(PHOTO: Destruction of the Kakhova Hydroelectric Power Plant has flooded towns and villages in Eastern Ukraine https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/ )
THURSDAY 6/8/23
SCOTUS Surprise – The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a 2022 Alabama voting map that would have prevented a second majority-Black district in the state, according to NPR, with Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh serving as the swing vote according to SCOTUSblog. The decision that reverses a recent court trend of eroding the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
One of three Trump-appointed justices, Kavanaugh joined Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson in upholding an Alabama district court’s injunction against the district map in Allen v. Caster. The three-judge district court found that the plan likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Russian Forces Shoot Rescuers, Zelinskyy Says – Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine are shooting at rescuers working to save people from the flood zone below the broken Kakhovka dam.
“From the roofs of the flooded houses, people see drowned people floating by,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy told Germany’s Bild, Semafor reports. “When our forces try to get them out, they are shot at by occupiers from a distance.”
The apparent attack on the dam by Russia, coming as a long-awaited offensive by Ukrainian forces was about to begin, has caused at least 1,800 local citizens to be evacuated. Hundreds of thousands are without water, according to reports.
Destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant has “caused an ecological catastrophe,” Ukrainska Pravda reports. “Water from the reservoirs has begun to flood towns and villages, and evacuation of local residents from dangerous areas has begun. The blowing up of the dam at [the KHPP] has caused problems with the water supply in the cities of Kryvyi Rih, Marhanets and Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.”
Zelinskyy stresses that the disaster will not stop Ukraine from liberating its territory nor “increase the chances of occupiers staying on the land.”
Ukraine’s president also has blasted the reaction of the UN and Red Cross to the dam’s destruction, saying international organizations should join in evacuating people from villages and cities.
Biden meets Sunak: In Washington, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets with President Biden Thursday largely to discuss the war in Ukraine, NPR reports. Sunak is lobbying for appointment of UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace to become the next head of NATO.
McCarthy’s unfortunate timing?: Monday, before the dam broke, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) voiced opposition to a supplemental spending bill that would include additional financial and military aid to Ukraine, as Freedom Caucus members threatened revolt over what they consider a debt ceiling bill favorable to the White House. Politico reported a “schism” between McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who took to the Senate floor Tuesday to call the bipartisan debt deal “Simply insufficient given the major challenges that our nation faces.”
McConnell called out threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, “and terrorists emboldened by America’s retreat from Afghanistan.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Politico he supports a supplemental defense spending bill, but, “There’s a conflict in the messages coming from the two Republican leaders,” he said.
Pence-Trump schism: In his Quixotic quest for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, former Vice President Mike Pence will play up his side of the Republican schism. In his CNN Town Hall appearance Wednesday, Pence noted Donald J. Trump’s description of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” in a 2022 radio interview.
“I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence countered, adding “it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight.”
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Trump Indictment Imminent? – Prosecutors from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith have told Donald J. Trump’s legal team the former president is a target of their investigation involving the handling of classified documents after he left office, The New York Times reports, citing two sources. While the report says it remains unclear whether he was the subject of the special counsel’s inquiry, their notification indicates the prosecutors’ investigation is nearly complete and that an indictment is on the way.
Trump’s caps key still sticks: The former president’s reaction, coming on his social media network Truth Social, will sound familiar.
“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” according to The Hill’s report. Trump said he “assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”
And along comes Pence: Former Vice President Mike Pence used the time on his CNN Town Hall Wednesday to describe the differences between himself, a true “Reagan Republican” and his former boss as well as the current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. Pence’s sales pitch to his party so far appears to be that he was the moral compass Trump’s 2016 campaign needed to secure the Christian right’s vote, and in 2024 that support should flow directly to him.
But Pence on CNN urged the Justice Department not to indict the former president, saying an indictment would fuel division domestically and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”
While “No one is above the law” he said, the DOJ could resolve the issue without resorting to an indictment, noting that the Justice Department simply informed his attorneys last week they would not charge him for holding on to classified documents. Never mind that Pence did not intentionally hold on to and hide classified documents after leaving office and did not try to declassify them by thinking about declassifying them.
--TL
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WEDNESDAY 6/7/23
Meadows Speaks to Grand Jury – Ex-President Trump’s ultimate chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in both the January 6th insurrection and the retention of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, The New York Times reported late Tuesday. Special prosecutor Jack Smith is investigating both cases. Trump attorneys reportedly are concerned that Meadows, who has been flying under the media radar for months, may have made some sort of deal in exchange for testimony over the two cases.
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Take That, Mr. Speaker – A “band” of hard-right House members, most with the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus voted against legislation “protecting” gas stoves from perceived potential government bans, according to Politico, because they were protesting Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal with President Biden to prevent default over the debt ceiling.
To be clear; there is no such pending legislation. And to be clear, the House’s MAGA-right would be as opposed as anyone on the Hill to said non-pending legislation to outlaw gas stoves. But the Trump-aligned House Republicans were willing to protest the bill anyway. The unexpected “rebellion” took senior GOP House leaders an hour to clear up, according to the report. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) told reporters no decision has been made whether to force a vote to oust McCarthy as speaker.
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Crowd Gathers in GOP Presidential Race -- Chris Christie served two terms as New Jersey’s moderate Republican governor before he signed on with Donald J. Trump’s MAGA camp in the last decade. Now he’s back as “chief Trump antagonist” according to The Wall Street Journal. Christie formally announced his candidacy Tuesday in New Hampshire, first GOP primary next year after the Iowa caucuses.
Next up is Pence: Former Vice President Mike Pence filed Monday for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and plans to formally announce Wednesday in Iowa, according to Forbes.
Sunu-no: Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, current moderate Republican Gov. Chris Sununu announced in a Washington Postop-ed “I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024.” Last year, Sununu disappointed supporters when he chose not to run for the Senate against incumbent Democrat Margaret Hassan.
Sununu writes, “I believe I can have more influence on the future of the Republican Party in the 2024 nominating process not as a candidate but as the governor of the first-in-the-nation primary state.”
West to the left: Former Harvard University Prof. Cornell West, who is also professor emeritus at Princeton University announced his candidacy on Twitter, Politico reports.
“I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party,” West said in his announcement.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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TUESDAY 6/6/23
SCOTUS This – The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider Vidal v. Elster, a case that challenges a rule that would let former President Trump prevent his name from being used on t-shirts without his permission. Specifically, Steve Elster seeks a trademark for the words “Trump Too Small” in order to print them on t-shirts.
The phrase comes from Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) quip in a Republican presidential debate that The Donald has “small hands” – indicating, according to bathroom talk lore – that some of his other vital parts are small, too. Elster contends the phrase was “intended to convey that some features of President Trump and his policies are diminutive,” SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe first reported in her own online publication, Howe on the Court.
You know: Small hands. Small other parts. Never got more than a handful of panels of The Wall constructed.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark office rejected Elster’s application, relying on a federal trademark law, Section 2 (c) of the Lanham Act, that prohibits the registration of a trademark that uses another person’s name without that person’s permission.
Rubio v. Spy: The Hustings for a long time has contended that Rubio’s shot in the debate that Trump has “small hands” was some sort of bastardization of an-oft printed Spy magazine trope that the then-New York real estate developer (this was the late-‘80s/early ‘90s, kids) was a “short-fingered vulgarian.” This conjurs more an image of greasy con man than that of the over-compensating under-endowed.
Spy turned this into something of a preternatural meme, consistently on first-reference calling the future president “Short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump …”
--TL
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Meanwhile ... Anticipating Ukraine's Counteroffensive
MONDAY 6/5/23
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy told The Wall Street Journal Ukraine’s military forces are ready to launch its counter-offensive against Russian troops, but warned that it could take some time, and come at a heavy cost.
“We strongly believe that we will succeed,” he told the WSJ in an exclusive interview from the port city of Odesa in southern Ukraine. “I don’t know how long it will take. To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready.”
Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive is nothing less than key to the future of liberal democracy against authoritarianism. There is no plausible way to defend any of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s actions in regard to Ukraine, whether or not from a center-column point-of-view.
Last week as the Senate sent the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 to the Oval Office for President Biden’s signature, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for more defense spending for Ukraine as part of a rider Republicans attached to the bill, which extends the federal debt ceiling to New Years Day 2025.
Graham also wants more defense spending for Taiwan, Israel and the Pentagon in general. What’s notable here is that Graham has been largely unwavering in his support of former President Trump, who refused to take sides in Russia v. Ukraine last month in his CNN Town Hall event.
Trump told his adoring pro-MAGA live crowd in New Hampshire that he wanted the “dying to stop” for both sides, though he failed to mention that the only Russians dying have been those who have helped Russia invade its neighbor. Many of them recruited by the Wagner Group. From prisons where they were serving time.
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Meanwhile, Up on the Hill – The full House of Representatives only, is scheduled to be in session Monday, with both chambers in session Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The full Senate, only, will be in session Friday.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa