Nov 28, 2024
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While we're talkin cabinet picks...
That time 19-year-old Olivia Julianna raised over $2.2mill for abortion access after being bullied by Matt Gaetz. Yup.
Is there a chance that many of these cabinet picks don't get confirmed?
Don't forget that this country not only gave the Republicans control of the White House, but they also gave them a Senate majority and most likely will end up keeping them in charge of the House of Representatives, so they don't need a single Democrat to confirm ANY of these awful Cabinet appointments. The best possible hope is for some of the handful of Senate Republicans who are moderate-ish or still have a few ounces of integrity to oppose some of the crazier appointees. And there are going to be even less of those Senators left after January 3rd.
But this country, in its infinite fucking wisdom, gave Trump and the GOP a mandate, so they can pretty much do what they are planning on doing. That's why we spent the past couple of years reminding people how important the 2024 election was going to be for the rest of our lives. It's not like we can turn to the courts for help; Trump has locked down the judiciary for decades, as well, especially the Supreme Court.
And, here's the thing: I'm sure Trump realizes that it's pretty unlikely that Gaetz can get confirmed as Attorney General because he's enormously unpopular with his own colleagues in the GOP. A lot of Congressional Republicans despise him, and it's not even like with how most people in Congress hate Ted Cruz but grudgingly point out that he's effective at his job and actually a pretty smart dude. With Gaetz, they just think he's a clown and are happy to be rid of him. You can bet that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going to put all of his efforts into defeating a possible confirmation of Gaetz as AG, and McCarthy still has significant influence in Congress because of his record as a major fundraiser for candidates in both chambers.
I bet Trump is throwing a couple of nominees out there that he knows can't get confirmed -- like Gaetz -- to make it easier to get potentially hesitant Republicans to confirm other controversial nominees, like Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary (!). It's like when Pablo Escobar would import a bunch of cocaine into the United States that he knew was going to get seized in order to sneak tons of it through sneakier means. They are decoy douchebags to distract from the other douchebags he's also putting into the Cabinet.
Matt Davies
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
December 23, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Dec 24, 2024
Today the House Ethics Committee released its report on its investigation of widely reported allegations that while in office, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate videos on the House floor, misused state records, diverted campaign funds for his own use, and accepted a bribe or an impermissible gift.
The report says that the committee found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had, in fact, “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl”; “used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions”; “accepted gifts…in excess of permissible amounts”; arranged official help for one of his sexual partners, whom he falsely identified to the State Department as a constituent, in getting a passport; tried to obstruct the committee’s investigation; and “acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.”
The committee concluded that “there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
It “did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute. Although Representative Gaetz did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the Committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel.”
Gaetz is a staunch ally of President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to put Gaetz in charge of the Justice Department. That appointment would have him responsible for law enforcement across the United States. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried hard to keep the report hidden once Trump had tapped Gaetz for attorney general, saying he “strongly request[ed] that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”
The Ethics Committee at first deadlocked over releasing it, but Andrew Solender of Axios reported today that two Republicans on the committee, Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), switched their votes to join the Democrats supporting the release of the report.
Ethics Committee chair Michael Guest (R-MS) and Representatives Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) and John Rutherford (R-FL) all opposed releasing the report, saying that they lost jurisdiction after Gaetz resigned, which he did when Trump announced his intention of putting him in the office of attorney general. In their comments in the report, they said they “do not challenge the Committee’s findings” but object to their disclosure.
Republican Party leaders were willing to put a man their own committee says likely violated state and federal laws into the position of the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. That scenario reflects the extraordinary danger of a country in which one party’s supporters see themselves as the country’s only legitimate governing party.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon’s team worried that the Republican Party would hemorrhage voters in the upcoming midterm elections. That spring, Nixon announced that rather than ending the Vietnam War, he had sent ground troops into Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia. In the protests that followed, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd at Kent State University, killing four protesters. Nixon’s clumsy suggestion that the protesters were responsible for the shooting began to turn middle-class white Americans, his key demographic, against him.
So Nixon’s advisors turned to a strategy they called “positive polarization.” They believed that dividing the country was a positive development because it stoked the anger they needed to get their voters to turn out. They deliberately turned against what they called “the media, the left, [and] the liberal academic community,” drawing voters to Nixon by accusing their opponents of being lazy, dangerous, and anti-American.
This polarization became a key technique of the Republican Party in the Reagan years, when talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh began to fill the airwaves with attacks on “feminazis,” liberals, and Black Americans who they claimed were trying to impose socialism on America. By 1990, a Republican group associated with then-representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) compiled a list of words for Republican candidates to use when talking about Democrats. They included “decay,” “sick,” “greed,” “corruption, “radical,” and “traitor.” In contrast, candidates were encouraged to refer to Republicans using words like “opportunity,” “courage,” “principle(d),” “caring,” and “peace.”
Over the past thirty years, Republicans appear to have come to believe that nothing is more important than making sure Republicans control the government. Less competition has given rise to states like Florida that are essentially controlled by the Republicans. This, in turn, means there is very little oversight of the party’s lawmakers, making obviously problematic candidates able to survive far longer than they would if there were opposition to highlight poor behavior.
It also means that party members appear willing to overlook deeply problematic behavior in their own lawmakers, who come to feel immune, while attacking Democrats for what Republicans claim is the same behavior. Notably, in February of this year, in a closed hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Gaetz badgered President Biden’s son Hunter over his drug use. Hunter Biden responded that he had been “absolutely transparent” about his drug use and asked: “What does that have to do with whether or not you're going to go forward with an impeachment of my father other than to simply try to embarrass me?”
The answer is that while the drug use of private citizen Hunter Biden did not affect the U.S. government, the drug use of congressmember Matt Gaetz did. In a healthy political system, political opposition would have called out his behavior long before he was tapped to become one of the most important figures in the government.
Crucially, in such a system, state law enforcement would have pursued Gaetz, and his own party would have dropped him like a hot potato long before it had to face commentary like that of progressive journalist Brian Tyler Cohen, who today wrote: “Congratulations to Mike Johnson for trying to pressure the House Ethics Committee into burying a report that found the then-nominee for attorney general had engaged in sexual activity with a minor. Party of Family Values, am I right?”
The Republicans’ determination to hold on to the government at all costs showed in a different story that broke this weekend. Representative Kay Granger (R-TX) has been absent from Congress since midsummer. On Sunday, Carlos Turcios of the Dallas Express reported that he found the 81-year-old representative in a memory care and assisted living home. In the months since she went missing, her staff continued to submit material to the Congressional Record, making it look like she was still active.
Chad Pergram of the Fox News Channel reported that a senior Republican source explained why Granger retained her seat despite her incapacity. Referring to what Pergram called “the paper-thin [Republican] House majority,” the source said: “Frankly, we needed the numbers.”
Granger’s condition has reignited the national conversation about the age and capacity of our lawmakers, an issue very much on the table for the 78-year-old president-elect, whose own behavior has been erratic for a while now.
On Sunday, Trump spoke at Turning Point’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, where, as Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded, he entered as if he were at a professional wrestling event. He proceeded to deliver a speech much like his campaign speeches.
It had an important new element in it, though, that he had pioneered on social media the night before. He claimed that Panama is not treating the U.S. well, and threatened that he will “demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly, and without question.” On Sunday he posted on social media that he wants Greenland too. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, responded that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be. Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede of Greenland said: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”
To my knowledge, Trump never mentioned taking the Panama Canal or Greenland during the campaign, and such dramatic action will likely undermine the principle that countries can’t just take over weaker neighbors. This principle is central to the United Nations, which holds that territorial integrity and sovereignty are “sacrosanct” and that members “shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” David Sanger and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times note that Trump’s aggression “reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.”
In a healthy political system, pronouncements from an elderly president-elect that could upend 80 years of foreign policy would spark significant discussion from all quarters.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/us/politics/kash-patel-fbi.html
Here's how Kash Patel, President-elect Trump's choice to lead the FBI, might try to make good on his pledge to rid the government of the so-
