Citing such "recent indicators" as slowing economic activity growth, "moderating" job gains and "eased" inflation, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee Wednesday chose to hold interest rates to 5¼%-5½%, a “soft landing” indeed. This after Consumer Price Index rose 0.1% in November, for a year-over-year inflation rate of 3.1%, down 0.1% from October, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The Federal Reserve is expected to hold its interest rate steady when it holds its last meeting of 2023 later this week, though the big question is whether it will start lowering rates in 2024. All items less food and energy were up 0.3% last month, for a 4% annual CPI, twice the Fed’s target level.
FRIDAY 12/15/23
Push for ‘More Targeted Operations’ in Gaza – U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said he agrees with Israel that its war with Hamas “is going to take months,” he said in Tel Aviv Friday (per The Washington Post), where he discussed with the nation’s leaders a planned transition from the “high-intensity phase” of the war to “more targeted operations.” On Thursday, Sullivan asked Israeli officials to lower the intensity of their attacks on Gaza in the “near future.”
This follows President Biden’s remarks earlier in the week that the IDF’s “indiscriminate bombing” was eroding support for Israel.
The Israeli Defense Forces also announced Friday it had recovered the bodies of three hostages, but did not say how the Israelis died, NPR reports.
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Report: Comer Has His Own Shell – Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is leading the House probe of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, for allegedly using shell companies designed to obscure millions of dollars in earnings received from shadowy middlemen and foreign interests. Now an investigative report by The Associated Press says Comer himself has his own shell company with “complicated” friends.
According to the AP, multi-millionaire Comer lists roughly 1,600 acres of land in Kentucky on his congressional financial disclosure statement, but not including the five acres he purchased in 2015 with a longtime campaign contributor as co-owner. Comer has transferred his ownership of the parcel to Farm Team Properties, a shell company co-owned with his wife, the report says.
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Automatic Voter Registration for Ex-Felons – Michigan has become the first state in the nation to expand automatic voting to ex-felons the moment they’re released from prison, according to a report by member station WKAR on NPR’s Morning Edition. Michigan already was among the handful of states that gave ex-felons the right to register to vote upon release from prison.
--TL
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THURSDAY 12/14/23
UPDATE: Leaders of the 28 member countries meeting in Brussels agreed to begin negotiations to let Ukraine into the European Union, The Washington Post reports. Instead of his threatened veto, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban abstained from the vote.
Et tu, EU? – Viktor Orban, leader of European Union member Hungary and the Kremlin’s closest ally in the region has threatened to block opening negotiations to make Ukraine a member, The Guardian reports. Orban also plans to veto 50 billion euros in EU aid to Ukraine, a day after U.S. Congress refused to vote on a $110-billion aid package to the country. The EU already has granted Ukraine candidate status and wants to move into formal negotiations.
Meanwhile: Senate negotiators are moving closer to a deal for on a southern border clampdown after the White House offered “significant” concessions, The Wall Street Journal reports. But even if it’s not too little, it may be too late for the House to go along with a deal that could replenish aid to Ukraine in exchange before Congress adjourns for the year Friday.
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Biden Impeachment Inquiry Advances – With no evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden, the House voted 221-212 along party lines to open an impeachment inquiry on the president Wednesday in connection with his son, Hunter’s, business dealings (AP).
Meanwhile, Hunter: The president’s son defied a congressional subpoena Wednesday for a closed-door deposition over his business dealings and instead took his case just outside the Capitol. Hunter Biden argued that pieces of the deposition can be selectively leaked and manipulated, according to the AP.
“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Hunter Biden said. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”
He now faces possible contempt charges by House Republicans.
--TL
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WEDNESDAY 12/13/23
Merry Christmas, Mr. Putin -- A full day spent lobbying Congress for a $110-billion aid package Tuesday did not move Republicans. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will return to Ukraine with pretty much no chance of receiving that aid before the end of the year.
President Biden had indicated he was willing to make further concessions in negotiations tied to southern border security, and demanded Republicans pass the aid package for Ukraine “before they give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him.”
“Russian loyalists in Moscow celebrated when Republicans voted to block Ukraine’s aid last week,” Biden said (per Axios). “If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing.”
What the GOP is doing:
•Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said it would be “practically impossible for Congress to resolve the standoff before the holidays.
•Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I told President Zelenskyy, ‘Here’s the problem: It’s got nothing to do with you.’”
•House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he told Zelenskyy, “we stand with him and against Putin’s brutal invasion … Our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security.”
Zelenskyy refused in that private Senate meeting to make any comment on the U.S. border issue, Politico reports.
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Nice New Democracy You Have There … Would be a Shame if Something Happened to it – Polish Parliament’s Sejm elected Donald Tusk prime minister of the country 248-201 Monday. This ends leadership of the authoritarian Law and Justice party, which under former Prime Minister Andrzej Duda drew warnings from the European Union, of which Poland is a member, after gutting power from the nation’s judiciary and seizing control of state media.
Law and Justice lost last October’s election to more moderate/liberal parties including Tusk’s Civic Platform party. Duda’s right-wing government resigned after the elections, but his party tried to hold on to power when Duda asked Mateusz Morawiecki to stay on as caretaker and try to form a new government, according to The New York Times.
Tusk had served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014, and was president of the EU’s European Council from 2014 to 2019.
Now, as Ukraine faces the likelihood U.S. military aid will end, at least into early 2024, Duda’s most potent adversary will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
--TL
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‘Life and Death’ for Ukraine – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with President Biden at the White House Tuesday after making a “life and death” plea to Congress for more military aid for its fight with Russia, The Washington Post reports. Zelenskyy was to hold a private meeting with members of the Senate at 9 a.m., followed by a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Ukraine runs out of money for arms if Congress fails to approve more aid before it leaves Washington for its holiday break on Friday.
Border security negotiations: White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients has entered negotiations with Sens. Christopher Murphy (D-CT), James Lankford (R-OK) and Krysten Sinema (I-AZ) to reach a U.S.-Mexico border security plan that would appease non-MAGA congressional Republicans who are balking over passing additional aid to Ukraine, according to a scoop by Semafor. Lankford has previously said he doesn’t expect the Senate to pass a Ukraine aid/border security bill before recess.
--TL
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MONDAY 12/11/23
Would Trump Abandon NATO?
As former Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) media book tour for Oath and Honor: A Memoir and Warning culminates in an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Monday, it seems far from certain that her message warning a second Trump term would be anti-democratic – outright dictatorial -- is getting across to American voters. A new Wall Street Journal poll says Donald J. Trump leads President Biden, 47% to 43% on a hypothetical two-candidate ballot.
Throw in five potential third-party and independent candidates, and Trump leads Biden 37% to 31%, with anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grabbing 8%.
Trump already is winning on international relations and foreign aid issues after the Senate voted last week to block $110.6 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s Russian army is taking a break for the rest of the year and will step up its invasion as Ukraine faces the beginning of 2024 its U.S. military aid depleted. Although continued aid is expected from the U.K., Germany and the rest of NATO, it is no substitute for the U.S. aid, which came to about 5% of the Pentagon budget. There’s also a potential hit to our economy, as 90% of that aid to Ukraine reportedly came back to American military contractors.
Beyond Trump’s threat to serve as a dictator – even if only for his first day, as he told Sean Hannity – he clearly has no plans to continue, or revive, military aid to Ukraine. Trump would pick up where he left off after his first administration in removing the U.S. from NATO altogether.
His campaign website “contains a single cryptic sentence” about NATO, The New York Times reported Sunday: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”
That “vague” line “has generated enormous uncertainty and anxiety among European allies and American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role,” the NYT says.
There is nothing vague about the way a NATO withdrawal would be the natural next step after dropping aid to Ukraine, and how it would please Putin.
Russian media already have celebrated Senate Republican opposition to the Ukrainian aid package – the result of a combo of a few MAGA Trump supporters and more mainstream Republicans who want to see a new strict border policy before sending more aid.
One of several examples reported by The Daily Beast: “Well done, Republicans! They’re standing firm! That’s good for us!” --“Grinning” propagandist Oleg Skabeeva on Russian state TV.
As a Trump White House aligns with fellow NATO member Hungary and its pro-Putin leader Viktor Orban, Russia will look to further conquests in the Baltic states and Poland, at least. And Russia’s closest current ally, China, will be further emboldened in going after Taiwan.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa