He and the rest of the MAGA weirdos are making the Senate work around the clock because they’re having a tantrum. From @SenWhitehouse on Sunday night,here’s an explanation for the weekend activities in the Senate:
If you’re sitting around wondering what is happening in the Senate, (a) you need to get a life, and (b) here’s a handy-dandy overview.
We begin with the rule that spending measures have to originate in the House, so to start a bill like our Ukraine funding measure in the Senate you need to bring a House-passed measure to the Senate Floor. The first step is to proceed to that House-passed measure.
A group of Republicans objects to all this, so the Majority Leader had to file cloture on that motion to proceed to the House-passed measure, requiring 60 votes. Getting cloture on that motion was our first vote, 67-32.
Cloture rules require thirty hours of post-cloture debate, so that debate took place, and then after that came the actual vote to proceed, which only required a simple majority, cloture having been invoked. That passed on Friday 64-19.
But the bill we moved to is not the one we want to pass, so we had to substitute in the text that we wanted.
That too required cloture (filed Friday), which requires an “intervening day” (yesterday) before the vote, as well as the thirty hours after. That second cloture is what we voted on today, 67-27.
In the meantime, one Senator today tried to send the bill to committee, taking it off the Floor and everybody back to square one, but that measure was tabled by simple majority vote.
That was the first vote today; then immediately came the 67-27 cloture vote regarding the substitute language.
Now we have thirty more hours to burn, setting up a vote Monday evening, by a simple majority, to actually effect the substitution of the text of our Ukraine measure for the original text of the House-passed bill.
Monday’s vote will be the actual vote substituting in our Senate language. Then we have to pass the bill with the new language.
So a third cloture may be required, with another intervening day, and another vote over 60, and another thirty hours of debate. So this could take a while.
Much of this procedure is swept aside by agreement, but a group of Senators is so opposed to the bill that they won’t allow unanimous consent to any departure from these procedures. That agreement is often achieved by agreeing to a schedule of amendment votes.
Feelings are running so high within the Republican conference, that Republicans have so far been unable to agree on any amendment, let alone a schedule of amendments that can accelerate the schedule. So here we are. Now go get a life.
The New York Times, writes Jamison Foser after years of reading “is, politically, a Republican newspaper.”
Okay, so I’m on a rant about the media’s obsession with Biden’s age. Thankfully, Jamison Foser offers suggestions on how to do more than complain or suggest, as lefties regularly do, that the left build its own media platforms. (In the next few months?)
First, it is important to note that there is a difference between acknowledging that the Times and its ilk won’t change much in response to criticism and thinking they won’t change at all. Forceful, reasoned media critiques can shift behavior around the margins — a little more coverage of something that’s been underplayed, a little less of something over-played, a reconsideration of a unsupported assumption or an underlying bias. It isn’t particularly efficient, it isn’t going to lead to the wholesale changes it should, but in a closely-divided country changes at the margins can be decisive. (It should also be noted that marginal changes work both ways, and if the anti-Trump coalition were to stop working the refs, media coverage might get even worse.)
Second: Changing the news media is not the only goal of media criticism. Another is changing the way people react to the news media. We might not be able to get the media to stop applying a deeply stupid double-standard to Biden and Trump, but if we can get some of their audience to understand that double-standard, we can reduce the harm it causes.
Third: Not only are “Yelling about political coverage” and “telling people how their lives would be different under a Trump presidency vs. a Biden presidency” not mutually exclusive, the former can actually be an effective tool in the latter. And I don’t just mean indirectly, via the marginal improvements discussed above. I mean that media criticism is often a useful vehicle for carrying other messages. When people criticize the New York Times for, for example, downplaying the threat of Donald Trump banning abortion, we aren’t just ineffectually criticizing the Times: We’re telling our audience that Donald Trump will ban abortion.
That might seem like an absurd bank shot; like a really inefficient way of spreading a message. Why not just say Trump will ban abortion? Well, obviously, we should do that, and do it often. The primary way the anti-Trump coalition communicates with voters should not be via media criticism; it should be more direct than that. But we know that a lot of people are mad about the media doing big things badly. We know that, as John Lydon said, anger is an energy. That anger is contagious, and when you’re in the message-spreading business, contagiousness is extremely valuable.
The goal, as Anat Shenker-Osorio says often, is to get your side to sing like a choir, in unison. If your team won’t repeat your message, if they won’t repeat or retweet it, it’s not a good message.
Foser adds, “The news media is not the only audience for media criticism, nor is media criticism qua media criticism completely futile. Don’t stop.”
But don’t be mules for carrying the other team’s message either. Here’s how he suggests professional Democrats likely to be quoted use the media to push back and transmit a counter-message:
If you’re a professional Democrat who supports Joe Biden and a reporter asks you about the politics of Biden’s age, your job is to tell the truth: “Donald Trump is a delusional, addled imbecile who confused a photo of the woman he sexually assaulted for a photo of his own wife, but you biased jackasses in the media are disproportionately obsessed with Biden, just like you helped Trump win in 2016.” Your job is not to sound like some third-tier pundit straining to sound as neutral as possible6 in order to win a PBS contract; it’s to tell the damn truth and help stave off fascism.
It’s a start. A spicy start. Go, and do thou likewise.
That’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a train.
Light at the end of the tunnel. Image by JJ via Flickr ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED).
We’ve seen this movie. We watched it in 2016. The press, driven by capitalist imperative to sell newspapers and attract eyeballs, promoted every right-wing smear against Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, most importantly the faux scandal about her private email server.
Clinton was likely the most qualified presidential person Democrats have ever fielded for the presidency. To win the presidency, Clinton first had to be an excellent candidate. She was not that, nor was her campaign up to the job. (Don’t get me started.) Nevertheless, the race to defeat Donald Trump, the TV celebrity and failed casino operator, was close. Her campaign suffered death by a thousand media cuts, flogged by right-wing outlets and in the eleventh-hour by grandstanding of FBI Director Jim Comey.
It’s happening again with the stream of media attention to President Joe Biden’s age. Republican’s all-but nominee Trump is only three years younger and in obvious cognitive decline. (He was mentally unstable in 2016, but that just made him a colorful novelty.) But fear of Trump’s MAGA mob makes Biden look like a softer target.
Ratings, eyeballs, and profits again make Trump better for business. The media’s collective thumb is again on the scale with this year’s “but her emails” narrative hook. News outlets cannot resist “Biden’s too old.”
But this year’s election is not a ratings game or a high school popularity contest. Over a million Americans died under Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s openly declaring his intention to reduce the country to a third-world dicatorship in fact or in effect.
So far, Americans who should know better are watching the same train roll towards them down the same track as 2016 and doing nothing.
Well, of course both The New York Times and The Washington Post led with stories Saturday morning about Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity. The story of special counsel Robert Hur’s report and its petty rhetoric about the president’s supposed memory lapses broke Thursday afternoon. It was the lead story in both papers Friday, perhaps understandably. But then it was still the lead Saturday. And even on Sunday both papers were still chewing it over, although to its credit, the Post’s Sunday piece didn’t just lazily extend the narrative with another beard-scratching “news analysis” about Democrats’ “deep concern” but reported on what actually happened during Biden’s two interviews with Hur. (Spoiler alert: Nothing occurred in the sessions to make White House aides think that attacks on Biden’s memory would feature in the report at all).
We’re at a fateful crossroads here. On one road, the Avenue of Responsible Sobriety traveled by the Times and the Post and most of the mainstream media, lies legitimate and necessary dialogue about whether any octogenarian, and this one specifically, is fit to be president. But the other road, the Mad Max Hellscape Expressway, has been taken over by the right-wing media, whose interest is not legitimate dialogue but the utter destruction of the octogenarian in question.
We can see where this is headed, writes, Tomasky. “[T]he souped-up Hummers of the Hellscape Expressway will overrun the dainty Priuses of Responsibility Avenue.” Again. Right-wing propaganda outlets pave the national media road that even the “responsible” outlets will drive.
Tomasky summarizes the well-trodden history of the Powell Memo, and the fallout from Trump’s 2020 loss, contested to this day on the right. Surprise, the right quadrupled down on crazy. “Fox, Newsmax, One America, all those Sinclair radio and TV stations, Christian radio, most newspapers out there around the country, the majority of prominent opinion journals, most of largest social media personalities, and more—that now sings from the same hymnal.”
So now what re: Biden’s age? For one, Trump’s speeches are a trove of “but his mental decline” material:
And: What about Donald Trump’s brain? For God’s sakes, he confused E. Jean Carroll with his ex-wife! He makes verbal gaffes all. The. Time. Just last Friday in a speech before an NRA crowd, he made several. He slurred “subsidies” as “subsies.” He groused that it gets covered if he “said one word a little bit mispronunciation.” He confused Biden with Barack Obama (again). He said the Democrats were going to rename Pennsylvania (?!?).
He also said: “Nice Saturday afternoon. I could tell you, if I weren’t doing this, where I would have been, I would have been in a very nice location.”
It was Friday.
Night.
Can you imagine if Biden had done that? The Timescovered the NRA speech, as did the Post. Neither piece made any mention of these malapropisms.
The Times emphasized Trump’s comments about Biden’s handling of classified documents, while the Post led with his promises to the crowd on guns. Those were legitimate news judgments by traditional standards. But I can’t help suspecting that if Biden had confused his days, it would have made it into their stories. Maybe even led them.
The problem here is that on the left what we see are complaints about the slanted coverage, as Jason Statler pointed out over the weekend, and as Tomasky does here, observing, “hewing to traditional news standards will do nothing but play handmaiden to democracy’s demise. So sure, Joe Biden’s age is an issue. But I mean, come on.”
“Come on”? That’s it? “Come on”?
As I suggested on Sunday, “Come on” is not going to cut it. What “refs” the right does not own it works. Somehow (Spocko?) those of us who expect this republic to live to fight another day have to actively pound the press as hard as the right does. I’m not sure how, but simply complaining won’t stop the train we all see coming.
A chief witness and onetime friend of Representative Matt Gaetzis cooperating in an unfolding House Ethics Committee investigation into whether the Florida politician had sex with an underage girl while in Congress, a lawyer for the witness said Friday.
Fritz Scheller, who represents Joel Greenberg, said that he had provided documents to the committee and that Greenberg “has and will cooperate with any congressional request,” The New York Timesreported.
In May of 2021, Greenberg pled guilty to several charges, including sex trafficking, and is currently in his second year of an 11-year sentence. The former Florida tax collector was able to secure a more lenient punishment by agreeing to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into Gaetz. In February of 2023, the department announced that it was closing the investigation without charging the Florida Representative with any crimes.
At the time of Greenberg’s December 2022 sentencing, Scheller said he was “disappointed” that the department hadn’t charged anyone else, and, though he didn’t name Gaetz, urged prosecutors to “pursue others,” including more “higher-level” figures, CNN reported. When the DOJ ultimately declined to prosecute Gaetz, Scheller claimed that the move was evidence of “two systems of justice,” adding, “Why prosecute the privileged when defendants of limited culpability and means provide an easier target?”
[…]
The House committee originally opened the investigation into whether Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift” in 2021, when Democrats controlled Congress.
But the ethics inquiry remained largely dormant until it was revived last year under GOP control.
The committee began reaching out to witnesses in July, but it appeared sidetracked by its investigation into disgraced former New York Representative George Santos. The committee asked to interview a witness soon after it released a bombshell report on Santos, signaling that it was beginning to turn its attention back to Gaetz. More recent reporting from CNN suggests that the inquiry is starting to look into possible sex crimes.
So far, Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing. In private communications reported by The Daily Beast in late January, he claimed that his push to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was driven by a desire to retaliate against the California Representative, whom Gaetz blamed for the ethics probe. On Friday, McCarthy told a media gaggle that the Florida congressman was afraid of the inquiry. “In the end, Gaetz would have a hard time being a member of Congress with staying out of jail too,” he said.
Trump’s been channeling Hitler so I guess this is just par for the course. It’s still startling:
Anthony D’Esposito, a congressman from New York, posted a picture on X last week of an undocumented immigrant flashing two middle fingers after being arraigned for allegedly assaulting two NYPD officers. “We feel the same way about you,” D’Esposito wrote. “Holla at the cartels and have them escort you back.” But Republican Congressman Mike Collins took it a step further: “Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back.” His post was flagged as violent speech, but it was allowed to stand on the grounds that “it may be in the public’s interest for the Post to remain accessible.”
Collins probably considers his statement a joke intended to communicate his views of migrants, and it is best not to overreact to behavior that is designed to provoke. But his post also reflects the mainstreaming of authoritarianism in the GOP. Since at least 2016, members of the Proud Boys—the extremist group that Trump told to “stand back and stand by” in the event he lost the 2020 election—have worn shirts with slogans like “Pinochet did nothing wrong” or “Pinochet’s Helicopter Rides.” Now a Republican in Congress is repeating them.
During Augusto Pinochet’s rule in Chile, more than 1,000 people were “disappeared”: abducted by the state, never to be seen by their families again. More than a hundred of those were drugged, hooded, and tossed from helicopters to sink into the ocean. Given the debate about whether Trump and his movement are fascist—a debate Trump has fueled by describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country and promising that he would be a dictator on “day one” who would “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin”—you might expect comparisons to Pinochet to come from his critics. That they come from admirers instead reflects the unsettling and bizarre ways that Trump is seen by his supporters (as Pinochet was by his) as the savior of Western, Christian civilization against its enemies from within.
I’ve heard some of the fringe MAGAs talking about the “helicopter” option but I didn’t realize that elected Republicans were doing it too. Like I said: psychos.
Some GOP Senators behave responsibly today. Go figure:
Donald Trump spent the weekend telling senators they should not pass more unconditional U.S. foreign aid. More than a dozen Republicans ignored him Sunday, moving forward on a bill to send $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The Senate voted 67-27 to advance the foreign aid supplemental spending bill that doesn’t include border provisions, moving it another step closer to passage. That still isn’t guaranteed, as leaders haven’t yet reached an agreement on GOP-demanded border amendments.
The package faces some resistance from Republicans, who say they won’t back further aid to Ukraine unless it’s amended to include border policy changes. Last week, Republicans blocked a bipartisan border-foreign aid package that was negotiated for months, arguing it didn’t go far enough to limit migration. Consideration of border amendments would require unanimous consent from senators, which is still elusive.
“From this point forward, are you listening U.S. Senate (?),” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No money in the form of foreign aid should be given to any country unless it is done as a loan, not just a giveaway.”
Trump had helped tank the bipartisan border-foreign aid bill, calling for Republicans to block that legislation as well. This time, many GOP senators didn’t seem concerned with his opposition.
“I think that it’s unlikely that we lose any more [members],” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in response to Trump’s comments. “It’s more likely that we can gain more, particularly of members who … were just wanting to make sure that our members got a chance to file amendments and have them heard.”
Republican support actually gained some ground on Sunday, with 18 voting to move the measure forward.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stumped for further aid in his Sunday floor speech, refusing to back away from his adamant support for foreign aid, particularly Ukraine, that’s highlighted a growing divide within his conference.
“I know it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power. To bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership,” McConnell said. “This is idle work for idle minds. And it has no place in the United States Senate.”
Check out the spin from some of them on Trump’s NATO comments, though:
Trump had other comments over the weekend that riled lawmakers, suggesting at a rally Saturday evening that Russia should “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO-member nation that is not meeting its spending commitment. Senate Democrats were expectedly aghast at the comment — but the remarks also elicited mixed responses from Senate Republicans.
Tillis blamed Trump’s team rather than the former president’s long-established beef with NATO, saying “shame on his briefers” for not explaining the U.S. has made a commitment to assist any NATO country that is attacked.
Others were sharper in their criticism. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said it was a “stupid thing to say.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said it was “uncalled for.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he doesn’t take Trump “literally.”
Trump was president of the United States for four years. If he doesn’t know how NATO works by now it’s because he’s an idiot.
Still, good for them. They defied Dear Leader. The bad news is that even if they get past this amendment hurdle, the House is a screaming clown show so who knows if this will ever happen?
Guilt on Bill Clinton's face. Ukraine relied on the United States, to help them if Russia broke its agreement. Ukraine gave up nukes, its only real security, in exchange for a promise. It risked its life for reduced proliferation. For us, for the world. How dare we run now. pic.twitter.com/rRrmrcolBs
Kevin McCarthy was known as a prodigious fundraiser and is as connected as anyone in politics. And he’s pissed:
Donors no longer want to contribute to their campaigns. Primary opponents are lining up to take them out. And some of them have been ex-communicated from caucuses on Capitol Hill.
The eight House Republicans who took the unprecedented step of removing Kevin McCarthy from the speakership are facing blowback, both in Washington and back home. It’s a sign that even four months after the historic move, emotions are still raw inside a GOP conference that is continuing to reel from McCarthy’s ouster.
Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia have arguably received the most incoming fire, with both now facing serious primary threats as they gear up for reelection. And Rep. Matt Rosendale, who recently jumped into the US Senate race in Montana, is facing headwinds in GOP circles — in part because of his vote to boot McCarthy — as top Republicans fear he will cost them a pivotal seat.
A well-connected GOP outside spending group is planning to play in the races against Good and Mace, while McCarthy himself is widely expected to get involved as well, according to multiple Republican sources familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, the Main Street Caucus and Republican Governance Group, two center-right-leaning groups on Capitol Hill, have both quietly dropped Mace from their ranks, multiple sources told CNN. Neither move was publicized, but sources say frustration with the congresswoman had been brewing for months leading up to her McCarthy vote.
“She really wants to be a caucus of one. So we obliged her,” one House Republican told CNN.
McCarthy has little reason to be faithful to the GOP. And it seems as if he doesn’t care that he’s taking out incumbents in what may be a tough year. Why should he?
If you think any of the last 48 hours of relentlessly negative coverage came out of nowhere, *six months* after Biden was sworn in, reporters were complaining about how boring it was to cover him. @juliaioffe laid it all out there, it's not like they were hiding their contempt. pic.twitter.com/BP7IcYHGd2
Yes, of course. The excitement over the Hur Report was palpable.
Similar to the phrase "dogged by questions," where a thing the press keeps asking about is transformed into that thing the candidate cannot ignore. Agency shifts. For example: "Clinton dogged by nagging email questions," a headline from Politico in 2016. https://t.co/yIDgHZEilxhttps://t.co/gTG8P98PS1
The kewl kidz are very upset that anyone would suggest they aren’t doing their jobs well:
By the way:
On 9/20/1939, NYT published an article about Hitler's charming home; tomato garden; love of chocolate, gooseberry pie & afternoon naps.
This was 9 mos after Kristallnacht, 6 yrs after the Dachau Nazi concentration camp opened, 12 days before he invaded Poland & started WWII. pic.twitter.com/4aJotYivbk
The GOP frontrunner simultaneously disavowed the U.S.’s mutual defense commitment with NATO and disparagingly invited Russia to attack U.S. allies – not unlike his invitation to Putin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. These are consistent rather than spontaneous positions https://t.co/2FJ3C8kqvQ
He is so brain damaged that he still thinks, after all this time, that NATO countries pay some sort of “dues” and if they don’t it means he can refuse to support them. It’s so stupid that it’s hard to even contemplate how dangerous it is to allow this person to be president again.
