HOLIDAY RECESS 2023-24
Rocky Mountain Bye – Now the presidential race is getting interesting. All those pundits who say Donald J. Trump has all but won the GOP presidential primary will have to discount Colorado, where the state’s supreme court has ruled 4-3 to remove the former president from its March 5 primary under an 1868 provision of the Fourteenth Amendment preventing insurrectionists for running for the office (The Washington Post). Next and final stop for the case is the U.S. Supreme Court, though many scholars say SCOTUS can only resolve the insurrection issue for all states.
Of course, Trump already has ridden his 91 indictment counts to new highs in the polls, but Colorado may have done nothing less than lead other states with similar cases pending in their courts.
Other voices: Republican challengers Nikki Haley and Chris Christie already have criticized Colorado’s supreme court for weighing in on a decision they say belongs only to the voters, according to MSNBC’s The Eleventh Hour.
--TL
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UPDATE: "Lots of talk, but no border deal," Punchbowl News says regarding Senate border control talks this past weekend. Sources told the newsletter that James Lankford, who is leading the GOP side of negotiations called up fellow Republican senators to tell them the talks likely won't be resolved until January. The full Senate is scheduled to return Monday, January 8, with the House returning that Tuesday.
Still Time for Ukraine? – The ups and downs of the $110-billion aid package to Ukraine are on the upswing again, sort of. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has kept the Senate in town through the weekend, blowing past its scheduled holiday break scheduled to begin Friday evening (the House left Washington a day earlier). Sens. Krysten Sinema (I-AZ), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and James Lankford (R-OK) are leading negotiations with Biden administration officials, including Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas, to trade aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in exchange for a strict border control package (per Politico). The level of progress in the talks seems to vary from news report to news report.
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Trump Goes All-In on Authoritarianism – At the beginning of his first presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump infamously said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” At his rally in Durham, New Hampshire last weekend, he proved he could go all-in on authoritarianism and racism without losing his core support (the rally crowd was big), repeating the Hitlerian phrase; “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all around the world…”
Piling on to the racism, he added, “Not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia.” (per Politico).
Quotes Putin: In psychology, it’s called transference. Works in politics, too. Trump said “even Putin” sees President Biden as a threat to democracy, quoting the Russian dictator’s four-hour “interview” last week. Our former president also repeated Putin’s criticism of Trump’s prosecution: “It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach ethics about democracy.”
Trump added, “They’re all laughing at us.” (per The Washington Post).
Trump also aligned himself with Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, who is single-handedly quashing the European Union’s 50-billion euro aid package to Ukraine.
Christie reacts: “He’s becoming crazier,” GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie said of Trump on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
White House reacts: “Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and our public safety,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said of Trump’s comments (per The Guardian).
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa