Now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Vice President-elect JD Vance were making the rounds on Capitol Hill Wednesday, meeting with Senate Republicans who, understandably, seem to be struggling to suppress their gag reflex when considering Gaetz’s attorney general nomination.
Their meeting with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was (it appears) a particular success for the incoming Trump administration. The longtime Donald Trump defender and South Carolina senator came out of that meeting with a new talking point for his colleagues to latch onto, if they so choose: the allegations against Gaetz are unproven, regardless of what is in the House Ethics Committee’s report.
After a closed-door meeting that lasted almost two and half hours, House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) on Wednesday said that the members did not come to an agreement to release the report on its investigation of now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
“There was not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Guest said to a crowd of reporters waiting outside the committee room as he left the meeting.
The far-right extremists who planned the attack on Congress on January 6 and who were hit with the longest prison sentences for their actions that day are now pushing for pardons from Donald Trump as he prepares to take office for a second time.
I want to add a quick addendum to today’s Backchannel about Democrats saying “no” to interest groups. This comes out of an exchange I had with TPM Reader CC. She argued a number of reasons that she sees gay marriage and trans rights as substantively quite different from each other. (For context, in her email she notes that she is “a lesbian who benefitted from the marriage equality movement.”) I actually agreed with most of her points. So let me make my argument a bit more specific and clear. I’m not arguing the two issues are substantively the same. I’m observing the general point that in 2003/2004 marriage equality was clearly opposed by a majority of Americans. The argument being put forward now is that Democrats shouldn’t be getting behind any position or issue that a majority of voters oppose. It’s fair to look back 20 years and consider how that framework would apply in that case.
Let me return to something I wrote about yesterday and said I’d return to: Adam Jentleson’s piece in the Times on whether the Democratic Party can learn to say no to interest groups that often demand assent to various positions and commitments that are either obscure or toxic to a majority of voters. Trans rights aren’t the only issue Jentleson was talking about. But the larger debate clearly revolves around the ad the Trump campaign ran against Kamala Harris saying she supported tax payer-funded sex change operations/gender affirming care for prisoners. This was a question Harris checked “yes” to on an ACLU candidate questionnaire in 2019 as part of her 2020 run for the presidential nomination. There is at least the perception among some that it played a non-trivial role in turning the campaign against her
As a general matter I agree with Jentleson’s point. Not specifically about trans rights issues, but more generally. The goal of parties and campaigns is first to win elections.
But I can’t say that without noting some recent history.
Will House Ethics Committee GOPers Bury The Gaetz Report?
The House Ethics Committee is set to meet today when it could decide whether to bury its completed report on recently resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s pick for attorney general. The committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats so it would take a GOP defection in defiance of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for the committee to release the Gaetz report.
While new damaging information could be in the report, most of the details of the allegations of Gaetz are already public, and the House Ethics Committee vote is increasingly representative of whether Republicans will be transparent, show any inclination to air their own dirty laundry in the service of battling corruption, and put up any kind of resistance to Donald Trump. I hope you’re not holding your breath on any of these fronts.
Senate Republicans are registering mild interest at most in seeing the House Ethics Committee report, but there is no groundswell among them to make it public.
In reporting on the hack, the WaPo offered this gem (emphasis mine):
Florida attorney Joel Leppard said in an interview with The Washington Post last weekend that one of his clients witnessed Gaetz having sex with the minor at a drug-fueled party in July 2017 — and that Gaetz was unaware of her age at the time but subsequently was told she was underage.
This woman and a second woman, also represented by Leppard, testified that they were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him and other individuals who attended these “sex parties.” They were paid through Venmo or other conduits — including the PayPal of Nestor Galban, whom Gaetz has referred to as his “adopted son.
Trump’s attorney general nominee was allegedly using his adopted son’s PayPal account to pay women for sex. By all means, release the House Ethics Committee report, but what more do GOP senators really need to know?
Hegseth’s Prospects For DoD
Republican senators are generally taking the same noncommittal approach on the controversial nomination of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense as they are for Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Both nominees face sexual misconduct allegations on top of their woeful lack of qualifications, conspiracist tendencies, and extremist views.
Here’s Hegseth on a podcast Monday night (yeah, this week) touting “a system of ‘classical Christian schools’ to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an ‘educational insurgency’ to take over the nation” (h/t Right Wing Watch):
Note the Beavis and Butthead laughter at the end when he disclaims that this is literal warfare.
Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.
Even if Patel is passed over for director, he is still in the running for deputy director of the FBI, according to the Guardian report.
Trump II Clown Show
Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick: commerce secretary
WWE co-founder Linda McMahon: secretary of education
Dr. Mehmet Oz: administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
‘Hostile Takeover’
Behold this nugget in a good WaPo piece on how outside-the-lines the Trump transition team is operating (emphasis mine):
Thus far, Trump has left the job of vetting candidates to Stanley Woodward, a Palm Beach lawyer on his campaign who has represented several Jan. 6 rioters and Trump associates caught up in the classified documents case, according to transition staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the decision.
Remember this comes as Trump is bypassing FBI background checks for some nominees.
Senate Republicans will be validating all of this corruption if, as expected, they confirm all or nearly all of Trump’s nominees with minimal fuss.
UPDATE: The Withering Trump Prosecutions
Hush money case: “Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.”–TPM’s Josh Kovensky
Jan. 6 cases: “A Trump-appointed judge on Tuesday said it would be ‘beyond frustrating and disappointing’ if the incoming president grants sweeping clemency to most of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”–Politico
Fake electors cases: “Election interference cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies are moving forward in Georgia and Arizona, but recent complications in each case have fueled speculation about whether the prosecutions are in more fragile shape than they were before Mr. Trump won the election.”–NYT
House GOP Targets New Transgender Member
The GOP 2024 effort to use transgender people as a so-called “culture war” attack is carrying right over into Congress, where the House GOP is targeting the first openly transgender member, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE):
REPORTER: Is this effort in response to Congresswoman McBride coming to Congress?
NANCY MACE: Yes, and absolutely, and then some. Someone with a penis in the women’s locker room — that’s not ok. I’m a victim of abuse myself. I’m a rape survivor.
NYT: Medicaid May Face Big Cuts and Work Requirements
AP: What to know about Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to lead Medicare and Medicaid
2024 Ephemera
NYT: Key to Trump’s Win: Heavy Losses for Harris Across the Map
Natalie Jackon: Trump’s decisive margin probably came from whims of low-information voters
Slate: This Election’s Surprising Bright Spot for Progressives Is a Very Big Deal
GOP Launches New Power Grab In North Carolina
“Republicans in the North Carolina legislature moved swiftly Tuesday to reduce the authority of statewide offices that will be held by Democrats in the new year, fast-tracking a bill that makes major changes to state government’s structure and functions.”–News From The States
Texas Is A Lab For Right-Wing Education Policy
“Texas education officials backed on Tuesday a new elementary school curriculum that infuses material drawn from the Bible into reading and language arts lessons, a contentious move that would test the limits of religion’s presence in public education.”–NYT
University of North Texas responds to new anti-DEI state law by removing dozens of references to race and equity in course names.
An analysis of newly released census data estimates the death toll from the American Civil War was 698,000, with a mortality rate twice as high for the Confederacy as for the Union. “This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths,” the authors of the new analysis said.
Here’s a morsel of news that shows you how far we’ve come over the last eight years. Donald Trump made a heavy play for the crypto world in the last campaign, promising to be a “crypto president” and courting donors in that space. He’s now in talks to buy (through the parent company of Truth Social) the crypto trading firm Bakkt. This comes after he already founded his own new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Bakkt was formerly led by former appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was later defeated by Sen. Raphael Warnock. This was when Loeffler was an executive at Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of The New York Stock Exchange. Loeffler’s husband Jeff Sprecher is ICE’s CEO. Both Loeffler and Sprecher remain major backers and financial supporters of Donald Trump.
Due to scheduling conflicts, the newest episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast will be released Thursday. We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week just in time for Thanksgiving!
As my colleague David Kurtz explained in Monday’s Morning Memo, it would be a massive break from precedent for Donald Trump to come into office with plans to replace the FBI director, a position that’s given a 10-year term specifically to inoculate against partisan politics seeping into the bureau’s operations.
But it is increasingly looking like Trump will do just that.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.
