May 20, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Negotiations Paused?

With twelve more days left in the month of May, the debt ceiling follies continue unabated. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy just "paused" the negotiations with President Joe Biden, which was a rather pessimistic note to close out what had otherwise been a rather optimistic week. There is speculation that both sides are using this "pause" merely as a political signal to their respective bases -- to show that they are negotiating hard and not giving away the store. If this is true, negotiations will likely resume at some point this weekend. But it's anyone's guess whether they'll agree even on a framework (much less actual legislative text) any time soon.

The first of June could be the "drop-dead date" (which most in the media have taken to calling the "X-date," but we have to say we prefer the more morbid allusion), where the Treasury runs out of money and has to halt payments and begin defaulting on debts. Twelve days is not a lot of time, considering both the slowness of Congress in normal times as well as the looming Memorial Day multi-week break for Congress.

This weekend -- or very early next week -- is likely the deadline for taking care of all of this without seeing a big negative impact on the financial markets or America's credit rating (or both). The closer we get to the earliest default date that could happen, the more nervous investors are going to become. The last time things got too close to the wire, America suffered a credit rating downgrade for the first time in history -- which, contrary to the stated goal of the Republicans, would increase what we'd have to pay toward our debts in future years, thus ballooning the deficit rather than shrinking it.

But Republicans don't really care. They're not budget-slashing ideologues, they are instead playing this game solely to score political points. They want their pound of flesh from Biden (or, more accurately, his budgets), and they don't care what the consequences are as long as they can end the process boasting that they "made Biden blink." That is the only reason we are going through all of this Kabuki theater, folks.

Tuesday saw a big meeting at the White House with Biden and all the leadership in Congress. Everyone emerged with fairly positive things to say about what had happened. McCarthy told reporters that a deal might be possible by the weekend. Biden announced he was cutting short his upcoming Asian trip, to return to the White House to finalize things, if that was necessary.

On the Democratic side, progressives are becoming worried that Biden seems open to at least beefing up work requirements for federal programs, while on the Republican side the MAGA caucus is becoming worried that McCarthy won't get every single thing they demanded (which is delusional, but that is indeed what they're miffed over). So perhaps today's announced "pause" is more Kabuki for both sides' benefit. It's tough to tell, at this point.

McCarthy's big worry, of course, is that if he does reach a deal and manages to pass it through his House, that he will immediately be challenged with a "no confidence" vote and deposed as speaker. Some Democrats are even quietly discussing what they'd have to do to save McCarthy if this took place, but we'll have to see how that bridge gets crossed when/if we get there.

The other big news from the past week was that there was no news... or, at the very least, no "crisis." This disappointed the news media, who had been eagerly anticipating plugging the "crisis" story for all it was worth, but after Title 42 was lifted at the very end of last week, a surprising thing happened: illegal border crossings went down. They had surged, just prior to the change in policy, but once Title 42 ended migrants suddenly faced much more severe deportations (back to their country of origin rather than just Mexico) and they would also have been faced with being banned from attempting to enter again for five years. Added into all this was a new app for applying for asylum (which from all reports was a big buggy but still seemed to be effective, in that most people considering crossing the border are now using it), and the result was that the surge actually abated. The daily numbers went down -- way down. Republicans pretended this wasn't the case and that their predicted border apocalypse had actually happened, but few were listening outside the rightwing media echo chambers. With the crisis so successfully averted, everyone else moved on. The upshot of it all seemed to be that the Biden administration had prepared for the end of Title 42 a lot better than anyone had expected.

In politics, Democrats had a pretty good night all around this Tuesday, as several states held primaries and special elections. Republicans lost control of two cities -- Jacksonville, Florida (now the 11th-largest city in the country) and Colorado Springs, Colorado. Democrats also retained control of one of the Pennsylvania statehouse chambers as well. These tea leaves will likely be kind of stale by the 2024 presidential election (it's too early to make those predictions, in other words), but it's always good to see Democrats have a good election night.

In presidential campaign news, Republican Tim Scott officially filed paperwork today, but this came as no surprise since he had already announced he was running. Other Republicans who may make some sort of announcement perhaps as soon as next week include Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum. You can be forgiven for not knowing who that last one is, as we had never heard of him either (he is the governor of North Dakota), but he may have deluded himself into thinking he actually has a chance of winning the GOP nomination.

Mike Pence got caught plagiarizing an old Donald Trump speech in a speech of his own this week, for those interested in the category of "people who are never going to win the GOP nomination."

Ron DeSantis closed out the Florida legislative session by signing a bunch of bills that one detractor called a "slate of hate" (which seems pretty accurate to us), and in likely-related news a traffic sign in a Florida city was hacked and changed to read: "Kill All Gays." Welcome to anti-woke Florida, everyone! Also related was the news that Disney is no longer going to move over 2,000 office jobs to Florida and will instead keep them all in California. This was a $1 billion development plan that is now not going to happen, so DeSantis can kiss all that tax revenue goodbye.

Donald Trump lost Senator John Cornyn as a supporter this week, when Cornyn told a Texas newspaper: "We need to come up with an alternative. I think President Trump's time has passed him by and what's the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win." Cornyn added that it "all boils down to electability," and "there's no prize for coming in second." Ouch!

We hate to admit it, but Trump himself is actually making a very savvy political move, even though it isn't been seen that way by the people concerned. Trump is refusing to say whether he'd support a nationwide abortion-banning law, or even the specifics of what abortion restrictions he does support. Trump has slammed DeSantis for signing a 6-week ban into law in Florida, saying it goes too far. Trump, being Trump, tried to spin this as: "many people within the pro-life movement feel that was too hash," when in reality most of the pro-life movement either thinks a 6-week ban is fine or that it doesn't go far enough. Some prominent forced-birth proponents strongly denounced Trump's weaselly answer, stating that they might have to endorse another candidate if that's the tune Trump was going to sing. But heavy-handed attempts at spin aside, Trump is actually being smarter than most of the Republican Party on this issue. Trump realized in the 2022 midterms that extreme positions on abortion were losing the Republican Party a lot of votes, and he's been trying to get the rest of the GOP to be vague about things ever since. Which, as we said (and hate to admit) is actually good politics, since an overwhelming majority of the public agrees that the Republicans have become far too extreme on the issue.

Speaking of Trump, it was a fairly quiet week for his legal woes. No felony charges were filed and Trump was not found liable or convicted of anything -- which for Trump these days is a good week. But every upcoming week won't be as quiet, of course. Trump's lawyers lost a motion they filed to delay possible charges against him in Georgia, and the prosecutor there indicated to the judiciary that calendars should be cleared for the first few weeks in August. Earlier she had indicated that she would be using the criminal grand jury that will be seated in July to present her charges, but only that it might happen somewhere between July 11th and the end of August. This narrows that window down considerably, so mark your calendars everyone!

In other legal news involving Republicans, Representative George Santos was referred to the House Ethics Committee, which is not exactly known for its blazing speed. The alternative was for Kevin McCarthy to allow a vote on expelling him, which he avoided (for now).

And finally, the biggest legal news from Republicanland this week was Rudy Giuliani getting sued by a woman (Noelle Dunphy) who had worked for him, for a whopping $10 million. The filing contains all kinds of lurid accusations of: rape, sexual abuse, harassment, failure to pay a promised salary (to the tune of $1,988,000), and bragging about selling Trump pardons for $2 million a pop.

Here are some choice quotes (from the many, many, many, many, many articles detailing all the revolting accusations -- or you can just read the entire 70-page court filing yourself, if you've got the time and the stomach for it):

Um... say what? The Red Sea parted some time before Moses? Seriously? "Functioning alcoholic" indeed....

The absolute creepiest thing in the filing, though, has to be that Rudy told Dunphy: "I think of you as my daughter. Is that weird?" Well, to most people, Rudy....

And here's the real kicker [emphasis added]:



Got that? Recorded. Dunphy says she's got a lot of all of this on tape, in other words.

Which seems as good a place as any to end this week's roundup. Now if you excuse us, we have to go wash our hands a few times, after typing all of that out....





We have two winners of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week, but first we also have an Honorable Mention as well.

Three Democratic senators (Ed Markey, Tina Smith, and Elizabeth Warren) joined with four representatives (Cori Bush, Hank Johnson, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff) to reintroduce a bill which would expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices. This is all tilting at a very large windmill and has zero chance of actual passage (through either house), but we have to applaud them for at least trying.

Our first Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week is Representative Jamaal Bowman, for taking the fight directly to Republican extremists, often on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The sub-heading to the story in the New York Times sums it up nicely: "The Democratic congressman has made a habit of brashly confronting Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, often in public displays meant to attract attention." Which is impressive indeed. People like this need to be challenged, as often as possible.

We also have an MIDOTW award for Donna Deegan, the new mayor-elect of Jacksonville, Florida. She becomes only the second Democrat in the past 30 years to win such a race, and her victory is even sparking Democratic optimism about the chances of at least turning Florida back into a purple state next year, after it's rightward lurch under Ron DeSantis. We're not so sure Deegan's victory is that much of a harbinger of things to come, but winning the most-populous city in Florida is impressive enough for now. It's also a rather large embarrassment for DeSantis, who had endorsed the Republican in the race (which Donald Trump is already making fun of).

For at least inspiring optimism in the Sunshine State and for standing up to extremism in a public way, both Jamaal Bowman and Donna Deegan are this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week winners. Well done!

[Congratulate Representative Jamaal Bowman on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts. Jacksonville Mayor-Elect Donna Deegan is not in office yet so has no public contact page and her campaign website didn't seem to have one either, so we suppose you'll have to wait until she is sworn in to contact her, sorry.]





First, an update. Earlier, Florida's Andrew Gillum won an acquittal in federal court on a charge of lying to the F.B.I. and a hung jury on the other corruption charges filed against him. This week, the feds announced they were dropping all remaining charges rather than attempting a new trial. So he doesn't have anything hanging over his head any more (we had mentioned him in a previous column as a possible Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, depending on what ultimately happened, but he is obviously no longer in the running for this).

It was revealed this week that not only was Senator Dianne Feinstein's bout with shingles a lot more serious than had previously been reported, but also that she seemed to be unaware that she had been absent from the Senate for months while recovering. This led some to question her effectiveness in the Senate, and charges of "elder abuse" were even muttered by others, but for the time being she is still casting votes when necessary, so she's still doing the minimum required (at least).

This week we have a name from the past for our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week -- none other than Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich was a progressive icon quite a while ago, when he ran as an anti-war Democratic presidential candidate back in 2004 and 2008. So perhaps you are wondering what he's been up to lately?



All we can say is that Kucinich better get used to fielding that particular question, because, um yeah it is indeed "relevant," and also yeah, it is going to be the first question he will always be asked, from this point on.

Surely there must have been something else for Kucinich to do, if he had wanted a little more political relevancy? This just seems embarrassing, for him. And extremely disappointing as well. Which is why Dennis Kucinich is definitely this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Since he's got a new job, and since we refuse to link to campaign web pages on editorial principles, we do not have contact information for Dennis Kucinich, so you'll have to seek it on your own if you'd like to let him know what you think of his new job.]




Volume 707 (5/19/23)

OK, we can't resist, seeing that volume number...



Gratuitous 1970s rock aside, we have our usual talking points to get to, here. The first few build on Joe Biden's campaign theme of Democrats defending freedom against the Republicans who want to strip it all away (which, credit where it is due, were inspired by reading this article from the New York Times), but then the rest of them are just a mixed bag.

Enjoy, and feel free to read while listening to Steve Miller. (Go on, you know you want to hear that whole song now, don't you? Who can resist that "big ol' jet airliner," after all? We know we can't....)



Medical freedom

This is the most effective one, so lead with it.

"Remember when the Republican Party was for 'big government getting out of the lives of everyday Americans'? That wasn't so long ago. But now they're making Soviet-era commissars blush with the party's move towards state-dictated control of the most personal decisions of people's lives. They want politicians to make medical decisions that Democrats feel are best left to families and their doctors. Democrats stand strong for the freedom to consult with a doctor and follow his or her medical advice. That includes autonomy over women's bodies and it includes parents being able to make whatever medical decisions they think are best for their kids' happiness and well being. Republicans don't want you to have that freedom. They want to stand between you and your doctor, and between you and your child's doctor. Democrats stand strongly for medical freedom -- politics should have no place in the examination room, period."



Classroom freedom

Democrats need to fight back on this front as well.

"Democrats are for the freedom of speech of both teachers and school librarians. We don't believe that teachers need to be censored, we instead want our children to be exposed to different viewpoints and make up their minds for themselves. Republicans are for dictating what teachers can and cannot say and which books librarians can and cannot offer on their shelves. Enough already! Teachers should be free to teach the honest history of racism and they should be free to admit that gay people actually exist. Republicans believe they should be fired or thrown in jail for teaching the truth. Democrats believe in freedom of speech in education -- because to do otherwise is not education, it is indoctrination."



Freedom not to get shot at

This one resonates with all parents, everywhere in America.

"Democrats stand for the freedom of schoolchildren to attend classes without worrying that they will be brutally killed by a weapon of war. Republicans fight hard to guarantee that anyone under the sun be allowed to purchase guns which were specifically designed for the battlefield. Democrats think that is crazy and just want this insanity to stop. Gun safety laws that even a majority of gun owners support are blocked by Republicans from ever becoming law. Well, Democrats stand for the freedom of schoolchildren not to be brutally slaughtered by weapons of war in their own classrooms, because we believe that that is a lot more important than an 18-year-old being able to own an AR-15."



Mickey decides California looks better

Don't mess with The Mouse.

"Florida's governor is on a personal crusade against one of the biggest employers in his state, all because they had the temerity not to support one of his Draconian laws censoring teachers. Remember when Republicans used to be for big business not interfering with private companies? Remember when Republicans championed corporate free speech? Now they're trying to censor that, too. But this comes with an economic price, as Disney just proved to Florida. They had plans for a billion-dollar expansion in Florida, but have just announced they have decided to cancel this project and leave all 2,000-plus jobs in California instead. Fighting a personal vendetta against one company is apparently more important to Ron DeSantis than creating a business atmosphere where companies want to add jobs. That is the price of fighting against freedom, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if other corporations follow Disney's lead here and decide on expanding in some other state -- a state run by Democrats who embrace freedom."



Crisis? What crisis?

In keeping with starting this segment with a 1970s popular song, that title is taken from a Supertramp album. Credit where credit is due....

"Last week, Republicans were falling all over themselves predicting an apocalyptic crisis at the southern border. But you know what happened when Title 42 was lifted? The number of people coming in went down. In a big way. The Biden administration now has an app people must use to claim asylum and the penalties for not using it and trying to sneak in are severe. It looks like Biden was a lot more prepared for this week than any Republican was willing to admit. Let's all keep this in mind the next time Republicans run around saying the sky is about to fall, shall we?"



In just one month, Biden beat Trump's whole term

You can just hear him saying in confusion: "Wait, what'd I say?!?"

"Kevin McCarthy just scored another political 'own goal,' in trying to hype the border situation. He tweeted out: 'We caught more people in the month of February on the terrorist watchlist than were caught the entire time of the last administration.' The key word in all of this is, of course, caught. This is a success story, not a failure. McCarthy is actually praising the Biden administration for doing a better job keeping possible terrorists out of America in one month than during the entire time Donald Trump was in charge. If I were Joe Biden, I would thank McCarthy for such a nice compliment!"



Weenie roast

Hoo boy. You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

"If the American people were polled and they were asked to name the most manly men in politics today, we would bet the farm that two names would be way down in the rankings: Donald Trump Junior and Senator Josh Hawley. They'd be right down there with Tucker Carlson telling guys to go tan their testicles to stay manly, most likely -- in the 'guys you would never look to for manliness advice' group. But it seems Junior has launched a new 'non-woke men's lifestyle magazine' (in his own words), while Hawley has released a book titled Manhood. You know, the same Josh Hawley who was made famous because of the video of him running as fast as he could to escape the mob of people attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, after Hawley had earlier saluted the same crowd. This book is so laughably bad one reviewer asked: 'Why did a man who is probably our leading national pipsqueak decide that promoting manliness was his ticket to political power?' That sounds about right to me."





Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

May 13, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Coming Home To Roost

Let's make sure we all get this correct. Donald Trump is now technically not a "convicted rapist." He's not a convicted anything, because the verdict handed down against him this week was in civil (not criminal) court. And the jury balked at declaring that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll, but they did find Trump liable for sexually attacking her and defaming her publicly. To the tune of $5 million. It only took them about three hours to do so, meaning the case was pretty iron-clad to begin with. So Donald Trump is merely the first ex-president to be found liable of being a sexual predator rather than being an actual convicted rapist.

Legal semantics aside, this week might become known as the point when the first chicken came home to roost for Donald Trump. For once, he didn't skate away scot-free and he wasn't even able to make the case disappear (or be endlessly delayed). That is an achievement on its own. Perhaps it will embolden prosecutors to bring some actual criminal charges against him, who knows?

Of course, this is just another "first" in a very ignoble list for Trump, starting with "first president to be impeached twice." The real question is whether it will make any difference, politically. The career of a normal politician (or even just "a normal human" ) would be over at this point. There wouldn't be any question about it at all. But this is Donald Trump we are talking about, who seems immune from political gravity and political rules of thumb.

The only way Trump would possibly pay a political price is if his opponents made a big deal out of it, most likely. But so far, the announced candidates for the Republican nomination have largely either been silent, metaphorically shrugged their shoulders, or actually supported Trump. Except for Asa Hutchinson, but then nobody's paying any attention to Asa Hutchinson. Two possible GOP candidates -- Chris Christie and Chris Sununu -- did rip into Trump for various reasons this week, but neither one has announced and neither one is getting a whole lot of media attention.

So much for the vaunted "family values party." So much for the "moral majority" and all of that hooey. So much for "taking responsibility for one's own actions." Those all used to be selling points for Republicans, but those days are long gone. Today's Republican Party has to adjust to any and all depravities coming from Trump, since their one bedrock tenet is: "Trump can do no wrong." As President Joe Biden is fond of saying: "This ain't your father's Republican Party, folks."

One thing we do wonder is how this will all play out in next year's general election. The biggest migration from voting Republican to voting Democratic has been in the suburbs -- suburban women, in particular. If the party nominates a man who has been held liable by a jury for sexual assault, how many of them are going to gladly return to the Republican fold and how many of them are going to continue voting blue? The GOP may never get any of them back until Trump exits the political stage in one fashion or another, and by then it may be too late.

Trump drove a second news cycle this week as well, as he appeared in a CNN town hall meeting the day after the verdict was announced. Trump addressed a crowd of Republican voters and independent voters that lean Republican (a fairly friendly audience, in other words), and CNN got a lot of flak for putting the spectacle on in the first place. The event was the real kickoff of the 2024 presidential campaign, at least on the nation's television screens.

In case anyone had doubts, Trump hasn't changed. Not one iota. He is still just as detached from reality as he ever was, he is still convinced not only that he's never done anything wrong but instead is the greatest U.S. president there ever was, and that life was peachy-keen for everybody when he was in charge of things. Trump still refuses to listen to objective reality, preferring the fantasy world in his head where he lives. He is still just as boorish and crude and ill-informed. He is still full of bluster. He still will shout anybody down without listening to what they are saying at all. And he is still a writhing ball of white-hot grievances. He's got scores to settle, and nobody's going to stand in his way (as far as he is concerned).

Trump spent roughly 70 minutes on CNN lying and lying and lying. He began with The Big Lie, that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from him. As usual, he had no new evidence, no old evidence, in fact no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim. He lied about what the Constitution contains, proving once again that he's never taken the time to read it. He lied like a rug about January 6th, and called it a "beautiful day." He lied about the economy, his record, Biden's record, oil production, tax cuts, and a host of other subjects.

Trump not only lied, he likely provided legal evidence which could reappear in court cases against him, on several fronts. He told some whoppers about the Presidential Records Act, what he did with all the classified documents, and what other presidents and vice presidents have done while leaving office. He insisted that Georgia had "owed" him more votes, which is why he made "a perfect phone call" in an attempt to strongarm Georgia state officials into creating them out of thin air. And for good measure, he defamed E. Jean Carroll once again, who is now contemplating filing another lawsuit against him, just for his town hall comments alone. All taken, it was a pretty good night for anyone who might find themselves sitting across from Trump in a court of law in the near future. National security attorney Bradley Moss summed it up in a tweet: "All three ongoing criminal cases got new evidence tonight against Trump. He is confessing on live television."

Trump refused to offer any backing or support for Ukraine against Russia. He refused to even say which side he'd like to see win the war. He quite laughably insisted that he would end the entire war "within 24 hours" because he's such a great negotiator.

The moderator of the event was CNN host Kaitlan Collins, who valiantly tried (and mostly failed) to push back against Trump's loose connection with the truth. "The election was not rigged, Mr. President," she insisted at one point, "You can't keep saying that all night long." But he could, and he did. Trump even called Collins "a nasty person" just for good measure. The crowd ate it up. Or parts of the crowd did. It was interesting to see the few shots where the cameras panned over the crowd, because while perhaps half of them were ready and willing to either laugh or applaud at everything Trump said, the other half sat very stonily with their hands across their chests or in their laps. Even with an audience designed to be as friendly as possible, Trump wasn't wowing everybody.

Beyond the New Hampshire voters present, CNN took a whole lot of grief for hosting the event and for the format, which virtually guaranteed Trump would be able to get away with any lie he felt like uttering. CNN even took some grief from within their own company, even from their own media reporter, who called the whole thing "a spectacle of lies." Michael Fanone, the D.C. police officer who was attacked on January 6th, called Trump "a volcano of bullshit." Others had less-polite things to say about him. Trump is now hawking a new T-shirt for his campaign with his face and the line: "This is TNN," because of course he is.

The big question in all of this is whether the verdict against Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case or his detached-from-reality performance on CNN is going to change anything politically for Trump. And sadly, the answer is: "Probably not." We'll have to wait roughly a week or so to see if any new polling shows some movement, but the safe bet is on it having minimal effect (at least with GOP primary voters). Most of the people running against Trump refuse to make any of it a political issue, which shows their own weaknesses. The only one who is speaking out is at the bottom of the standings. The only two who might have a chance of forcing the issue (due largely to their "in your face" personalities) have not announced their own campaigns yet. As previously mentioned, Chris Christie and Chris Sununu both had some strong words to say about both the verdict and the political positions Trump staked out on CNN, but until they actually declare their candidacies they are merely voices in the wind.

In other "Republicans behaving badly" legal news this week, Representative George Santos was indicted on 13 counts in federal court this week, for using campaign funds for personal use, for lying to Congress (on financial statements), and for scamming the unemployment system out of tens of thousands of dollars while he was still employed. The ultimate irony? He may be convicted on that last scheme by a bill he co-sponsored that is now law. It all looks like his lies are catching up to him a lot quicker than Trump's. At least, one can hope. Maybe it is the start of "chickens coming home to roost" season after all....

Political news was made this week at the White House, as the four congressional leaders (from both parties and both houses) met with President Biden to try and hammer out a deal over raising the debt ceiling and negotiating on the budget. They all met Tuesday, everyone was fairly tight-lipped about the meeting afterwards, and they planned a second meeting for today -- which was postponed at the last minute. This could be good news or bad, depending on which rumor you prefer, but what is leaking out is the possible areas where the two sides could agree. So far, this is fairly limited -- clawing back unspent COVID funds and passing "permitting reform" (which will speed up both fossil fuel drilling projects and green energy installations). The White House and the Democrats are, as expected, demanding that the debt ceiling be raised to a limit which places it beyond the 2024 elections, and they're pushing for limiting any across-the-board budget cuts to the next two years as well. Republicans wanted only a one-year debt ceiling hike and they want the cuts to be in place for 10 years. Republicans also want to add new work requirements to federal programs, which Democrats are not in favor of. But from all the leaks, it does seem like the Republicans have backed down from insisting on repealing large parts of Biden's legislative legacy.

Can the two sides reach an agreement and get it through both houses of Congress by what could be the drop-dead date of the first of June? Stay tuned....

This week saw the official end to one of the last remnants of the COVID-19 pandemic era. What's called "Title 42" ended at the country's borders, which was a program that used the threat of disease to quickly deport people who arrived illegally. However, the expected flood of migrants across the border as a result doesn't seem to have materialized in quite the apocalyptic volume that the media has been hyping (at least, as of this writing). We'll have to see how it plays out on the evening news both tonight and all next week.

One interesting development is that a government Union (the National Association of Government Employees) is now suing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in order to force her to completely ignore the debt ceiling altogether, on the grounds that it is unconstitutional (under the 14th Amendment). Making this move (unilaterally declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional) has been considered by at least some Biden advisors and other Democrats, but reportedly Biden himself is not sold on it. The case would have to move with lightning speed through the courts in order to influence what's going to happen before June, but in the long term it might be a way to adjudicate the debt ceiling on its own (so that the next "fiscal cliff" never even happens).

The whole debt ceiling fracas is complicating some other important things Congress is trying to do, most notably the farm bill. Farm bills are sacred to rural districts, which means they are counting on Republicans to deliver for them. However, if the budget discussions include radical cuts in all federal programs, the farmers are going to see their payments slashed. This is not the first time the GOP's grandiose talk of "cutting spending" has crashed into the hard cold political reality that what this always means is somebody's going to get shortchanged in a big way. Which is not exactly going to be music to the farmers' ears.

It didn't get much coverage in the press (because it was such a nothingburger), but this week one of the House committees who is investigating all things Biden held a press event to announce that after all their digging, they still didn't have any evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden. Nor have they yet found that any member of Biden's family or anyone else connected with him has broken any laws. They went fishing, and they caught precisely nothing. Perhaps if the chair of the committee is serious about digging out egregious influence-peddling by relatives of politicians he'll turn his attention to the Trump offspring and their spouses, who seem to have been cashing in hand over fist off Trump's presidency (before, during and after). Maybe that'd be a more productive use of his time?

And finally, some good news to close the week out. Here's the story:

Sounds like good news for women, and an excellent issue to help motivate young voters to support Biden and the Democrats next time around!





Senator Dianne Feinstein has certainly caused some consternation with her long absence in Washington, but this week she made an at least semi-triumphant return and started casting votes again both on the floor of the United States Senate and also in the all-important Judiciary Committee.

For coming back, appearing in person, and doing the minimum required of a United States senator (casting votes), Dianne Feinstein deserves this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Up until now, her return had been in serious question, after suffering a bout of shingles and being absent from D.C. and the Senate floor since February. But her medical team apparently cleared her for the flight and for limited duties, so she'll be on a light schedule for the foreseeable future -- but with the razor-thin margins of majority in Congress, her vote was absolutely necessary and it is heartening indeed to see her back in the saddle again.

We are, as we have mentioned previously, a constituent of Feinstein's. So we feel qualified to judge her performance. And we find that we are just fine with her serving a caretaker role in the Senate until January of 2025 (assuming she can hang on that long). We trust her staff to prop her up and get her to the votes on time and instruct her to vote the correct way (in other words: exactly what was happening anyway, back before the shingles outbreak).

We don't have a problem with Feinstein tacking an extra year or two onto her longstanding legacy as the longest-serving female senator ever. We really don't. Plenty of male senators have gone the same route, and we were only minimally annoyed with them for not stepping down in a timely fashion, so we refuse to adopt a different standard for Feinstein.

The subject of whether the Senate is made up of doddering old people, some of whom are no longer the sharpest knife in the drawer and others who are absolutely decrepit is a much bigger discussion than just Feinstein. But with the conventions and traditions which are in place, we have no problem with another year and a half of Feinstein representing us in the Senate. As long as she casts her votes. It's the lowest bar imaginable for an elected legislator, but as long as Feinstein can still reliably clear it, we can wait until January of 2025 to be represented by someone with a little more vigor.

Feinstein got a standing ovation when she was wheeled into the Judiciary Committee (although the news reports we read didn't specify whether it was a bipartisan standing ovation), and we will add to this applause this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Live long and prosper, Senator Feinstein.

[Congratulate Senator Dianne Feinstein on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We're going to hold this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award in abeyance, since on this particular issue the jury is still out. Next week, we will likely be able to see things a lot more clearly.

The situation at the southern border is (obviously) in the news, as the Title 42 pandemic exclusion was lifted at midnight. What will happen next? One thing sure to happen is that Republicans will make all the political hay they can over the issue, as they always do. They'll use the opportunity to paint Biden as weak on immigration and the border "wide open."

Some Democrats aren't very happy with the moves Biden has made on the border in anticipation either. So Biden will likely be taking incoming from both sides. But as we said, the jury's still out. Can Biden make his own case? Can the administration shape public opinion into supporting immigration reform of one sort or another? Those are open questions, at this point.

The Biden administration had plenty of warning that this was going to happen at some point. The question is whether they did enough to prepare for it. Congress certainly hasn't done much of anything, because both sides are so far apart and both sides find it convenient politically not to strike any sort of compromise.

Biden could have made immigration reform a top priority when he first got into office, that is true. But he wasn't likely to have succeeded even if he had tried, and he had a whole lot of other problems to deal with that were more pressing at the time (such as COVID itself, and saving the economy).

It seems doubtful that any meaningful immigration reform is going to happen any time soon. Some sort of bipartisan measure may make it out of Congress that extends the same sort of exclusion as Title 42 for a number of years, which would leave it up to the president and his administration to use or not use. But such a bill won't pass within the next week, so we're stuck with whatever's going to happen down at the border for the time being.

But, like we said... the jury's still out. We'll give Biden one week and see how things go, while we place the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week statuette back on the shelf for now.




Volume 706 (5/12/23)

Part of Joe Biden's midterm strategy and his re-election strategy is to paint Republicans with the broadest "extremist" brush possible. Fortunately for him, they just keep sinking lower and lower into the primordial ooze.



It's simple, folks

Two reactions to the CNN town hall were worth quoting.

"House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed up Trump supporters perfectly, after his CNN appearance this week: 'One, facts don't matter. Two, hypocrisy is not a constraint to their behavior. And three, they actually believe that shamelessness is a superpower.' Couldn't agree more. But it was Joe Biden's campaign that came up with the best response, speaking to people who aren't Trump supporters. They tweeted out: 'It's simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that?' Because that is the question every Democrat should now be asking voters."



What if she were your daughter?

Hit Trump on the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and make a pitch to all those suburban moms out there at the same time.

"Would you want your daughter to go through what E. Jean Carroll did with Donald Trump? Would you be comfortable sitting in the same room with someone a jury had unanimously agreed did that? Don't we teach our sons never to do what Trump did? What rational person thinks that just because he is rich and powerful he should be able to get away with that with any woman? What if it had been your daughter?"



Waiting in the wings

Trump is getting a lot of grief for his Ukraine comments, since the Republican Party still has a core of military/foreign policy hawks left in it.

"Donald Trump refused to call Vladimir Putin a war criminal and he wouldn't even say whether he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win the war. Is there anyone alive who really believes Trump could end the war 'in 24 hours' as he is promising to do? As usual, Trump has no clue what to do, and also as usual, he is reflexively siding with Putin. Chris Christie, who is considering running against Trump for the GOP nomination, was even harsher, saying: 'Donald Trump refused to say tonight that he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia. More proof that he continues to be Putin's puppet.' He later repeated the charge that Trump was 'Putin's puppet,' and called Trump a coward as well. And that's from a fellow Republican, mind you."



More GOP projection

They always seem to be most fanatically against the things they are guilty of, for some reason.

"Texas state representative Bryan Slaton was just forced to resign, because he would have been expelled if he hadn't. Slaton was a champion of the ongoing efforts to label anyone Republicans don't approve of as 'groomers' of children. Slaton railed against 'groomers' on social media. But it turns out he had taken a 19-year-old legislative aide up to his apartment, plied her with enough alcohol to give her double-vision, and then date-raped her. Let that sink in. She was 19 years old -- too young to legally drink, even. And he was leading the crusade to, as one of his political opponents put it, 'fixate the entire state on children's genitals.' It's pretty typical of Republicans to be guilty of the very thing they are crusading against, though, when you really think about it."



He calls them Americans

Is anything too extreme for Republicans to just blurt out, anymore?

"Republicans are going down a very extremist path on all sorts of issues, and now some of them are almost open supporters of White supremacy. Eric Trump seems to enjoy hanging out with Hitler fanboys, for instance. And Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama just said, in response to being asked whether we should allow White nationalists in the military, and I quote: 'Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.' Is there any racist bridge that is still deemed too far for Republicans? Or are they just flat-out the White Nationalist Party now?"



The end of the road

This is the end goal of the hardcore forced-birth movement. Point it out -- this is not some hypothetical thing anymore.

"In Missouri, a Republican just introduced a bill that would charge any woman and anyone else involved in any abortion with murder. This would be punishable with up to life in prison. The same legislator made the news last month by voicing his support for children being allowed to legally marry as young as 12 years old. This is the face of today's Republican Party, folks, make no mistake about it. There is no extreme they won't go to -- and try to force the rest of us go to as well."



Finally! We agree!

In his own words....

"Tucker Carlson was texting with a reporter who asked him if he was going to run for president. Carlson yanked the reporter's chain by agreeing, and stating he'd be announcing soon in New Hampshire. The reporter then asked for a phone call to verify it, before believing such a scoop, to which Carlson replied: 'Totally kidding. Sorry. I can never control myself. I'm fundamentally a dick.' Finally! Something Tucker Carlson and I can agree on... in his own words...."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

May 6, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Didn't We Fight A War So We Could Ignore This?

President Joe Biden will not be attending the coronation of King Charles III tomorrow, which is entirely appropriate (although he is sending First Lady Dr. Jill Biden instead, out of respect). No U.S. president has ever attended a British coronation, and with good reason -- after all, we fought a whole war just so no American would ever have to show any sort of fealty to any King or Queen of England ever again. But even though Biden won't be there, the two men do share one notable similarity: they both waited all their lives -- decades and decades of it -- for the chance to sit at the head of their country. So it's pretty easy to see they do share how long the wait has been for both of them.

Americans will be inundated with the entire spectacle tomorrow, which we plan on skipping entirely -- both for patriotic reasons and because this sort of thing tends to bore us silly. Also, we always cringe at all the fawning attention the American media shower upon the British royalty just as a general rule, so it's a pretty easy choice not to pay it any attention. Although we did have to laugh at the work of some unnamed British pranksters who wordlessly expressed their own dismissive feelings towards all the hoopla. Here is both the SFW story and the NSFW image, for those who want (in... ahem... a Cockney accent?) a bit of a larf.

Unlike King Charles, of course, President Biden's tenure as head of state is not a lifetime appointment. He's got to run to keep his job next year, a problem Charles will never have. And right now the conundrum Biden's somehow got to solve is how to keep the House Republicans from destroying the American economy just because they feel like it.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen lit a big fire under everyone this week by announcing that (due mainly to the backlog problem at the I.R.S. being solved and tax returns going out faster) the country may actually default on its debt as soon as the first of June. This, quite obviously, doesn't leave a whole lot of time for Congress to solve the problem -- especially when you consider how little overlap there is going to be in May between the Senate and the House of Representatives being in session and Biden also being in Washington. Things are going to have to move at lightning speed, to put it bluntly.

President Biden announced a meeting would be held next week with all four members of the leadership of Congress (Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Republican side and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for the Democrats) in order to begin negotiations. Or not -- according to the White House there will be no negotiations over the debt limit itself, while they are open to negotiating over the actual federal budget. McCarthy has sworn that a "clean" debt hike bill will not pass his House, so obviously they're going to have to figure out some way both can save face, if any compromise is struck.

House Democrats have indicated they are going to move forward with a "discharge petition" which will include a clean debt hike, and they are looking to peel off at least five Republican votes (plus any others they need if there are defections on their side of the aisle). Senate Republicans are wooing Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, because of course they are.

The White House, meanwhile, appears much more open to the various ideas people have had for just ignoring Congress and the debt ceiling altogether -- by either invoking a clause in the 14th Amendment or perhaps minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. All options are being explored, it appears, which is good news, although any such unilateral move would doubtlessly be challenged in the courts by Republicans -- who would, in effect, be suing to force the American economy to collapse (not a very good look for them, politically).

Biden is doing a pretty good job being out in front of shaping public opinion on the issue, and the White House has focused on two talking points in particular. The first is a dire report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors predicting what a default will do in terms of unemployment (up to 8 million jobs could be lost), the economy (a 6-percent contraction), and the stock market (down by 45 percent). And that's not even mentioning the skyrocketing interest rates for everyone's mortgages and credit cards or the hundreds of billions we'll all be paying in increased interest on the national debt -- all due to an entirely-avoidable Republican default.

The second is to warn of the consequences of the Republican plan, which would mean cutting 22 percent of all discretionary spending. Team Biden picked the best issue possible to shame Republicans into realizing what it is exactly that they're calling for -- veterans. Because the V.A. budget would have to be slashed (along with everything else) if the GOP plan became reality. Biden trolled the Republicans by tweeting out "a little chart" he made "that could help them out," just to get this ball rolling. Vets groups are already up in arms over such potential budget cuts, which would negatively impact medical care for veterans.

This is how you fight Draconian Republican budget hawkery -- by pointing out precisely what such cuts would mean. This is also why Kevin McCarthy hasn't passed a budget blueprint yet and why his debt ceiling plan has no real specifics -- because once Republicans do put their cards on the table, they're going to be forced to defend each and every cut. So far, the White House has been doing an excellent job of fighting back on this front.

In other news, Donald Trump's rape trial is winding down, as both sides rested their respective cases this week. They judge delayed closing arguments until Monday, just on the off chance Trump himself wants to show up and testify. If he doesn't, the case could go to the jury as soon as Monday, so there's that to look forward to next week.

A group of leaders of the Proud Boys was found guilty of sedition this week, and they all face long sentences for preparing for and helping instigate the January 6th insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol. Trump, upon hearing the news of the verdicts, threw a tantrum on social media (because of course he did).

Other Republicans seem to be sensing that Trump could be weakened, as both Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson had some rather pointed things to say this week. Christie is not currently an announced candidate for president, but will be making this decision in "the next two weeks." If he runs, he's going to go full-on anti-Trump. From an interview with Hugh Hewitt, where Christie was asked what he thought of Trump possibly skipping the first Republican debates:

At this point he was interrupted by Hewitt pointing out that Trump was far ahead of the field so it might make sense for him to skip the debates. Christie shot back:



Longshot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy piled on as well, when he was asked what he thought of Trump skipping debates:



Not to be outdone, Asa Hutchinson, who is also an announced candidate, wrote an article that ripped into Trump on several other fronts. This is notable because Hutchinson has been taking small shots at Trump up until now, but he's never been so forceful about doing so up to this point:



As mentioned, this wasn't the only shot Hutchinson took at Trump. The Republicans are going to get exactly what's going to happen tomorrow in Merrie Olde England -- a coronation -- unless the candidates running against Trump for the GOP nomination actually start running against Trump. So it's good to see this sort of thing becoming more common.

Let's see... what else? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined in the chorus of voices urging Senator Dianne Feinstein to step down, and the editorial board of the New York Times came to the same conclusion. Feinstein, however, doesn't sound like she's budging any time soon.

The Supreme Court has sunk even lower in the eyes of most Americans (including even some Republicans), as it was conclusively proven that Clarence Thomas has no ethics to speak of at all and will accept gobs of money from just about anybody while never reporting any of it publicly. John Roberts and the rest of the court seem unconcerned about this and are perfectly fine with the current situation continuing -- where the court has no ethics code and self-polices itself on such issues. To which we say: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

One final note... being one ourselves, we of course fully support the Hollywood writers' strike, and support the Union's efforts to get some fair compensation for the people who work so hard in the industry. But we're also a consumer of late-night television comedy, which meant we were among the first to directly experience what things are going to be like on television until the issue is resolved: a lot of re-runs. And a long weekend of coronation/royals obsession to boot.

(Sigh.)





The week started off with the annual "nerd prom" or White House Correspondents Dinner, where both the headline comedian and Joe Biden did a good job cracking wise for the press (and all the hangers-on). Best Biden moment of the night was at the end, where he donned "Dark Brandon" aviator shades right before he sat down. For getting a few good jokes off, for not blowing his lines or his timing, and for those shades, President Biden at least deserves an Honorable Mention.

Senator Bernie Sanders also deserves an Honorable Mention for introducing a new minimum wage hike bill that ups the ante to $17 an hour. While $15 an hour has been the rallying cry for a while, nowadays $15 isn't even enough to provide a livable wage, so Bernie has reacted by calling for more. The bill is likely just as doomed as his other efforts on this front, but we do have to note that Bernie is keeping up with the times.

And one more, because we have to say we were pretty impressed with the campaign announcement from Colin Allred, a Texas Democrat who is going to take on Senator Ted Cruz. The video's worth watching, for those interested. "Turning Texas blue" is the seemingly-impossible dream that always seems to remain out of reach, but Ted Cruz is the weakest Republican politician in the state, so perhaps Allred will have a fighting chance (we certainly hope so!).

But this week the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to the Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who was the driving force behind a bill which has now passed the state legislature and is headed to the governor's desk. Here's what the bill will do:



In an ideal world, of course, such a bill would be unnecessary. But we don't live in an ideal world, we live in one where Republicans are trying to force libraries to ban books. They're trying to make it a big political wedge issue, and the article points out that the effort was spurred from a district in suburban Chicago where parents were trying to get Gender Queer: A Memoir yanked off the shelves. So it didn't happen out of the blue.

If Republicans are drawing battle lines, it is incumbent upon Democrats to fight back. So while some might see this new law as unnecessary, it sends a very clear statement of support for libraries and librarians everywhere. Which is an impressive thing to do, and which is why Alexi Giannoulias (and all the Democrats who voted to pass the bill, which didn't get any Republican votes) deserve this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias via his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





First, an update. Florida politician Andrew Gillum -- who narrowly lost a governor's race to Ron DeSantis -- has beaten the rap on the charge of lying to the F.B.I. However, while he was found not guilty on this count, the jury hung on other charges of outright corruption. For which he's going to be tried again -- so he's a long way from being out of the legal woods yet. But we did want to at least update his status here.

President Biden disappointed many Democrats this week by announcing he will be moving 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border, in anticipation of a wave of border-crossings after the pandemic emergency measure (Title 42) is lifted. This is in addition to 2,500 National Guard troops who are already there. But Biden had to do something, otherwise we would all see photos from next week throughout the 2024 campaign season. We may still -- the troops Biden is sending (due to the Posse Comitatus Act) cannot actually patrol the border or apprehend anyone, instead they will be doing support duties to put more Border Patrol agents in the field. But for now we're only going to hand Biden a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award. As we said, Biden has to be seen as doing something to at least prepare for the anticipated crowds crossing the border next week.

Instead we are reaching down to the state level to hand out two Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards. The first goes to a state senator from California, Dave Min, who was arrested this week for driving drunk in Sacramento. Normally this wouldn't have caught our attention except for this one footnote: "Min... is running for the seat held by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter." Porter is vacating her seat in the U.S. House in order to run for Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat. And her district (in Orange County) is going to be a battleground race. So anything which lessens Democrats' chances of keeping her seat is a bad thing. But there is this: "Min is not the only Democrat in the race: He's contending against Women for American Values and Ethics founder Joanna Weiss." So there will be at least one other choice on the ballot, at least.

Our second MDDOTW this week goes to the secretary of state up in Oregon. Here's the whole story:



The only thing we've got to say is that at least both of these Democrats did the right thing, in the end. Min owned up to his D.U.I. and accepted responsibility and didn't try to excuse his actions. Fagan announced her resignation. But only after she had been caught essentially accepting kickbacks.

Whether they did the right thing in the end or not, though, we have to say that the two examples of "Democrats behaving badly" were disappointing indeed.

[Contact Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan on her official contact page (while you still can), and California State Senator Dave Min on his official contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 705 (5/5/23)

Another mixed bag this week, starting off with a campaign strategy from Joe Biden that could be a lot more effective than you might think. Because sometimes it is all about how you define your terms, in politics....



Freedom

Joe Biden released a video announcing his campaign, and then his campaign immediately released his first campaign ad to follow it up. It's a good ad, and it reinforces something that Democrats are reclaiming as their own: effectively using the word "freedom" in politics. Here is how the ad starts:





Lowest ever

Biden's going to need the enthusiasm of Black voters, so point historic achievements out at every possible opportunity.

"Not only was this month's overall unemployment number the lowest in over half a century at only 3.4 percent, another milestone was reached as well. Black unemployment now stands at only 4.7 percent, which is the lowest it has ever been recorded. Joe Biden has almost closed the gap between White and Black unemployment -- a gap that used to be severe, with Black workers unemployed at twice the rate of White workers. Now that gap is down to only 1.3 percent -- also the lowest its ever been. Joe Biden has made good on his promise of opening up economic opportunity to all Americans, plain and simple."



Eight million jobs

The White House ran some numbers, so use them!

"If the extremist MAGA Republicans have their way and destroy the full faith and credit of the American people, economists now estimate that it could cost the economy as many as eight million lost jobs. If the stalemate goes on, the American economy could contract by a disastrous six percent. The stock market could fall by almost half its value. If there is even a short default on our nation's responsibilities to pay its bills, interest rates are going to go through the roof -- and that means all Americans would pay higher credit card rates, mortgage rates, and the U.S. government would wind up paying something like $750 billion in increased interest payments over the next decade. That is the fire that Republicans are playing with. This is not some abstract debate in Washington, this is going to hurt real Americans for a long time to come."



Shortchanging veterans

Both Biden and the Democrats have been leaning in to this one, for good reason.

"Republicans passed a plan in the House where they finally issued their ransom demands to free the hostage of the full faith and credit of the American people. They were too scared to fill in any details, but what it would mean would be a whopping 22 percent cut to every federal program except the military, Social Security, and Medicare. That means veterans funding would be slashed as well. The Department of Veterans Affairs released a statement outlining what these Draconian cuts would mean: 30 million fewer outpatient visits and 81,000 jobs lost in the Veterans Health Administration. Republicans won't admit that they're going to have to make cuts like this for their math to add up. Democrats are fighting for veterans, because they were brave enough to sign up to fight for us. We will not stand for cutting veterans benefits to the bone, but that is exactly what the Republicans are threatening to do."



Some family values you got there...

Republicans think they've got a dandy wedge issue in what they call "parents' rights," and Democrats really need to go on the offense on this one in a comprehensive way.

"Republicans used to call themselves 'the party of family values,' but that is no longer true (if it ever was). Republicans are busy -- in state after state -- rolling back child labor laws. They want to put all the children to work, plain and simple. They want 14-year-olds to be able to serve alcohol. They want any parent at your school to be able to ban any book they don't like so that your child never even gets to make up their own mind about reading that book. Republicans want teachers only to teach a censored version of history where racism apparently never happened. They want to muzzle teachers from ever mentioning that not every family has a mommy and a daddy. They want trans kids to not exist. They want to drag America backwards to fit their own narrow ideas of what this country means. But all parents have rights. And most parents actually want their children to learn the truth -- both the truth of America now and the truth of how we got here. Republicans are for restricting your child's freedom to learn, while Democrats are fighting hard for them to keep this precious freedom."



Roberts Court most corrupt in history

The only thing that's going to get anything done is to personalize this one.

"Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts should be ashamed. Because the Roberts Court is going to go down in history as being the most corrupt ever. Americans have gotten used to their politicians being for sale to the highest bidder, but having members of the highest court in the land open to such influence-peddling is more than unseemly, it's disgraceful. No wonder the public's opinion of the court has been dropping like a stone. Clarence Thomas apparently is open to all sorts of people making lavish payments on his behalf, to both him and his family. And John Roberts is fine with it all, it seems. Any other judge in this country would be guilty of breaking ethical laws for what Thomas has been caught doing, but the Supreme Court is the only court which has completely exempted itself from any code of ethics whatsoever. History will not remember this court with honor, because the Roberts Court is the most corrupt in our entire history. You'd think Roberts would care, since it'll be his name everyone remembers, but apparently he doesn't."



Grifters gotta grift!

The people of Georgia dodged a bullet, obviously.

"It seems Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate that Donald Trump heartily endorsed, took over a half a million dollars that was supposed to have been donated to his campaign and just pocketed it. He moved it all into an account for one of his businesses, and the donor had to beg him to reroute it to the campaign account -- which never got it. There were all kinds of reasons why Walker was patently unfit for the United States Senate, and I am glad a majority of the people of Georgia realized it, but I never thought he'd be an even more blatant grifter than his mentor Donald Trump. But hey, grifters gotta grift, I suppose. Trump must be so proud of him!"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

April 29, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Launches His Re-Election Campaign

This is the big White House Correspondents Dinner weekend, but somehow our invitation was either lost in the mail or otherwise overlooked. So we'll have to watch the clips later, like everyone else.

This was a pretty momentous week in politics, as President Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, Donald Trump's rape court case got underway, and Kevin McCarthy was actually able to corral his various factions to vote for a bill that Democrats will use as fodder in the upcoming congressional campaigns. So let's get right to it all, shall we?

President Biden released three-minute video this Tuesday, and it was immediately countered with a 30-second video from the Republican Party. Biden's video was positive and upbeat for the most part, while the GOP response can only be called words like "apocalyptic" or "dystopian." We wrote about both videos earlier in the week in more detail, but the upshot is that Republicans -- surprise, surprise! -- are obviously going to run their campaigns purely on fear, once again. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Such a pitch makes sense to those whose only source of news is Fox or one of the even-further-right media outlets, since they have been mightily trying to portray Joe Biden's term in office as the worst possible thing that has ever happened to this country. Since this bears virtually no relation to the actual reality of the situation, it seems jarringly disconnected when you view a political ad made with these beliefs. But to those who hear only this drumbeat of doom, it must sound perfectly reasonable to think that a Democratic governor and/or a Democratic president would ever use the military to "close" the city of San Francisco because of "crime" and "fentanyl." That is patently insane to anyone who thinks about it for more than a half a second, but that is indeed one of the "what if" scenarios the GOP ad warns of.

Back in reality, Joe Biden is well aware of his biggest actual drawback in the upcoming race -- his advanced age. Even voters who voted for him in 2020 aren't exactly enthused about getting the chance to vote for him again. But Biden's biggest positive argument is a doozy: "I beat Donald Trump once, and I can beat him again." Unless somebody on the Republican side starts catching fire with base GOP voters, it certainly looks more likely than not that the 2024 race will be a repeat of the 2020 race: Biden versus Trump. Which doesn't really thrill much of anybody beyond their hardcore supporters.

Trump is, of course, a flawed candidate for many reasons. His legal baggage seems to mount by the day, for one. E. Jean Carroll got her "day in court" all week long in New York, in a civil case she brought against Trump for raping her back in the 1990s. Trump hasn't even bothered to show up for court, which may not exactly endear him to the jury. This case may wrap up as soon as next week, so it will be interesting to hear what the jury decides. Because it is a civil trial, there will be no jail time involved, but a hefty financial settlement would certainly be one more gigantic piece of baggage for him to carry around.

In other Trump legal news, Mike Pence didn't waste any time after an appeals court ruled against Trump's attempt at preventing Pence from appearing before a federal grand jury. Pence showed up the very next morning and spent several hours testifying to them -- although nobody who wasn't in the room has any idea what he said, at this point. The interesting thing to consider about Pence testifying is that the special counsel looking into Trump's possible federal crimes can't really go any higher than Pence, in terms of seeking testimony from those closest to Trump during the whole January 6th fiasco. Since Pence is the highest rung imaginable on the ladder, the next step may actually be bringing indictments. But nobody has any idea of the timeline of when this could happen, this is just speculation.

One timeline was revealed this week, down in Georgia. The prosecutor there who is looking at possible election fraud and many other serious charges sent a letter which informed law enforcement agencies in the state that charges were expected to be brought between July 11th and September 1st. This is a little more specific than anything else we've heard on this case, but that's still quite a ways down the road. Which means that nothing public is going to happen on the case for at least two more months. The prosecutor has apparently delayed things because so many witnesses have come forward in the meantime (including people who might be charged, who are reportedly now throwing their co-conspirators under the bus).

In non-legal political news, Trump reacted to Biden's campaign launch the way he reacts to any political opponent (of either party) -- he spewed a whole bunch of lies about Biden, all in keeping with that Fox-inspired apocalyptic view of the country. Trump flexed his political muscles in a different way this week as well, as he intimated that he might not show up for any of the Republican presidential debates, because the party hadn't gotten his approval for them all. The R.N.C. chair tried to brush this off (on Fox, which astoundingly actually fact-checked her to her face), saying "President Trump never shies away from a debate," conveniently forgetting that Trump had indeed done so previously. Whoops!

It actually would make a whole lot of sense for Trump to skip all the GOP debates, at least until anyone else in the field actually showed signs of mounting a credible challenge to him. If Trump is crushing all other contenders in the polls (which is indeed the case, currently), then why should he let any of them have free shots at him on a debate stage? Ignoring the debates would mean Trump's star power wouldn't be in the room and all the other wannabes would be left to bicker among themselves. So it seems like skipping at least the first few debates might be the smartest thing for Trump to do, at least at this point.

The only candidate who has managed to even dent Trump's support in the GOP base is Ron DeSantis, but it seems the more he tries to present himself as a "better than Trump without all the drama" candidate, the more people aren't very impressed with him. He's trying to make the argument that he's even tougher than Trump on several social wedge issues, while being far more electable to the general public, but this argument doesn't seem to be working. His level of support in the polls seems to have already peaked, which is far too early (obviously). Remember when Jeb Bush seemed like the inevitable Republican presidential nominee? Perhaps he won't be the only Florida governor to see his political fortunes wither way too early.

DeSantis is locked in a political vendetta with Disney, which keeps escalating. This week Disney filed a federal lawsuit accusing DeSantis of a campaign of political retribution against it, which seems like a pretty easy case to make (given all the public posturing DeSantis has done on it). Attacking a large corporation who provides tens of thousands of jobs in your state isn't exactly a traditional conservative thing to do, and already there are plenty of Republicans who are getting more and more annoyed at this personal vendetta -- which isn't helping DeSantis in the polls or with large GOP donors.

Nikki Haley (another GOP presidential wannabe) gave a speech this week to a big forced-birth gathering, and she tried to walk her own tightrope on the abortion issue. She refused to take any stance at all on any of the contentious tactics being debated in the movement, instead she tried to make the issue all gauzy and feel-good. Call it the "compassionate conservative forced-birth" position, perhaps. It is doubtful this is going to convince any actual voters though, since whether Republican candidates want to specify their own positions or not the reality is that the most extreme members of the party are going to continue to try to impose their drastic laws on everyone. Which all works to the Democrats' advantage, since the forced-birth position is not popular at all. Haley's attempted dodge of what she would actually support seems doomed to fail.

In fact, some Republicans are already balking at the more extreme versions of abortion bans. A "near-total" ban in South Carolina and a six-week ban in Nebraska both failed to pass in their states' legislatures because a handful of Republicans decided they went too far. But so far, this has been the exception -- most Republicans are unwilling to directly take on the forced-birth movement in any way whatsoever.

In other mean-spirited political news, Kansas just passed the most restrictive "bathroom bill" in the country, barring transgendered people from using the bathroom of their chosen gender. The very red state actually has a Democratic governor who vetoed the measure, but the Republicans have a supermajority in their legislature and overrode her veto this week. This is all part of the Republican "attack trans rights and drag queens" strategy, which seems to be a last desperate attempt to fight L.G.B.T.Q. rights one more time (they've given up on fighting gay marriages, for the most part, and have now latched on to transgender rights for this election cycle).

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally was able to drag his opening bid in the debt ceiling standoff across the finish line this week, herding his GOP cats into just enough votes (217) to pass his bill. In other words, not exactly a show of strength. We'll have more to say on what the GOP plan would mean later on, but the passage of the measure means a new phase for the political mudfight.

President Biden has so far stuck to his insistence that he will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States government, and the White House sounded pretty adamant about it after McCarthy's bill squeaked through. Team Biden also showed how they'll be presenting their case to the public. A White House spokesman put it thusly:

We have just a few more odds and ends to get to here, then we'll move on to the awards. The Republican Party created a post-mortem or autopsy to grade their performance in the 2022 midterms. But there was one very big cause for their electoral woes that the document refused to even mention: Donald Trump. This was even pointed out by members of the Republican National Committee:



Over on the other side of the aisle, if you're so inclined, you can now buy official "Biden For President" campaign items with "Dark Brandon" on them (complete with glowing red laser-eyes). But that wasn't even the most amusing thing from Biden this week.

The president hosted the leader of South Korea at the White House, which even included a state dinner. At some point in the proceedings, Biden invited South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to offer up his own (a cappella) rendition of the first verse of American Pie. Afterwards, Biden presented him with a guitar signed by Don McLean. But even that wasn't the best photo op of the week.

On "Take Your Child To Work Day," Biden appeared outdoors to a small crowd of people flanked by the most adorable "Secret Service agents" you've ever seen. And we have to hand it to the kids, they all played their part perfectly, with little sunglasses and serious scowls on their faces. Take a look for yourself, but be fully prepared to say: "Awwww...."





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week before we get to the main event. The first goes to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who this week signed a "Right To Repair" law, making his state the first to have one. This forces the makers of farm equipment to provide farmers who have bought their incredibly-expensive machines (such as combine harvesters) all the software and other tools they need to be able to fix their own machines. This is a fascinating issue that is rather bipartisan (it is mainly a rural issue), but it also could be expanded to cover things like allowing people to be able to change the batteries in their iPhones. In any case, Polis was the first governor to actually get a law passed, and he deserves credit for doing so.

Also worthy of credit is Senator Ben Cardin, who led the push in the Senate this week to remove the deadlines from the Equal Rights Amendment, which would immediately allow it to become a ratified part of the U.S. Constitution. This effort failed -- only two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted for it -- but it was worth the effort if only to put the 46 Republicans who voted against it on the record as being against women's equality. The fight to get this amendment ratified goes back 100 years, and it's not over yet -- but it is a lot closer than it has ever been before. Cardin voted to ratify the amendment when he was in the Maryland legislature, over 50 years ago. Now he is leading the charge to finish the job.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was none other than Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr, the first transgendered lawmaker ever to serve in the state legislature. Here's the story, if you haven't been following it:



Representative Zephyr feels the issue of transgender rights is one of life and death. She obviously has a personal stake in trying to prevent Republican lawmakers from passing laws targeting such people, and she is advocating for her community. But she won't be able to do so from the chamber floor anymore -- the most she's now allowed to do is to vote on bills from a remote location.

Republicans have decided that destroying the rights of transgendered people is a big hot political issue for them right now. All across the country, red states are competing with each other to pass the most Draconian laws possible targeting trans people. They think it's a winner for them, politically. But their actions have real-world consequences and Zooey Zephyr was doing her best to make this point as a state representative. Now she has been silenced.

For her courage and refusal to back down, Zooey Zephyr is easily the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Montana Representative Zooey Zephyr via her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We're going to take a big-picture view of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award this week, because this still annoys us no end.

Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden are playing a dangerous game of "chicken" over the full faith and credit of the United States government. The Republican House is engaged in hostage-taking, threatening not to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden agrees to slash the federal budget in all sorts of disastrous ways. Biden quite rightly points out that when Donald Trump was in office, Republicans were more than happy to raise the debt ceiling three times without any such concessions. Each is trying to spin the whole made-up crisis as the other one's fault.

To us, however, Joe Biden is indeed at fault for this whole mess, because it was all so predictable. And he could have avoided it in two separate ways, neither of which he pursued. He even denigrated one of them. Which directly led to exactly where we are now.

Back in January, we wrote about this at length, in an article titled "Biden's Biggest Mistake." In it, we wrote:



As we said, it was entirely predictable that McCarthy would do exactly what he has now done. But it didn't have to be this way. We could have avoided this situation permanently by abolishing the fictional debt ceiling all together. Biden could have avoided it for the rest of his first term by striking a deal with the lame-duck Congress. He did neither of these things.

Admittedly, neither one was guaranteed to pass. Making the effort might not have worked. But refusing to even make either effort is pretty inexcusable, when you consider where we are now as a direct result.

We still would like some enterprising White House reporter to pose that question to Biden, even now: "Can you explain why you called abolishing the debt ceiling 'irresponsible,' when doing so would have avoided what we all face now? How was it 'responsible' to allow Kevin McCarthy to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage when it all could have been avoided?"

Whether that question ever gets asked or not, President Joe Biden deserves this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week for irresponsibly allowing this situation to even happen, when it could have been prevented.

[Contact President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 704 (4/28/23)

Media appreciation note:

There was a big shakeup in the world of cable news this week, as two prominent commentators were fired from two separate networks: Tucker Carlson (Fox "News" ) and Don Lemon (CNN). Carlson got most of the attention, but by week's end he had faded away into the realm now inhabited by his predecessors, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. This consists of ranting to a boutique audience online rather than to millions of Fox viewers each night.

The rest of the media world had a field day when the story first broke, with many going with the "anchors dropped" or "anchors away" metaphor, but the funniest headline we saw was from Politico, who came up with: "Fox Nips Tuck, CNN Squeezes Lemon Out." A headline for the ages, in our humble opinion.

There was some truly sad news this week; the death of Harry Belafonte. Most of the obituaries we saw focused on his musical abilities, but what was much more impressive (to us, at least) was his long history of political activism. Belafonte was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Junior and helped organize the 1963 March On Washington. He continued his political activism his entire life, and as we said it is a much more impressive record than his other accomplishments in life.

Requiescat In Pace, Harry Belafonte. You will be missed.



They are scared to level with you

Democrats need to point out both what is in the bill the House Republicans just passed, as well as what is not in the bill. Because they're trying to sell a pig in a poke here.

"Kevin McCarthy began his leadership of the House of Representatives promising that his first priority would be passing a budget and that that budget would balance within 10 years. That last promise was the first abandoned, but make no mistake about it, what the House just passed is not actually a budget. President Biden has put out a full budget, with all the numbers filled in. Republicans are scared to do so because then the American people would see precisely how devastating their ideas would be. So they passed a bill without any specifics, promising to fill in the details later. I say to Kevin McCarthy and all the rest of the House Republicans: 'What are you scared of? Let the American people see what your plans are! Level with them -- they deserve to see.' Because my guess is that they're going to continue to hide their real numbers for as long as they can get away with it -- because they are so scared of what the American people will think about their plan."



State your facts

This is going to be a build-your-own talking point for lots of Democrats running for Congress this election cycle. Kevin McCarthy jammed through his plans to slash federal spending, and all but four House Republicans voted for it. The White House has put out helpful "state fact sheets" which break down what the Republicans are now on record supporting, which can be used by Democrats to tell the voters what the GOP is fighting hard for (while taking the full faith and credit of the United States government hostage). Their plan had no detailed numbers in it, so the White House helpfully did the math. Here is Dana Milbank of the Washington Post using this to great effect, in an article warning all the moderate Republicans who just "walked the plank" what they can expect in the upcoming campaign. This is how to frame the whole budget/debt ceiling fight perfectly, from now on:





Another first!

Worth pointing out whenever his name comes up, don't you think?

"Donald Trump has achieved a new 'first' in American politics -- he is now the only former president in American history to be accused in an open courtroom of rape. He'll go down in history not only for being impeached twice, but also for being the first ex-president to be accused of one of the most heinous crimes there is. Hopefully he'll be the only one ever, too."



Trump knew the Big Lie was a lie from the start

The Washington Post broke this story, and it will no doubt come up in some future court case against Trump.

"Donald Trump didn't just hire one investigative firm to chase down all his 'election fraud' rumors, it turns out he hired two such firms. He paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars to look into every single accusation of voter fraud or vote-rigging all the conspiracy theorists came up with. And not just one but both firms told Trump exactly the same thing -- that it was all rumor, that claiming the election was stolen from him was no more than a Big Lie. Trump knew this from the start -- he paid a lot of money to two firms to find out. And they both told him there was 'no there, there.' Trump didn't care about evidence, though, since there was still money to be made over pushing his Big Lie."



Yeah, like that is going to happen....

The Republican Party really deserves to be called out for their delusion.

"Right after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign, the Republican Party put out an ad which predicted the military would soon be 'closing' American cities, if Biden were re-elected. This is patently insane. They showed the U.S. military standing guard on the screen while the voiceover read: 'Officials closed the city of San Francisco this morning, citing the escalating crime and fentanyl crisis.' This would be laughable if it weren't so apocalyptic in nature. I mean, ok, I might be able to believe that some Republican governor of some deep red state tried to call out the National Guard to besiege some Democratic city within their state, but San Francisco? Seriously? Gavin Newsom's going to shut down the City By The Bay? In what universe would this even happen? I mean, I understand that scare tactics and fearmongering is kind of what Republicans do, but you'd think they'd make it even a tiny bit believable. This is just some kind of a warped joke."



For the children

Democrats really need to lean in to this, because they've got their own case to make on the issue.

"Republicans like to say that they're all for protecting children, but they've got a pretty strange way of defining that. What the Republican Party is actually for is banning books so children can't see them. Banning teaching children the real history and the honest truth about racism in America. Banning teachers from even admitting that gay couples exist. Furthermore, they're now pushing to relax child labor laws in many states, so schoolchildren can work night shifts or in meatpacking plants. They want to force pregnant 11-year-olds to give birth. They want it to be as hard as humanly possible for college kids to vote, because they usually vote Democratic. Democrats are the ones who are really standing up for America's children, because we are against all of those things."



No ethics at all

This has the benefit of being literally true.

"It is an absolute disgrace that the Supreme Court has no code of ethics. Justices feel free to accept lavish gifts from billionaires, sell property to their buddies at inflated prices, and refuse to recuse themselves from cases where they have a clear conflict of interest. As I said, this is an absolute disgrace. Every other judge in America is forced to follow a code of ethics -- rules to preserve impartiality in our justice system. But the Supreme Court has no ethics at all."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

April 22, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Fox On The Run

We admit using that subtitle dates us in a way, since we are indeed old enough to remember the popular song of the same name -- but we couldn't resist, since this week started out with Fox News caving at the last possible moment as a civil defamation trial was set to begin against them. First the trial was delayed a day and then came the bombshell news that Fox had settled with Dominion Voting Systems for a jaw-dropping $787.5 million. To state the patently obvious, you don't settle a case you fully expect to win. Fox knew it was in danger of not just losing the case (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion, a little more than twice what Fox settled for) but having the network's dirty laundry exposed in even more painful fashion than it already had been (through releases of internal communications between executives and network personalities that were already embarrassing enough). Fox was indeed on the run, to the tune of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

While Dominion did get a whopping huge amount of money in the deal, there was one thing conspicuously absent: any public statement (on their own airwaves or otherwise) that Fox News had done anything wrong. Or any public statement, for that matter, that it was going to change its ways in the future. But that could be coming in the next act in this play (more on that in a moment).

Fox News is not a reputable news organization -- that was the inescapable uptake from the case. To quote the Talking Heads (which doesn't date us quite as much, but still...), Fox instead is a broadcaster of: "Lies, lies and propaganda." The internal communications revealed by the case show without doubt that what was fundamentally most important to Fox was keeping its viewers happy -- even if that meant blatantly lying to them. That is not what a reputable news organization does, obviously. Fox personalities and executives were worried that broadcasting the truth about the 2020 presidential election (that Joe Biden had won in a free and fair election) would have driven its viewers to its competitors in the rightwing media bubble. Ratings trumped (pun intended) any scintilla of journalistic integrity. If its viewers wanted lies and propaganda, Fox was more than willing to deliver.

The best reaction of the week came from Jake Tapper, over on CNN, who was tasked with reading on the air the statement Fox News put out about the settlement. Which contained the line: "This settlement reflects FOX's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards." Tapper reacted by cracking up when reading that line, and saying: "I'm sorry, this is going to be difficult to say with a straight face."

That is precisely the correct reaction. Because that is a laughable statement, from Fox.

As mentioned, this isn't the end of the road for lawsuits stemming from the avalanche of lies and conspiracy theories unleashed by Donald Trump after he lost. There are a whole bunch of others out there. Dominion still has six lawsuits pending, against other rightwing media outlets, against Trump lawyers, and against others who prominently spread falsehoods after the election. Fox still faces an even larger lawsuit by another voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic. And Smartmatic is suing for a whopping $2.7 billion.

The same pressures will be on Fox as the Smartmatic suit progresses, to somehow settle it before their own executives and on-air personalities are forced to submit to cross-examination under oath. But Smartmatic's lawyers are now indicating that they will be demanding as a part of any such settlement an actual apology and admission of wrongdoing by Fox -- preferably read over their own airwaves. And Fox, as we noted, is already on the run. They're between a rock and a hard place. Which is exactly where they deserve to be.

Fox also deserves to be shunned by all the actual news organizations from this point on. They should not be treated as colleagues. They should not be treated as journalists. They should be treated on a par with "reporters" from the tabloid press. They should be sneered at by any who work in the business of actual news reporting.

As a footnote to the Fox settlement, Mike Lindell lost in his own legal comeuppance this week (although it was a smallish sort of comeuppance... but like Fox, there's more to come for him). The "MyPillow guy" had put on a "cyber symposium" where he produced his "evidence" of (supposedly) China tampering with the 2020 election, and then he dared everyone with a formalized "Prove Mike Wrong" contest -- with a whopping prize of $5 million for anyone who could prove that his "data" wasn't actual data from the 2020 election. A computer forensic specialist did so -- he proved that what Lindell released was in no way what he said it was and had absolutely nothing to do with the 2020 election. An arbitration board agreed, so now Lindell's got to pay up the five million.

In other words: the election-denial chickens are coming home to roost. And it's about time!

Moving along to other subjects, we have to admit that this is one of those weeks where we are writing this column while waiting for another shoe to drop. The Supreme Court has a self-imposed deadline of midnight tonight to issue a ruling on an appellate court decision on access to an abortion pill. The trial judge tried to ban the pill nationwide, the appellate court overturned that decision but left in place several restrictions that didn't exist previously, and the Supreme Court has already blown through one deadline this week to figure out what American women will be able to do come tomorrow. We do realize that once the news breaks, all of the rest of what we have written here may seem rather insignificant, but that's just the way the scheduling ball bounces. For now, we're going to ignore the case and the court until some sort of decision is reached. [Editor's Note/Breaking News: For once, SCOTUS actually did the right thing, at least for now... we'll have more to say on this next week.]

The House of Representatives saw some drama this week, as Kevin McCarthy finally issued an actual set of demands for the hostage he wants to take. With perhaps less than eight weeks to go before the United States is forced to default on its public debt, McCarthy has finally figured out what he's going to demand from Joe Biden and the Democrats in order to avert a worldwide economic crisis.

This isn't a budget, mind you. It's not even a budget overview. McCarthy still has yet to produce either of those things -- which is where the negotiations over spending will actually take place. But he finally did get his list together of what the Republicans want in exchange for averting catastrophe. It's a rather vague list, without the level of detail necessary to see exactly which federal programs will be hit the hardest. But it's at least something.

McCarthy swears he's going to bring it to the House floor next week for a vote. But this may prove to be optimistic, as nobody knows at this point whether he'll be able to corral the necessary 218 votes to pass it or not. McCarthy can only afford four defections, so he's got to keep all of the "five families" within his own caucus happy. We'll see next week whether he achieves this or not.

President Joe Biden's reaction was immediate. He went out to a Maryland Union hall to deliver a speech excoriating the Republican budget-cutting. He has already launched a full-throated defense of his spending priorities, and other Democrats really should be paying attention, because he's making some excellent points (some of which we'll be getting to later on).

This is all going to devolve into a very dangerous game of "chicken" between McCarthy and Biden. We'll see which one blinks first, but the first test is going to be if McCarthy can manage to get anything through his own House.

Over in the Senate, Republicans (as expected) successfully blocked a temporary replacement for Senator Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee. With Chuck Schumer unable to get the necessary 60 votes to do so on the floor, this means that the pressure on Feinstein is going to ratchet up enormously with each passing day. He absence is already causing problems, which is why the Republicans blocked the move in the first place. In the end, the only way out of the impasse may be Feinstein resigning -- assuming she doesn't recover enough physically to travel to Washington and start casting votes again.

In the presidential election contest, Mike Pompeo decided against a run (which we have to admit, did surprise us), while Larry Elder ("Who?" ) did jump into the Republican primary race. Chris Christie still hasn't made his move yet, but he certainly sounds like he's ready to enter the fray. In frontrunner news, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have begun taking potshots at each other in ads, while Trump rises and DeSantis sinks in the polling.

On the Democratic side, Robert F. Kennedy Junior ("Oh, no -- not him again!" ) will challenge Marianne Williamson for the title of "most forgettable Democrat beaten by Joe Biden in the primaries." It is rumored that Joe Biden will make his own run official next Tuesday (which would be the four-year anniversary of him announcing his 2020 bid), but then again who knows?

Republicans from Jim Jordan to Marjorie Taylor Greene continued to beclown themselves in House committee hearings this week. Greene got so outrageous the Republican chair of the committee agreed to strike some of her remarks from the record (for being disrespectful). The chair was annoyed, and he is now trying to ensure that if she makes unhinged outbursts again that McCarthy will remove her from his committee, which would certainly be entertaining to see.

One interesting footnote from Tennessee -- after voting to expel the "Tennessee Two" for speaking out of turn, a Republican leader in their statehouse was forced to resign this week after it was revealed that he had sexually harassed at least one legislative intern (and "likely two" ). Nothing like the ol' "party of family values," eh, folks?

Which brings us to Trump's legal woes of the week. Trump is being sued in New York by E. Jean Carroll, who claims Trump raped her in a department store years ago. The trial will begin next week, but it seems Trump can't even be bothered to show up. His lawyers filed a motion asking the judge to tell the jury that Trump's absence was due to him not wanting to subject New York City to a traffic mess while he's there. Here's what Trump's lawyer urged the judge to tell the jury: "while no litigant is required to appear at civil trial, the absence of the defendant, in this matter, by design, avoided the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City." What an altruistic guy! The judge was reportedly not impressed.

But enough wallowing in the filth of the Republican Party. We close today with a story that everyone can smile at, for its absolutely adorable nature. Because it seems there was a creeping (pun intended) breach of security at the White House this week:

We have a smattering of Honorable Mention awards to hand out before the big one this week, starting with President Biden for coming out swinging against the Republican debt-ceiling hostage-taking.

John Fetterman, now back performing his duties as senator once again, had some positive words for marijuana legalization this week (on 4/20, naturally!). He began by tweeting out a photo of him holding up a green flag which read: "It's 420 somewhere" with the message: "It's 4:20 on 4/20. That's the tweet." He followed this up with: "No more Reefer Madness," and: "I always have and always will fight for legal weed & ending the racist War on Drugs." For which we applaud Senator Fetterman and all others in Washington who are fighting to end the insanity once and for all.

The governor of Kansas vetoed two bills designed to target transgender people this week, one a "bathroom bill" and one which would ban gender-affirming healthcare for children and teens. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed both of them, although at least one may make it into law anyway. As HuffPost reports:



Kudos to Kelly for stopping at least one of them, in a very red state.

But there's a clear winner for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week -- Senator Patty Murray, from Washington state. Murray set an impressive milestone this week by casting her 10,000th vote on the Senate floor. No woman has ever achieved this mark of longevity before now, not even the longest-serving woman senator of all time, Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein doesn't appear to be far behind -- the only reference we could find put her current number at 9,827 votes. So Murray's not the only one in this range, but she has now gone down in history as the first to watch her personal odometer turn over to five digits.

Only 32 men have achieved this feat, it bears mentioning, in all of American history. The absolute record is going to be tough to beat, as Senator Robert C. Byrd cast a whopping 18,689 votes during his extended stay. Patrick Leahy got close to topping Byrd, coming in at number two with 17,374 votes, but he retired at the start of this year.

Murray and Feinstein were both first elected to the Senate in 1992, which was called "the Year of the Woman." This was after the Anita Hill hearings and there was a backlash which sent -- for the first time ever -- five women to the United States Senate in a single election (one, Barbara Mikulski, was re-elected, but Feinstein, Murray, Barbara Boxer, and Carol Moseley Braun were all elected for the first time). Thirty-one years later, one of them has now cast 10,000 votes and another is less than 200 votes shy of hitting that mark. That is a powerful and historic, and it is why Senator Patty Murray is the easy choice for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. We look forward to her casting many more such votes in the future!

[Congratulate Senator Patty Murray on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We've got one (Dis-)Honorable Mention award this week, and one award held in abeyance (for now).

Senator Joe Manchin seems like he's going to run for re-election. Since he's from West Virginia, this means appealing to an electorate which hails from one of the reddest states in the entire country. To do so, he has felt free to buck his own party often. But this week he rather gratuitously took a cheap shot at President Biden, so we've got to at least hand him a (Dis-)Honorable Mention for doing so.

Andrew Gillum, who lost his race against Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, is now on trial for federal corruption charges and lying to the F.B.I. We can't even say "the jury's out" on this one, as the trial has just begun. But until the verdict is read, we're going to hold off on giving him any more awards, just on "presumption of innocence" grounds.

But the jury (so to speak) is in on Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra. Here's the story:



We do take Becerra at his word that this was "inadvertent." And we were pleased to see him not only own up to his mistake but promise not to make the same mistake ever again. Which is important, because the Hatch Act is rather toothless, as the article goes on to point out:



Democrats need to set a higher bar for ethics in politics, to repair the massive damage that Donald Trump did, to be blunt. We lost count of the number of times Trump administration people blatantly violated the Hatch Act on national television (Kellyanne Conway immediately springs to mind, for obvious reasons). And nothing ever happened to any of them, because Trump simply didn't care.

So we have to applaud Becerra for taking responsibility for his error and for promising to do a better job in the future. But we still have to give him this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week for making the error in the first place.

[Contact Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 703 (4/21/23)

As we said earlier, we are still waiting to hear what the Supreme Court does on the abortion pill. Because of this, we find ourselves a few short in the talking points we had planned out for today. So in a blatantly lazy act of stenography, we are going to fill the first three talking points with the entirety of a press release handed out by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in response to Kevin McCarthy finally putting something on paper.

The debt ceiling fight is guaranteed to be an extended affair. This is going to consume weeks of politics in Washington, and it's only going to get more intense the closer we get to the actual deadline (where the United States government could default on its debt for the first time in history).

So we thought it was important to begin the whole fracas with Joe Biden's position. These are all going to be Democratic talking points we'll all hear for the next two months, most likely (if not longer). And so far, the White House seems to be doing a great job of framing the issue, so rather than reword their points in our own language, we're just going to present theirs verbatim.



Extreme MAGA wing

Biden's been out front on this since before the midterm elections. And it works -- paint the entire Republican Party with the broad MAGA brush....





This is what it really does....

Point out all the real-world consequences of the Republican plan -- as many as you can think of, and as often as you get the chance!





Then present the alternative

OK, gratuitous capitalizations aside (hrrmph!), this clearly presents people with the Democratic alternative to the Draconian Republican agenda.





Mint the damn coin, Joe!

Biden's hands aren't completely tied, of course.

"If Joe Biden gets pushed too far, he's got a number of ways to make this entire problem disappear. The 14th Amendment states that, and I quote, 'The validity of the public debt of the United States... shall not be questioned.' Right there in the Constitution is the answer -- debts incurred by passing legally-binding appropriations bills shall not be questioned, period. The entire concept of a debt ceiling -- which didn't exist when this amendment was ratified -- is therefore unconstitutional on its face. Which means Joe Biden and the Treasury Department should just ignore it, and we'll never have to have this hostage-taking standoff again. Or Biden could direct the Treasury to just mint a trillion-dollar coin and deposit it with the Federal Reserve and once again the problem just disappears -- without Congress having to lift a finger. What I would do if I were Joe Biden -- before we get to the do-or-die deadline -- would be to have the Treasury mint the coin, hold a very public ceremony to display it to the public, and then just threaten to deposit it with the Fed. Mint the damn coin, Joe! It's the easy way out of this mess!"



McCarthy weakest speaker ever?

This taunt might just come in handy in all sorts of future situations (it's a pretty safe bet, at this point).

"Speaker Kevin McCarthy issued his list of demands to release the hostage of the full faith and credit of the United States of America. But there's no guarantee he'll be able to get 218 Republicans to vote for it next week. I'll be looking for any signs of a delay in holding this vote, because it will signal exactly what we all suspect anyway -- that McCarthy is well on his way to becoming the weakest speaker in American history, unable to herd the cats in his own caucus. Remember when Republicans promised that they'd immediately pass some kind of border security bill as their very first action if they took the House? Well, that one's not ready for primetime either. McCarthy talks a good game, but when it comes down to actually whipping votes, we're all going to see next week how strong his position really is."



GOP enters alternate universe....

This is just bizarre. Sure, it's a welcome development for Democrats (and everyone else, really), but it's still very weird to observe.

"Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis -- the two current frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination -- are beating each other up in ads over who will stand up stronger for Social Security and Medicare. What they gloss over, however, is that they're trying to outdo each other in standing up to their own party. Democrats have always supported and fought hard for these programs, while Republicans have been itching to either kill them outright or slash them to the bone since they were first enacted. So it is rather strange to see championing Medicare and Social Security as a brand-new GOP litmus test. All we as Democrats have to say is: 'Welcome to the party, guys! Glad to see this change of heart in Republicans!'"



Like a rug

An easy target, this week. And we tried to limit ourselves to not using profanity, just to be polite about it all....

"Fox News, it is now clear, is not an actual news organization. It's just not. They don't seek out the truth and report it to the public. Instead, they lie. Like a rug. Like a dog. Through their teeth. Their pants are ablaze. They speak with forked tongue. They are pathological liars. They are full of bovine excrement. Or full of baloney, if you prefer. You can tell when the people on Fox are lying, because their mouths are moving. They are nothing short of snake-oil salesmen. They are not a news organization, they are the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, plain and simple. And that is the honest truth!"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

April 15, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Sleeping Giants Awaken

There's a new reality in American politics, and one political party is reaping the benefits of it while the other is trapped in a downward spiral of ever-increasing extremism. Some Republicans are beginning to understand the power of the sleeping giant they have awoken, but there's really no easy way out from the conundrum they have created for themselves. Abortion is going to be a potent political issue for at least the next few elections, and Republicans' only answer so far is to double down, triple down, or quadruple down on forcing the most extreme positions they can come up with on as many of the American people as they possibly can.

The most interesting report on the Republicans' growing unease over where they find themselves now was a story about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Just last year he got his legislature to pass a 15-week ban on abortion. He signed the law very publicly, with much fanfare. While that seemed a strong enough political move for him back then, however, it is now seen (by the increasingly-Draconian forced-birth activists) as insufficient. So DeSantis just passed a six-week ban. Except this time he signed it late at night with no journalists present, and then the next morning when he addressed a very conservative crowd, he didn't even mention his new law, despite the friendliness of the crowd.

Democrats are already on the offense on the issue. They're ready to use the issue against him when DeSantis travels the country in the run-up to his expected bid for the GOP presidential nomination:

He won't be the only one trying to defend extremism to the public -- a public which has only grown more supportive of women's rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs decision.

Also in the news was a theocratic federal judge in Texas, who could barely contain his obvious bias while issuing an order to end the F.D.A.'s approval of one of the drugs prescribed for chemical abortions. The Fifth Circuit of Appeals quickly suspended the judge's stay (which would have gone into effect tomorrow), but in doing so they seriously limited access to the drug for American women. This action is being appealed to the Supreme Court, which could weigh in before the deadline is reached. [Editor's note: the Supreme Court just extended this deadline until next Wednesday, after this was written.] The Supreme Court is going to have to have the final say on the matter, since a different federal judge issued an order last week in complete contradiction to the Texas judge's ruling -- an order to the Biden administration not to change the public's access to the drug (in a limited number of states, however). These radically different outcomes are going to require the Supreme Court to issue a final judgment. And nobody has any idea what they'll do, of course.

Politically, the interesting thing about the Texas judge's order was that virtually no Republicans in Washington wanted to even talk about it. Republicans in Congress are trying to keep their heads down, avoid the fray, and just stick to their "it should be up to the states" mantra. But that doesn't work when one radical judge can change access for all American women. That is definitely not a state-level issue:



While the Republicans really don't want to talk about how unpopular their agenda has become, on the other side is a growing backlash against the GOP's position -- and not just on abortion. Republicans seem to want to run all their elections on banning books from schools, demonizing trans kids and drag queens, and ending all mentions of racism in the classroom. Their fearmongering is becoming more intense and more extreme with each passing day. And it is all about governmental control over people's lives. Which isn't exactly a winning message, electorally -- but they just don't seem to realize this salient fact.

Republicans have no actual position on abortion, as a party. And the GOP politicians who are open to any sort of compromise or compassion on the issue are mostly too scared of losing a primary election to another Republican who is more extreme. So they keep passing more and more bills in more and more states that get more and more extreme, while the national Republicans are completely silent. Even Republicans running for president are waffling when it comes to stating exactly what they would support -- a nationwide ban? What week? Any exemptions? What penalties? -- because they know full well that no matter what they say, it is going to make them enemies. If they support something more of the public would consider reasonable, then they have left themselves open to attacks from the more fervent of the forced-birth crowd. If they go full-on extreme, they know they're going to have a very tough time winning suburban and independent voters. Who are increasingly supportive of women's right to bodily autonomy -- polls show that the public supports not just the legality of the abortion pill but having them accessible by mail, too, to the tune of 65 percent approval or even higher.

Politically, Republicans are caught in a bind. Which could be very good news indeed for Democrats -- especially now that there is growing proof of how potent the issue can be at the ballot box.

Speaking of Democrats, President Joe Biden had a fun week, as he travelled to both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for an early celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Accords (which largely ended "the Troubles" ). Biden then took a few days to vacation and explore his own Irish roots, as many Americans are wont to do on the Emerald Isle.

Amusingly, right before he left, Biden took a potshot at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in their ongoing standoff over the budget and the debt ceiling. In a letter, Biden told McCarthy: "My hope is that House Republicans can present the American public with your budget plan before Congress leaves for the Easter recess so that we can have an in-depth conversation when you return."

The White House kept up this drumbeat in Biden's absence:



McCarthy, of course, has no actual budget. He doesn't even have a budget resolution (a kind of overview of a budget). He doesn't even have a summary of what such an overview might contain yet. And he's got such a razor-thin majority he may never be able to come up with any plan that will actually pass the House. So Biden is quite right to point this out in as derogatory language as he cares to.

Biden being Biden, he did make at least one cringeworthy gaffe while he was in Ireland, but it could have been worse and the Irish are probably used to Americans getting all sorts of things wrong about their history, so it didn't even make waves over there (much less here).

Back home in America, a 21-year-old man was arrested for leaking secret government documents that he had access to as a member of the Massachusetts National Guard. Apparently, he didn't do so for any overarching reason other than to impress his fellow online gamers, in a chat room. But whatever his reasons, he broke some serious laws by posting the secrets, and is facing a lot of prison time as a result.

You'd think something like this would be one of those rare bipartisan moments in politics, since it's pretty easy to condemn what he did. But you'd be wrong about that... for at least one Republican. Marjorie "Three Names" Taylor Greene immediately championed the leaker in some sort of deranged anti-Biden fit:



It seems there is no criminal behavior these days that at least some radical Republicans will fully support, in furtherance of their own extremist politics.

Speaking of Republican criminal behavior, it's time once again to check in on the legal woes of Donald Trump. This is "Exhibit A," really, in making the case that today's Republicans are just unabashedly pro-criminal. Congressional Republicans are trying to pass a bill to remove the power of local prosecutors to investigate or charge any former president, but of course there's only one who would even be affected by such a move. Trump himself is promising to investigate local district attorneys he doesn't like, if he ever gets back into the White House -- showing once again that he and the GOP are the epitome of projection, when it comes to "weaponizing the justice system" for political purposes. Republicans' knee-jerk defense of Trump could get a lot more perilous if more serious charges are brought against him, but they don't seem to care. They're going to follow him down this rabbit hole no matter what, it appears.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is planning on forcing Republicans to vote on a bill denouncing "defunding the F.B.I." when Congress returns, so we'll have to see how many of them vote in favor of defunding America's national police -- yet another example of GOP projection.

But back to Trump and his continuing adventure with the justice system. Fox News has apparently relented and let Trump back on their airwaves, and in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he told one of his made-up unbelievable stories, this one about what happened to him during his arraignment in New York City:



This was contradicted by a witness to the whole proceeding, who called Trump's story "absolute B.S." When asked how much truth there was to Trump's story, they responded: "Zero. There were zero people crying. There were zero people saying 'I'm sorry'."

Other Trump legal developments: Trump's lawyers are appealing the decision that will allow Mike Pence to testify in front of a federal grand jury about the events leading up to and during January 6th, but this appeal is quite likely to fail. The federal investigation into Trump keeping classified and other governmental documents also seems to be heading to the endgame phase. Trump just sued Michael Cohen -- the prime witness against Trump in the Stormy Daniels case -- for $500 million, just for the heck of it. This was a monumentally stupid thing for Trump to do (because it opens up all kinds of cans of worms for him in terms of depositions and discovery), but apparently Trump's lawyers couldn't talk him out of it.

Trump was forced to testify in New York this week -- for over seven hours -- in the civil case looking into tax fraud. The surprising news from this deposition was that "Mr. Trump answered questions without asserting his right against self-incrimination." That probably stems from the fact that it is a civil (not criminal) case, where invoking the Fifth Amendment can be used against you in court as evidence that you are covering up criminal behavior.

And the cherry on top of it all: the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her, is scheduled to begin on April 25. Trump (as usual) is trying to get the trial delayed, so we'll see when it actually does begin, but whenever it does it is going to move to center ring in the Trump's Legal Problems circus.

We've saved most of the Republican batcrap-crazy news for the talking points, but we have to close with one stunner. In the race to the bottom of which state Republican Party organizations can exhibit the looniest, most-unhinged behavior, Arizona is usually seen as a frontrunner. But while Michigan elevated one of the conspiracy-theory crackpots in their ranks to actually chair the state party, in Arizona a Republican actually went too far. No, really! In the state where the Republican Party lost its collective mind most spectacularly after the 2020 election, a state legislator invited a stone-cold conspiracy theorist to testify at an "election integrity" hearing. This witness falsely accused judges, lawmakers, and other Republicans of being on the payroll of Mexican drug cartels.

This sort of thing seems almost normal, for the Arizona GOP at least. But in a surprise move -- seriously, you could've knocked us over with a feather -- they actually voted to expel her. By a vote of 46-13, no less!

Maybe the fever is starting to break, down in the Grand Canyon State? One can only hope....





This week, we have to turn to Tennessee for our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. The two members of the "Tennessee Three" (who should probably just go by the "Tennessee Two," now?) who were expelled from the legislature last week have both now been reinstated and are back at work getting under the skin of Republican legislators.

State Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were booted out of office last week by the Republican supermajority. The third representative was a White woman, and survived the vote without getting expelled. But the state's procedure for replacing expelled members sent the decision back to the local governments of the areas they represented. And both of them wasted no time whatsoever in sending the two men back to the statehouse, in defiance of GOP threats to gut their local budgets.

This is all very naked and very ugly hardball politics, obviously. The Tennessee Republicans probably figured they could get away with such a bold move, mostly because few people outside the state would be paying attention. They badly miscalculated in this.

What happened instead was the Tennessee Three became big news nationwide. Joan Baez showed up to support them. President Biden called them up and invited them all to the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris visited them in Tennessee. And now videos of them doing their jobs by denouncing their Republican colleagues are going viral.

In other words, they seem destined for stardom in the Democratic Party. Or at least a national stage to express their outrage at their treatment. Both have had a lot to say, very eloquently and very powerfully. Here is Representative Jones addressing the body in the debate on his expulsion vote, to give just one example:



Both Justins are now back where they should be -- in the offices, representing the voters that sent them there. And Tennessee law forbids the legislature from expelling them again over the same issue, so their seats are safe for now.

We used the metaphor earlier for a different reason, but it's hard not to repeat it here for the political theater which just took place in Tennessee: the Republicans awoke a sleeping giant. They were blindsided by the fact that the rest of the country saw them as abusing their political power. And the exact opposite of what they intended wound up happening -- not only were the two sent right back to the legislature, but they now have a nationwide audience and following behind them.

There wasn't even really any question, this week. The Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award goes out to both Justin Jones and Justin Pearson. And allow us to add our voice to the chorus supporting them: More power to them!

[Congratulate Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones on his official contact page, and Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson on his official contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





We considered Senator Dianne Feinstein for this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, but upon reflection decided she didn't deserve it.

There was an uproar this week about Feinstein, after a news report pointed out the fact that Feinstein has been missing in action in the Senate for a growing period of time, and might never make it back to Washington. The 89-year-old senator contracted shingles and has been recuperating, but she sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where her absence has caused all of Biden's judicial nominations to come to a screeching halt.

Immediately after the news story was released, Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna called for Feinstein to resign her seat.

She didn't do so -- yet -- but she did react quickly, we have to admit. She contacted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and asked that she be at least temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee.

That was the right thing to do, and it didn't take very long for Feinstein to decide to do it. Which is why we can't really give her a negative award this week.

Now, it may not be all that easy for Schumer to replace her on the committee. He would need either unanimous consent or 60 votes to do so. If the Republicans dig in their heels to delay things (which they have every motivation to do), then Feinstein would actually have to resign her Senate seat to force a replacement. So we'll have to see how things progress. Feinstein could fully recover and go back to Washington, the Republicans could magnanimously let Schumer replace her on the committee without gumming up the works, or she could actually resign if they do cause a roadblock.

So the jury's still out on this one, but we are glad that the news story and Khanna's forcing the issue has at least gotten the ball rolling. President Biden deserves to have his judicial picks confirmed by a Democratic Senate in a timely manner.

But we will admit that Feinstein was really our only candidate for the award, so we'll have to put the MDDOTW back on the shelf for another week, unless readers have their own candidates to suggest for the award.




Volume 702 (4/14/23)

We started off kind of at random today, but then built to a theme of how Republicans seem to be vying with each other for who wins the "Most Repulsive" prize. Think that's overstating things? You won't, when you finish reading them all, that's our guess.



Taming inflation

A big milestone was reported this week, and Democrats should really point it out, after Republicans tried to make so much political hay over the issue in the last election.

"Last month, inflation dropped to a rate of only five percent. That is down from the post-COVID spike of nine percent, last year. Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve have been acting to bring inflation down, and their efforts are paying off in a big way. Inflation is falling fast, and the threat of a recession appears to be fading as well. The target inflation number is two percent, so it doesn't have that much further to go before we all get back to normal. I would call on my Republican colleagues to celebrate this success story with the same fervor that they used while denouncing high inflation last year. Because we're on the right track, and Biden and the Fed's efforts are working."



The extremists are in charge of the GOP

Paint them all with a very extreme brush, since few of them are willing to stand up to the most extreme forces on their side.

"Make no mistake about it, folks, the ultimate goal of the Republican Party is to pass a nationwide abortion ban for every American woman, no matter what state she lives in. By any means necessary, they want to control women's bodies rather than allow them the freedom to decide for themselves. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives used to denounce -- in the strongest possible terms! -- judicial activism. We just saw a prime example of that down in Texas, where the forced-birth extremists filed a case with what can only be called a theocratic judge in order to get the result they weren't able to achieve through passing new laws. He gladly complied and for the first time ever substituted his own personal bias for not just the ability of Congress to make laws but also all the scientists and doctors at the Food and Drug Administration. Despite having no medical training whatsoever, this judge decided what drugs were ideologically allowable to the American public. This is raw judicial activism, but few Republicans are willing to say so now. They'll use any trick in the book they can think of -- because the Republican Party wants to ban all abortion nationwide, and they will continue to keep trying to do so right up until the voters remove them from power."



Impeach Thomas now!

Somewhere, Anita Hill is sitting back and saying: "I told you so!"

"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas needs to either resign or be impeached, as soon as possible. He is obviously a bought-and-paid-for judge, and thinks no ethical code forbids him from accepting lavish amounts of money and goodies from a wealthy Republican activist. This is unacceptable and if Thomas doesn't do the right thing, Congress should act instead. After all, who can defend such actions? How can anyone in Congress not immediately call for Thomas to step down in shame or be immediately impeached and removed? Is the highest court in the land truly for sale to the highest bidder? Shouldn't the Supreme Court have the strictest code of ethics in the judiciary instead of having no code of ethics at all? This is an absolute outrage!"



How low can they go?

That's all even before getting in to who the guy really is.

"The fatcat billionaire who has been bankrolling Supreme Court Clarence Thomas is not your everyday billionaire, folks. He has a collection of Nazi memorabilia that he proudly and openly displays in his home. This includes not one but two paintings done by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, Nazi medallions and even swastika-emblazoned linen napkins. That is the face of today's Republican Party, folks. That is who Justice Thomas pals around with. How low can Republicans sink? Is absolutely nothing out of bounds for them, these days? Have they truly no shame at all?"



Speaking of offensive...

We're kind of building a theme, here, obviously.

"Tennessee Republicans saw fit to expel two members of the legislature for interrupting the proceedings with a protest. But what you might not realize is how many things they've let their own members get away with, without being expelled. A GOP lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting underage girls on a team he coached and even though one of these girls recorded him essentially apologizing for doing so, they didn't kick him out -- instead they made him chairman of the education committee. You just can't make this stuff up, folks. The GOP house speaker sent texts describing pole-dancing women and his chief of staff's sexual adventures, but he was allowed to keep his seat. One Republican, just last month, made a joke about lynching, suggesting that the state consider adding 'hanging by a tree' to the list of state execution methods. In a state with a history of lynching Black people, he hasn't been reprimanded. And one Republican apparently peed on the chair of one of his own fellow Republicans, in front of other members, with absolutely no consequences whatsoever. That is who Tennessee Republicans are. They will forgive just about anything... in their own caucus. But when a Democrat annoys them, their first answer is to just kick them out completely. Welcome to the hypocrisy of today's Republican Party."



Rather than abortion, let's just let 11-year-old girls get married!

No, seriously... you just cannot make this stuff up....

"A Republican in the Missouri state senate set the bar at the lowest possible level this week -- which as you know was a pretty tough thing to achieve, given all the other repulsive behavior from his fellow Republicans of late. Mike Moon was quite open about the forced-birth Utopia he'd like all his constituents to enjoy -- which includes allowing 11- and 12-year-olds to get married. Here's what he's had to say on the issue:"



"I guess that's what 'pro-choice' means, to Republicans. This is today's Republican Party, folks. Standing strong for the right of pregnant 11-year-old girls to get married."



Irony is dead in the GOP

This is sort of a "make your own talking point" thing to close on, here. We were personally left speechless at the lack of comprehension as to just how ironic and amusing this truly was, for everyone who isn't a member of the MAGA cult. The backstory is that Donald Trump was apparently considering hiring Laura Loomer to work on his campaign staff, despite the fact that she's a known racist and bigot. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has her own particular brand of conspiratorial lunacy, urged Trump not to and called Loomer "mentally unstable and a documented liar." [Feel free to make your own "Takes one to know one!" joke, here.] But the thing that caused our jaw to drop was what Greene posted to Telegram after Loomer attacked her personally. It is the absolute height of projection, really. Because it is impossible to read it and not think of a few other instances of this being true in today's Republican Party (to say nothing of Greene herself). So we leave you with just Greene's words, and trust you to come up with your own outrageous response to her:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

April 8, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Merry Arrestmas!

Today's Republican Party is not just the Party of Trump, it also is now the Party of Trumpism -- or to put it in plainer terms: authoritarianism. "We're going to do whatever we want to do, because we can" seems to be the new rallying slogan for Republicans. Never mind what the public thinks or wants, never mind the possible political backlash, it's just going to be full steam ahead for as long as they can get away with it.

The week began with the new episode of the continuing saga of The Trump Circus (this week's episode: "Merry Arrestmas!" ), where the nation was treated to the spectacle of a former president being charged with 34 felonies in New York City. The best single sentence summing up the day's events came from a Washington Post article:

The media covered it with all the breathless expectation of watching O. J. Simpson's white Bronco on a Los Angeles freeway, but it was actually a pretty boring day all around. Donald Trump was only briefly seen six times in all this live coverage (before he returned to Florida and delivered his own remarks on the situation): leaving Trump Tower, moving from his motorcade to the courthouse building, walking about six or seven steps in a hallway as he entered the courtroom, walking back through the hallway afterwards, getting in his car, and boarding his plane. There were also a handful of still shots of Trump sitting at a table in the courtroom with his legal defense team, as well as a few oddly hideous renditions of Trump by the courtroom artist (one of which bore more than a striking resemblance to the Grinch). That was it, for all the hours and hours of live television coverage. Not much to show for it all, but the media didn't care, they were happy with their ringside seats to the center ring of The Trump Circus once again.

Afterwards, both the district attorney who brought the charges and then later Trump himself spoke to the cameras. The D.A. defended his position in no uncertain terms:



Trump took time during his comments to threaten the D.A., the judge who has been assigned the case, and (for good measure) the judge's wife and daughter. This was too much for even Steve Doocy on Fox News, who later pointed out: "Six hours later, at Mar-a-Lago, the judge was attacked, the judge's wife, and the judge's daughter. The judge's daughter wound up on Truth Social and a bunch of social media sites yesterday because she works for a consulting firm that did work... for the Biden-Harris campaign. It is a very bad look to attack the family of the judge."

Trump also used his address to attack a few other prosecutors who are leading investigations into much more serious charges against him, and he mightily tried to turn the event into some sort of celebratory "arraingment party." Without much notable success, however. The response from his own handpicked crowd was tepid, at best, and Trump's scathing vitriol didn't leave a whole lot of room for applause lines (one example, while bemoaning the state of the country under President Joe Biden, Trump darkly warned that "all-out nuclear war" was just around the corner, frantically warning: "It can happen! We're not very far away from it!" Not exactly a "stand up and cheer" line, and the crowd reacted accordingly.

The whole day had a rather tawdry and anticlimactic feel to it, truth be told. We suppose that's appropriate, considering what spurred all the (allegedly) illegal activity in the first place. Donald Trump is certainly not the first United States president to fool around extramaritally -- he's not even the first to arrange for hush-money payments to his mistress, in fact (the Washington Post helpfully reminded everyone of Warren G. Harding's peccadillos). You could even go back to Grover Cleveland fathering a child out of wedlock and having to face taunting campaign slogans as a direct result ("Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"... which Cleveland's supporters gleefully embraced after he won, adding: "Gone to the White House -- Ha! Ha! Ha!" ). But he will be the first to have the entire sordid affair microscopically examined in a court of law.

Trump has long predicted that Trump Nation would rise as one if he was ever actually held accountable for anything he has done. He predicted widespread demonstrations as his supporters took to the streets in his defense. Before the arraignment even happened, Trump warned of possible "death & destruction" on his pet social media site. But when the time came, only perhaps 300 protesters showed up at the courthouse; they were prevented from even catching a glimpse of Trump himself; and even Marjorie Taylor Greene with a bullhorn wasn't enough for the insanely-loud whistles and jeers from anti-Trump protesters. Greene was the only notable Republican to even address the protesters, and she only stayed for 10 minutes or so because she was getting crushed by the crowd. George Santos did stroll by earlier, just to troll the media into giving him some airtime (which most were happy to do). That was it. If there were any protests happening anywhere else in the country, they were obviously so miniscule as to not even warrant the slightest media coverage.

The charging document itself was mostly legal "boilerplate." The D.A. has chosen to hold his cards very close to the vest and not reveal his prosecutorial strategy quite yet. This drove all the experts bonkers on television, because they couldn't quite put a finger on whether the indictment showed a strong case or a weak one. The entire day was, as we said, pretty anticlimactic. By the end of the week, most everyone had actually moved on and the Trump indictment was already seen as "old news." That's not exactly the splash Trump was looking for, obviously.

Republicans, of course, are collectively losing what is left of their minds over the whole thing -- or at least the ones willing to debase themselves by appearing on television with tears in their eyes begging everyone to give Trump some more of their hard-earned money. Or comparing Trump to Jesus, for that matter ("Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government!" ). The Republican Party as a whole seems to have taken a rather absolutist position, which might be stated as: "No Republican politician can ever be investigated by anyone for anything, even after they have left office, because Republicans have an eternal 'Get out of jail free' card permanently tattooed on their body for all time." We'll see how absolutist they all are when the next Trump indictments are handed down (for crimes far more serious to the American form of government).

Also an open question is how Republican voters -- even Trump voters -- actually see all of this. Anecdotal evidence can be found either way, but we do wonder how many GOP voters are just getting tired of all of Trump's antics at this point, and how many more are taking a more practical "someone else might have a better chance of winning" attitude. From an article with a few of those anecdotes:



So far, Trump is enjoying a big bump in the polls of Republican voters, so it remains to be seen how widespread such sentiments actually are. Guess we'll all just have to tune in for the next episode Trump's ongoing soap opera....

By week's end the political media was watching another Republican circus, this one down in Tennessee. Inspired by protests at the statehouse after yet another horrendous school shooting, three Democratic Tennessee house of representatives members interrupted the floor proceedings with their own protest chants -- two of them using a bullhorn to do so. The Republicans in the chamber absolutely freaked out in response. They quickly stripped the lawmakers of their ability to appear on the floor and then hastily arranged a vote to expel them from the body. The votes happened yesterday, and the two Black male lawmakers were expelled while the White woman (who, to be fair, did not use the bullhorn) was allowed to keep her seat (by only a one-vote margin). Not exactly the best optics, in other words. The lawmaker who did keep her seat later responded, when asked why she made it when the others didn't: "It might have to do with the color of our skin."

The expelled lawmakers may stage a comeback, however. The procedure in Tennessee when a vacancy appears is that the local governments in the district appoint someone to serve in the interim while an election is scheduled to replace the representative. But there's nothing to stop the local politicians from appointing the same two men who just got expelled, and there's nothing to stop them from running again during the special election. But there is this -- the state constitution forbids the legislature from expelling members twice for the same reason. Meaning they could both be back on the job in short order knowing that they are immune from the same thing happening all over again. So we likely haven't heard the final chapter in this story.

One does hope that this isn't the beginning of a spiral of escalation from Republicans. Any legislative supermajority -- the number required to overturn vetoes or expel its members -- can act with virtual impunity, after all. And the move in Tennessee might inspire other such naked abuses of power. One may even be brewing in Wisconsin, but we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Reaction from Democrats was swift, as it is pretty easy to condemn what just happened in Tennessee. President Biden released a statement which said: "Today's expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent. Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee." Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a bit more pointed: "Republicans may think they won today in Tennessee, but their fascism is only further radicalizing and awakening an earthquake of young people, both in the South and across the nation. If you thought youth organizing was strong, just wait for what's coming." Most of the protesters were schoolchildren and their parents.

But speaking of backlashes (as well as possible naked power grabs by Republicans), the best news of the week came from Wisconsin, and (to a lesser degree) Chicago. In both places, a progressive candidate won an important election (state supreme court justice in Wisconsin, and the mayor of the city of Chicago). We're going to get to the details later, during the awards, but there was a dark lining to the silver cloud (so to speak) in Wisconsin. On the same day, a special election was held for a vacant seat in the state senate. The Republican candidate narrowly won. Adding this one seat means that the GOP now does hold a supermajority in the state senate, but they haven't hit this mark in the lower legislative chamber (meaning they cannot use a purely partisan vote to overturn a veto from the Democratic governor). But guess what they can do with just a majority in their house and a supermajority in their senate? Impeach and convict anyone they feel like. This has led to worries that they could move quickly to impeach the new supreme court justice before she is even sworn in. They could also boot out the governor, if they chose to do so.

The legislature is so lopsided in one of the closest swing states in the country because it is by some measures the most-gerrymandered state in the entire country. But this may be changing in two notable ways. The first is the electorate might just be getting tired of Republican rule. The supreme court justice won her election by an astounding 11 points, in an election with very high turnout. This is in what used to be a perfectly-balanced 50-50 state, mind you. And the second way it might be changing is that the new supreme court justice is downright eager to hear a case on the rampant GOP gerrymandering. So the next time the Republicans face the voters, it might be on a much more level playing field.

Wisconsin isn't the only worrisome place on this particular front, though (sad to say). But we'll leave that one for the awards section as well.

Let's see... a few other noteworthy things happened in the political world this week, so let's whip through them in lightning fashion here.

Mike Pence is now reportedly ready to testify to a federal grand jury about what he witnessed and heard on January 6th, although it is unclear whether Trump will continue fighting to bar him from appearing (by appealing, which seems destined to fail at this point). Pence might just be the key witness against Trump, so this is pretty big news.

Progressives and the extreme right wing Republicans in the House are actually discussing working together on a few things (which led Representative Pramila Jayapal to state the obvious: "Sometimes you have interesting bedfellows in Washington" ). Here's the story, from Politico:



One of the Freedom Caucus members put it thusly: "Sometimes the political spectrum is more of a circle than a line."

Under the category: "presidential campaign news made by people who will never be their party's nominee," we have this week the official campaign launches from Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Remember their names, for political trivia pub quizzes in the future, folks!

And finally, to close on, when he was nominated for the highest court in the land many (most famously Anita Hill) tried to make the case that Clarence Thomas simply had no concept of ethics. This week was another revelation at how much this has proven to be true, as it was revealed that for decades now he has been accepting lavish travel and vacations and plane rides and all sorts of expensive things from a well-heeled Republican donor. Which Thomas never saw fit to report to anyone.

If there's a more obvious poster child for: "This is why we need a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, dammit!" we are unaware of one.

OK, that's enough, let's move along to the awards segment, shall we?





We first have a few Honorable Mention awards to hand out. Michigan Democrats continue to get lots of good things done, and this week it was Governor Gretchen Whitmer signing a bill which removes the law from Michigan's books which outlaws abortion (which was passed almost a century ago). The voters had already restored the constitutional rights of women in the state by changing the state's constitution, but this outdated law was still technically on the books -- so the legislature acted to remove it once and for all. As one state representative put it: "We cannot allow archaic laws to remain on our books under the assumption that they'll never be used again. We don't know what the future will hold and we don't know what plans abortion opponents have."

Honorable Mention awards are also merited for the two Tennessee lawmakers -- former representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson -- who were just expelled from the state legislature in spectacular "the punishment does not fit the crime" fashion. We certainly hope that both either get appointed back to their seats or win them back at the next election.

And we have one final Honorable Mention for Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat, who beat a pro-police Democrat in a runoff election this week to become the next mayor of Chicago. When the current mayor, Lori Lightfoot, failed to advance to the runoff election, many assumed that the voters wanted a more centrist, less-progressive person for the job. But in the end, this assumption proved incorrect as Johnson won a very tight race. It remains to be seen whether his campaign will be replicated elsewhere by other progressive candidates, but his victory was impressive just on its own.

But our main award has to be slightly renamed. Since the positions and the candidates for judicial office in Wisconsin are technically nonpartisan, we have to replace our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week with a Most Impressive Nonpartisan Liberal Of The Week instead (giving us the acronym "MINLOTW," which is almost even pronounceable!).

Wisconsin's new Supreme-Court-Justice-Elect Janet Protasiewicz just won the most expensive state judicial race in American history. It was a race worth fighting, too. Conservatives held a 4-3 majority on the court but one of them decided not to run for re-election this year. This left an open seat, and a very conservative, very anti-abortion, very partisan candidate was defeated by a liberal who was not afraid to actually campaign on her ideological positions. Which included supporting abortion rights instead of forcing women to give birth, and which included getting rid of the horrifically-gerrymandered maps the Republican Party saddled the state with. Many pearls were clutched in consternation over a liberal defending her positions in such a fashion, because to many it is only conservatives who should be allowed to do so.

Wisconsin has been a swing state balanced on a 50-50 edge for quite some time now. Joe Biden won the state in 2020 by a little over 20,000 votes. Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by almost 23,000 votes. That's about as close as it gets, folks. Janet Protasiewicz won her election Tuesday by 11 percentage points -- which translates to over 200,000 votes. That is the kind of difference the issues of abortion and fairness in democracy can have on an election.

And this one election is not only going to flip the state from being forced-birth to pro-women's-rights but it will also level the playing field for future elections, which will give the Democrats a chance to reclaim power in the state legislature and in their state's congressional delegation. This is an election which will have deep and lasting consequences, in other words.

So we absolutely had to give Janet Protasiewicz this week's MINLOTW award -- even if we did have to rename it. Her victory was easily the most impressive feat of any liberal this week, and we celebrate along with the voters of Wisconsin for this sea change in their state government.

[Janet Protasiewicz is still a private citizen until she is sworn into office, and it is our standing policy not to provide contact information for such persons, so you'll have to look it up yourself if you'd like to congratulate her and let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





There was another heavily-gerrymandered state with a Democratic governor in the political news this week, but in this case the news was pretty bad. Here's the story, which pretty much speaks for itself:



Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.

As we said, this one really speaks for itself. We suppose technically she's not a Democrat anymore, so we'll have to change this award as well this week, to the Most Disappointing Former Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact North Carolina Representative Tricia Cotham on her official contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 701 (4/7/23)

We've got a mixed bag of talking points this week, since we had a number of momentous events take place. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly.



No one is above the law

Chant it like a mantra.

"The principle that 'no one is above the law' is an absolute bedrock foundation of American democracy. We have statues of 'Blind Justice' in Washington for a reason. Justice is supposed to be blind -- blind to any defendant's personal power or wealth or status. Everyone should be treated equally. If you do the crime, you should be prepared to do the time. There is no 'free pass' just because you happen to be campaigning for office. If that were true, every criminal in the country would file for candidacy every single election cycle and thus be immune from punishment. No one is above the law, period. Not you, not me, and most definitely not former presidents."



What's unprecedented is Donald Trump

The only thing both sides can agree on in the Trump indictment is one single word, it seems.

"Yes, it is correct that the indictment of a former president on 34 felony charges is unprecedented. But it's not the law -- similar charges are brought every day by the Manhattan D.A.'s office. What is truly unprecedented is that we have a former president who is facing so many criminal charges for his own actions. We've never had a president who felt immune from the law. We've never had a president who tried to personally profit from his time in office. We've never had a president who ignored national security laws just because he wanted to keep some souvenirs of his time in office. We've never had a president who blatantly tried to overturn a popular election before -- and got caught so red-handed in the attempt. We've never had a president urge a violent crowd to overthrow the American form of government before. We've never had a president who did any of these things, much less one who did them all. So you're right -- the situation is unprecedented. Because Donald Trump is unprecedented. We've never had a president who broke laws in willy-nilly fashion before, so we've never had to force one to face such legal consequences before. It's really as simple as that."



Republicans in disarray!

This is going to become an ongoing taunt, and it's going to get more and more potent over time (that's our guess anyway...).

"Republicans are proving that they just cannot get their act together. They are threatening the American economy by holding the debt ceiling hostage -- a rather drastic thing to do, right? -- but they have no idea what they're even demanding for the release of that hostage. Where is their budget proposal? It doesn't exist. What do they all agree is so honking important that the debt ceiling must be threatened to fix it? They have no idea. Some say this, some say that, but Kevin McCarthy doesn't have 218 votes for any of it. They can't even get their act together on a farm bill, much less a whole budget. This reminds me of the chaos the Tea Party caused, the last time Republicans held the House. Kevin McCarthy can't herd his own cats. Republicans can't get their act together. All they know how to do is to threaten to burn everything down."



On, Wisconsin!

Hammer the unfairness of it all home.

"Sometimes, democracy works the way it is supposed to. In Michigan, Democrats painstakingly changed the way their state was redistricted by taking that power away from the politicians and handing it to a nonpartisan panel. The result is that Michigan Democrats were able to win elections in competitive districts and end one-party gerrymandered rule in their state government. Now it seems to be Democrats' turn in Wisconsin. By successfully flipping one seat on their state supreme court, they have flipped control and thus ended an extreme court that came within one vote of overturning the 2020 election and just handing the state to Donald Trump. The conservative candidate for this seat aided and abetted this plan, but the liberal won the day with a very wide margin of victory. As a result, not only will the women of Wisconsin have their full constitutional rights restored, but the days of Republican gerrymandering are also about to come to an end. The state votes 50-50 but their delegation to the United States House of Representatives has six Republicans to only two Democrats. Republicans just gained a supermajority in their state senate, and are near that in the lower chamber as well. In 2018, Democrats won 53 percent of the votes for state legislature seats but only won 36 percent of the seats due to these extreme gerrymanders. But with one election, all of that is about to change. To which I would say in celebration: On, Wisconsin!"



The more extreme, the bigger the backlash

Republicans are trapped in a no-win situation.

"For years, the Republican Party courted the anti-abortion movement, no matter how extreme it got. But then the dog actually caught the car, and Roe v. Wade was overturned. Now they are trapped -- their base is strongly anti-abortion but the country as a whole is just as strongly for women's right to body autonomy. This makes extreme positions on abortion tempting for Republican officeholders, since it helps them win primary elections. In ruby-red districts, this also means winning their general election too. But at a statewide level and a national level, the extreme policies and stances on abortion are not in line with what the public wants. We have seen this backlash ever since the Dobbs decision was handed down. We saw it this week in Wisconsin, where a pro-choice judicial candidate won a seat on the state supreme court by an astounding 11 points in a 50-50 state. Republicans are cornered into the most extreme forced-birth position by their base, but it's increasingly losing them elections statewide. And the more extreme they go, the bigger this backlash will be."



Gun safety becomes more mainstream

Democrats should also press this issue as hard as they can.

"I want to speak to all the moms out there. The moms who fear for their kids' lives when they go to school. The moms who are well aware of the shameful fact that gun violence is now the number one cause of death for America's youth. And I want to tell all those moms -- if you vote Republican then nothing is ever going to change. In fact, things might even get worse. Republicans are so in the pocket of the gun lobby they won't even consider commonsense laws that an overwhelming majority of the voters want to see put in place. The only way the gun insanity is going to end is if all the moms out there make it their number one issue at the ballot box. A vote for a Republican is a vote for more and more gun violence. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for some sanity in stopping the ongoing slaughter of American children. It's as simple as that."



Lowest on record

President Biden just beat another record Trump set, and everyone should point it out.

"Today's unemployment number marked a record low for Black unemployment, going back ever since records were kept on the statistic. While unemployment overall hit 3.5 percent again, Black unemployment now stands at only 5.0 percent. Historically, Black unemployment has been roughly twice the overall, so this represents not just the economy continuing to recover but actual progress towards racial equality in employment. That is an impressive achievement, and I think President Biden should make a bigger deal out of it."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

April 1, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Trump INDICATED!

Donald Trump's typographical mistakes were already legendary. But up until now, none have truly been as historic as the one he posted immediately after a New York grand jury indicted a former United States president for the first time in American history [bizarre capitalization in original, of course]: "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America...." Um, well, yes... the grand jury just indicated that Donald Trump was worthy of indictment.

Buffoonery aside, this is indeed a historic moment. Because the New York grand jury went first, the relative merits of the Stormy Daniels case will be endlessly dissected and discussed in the coming days, but as of this writing nobody outside of the grand jury or the prosecutor's office is fully aware of either: (1) the exact charges against Trump (said to be on the order of 30 separate charges, but no details have been released yet), or: (2) the evidence which convinced both the prosecutor and the grand jury that Donald Trump had not just broken the law but that this could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Nobody knows -- and we won't even begin to know until next Tuesday at the earliest. That's when rumor has it that Trump will surrender himself in New York City to get his mug shot and fingerprints taken and to face arraignment for the charges. At that point the charges will become publicly known, but the full weight of the evidence against Trump will not be revealed to the public before the case actually comes to court. This is an important fact to keep in mind -- whether you think Trump is guilty as sin or pure as the driven snow. Nobody really knows at this point, beyond pure bias and speculation.

The American judicial system is built on the foundation that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. So right up to the time when the jury announces their decision, Donald Trump is still to be considered innocent. But that presumption of innocence cuts both ways -- a fact which (checks the news...) pretty much every single Republican under the sun has conveniently forgotten. Because they are mightily trying to flip the whole thing on its head and declare the prosecutor guilty of all sorts of nefarious things. All without a shred of proof of any wrongdoing, and all without knowing the slightest detail about the evidence presented against Trump to the grand jury. It's all a "witch hunt" they say, and dire threats of weaponizing the House of Representatives against this prosecutor have already been issued.

The House, of course, has zero jurisdiction over the New York prosecutor's office -- in fact, the House has zero jurisdiction over anyone anywhere. It is a legislative body. It does not enforce laws -- that is an executive and/or a judicial duty. But that fact isn't going to stop them from trying, obviously. It's amazing how Republicans conveniently forget pretty much every single thing they've ever said about the sanctity of "federalism" and "states' rights" and the 10th Amendment, when one of their own is in the dock. The GOP's hypocrisy is already breathtaking, and we're just getting started.

We're all going to get tired of hearing the word "unprecedented," that much seems certain. But during the lull while the political press anxiously awaited the indictment to drop, the "Retropolis" column at the Washington Post dug up one interesting precedent from the annals of American history. Ulysses S. Grant -- while he was president -- was arrested and booked at a police station. He was essentially fined as well, although the article ends with: "He didn't show up for court." Here's how it all unfolded:

Which he then did. The president "and several of his speeding buddies" were hauled down to the local police station. Grant was forced to put up 20 dollars as bail ("collateral" ). A trial was held the next day, and heavy fines were handed down -- but the president skipped out on court and apparently nothing else was ever done about it.

In essence, he got a speeding ticket and blew it off.

The story wasn't made public until the policeman retired and spoke to a Washington newspaper in 1908. So you should take all the quotes in it with a grain of salt, as the exchange was likely nowhere near as refined as the cop's memory reported. But this incident is historical fact (the D.C. police chief in 2008 confirmed the story to the Post) -- a sitting president has indeed previously been arrested and booked down at the local police station. Trump won't be the first -- or the category will have to be defined more carefully (Trump will be: "the first former president to be charged with a crime and booked" ) to be strictly accurate.

Historical footnotes aside, where does this leave us all? Awaiting Trump's surrender, which could take on the circuslike atmosphere of O. J. Simpson in his white Bronco (one Trump advisor even predicted it will be like "O. J. Simpson on steroids," in fact). Will there be news helicopters tracking the president from his Florida resort to the local airport, and then from the destination airport to the court building in New York City? That seems pretty probable. Will we have breathless minute-by-minute news coverage while it happens? I would bet on it. Will Trump milk it for all it is worth, politically-speaking? Most assuredly. Will Trump actually give a little speech and/or press conference on the steps of the courthouse either before or after entering the building? One can only hope....

Whatever happens, like pretty much all things Trump, it is bound to be a spectacle that boosts his television ratings. Which is really all he cares about anyway, when you get right down to it.

We wrote earlier this week (the day before the indictment happened, in fact) that we thought it would be a much better thing for all concerned if the Georgia prosecutor who is looking into possible election tampering and racketeering charges against Trump made the first move. That would live up to the historic occasion of seeing Trump surrender himself to the authorities. But perhaps Karma knows what it is doing -- the New York case is notable not for abuse of presidential powers or possibly seditionist actions which spurred an attempted insurrection, but instead because it is all so tawdry and downright sleazy. Which is perhaps fitting, for Donald Trump's first criminal charges, when you think about it. After all, tawdry and sleazy are words that already spring to mind when you think of Donald Trump, even before any indictments.

Republicans are trying to paint the prosecution as one that would never have happened to any other politician, but that's pretty laughable. Just imagine for one moment what a Republican prosecutor in Arkansas would have done if he or she had solid evidence in hand that Bill Clinton had done exactly the same thing Trump is accused of -- paid hush money to an adult film star/director and then illegally fudged the books to cover it up. Think Bubba would have been indicted? If you answer anything but: "Most definitely!" to that question, then you must be too young to remember the 1990s. Because Clinton would indeed have been tried in court in a heartbeat if that were true. Hey, at least the Democrats didn't impeach Trump over the porn star payoff....

Whether it was Georgia or New York, it is going to help that the first prosecution of Trump will happen at a state level. Joe Biden's Justice Department and the federal government in general had nothing to do with it. This is a distinction the Republicans are trying to gloss over, but for the time being New York state is the only government involved in the case. If federal charges do appear (from the federal grand juries looking at Trump's refusal to comply with a subpoena / retention of classified and other presidential documents, as well as Trump's possible criminality for the January 6th insurrection), they may wind up being tried in court faster than either state can move, however. The federal criminal judicial system may move quicker, in other words, because of how it normally operates.

And lest we forget, these are just the criminal cases against Trump. There are plenty of others in various stages of completion:



In other words, there will be plenty of extravaganzas in the "Mr. Trump Goes To Court" circus, no matter which one happens to be in the center ring at the moment. In fact, the rape/defamation case will almost certainly be heard in court before any of the others.

What everyone is waiting to see now is how Trump's most fervent followers will react. Will there be violence? Will it be confined to New York or will it be widespread? It's not just Trump but many other Republicans who are whipping up the MAGA base into a fever pitch right now, and as we've already seen, bad things can happen as a direct result. Trump is waiting until Tuesday to surrender himself, which leaves a lot of time for people to travel to protest. Then again, Trump himself predicted he'd be indicted weeks ago, and the protests that did spring up on the Tuesday he (wrongly) identified were pretty small and pathetic, so nobody really knows.

We are indeed entering uncharted territory, and we will be traversing that territory for years to come, most likely. Criminal trials are a lot speedier than civil trials, but Trump is an absolute master at delaying judicial proceedings. This will all coincide with Trump's third presidential campaign, and (being uncharted territory) nobody has any idea what it will do for him politically. Will even the Republican base get tired of a candidate with more baggage than a 747? Or will they rally around him to the very end? He's already gotten a bump in attention from the whole indictment drama, and he has once again managed to get virtually every Republican out there -- including (astonishingly) all the Republicans who are running against him for the presidential nomination -- to parrot his own talking points and fervently defend him. At least for the moment, it is definitely still Trump's Republican Party.

This has the feeling of a sprint, since we're all now breathlessly awaiting next Tuesday, but it's going to be a marathon in the end. It may be multiple marathons running simultaneously, if other indictments follow the New York one. Because there are multiple grand juries still out there who might just (we can't resist) INDICATE that Trump is worthy of indictment. Buckle up, everyone, this rollercoaster ride's going to be one for the ages!





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main one this week.

The first goes to Senator Bernie Sanders, for raking the former head of Starbucks over the congressional coals for his and his company's Union-busting activities. Howard Schultz once considered running for president as a Democrat, but ironically the only ones in the committee room who were sympathetic to him were Republicans.

And Senator Tim Kaine certainly deserves to be congratulated for his years-long persistence in getting the Senate to vote to repeal two of the "Authorizations for the Use of Military Force" the United States has used to justify foreign wars. The Senate vote was 66-30, showing how much bipartisan support Kaine finally achieved for his bill. He's been trying to get this passed for over a decade now, which shows some admirable persistence, you've got to admit.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week goes to every elected Democrat in Michigan's state government. This week, the governor signed into law a measure that overturned the so-called "right-to-work" law that Republicans had passed back in 2012. Michigan is an important symbolic state to Unions, so this was a victory that was especially sweet. And it was the first state-level right-to-work law overturned by any state legislature since 1965, which is impressive indeed.

This is not an isolated legislative incident, either. Here's what else Michigan Democrats have been up to, since they captured the "trifecta" of control of both houses in the legislature and the governor's office last year (for the first time in 40 years):



Michigan cannot yet be counted as a reliable blue state, but they're working on it. Michigan Democrats have been planning their strategy for a long time, in fact. They got a ballot initiative passed in 2018 which turned over control of the state's redistricting to a nonpartisan commission, who then got rid of all the Republican gerrymandering after the 2020 census. It didn't hurt that Michigan's Republican Party went pretty far down the rabbit hole of election denialism after 2020 and managed to nominate the most extreme candidates imaginable in 2022.

Democrats in Michigan know that their control of government isn't guaranteed in the future, so they are busily fixing all the damage to their state's laws that Republicans have created through decades of control.

And from all accounts, they're doing a bang-up job of it.

Which is why all of Michigan's elected Democrats deserve this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Keep up the good work!

[Congratulate Governor Gretchen Whitmer on her official contact page, or you can look up individual legislators on the official legislature pages, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





This is rather obscure -- an aide to a governor -- but it merits the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award for how abhorrent it was.

We have stopped even mentioning the endless series of school shootings and other mass shootings here for the most part, because we essentially gave up hope that anything is going to change any time soon (at least on a national level). So we didn't comment this week on the most recent atrocity, a school shooting in Kentucky where the police identified the shooter as transgender. But others did.

Feelings run strong after these events, obviously. And it was downright disgusting to see Republicans cheerfully engage in something they regularly denounce Democrats for doing -- slapping some "identity politics" on the whole event to paint all transgender people as dangerous lunatics. They never do so when (as is hundreds of times more common) the shooter is a White cis male, of course, that almost goes without saying.

Democrats and other gun-control supporters pushed back on this in various ways. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do so. And then there's a downright abhorrent way to do so:



This is mere "hours after" the news of the shooting broke.

Words escape us. This is so wrong it's just patently obvious, at least to us. Which is why Josselyn Berry is hereby awarded this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. And "disappointing" doesn't even begin to cover it, we should add.

[Since she has resigned, Josselyn Berry is now a private citizen and it is our standing policy not to provide contact information for such persons.]




Volume 700 (3/31/23)

We're going to pause for two moments here, before we get started. The first is to note that volume number. Yes, yes, we know -- it really should be "Issue" instead of "Volume," but whatever. Just as we enjoy seeing our car's odometer turn over a big milestone, we have to say even we are astonished that we've managed to crank out 700 of these columns over the past two decades!



And our second pause is somber rather than celebratory, because we have to note the passing of Mark Russell, a political satirist and piano player who will not soon be forgotten. He is no doubt now playing a star-spangled piano at the hotel bar in Political Heaven. Requiescat In Pace.

With that out of the way, let's get right to the talking points. As you've probably guessed, there really is only one subject this week that everyone's talking about....



Blind justice

Let's start on the high road, shall we? We'll have some gutter-level snark later, we promise, but let's start with something more noble.

"In America, no one is above the law. That is how it should be. Justice is supposed to be blind -- if you do the crime, you should do the time no matter who you are. No matter how powerful, no matter how wealthy, no matter what you have made of yourself in the rest of your life, if you break the law you should be treated equally by the courts. And until we all get to see the evidence that the grand jury saw, nobody has any real clue about Donald Trump's innocence or guilt. But to say he never should have been charged is just wrong -- because in America, no one should ever be above the law, period."



The restrained approach

Representative Ruben Gallego, who is running to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, took a very sober and restrained approach to commenting on Trump's situation:





We never had to, before

Representative Adam Schiff made an excellent point we wish more Democrats would make -- yes, this is an unprecedented situation, but the reason for that is that we never had to deal with someone like Donald Trump before.





Unlawful political interference

Republicans are infamous for almost always being guilty of projection. What they loudly complain about in others is usually what they are guilty of themselves, or possibly even actively engaged in at that very moment. The district attorney's office in New York has been sent several letters by House committee chairs, demanding all sorts of documents in the case against Donald Trump. This is beyond improper -- it is actually a crime in and of itself. These Republicans are actively trying to obstruct justice by demanding information that cannot be publicly revealed at this point. Which the D.A.'s office pointed out, in a harshly-worded response after the indictment:





Lock him up!

And then there's the rampant hypocrisy of Republicans drowning in crocodile tears over (gasp!) Democrats doing precisely what they have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for, ever since Trump appeared on the political scene.

"I hear many Republicans are outraged over what they call 'the politicization of justice' or denouncing any sort of criminal case being brought against a Republican politician in general. Which is just too ironically funny for words, really, when you consider how much political hay they've made over the phrase 'Lock her up!' Remember that? They've called for pretty much every prominent Democrat around to be 'locked up,' in fact: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden (just for good measure), Adam Schiff, Robert Mueller, Dr. Anthony Fauci... I mean, it's a long list. They've been screaming about it for years, folks. And now we're supposed to believe them when they say that justice should never be politicized in any way, shape, or form? Puh-leeze."



Keep trying, he'll get it eventually...

Of course, we can't pass up the chance to get just a wee bit snarky...

"Maybe by the second or third time he is criminally charged, he'll finally learn how to spell 'indict'... keep trying, Lil' Donny, you'll get it eventually!"



Stormy chimes in

But the hands-down best response of them all (at least, so far) comes from adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels herself -- the eye of the storm, one might call her. In an interview with The Times of London, Stormy let her own snark flag fly [trigger warning: explicit and possibly-offensive language ahead]:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 25, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Will No One Rid Trump Of This Meddlesome D.A.?

On one of the last days of the year 1170, an English king seems to have begun a long tradition of what might now be known as "mobspeak." Like unto a mobster capo who is cautious about saying or ordering his minions to do specific things which he might later be found guilty of, King Henry II -- speaking about a man who was a powerful rival at the time, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket -- uttered the ultimate in "deniability" to his knights. The wording is in doubt, since this all happened a very long time ago, but the most common phrasing known today is: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" We personally prefer the version that calls him a "meddlesome priest" instead, just for the Scooby Doo vibe, but the only account written by a contemporary of Henry worded it (in Latin): "What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!" This version, we feel -- with only slight modernizations of the language -- could easily have been uttered by Donald Trump. It includes shaming his own followers ("miserable drones and traitors" ) for being insufficiently loyal and fervent in his defense, a personal playground insult to the object of his wrath ("low-born cleric" ), as well as overdramatizing his own victimhood ("treated with such shameful contempt" ). The whole statement is downright Trumpian, when you think of it.

What happened next, back in the 12th century, was that four of Henry's knights hied thither to Canterbury Cathedral and duly hacked the archbishop to death. Becket later achieved sainthood as a martyr to Christianity. But Henry was able to stay king and while he didn't have the four knights (who fled to Scotland) arrested, he did later ignore them when they begged him for help. Sound familiar?

We were reminded of this historical murder by two things this week. The first was when it was featured in a "Final Jeopardy" clue/answer on Jeopardy!, and the second was Donald Trump's creation and manipulation of a media blitz that reminded every Republican politician still standing that Trump's own wrath still demands absolute personal loyalty to him in all things -- whether he spells out exactly what he wants done or just hints obliquely at it.

Last weekend, Trump warned his followers that the vague stories in the media were actually true and that he would be arrested on Tuesday after being indicted by a New York grand jury investigating the hush money payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels. This was the underlying crime which has already sent Michael Cohen to prison, just to remind everyone. But Trump actually had no special inside information; Tuesday came and went with Trump still walking around a free (and unindicted) man, so for the rest of the week the media played the Waiting For Godot game and breathlessly reported on all the developments in the case -- which amounted to absolutely nothing happening.

During this whole period, Trump was far from silent. He has been calling on his supporters to "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!" and "TAKE OUR NATION BACK!" and "SAVE AMERICA!" in increasingly apocalyptic language, winking and nodding at possible violence throughout. Here is but one example of the language Trump has been using towards the D.A. in the case:

Trump also called District Attorney Alvin Bragg "racist" (Bragg is Black), "CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL", "CARRYING OUT THE PLANS OF THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS", and "HUMAN SCUM!" For good measure, Trump shared an article from a radical rightwing media source that showed a photo of Trump wielding (badly) a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg's head.

In other words, it is the run-up to January 6th all over again, on steroids. Trump is all but openly calling for violence, sneering in one message: "OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!" He is directly attempting to obstruct the course of justice with threats of violent mobs. And throughout it all, he weaves his usual mobspeak deniability so he can feign innocence later on, in the aftermath of whatever he stirs up (although even threatening a prosecutor is a crime in and of itself). All that remains to be seen is whether his predictions of what would amount to mob justice actually come true or not. How many will answer his call to "rid me of this meddlesome D.A.?" Only time will tell....

Some Republicans reacted to the initial calls for "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!" with varying degrees of caution. Kevin McCarthy kinda-sorta called for calm. Marjorie Taylor Greene told people not to protest. But most Republicans either immediately backed Trump's basic claim of it all being an unfair witch-hunt or circled around to this position eventually. Even all his rivals for the Republican nomination kowtowed to Trump on this basic point, although the most prominent did (eventually, after a delay of days) use the opportunity to take a potshot or two at Trump. Ron DeSantis said to reporters: "I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I can't speak to that." He did an interview later in the week where he was asked about the juvenile names Trump has been calling him, and DeSantis was even more pointed: "I mean you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner, because that's what we've been able to do in Florida, is put a lot of points on the board and really take this state to the next level."

But minor sniping aside, virtually the entire Republican Party rallied once more around Donald Trump's increasingly-shaky legal position. Trump proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that while the New York D.A. might not be afraid of him, pretty much every Republican politician out there -- even the ones challenging him for the GOP presidential nomination -- is indeed still terrified of the influence he wields over the MAGA faithful (even the most violent among them).

Trump's pet hotheads in the House who now chair committees and subcommittees sent their own attempt at obstructing justice in the form of a letter to the New York D.A., demanding that he provide them with all the details of the investigation even though Trump has yet to be indicted. Their contempt for "law and order" is just breathtaking. By week's end, Bragg's office responded with its own letter, which essentially told the House MAGA Republicans to go pound sand. Revealing details of an ongoing investigation is against New York law, after all, which the letter explicitly pointed out.

Because he has forced us once again to write about him as a lead subject, we'll close with our usual weekly rundown of all the other legal problems Trump is still facing. While everyone is breathlessly awaiting the possible indictment in a criminal case, the civil case of E. Jean Carroll which accuses Trump of raping her is going to begin at the end of next month, which should move it to the media's center stage. A judge just ruled that the jury in the case will be kept anonymous -- which is typical in cases involving mobsters and other organized crime figures. This was granted because Trump already has a history of trying to intimidate (and have his supporters threaten) everyone involved in any legal proceeding against him.

There was actually some very quick developments in the federal case being made against Trump for his obstruction in the classified documents case, as a judge ruled that a grand jury investigating the matter could indeed call force one of Trump's lawyers to appear and answer questions about matters that normally would be covered under the attorney-client privilege, but which were ruled admissible because of the "crime-fraud exception" to the rule. This states that any lawyer who aids and abets his client in the commission of crimes is not covered by the normal privilege. The ruling was appealed on Tuesday, the appellate court told Trump to reply by midnight, and then ruled the next day that the lawyer would indeed have to appear and answer the grand jury's questions. By week's end, he had testified -- which is the speed of light, for the judicial system, we have to admit. The moral of this story: Trump is a master at delaying civil cases by endless motions and appeals, but criminal cases move a lot faster through the system.

Trump's lawyers also joined the lawyers for Mike Pence in arguing that Pence shouldn't have to answer a grand jury's questions about January 6th this week as well, so we'll have to see how long it takes for a ruling in that case (although this one may go up to the Supreme Court level before it's ultimately decided).

And in a related case to Trump -- Fox News being sued by the Dominion voting machine company -- one rat has already fled the Fox ship, and accused Fox (in her own lawsuit against them) of coaching her to give misleading testimony when deposed in the case. The Fox case is barrelling ahead and will also soon begin inside an actual courtroom, but this was an interesting development.

President Joe Biden made some news this week by seeing his first veto upheld after a House vote fell far short of the necessary two-thirds to overturn it. We wrote about the whole thing yesterday in more detail, for those interested. Biden showed once again his political instincts are good, in the tweet he sent out after vetoing the bill:



That's some pretty good framing, we have to admit. As was Biden staking out another position Democrats have been attacked previously over:



Biden also ripped into Republicans during an event to mark what might be called "B.F.D. Day." It was the 13th anniversary of not just the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it was also the anniversary of then-Vice President Biden being caught on a hot mic telling President Barack Obama what a B.F.D. it was. [And no, we're not going to write it out, look it up yourself if you don't remember of what we speak.]

For good measure, Biden also announced the creation of two brand-new National Monuments, surrounding Spirit Mountain in Nevada and the Castner Range in Texas.

In other political news, some actual bipartisanship was shown in a congressional hearing this week as the leader of the company that owns Tik Tok was grilled mercilessly from both sides of the aisle. Some are predicting that Tik Tok will actually be banned for use in the United States, but personally we doubt it'll come to that -- since any politician who votes for such a ban can pretty much kiss the "youth vote" goodbye forever.

In more partisan fashion, the House passed a bill on education that has already been declared dead on arrival over in the Senate. Doubtlessly, this will be only the first such "messaging bill" from the GOP-controlled House, which are mostly used as fodder for campaign ads.

Republicans are fast becoming known as "the pro-child labor party," it seems, as they work diligently to roll back rules on the exploitation of children. Wonder what happened to all their "Oh, won't someone think of the children!" crocodile tears, eh?

The Michigan Republican Party is seemingly in a race with Arizona's GOP to see which can win the "craziest state Republican Party in the country" award. Michigan now has a government controlled by Democrats, while the Republicans were taken over by the MAGA-iest of the MAGA. They put out a message on Democrats' modest gun safety legislation which went straight to the "Nazis took everyone's guns away when they launched the Holocaust!" messaging. Ball's in your court, AZ GOP!

And finally, a few amusing notes to close on. A school principal in Florida was forced out of her job because a lesson on Renaissance art included the image of Michelangelo's David, which (gasp!) shows full-frontal male nudity. We mention this not just as an example of the war on teaching in Florida, but also because The Simpsons dealt with this very issue (over the same statue) over 30 years ago. Once again (to make a second cartoon reference), "Simpsons already did it!" turns out to be true.

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on The Daily Show this week and made a bet with guest host Al Franken (a former senator himself) over whether Donald Trump will win in 2024. Graham bet 20 bucks that he will.

And the Supreme Court just heard a case that they can really (sorry) sink their teeth into, which concerned a spoof of a Jack Daniel's bottle in the form of a dog's chew toy. The "Bad Spaniels" ripoff toy, instead of proclaiming: "Old No. 7 brand Tennessee sour mash whiskey" has the following on its label: "The old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet."

The case will have far-reaching consequences for the preservation of copyrights, but it certainly was the most amusing story of the week!





House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries coined a new term this week which earns him at least an Honorable Mention. The Republican committee dedicated to "weaponizing the federal government"... oh, excuse us... dedicated to investigating the "weaponization of the federal government" (how could we have gotten confused about that?) was the subject of Hakeem's creativity:



We still prefer an earlier neologism, and will continue to call it the "Tinfoil Hat Committee," but we have to applaud Jeffries for his effort in this creative field as well.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week goes to two incredible women in the Nebraska state legislature. Nebraska's legislature is a trivia answer, because it is the only one in the country with a unicameral single-house body. Which, incidentally, allows for filibusters.

So state Senator Machaela Cavanaugh decided to (as she put it) "burn the legislative session to the ground" by endlessly filibustering the bill she strongly objected to, which would ban gender therapy for transgender youth.

Nebraska's lawmakers only meet for 90 days a year, so by gumming up the works, Cavanaugh has brought the state's legislature to an absolute halt. They haven't passed a single bill yet. HuffPost has the most in-depth report we've read on how this is all progressing:



Here's a video of excerpts from that speech, for those interested.

Cavanaugh is not alone, either. State Senator Megan Hunt has a transgendered son, so she is directly and very personally impacted by the bill. And she has pledged to filibuster not just the anti-transgender bill but all bills that come up, on any subject. And she sounds pretty adamant about this:



The effort might fail, it should be noted. The bill may pass, and the governor has signalled his support. But in taking such a brave and unforgiving stance, these two women are doing everything in their power to protect the civil and human rights of children. Which is why they both deserve this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Nebraska state Senators Machaela Cavanaugh on her official contact page, and Megan Hunt on her official contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





A handful of Democrats either voted with the Republicans on the initial bill that President Biden vetoed this week or actually voted to overturn his veto, but since it was upheld we're going to just ignore them.

And she doesn't technically qualify for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, no longer being a Democrat, so we're instead going to give Senator Kyrsten Sinema a Most Disappointing Former Democrat Of The Week award instead.

Here's why:



We find it hard to disagree with that final statement.

Which is why we had to single her out this week. Just for old times' sake, as it were.

[Contact Senator Kyrsten Sinema on her Senate contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 699 (3/24/23)

As we said, we do hate when this happens, but the Trump calls for "PROTEST!!!" this week were worthy of an entire segment of talking points. Trump needs some strong pushback for what he's been advocating, what he's been intimating, what he's been winking and nodding at, and just all the rest of it.

Because (as our first talking point points out) if he's allowed to skate free on everything he's said this week, he's just going to keep right on doing so. So here's our attempt to head this all off at the pass now, instead of later.



This is why we can't "move on" from it all

This is the core point, and it should be hammered home. Because Trump is going to do this over and over again, with each new legal setback.

"You know what? This is the answer to all those Republicans who have been urging everyone to just 'move on' from the January 6th incitement to insurrection from Donald Trump. Because this is precisely why we cannot just 'move on' from it. Donald Trump is going to run the same playbook he did back then -- issuing barely-disguised calls for his supporters to commit political violence in his name -- over and over again. He is going to keep right on doing this as long as it works to any degree among his most fervent MAGA supporters. As long as Donald Trump thinks he can get away with using violence as a political bludgeon, he is going to continue to do so. So, no, we can't all just 'move on' from this profanement of the American system of government. Because there should indeed be punishments for directly attacking it or urging others to violently do so on your behalf."



Do you support mob violence and intimidation or not?

Just askin', mind you....

"You know what? Every single Republican politician should be asked by every single journalist interviewing them a very basic question: 'Do you support calls for mob violence to attack a prosecutor or not?' That used to be an unthinkable question to even ask, but that was in the pre-Trump times. Now it must be explicitly asked, because far too many Republicans are complicit in their silence. If they can't even denounce calls for what would amount to mob rule, then they have failed to uphold their oath of office to the United States Constitution, plain and simple. So yeah, if I were you, that's the first thing I would ask each and every one of them."



He's going to get someone killed

Democrats, of course, strongly reacted to all of Trump's incitement. Here is what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had to say about it all:





A bullhorn of bile

A group of civil rights leaders in New York (including Al Sharpton and a former governor) reacted with their own outrage:





Blaring air horn

As with many Trumpian things, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

"Donald Trump is going to hold his first political rally for his re-election campaign this weekend -- after waiting over four months to hold any such rally -- in Waco, Texas. On the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege. This is a clear signal to the most extreme of the extreme on the right that Trump is one of them now. He could not be more clear about his support for attacking and killing federal officers, folks. The Houston Chronicle probably put it best -- this isn't a 'dog whistle,' it is instead the 'blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler.' Trump is stoking violence against the government by his choice of date and site. It's as plain as the nose on your face."



What if Bubba had done it?

We forget where we saw this point being made this week so sadly we are not able to give credit where credit is due, but we did feel it was a good point to make.

"For all those Republicans who are pooh-poohing the heart of what Donald Trump might be indicted for -- as Ron DeSantis so memorably put it: 'paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence' -- let me ask you a simple question. Would you have been equally dismissive if President Bill Clinton had, at one point in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, been found to have made a $130,000 hush-money payment to anyone and then tried to write it off on his taxes as legal expenses? What would you have said then, eh?"



What'd I miss?

This is going to be a good all-around talking point pretty much all year long, most likely.

"I'm sorry, it's really getting hard to keep them all straight when discussing Trump's various legal woes. Are we talking about the porn star hush money? Or tax evasion? Or incitement to riot and leading an insurrection? Or election fraud and/or tampering with an election? Witness tampering? Blatantly ignoring and lying about federal subpoenas? Mishandling of highly-classified documents? Rape? Or maybe it's one of the multiple cases of obstruction of justice? I'm sorry for not keeping up, and I'm really sorry if I've forgotten any... but it's really tough to keep them all straight."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 11, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Takes The Fight To The MAGA Republicans

We have to warn everyone up front here that this week's Friday Talking Points column is not going to follow the normal format. Most of it is actually going to review the speech that President Joe Biden gave yesterday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biden went to Philly to introduce his annual budget proposal, which was publicly released just before he spoke.

Rather than do what many Democratic presidents do when faced with an unruly house of Congress run by the opposition -- which is to go into a defensive crouch and try to compromise on just how much the federal budget needs to be slashed -- Biden instead took the fight to the Republicans by showing America that if we would just tax the ultra-wealthy enough to pay their fair share, this country could accomplish all kinds of good things and reduce the deficit at the same time. That is surprisingly refreshing to see from a Democratic White House, we have to say!

But as we said, we've devoted much of the rest of this column to excerpting Biden's speech, so we'll just very briefly run down a few other things that happened in the political world first (in extremely abbreviated fashion, since the other parts are so lengthy).

The biggest story this week in the political/media world was the proof that Fox "News" is nothing more than lies and propaganda. It is entertainment that is solely focused on their bottom line. The sheer hypocrisy of both the people who run the company and their most popular entertainers is just staggering.

We simply aren't going to take the time to delve into everything that has been revealed by the lawsuit progressing against Fox by the Dominion voting-machine company, but we have to include a few choice moments from the week, starting with the most-quoted thing Tucker Carlson was caught texting in the period after the 2020 election: "We are very, very close to being able to ignore [Donald] Trump most nights. I truly can't wait. I hate him passionately." Also: "What [Trump is] good at is destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong."

Of course, Tucker never got his wish, as Fox "News" continues to this day to spew lies just to please Donald Trump. Carlson spent all week trying to pull the wool over the entire country's eyes about how January 6th was nothing more than a tour group at the Capitol who got lost -- which is gaslighting on what can only be called a Trumpian level.

Also amusingly revealed this week was a bit of a self-own. Twenty years ago Carlson wrote a book where he said the following (to show his disdain for the ruling king of cable news at the time):

As many have pointed out, he could now write something awfully similar to describe himself. To promote his book, Carlson went on C-SPAN and went even further:



As if this weren't enough, this week Carlson actually opined on the subject of liars on his show -- once again without the slightest realization of what a self-own it truly was:



Takes one to know one, Tucker.

Anyway, for those of you who have somehow missed the whole fracas, here is a baker's dozen of links to articles detailing the woes over at Fox this week: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13].

In other news from the right side of the aisle, we have two examples which show precisely how much Republicans "stand up for children" -- in Missouri, the governor just signed a bill to loosen child labor laws, and in West Virginia Republicans voted down a bill which would have banned underage children from getting married. Nothing like those good old-fashioned "family values," eh folks?

Speaking of which, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fell down and got a concussion this week. Both Democrats and Republicans wished him well. But a lawyer for Donald Trump decided cruel mockery was what was appropriate instead.

Speaking of Trump, we have two items for our regular check-in on Donald Trump's developing legal woes: a judge just ruled Peter Navarro will now have to turn over the emails he's been trying to hide, and Trump has now been "invited to testify" before a criminal grand jury in New York which has been investigating his hush-money payoff to Stormy Daniels. Legal experts are predicting that this is the final step before charges are actually brought against Trump, so we might have that to look forward to in the next few weeks or so.

And to wrap up with some good news, the Internal Revenue Service has bounced back in a rather amazing fashion from the enormous backlog of a few years ago (during the COVID times).



This, of course, is the money that the Republicans want to stop flowing to the agency. Because they just hate it when Democrats actually make government work well.





There were a few Democrats who earned Honorable Mention awards this week, before we get to the main award.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is taking the fight to Walgreens by cancelling a contract worth $54 million the state had with the company to provide medications to prisoners. This is in reaction to Walgreens buckling to pressure from Republican attorneys general over dispensing abortion medication, which has led to general calls to boycott the company. Other blue states may follow in Newsom's footsteps in the coming weeks, but once again Newsom is out front of the Democratic pack on a big issue.

Representative Jamie Raskin gave a heartfelt speech on how the Republicans' Big Lie now encompasses what happened on January 6th, and it is definitely worth watching (it's only two-and-a-half minutes long). Raskin tears into Republicans for refusing to state the difference between truth and lies. So an Honorable Mention goes out to both Raskin and Newsom this week.

When it became apparent that Joe Biden was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, we have to say we weren't exactly thrilled about it. We supported Bernie Sanders, personally, because we really wanted to see a party leader with a truly progressive agenda.

But we have to now admit, Joe Biden has proven to be one heck of a lot more progressive than we ever expected. And his newly-unveiled budget proposal just confirms that opinion.

Biden travelled to Pennsylvania to give a speech introducing his budget to the American people. And parts of the speech almost seemed like Bernie had ghost-written them for Biden to deliver. Here is Biden on the high cost of prescription drugs:



Biden pointed out that Republicans not only didn't vote for this plan, now they want to repeal it -- even though it would add billions to the deficit if they did.



Biden then told of hearing from a mother who shamefully admitted that she can't afford the insulin her two daughters need and that she has to "split it sometimes." Biden used this to highlight his budget proposal that would extend the $35-a-month cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs from just seniors on Medicare to everybody. And he put it in very personal terms:



Biden's budget expands affordable child care, preschool, Pell Grants, paid family leave, paid medical leave, elder care and home care. Democrats don't just proclaim they are for families, they back it up with actual policies to help families. Which Republicans are against. That's a pretty basic contrast to make. Biden hammers this point home again and again:



One part of his speech was a masterful redefinition of what the entire "defund the police" movement was actually about (as opposed to what its detractors claimed).



And finally, one last excerpt that also could have been written by Bernie Sanders:



President Joe Biden's budget proposal is a roadmap to his re-election campaign, quite obviously. He has tossed his budget down as a political challenge to the Republicans: "This is what I'm for -- what are you for?"

As we'll explore more in the Talking Points segment, Biden has the possibility of pulling off an impressive political feat: defining the Republicans for the 2024 election before they can get their act together to define themselves.

So for his very progressive budget, for a rather impressive speech, and for taking the fight to the Republicans early, Joe Biden is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





No Democrat of national stature truly disappointed us this week, so we're going to retire the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award back to the shelf until next week. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments, in case there's someone we missed, as always.




Volume 698 (3/10/23)

As mentioned, this is really "Part 2" of reviewing President Biden's recent speech. Because Biden was not just introducing his budget plans, he was rolling out the main themes of the 2024 election -- and not just for him, but for all Democrats. So we thought it was important enough for such a deep dive.

President Biden has a golden opportunity here, and he seems to know it. In fact, he's trying to exploit it for all it is worth. It's a basic tactic in politics -- define your opponents early, before they have a chance to define themselves.

Biden now has a budget which shows his whole agenda, with concrete numbers he can point to. The Republicans do not. And they're not going to have one any time soon, it seems. Because they cannot decide what they stand for and what they really want, at least outside of: "We want to annoy liberals." There are many competing factions (each with their own particular degree of extremism) within the House Republican caucus. They're going to have a tough time putting forth any budget proposal that all of them will actually vote for.

Which gives Biden a clear field to paint them with the broadest brush possible -- which he is already doing. So we thought instead of our normal talking points format we'd just run the best excerpts from his Philadelphia speech this week, to show how up until the GOP actually gets its act together, how easy it is to define them in the public's mind before they even get a chance to.

Biden begins by almost taunting Kevin McCarthy over the squabbling he's experiencing within his own ranks. A shorter version of this might be: "I've shown you my budget.... where's yours?" Here's how Biden actually put it:



While most of it is polite, that "tomorrow, if he has his budget" is indeed a bit of a taunt. Biden then moved on to the box he has so successfully put Republicans into on Social Security and Medicare. The Republican Party has -- for decades -- wanted to either cut or just eliminate both social safety net programs. Which Biden points out:



Biden only went halfway in his budget (to be fair), by proposing a fix to Medicare but failing to do so on Social Security. Nonetheless, his fix would work to make the program solvent -- something the Republicans are quite likely to utterly fail at doing.

Biden then returns to taunting mode:



Biden then moves on to how he's going to pay for his budget, which is actually a quite popular thing to propose:



Biden then once again defines his opponents before the fight even begins. He makes an excellent point -- he's fully willing to hold budget negotiations with the House Republicans, but he insists that this discussion happen without threatening the entire economy:



And finally, to drive it all home at the end, Biden taunts them directly. He's now made his budget public. Everyone can see what he wants to do. Until the Republicans do the same, any Democrat can define the Republican agenda in any way they wish. Until they admit to the American people what they actually want to do, we should all assume the absolute worst:



Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com