Another ‘Too Good’ Jobs Report – Employers added 253,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy in April, the Labor Department reported Friday, lowering the unemployment rate to 3.4%. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated the new-jobs number would be 180,000, below an average of 345,000 jobs added per month on average from January through March, and low enough to raise the unemployment rate versus March by 0.1 point, to 3.6%.
Fed response?: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated that this week’s quarter-point increase in the interest rate could be the last amid signs the economy is cooling enough to lower inflation toward its 2% target. Now are we in for more interest rate increases?
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Ain’t Too Proud for Prison – A jury found four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including leader Enrique Tarrio, guilty of seditious conspiracy Thursday for their roles in supporting ex-President Trump’s “Big Lie” in the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. The verdicts in Washington, D.C. federal court are the last of the Justice Department’s conspiracy cases related to January 6, according to The Guardian (though DOJ’s probe of Trump’s involvement continues). A fifth Proud Boy, Dominic Pelzola, who smashed in a Capitol window, was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy, but was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding. Members of another far-right group participating in the Capitol Attack, the Oath Keepers, were convicted of seditious conspiracy last January.
Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland: “Evidence presented at trial details the extent of the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and the central role these defendants played setting into motion events of that day.”
And stand by: Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, has promised to pardon supporters charged with criminal offenses in connection with their participation in the January 6 Capitol attack if he wins the 2024 election.
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Is Feinstein Saving Clarence Thomas? – Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) says she will return to the Senate after she fully recovers from her case of the shingles. The Senate Judiciary Committee has been short of her vote necessary for a Democratic majority for much of the year and has been unable to approve many of President Biden’s judicial nominees.
More urgently, Democrats are unable to proceed with a new ethics reform bill aimed at the Supreme Court, according to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Axios reports.
Some prominent Democrats on the Hill, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called for Feinstein, who already has ruled out running for re-election next year, to retire now.
This comes as allegations of questionable ethics pile up on Justice Clarence Thomas. Earlier in the week, ProPublica reported that GOP megadoner Harlan Crow paid private school tuition potentially worth about $150,000, for Thomas’ grandnephew. On Friday, The Washington Post reported in an exclusive report citing documents it has received, that conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, head of the Judicial Education Project, arranged for Thomas’ wife, Ginni, to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work more than a decade ago, “specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork.”
Leo reportedly instructed GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25,000” and emphasized that the paperwork must have “no mention of Ginni, of course.”
Conservative backlash: Conservatives are warning these ethics attacks on Thomas are “meant to drive him off” SCOTUS, according to a Wednesday headline in The Washington Times, before WaPo’s latest story.
The Feinstein Effect: But Feinstein’s refusal to retire early has detracted from the allegations against Thomas, shifting some attention to Democrats’ infighting. If Feinstein were to retire and allow Durbin to name a replacement on Senate Judiciary in order to regain the majority necessary to review SCOTUS ethics, California Gov. Gavin Newsom would name Feinstein’s replacement. With the state’s primary for the 2024 elections about a year away, three Democratic representatives, Katie Holmes, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee have announced their candidacies.
Newsom promised in 2021 to name a Black woman to replace Feinstein if she retired mid-term, according to the Los Angeles Times. If the governor were to hold to this commitment, he would make Rep. Lee the incumbent and give her an advantage over Holmes and Schiff next year.
--TL
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THURSDAY 5/4/23
Fed Says ‘Not Quite Yet’ – The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter-point to the 5% to 5.25% range Wednesday for its 10th straight – and potentially last -- increase.
Ominously, the last time interest rates were this high was summer of 2007, per The New York Times.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell (above) said “a decision on a pause was not made today” adding that “we’ll approach that question in the June meeting.”
The Federal Open Market Committee issued a statement that in addition to persistent high interest rates, it will “take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial development.”
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Who’s Putin Who? – During a surprise visit to Helsinki, Finland President Volodymyr Zelinskyy denied Ukraine had anything to do with an alleged drone attack on Moscow’s Red Square, which the Kremlin called a terrorist attack and assassination attempt on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow,” Zelinskyy said Wednesday. “We are defending our villages and cities.”
Kremlin sez: It will “retaliate” when and where considered necessary.
BBC sez: Three Kremlin-provided videos show electronic radar assets shooting down one of the drones, per the BBC. Red Square below is getting set for Russia’s Victory Day celebration over the Nazis in World War II, which is held every May 9.
Was the attack staged as a pretext for a major Russian offensive in Ukraine for next Tuesday?
--TL
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WEDNESDAY 5/3/23
Senate Judiciary Holds Hearing on SCOTUS Ethics – But Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts “declined” an invitation to appear before the panel (per The Hill).
What Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) said: Scolded Roberts for “oblivious” response to “obvious” ethical conflicts by justices.
“The highest court in the land shouldn’t have the lowest ethical standards. That reality is driving a crisis in public confidence in the Supreme Court. The status quo must change.”
What ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said: That the hearing is part of a “concentrated effort to delegitimize this court and cherry-pick examples to make a point.”
“I think, here’s what you’re trying to do on the Democratic side. Remember when Sen. Schumer (D-NY) went to the court and started yelling at everybody in the court? Not everybody, just pretty much our folks.”
‘Cherry-picked’: After ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas received free private jet travel, yacht trips and lavish vacations from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, Politico reported Justice Neil Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the person who purchased his $1.8-million Colorado property – the head of a law firm with multiple cases before SCOTUS, and Business Insider reported that Chief Justice Roberts’ wife, Jane, has made more than $10 million over seven years as a headhunter recruiting and placing attorneys in law firms.
So far, no such reports on SCOTUS justices nominated by Democratic presidents.
--TL
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TUESDAY 5/2/23
May 9 for June 1 – President Biden will meet with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other top lawmakers May 9 to discuss the debt-ceiling limit, NPR reports. The White House meeting follows Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s warning Monday that the federal government could reach its limit earlier than previously calculated – possibly on June 1.
McCarthy passed a bill that would raise the ceiling in exchange for severe cuts to Biden’s budget agenda, including his hard-won Inflation Reduction Act. But the White House repeatedly has refused to negotiate over its spending programs in exchange for unrelated debt-ceiling relief.
McCarthy’s bill passed with no votes to spare, and now he must negotiate a bill “that can win support from House Republicans and President Biden,” The Hill says. And, oh yeah, it must pass the Democratic-controlled Senate as well.
We’re listening to her, now: The Hill quotes “McCarthy critic-turned-ally” Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) who said of the speaker’s task; “I’m sure it’s going to be tougher.”
Meanwhile: The underlying attitude from libertarian-leaning Republicans on the Hill seems to be that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling in time, the crashing economy will be blamed on the Biden White House. But it cannot be repeated too often that a federal default will crash the global economy, and no one will come out politically alive.
--TL
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This Week, Meanwhile
MAY DAY 2023
UPDATE: First Republic No More – JP Morgan Chase Bank purchased First Republic Bank over the weekend after California regulators shut it down, NPR reports. First Republic has been wobbling since the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March. Chase gets Republic’s approximately $92 billion in deposits, $173 billion of loans and approximately $30 billion in securities, according to Morning Edition.
First Republic's failure is the second-largest in U.S. banking history.
Chase paid about $10 billion to purchase Republic, and will receive about $50 billion in FDIC funding over five years to aid the purchase.
First Republic’s 84 branches in eight states were to open as usual Monday under new branding, according to NPR. CEO Jamie Dimon says Chase’s takeover will “minimize costs” to the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund to about $13 billion.
Fundamentally sound?: “The banking system remains sound and resilient, and Americans should feel confident in the safety of their deposits and the ability of the banking system to fulfill its essential function of providing credit to businesses and families,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said.
Fed, Regulate Thyself – If the spate of recent freight train derailments was not enough to raise the question of whether federal regulations and enforcement have grown too lax in recent decades, there is last Friday’s admission by the Federal Reserve that it had caught its regulators napping before the March 10 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Banking regulation supervisors did not fully appreciate SVB’s vulnerabilities, and when they did, failed to act sufficiently, Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, said in his report. The self-criticism signals a “broad push” to toughen rules on the banking industry, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A separate report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, also issued Friday, says it was slow to ramp up addressing issues it identified for Signature, a bank that failed two days after SVB, on March 12. A third report from the Government Accountability Office – also issued Friday – said regulators found problems at both SVB and Signature in recent years but did not ramp up supervisory actions in time.
On Friday, the Fed’s Barr called for restoring rules that apply to banks with more than $100 billion in assets and said regulators must re-evaluate how they treat deposits above the $250,000 limit insured by the FDIC. SVB and Signature both had a large amount of such deposits, the WSJ says.
Upshot: Republican presidents and congressional leaders have successfully been pushing back against what conservatives consider excessive federal regulation since the Reagan administration. As part of his return-to-the-New Deal agenda, President Biden has raised the issue of fixing lax federal regulation, especially after the high-profile freight train derailment in eastern Ohio. But the Fed’s report is likely to get more pushback than attention, particularly from Republicans, at least until the debt ceiling crisis is handled – we hope -- by early this summer.
What do you think?: Time for some regulatory crackdowns, or do you prefer a laissez-faire attitude toward the Fed’s report?
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Marcos Visits White House – President Biden hosts Philippines President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, Jr. Monday over growing concerns about the Chinese Navy’s harassment of Philippines vessels in the South China Sea, according to The Hill. The U.S. and Philippines conducted their largest war drills just last week, and air forces of the two countries were to hold Monday their first joint fighter jet training since 1990.
Before he left Manila Sunday, Marcos said he is “determined to forge an even stronger relationship with the United States in a wide range of areas that not only address the concerns of our times but also those that are critical to advancing our core interests.”
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Up on the Hill – The full Senate is in session Monday through Thursday of this week. The House of Representatives is out.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news