Josh Marshall
Vaccine Shipments to Israel Halted Over Government Impasse
A simply astonishing confluence of events today in Israel – one that at least temporarily has led Pfizer to refuse to deliver the latest shipment of its COVID vaccine to the country.
After a number of delays, a prosecutor began his opening statement today in the corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu was in court today, with the jarring images you would expect from such a moment going out over the news wires. Meanwhile, party leaders are meeting today with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to formally recommend which party leader should be given the first opportunity to build a government after the inclusive results of last month’s election.
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Culture and Consumerism vs the American Political System 
As Tierney Sneed explains here, big corporations are lining up in opposition to the voter suppression law in Texas as many have been over the last couple weeks in response to the legislation in Georgia. This broader trend has spurred a generally insipid and perhaps offensive debate about whether corporate America is now “woke” as well as a more interesting question about whether we should applaud a system in which corporate America tries to exercise a veto over the political choices of state governments. (Remember, it may not always be laws you disagree with.) But apart from loaded questions this phenomenon is an illustration of a broader reality undergirding almost all American politics today, which is important to focus on.
Why are corporations doing this?
If you’re a serious Gaetz-ologist this is a must-read piece by Josh and Kate. They dive into timelines and granular nuts and bolts for when the investigation started, when Bill Barr found out about it, when Gaetz or possibly Trump may have found out about it, Gaetz alleged co-trafficker and hints that Gaetz may have started bearding up his personal life as the Feds closed in.
The Matt Gaetz story is exploding in so many bizarre and incriminating directions at once that it’s pretty hard to keep up with all the threads of the story. But there’s one broader element of the saga which has become increasingly evident over the last couple days: Matt Gaetz lifestyle and behavior, if not the specific alleged crimes, appear to have been common knowledge in MAGA world and among DC Republicans generally.
A few examples.
A Gaetz/Greenberg Sex Trafficking Ring?
Having read the Times latest installment of Matt Gaetz I feel fairly confident that Mr. Gaetz will not be serving in Congress for much longer. The piece is simply devastating, not only for the facts alleged but for what you can glean about the breadth of the investigation from the nature of the reporting itself. Times reporters appear to have spoken to many of the women involved, reviewed ‘receipts’ from digital payment apps which were allegedly payments for sex, as well as other digital communications. In other words, it’s big; it’s bad; and there are receipts, literally and figuratively.
Let me summarize this as concisely as I can.
Peeling Back Layers of Fear and Hyper-Caution
Yesterday was two weeks after I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, the first day I was officially immune from COVID, or as immune as an mRNA vaccine gets you. Obviously vaccinated people still get COVID, though serious or fatal cases are extremely rare, almost to the point of non-existence, according to the latest data. Two additional studies have been released over the last week: one a batch of follow-on trial data from Pfizer which places the vaccine’s efficacy just over 90%; another from the CDC, probably more consequential, suggests the vaccine is almost as effective against infection as it is against disease. But for the moment, whatever the latest science says, I’m as vaccinated as you get.
My family and I have been very ‘tight’ when it comes to COVID. On the spectrum of mitigation we’ve leaned strongly to the side of caution. Still though I go to the pharmacy to pick up medicines, to the grocery to get food, for the occasional outdoor dining. But each time it’s not only masked or now double-masked, it’s with a persistent consciousness of vulnerability and a general imperative to limit my time indoors with people I don’t know as much as possible. Do what I need to do and get back to the relative safety and isolation of my home.
Gaetz Saga Manages to Get More Absurd
Here’s a fascinating new wrinkle to the Matt Gaetz story. Jeff Stein has a piece up about the backstory of this Iranian rescue operation which – absurd as it sounds – is the center of what the Gaetzes claim was an extortion plot.
The Gaetzes gave purported screencaps of text messages to The Washington Examiner, a friendly rightwing outfit, to support their extortion claims. But even at face value what is described doesn’t sound like an extortion plot.
The Self-Immolation of (Not So) Young Matt Gaetz
When I saw the first reports of the Gaetz story I figured he was hooked up with some sleazeball who kept a coterie of young women on hand for his male pals enjoyment. Gaetz partook and got swept up in the investigation of the sleazeball associate. Some version of that seems broadly true and the friend is a disgraced GOP rising star named Joel Greenberg, who was the tax chief in Seminole County before getting indicted for stalking, child sex trafficking and more.
But Gaetz’s performance on TV and Twitter last night makes me think his legal predicament is significantly more serious. Sex with a minor, with money involved and crossing state lines, is certainly bad enough. But these wild claims about good guy and bad guy factions at the DOJ, feds pressuring various friends to testify against him, denials about photographs with underaged girls that no one had at least publicly accused him of yet – these are the flounderings and flailings of a guy wrapped up in something considerably more serious.
Trump is Floundering and Unheard
I hear again and again that people shouldn’t ‘amplify’ Trump now that he’s lost power and his platforms on social media. This is a theory and understanding of politics and speech that I have always thought was more or less bankrupt. It crops up again now when Trump releases one of his Twitter-esque statements “from the office of” the 45th President, which he distributes to reporters. This happened again yesterday when he released a lengthy – quite lengthy – tirade against Drs Fauci and Birx. The idea is that journalists posting these on Twitter or discussing them somehow does Trump’s work for him rather than keeping him bottled in what really must be a personal hell of exile from the social media platforms which were so central to his political rise and the supply of endorphins in his bloodstream. But really these blasts only underscore how distant he has become from the centers of power, both literal and figurative. He used to yell in our faces or live in our heads. Now he’s reduced to nailing his rants to a public bulletin board way on the outskirts of town.
It’s like he’s barking into a pipe deep in a mine shaft and you can only faintly hear him out of the exposed pipe end sticking up out from the ground.
As we’ve discussed in various contexts over recent months, a big, big question is whether mRNA vaccines prevent COVID infection itself or the just illness that the virus causes. If the vaccine keeps you from getting a severe case of the disease or dying that is obviously a huge benefit. But the initial efficacy studies could not rule out one possibility: that vaccinated individuals were still getting infected and that the vaccine was pushing their cases into the asymptomatic category. That may not be a huge difference for individuals. But it’s all the difference in the world in terms of stopping the on-going spread of the disease through the population.
Now we have a study that seems to address this question directly.