Susan Glasser at the New Yorker also takes a look at the GOP field and her observation about Pompeo is especially tart: Most, like the former Vice-President, take the route of simply avoiding unpleasant facts from the Trump years that do not fit with the story they want to tell. Which pretty much sums up the state of Republican discourse headed into the 2024 election cycle. At least Pence admits that January 6th happened, and that it was wrong. In the latest example of the genre, Pompeo’s new memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” published this week, manages more or less to skip the catastrophic ending to the Trump Presidency, aside from offhand references to January 6th as “the mayhem at the Capitol” that “the Left wants to exploit for political advantage.” This is known, in my household, as “pulling a Kayleigh”—a feat of political contortion Peter and I have named in honor of Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump press secretary who managed to publish an entire 2021 memoir, “For Such a Time as This: My Faith Journey Through the White House and Beyond,” that never so much as mentions the insurrection at the Capitol.
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During Trump’s final days it was reported that he and Bill Barr were speeding up federal executions to kill as many people as possible before he left office. (I wrote about it here.)He and Bill Barr had gleefully reinstated the federal death penalty and were afraid they’d leave some possible victims alive if they didn’t move quickly. By 9:27 p.m. Bernard was dead. In that moment, he became the ninth of 13 people executed in the final six months of the Trump administration — more federal executions than in the previous 10 administrations combined. Of the 13, six were put to death after Trump lost the election, his Justice Department accelerating the schedule to ensure they would die before the incoming administration could intercede. Before Trump, there had been only three federal executions since 1963; in January 2021, Trump oversaw three executions during a single four-day stretch Two years before that stretch, Trump had signed perhaps the lone broadly popular major initiative of his presidency: a bipartisan criminal-justice reform bill. By 2020, however, his political calculus had changed.
Your heart is in your throat watching these incredible animal rescues. But it restores your faith in the human animal to see it
Braço do MP que fiscaliza as Forças Armadas não deu nem o primeiro passo para pedir punições pelo 8 de janeiro.
The post 18 dias após ataques, Ministério Público Militar sequer abriu inquérito contra fardados suspeitos appeared first on The Intercept.
A “new mindset is apparent” President Joe Biden exceeds expectations. (He’s exceeded mine.) But in several non-flashy ways people may not have noticed. David Dayen notices that Uncle Joe is taking on corporate concentration and bringing the busting back to trust busting (American Prospect): On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden signed one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy since FDR. It was not legislation: His signature climate and health law would take another year to gestate. This was a request that the government get into the business of fostering competition in the U.S. economy again. Flanked by Cabinet officials and agency heads, Biden condemned Robert Bork’s pro-corporate legal revolution in the 1980s, which destroyed antitrust, leading to concentrated markets, raised prices, suppressed wages, stifled innovation, weakened growth, and robbing citizens of the liberty to pursue their talents. Competition policy, Biden said, “is how we ensure that our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism; it’s about capitalism working for people.” Joe had me with that line. He gets it.
But I’m sure it’s bad news for Biden… Dean Baker has the details: GDP Grow 2.9 Percent in 4th Quarter, Driven by Inventories and Service Consumption GDP growth was in line with expectations, with the economy expanding at 2.9 percent annual rate, down slightly from the 3.2 percent rate in the third quarter. Inventory accumulation was the largest single factor, adding 1.46 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. Service consumption added 1.16 percentage points, while a smaller trade deficit added 0.56 percentage points. Housing was a major drag, with residential investment subtracting 1.29 percentage points from growth. The quarter is likely to again show a healthy rate of productivity growth. Payroll hours increased at a 1.1 percent rate in the quarter. A sharp rise in people reported that they are self-employed is likely to raise hours growth to around 1.5 percent, leaving productivity growth in the range of 1.4 percent. This compares to reported declines in productivity in the first half of 2022.
Wow, just wow: It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion. Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office. But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.
Not enough Republicans leave the GOP in my opinion, but a few have done it over the past few years. One of the most entertaining and articulate is Tim Miller’s whose book “Why We Did It” is one of the best apologias out there, is always interesting on this topic. If you have a half hour to kill, this is an interesting interview on that topic.
Will they do what Trump wants? Sure they will. They want it too: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has released the names of the Republicans who will serve on a pair of subcommittees as part of the GOP’s promise to launch investigations into the Biden administration. McCarthy in a tweet Tuesday announced the GOP membership of two select subcommittees on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The House voted along party lines to establish the weaponization committee earlier this month to probe ongoing investigations from the Department of Justice. The subcommittee was part of a list of demands that hard-line GOP House members had for McCarthy to win their support to become Speaker. McCarthy later promised to create both the weaponization and COVID-19 subcommittees a couple of days ahead of the Speaker vote. Republicans have described the weaponization subcommittee as “Church-style,” referring to a Senate select committee led by former Sen.
The Business Secretary will be able to set minimum service levels for six key sectors — and decide what workers are included in the new strike-busting definitions