THU 11/11/21
•The Tomb of the Unknowns marks its 100th anniversary at Arlington National Cemetery and is open to the public for the first time in 96 years, for just two days, NPR says.
•President Biden will sign the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill Monday, The Hill reports.
•A federal judge has approved a $626 million settlement of civil claims regarding the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Nearly 80% of the settlement is for children, but it does not settle all lawsuits over lead contamination in the city’s water, Michigan Public Radio reports.
•Scroll down to read a new comment in the right column regarding our ongoing debate, ‘Was January 6 a ‘Dress Rehearsal’?” It’s not too late to add your own comments to the left or right columns – email us at editors@thehustings.news.
Insurrection vs. Inflation – District Judge Tanya Chutkan refused to delay the Friday deadline for the National Archives to turn over Trump White House documents to the January 6 House select committee, while the former president appeals the judge’s decision of earlier in the week (The Hill). Meanwhile, President Biden spoke of easing up supply shipping bottlenecks with the passage of his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, after the Labor Department yesterday released news of the highest annual Consumer Price Index in 30 years.
What do these two issues have to do with each other?
If Donald J. Trump’s attorneys can’t get the Supreme Court to stay the district judge’s decision before the White House documents are turned over to Rep. Bennie Thompson’s, D-MS, committee tomorrow, much will be revealed about the president and his advisers’ involvement in the Capitol insurrection.
If, on the other hand, Trump manages more delay, the select committee will get stalled probably well into 2022. Next year, coincidentally, is when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin expects inflation to come down to normal levels while the White House holds out high hopes that bipartisan infrastructure will help fix the supply chain bottleneck and all those container ships stacked up off U.S. coasts.
Known knowns: Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, is highly unlikely to let the $1.8 trillion Build Back Better social safety net plan go anywhere, especially after the dire CPI numbers.
Known unknowns: The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the safety net bill next week. But it’s unlikely to advance, at least in the Senate, until next year if at all, depending on how the inflation rate plays out in coming months. By the time that happens, the House select committee either will, or will not, have scrutinized Trump’s White House papers.
Unknown unknowns: House Republicans who support Trump want to strip the 13 moderate House Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill of their committee assignments, even though the bill has widespread support across the country, as it fixes roads and bridges – and ports – while boosting employment levels. The Trumpists do not want to hand Biden any victories, especially as his poll numbers plummet -- a USA Today/Morning Consult poll released yesterday says Biden’s approval rating has dropped to a Trump-like low of 38%.
They also want to root out moderate House Republicans (many of whom, including Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, one of only two GOP members on the 1/6 committee, have already announced they will not run for re-election) on their way to a much-expected route of Democrats in next November’s mid-terms.
Known known II: If the 1/6 select committee struggles next year with Trump’s stall tactics, and the inflation rate and struggling economy hands the GOP a turnover of the House, its new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, will dismantle the committee.
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House Dems Hope to Censure Gosar — A group of House Democrats will offer a resolution to censure Paul Gosar, R-AZ, which, if accepted, would have the consequence of Gosar having to stand in the well of the House as the censure is read out by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. Gosar posted “an edited video on social media depicting himself as murdering Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden,” according to Punchbowl News.
Note: Gosar is 62 and generally considered to be a grown-up. An edited anime with one of his colleagues being killed and the president of the United States being attacked is something that one might imagine a pimply-faced teen to post. Yes, this is what it comes to in the political entity formerly known as the “Grand Old Party.” There is nothing grand about it. Stupid, perhaps. Incidentally: Gosar’s former career was as a dentist. The mind boggles.
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There’s Always Chris – Former New Jersey governor, “friend” of Donald J. Trump, and likely 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie told the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas last weekend that it’s time for the GOP to focus on future fights rather than rehash the 2020 election, Axios reports in a preview of an exclusive interview for an upcoming HBO show.
Predictably, Trump put out a statement that Christie “was just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past.” Christie left New Jersey with a record-low approval rating of just 9%, Trump continued, without explaining why he would have relied on such a disliked politician for his 2016 campaign.
Note: Good news for never-Trump Republicans, Democrats and other defenders of democracy is that Christie’s almost inevitable ’24 run will make it hard for Trump to hold on to all but his most loyal acolytes over the next three years.
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Obituary: F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s Last Apartheid President – The last president of South Africa’s Apartheid regime, F.W. de Klerk, has died after battling cancer at his home near Cape Town Thursday, age 85. De Klerk served as South Africa’s president from 1989 to 1994, when he lost re-election to the formerly imprisoned African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela. The two men shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. While de Klerk apologized for Apartheid, the question remains of whether he sufficiently rejected its moral injustice.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2021
•Scroll down for our debate on whether the January 6 Capitol insurrection was a ‘dress rehearsal’ for Donald J. Trump’s return in 2024. Submit your comments to editors@thehustings.news.
Inflation Rate Hits 30-year High – Consumer Price Index was up 6.2% for the last 12 months, the highest annual inflation rate since 1991, the U.S. Labor Department reported Wednesday. The CPI rose 0.9% in October, versus 0.4% in September. The Labor Department cited price increases in a wide array of consumer goods, though energy, shelter, food, used and new cars and trucks “were among the larger contributors.”
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Judge Rejects Trump’s Lawsuit to Block 1/6 Papers – Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan has denied former President Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the National Archives’ release of documents related to the January 6 Capitol insurrection to the House Select Committee investigating the riot. In her 39-page ruling, the judge said there is a public interest in releasing the documents (The Hill).
“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not president,” Chutkan said.
Note: While the House Select Committee hopes to procure the documents as early as this Friday, Trump’s attorneys have promised to appeal, and the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court. If Trump’s lawyers can draw out the case well into 2022, a long delay could come after the midterm elections, when Republicans expect to retake the House majority and a new speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, would likely dissolve the 1/6 investigation.
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Meanwhile, 1/6 Committee Subpoenas 10 More Trump Associates – The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection has issued 10 more subpoenas, to former Trump administration officials. They are, per The Wall Street Journal:
•Kayleigh McEnany: Trump White House press secretary.
•Stephen Miller: Senior advisor, and key advocate for administration’s immigration policy.
•Chris Liddell: Former White House deputy chief of staff.
•Nicholas Luna: Trump personal assistant (“luggage carrier”).
•John McEntee: Former White House personnel director.
•Ben Williamson: Trump assistant and senior advisor to ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
•Keith Kellogg: Ex-Vice President Pence’s security advisor.
•Cassidy Hutchinson: Special assistant to ex-President Trump for legislative affairs.
•Molly Michael: Special assistant to the ex-president, and former Oval Office operations co-ordinator.
•Kenneth Klukowski: Former senior council to ex-Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.
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Sununu Rejects Senate Run – Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has rejected pleas by GOP Senate leadership to run against Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-NH, in next year’s midterms. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, considered Sununu their best chance for retaking the chamber’s majority after November 2022, Politico notes.
Sununu is the younger brother of former Sen. John Sununu, who lost re-election to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in 2008. Shaheen, a former governor who lost her first run against John Sununu in 2002, became the first Democratic U.S. senator from New Hampshire since 1981 when she took the seat in 2009.
Note: The pols have it that Sununu finds it easier to be a Republican governor with a distant relationship to Donald J. Trump, like Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, than to potentially run against a hand-picked Trump candidate for the Republican Senate primary next year.
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Obituary: Max Cleland – Former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, D-GA, died Tuesday at the age of 79. As a U.S. Army captain who served during the Vietnam War, he lost both legs and an arm in a grenade accident in 1968. He served as administrator of the Veterans Administration under President Carter from 1977 to 1981, and ran for the Senate in 1996, where he served until January 2003. During his failed bid for a second term, Saxby Chambliss, his Republican opponent ran commercials claiming Cleland was “soft” on terrorism, picturing him side-by-side with a photo of Osama bin Laden. Republican Sens. John McCain, of Arizona and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska expressed their outrage at their party’s smear campaign at the time.
“I publicly stated that I wanted it stopped,” Hagel later said. “To question Max Cleland’s patriotism was just astounding to me. And these are from people who had never served our country in uniform.”
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash