Driven largely by increased gasoline and electricity prices, the Consumer Price Index rose to 3.4% in December, up from a 3.1% annual rate in November, the Labor Department reported Thursday. December’s monthly increase was 0.3% compared with +0.1% in November. 

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...meanwhile...

WEDNESDAY 1/10/24

Trump’s Powers – If we gain nothing else from Donald J. Trump’s “Big Lie” and the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol, we will get a ruling on the limits of presidential power, heretofore largely untested for more than two centuries. On Tuesday a panel of three federal appellate judges signaled skepticism that Trump – who attended the hearing though not required to do so -- could claim immunity from prosecution for the insurrection.

“A president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Would such a president be subject to criminal prosecution if he’s not impeached?” said Judge Florence V. Pan, one of the two appointed by Democrats. 

The third, Republican appointee Judge Karen L. Henderson, said “it was paradoxical to say that [the ex-president’s] constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws.” (This report via The Washington Post.)

Shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, indeed.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer said that any crime connected to a president’s “official duties” requires the “political process” of impeachment and a conviction by the Senate would have to come before any prosecution. He predicted speedy impeachment for a president involved in a murder. Trump and his attorneys argue this case – the one for his alleged involvement in the January 6^thinsurrection among four against him – would open a “Pandora’s box” for future presidents to be charged with all sorts of crimes and fear of charges after leaving office.

“It’ll be bedlam in the country,” Trump said in an appearance at the Waldorf Astoria hotel near the federal courthouse – the old federal post office building that was owned by Trump’s company while he was president. Trump took no questions from reporters.

If the three-judge panel does indeed rule against Trump’s claim of immunity in the case, the former president’s legal team will certainly appeal to the full federal appellate court in Washington and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus very likely delaying the trial’s March starting date. 

--TL

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TUESDAY 1/9/24

Washington is Not Iowa – Former President Trump was expected to step aside from Iowa rallies where he is campaigning to keep his lead in next week’s Iowa caucuses, to return to the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. in a voluntary appearance to argue he is immune from prosecution (The Washington Post). Trump was arraigned in federal court last August on charges of interfering with the 2020 election results.

Crashing the soft landing: Donald J. Trump said this in an interview with former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, according to The Hill: “And when there’s a crash – I hope it’s going to be during the next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

The Biden administration is enjoying a “soft landing” (though not in the polls) from the Federal Reserve’s steep interest rate hikes to bring down pandemic-era inflation, which was caused largely by economic forces outside either Biden’s or Trump’s control. Biden, whose Bidenomics is a sort of revival of FDR’s economic policy has previously compared Trump with Hoover. 

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign posted this on X: “Donald Trump’s campaign is about him. Not America. Not you.”

--TL

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MONDAY 1/8/24

Another Budget Deal – House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have reached an agreement on Fiscal Year 2024 spending to keep the government open. The deal makes minor changes to the Fiscal Responsibility Act and last spring’s debt-limit agreement between (then-) Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Biden, “the beginning of the end” for McCarthy, Punchbowl News reports. After being ousted as speaker, McCarthy left the House at the end of 2023. 

The deal keeps Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and a $696-billion Biden-McCarthy “side-deal” in place and accelerates a $10-billion IRS cut to FY24 from FY25, and cuts $6.1-billion in COVID relief funds. The $1.6-trillion budget allocates $886 billion for defense and $773 for non-defense spending, according to PN. Four spending bills, for Veterans Affairs, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and Energy and Water expire Friday, January 19 and the rest expire February 2.

Note: Conventional Pundit Wisdom warns that signing on to pretty much the same deal that McCarthy struck last year puts Johnson on the hot seat. The difference, however, is that Johnson is a House Freedom Caucus member who can take a harder line in 2025 if Trump and the House GOP win this November.

•••

Another Warning – Ex-President Trump has refused to sign an optional oath by the Illinois State Board of Elections that he will not “advocate for the overthrow of the government,” ahead of the state’s March 19 primary and November general election, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reported Saturday. Trump did sign the pledge in 2016 and 2020. Illinois imposed the oath as an anti-communist measure in the 1950s and made it optional in the 1970s.

Meanwhile… Former Republican representative from Illinois and member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, Adam Kinzinger, says that Trump is in trouble with the revelation that Trump’s former chief of staff, Dan Scavino, appears to have spoken with special counsel Jack Smith. According to a report by ABC News, Scavino told Smith’s team that Trump “was just not interested” in trying to stop the January 6, 2021 insurrection and did not write the tweet that went out from his Twitter account posted about 2:38 p.m. that day calling on the mob to “stay peaceful.”

•••

Austin Out? – There is growing pressure for heads – or at least, a head – to roll over Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to report he was at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with complications from an undisclosed surgical procedure, Politico reports. For days, the Pentagon failed to inform the White House and the National Security Council that Austin was indisposed. Could the defense secretary’s head be among the first to roll?

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

SAT-SUN 1/6-7/24

Hiring remains strong, with 216,000 new jobs added to the economy in December, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate was unchanged from November at 3.7%, with notable job gains for local and federal government, health care, social assistance and construction. Job openings declined for transportation and warehousing.

January 6 -- Upon the third anniversary of the attack on the United States Capitol, we're asking for your COMMENTS on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should be used to keep Donald J. Trump off states' ballots this year. Please send your comments to editors@thehustings.news and indicated in the subject line whether you identify with the left or right.

•••

Trump’s Ballot Status – All anti-Trumpers and Democrats do not want to remove Donald J. Trump from states’ primary ballots under Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment. Take Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, who told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he fears doing so would fire up his supporters and make them feel the deck is stacked against them. 

There’s also the question of whether both Democrats and Republicans could amp up reliance on Section 3 on a quadrennial basis, much in the same way impeachment has become almost normal in the 25 years since President Clinton was impeached.

Colorado and Maine already have removed Trump from their primaries’ ballots, pending appeals up to the U.S. Supreme Court, of course. 

Pending lawsuits: In addition to Wisconsin, lawsuits citing Section 3 seek to remove Trump from the ballots in Arizona, Alaska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to Lawfare.

Dismissed: Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballots of Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have been dismissed, Newsweek reports.

Your thoughts?: Should Trump be removed from the ballot in your state’s primary? Let us know with an email to editors@thehustings.news and please, list your political leanings in the subject line.

--Todd Lassa

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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.

•••

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 5^th  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

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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.

•••

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.

•••

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.

•••

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.

•••

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

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The U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in November, a number that supports current thinking that we are in for a ‘soft landing’ instead of a recession in early 2024. The unemployment rate slipped by 0.1% to 3.7%, and the Labor Department says the biggest job gains came in health care and government, with some upside to manufacturing after UAW workers signed a contract and returned to work for General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis. Employment in retail sales declined.

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Cameo is an online video platform with which you can pay a celebrity – “B”, “C”, “F” to “Z” – to send a video greeting to a friend or family. Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) already is drawing fees four times what he earned just after he was expelled last week, and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is buying. Fetterman paid Santos $343 to punk Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), according to Business Insider.

“I thought my ethically-challenged colleague @BobMenendezNJ could use some encouragement given his substantial legal problems,” Fetterman said of the U.S. senator charged with bribery, posting on X. “So I approached a seasoned expert on the matter to give ‘Bobby from Jersey’ some advice.”

Santos’ Cameo greeting to Menendez: “Hey Bobby … Look, I don’t need to tell you, but these people want to kick you out and make you run away – you make them put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir.”

The Hill figures Santos doesn’t know who Menendez is, from this correspondence back to Fetterman: “Bobby from Jersey. I love this! I wish I knew the Bobby in question! LOL.”

Biggest surprise is that the congressman who tried to make a fashion statement on Capitol Hill still uses “LOL.”

•••

Comment on the center section in this column or the one on the right. Or, email us at editors@thehustings.news and indicate in the subject line whether you lean left or right.

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