WAITING FOR PHASE 2: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump talk peace in Gaza -- as the White House's plan remains stuck in Phase 1 -- at a news conference in Palm Beach, Florida, before the new year. [From a White House video.]
•Read the 255-page transcript of the House Judiciary Committee closed-door deposition of former special counsel Jack Smith, released New Year’s Eve HERE. Scroll down center column for details.
Know No Child Care – Right-wing anti-immigrant influencer Nick Shirley’s YouTube video “investigating” Somali-run daycare centers in Metro Minneapolis has prompted the Trump White House to announce it is freezing the federal Child Care and Development Fund, ABC News reports.
Such a freeze will affect not only the 1.4 million children on subsidized care nationwide, but millions more children reliant on the facilities, because they are “not going to be able to remain open inf there are any delays in receiving their subsidies for the children that they care for that fall under the CCDF funding,” National Child Care Funding Director Cindy Lehnhoff told NPR’s A Martinez on Morning Edition. Such childcare facilities have a month at best to remain open, Lehnhoff said.
The CCDF is the largest federal funding source for childcare to states, indigenous tribes and territories, says the Bipartisan Policy Center’s “Explainer.” If Lehnhoff is correct, and the CCDF freeze shuts down centers reliant on the federal subsidies for a significant portion of the children under their care, it could affect parents from a wide swath of socio-economic communities across the United States, much like the end of Affordable Care Act subsidies.
A secondary effect of the freeze is that many parents will find it hard to make it to their offices or other workplaces if subsidized childcare centers are forced to shut down, Lehnhoff told Morning Edition.
In Shirley’s YouTube video, Shirley and an older man identified only as “David” attempt to enter Somalian-run Minneapolis-area day care centers to inquire about signing up Shirley’s “son Joey.” He is refused entry in most cases and concludes there are no children being cared for in the facilities.
Shirley has built his YouTube following by posting “anti-immigrant” clips, according to The Intercept_, and is calling for investigation into Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, running mate in 2024 to presidential candidate Kamala Harris. One of the facilities covered in his video, Nokomis Day Care Center in Minneapolis, was burgled early Wednesday morning, its manager, Nasrulah Mohamed, told Fox News America Reports on Wednesday.
•••
Trump v. Boebert? – Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) took to X-Twitter to strike back at President Trump for the first veto of his second term Tuesday, December 30, with which he blocked a “long-awaited” lower Arkansas Valley project to deliver clean water to approximately 50,000 residents of Southeast Colorado, according to Colorado Politics. Trump said the state, and not the federal government, should pay for the project.
Boebert, who has been as staunch a Trump-MAGA supporter as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), said in her social post that Trump vetoed a “non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people, many of whom voted for Trump in all three elections.”
Boebert hinted that Trump’s veto was political retaliation for her support of the discharge petition that forced the House to vote on releasing the Epstein Files.
The veto also is seen as retaliation for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis to release former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters from prison, where she serves a nine-year sentence for tampering with election equipment in 2020. Colorado is a politically split state, leaning red east of the Rocky Mountains and leaning blue west of them.
Trump also has announced he will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
•••
Smith ‘Secrets’ Revealed – Ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith’s December 17 deposition before the House Judiciary Committee was held behind closed doors, but the committee released a 255-page transcript on New Year’s Eve, leaving Smith, who investigated President Trump’s part in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol and his absconding classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after his first term, to explain the work he was able to complete.
It began with the explanation that Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) “requested this deposition as part of the committee’s oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department and its misuse of Federal law enforcement resources for partisan political purposes.”
OK then.
“I was taught as a young prosecutor to follow the facts and the law, and to do so without fear or favor, to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons,” Smith began. “For nearly three decades I have been a career prosecutor. I have served during both Republican and Democratic administrations and I’ve been guided by those principles in every role I’ve held. I continued to honor those principles when I was appointed to serve as special counsel in November of 2022.
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.
“Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
•••
Get Off Our Lawn – The White House on December 16 issued Proclamation 10949 to fully restrict entry of nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Proclamation 10949 partially restricts or limits entry of nationals from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
________________________________________________
NGOs Out of Gaza – Israel’s ministry of diaspora affairs Tuesday told 37 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) they would have to cease operations in Gaza within 60 days unless they meet stringent new regulations, including disclosing personal details of their staffs. This is ostensibly to prevent NGOs from employing staff with connections to extremist organizations and to ensure Hamas does not exploit international aid, though the Association of International Development Agencies, which represents more than 100 NGOs operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank already vets its staff there “strenuously,” its executive director, Athena Rayburn, told The Guardian.
“We have such strong measures in place already and have proposed alternatives to the Israeli authorities that would meet the requirements, and they have refused,” Rayburn told the newspaper.
Meanwhile … Israel has become the first country to recognize Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia, as an independent nation, the right move “for all the wrong reasons,” while continuing to refuse recognition of Palestine, according to analysis by Zvi Bár el of Haaretz. Somaliland leans toward democratic rule and is one of the most stable entities on the Horn of Africa, Bár el writes, but Israel is more interested in its economically strategic location on the Gulf of Aden, the maritime route linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
///
Another Prize for Trump – First there was the newly invented FIFA Peace Prize as consolation for the Nobel Committee’s snub of our president. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel Prize would go to a non-Israeli for the first time ever: President Trump.
Netanyahu’s announcement came in a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida (above) after the PM and the president held talks about moving the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords on to Phase 2, despite lingering issues with the Phase 1 ceasefire. To wit; Hamas has not given up arms, nor has it handed over the remains of its last hostage, Ran Gvili, for burial in Israel. Nor has the Israeli Defense Force ceased missile attacks on Gaza, nor has it allowed the level of food, aid and supplies into Gaza as proscribed by Phase 1.
For its part, Hamas says it cannot locate Gvili’s remains because those who know where it is are dead.
That did not keep Netanyahu from praising Trump at the beginning of their press conference.
“I think we have a partnership, if I can quote you, second to none, I think it has allowed us to do enormous things,” Netanyahu said.
Trump issued a non-binding statement afterward that says the Abraham Accords would be expanded to more countries – this means Saudi Arabia – at an undefined point in the future, Haaretz reports.
“At some point, they’ll sign the Abraham Accords,” Trump said.
The president went on to say that if Hamas fails to disarm as Phase 1 requires, “It would be very, very bad for them.”
He also warned of a potential Israeli strike against a Hezbollah stronghold. They are “behaving badly, so that will probably happen.”
Trump also warned of another strike on Iran aimed at its allegedly revived nuclear weapons program (which was to have been obliterated by the last US strike on the country during the Trump administration).
“If it’s confirmed, they know the consequences,” Trump said, “and the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time.”
Trump did not directly address the issue of voluntary exile of Gazans to a third country, nor did he say anything about reports of violence by far-right Israeli activists in Palestinian villages on the West Bank, Haaretz notes.
Thus stands the art of Phase 1 of the Abraham Accords peace deal.
Netanyahu remains in Florida for the rest of the week, along with his wife and son, and minimal press access, Haaretz reports, in what “appears to be a vacation in disguise.”
•••
Meanwhile, in Venezuela – The CIA hit a port in Venezuela purportedly used for shipping narcotics, with a drone strike last week, CNN reports, citing two unnamed sources. There were no casualties nor injuries, as nobody was on the dock at the time.
According to CNN’s Monday scoop, US Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support, underscoring their continued involvement in the Trump administration’s apparent efforts to remove Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro. Spokesperson Allie Weiskopf denied Special Operations Force involvement.
On WABC radio last Friday, President Trump told station owner and major Republican donor John Catsmatidis US forces took out a “big facility” in Venezuela.
“We just knocked out – I don’t know if you read or you saw – they have a big plant, on a big facility, where ships come from, two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump said.
•••
Election Denier – The Virginia man charged with planting pipe bombs at both the Republican and Democratic party headquarters near the Capitol on January 5, 2021, Brian J. Cole Jr., told the FBI he needed to “speak up” when he began to suspect the 2020 presidential election that President Trump and many of his supporters continue to claim was stolen from him, had been “tampered with.” The apparent motive for planting the pipe bombs was revealed in papers filed by the Justice Department in federal court in Washington, The New York Times reports. – Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa