to come to the table for serious negotiations. The door has not closed on diplomacy, but Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions. The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and Republic of Korea and Japanese allies.” -- White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, 3/24/22
No, Russia isn’t the only country undertaking global destabilization.
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Ex-Prosecutor Say Ex-Prez “Committed Crimes” – Donald J. Trump is “guilty of numerous felony violations” and it was a “grave failure of justice” not to hold him criminally accountable, former prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz said in his resignation letter, obtained by The New York Times. Pomerantz and fellow prosecutor Carey R. Dunne resigned last month after Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, put the brakes on the effort to seek a criminal indictment against the former president in an investigation of falsified business records.
“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes – he did,” Pomerantz wrote.
Bragg took over the case after Cyrus Vance retired as Manhattan D.A. rather than run for re-election last November. In his letter Pomerantz expressed confidence that Vance’s investigation would have led to criminal charges against Trump and his organization. Bragg insists the grand jury investigation continues, though its term expires in April.
Boilerplate: Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but Donald J. Trump has slammed the D.A.’s investigation as “political.” The Trump Organization responded to Pomerantz’s resignation letter by calling the former prosecutor “a never-Trumper” and adding, “never before have we seen this level of corruption in our legal system.”
But Wait, There’s More: New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case against the Trump Organization for similar allegations continues, and the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection has indicated it has evidence of Trump’s complicity in the attempted coup. But the House panel would have to convince U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to issue charges against the former president.
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Mo v. Trump -- ICYMI, former President Trump “removed” his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks’ (R-AL) re-election campaign this year, saying he had “hired a new campaign staff who ‘brilliantly’ convinced him to ‘stop talking about the 2020 election’” … perhaps because this is 2022. “Election fraud must be captured and stopped or we won’t have a country anymore.”
Brooks shot back yesterday with an accusation that Trump asked him to remove President Biden from the White House following the 2020 elections, despite the congressman’s protests, according to The Hill.
Brooks’ Statement: “President Trump has asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency. As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asked. Period.”
But Not the Last Word: We know from experience of the last two years that Brooks’ “period” on that statement will not stop Trump from perpetuating the Big Lie. In Ohio, seven Republicans are running for the primary to replace Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), with all top candidates claiming to be “Trumpiest,” according to NPR’s All Things Considered. But Rep. Brooks’ break from MAGA-ism indicates the former president’s grip on the GOP may finally be loosening.
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Meanwhile, in Job Approval Ratings -- According to Gallup, Donald Trump began his presidency with a 44% approval rating, peaked at 49% (May 1-13, 2020), then was at 34% in his last week in office. Makes one wonder about the power of “the Base,” but that’s a subject for another time.
The latest numbers for Joe Biden have him at 42%, which is a 1% bump over his number in February.
According to Gallup, there are two categories where there are numbers considered “statistically significant changes,” the 6% improvements in both his response to coronavirus (now at 53% approval) and his handling of the situation with Russia (now at 42%).
As for the first, that might be predicated on the sense that many Americans now have that COVID is “over.” Not true, of course, but it seems like it.
As for the second, that 42% leads to a question of what the surveyed would prefer —and most of them probably don’t have an answer for that.
Biden’s job approval ratings since he’s been in office started at 57%, his peak, and since September 2021 (43%) has been bumping along in the low 40%s. Better than Trump’s consistency in the mid- to high-30%s, but not exactly the stuff of a rousing rendition of “Hail to the Chief.”
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Former Secretary of State Albright has Died – Madeleine Albright, who “rose to power as a brilliant analyst of world affairs” according to The New York Times, before becoming the first female secretary of state for President Bill Clinton from 1993-97, died Wednesday of cancer. She was 84.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics