Month: August 2022

He did it, we know it, but will they take any action against him?

Three former prosecutors write about the January 6th legal case against Donald Trump:

After seven hearings held by the January 6 committee thus far this summer, doubts as to who is responsible have been resolved. The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.

The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two of us as Department of Justice officials in Republican administrations—thought possible before the hearings began. Trump was not just a willing beneficiary of a complex plot in which others played most of the primary roles. While in office, he himself was the principal actor in nearly all of its phases, personally executing key parts of most of its elements and aware of or involved in its worst features, including the use of violence on Capitol Hill. Most remarkably, he did so over vehement objections raised at every turn, even by his sycophantic and loyal handpicked team. This was Trump’s project all along.

Everyone knew before the hearings began that we were dealing with perhaps the gravest imaginable offense against the nation short of secession—a serious nationwide effort pursued at multiple levels to overturn the unambiguous outcome of a national election. We all knew as well that efforts were and are unfolding nationwide to change laws and undermine electoral processes with the specific objective of succeeding at the same project in 2024 and after. But each hearing has sharpened our understanding that Donald Trump himself is the one who made it happen.

As former prosecutors, we recognize the legitimacy of concerns that electoral winners prosecuting their defeated opponents may look like something out of a banana republic rather than the United States of America; that doing so might be viewed as opening the door to prosecutorial retaliation by future presidential winners; and that, in the case of this former president, it might lead to civil unrest.

But given the record now before us, all of these considerations must give way to the urgency of achieving a public reckoning for Donald Trump. The damage to America’s future that would be inflicted by giving him a pass far outweighs the risks of prosecuting him.

They lay out the case, first showing that Trump clearly knew he had lost the election and second that his involvement in trying to overturn it anyway was “systematic, expansive, and extraordinarily personal” — his phone calls, the witness tampering, the attempt to corrupt the DOJ, the pressure campaign on Mike Pence etc. Third, is Trump’s advance knowledge of violence on January 6th and finally his refusal to step in to stop the insurrection once it started. The article provides all the details to back up those conclusions and they are damning.

Their analysis:

On the first point, it is hard to imagine an offense that would more urgently call for criminal accountability by federal prosecution than a concerted and nearly successful effort to overthrow the result of a presidential election. It is an offense against the entire nation, by which Trump sought to reverse a 235-year-old constitutional tradition of presidential power transferring lawfully and peacefully.

The fact that a related state grand-jury investigation is proceeding in Fulton County, Georgia, relating to the part of the plot aimed at the Georgia vote count and certification process does not alter or lessen the urgency of this federal interest. Separate state and federal prosecutions can and should proceed when federal interests are as strong or stronger than the local interest.

Nor can there be any doubt about the crucial need to deter future attempts to overthrow the government. For the past 18 months, and presently, Trump himself and his supporters have been engaged in concerted efforts across the country to prepare for a similar, but better-planned, effort to overcome the minority status of Trump’s support and put him back in the White House. Moreover, if the efforts of the former president and his supporters garner a pass from the federal authorities, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, Trump will not be the only one ready to play this game for another round.

As many have pointed out, deterrence requires that the quest for accountability succeed in achieving a conviction before a jury—here most likely made up of citizens of the District of Columbia. And the Department’s regulations make the odds of the prosecution’s success an important consideration in determining whether to go forward. In the case of a person who has made a career out of escaping the consequences of his misconduct, this is no small issue for the attorney general to take into account.

But as former prosecutors, we have faith that the evidence of personal culpability is so overwhelming that the case can be made to the satisfaction of such a jury. One of us—Gerson—has tried many difficult cases before D.C. juries with success. As a defendant, Donald Trump would open the door to all sorts of things that wouldn’t come into a normal trial, and the prosecutor could have a field day in argument about how this would-be tyrant tried to overthrow the government that has kept our nation free for two and a quarter centuries. Bottom line: Given what is at stake, even with the risk of a hung jury—leaving room for a second trial—there is no realistic alternative but to go forward.

Any argument that Donald Trump lacked provable criminal intent is contradicted by the facts elicited by the January 6 committee. And the tradition of not prosecuting a former president must yield to the manifest need to protect our constitutional form of government and to assure that the violent effort to overthrow it is never repeated.

 Donald Ayer served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush. Stuart M. Gerson served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice from 1989 to 1993 and as acting attorney General in 1993. He is a member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, currently Of Counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

All of this sounds very convincing to me. But what do I know? I do have to say that the DOJ’s decision not to charge Meadows and Scavino with contempt of congress strikes me as a bad sign. Even if they both had a claim to executive privilege, which is very debatable, they should have been required to appear and answer questions that did not relate to executive privilege and assert their claim on a case by case basis. But there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion and I have to hope their reasons for making that decision aren’t because they are being unnecessarily cautious.

But, you know, tick-tock…

It’s a lie

Since news broke on Monday that the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s South Florida home, Republican members of Congress and right-wing media figures have launched a new line of attack against Democrats: that the Internal Revenue Service intends to use nearly $80 billion in new funding to pursue similar intrusions on average Americans. Those dollars, Trump allies are saying, will go toward the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.

“Do you make $75,000 or less?” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you—with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.” Richard Grenell, Trump’s former Acting Director of National Intelligence, wrote on the social media platform: “The FBI raids Trump’s house and the Democrats vote to add 87,000 new IRS agents to go after Americans. Wake up, America.”

Other high-profile conservatives have insinuated that the Biden administration intends to direct those additional auditors to dig up dirt on the President’s political opponents. “After todays raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio.

It’s a notion that has taken off like wildfire, signaling what is likely to be a prominent broadside from Republicans against Democrats in the midterm elections.

There’s only one problem. It’s not true.

The Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate, health care and tax package that passed the Senate on Sunday and is expected to head to Biden’s desk after the House approves it on Friday, includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS to be phased in over 10 years. A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those hires would not be Internal Revenue agents, and wouldn’t be new positions.

According to a Treasury Department official, the funds would cover a wide range of positions including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.

“It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses,” Natasha Sarin, a counselor for tax policy and implementation at the Treasury Department, tells TIME.

At the same time, more than half of the agency’s current employees are eligible for retirement and are expected to leave the agency within the next five years. “There’s a big wave of attrition that’s coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions,” says Sarin, an economist who has studied tax avoidance extensively and who was tapped by the Biden administration to beef up the IRS’s auditing power.

In all, the IRS might net roughly 20,000 to 30,000 more employees from the new funding, enough to restore the tax-collecting agency’s staff to where it was roughly a decade ago.

The IRS currently has roughly 78,000 employees. According to John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, that’s down from around 100,000 when he first started. By the time he resigned four years later, he said, it was clear that the agency was in the grip of a systematic attempt by the GOP to weaken it.

It’s an effort that goes back to 2010, when Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives and immediately instituted a series of crippling cuts on the IRS. Since then, overall funding for the IRS has fallen further, by more than 20 percent, while enforcement funding has dropped by 31 percent. That’s made it easier for high-net-worth tax cheats and major corporations to avoid federal taxes to the tune of billions of dollars.

“The largest corporations in the United States with over $20 billion of assets have had their rate of audits go from nearly 100% to 50%,” says Janet Holtzblattt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Among wealthy individuals who had a positive income of a million dollars or more, the audit rate fell from 8.4% in 2010 to 2.4% in 2019.”

That’s otherwise known as drowning the federal government in the bathtub pursuant to the directive Grover Norquist, conservative anti-tax czar.

The Republicans will lie anyway, of course:

“I think a lot of people are going to be upset by this across the country and across the political spectrum,” Hogan Gidley, Trump’s former White House deputy press secretary, tells TIME, when asked about IRS funding. He falsely described the Biden administration’s plan as hiring “85,000 IRS agents to come after mom-and-pop businesses.”

But if Gidley’s right, Americans will only be angry because of what Republicans are telling them about the IRS—not what’s actually happening there.

Only about 40% of Americans will be angry if the press does its job. This story is a start but there needs to be a concerted effort to set the record straight.

LINK

Are they just noticing this? Lol:

“Trump has an absolute viselike grip on the Republican electorate, and if he wants to be the Republican nominee in 2024, he will be,” said GOP strategist John Thomas. He said he had been helping to organize a political action committee to support a potential presidential bid by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if Trump doesn’t run, but recently put those plans on pause.

Some Republican strategists have voiced worries about Trump’s influence, fretting that he is elevating less electable candidates in crucial races and that his polarizing presence in the midterms could complicate Republican attempts to win back control of Congress by running on concerns about inflation, crime and other problems that have persisted under Democratic control of the federal government.

“Having amateur candidates who’ve never run for office before carrying the banner for the Republican Party in critical Senate races is a risky maneuver,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who argues that Trump has helped elevate untested candidates in pivotal states. “The list is quite lengthy of Senate seats lost by weak Republican candidates, even in good Republican years.”

Even as he has notched some campaign wins, Trump has considerable legal and political problems, with multiple federal and state investigations into his conduct related to improperly taking classified materials to his seaside Florida estate, and his activities related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

All of these fretting Republicans have only themselves to blame. They created this monster and his loyal cult-members are completely out of their control.

I think this says everything about the GOP establishment that has let this happen to their party:

Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who is running for a safe Republican seat in next week’s Florida primaries, said that the Wyoming race “became a national referendum on the future of the GOP.”

“There are other Liz Cheneys in the conference,” Sabatini added. “They’re just smarter, and they keep their mouths shut.”

Republicans know how to pick ’em

We have some winners among Republican candidates this year. Wyoming Rep. LIz Cheney was not one on Tuesday, as expected. Too sane for her Trumpformed party. If you have not read Robert Draper’s unsettling profile of the Joe McCarthy-adjacent lunatics who have taken over in what was once John McCain’s Arizona, do.

I’ve long joked that centuries after the Reformation, any yahoo with a slick suit, an expensive coif, a sonorous voice, and a morocco bound, gilt-edged, King James red-letter edition gets to define Christianity any damned way he pleases, and there’s no authority to say otherwise. After the Trumpformation of the Republican Party, barriers to entry there are even lower.

Election denial and Trump fealty are enough.

Dana Milbank offers an example from the Tar Heel State:

Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Bo Hines, the Republican nominee from North Carolina’s 13th District, weighed in recently on all the talk about the United States becoming a banana republic, one of those nominal democracies where the rule of law is shaky. But Hines, a former college football player, spoke as if everybody was referring to Banana Republic, the clothing retailer.

“A lot of people have likened the situation going on right now, is, you know, they say we’re in a Banana Republic,” he told radio host John Fredericks. “I think that’s an insult to Banana Republics across the country. I mean, at least the manager of Banana Republic, unlike our president, knows where he is and why he’s there and what he’s doing.”

Hines’s campaign retroactively labeled this “a joke.” Ha! I nearly split my pleated chinos.

It’s not as if candidates through the years have not made gaffes on a bipartisan basis, Milbank observes, but this year’s crop of Republicans’ amplifiers go to 11.

After Bo Hines, need Milbank say more?

He does: Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz.

Crudité, anyone?

Mmmmm 😋 crudité pic.twitter.com/SVqQDGOKEd

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) August 16, 2022

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You must be present to win

Working outside the Democratic Party (as a blogger) and inside (as a low-level official) is the best of both worlds. You can throw rocks when necessary (often enough) and get state politicians to listen to you. First, because they know you have a hand in getting them elected/reelected, and second because you have a platform for embarrasing them if they won’t.

It’s not a perspective Generation Z shares, writes Annie Lowry. They’ve never known an America that actually works:

“Frustrating” was one word a young progressive activist named Annie Wu Henry used to describe today’s Democratic establishment.

In her mind, Wu told me in an interview, Democrats are falling short in terms of addressing the country’s affordability crisis, eliminating student debt, protecting the rights of immigrants and LGBTQ Americans, and ensuring access to abortion. Worse, she said, they seem to have no viable strategy for accomplishing what they promise, let alone what the country needs. “We tell them our ideas, and they tell us their plans,” Wu said, talking about the strategic differences she sees between the left and the right. “While we can be very upset that the Court overturned Roe, nobody should be surprised. The right has been talking about this for decades, as well as telling us how they are going to do it.”

She’s right. Things really began falling apart in the 1990s. National Democrats have been sluggish to respond to and develop effective counters for conservatives lurch to the right, after lurching to the right, etc.

Miraculously, after a slow start with narrow congressional margins and against implaccable resistance from Republicans, Joe Biden has had perhaps the best couple of weeks of any president in memory. Will it be enough to ameliorate Gen Z cynicism, Lowry asks.

Biden’s approval ratings among the Gen Z cohort has fallen three times more than among Boomers. Lowry’s conversations with political analysts, pollsters, and politically engaged young activists elicited several concerns.

Inflation and the economy are worse for Gen Z than for Boomers still in the drivers’ seat. Secondly, their issues are not Boomers’ issues: student debt, LGBTQ rights and protections. Getting them taken as seriously as the young demand has been a slog, at best.

There’s a third reason so many politically engaged young lefties feel disaffected: These young people have come of age in a time of rising populism, declining democracy, climate catastrophe, and vicious inequality. “This is a cohort that has never felt stable or secure, personally, financially, or physically,” John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, told me. “They don’t have a moment where they felt great to be an American, or when America was truly united.” These voters aren’t old enough to recall the surge of patriotism after 9/11, he noted; some don’t even remember Barack Obama’s election. But their feeling of vulnerability has made the youngest American adults much more likely than older voters to agree that the government should, and indeed needs to, solve the country’s problems.

Yet Biden and a Democratic Congress have failed to deliver on many of their promises. The Republican-dominated Supreme Court now looks set to gut the administrative state and wind back any number of laws and rights, and will likely keep doing so for decades. Conservatives, through techniques such as gerrymandering, have tilted state legislatures and Congress to the right. The problems are getting more and more pressing, and the government is getting less and less capable, in the eyes of many young progressives I spoke with (a point on which many political scientists, historians, and politicians concur). “The country’s broken, held together with McKinsey slide decks and duct tape,” Beatrice Adler-Bolton, a co-host of the podcast Death Panel, told me.

The youngest Americans will bear the worst consequences of our warming world and our government, which gives disproportionate power to older people in conservative states. And young progressives might not get their say in Washington for a long time, if ever. “On abortion access or raising the minimum wage or gun safety, we have seen the inability of our legislators to enact the policies that the vast majority of Americans support,” Tzintzún Ramirez, of NextGen, said. “Now we have an extreme right-wing Court that is making decisions over the health and the lives of millions of people, with next to no accountability.”

“The question is, is it possible for this generation to hold two seemingly disparate views at the same time: Politics is unable to meet the moment, but it’s still worth voting?” Della Volpe said.

Two observations.

Older Democrats need to stand aside and make way for younger voters to exercise power even if that includes making their own mistakes. Why else bother? I see local Democrats lament the lack of more younger activists in the ranks while they hang onto power past their expiration dates and give the young few routes to leadership in the next decade.

Second, getting Democrats to think outside the box is near impossible. Nationally and locally, innovation (other than tech) draws the side-eye. Not only is that dispiriting for would-be new party activists, it means Democrats often keep doing the same things the same way even if they’re losing. Who wants to do that?

OTOH, counting on older voters to change their ways is a fool’s game. Younger voters have untapped power at their fingertips. And it’s free. That is, if they’ll reach out and take it. Consider what committed lunatic outsiders accomplished (negatively) with the Republican Party in Arizona. Or what a bartender from the Bronx did to Rep. Joe Crowley. The Democratic Party is as vulnerable to savvy, committed progressives. But substantive change won’t happen by throwing rocks from the outside or through non-participation. You must be present to win.

From Netroots Nation-Pittsburgh

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Poor Jared. He really is a soulless, empty boy.

Years ago a New York Times restaurant critic famously published a scathing review of Food Network star Guy Fieri’s new joint in Times Square. A short sample:

Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?

Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?

When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered?

Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?

Here’s the equivalent in book reviews:

The United States Secret Service isn’t known for its sense of humor, but when it gave Jared Kushner the code name “mechanic,” was someone betting that he’d call his memoir “Breaking History”?

It’s a title that, in its thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness, matches this book’s contents. Kushner writes as if he believes foreign dignitaries (and less-than dignitaries) prized him in the White House because he was the fresh ideas guy, the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter.

He betrays little cognizance that he was in demand because, as a landslide of other reporting has demonstrated, he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice, a cocky young real estate heir who happened to unwrap a lot of Big Macs beside his father-in-law, the erratic and misinformed and similarly mercenary leader of the free world. Jared was a soft touch.

“Breaking History” is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested in.

This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.

The tone is college admissions essay. Typical sentence: “In an environment of maximum pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives.”

Every political cliché gets a fresh shampooing. “Even in a starkly divided country, there are always opportunities to build bridges,” Kushner writes. And, quoting the former White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell: “Every day here is sand through an hourglass, and we have to make it count.” So true, for these are the days of our lives.

Kushner, poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s ever received; he brings these home and he leaves them on the doorstep. You turn the pages and find, almost at random, colleagues, some of them famous, trying to be kind, uttering things like:

It’s really not fair how the press is beating you up. You made a very positive contribution

I don’t know how you do this every day on so many topics. That was really hard! You deserve an award for all you’ve done.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say again. This agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t for Jared.

Jared did an amazing job working with Bob Lighthizer on the incredible USMCA trade deal we signed yesterday.

Jared’s a genius. People complain about nepotism — I’m the one who got the steal here.

I’ve been in Washington a long time, and I must say, Jared is one of the best lobbyists I’ve ever seen.

A therapist might call these cries for help.

It goes on. I laughed through the whole thing.

Palin’s not running away with it

By far most interesting result last night: Mary Peltola (D) has a legitimate shot to win the #AKAL special election over Sarah Palin (R) if enough of Nick Begich’s (R) ballots “exhaust” or go to Peltola in the final ranked-choice round (we won’t know for a few weeks). pic.twitter.com/QkUqle3uxN

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 17, 2022

My oh my:

Ms. Peltola, 48, took 37.8 percent of the vote in the special election to fill Alaska’s lone congressional seat through January, putting her more than five percentage points ahead of Ms. Palin, the state’s former governor and 2008 vice-presidential Republican nominee. Ms. Peltola was also leading Ms. Palin by nearly four percentage votes in the primary race to fill that seat beyond 2023.

A win in the special election could provide a major boost in name recognition and momentum for Ms. Peltola, who has quickly risen to prominence since placing fourth in a June special election primary. On Tuesday, Ms. Peltola mingled with supporters at an Anchorage brewery as the results rolled in.

“It’s just really overwhelming to see the kind of support that I’m getting,” she said. “I am hopeful.”

It will make my year if Peltola beats Palin and Begich. They are both phony Republican hacks and it’s possible that their voters hate the other one enough to vote for Peltola as their second choice.

But mature enough to go through pregnancy and childbirth and then become a parent

This is just brain dead and it proves how judges and courts are unsuited to make such personal decisions:

A pregnant and parentless 16-year-old in Florida may be forced to give birth after an appeals court ruled she was not “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

The teenager, who is identified in court papers as Jane Doe 22-B, was appealing a decision by Circuit Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz on Aug. 10 that blocked her from having an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian, as required by Florida law.

At the time, the teenager was 10 weeks pregnant, the court papers state.

But the three-judge panel of the state’s 1st District Court of Appeal, which covers northern Florida, sided Monday, for the most part, with Frydrychowicz.

The teenager “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy,” the ruling by Judges Harvey Jay, Rachel Nordby and Scott Makar, states. “Having reviewed the record, we affirm the trial court’s decision under the deferential standard of appellate review set out (in the consent law).”

Dissenting from the other judges, however, Makar wrote that the appeals court should send the case back to Frydrychowicz for the possibility of further consideration.

“The trial judge apparently sees this matter as a very close call, finding that the minor was ‘credible,’ ‘open’ with the judge, and nonevasive,” Makar wrote. “The trial judge must have been contemplating that the minor — who was 10 weeks pregnant at the time — would potentially be returning before long — given the statutory time constraints at play — to shore up any lingering doubt the trial court harbored.”

Makar noted that the teenager is “parentless,” lives with a relative, but also has an appointed guardian. She was also savvy enough to do Google searches “to gain an understanding about her medical options and their consequences.”

“She is pursuing a GED with involvement in a program designed to assist young women who have experienced trauma in their lives by providing educational support and counseling,” Makar wrote. “The minor experienced renewed trauma (the death of a friend) shortly before she decided to seek termination of her pregnancy.”

Makar also noted that in her petition, which “she completed by hand,” the teenager insisted “she is sufficiently mature to make the decision, saying she ‘is not ready to have a baby,’ she doesn’t have a job, she is ‘still in school,’ and the father is unable to assist her.”

The “guardian is fine with what [she] wants to do” the teenager claimed, according to Makar.

Just look at the contortions these people went through to justify this asinine decision. It’s insane.

Meanwhile in Louisiana we have another case that just makes your heart hurt:

A pregnant woman in Louisiana says she’s being forced to choose between carrying a fetus that lacks a skull and the top of its head (as a result of a rare condition called acrania) to term, or traveling several states over for a legal abortion, since Louisiana has banned abortion with very narrow exceptions.

“It’s hard knowing that I’m carrying it to bury it,” Nancy Davis, who’s 13 weeks pregnant and is already the mother of one child, told local news station WAFB9 on Monday. A few weeks ago, she had her first ultrasound and was told the fetus wouldn’t survive—but that she would have to either carry and birth the nonviable fetus or travel to Florida, the closest state where abortion is still legal. Davis is running out of time to make her decision, however, because Florida bans the health service at 15 weeks.

Last Friday, the Louisiana Supreme Court allowed the state’s ban—which bans care except to save a pregnant person’s life or in some cases when the fetus won’t survive—to take effect, though litigation to block the ban remains ongoing. Louisiana’s ban includes an exception for some fetal conditions, but acrania isn’t on the Louisiana Department of Health’s narrow list of qualifying conditions.

Louisiana’s ban—and certainly, the constant legal back-and-forth around it—is already taking a massive toll on the state’s health care system that will only get worse now that all three of the state’s clinics were forced to permanently relocate out-of-state on Monday. Before Davis, one Louisiana doctor testified in an affidavit challenging the ban that her patient was forced to endure a “painful, hours-long labor to deliver a nonviable fetus, despite her wishes and best medical advice,” after the ban temporarily took effect last month.

They should be honest and admit that pain and suffering being inflicted on women as punishment for their moral fall or “failure” to deliver a perfect offspring is the whole reason they are doing it. The cruelty is the point.

Fat chance

Mike Pence is busily pretending that he has a chance to win the GOP nomination for president and is being confronted with uncomfortable questions:

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday he would give “due consideration” to any formal invitation to testify before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, while hinting at potential executive privilege issues.

Pence made the remarks during a Q&A after a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics & Eggs” breakfast, a common stop for candidates considering a run for office.

“If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it,” Pence said, after calling January 6 a tragic day for all Americans. “But, you heard me mention the Constitution a few times this morning. Under the Constitution, we have three co-equal branches of government, and any invitation to be directed to me, I would have to reflect on the unique role I was serving in as vice president. It would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don’t want to pre-judge, so if there’s ever any formal invitation rendered to us, we would give it due consideration.”

He is wrong. It is not unprecedented. Presidents and Vice Presidents have testified before congress:

President Abraham Lincoln
House Judiciary Committee
February 13, 1862

Vice President Schuyler Colfax
House Select Committee to Investigate the Credit Mobilier
January 7, 1873

President Woodrow Wilson
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
August 19, 1919

President Gerald R. Ford
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, House Judiciary Committee
October 17, 1974

Formers who testified: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman, Gerald R. Ford

It’s not common but then insurrections in which people storm the capitol demanding to hang the Vice President aren’t common either. In fact, that is unprecedented.

I will be shocked if Pence agrees to do it. He should. It’s not as if he can do anything worse that what he’s already done in the eyes of GOP voters. He might as well act like a patriot. But that would require him to testify in depth about the threat from Donald Trump and I can’t see him summoning the courage to do that.

Cheney hints broadly that she’s planning an independent campaign for president

“The Great Task”

“In coming weeks, Liz will be launching an organization to educate the American people about the ongoing threat to our Republic, and to mobilize a unified effort to oppose any Donald Trump campaign for president,” Cheney spokesperson JEREMY ADLER tells Playbook exclusively.

The new group, which will serve as Cheney’s primary political vehicle as she considers whether to run for president in 2024, does not have an official name yet. An informed guess: The Great Task, which was the name of Cheney’s final ad of the campaign. The phrase is from the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address, and Cheney also referenced it in her concession speech from Jackson, Wyo., last night

I would be thrilled if she entered the race and shaved a few points off of Trump’s vote totals. There are probably a few Republicans out there who would otherwise vote for Trump even if they had to hold their nose to do it. Some of them just can’t let themselves vote for a Democrats.

However, I’m very concerned that she would also shave points off of the Democratic ticket from moderate GOPers who would otherwise vote for them. Even worse there may be some Democrats who vote for her because of her courage in facing down Trump, denying Biden or another Democrat the win. Don’t think it won’t happen. Republicans do not have a monopoly on stupid.

So, I’m divided on this. In the end it may not make any difference at all. But it’s risky.