Two Members Of Congress Flew To Kabul And No One’s Impressed

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Great Timing, Guys

Two members of Congress went on a junket to Kabul right in the middle of the massive airlift to rescue Americans and Afghans from the Taliban takeover.

  • The guilty reps are Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Peter Meijer (R-MI).
  • Military and State Department officials were livid, according to the Washington Post.
    • A diplomat lambasted the trip as “one of the most irresponsible things I’ve heard a lawmaker do,” and a senior official said it was “as moronic as it is selfish.”
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) didn’t seem to care for the stunt either, reminding members that State and Defense Department officials have asked them not to travel to the region now. 
    • “Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating America [sic] and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan,” she wrote in a letter.
  • Moulton and Meijer insisted that they went there to “to gather information, not to grandstand,” and that they hadn’t taken up room in a plane that actual refugees needed.
    • “We left on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” they said.
  • Let the dunking begin:

Biden Sticks To His Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline

The President won’t be extending his Aug. 31 deadline despite pressure from some lawmakers and officials, saying in a speech yesterday that he was “determined to complete our mission.”

  • Whether Biden ultimately decides to extend the deadline “depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport to those who are transporting out and no disruptions to our operation,” he said.

The House Passes The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

The effort to revive key elements of the Voting Rights Act passed 219-212, with no Republican support.

  • Among other things, the bill would require jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to receive federal approval before implementing new voting laws (also known as “preclearance”).
  • The bill attempts to counter the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby case.
  • The legislation is almost certainly doomed in the Senate without changes to the filibuster rule. The only GOP senator who supports it is Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Yet Another Insurrectionist-White Nationalist Crossover

The Jan. 6 insurrectionist who is accused of stealing a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office during the attack allegedly participated in a neo-Nazi chat room, an investigation by Vice found.

SCOTUS Upholds One Of Trump’s Worst Anti-Immigration Policies

The Supreme Court ordered the Biden administration to comply with a lower court’s ruling to reinstate Trump’s infamous “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Get The Damn Shot

Hospitalization rates for people who weren’t vaccinated for COVID-19 were 29 times higher than for the vaccinated in Los Angeles County in July, according to a new study by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

An Actual Voter Fraudster’s Reckoning

GOP operative McRae Dowless, who masterminded an absentee ballot fraud scheme in a 2018 North Carolina congressional election, will be sentenced today after pleading guilty to federal Social Security fraud charges.

  • Dowless still faces separate state criminal charges for allegedly ordering his assistants to collect incomplete ballots and fill them out during the 2018 election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

A Ghost Pleads Guilty

A former Florida Senate candidate who ran as a “ghost” candidate in a Republican’s plot to siphon votes from a Democratic rival with the same last name pleaded guilty to election law violations.

And The Award Doesn’t Go To…..

Remember when then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won an International Emmy for, uh, holding press conferences last year? Well, now he has to kiss that little statue goodbye after resigning in disgrace.

  • The International Academy announced that it was “rescinding” the award, and that Cuomo’s “name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.”
  • In case you forgot, they gave Cuomo the Emmy last November “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world.”

Having A Normal One

Andrew Giuliani, the son of ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is out here doing … this:

Did anyone else forget that Giuliani’s running for New York governor? And that he’s a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum board of trustees?

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Oklahoma Man Who Assaulted AP Photographer On Jan. 6 Gets Arrested

Posted on by Summer Concepcion

The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that an Oklahoma man caught on video pushing an Associated Press photographer over a wall outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection was arrested last week. Continue reading “Oklahoma Man Who Assaulted AP Photographer On Jan. 6 Gets Arrested” →

FCC Wants $5M Fine Against Wohl, Burkman For Racist 2020 Robocalls

Posted on by Matt Shuham

Right-wing hoaxters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman face a proposed $5 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for the racist robocalls they deployed during the last election. 

Continue reading “FCC Wants $5M Fine Against Wohl, Burkman For Racist 2020 Robocalls” →

Emerging Data on Booster Shots

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wanted to revisit the question of COVID vaccine booster shots, or rather third doses of the vaccine which are now being administered in Israel and will be in the United States starting next month. (Those with compromised immune systems have already been approved for third doses in the United States.)

The short version is that initial data out of Israel appears to show dramatically increased protection both against infection and disease from a third dose. But there are at least some questions about the data and what they actually mean.

Continue reading “Emerging Data on Booster Shots” →

The For The People Act Still Has Life. But You Wouldn’t Know It From Reading The Coverage.

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

Right before the Senate left for recess earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to once again force a vote on the For The People Act (S. 1), the most significant fair elections bill in generations. All fifty Democratic senators voted to bring the bill from committee to the full Senate floor, but because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) objected to moving forward immediately, there could not be a motion to proceed to debate it. 

Continue reading “The For The People Act Still Has Life. But You Wouldn’t Know It From Reading The Coverage.” →

House Democrats Of All Stripes Are Mad At The Disruptive Centrists

Posted on by Kate Riga

House Democrats from both sides of the political spectrum are finding it hard to contain their annoyance at their 10 colleagues threatening to topple President Joe Biden’s entire agenda — for no real reason. 

Continue reading “House Democrats Of All Stripes Are Mad At The Disruptive Centrists” →

The Terror/Consultant Industrial Complex Rears Its Head

Posted on by Josh Marshall

One thing I’ve been wanting to address over the last week is what remains the background premise for the Afghanistan mission: denying a safe haven to al Qaeda or other similar groups from which to mount attacks on the United States. I have already seen numerous analyses claiming that al Qaeda will soon be setting up shop again under Taliban protection. Sometimes it is necessary to grab hold of a bad argument by the root.

Let me address this at a few levels.

In retrospect – and perhaps at the time – the entire ‘safe haven’ argument was greatly overstated. Let’s take the actual 9/11 attacks as our example. As many note, most of the plotting was done by people who weren’t even in Afghanistan. They were mostly people from the Gulf living in Europe or the United States. At a basic level the whole premise was wrong from the beginning. But this critique misses a non-trivial part of the equation. There’s only so much time in the day. If you’re running an international terror group, time spent on the run is time not spent plotting attacks. Obviously terrorist and guerrilla groups have managed to do both throughout history. But it certainly makes sense and I think is borne out by history that if you have a base of operations which is basically protected and secure that’s an advantage. This is the premise on the strategy of ‘pressure’ wrapped up in aggressive surveillance, drone strikes, throttling access to the international banking system, special ops raids and more. Time spent running is time not spent plotting.

Continue reading “The Terror/Consultant Industrial Complex Rears Its Head” →

McConnell Blesses Centrist Dems’ Attempt To Blow Up Two-Track Infrastructure Plan

Posted on by Kate Riga

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cheered the attempt by some moderate Democrats in the House to decouple the two infrastructure bills, threatening the future of the Democrats’ sweeping reconciliation package.

Continue reading “McConnell Blesses Centrist Dems’ Attempt To Blow Up Two-Track Infrastructure Plan” →

COVID Surge Is Cutting Into Supply Of Oxygen Used To Purify Orlando’s Water

Posted on by Matt Shuham

After four days of irrigation austerity, the Orlando officials are urging residents to continue cutting back on watering their lawns and other nonessential water use — because of COVID-19. 

Continue reading “COVID Surge Is Cutting Into Supply Of Oxygen Used To Purify Orlando’s Water” →