Like all upstanding Americans I’m eagerly awaiting the first hearing of the House GOP’s new “weaponization of the federal government” investigations committee. That first hearing will feature former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley and what is being presented as an FBI whistleblower of sorts, a former FBI agent named Nicole Parker who says she left the FBI three months ago in the face of growing politicization and unprofessionalism from the FBI brass. She’s now a regular on Fox News. So she’s the one who will reveal how the FBI has become a haven of wokeness during her 12-year tenure.
I looked her up and saw this opinion piece she wrote for Fox News. And in addition to a lot of verbiage about wokeness and how the Bureau changed during her time there, her one example of politicization was fairly revealing. Parker was offended that during the George Floyd protests in D.C. on June 4 a group of FBI agents in tactical gear kneeled before protestors in what they apparently saw as a deescalation effort.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) said on Sunday if Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chooses to retire before finishing her term, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) should keep his promise to choose a Black woman to take the longtime senator’s seat. It’s the latest subtle hint that House Democrats might know more about Feinstein’s political future than her office has made public.
President and Dems should be repeating over and over and over: “we will debate next year’s budget (with our proposals and yours on the table) but not until you stop threatening America’s payment for bills already here from the Trump admin and last year. Who would believe Congress, anyway, if you default on previous promises?”
They can also say over and over that China will win if the GOP forces this crisis.
They need to get out of their DC bubble and do a much better job of repeating stuff to get some control of the public portrayals. Most Americans do not understand this debt limit nonsense.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
White House Rejects GOP Ploy On Medicare and Social Security
Wrapped up in Republicans’ debt ceiling hostage-taking is also their long-running con to break Social Security. Despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy repeatedly assuring public audiences that Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in debt ceiling negotiations, Republicans continue to float various ways to undermine the social safety net.
Just last week, former Vice President Mike Pence trotted out the old GOP standby for Social Security: private accounts.
To its credit, the White House on Monday strongly rejected a GOP ploy to create a commission to consider “reforms” to Social Security and Medicare.
This will serve as your regular reminder that the use of the word “reform” in the context of Social Security and Medicare is highly misleading and tendentious.
Republicans for decades now have opposed these popular programs on ideological grounds, but have attempted (often successfully due to unsophisticated media coverage) to mask their efforts to undermine and redefine them out of existence. Or, as the LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik called it: the “Republican and conservative habit of employing plausible-sounding jargon and economists’ gibberish to conceal their intention to hobble the program.”
Hiltzik serves as a great example of sophisticated coverage of the GOP sophistry on Social Security:
But make no mistake: Diverting any significant portion of Social Security taxes into private accounts would make the program unworkable, funnel untold wealth into the hands of Wall Street promoters and leave millions of families destitute.
A founding member of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen and his girlfriend were hit with federal charges of conspiring to attack the power grid around Baltimore. A third person they were allegedly conspiring with turned out to be an informant for the government who recorded many of their conversations.
Marines Charged In Capitol Riot Got Intel Jobs AFTER Jan. 6
We knew that the active duty Marines recently arrested for allegedly participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol worked in military intelligence roles, but what we didn’t know is that they were assigned those highly sensitive posts after Jan. 6, according to the latest reporting from James Risen at The Intercept.
DeSantis Seeks New Powers To Go After ‘Voter Fraud’
Stymied by local Democratic prosecutors that refuse to play ball, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has had limited success in winning prosecutions based on the work of his bogus voter fraud police.
The reason? The statewide prosector that he wanted to handle the cases is limited by statute to prosecuting crimes that happen in multiple counties. So if someone allegedly voted illegally in only Miami-Dade County, the statewide prosecutor has no jurisdiction. And if the local DA doesn’t want to do DeSantis’ bidding, then he’s out of luck.
Not to worry though! The GOP-controlled Florida legislature is considering a bill to broaden the jurisdiction of the statewide prosecutor and do an end run around Democratic DAs who want no part of DeSantis’ scheming.
Why it matters: DeSantis’ bogus voter fraud police has, not surprisingly, focused its attention on predominately Democratic counties, and most of those voters arrested have been Black. So to sum up, Florida Republicans are trying to change the law as a way of doubling down on their effort to target Black voters, ginning up more attention about bogus voter fraud, and in the process stirring up fear to dampen the Black vote. Admirable work, all the way around.
Former President Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba and her law firm are planning to appeal the ruling awarding nearly $1 million in sanctions against them by a federal judge in Florida for filing frivolous and vexatious litigation.
Great Read
The recent eruption of Mauna Loa disrupted for the first time the decades-long project set up on the mountain to record atmospheric CO2. The data from Mauna Loa (collected separately by NOAA and Scripps) feeds into the long-running Keeling Curve, based on observations that Scripps scientist Charles David Keeling began recording in the 1950s. The New York Times has a great piece on the temporary observatory set up on the nearby Mauna Kea volcano to continue the crucial scientific work.
Death Toll In Turkey Quake Climbs Past 5,000
A Syrian woman walks past a half collapsed house in the town of Azaz on the border with Turkey on February 7, 2023, following a deadly earthquake. The 7.8-magnitude quake early the previous day, which has also killed thousands in neighbouring Turkey, led to widespread destruction in both regime-controlled and rebel-held parts of Syria. (Photo by Bakr ALKASEM / AFP) (Photo by BAKR ALKASEM/AFP via Getty Images)
The 7.8-magnitude quake and its 7.5-magnitude aftershock laid waste to vast areas of Southern Turkey and Syria, with an early death toll of more than 5,000 people.
We’ve mentioned before that the one clean way to avoid a national debt default is a discharge petition in which a small number (at least 6) of House Republicans join with Democrats to force a vote on a clean debt ceiling. Once that happens, the two sides can get down to negotiating a budget. But today, Don Bacon (R-NE) — Washington’s favorite GOP “moderate” — came out categorically against the idea. As reporter and TPM alum Sahil Kapur puts it, if Bacon won’t do it probably no Republicans will.
TPM Reader TC has a more optimistic view of the avian flu issue. I don’t think this is really in contradiction with the earlier post. These are not likely scenarios. But the stakes are high enough that we should be prepared even for very unlikely ones. From TC …
Long-time reader here, wanting to throw in my $0.02 regarding Josh’s recent piece ‘Can We Be Ready‘ about the ongoing avian influenza epidemic. For reference, my doctorate focused on improved/next-generation influenza vaccine design.
Overall, I appreciate Josh’s measured approach to discussing infectious diseases, but would like to make a few additional points:
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) tried to get some good press and score points with Donald Trump supporters when he arrested 20 people accused of voter fraud last year, but the stunt hasn’t led to any real convictions. On Friday, Republicans in the state legislature introduced a bill to change that.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland announced in a press conference on Monday that a neo-Nazi leader and his girlfriend are being charged for allegedly plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid.
Perhaps the most important thing about the Chinese surveillance balloon episode is the completely over-the-top reaction to it among the political class, which, in turn, reminds us how the entrenched stupidity of our politics endangers us. I was reminded of this over the weekend when I read this column in the Times by Zeynep Tufekci. If by chance you’re not familiar with her, you should be. She was one of the most insightful and reliable sources of information throughout the pandemic despite not being an epidemiologist or a medical doctor.
Brandon Russell, founder of Atomwaffen, and his girlfriend Sarah Clendaniel have been arrested and charged with a plot to attack a ring of power stations around Baltimore, Maryland in the hope of sowing chaos and triggering the predicted race war at the center of neo-Nazi/white supremacist ideology. FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Sobocinski of the Baltimore field office told reporters there was “no indication” the plot was part of “anything larger.” I assume that’s true as far as it goes. But we’ve seen a wave of these attacks over recent months.
