Monday, December 12, 2022

On Our "Virtual Route 66" This Week: On the Week That Was




 It has been quite a week, yet again, in our World.   The Iranian Revolution of 2022 continues to rage on as executions have begun by the Iranian Regime to try and frighten the population.    The US political scene was shaken by a switch by US Senator Kristen Synema to an independent.   Britney Griner, a US Basketball Player, held for 10 months in Russia, was released in a prisoner swap.   Arizona's Election continues to be in flux as the losing Republican candidate, Kari Lake, filed a lawsuit.   This is as Europe was shaken as two European Parliamentarians were arrested as part of the Qatar World Cup Corruption probe.    Europe's challenges continue as the UK is in the midst of strike action by nurses, emergency workers, postal workers and others.   This is as the war between Russia and Ukraine continues with no apparent end in sight.

Our team pulled together a curated assessment of the week that was with commentary from leading Media around the World, including The Financial Times, the Economist, crooked media, Politico and leading thinkers, including Heather Cox Richardson as the dash to 2023 begins in earnest:


 

BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- 23-year-old Andrew Hartzler dragging his aunt Rep. Vicky Rep. Hartzler (R-MO) for her hysterics on the House floor over the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act. Christmas in the Hartzler family is going to be interesting!

President Biden came to the White House facing so many large-scale problems in the U.S. that it left many of us wondering why anyone would want that job in the first place. Two years later…we’re asking the same question! 
 

  • Wasn’t that a nice little intro? I think it was pretty professional. Now let’s rip into Kysten Sinema. This fucking lady. The Arizona senator announced today that she will change her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, just days after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) won his hard-fought re-election campaign and brought Dems to a 51-49 majority in the upper chamber. You just couldn’t let anyone else have 10 minutes of attention, could you, Kyrsten? Sinema has voted with President Biden’s agenda 90 percent of the time, but boy has she made a big fucking show out of the remaining 10 percent. 
     

  • Statements from both Sinema’s office and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer confirmed that she asked to keep her committee assignments and will continue caucusing with Democrats, leaving the 51-49 majority mercifully intact. For now. She will essentially join Sens. Angus King (I-ME) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as the third independent in the chamber, but how she will vote issue to issue is as uncertain as ever. Sinema was swept into the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, when millions of people horrified by the Republican government worked tirelessly to impose a check on the Trump administration. What an unbelievable slap in the face this is to all of the organizers who worked themselves ragged to put someone they believed would be a champion of progressive values in office. 
     

  • And the point seems to be to undercut them once again. Changing party ID means Democrats can’t primary her, and raises the possibility that if Democrats recruit a candidate of their own, she will remain on the ballot as an independent, splitting the ticket and paving the way for Sen. Kari Lake (R-Hell). . Sinema has broken with Dems on some pretty key issues like voting rights, increasing the minimum wage (is she fucking serious) and the filibuster, and was even censured by the Arizona Democratic Party for her vote to preserve the latter. Now she’s essentially threatening to throw the seat to the GOP if Dems don’t coronate her despite all the betrayals.  Go to K Street and get a consulting job, since that’s what you so clearly want! This now puts the White House and the Senate leadership in the truly humiliating position of trying not to say anything too abrasive about Sinema, in the hopes that she will still cooperate with them when they need her.

Okay, enough about the *kookiest* senator Big Pharma money can buy, because ultimately, Biden has bigger problems to deal with in his next two years. 
 

  • Today, longtime Biden confidant and top State Department official Brian McKeon announced he will leave the administration due to family obligations, signaling what could be the first of several high-level departures across the government as Republicans take control of the House. Members of the rising House Republican majority have already promised spree investigations into everything from the military withdrawal from Afghanistan to immigration at the southern border to DOJ’s seizure of documents from Mar-a-Lago. Biden and McKeon have worked together for decades, and a larger problem of lack of institutional knowledge at the State Department already exists following decades of firings and funding cuts. 
     

  • Speaking of House investigations: the House January 6 Committee reportedly wants to refer at least four individuals to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, in addition to disgraced former president Donald Trump. The committee has not formally decided whom to refer, and for what crimes, but the four in question were all central to the coup-ing. There’s Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his legal attack dog John Eastman, his one-time personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and Trump-era DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. All four of these jabronis had a direct hand in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the perpetuation of voter fraud conspiracies. Although criminal referrals to DOJ would be largely symbolic, given how much evidence of criminal conduct is already public, they would nevertheless represent a powerful, bipartisan statement for the historical record. 


With slings and arrows coming from all directions, congressional Democrats need to hold the line and act with the certainty of the mandate they intend to hold the line against the fascism mounting in the GOP. The future of American democracy depends on it, but no pressure!

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock speaks during an election night watch party.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock speaks during an election night watch party on Tuesday, Dec. 6, in Atlanta. | John Bazemore/AP Photo

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DRIVING THE DAY

“I am Georgia. I am an example and an iteration of its history. Of its pain and its promise, of the brutality and the possibility.”

And just like that, a Democratic political star was born.

Over the past 30 months, RAPHAEL WARNOCK has won a Senate primary, got the most votes in two general elections and won two runoffs. On Tuesday night, he finally won a full six-year term in the United States Senate.

A lot has been said about how flawed a candidate that Warnock’s opponent, HERSCHEL WALKER, was. (A lot.) And so much of the conversation and coverage of Georgia’s election centered on what it would mean for the power of a current and a former president.

But Warnock’s three-point win Tuesday underscored his own talents and cemented the 53-year-old pastor as one of the nation’s most compelling and effective Democratic politicians.

His five-election streak in a changing but still conservative state should be recognized as an amazing political feat. Warnock has managed to combine a compelling biography, going from Savannah’s housing projects to MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s pulpit, with disciplined messaging, relentless organizing and a stunning capacity for small-dollar fundraising.

He has cobbled together a Biden-esque coalition ranging from hyped-up Democrats to moderate Republicans and independents. “I want all of Georgia to know, whether you voted for me or not, that every single day I am going to keep working for you,” he said late Tuesday. “I’m proud of the bipartisan work I’ve done and I’m going to do more.”

Warnock heads back to Capitol Hill with his political stock at a new high. While Georgia’s runoff system is uniquely exhausting and historically suspect , it has redounded to Warnock’s benefit: Saturation coverage of two consecutive runoffs has made him one of the most recognizable United States senators in the country.

He had the political world’s undivided attention last night as he delivered lines like this: “[My mother] grew up in the 1950s in Waycross, Ga., picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight, she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.” Warnock’s full speech

Walker concedes … 

“I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials," he said, adding: “There’s no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now, because we put up one heck of a fight.” Video

Top Democrats respond …

President JOE BIDEN: “Tonight Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and most importantly: sent a good man back to the Senate. Here’s to six more years.”

VP KAMALA HARRIS : “Georgia voters said they wanted a Senator who would fight for them—and made it a reality when they reelected @ReverendWarnock to the U.S. Senate. Congratulations, my friend.”

Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER: “Senator Warnock's well-earned victory is a victory for Georgia, and a victory for democracy and against MAGA Republican extremist policies.”

Chuck Schumer's Democratic Party-themed socks.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer shows off Democratic Party-themed socks during a press conference on Tuesday, Dec. 6. He said was wearing them in anticipation of a Democratic win in the Georgia senatorial runoff. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

 

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More takeaways … 

— Things aren’t improving for Trump. Yet another hand-picked Trump nominee has now lost, costing Republicans a golden chance to clog up Biden’s administration by flipping the Senate and putting an exclamation point on a disastrous rollout for Trump’s third presidential run. The result prompted more Republicans to speak out, though most continue to refrain from direct attacks on Trump.

“Should’ve been clear in the 2020 election and runoffs and even clearer when Kemp trounced his primary opponent earlier this year — Georgia has grown impervious to President Trump’s charms,” GOP strategist MATT WHITLOCK tweeted last night . “If he’s on a future ballot there I’d count the state in the blue column (again).”


Open in app or online

In October, prosecutors told a court they did not believe Trump had turned over all the documents with classified markings in his possession, and they were particularly concerned that he carried documents with him on flights between Mar-a-Lago and his properties in New York and New Jersey. On the advice of his lawyers, Trump hired a team to search for more documents, and they have found at least two more items marked classified and have turned them over to the FBI. 

A spokesperson for Trump said in a statement that Trump and his lawyers “continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice.”

Trump’s lawyers are doubling down on the idea that presidential immunity protects the former president from virtually anything he might have done in office, even “seeking to destroy our constitutional system.” Today, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall argued before the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the former president cannot be sued by police officers and members of Congress for inciting the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, that he is immune from lawsuits even if he had urged his followers to “burn Congress down.” 

Such an argument is fingernails down a chalkboard to anyone who knows anything at all about how the Framers of our Constitution thought about unchecked power. 

There is, though, ongoing congressional review of the Trump administration. Last night the chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, Ron Wyden (D-OR), and the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, asking for information in their “ongoing investigations into whether former Senior White House Adviser Jared Kushner’s financial conflicts of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade, and national security policies for his own financial gain.” 

The letter outlines the timing of the 2018 financial bailout of the badly leveraged Kushner property at 666 Fifth Avenue (now known as 660 Fifth Avenue) with more than $1 billion paid in advance from Qatar. Qatar had repeatedly refused to invest in the property, but after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a blockade on Qatar—after Kushner discussed isolating Qatar with them without informing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—Qatar suddenly threw in the necessary cash. Shortly after that, the Saudi and UAE governments lifted the blockade, with Kushner taking credit for brokering the agreement. 

Because of this case, and a number of others covered in the letter, the committees have asked the Defense Department to provide any correspondence it had with the Kushners during the Trump administration, or about the various dealings in which business and government appeared to overlap. They have asked for the information by January 13, 2023.

The ideas of the Framers on the nature of government was also in the news today thanks to arguments before the Supreme Court in the case of Moore v. Harper, a crucially important case about whether state legislatures have exclusive control of federal elections in their states, or if state courts can override voting laws they believe violate state laws or the state constitution. Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig, who sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in October called Moore v. Harper “the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.” 

The case comes from North Carolina, where the state supreme court in February declared that new congressional and state legislature maps so heavily favored Republicans as to be “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” The Republican-dominated legislature says that it alone has the power to determine state districts and cannot be checked by state courts or the state constitution.

The legislature claims this power thanks to the “independent state legislature” doctrine, a new legal theory based on the election clause of the U.S. Constitution, which reads that "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” Lawyers for the legislatures today claimed this clause means that the legislature alone can determine election laws in a state.

In October, Luttig published an article in The Atlantic with the unambiguous title: “There Is Absolutely Nothing to Support the ‘Independent State Legislature’ Theory.” The subtitle explained: “Such a doctrine would be antithetical to the Framers’ intent, and to the text, fundamental design, and architecture of the Constitution.”

Politicians, voting rights advocates, state attorneys general, senators, former governors, military officers, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the American Bar Association, and so on, all offered their own briefs to the court sharing Luttig’s position, with historians of the Founding Era agreeing that “[n]othing in the records of the deliberations at Philadelphia or the public debates surrounding ratification” supports the idea that state legislatures have exclusive power to regulate congressional elections. “There is no evidence that anyone at the time expressed [this] view…. [T]he interpretation is also historically implausible in view of the framers’ general fear of unchecked power and their specific distrust of state legislatures. There is no plausible eighteenth-century argument” for the independent state legislature theory, they say. 

The historians also observed that those embracing the theory ignore the ample documentary evidence and instead rely extensively on a document that scholars proved long ago was written ten years after the actual Constitutional Convention. 

Ouch.

The independent state legislature theory would also permit legislators to choose their presidential electors however they wish. Had such a theory been in place in 2020, Trump’s scheme for throwing out Biden’s electors in favor of his own would have worked, and he would now be in the White House. 

The potential for this case to upend our right to have a say in our government has had democratic advocates deeply concerned, but observers watching the court today seemed to think the right-wing justices would not embrace the theory fully. Perhaps this is in part because they know well that their legitimacy is fraying as they are increasingly perceived as partisan politicians, or perhaps the Supreme Court is wary of undermining the idea of judicial review. In any case, both Marc Elias of Democracy Docket and Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog analyzed the justices’ questions today and guessed they would find a middle ground that preserves some measure of state courts’ oversight of legislatures’ election shenanigans. 

Their analysis is only a guess, of course. Elias suggested the court would likely hand down a decision in the case in June. 

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/07/trump-tower-bedminster-records-search/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-hosts-event-featuring-qanon-pizzagate-conspiracy-theorist/story?id=94701765

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-lawyers-attend-court-hearing-as-doj-presses-aides-in-mar-a-lago-probe-11666902371

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-legal-team-finds-two-more-documents-marked-classified-11670447615

https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/2022.10.26_Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Founding%20Era%20Scholars%2021-1271.pdf

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/oral-arguments-colorado-wedding-alito-incomprehensible.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-07/trump-claims-immunity-over-burn-congress-down-hypothetical

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/moore-v-harper-independent-legislature-theory-supreme-court/671625/?fbclid=IwAR2ya630ZkNTy9FjtDWn8EWFMn3zhvgGgN8xR_30PuuQaAxjhl2u2tyeVB8

https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/headed-toward-a-middle-ground-todays-argument-in-moore-v-harper/

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=133564

https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.6.22%20Letter%20from%20Chairman%20Wyden%20and%20Chairwoman%20Maloney%20to%20Secretary%20Austin.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/07/kushner-democrats-congressional-probe-bailout/