FRI 12/17/21
•With restrictive abortion laws in Mississippi and Texas threatening to overturn Roe v. Wade,the FDA has eliminated key restrictions on abortion pills,WaPoreports. The pills now can be prescribed via telehealth consultation and mailed to the patients, but some states already ban sending and mailing the pills.
•’Trump’s Coup Must be Stopped’ posts in this space Friday afternoon, with comments from our contributing pundits in the left and right columns. To comment on this debate, please emaileditors@thehustings.news or click the “comments” button.
Build Back Later – The inevitable delay of President Biden’s $2.2-trillion social safety net, climate change and tax bill, Build Back Better, was finally confirmed Thursday after the Senate parliamentarian ruled the bill could not contain a section granting legal status for undocumented immigrants, The New York Times reports.
Work to pass BBB as a budget reconciliation package, which would require only the 51 votes of the Senate’s Democratic majority including Vice President Kamala Harris, will continue “over the days and weeks ahead,” Biden said Thursday, thus releasing the chamber for their holiday recess. “We will – we must – get Build Back Better passed, even in the face of Republican opposition.”
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), who has been working for years to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens, said “we’re not going to stop fighting for them.”
About that pricetag: No, the $2.2-trillion noted in the lead sentence is not inflation, exactly. The Congressional Budget Office last week “scored” BBB at that cost over its 10 years, but not including tax offsets, which is one of the issues over which Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) have been negotiating in earnest for weeks.
The figure we’ve used up to release of the CBO report is $1.75 trillion, including the tax offsets. Manchin’s own upper limit has been $1.5 trillion.
Note: The failure of the Senate to pass BBB this year became inevitable when Biden’s $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed earlier this fall. Now the pressure seems to be relieved a bit, and Democrats now can use the infrastructure bill as a weapon against Republican challengers fighting to regain control of the House and Senate next November.
•••
Trump Has Far Less GOP Support in the Senate, Report Says – Former President Donald J. Trump continues to attack Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for failing to join in on the “Big Lie” about the November 2020 presidential election, but the minority leader’s caucus is having none of it, according to a report in Politico.
“How this guy can stay as Leader is beyond comprehension,” Trump wrote Thursday. “This is coming not only from me, but from virtually everyone in the Republican Party. He is a disaster and should be replaced as ‘Leader’ ASAP.”
Trump’s efforts to “depose the Senate minority leader has resulted in firm pledges from just two Republican candidates, and no senators,” according to Politico, “and it has failed to turn up a formidable challenger to run against McConnell.”
Trump reportedly has the support of Fox News, including Tucker Carlson, who last week announced he would be regularly highlighting “problems” with McConnell, and called him an “instrument of the left.”
Note: Contrast this with House Republicans, where Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is acceding to Trump acolytes like Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Lauren Boebert, of Colorado as McCarthy tries to maintain position as minority leader ahead of becoming House speaker after next November’s mid-terms.
•••
Federal Judge Foils Sackers’ Escape – Legal releases shielding the Sackler family from civil opioid lawsuits are not permitted under the bankruptcy code, federal judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York, ruled late Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal. Her ruling ices the Perdue Pharma Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan that would have protected the family that has controlled the company.
Prior to filing for bankruptcy, Perdue Pharma distributed more than $10 billion to key members of the Sackler family and set aside $4.5 billion to be distributed directly from the company to states with opioid addiction claims. The Sackler family thought their funds would be shielded from the lawsuits filed against the company.
Court appeals by Perdue Pharma, the Sackler family and groups representing opioid victims are expected, but the judge’s ruling could also affect other U.S. companies seeking to protect majority shareholders with Chapter 11.
•••
Note With Impending News -- In February 2020, in a courtroom in London where extradition hearings were underway, Julian Assange’s lawyer reportedly told the court that then-president Donald Trump would offer the WikiLeaks founder a pardon if, upon return to the U.S., he would agree to say that Russia was not involved in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election.
This is the same ex-president who said, during the 2016, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to those allegedly on a missing server containing Hillary Clinton emails.
So let’s see: He was going to pardon someone who is charged with disclosing national defense information and he reached out to a national adversary.
Nothing like Making America Great Again through such methods.
In a piece earlier this week on MSNBC.com about a ruling from a U.K. Court that will allow Assange’s extradition to face charges in the U.S., Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director for counterintelligence for the FBI, posits that it is possible that the Justice Department could cut a deal with Assange to obtain his testimony.
Figliuzzi writes:
‘When questioned by Mueller’s investigators, Trump denied knowing anything about the Russian–WikiLeaks connection. At least 30 times in response to Mueller’s questions, he said he either had “no recollection” or he “didn’t know.” But if he was lying to Mueller about his knowledge of any role WikiLeaks or Russia had in assisting his campaign, then he was lying to federal agents and committing a felony. Trump’s lies would also have obstructed the special counsel investigation.’
Remember “WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks!”? Maybe if Assange flips that affection will change.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THU 12/16/21
•The White House today will announce a plan to recruit more commercial truck drivers to help alleviate the supply chain bottleneck, WaPo reports. The American Trucking Association says the U.S. is 80,000 truckers short of what is needed. The Biden administration plans to help state departments of motor vehicles issue more commercial licenses, increase apprenticeships and recruit military veterans to drive trucks.
•Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal charges that he violated George Floyd’s rights, and the rights of a 14-year-old in a separate case as part of a plea deal in which he will serve 25 years for the civil rights charges concurrently with his murder conviction (WaPo).
Expecting BBB Before Christmas Wouldn’t be Prudent – Two meetings between Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) and President Biden over the $1.75-trillion Build Back Better social safety net plan “have gone poorly” according to Punchbowl News and now, finally, despite expiration of the Child Tax Credit, it’s clear there will be no vote before the end of the year. Last night Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) filed cloture to move on 22 stalled Biden administration nominations including Rahm Emanuel – former Chicago mayor and Obama White House chief of staff – for ambassador to Japan and former career Foreign Service officer Nicholas Burns for ambassador to China, with plans to fast-track their confirmations through the weekend.
“Although Schumer has been hesitant to admit it publicly, the Senate wasn’t ever likely to pass BBB before Christmas,” Punchbowl News says. That conclusion had become apparent way back when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had to ultimately separate the bipartisan infrastructure bill from BBB in September to get the infrastructure bill passed.
Schumer is reportedly working on a deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to push through the 22 Biden nominees over the next few days. The issue is a “blockade” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that has “left dozens of President Biden’s State Department nominees in limbo,” according to The Hill.
Note: Child Tax Credit backers are looking for workarounds “if” the BBB stalls, says Roll Call. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is working on presenting a legislative fix before Congress leaves Washington for the holiday recess.
•••
Inflation is Not ‘Transitory’ Anymore – If Build Back Better by end-of-2021 needed one more stake in its heart, it was the Federal Reserve’s new policy signaled yesterday after a two-day meeting that it will wind down bond-buying more quickly next year.
The Fed yesterday signaled it will raise rates by a quarter-point in each of three rate increases after it accelerates tapering of the bond-buying program, The Wall Street Journal reports. As recently as September, Fed officials indicated they would not need to increase rates until 2023, but Chairman Jerome Powell has removed the word “transitory” in describing pandemic-era inflation, which reached the annual rate of 6.8% last month, according to the Commerce Department.
“Transitory” inflation was tied to supply-demand imbalance caused by the pandemic’s supply chain bottlenecks. Now the Fed clearly expects high inflation – generally considered more than 2% annually by most economists – to be a chronic problem as the supply chains open up. Elsewhere in The Wall Street Journal there are stories of those bottlenecks beginning to ease despite the tenacious grip of the omicron variant of COVID-19, of big banking projecting higher profits next year as they raise interest rates, and of Wall Street investors welcoming the results of the two-day Fed meeting with bullishness.
Note: The irony nobody is talking about is that inflation was considered too low after economic recovery of The Great Recession, which led to a 0% rate pushed on the Fed by the Trump administration.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics
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WED 12/15/21
•The death toll from COVID-19 has breached another sad milestone. The Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center says U.S. deaths have reached 800,473. The carillons at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., will ring 800 times tonight. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now predicts there could be a surge of infections in January, WaPo says.
•The House of Representatives voted 221-209, along party lines, to send the $2.5 trillion debt-ceiling bill to President Biden’s desk in time to avoid a federal government shutdown. The issue now puts the government debt in good standing until 2023, when the post-midterm Congress must again deal with it.
•The child tax credit expires today unless Congress grants an extension, or the Senate quickly passes President Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan, WaPo says. The latter is unlikely, of course, before the end of the year.
Disappointing November Retail Sales – November’s retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% to $639.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday morning. The modest increase compares with a 1.8% increase in October retail sales, to $638.2 billion, which indicates consumers started their Christmas shopping earlier than usual.
House Votes to Hold Meadows in Contempt of Congress – The House voted 222-208 to hold former President Trump’s last of four chiefs of staff and author of the recent book, Chief of Chiefs, Mark Meadows, in contempt of Congress over his refusal to appear before the select committee investigating 1/6. Meadows rescinded an earlier agreement to appear after an apparent Trump backlash against his book.
Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), the only two Republican members of the select committee were the only two Republicans to vote with 220 Democrats in favor of the contempt charges, Roll Call reports. It is now up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Meadows, who has countered with a lawsuit against the select committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“He’s willing to talk about it in his book,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of nine members of the select committee said. “He’s willing to talk about it in public, but he is unwilling to undergo the questioning of our committee despite having been subpoenaed to do so in deposition.”
“He tried to cooperate, but the select committee didn’t care,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). There’s your point-counterpoint on Meadows, who claims executive privilege, as Trump has always expected of witnesses to the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Note: Thanks largely to his book and his lawsuit, Meadows’ contempt of Congress charges seem to be overshadowing Steve Bannon’s. The select committee already has a lot of Meadows’ correspondence, but still doesn’t have his 38-page, January 5 PowerPoint laying out Trump’s bid for turning around the presidential election. This contempt case could end up at the Supreme Court, where the loyalty of Trump’s three justice appointees – who late last year ruled against him on “election fraud” claims – could be tested.
Bonus note: Politico reminds us that the two GOP votes to charge Meadows with contempt in the House is seven Republicans fewer than those who voted for contempt of Congress charges against Bannon.
•••
Hannity and Ingraham Explain it All – From Politico, which appears to have given up on trying to watch Fox News, as its piece on “personalities” Sean Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s explanations of their January 6 texts to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, directs to CNN’s coverage …
Hannity: I have always been consistent on January 6, and on all riots. All riots are bad … ALL OF THEM. And, on this program, we strongly condemn the riots of January 6 …
Ingraham: Both publicly and privately, I’ve said what I believe. That the breach on the Capitol on January 6 was a terrible thing. Crimes were committed, some people were unfairly hounded, and persecuted and prosecuted, but it was NOT an insurrection.
Note: It was an insurrection.
•••
About Abortion — As the abortion issue continues to roil the courts — even though Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Roe v. Wadewas stare decisis, until he didn’t — a Morning Consult survey shows that getting an abortion in the U.S. isn’t as easy as one might think. The survey, taken among 2,200 adults, shows that only 30% say it is “easy” to access abortion care in their area. Not entirely surprising, while 35% of men think it is easy, only 25% of women do.
Note: Requiring licensed physicians perform abortions is one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on by 76% and 70%, respectively. One might argue that is what abortion rights activists want to have occur, rather than laws that will put women at the mercy of someone who hasn’t made it through the front door of a medical school.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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TUE 12/14/21
•Read “Dereliction of Duty,” Gary S. Vasilash’s in-depth News & Note on House of Representatives’ Select Committee Vice-Chairwoman Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) reading of texts begging Mark Meadows to call off Capitol insurrectionists, January 6. Go to https://thehustings.substack.com.
•Antony Blinken began his first tour of Southeast Asia as U.S. secretary of state today, beginning with Indonesia. The tour is a strategic counterpoint to China’s economic expansion in the region.
Meadows’ Contempt – The select committee on the January 6 Capitol insurrection voted 9-0 to press contempt of Congress charges against President Trump’s fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Roll Call reports. Today, the full House will vote to pass the charges on to the Justice Department for consideration. Meadows failed to show up for his deposition last week Wednesday, the day after his book on his year or so in the Trump White House, Chief of Chiefs, went on sale just in time for Christmas.
On November 26, Meadows provided documents from his personal email account and privilege log, according to the Roll Callreport, but withheld hundreds of other documents, under the “executive privilege” claim. Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger III has countered the committee’s efforts with a suit against the panel and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), restating the executive privilege claims. The committee is especially eager to obtain a.) an email about appointing alternate electors as part of a “direct and collateral attack” after the presidential election, and b.) a January 5 e-mail of a 38-page Power Point whose title alone could serve as evidence; “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference and Options for 6JAN” that Meadows & Co. apparently wanted to present “on the Hill.”
Oh, the Irony: Select committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) Monday brought up Meadows’ seven years as a Republican congressman from North Carolina, noting he briefly held the title of ranking member of the House Oversight & Reform Committee.
“It’s not hard to locate records of his time in the House and find a Mr. Meadows full of indignation because, at the time, a prior administration wasn’t co-operating with a congressional investigation to his satisfaction. Whatever legacy he thought he left in the House, this is his legacy now. His former colleagues singling him out for criminal prosecution because he wouldn’t answer questions about what he knows about a brutal attack on our democracy. That is his legacy.”
(That was about Benghazi and Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.)
Fox and Friends: The committee’s vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who with Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois are the only Republicans on the nine-member panel, and likely to be two of only a handful of Republicans who vote with the Democrats in sending contempt charges to the Justice Department, read urgent texts sent to Meadows January 6 from Fox News “personalities.”
From Laura Ingraham: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
From Sean Hannity: “Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol?”
•••
Bye, Bye 0% Fed Interest Rate – Federal Reserve officials meet Tuesday and Wednesday to tackle the high inflation rate, currently running 6.8% annually in the U.S. amid wild supply and demand shifts related to the coronavirus pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reports. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell already has scrubbed the word “transitory” from his vocabulary, when describing the high inflation that is well above the target rate of 2%.
From this two-day meeting, the Fed is expected to accelerate its “tapering” policy – which is a winddown of buying government bonds used to stimulate the economy. WSJ suggests the Fed will move to complete this tapering to March 2022 from the previous target of June. This completion will open the Fed to raising the Prime Rate from the current level of 0%.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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MON 12/13/21
•Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) meets with President Biden today to discuss the $1.75-trillion Build Back Better program and whether the Senate might pass it this year, according to Punchbowl News. Manchin is scheduled to meet with moderate Democrats Tuesday with hopes he can be convinced to carve out a special filibuster rule to pass voting rights legislation.
Next Up on Contempt of Congress: Mark Meadows – The House has scheduled 7 p.m. Monday to consider contempt of Congress charges against Donald J. Trump’s last of four chiefs of staff, Mark Meadows, after he has flip-flopped on whether to testify before the Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson’s (D-MS) is seeking the contempt charges because he wants to ask Meadows about a trove of communications from the chief of staff regarding the insurrection, including text messages offering guidance to a “Stop the Steal” rally organizer, and an email saying the National Guard would be present to “protect pro Trump people,” according to The Hill.
Last Friday, the House issued subpoenas to former Trump aides Robert “Bobby” Peede Jr., and Max Miller, whom the committee says met with Trump on January 4 to talk about the upcoming rally on the Ellipse to support the lame-duck president’s stolen election claims and to discuss people he had wanted to speak at the gathering, according to Roll Call. [Miller is the Trump-endorsed candidate for a House seat from Ohio, whose primary candidacy has been derailed by allegations he physically abused his former partner, Stephanie Grisham, another Trump aide. Someday, this will make either a Netflix movie or a Hallmark movie, depending on Trump’s political success going forward.]
Former Trump campaign official Katrina Pierson also was present at that meeting and was issued a subpoena last September. She is also a candidate for an Ohio seat in the U.S. House.
•••
About that CBO Report – Making the $1.75-trillion Build Back Better safety net programs -- in particular the Child Tax Credit -- permanent will add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported Friday, Roll Call says. Conversely, let the Child Tax Credit expire in one year, as in the version of the bill passed by the House and awaiting Senate approval, and the program costs $231 billion over 10 years.
Overall cost of the House bill is about $2.2 trillion before offsets, CBO says.
“I’m urging the Democratic Party to stop the madness,” said South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, who requested the CBO report with his House counterpart, Jason Smith, of Missouri.
Note: Democrats promote the child tax credit as one of the centerpieces of the BBB, making it unlikely they would let it expire in a year if or when the package becomes law.
•••
Person of the Year – Time magazine has named Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk its 2021 Person of the Year, calling him: “Visionary. Iconoclast. Troll.” He is also one of the richest people in the world, and in its Sunday Business section The New York Times describes Musk’s aversion to charitable donations, at least in any conventional way: In a “public spat with the director of the World Food Programme on Twitter,” Musk announced: “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.”
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics
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FRI 12/10/21
•President Biden attends a private funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., today, for his longtime Senate colleague, Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas.
•WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appears bound for extradition to the U.S. after the High Court of London overturned a lower court ruling that his mental health was too fragile for the criminal justice system (AP). The U.S. extradition request has been sent to Britain’s interior minister for review.
No Build Back Better This Year – The Consumer Price Index rose 0.8% in November, for an annual rate of 6.8%, a number that ought to put the kabosh on the Senate moving forward the White House’s $1.75-trillion Build Back Better social infrastructure program at least for the remainder of the year. As in October, when the CPI rose 0.9%, for a 6.2% annual rate, gasoline, shelter, food and used cars and trucks led the high inflation rate, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its monthly report. Energy was up 3.5%, the gas index was up 6.1%, food was up 0.7% and food at home was up 0.8%.
Note: The White House may take just a bit of comfort with the fact that the November CPI “was the fastest pace since 1982,” according to The Wall Street Journal … President Ronald Reagan’s second full year in office.
•••
Or, Does it Still Have a Chance? – Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) still hopes to get a vote on BBB before the Senate flies out of town for the holiday recess. Punchbowl News Friday outlines the Will it? Won’t it? arguments, and it’s worth a read, but the top reason for why it won’t get a vote is Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV), and if that’s not convincing enough, the website notes Senate Democrats haven’t written the bill, yet.
•••
Beat the Devil – New York State Attorney General Letitia James has suspended her campaign for governor and instead will run for re-election next November, meanwhile concentrating on pushing to depose ex-President Trump in January for the civil fraud investigation of the Trump Organization. This scoopage comes courtesy The Washington Post.
The investigation is looking into whether the Trump Organization valued property it has held at low rates for tax purposes and at much-higher rates for banking and investment purposes.
Note to Senate Democrats: This is what it takes to get business done by January – spend less time worrying about upcoming elections.
Note to Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon: Politico portrays the New York AG’s priorities as part of Trump’s bad day Thursday. A federal court of appeals rejected the ex-president’s claims of executive privilege to block the National Archives from turning over documents from his White House to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump could still appeal to the Supreme Court for an emergency ruling.
•••
Schiff to House Republicans: Stop Fearing The Donald – The House Thursday passed along party lines Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) Protect Our Democracy Act to place new limits on executive branch power and subject presidential candidates to more disclosure (looking at you, Trump tax returns). Just one Republican joined all Democrats in its passage, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois (yes, he’s retiring next year).
The bill is why it’s time for Democrats to “abandon their obsession with Donald Trump,” Rep. James R. Comer (R-KY), retorted in opposing the legislation, according to Roll Call’s report. Comer called it “bad policy that diminishes the power of the executive branch.”
Schiff said Republicans should support the bill, but they “live in utter fear” of ex-President Trump.
Comer also warned of GOP retaliation after re-taking the House in next year’s mid-terms.
“I think that’s fair game. And I can promise the American people that very soon there will be this type of oversight for the Biden administration and the president’s son, Hunter,” he said.
Note: The Protect Our Democracy Act has no chance against a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics
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THU 12/9/21
•Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) and Jon Tester (D-MT) Thursday joined 50 Republicans to pass a resolution nullifying President Biden’s vaccine-or-test COVID-19 mandate for private employers. The resolution has a slim chance in the House of Representatives, where Republicans need the support of five Democrats for passage, Roll Call notes.
•The body of former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) lies in state in the Capitol today. Dole, a three-time presidential candidate and World War II army veteran who served the Senate from 1969-1996 died Sunday, age 98.
•The U.S. COVID-19 vaccination rate has breached 200 million people, or just over 60% of the population, WaPo reports. More good news is that last week, the average number of doses per day grew 35% over the previous week.
Biden Opens ‘First-Ever’ Summit for Democracy – President Biden announced a $424.4 million initiative to strengthen democracy globally Thursday in a teleconference summit attended by more than 100 national leaders, including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, NPR reports, but not Russia’s Vladimir Putin, nor China’s Xi Jinping. Establishment of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal is a “landmark set of policy and foreign assistance initiatives that build upon the U.S. Government’s significant, ongoing work to bolster democracy and defend human rights globally,” the White House says.
The initiative includes “up to” $424.4 million to:
•Support a free and independent media.
•Fight corruption.
•Bolster democratic reformers.
•Advance technology for democracy.
•Defend free and fair elections and political processes.
Note: Biden might want to allocate a portion of those funds to the U.S., in lieu of passage of any significant voting rights legislation by Congress.
•••
No U.S. Troops in Ukraine – President Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops to help Ukraine fight off a potential Russian invasion, following his teleconference with Vladimir Putin yesterday.
“It would depend upon what the rest of NATO countries wanted to do as well,” Biden told reporters, per Reuters. “But the idea that the United States is going to unilaterally use force to confront Russia invading Ukraine is not in the cards right now.”
The Kremlin denies plans for intervention, despite Russia’s 2014 annex of Ukraine’s Crimea region, and says the troop buildup along its neighbor’s border is “defensive” in nature.
•••
McConnell to Raise Debt Limit – Yes, we know he is minority leader, but Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will deliver the 10 Republican votes Democrats need to raise the debt limit in a “contentious” cloture vote today. McConnell negotiated with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has the title “majority leader” on his business cards, at least, an agreement for a one-time measure allowing Democrats to avoid filibuster and raise the debt limit by a simple majority vote, as Punchbowl News reports.
The whip list of Republican senators who will vote for cloture consists of the usual suspects, according to Punchbowl News: John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin has given Congress to next Wednesday before the federal government begins defaulting on debt.
•••
About Mark Meadows’ Book – Mark Meadows has a book coming out about his time as ex-President Trump’s chief of staff. He obviously expected Trump to like what he had to say, including a passage first reported by The Guardian in which Meadows recalled how his boss discovered he had COVID-19 just before leaving for his first debate against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in Cleveland in September 2020.
Perhaps Meadows wanted to become Trump’s 2024 running mate?
Whatever, doesn’t matter. On Wednesday Meadows’ attorney filed suit against the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, after Meadows rescinded his agreement to testify before the panel. The committee has asked the Justice Department to file contempt of Congress charges against Meadows (who, by the way, represented North Carolina’s 11thDistrict in the House from 2013 to 2020) when he failed to show up for testimony yesterday.
Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) spent some time on CNN yesterday describing how Meadows’ reclamation of executive privilege does not matter, because his upcoming book already has made said executive privilege claims moot.
Note: As everybody from former “fixer” Michael Cohen to presumptive 2024 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie knows, Trump expects absolute loyalty from his sycophants but will drop reciprocating loyalty when he feels any slight, and yet it appears Meadows will continue to grovel to his former boss for as long as he can.
•••
Primary Coloring Book – This bit of Capitol Hill gossip that has implications for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) run for House speaker after next year’s midterms comes from Politico. It seems former Rep. Renee Ellmers tweeted Wednesday that she is running in the GOP primary for North Carolina’s 4th District again next year, which she had lost in her party’s 2016 primary after allegations she had an affair with McCarthy.
Both Ellmers and McCarthy denied the allegations, which are thought to have also contributed to McCarthy’s loss in his bid for speaker in January 2017. Then-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was elected speaker, instead.
Politico says that McCarthy met Wednesday with Bo Hines, a former football player and Trump favorite who plans to run for North Carolina’s 7th District seat, but now is considering running in the 4th instead.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods