Skip to content

Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

More Chaos In The House

Published by digby on April 16, 2024

It appears that Mike Johnson’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to obtain Trump’s protection didn’t get the job done:

Speaker Mike Johnson took the extraordinary step this morning of publicly announcing that he was “not resigning” after a second conservative GOP hardliner called for his ouster in a closed House Republican Conference meeting.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) stood up in the private meeting in the Capitol and said Johnson should “clean the barn” — clear out all pending controversial legislation — and announce he’s resigning so House Republicans can choose a new speaker.

Massie also said he would support Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) motion to vacate resolution, which the Georgia Republican introduced several weeks ago. Greene has not sought to make it privileged, which would trigger a vote over whether to oust Johnson. This was the same process used to dump former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year.

The current wave of angst is due to Johnson’s introduction of a package of bills to send aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. House Republicans will need Democratic support to pass the rule in committee and on the floor. And the GOP will need the minority’s support to clear the package.

“We have a rudder,” Massie told reporters following the Republican meeting. ”We’re steering everything toward what Chuck Schumer wants.”

A vote on the aid package is expected by Friday at the earliest, GOP sources say.

Johnson, speaking at a House Republican leadership news conference, said it is “absurd” to try to throw him out of the office right now. Here’s Johnson:

“I am not resigning. And it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause, it is not helpful to the country, it does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here — a secure border, sound governance – and it’s not helpful to the unity that we have in the body.”

Johnson reiterated again as he did Monday that he wasn’t worried about an MTV.

But let’s be clear — It’s not great when a speaker has to go out and publicly declare that he’s not resigning just 174 days into his tenure.

House Democrats are watching the developments inside the GOP conference very closely. They’re concerned not only with Johnson’s fate but what impact it will have on the foreign aid bill, as well as whether they’ll have to intervene in any Republican attempt to oust another speaker.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other top Democrats have signaled they’re willing to support a rule for the foreign aid package and help pass the bill as long as there aren’t any poison-pill provisions attached to the measure.

But a vote to help Johnson stave off a motion to vacate before the foreign aid package comes up is another matter, Democratic insiders said. Johnson would have to definitively state what the package will look like — and how many GOP votes he can deliver for it — before Democratic leaders are going to cut any members loose on the MTV. Timing is everything here, as always.

Two Democrats have said they’d vote to keep Johnson if it came to it. I’m not sure that would help him. There are those who believe that if a Democrats votes for something it’s automatically tainted — they could switch to take Johnson out. And if he does curvive at the hands of Democrats his caucus will treat him as a pariah. If they pull the trigger on this, he’s screwed no matter what.

Four Years Ago Today

Published by digby on April 16, 2024

He was really spiraling during this period:

He was very hostile to certain states during this period because they weren’t just rolling over for anxious re-opening of the country without adequate testing and supplies. Note how he characterizes one state as being 2,000 miles away as if it isn’t part of America — the country he was supposedly leading.

His performance during that crisis should have made him a pariah in America and instead he’s a hero to almost half the population, so much so that they want him back. I’ll never stop being stunned by that.

Mike Johnson’s Dilemma

Published by digby on April 16, 2024

It seems like only yesterday that Republican president in exile, Donald Trump, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were pledging fealty to one another in a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Actually, it was five days ago and it appears their political union was as short-lived as the marriage of the Golden Bachelor. As Johnson faces the most difficult week of his short career as Speaker, when asked if he supported Johnson’s plan to finally pass the long stalled foreign appropriations bill, Trump blandly replied, “we’ll see what happens with that.” So much for their beautiful friendship.

Trump has his own problems right now, of course. He’s in the midst of his first criminal trial in New York where he’s alternately nodding off and being admonished by the judge for intimidating the jurors. So I suppose it’s too much to ask that he would be concerned with something as trivial as national security. It’s just too bad that his inexplicable admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his desire to thwart any deal to at the border to boost his own electoral chances has led the House MAGA caucus to refuse to allow the Senate passed, bipartisan appropriations agreement to come to a vote. All he has to do is say the word and it’s almost certain they could get it to the president’s desk by the end of the week.

The state of play changes from minute to minute so there’s every chance that this will be outdated by the time you read this. But as it stands on Wednesday morning, Johnson is preparing to present four separate bills, one for Ukraine, one for Israel, one for Taiwan and one with a hodgepodge of policies including the banning of TikTok. If he could manage to get them to the floor for a vote (not a given since MAGA Republicans are routinely voting against procedural rules which means Democrats may have to do it) he could conceivably gather together enough votes to pass Ukraine aid with a majority of Democrats and another to pass Israel aid with a majority of Republicans. The Taiwan bill shouldn’t have any trouble and who knows what’s going on with that fourth vote?

No doubt Johnson thought he had Trump’s backing for this plan when he left Mar-a-Lago on Friday but it’s likely that Trump was only half listening to him obsessed as he is with his own problems. If he did agree he certainly didn’t communicate that to Greene who said this week that she plans to pull the trigger on her motion to vacate the chair if Johnson makes any move to help Ukraine. (She was calling the Ukrainians Nazis over the weekend.) On Tuesday she was joined in her crusade by Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie who stood up in a GOP meeting and demanded that Johnson resign. He later went before the cameras and declared that he is now a co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate.

Greene demanded that he resign as well:

Johnson was not amused. After the meeting he told the press that he was not resigning and that it’s “an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs.” He has a point but that ship sailed when his predecessor Kevin McCarthy sold his spine to the far right by agreeing that any right wing kook could call for the Speaker’s ouster.

With only a two vote margin, Johnson would not survive a vote without Democrats jumping to his defense. As of Friday, when Congressman Mike Gallagher, R-Wi., departs after having resigned in disgust, that two vote margin shrinks to one. However, it remains to be seen if Greene is serious about calling for this vote or just wants to hold it over Johnson’s head while garnering tons of attention from the media.

She spoke with Breitbart on Tuesday evening and said, “yes I am prepared to do it. But the process of how I am doing it and going about it is I am being respectful of my conference and a Republican majority and I’m also being respectful of my colleagues. I didn’t like how it was done when they threw out Kevin McCarthy. It was done by force and no one had a say.” Despite her constant refrain that she has many (so far silent) supporters for this move there is little evidence that’s true. Greene added this hedge, “the reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker.” In other words, she’s probably bluffing.

The big question now is how the House Democrats and the Senate will deal with all this. There are two Democratic congressmen who have said they’d vote to keep Johnson if it comes to that, Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida. It’s hard to say whether they’d actually do that if it came down to it. More immediately urgent is how the Democrats might handle the rule vote. (Johnson could agree to a suspension the rules and bring it to the floor without all that folderol but he refuses.) The question is what the Democrats would want in return for helping him out and if they’d be satisfied just to get this appropriations bill over and done with. That is unclear but we should know in the next couple of days when we see how and if they can get these bills to the floor.

There is a possibility that it could run into some difficulty in the Senate however. Yet another surreal moment occurred on Tuesday when the House formally delivered the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Greene’s demand that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refers to the fact that Democrats may not bring up the impeachment for trial at all which has a number of GOP Senators up in arms and could gum up the works on these bills Johnson is attempting to put together. If he would just put the bill the Senate already passed on the floor, that would be the end of it. But separating it into four different bills will require the Senate to vote again and there’s a chance that they might be able to muster a filibuster if they decide to use the impeachment farce as an excuse to blow up the Ukraine funding. Thirty Republican Senators voted against the original bill and so far there does not seem to be a border component in any of the new bills (Trump’s doing, I’d guess) which was one of the incentives for the others to vote yes.

This is, in short, a huge mess and it will be a miracle if they get anything passed. Between Trump’s self-serving meddling and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s showboating, not to mention the general lunacy of the MAGA caucus in both houses, the lunatics are literally running the asylum and the security of the whole world is hanging in the balance. And it is not partisan hyperbole to say that this state of affairs is 100% the fault of the Republican Party. They are simply incapable of governing.

Salon

Updat: It looks like Johnson is going to try to the 4 votes on the floor. Who knows if the rule to proceed will pass. He says he expects a vote by Saturday night when he will have a one vote margin. There’s more and more chatter that if this falls apart, this will be the next step:

Stay tuned.

Trump’s New Executive Time

Published by digby on April 16, 2024

He did it again today:

I just heard CNN describe this as “Trump closed his eyes during jury questioning.”

Ask yourself if they would be so euphemistic if Joe Biden was nodding off during his own criminal trial.

Faithless And Feckless

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 16, 2024

Points for consistency

Firefighters respond to conflagration caused by Russia’s overnight strike on Kharkiv. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine

If it feels odd advocating for U.S. aid to Ukraine to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russian invaders, join the club. Those of us who opposed Cold War proxy battles and geopolitical gamesmanship in remote corners of the planet half a century ago now find ourselves living in a more connected world. When a ship stuck in the Suez Canal can disrupt our lives here, what happens on NATO’s doorstep is equally of concern. Just as much as what happens between Israel, Gaza, and Iran.

What’s confounding (or not) is how the formerly hawkish Republican Party that once feared commies in woodpiles have truned into Putin’s lapdogs. Perhaps it’s not surprising. Their positions have always been more performance than principle.

Two stories from the New York Times concerning the fate of Ukraine.

This one:

Ukraine’s top military commander has issued a bleak assessment of the army’s positions on the eastern front, saying they have “worsened significantly in recent days.”

Russian forces were pushing hard to exploit their growing advantage in manpower and ammunition to break through Ukrainian lines, the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement over the weekend.

“Despite significant losses, the enemy is increasing his efforts by using new units on armored vehicles, thanks to which he periodically achieves tactical gains,” the general said.

At the same time, Ukraine’s energy ministry told millions of civilians to charge their power banks, get their generators out of storage and “be ready for any scenario” as Ukrainian power plants are damaged or destroyed in devastating Russian airstrikes.

“The Russians fire five times as many artillery shells at the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are able to fire back,” US European Command head Gen. Christopher Cavoli told a recent House Armed Services Committee meeting.

And this one:

Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday said he planned this week to advance a long-stalled national security spending package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other American allies, along with a separate bill aimed at mollifying conservatives who have been vehemently opposed to backing Kyiv.

Mr. Johnson’s announcement, coming after he has agonized for weeks over whether and how to advance an infusion of critical aid to Ukraine amid stiff Republican resistance, was the first concrete indication that he had settled on a path forward. It came days after Iran launched a large aerial attack on Israel, amplifying calls for Congress to move quickly to approve the pending aid bill.

Yeah, well, good luck, Mike. Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin and given the chance would follow him around like a puppy. If Putin wants Ukraine, that’s fine by The Donald.

Anne Applebaum relfects on how swiftly the U.S. came to Israel’s aid over the weekend while Republicans leave Ukraine’s democracy and perhaps its people to another slow death. People there still recall the Holodomor.

Applebaum writes:

Why the difference in reaction? Why did American and European jets scramble to help Israel, but not Ukraine? Why doesn’t Ukraine have enough matériel to defend itself? One difference is the balance of nuclear power. Russia has nuclear weapons, and its propagandists periodically threaten to use them. That has made the U.S. and Europe reluctant to enter the skies over Ukraine. Israel also has nuclear weapons, but that affects the calculus in a different way: It means that the U.S., Europe, and even some Arab states are eager to make sure that Israel is never provoked enough to use them, or indeed to use any serious conventional weapons, against Iran.

A second difference between the two conflicts is that the Republican Party remains staunchly resistant to propaganda coming from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Leading Republicans do not sympathize with the mullahs, do not repeat their talking points, and do not seek to appease them when they make outrageous claims about other countries. That enables the Biden administration to rush to the aid of Israel, because no serious opposition will follow.

But?

By contrast, a part of the Republican Party, including its presidential candidate, does sympathize with the Russian dictatorship, does repeat its talking points, and does seek to appease Russia when it invades and occupies other countries. The absence of bipartisan solidarity around Ukraine means that the Republican congressional leadership has prevented the Biden administration from sending even defensive weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. The Biden administration appears to feel constrained and unable to provide Ukraine with the spontaneous assistance that it just provided to Israel.

Open sympathy for the war aims of the Russian state is rarely stated out loud. Instead, some leading Republicans have begun, in the past few months, to argue that Ukraine should “shift to a defensive war,” to give up any hope of retaining its occupied territory, or else stop fighting altogether. Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, in a New York Times essay written in what can only be described as extraordinary bad faith, made exactly this argument just last week. So too, for example, did Republican Representative Eli Crane of Arizona, who has said that military aid for Ukraine “should be totally off the table and replaced with a push for peace talks.”

But Ukraine is fighting a defensive war. Clearly. Once quick to invoke Neville Chamberlain while rattling sabers about foreign tyrants, MAGA Republicans eagerly hope to elect one themselves. Finding common cause with Putin is them being consistent, at least in their fecklessness.

Applebaum notes one of the conclusions the rest of the world will draw:

A part of the Republican Party—one large enough to matter—can be co-opted, lobbied, or purchased outright. Not only can you get it to repeat your propaganda; you can get it to act directly in your interests. This probably doesn’t cost even a fraction of the price of tanks and artillery, and it can be far more effective.

If only we could harness their bad faith as an energy source.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

The Right Of The Hissy Fit

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 16, 2024

With apologies to Digby

For most on the right, pitching a hissy fit is a ploy to control the political narrative. A little phony sanctimony here, some faux outrage there, and plenty of echo-chamber volume, and Democrats run for cover. Maybe even beg forgiveness for something they did not do. But for Donald Trump, pitching a hissy fit is a way of life to which that Marvelous he is entitled. How dare any lesser being deprive him of his birthright?

Yet, here Trump sits facing justice for falsifying business records and defrauding voters, a mere pleb in an ungilded New York City courtroom where hissy-fitting is not permitted. On Monday, Justice Juan Merchan explained to Trump just how things work in his domain (New York Times):

As part of the pretrial housekeeping, Justice Juan Merchan delivered the so-called Parker warnings on courtroom behavior directly to the defendant, reminding him that he could be jailed if he disrupted the proceedings.

Trump, who earlier seemed to be dozing, muttered, “I do,” when asked if he understood this and the other elements of the warning, which Merchan was delivering to Trump for a second time — now orally — just to make sure it sank in.

Not likely. Before this trial even gets rolling, Merchan must rule on whether Trump should “be held in contempt of court and possibly jailed for three Truth Social posts attacking Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels” in violation of a gag order against Trump intimidating witnesses. Attacking adversaries is something Trump ponders each morning even before spatula-ing on his bronzer and spraying his hair until it hides his baldness. Clearly, his rights are being violated.

Being a criminal defendant cramps Trump’s style like it’s never been cramped before (The New Republic):

The weeks-long proceeding will require Trump to be in court for every session—something Trump himself has challenged as “election interference” on the basis that it will keep him away from the campaign trail—even though he’ll be permitted to campaign every weekend, evening, and Wednesday during the process. If he fails to appear in court, he could face an arrest warrant.

Trump won’t be able to golf on fine spring days. He faces another uncomfortable reality as a criminal defendant (Politico):

Donald Trump is learning a hard lesson: Criminal defendants don’t get to set their own schedules.

Three times on Monday the former president asked Justice Juan Merchan to cut him loose from his hush money trial to attend to other matters — some personal, some political and some legal. Three times the judge responded with, essentially, “eh, we’ll see.”

Could he attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17? I’ll get back to you, Merchan said.

May he skip the trial on April 25 to attend Supreme Court arguments about whether he’s immune from special counsel Jack Smith’s charges for trying to subvert the 2020 election? Not likely, said Merchan.

Can he be exempted from any proceedings that may arise on Wednesdays — when Merchan’s court is typically dark — so he can campaign? Not if the jury is in, the judge told him.

Naturally, Trump reacted badly. The moment he exited the courtroom on Monday, he lied.

“It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student,” Trump told reporters. “It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial.”

His worshippers were just as naturally faux-outraged, condemning the restrictions as “banana republic tactics.”

“Total election interference,” declared Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), parroting her liege lord.

As we’ve seen, Trump’s supporters consider the potential that their presidential candidate could be a convicted felon irrelevant. Nothing is disqualifying to their would-be king. And how dare anyone treat him like a commoner?

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Even Rich, Famous Women Are In Danger

Published by digby on April 15, 2024

This is pretty powerful:

I’m sure she had access to the best medical care in a state where her freedoms were preserved. But she went through this and can easily imagine what it would be like if that hadn’t been so. So can millions of other women, including many of the women watching that show.

Drowsy Don Lies Again

Published by digby on April 15, 2024

And the media buys it

So Trump came out of the trial today whining like an 8 year old that the big mean judge won’t let him attend Barron’s high school graduation — and all of MAGA world is having a full blown collective mental breakdown over it, calling the judge evil and screaming “Witch Hunt!!!!”

One little problem:

Fact Check: Trump falsely claims judge won’t let him attend son’s high school graduation next month

From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

After leaving court on Monday, former President Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that Judge Juan Merchan would prevent him from attending his son’s high school graduation in May. 

“It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son,” Trump said, before lamenting “that I can’t go to my son’s graduation.” 

Trump’s son Eric Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric by tweeting, “Judge Merchan is truly heartless in not letting a father attend his son’s graduation.”

Facts First: The judge hasn’t ruled yet on Trump’s request to be excused from court so he can attend Barron Trump’s high school graduation.

Criminal defendants like Donald Trump are typically required to attend their case proceedings in person. Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan on Monday about whether their client could be excused for some events, including the graduation and the upcoming arguments in front of the US Supreme Court in one of Trump’s other criminal cases.

While Merchan didn’t let Trump attend next week’s Supreme Court hearing – because Trump has to be in New York for the trial — he said it was too early to rule on the graduation.

Needless to say, most criminal defendants don’t get to attend their children’s events during the trial. Why Trump and his cult think he should is simply daft. But that’s not he point. He lied blatantly when he said that the judge said no. He did not. And I’m sorry to say that the media is failing to report that lie for some reason, accepting Trump’s word that he said no.

Here’s a report from the Daily Beast:

Donald Trump will not be given a day off from being present at his criminal hush money trial to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation in Florida, Judge Juan Merchan said on Monday.

The former president had asked for the proceedings to be suspended on Friday, May 17 so he could be at the ceremony, but his request fell flat. If Trump plays hooky and attends the graduation anyway, he will be jailed, Merchan said.

After being told “no,” Trump addressed reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Sigh…

About That Near Catastrophe

Published by digby on April 15, 2024

Josh Marshall on the weekend’s events in the middle east:

The U.S. telegraphed more or less exactly what Iran was going to do via extremely good intelligence (reminiscent of the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine). It undoubtedly played a huge role bringing Jordan, Saudi Arabia and likely other Arab states into active and public armed action in defense of Israel. It positioned and deployed U.S. anti-ballistic destroyers and aerial assets to itself shoot down roughly a hundred of the estimated 300+ aerial devices Iran launched at Israel. Together, Israel, the U.S. and various allied Arab states took down 99% or more of all those devices. Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment and virtually none of it got through. And now the U.S. has managed to get Israel not to launch an immediate and inevitably escalatory retaliation.

It goes without saying that no administration works on its own. It comes to the game with the world’s most powerful military and major power status. It’s operating with Arab allies who have been gravitating toward a de facto anti-Iran alliance with Israel for years. And yet, anyone who knows anything about foreign or defense policy knows that most of it is all the endless number of things that can wrong and the one or two ways they can go right. Navigating the last week to this point today is a tour de force of international crisis management for the Biden White House.

As Marshall says, we’re not out of the woods yet and anything can happen. But I’m inclined to agree that this was a very hairy moment that does appear to have been successfully “managed” so as not to trigger a regional war. Maybe the Biden administration had little to do with that but according to all the reporting they, in coordination with allies, were able to keep a lid on it for all the reasons Marshall lays out.

Biden’s Israel policy has been intensely frustrating and downright inexplicable when it comes to Gaza. I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to adequately account for America’s position as we have watched that mass suffering unfold. But it’s also the case that he’s dealing with a corrupt monster in Netanyahu who is motivated to keep the war going as long as possible who it’s clear is working hand in glove with the Republicans to sabotage Biden at every turn. This makes the risks of it expanding across the region very acute. That doesn’t excuse anything the US is or isn’t doing, of course. But it does provide some context which we saw displayed this weekend as we were on the precipice of a war that could hurtle out of control very, very quickly. It was a near thing.

Trump’s Dimension

Published by digby on April 15, 2024

Last weekend’s bizarre digression on Gettysburg has gotten more coverage than usual. I would hope that more people are exposed to some of this. He’s not normal: