Goodbye, Two-Track Infrastructure Plan?

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

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

An Abrupt Shift

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her caucus Monday night that the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill wouldn’t be ready for a vote this week as she had planned, but she would push on ahead with a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday anyway.

  • The decision to basically decouple the bills came after Democratic leadership realized they’d have to pare down the $3.5 trillion price tag for moderate Democrats who threw the two-track plan into jeopardy, according to multiple reports on the meeting.
    • “It all changed, so our approach had to change,” Pelosi said during the meeting, per Politico. “We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated.”
  • Pelosi also said the bipartisan legislation has to pass before key transportation funding expires on Thursday, according to Politico.
  • But a deal’s a deal, and Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) made it clear after the meeting on Monday night that progressives were sticking to the original plan moderates had initially agreed to: A majority of her caucus would vote against the bipartisan bill on Thursday if it comes without reconciliation.
    • “We are going to vote for both bills after the reconciliation bill is done,” she said.

Biz Lobbyists Who Sort Of Hate BBB Throw Sinema A Fundraiser

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who is holding the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill hostage, is having an event today with five business lobbying groups, several of which are fighting pretty dang hard to make sure that bill doesn’t pass.

  • The attendees will spend 45 minutes writing the senator checks for between $1,000 and $5,800 to her campaign.
  • Sinema spokesperson John LaBombard insisted that the Democratic senator is “working directly, in good faith” with her fellow lawmakers and the White House on the reconciliation measure.

Abbott Blindsided By Trump’s Demand For A Fake Election Audit!

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) reportedly had to scramble to appease the ex-president after he sent a letter to the governor demanding an “Forensic Audit” of the Lone Star State’s election results, similar to the bogus “audit” commissioned by Arizona GOP senators (which, surprise surprise, didn’t find anything that would undo Biden’s victory).

  • There was a “mad dash” in Abbott’s office to figure out whether Trump “was actually being serious” with his demand, an unnamed aide told Politico.

Gov’s Daughter Gets Certificate After Mom Speaks To The Manager

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) met with South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program director Sherry Bren, Bren’s boss plus state Labor Secretary Marcia Hultman, in July 2020 after Bren’s agency moved to deny Noem’s daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser certification.

  • Noem’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, was at the meeting, according to the Associated Press.
  • Lo and behold, Peters ended up getting her certification several months after the meeting.
  • Hultman allegedly demanded that Bren retire right after Peters got certified, with the Labor secretary allegedly telling Bren that she had an “inability to change gears.”
  • Noem’s spokesperson painted the governor’s helping hand as her cutting through “bureaucratic red tape to get in the way of South Dakota’s sustained economic growth” because “having more quality appraisers in the market will help keep our housing market moving and home prices down.”
  • Noem is feeling Very Attacked Right Now after the Associated Press reported on this mess. “Listen I get it. I signed up for this job,” she tweeted. “But now the media is trying to destroy my children.”

In Case You Missed It

A stunning Yahoo News report revealed a CIA plot to kidnap Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and potentially assassinate him in 2017.

Must-Read

“Anita Hill Wants More Than an Apology” – New York Magazine

Trump Cartoonist Gets COVID And Won’t Go To The Hospital

Ben Garrison, a cartoonist who draws Trump like Thor, has been infected with COVID-19 after posting extremely on the nose comics about the evils of the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccine mandates:

  • As you could probably guess, Garrison said that he’s been taking Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic generally used for horses and cattle, as treatment for the virus.
  • The cartoonist insisted to Gizmodo that he wouldn’t go to the hospital, citing a bizarre conspiracy theory that claims hospitals “get extra money” for COVID death reports.
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The Reckoning Continues In What Promises To Be A Wild Week In Congress

And we’re off to the races.

This week is when the tug-o-war over infrastructure will truly begin to heat up: The House will begin the debate over the bipartisan infrastructure bill today and is slated to vote for it on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told rank-and-file Democrats in her chamber on Sunday.

Democratic leaders also hope to finish up on negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill this week after centrist Democrats threw a grenade at the initially agreed-upon two-track process of passing the reconciliation and the infrastructure bills together.

But the real fight is in the Senate, where Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have kicked up a fuss over the $3.5 trillion price tag of the reconciliation bill. That’s also where Democrats find themselves in a gridlock with Republicans who refuse to suspend the debt ceiling for the legislation.

Follow our live coverage below:

Senate GOP Filibusters Bill That Would Avert Gov’t Shutdown And Debt Ceiling Catastrophe

Posted on by Kate Riga

Senate Republicans made good on their threat to filibuster a continuing resolution that would have funded the government for a few more months and suspended the debt ceiling through December of next year. 

Continue reading “Senate GOP Filibusters Bill That Would Avert Gov’t Shutdown And Debt Ceiling Catastrophe” →

Where Things Stand: Trump’s Thirst For Revenge Might Be Stronger Than Loyalty

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

While unwavering fealty may be the most important key to former President Trump’s heart, a good prodigal’s son (or, daughter) story may be just as enticing. Especially when it’s coupled with the sweetness of retribution.

Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Trump’s Thirst For Revenge Might Be Stronger Than Loyalty” →

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Buddies Tried To Get The VA To Sell Access To Veterans’ Medical Records

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

This article was originally published in ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

Former President Donald Trump empowered associates from his private club to pursue a plan for the Department of Veterans Affairs to monetize patient data, according to documents newly released by congressional investigators.

As ProPublica first reported in 2018, a trio based at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort weighed in on policy and personnel decisions for the federal government’s second-largest agency, despite lacking any experience in the U.S. government or military.

While previous reporting showed the trio had a hand in budgeting and contracting, their interest in turning patient data into a revenue stream was not previously known. The VA provides medical care to more than 9 million veterans at more than 1,000 facilities across the country.

“Patient data is, in my opinion, the most valuable assets [sic] the VA has,” a consultant said in a June 2017 email released Monday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “It can be leveraged into hundreds of millions in revenue” by selling access to major companies, he said.

The consultant, Terry Fadem, ran a private nonprofit for Bruce Moskowitz, a West Palm Beach, Florida, physician who was one of the three Trump associates given sweeping influence over the VA, known to officials as “the Mar-a-Lago crowd.”

In response to Fadem’s email, Moskowitz told then-VA Secretary David Shulkin that he had discussed the plan with interested companies including Johnson & Johnson, CVS and Apple. Shulkin replied that he liked the idea, according to the documents.

Senior officials scrambled to hire Fadem as a contractor, the emails show, but it’s not clear whether his contract was awarded. “I am working on trying to understand why and where [h]is contract is stuck,” Poonam Alaigh, then the agency’s top health official, said in a June 2017 email. “I agree, having him on board as soon as possible will be critical.”

The documents do not show what became of the plan or whether the VA ever sold access to patient data. Nor do the records include evidence that Moskowitz or the other Mar-a-Lago associates were in a position to profit personally.

A spokesman for the trio said as far as they know Fadem was not hired and the VA never acted on the licensing idea. “We were asked repeatedly by former Secretary Shulkin and his senior staff, as well as by the President, to assist the VA and that is what we sought to do, period,” the three said in a statement.

Shulkin, Alaigh, Trump’s office, the VA, Johnson & Johnson, CVS and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fadem died in 2019.

The latest revelation helps complete the picture of the Mar-a-Lago triumvirate’s extensive influence over Trump’s agenda for veterans, a signature issue in his 2016 campaign. ProPublica’s revelations about the men’s day-to-day involvement prompted investigations by congressional committees and the Government Accountability Office, as well as a court challenge.

House Oversight Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., said in a statement on Monday that the documents show “the secret role the trio played in developing VA initiatives and programs, including a ‘hugely profitable’ plan to monetize veterans’ medical records.”

“Ike Perlmutter, Marc Sherman, and Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, bolstered by their connection to President Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club, violated the law and sought to exert improper influence over government officials to further their own personal interests,” the chairs said.

Perlmutter, Sherman and Moskowitz have previously said that they obtained no personal benefits, had no official role and exercised no formal authority.

But the newly released documents show that they did view themselves as an official advisory committee — and disregarded repeated warnings that they needed to comply with a Watergate-era transparency law.

“As the President asked, we can now formally create an official committee,” Perlmutter, the group’s leader and chairman of Marvel Entertainment, wrote in a February 2017 email after a meeting with Trump. Perlmutter is a Mar-a-Lago member and one of Trump’s biggest political donors.

Perlmutter went so far as to rebuke White House staff for holding discussions without him.

“I am shocked and extremely disappointed with the manner in which you have engaged in individual communications with Apple — and intentionally excluded our broader team of subject matter experts,” Perlmutter said in a March 2017 email to White House aides. “I understand that these backdoor discussions have apparently been occurring almost daily for weeks, and you have not told anyone and refuse to return phone calls and emails.”

Official advisory committees are governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The 1972 law, known as FACA, requires federal agencies to inform the public when they consult outside experts.

Administration officials repeatedly told the Mar-a-Lago trio that they would have to comply with the law. The law compels advisory committees to represent a range of views and disclose their activities to the public.

“It appears FACA may be implicated,” a VA lawyer said in a January 2017 email that Shulkin shared with Moskowitz.

That April, White House aide Reed Cordish told Perlmutter directly, “You will need to form a FACA group.”

But Perlmutter demurred, replying, “We have been advised that FACA does not apply because we are not a formal group in any way.”

Instead, the group took efforts to conceal its activities, documents show. “We are still unsure what can be put in emails and what to discuss verbally,” Moskowitz wrote to Shulkin in February 2017.

The group’s spokesman maintained they weren’t a formal committee and said complying with FACA was the agency’s responsibility.

In March 2021, a federal appeals court in Washington held that a liberal veterans group could proceed with a lawsuit to enforce FACA’s disclosure requirements around the Mar-a-Lago trio.

The Road to the Stolen 2024 Election

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I’ve been gratified to see that the threat to the 2024 election and really all elections that come after it is beginning to seep into the mainstream or prestige political dialog. You may have seen Robert Kagan’s essay in the Post or this one in Politico or other pieces that have appeared in the last week or more. These don’t tell us a lot that we don’t know. But especially pieces like Kagan’s place the critical conversation in one of those prestige venues that exist outside the limits of “both sides” analysis. Maybe the foundations of our democracy are under active threat and we see it all happening right in front of us. Maybe it’s not a general issue. Maybe it’s the radicalization of one political party increasingly taking aim at the foundational rules and agreements that make civic life possible in this country.

I thought it was worth laying out just what we’re talking about in specific terms. The general problem is that a radicalized GOP simply no longer accepts the idea that elections apply to them. Or rather, elections they don’t win can’t be legitimate, by definition.

But there are specific paths that get you to acting on that belief. So let’s discuss them.

Continue reading “The Road to the Stolen 2024 Election” →

No Big Deal (Except Everything Hangs In The Balance Right Now)

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

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

Buckle Up For A Big Week Ahead On The Hill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is finessing the two-step Biden legislative agenda, navigating between suspicious progressives and a small cadre of moderates in her own chamber, while the real action remains in the Senate.

  • Pelosi announced in a “Dear Colleague” letter Sunday evening that the House will begin debate Monday on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, with a planned vote on Thursday. That massages her previous agreement with moderate Democrats to “consider” the bipartisan bill no later than today.
  • The House would also work to “conclude negotiations” over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that moderates have been trying to divorce from the passage of the bipartisan legislation. But the center of gravity for the reconciliation package remains with Senate Democrats.
    • Pelosi signaled earlier on Sunday that the reconciliation package’s price tag will be shrunk down, telling ABC’s “This Week” that the decrease “seems self-evident.” 
  • Pelosi’s announcement came after Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who has repeatedly warned that more than half of the caucus will torpedo the bipartisan bill if it gets put to a vote on Monday, predicted that there wouldn’t be a vote today.
  • Two of the House centrists who tried to force Pelosi to hold a vote on the bipartisan bill before the reconciliation bill announced on Sunday that they now support the “swift passage” of the $3.5 trillion plan.
  • The House Budget Committee passed the reconciliation bill out of committee on Saturday. One Democrat joined the committee’s Republicans to vote against it: Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA)

TPM’s Josh Marshall Goes On CNN To Discuss Media Coverage Of The Budget Fights

Pro-Trump County Elections Official Who Allegedly Leaked Vote Data Tried To Indoctrinate Her Staffers

Colorado Republican Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk and recorder who is currently under investigation by the FBI, required her office’s employees to attend a presentation in April in which physics teacher Frank Douglas, an election truther working for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, peddled a bunch of fake conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being riddle with fraud.

  • Peters also brought her staff to a separate private meeting with Douglas for him to push the conspiracy theories to them directly, Douglas told the Washington Post. “I sat down with her and showed her how her election was hacked, and she brought in all of her employees, one after the other,” he said.
  • Peters urged her staffers not to talk to law enforcement last month, per an email obtained by the Post, amid the FBI’s investigation and the Colorado secretary of state’s lawsuit against her and her deputy, Belinda Knisley, for allegedly allowing an unauthorized person access to data from the county’s Dominion Voting Systems machines that later leaked online.
  • Peters admitted last week during a podcast that she had “commissioned somebody to come in” to copy the data. Peters and Knisley’s lawyers deny that the officials had leaked the data online, and argue that they had at worst committed merely “several technical violations of election regulations.”

Hit-And-Run Attorney General Still Faces Trouble Even After Avoiding Jail Time

South Dakota lawmakers have called for a special session to consider impeaching state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg after the official was given a slap on the wrist for fatally striking a pedestrian with his car last September.

  • The move doesn’t guarantee that there’ll actually be impeachment proceedings, Speaker of the House Spencer Gosch (R) told the Argus Leader.
  • Ravnsborg avoided jail time for the accident and instead was ordered to pay a fine of $500 for each of the two traffic misdemeanors he had pleaded no contest to, plus court fees of $3,742. Prosecutors had initially charged the official with three traffic misdemeanors before dropping one of the charges in a plea deal with Ravnsborg.
  • The state attorney general refuses to resign even as multiple lawmakers plus South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) demand that he do so.
  • Ravnsborg is staring down other problems over the collision as well: The victim’s widow has vowed to sue the attorney general.

The Kids Aren’t Alright

Kids today are on track to face three times as many climate disasters as their grandparents, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

In Case You Missed It

Rudy Giuliani has been banned from appearing on Fox News for almost three months, according to Politico.

  • Giuliani’s real sad about it and feels betrayed by Rupert Murdoch, a source told Politico.
  • Andrew Giuliani, the ex-New York City mayor’s son, has reportedly been banished too.

Hey Check Out This Adorable Kitty

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Booker Rips GOP’s ‘Kabuki Theater’ On Debt Ceiling

Posted on by Summer Concepcion

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) on Sunday swiped at Republicans’ brinksmanship on the debt ceiling soon after Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) declared that he is joining his Republican colleagues in refusing to help Democrats suspend the debt ceiling.

Continue reading “Booker Rips GOP’s ‘Kabuki Theater’ On Debt Ceiling” →

Jayapal Pours Cold Water On Vote For Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill On Monday

Posted on by Summer Concepcion

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that she does not expect a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill to happen on Monday — the date when rebelling House moderates pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor — as moderates and progressives struggle to agree on the price tag of Democrats’ sweeping $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

Continue reading “Jayapal Pours Cold Water On Vote For Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill On Monday” →