It’s getting close It looks like the new speaker’s “running room” is running out: Speaker Mike Johnson is edging closer to the same sort of clash with conservatives that helped bring down his predecessor Kevin McCarthy. The brewing storm, crystallized by Johnson’s comments during a Wednesday meeting with GOP senators, is threatening to end what is left of the Louisiana Republican’s honeymoon running the House. On his right flank, some members are already asking behind closed doors whether Johnson might meet the same fate as the deposed McCarthy — though other GOP lawmakers see that speculation as bluster. Johnson has antagonized conservatives most acutely by engaging in policy talks with fellow leaders, rather than pushing exclusively for base-pleasing wins that won’t survive in the Senate. That traditional approach won’t hurt Johnson with most of the House GOP — but as McCarthy’s ouster made clear, it only takes a handful of fed-up members to make a speaker’s life difficult. The new speaker showcased his willingness to stand up to conservatives, as well as its limits, during his visit to the Senate.
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It looks like the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have decided to reprise their dignified behavior in the Kavanaugh hearings. Whenever something threatens the big bubble they’ve created around their precious Supreme Court majority they turn into shrieking harpies: Tempers exploded at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday before Democrats voted to subpoena a major conservative donor and a prominent conservative activist linked to the Supreme Court’s ethics scandals. The Republican members of the committee stormed out of the hearing room in the Hart Building shortly before Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called a vote on authorizing the subpoenas. The motion passed with 11 Democratic votes. Not a single Republican was left in the room by the time the roll call ended. Durbin went ahead with the vote shortly before noon to prevent Republicans from delaying it until next week by invoking a rule to limit committee meetings to two hours.
Human society is energy blind. Like a fish in water, it takes for granted the existence of that without which it could not survive. As with so many of humanity’s problems, this conceptual failure can be traced back to an economist. However, the guilty party is not one of “the usual suspects”—Neoclassical economists—but the person … Continue reading "Putting Energy Back into Economics"
An extraordinary email uncovered under freedom of information laws raises serious questions about whether Bellingcat, the “open source” collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies. Editor’s note: On December 22, The Grayzone received an email from Bellingcat founder and editor-in-chief Eliot Higgins threatening legal action if this story was not removed from the internet. Attempts to respond to Higgins produced an out of office automated reply, noting he was now […]
The post FOI raises further questions about Bellingcat coordination with Western intelligence first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post FOI raises further questions about Bellingcat coordination with Western intelligence appeared first on The Grayzone.
Ten people say the RNC is short of cash Did they have tears in their eyes? Did they say “Sir”? The Washington Post declines to elaborate: The Republican Party’s finances are increasingly worrisome to party members, advisers to former president Donald Trump, and other operatives involved in the 2024 election effort, according to 10 people familiar with the matter. The Republican National Committee disclosed that it had $9.1 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 30, the lowest amount for the RNC in any Federal Election Commission report since February 2015. That compares with about $20 million at the same point in the 2016 election cycle and about $61 million four years ago, when Trump was in the White House. The Democratic National Committee reported having $17.7 million as of Oct. 30, almost twice as much as the Republican Party, with one year before the election. Kevin gets schooled Cash is not the only thing the RNC is short on. “Forget the Alamo!” is the RNC’s new cry of freedom. Kevin McCarthy was Speaker of the House. He holds a degree in marketing. Not his only B.S. Users of formerly Twitter were quick to point out where McCarthy went wrong.
Don’t lose sight of the big picture David Kurtz at Morning Memo lays out the 2024 stakes: The rule of law is on the ballot in 2024, and it trumps every other political and policy consideration. It is the umbrella under which every other issue is addressed: Want to restore abortion rights? Want to openly debate Israel and Palestine? Want to accelerate the energy revolution to head off the worst of climate change? Good luck. Because if Trump, as promised, harnesses the power of the federal government to attack his perceived political enemies, exact retribution for slights, overturn elections, eviscerate the right to vote, and continue the effort to lock in GOP minority rule, he will break the democratic mechanisms for adjudicating policy preferences, enacting new laws, and enforcing them. Trump is promising a fundamental break with the rule of law and from that will flow a fundamental breakdown in democratic processes and institutions. It is as simple as it is hard to stay at maximum threat level for years on end.
It seems like only yesterday that the entire Republican Party was calling for the smelling salts over the shocking decision by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that Senators not be required to wear suits and ties on the floor of the Senate. The keening and wailing from the members of both houses over the loss of decorum could be heard from coast to coast. How could the Republic survive such a blow to the dignity of the US Congress? Republicans were so outraged they sent a letter to the Majority Leader registering their “supreme disappointment and resolute disapproval” of the decision. The outcry was so overwhelming that the chamber ended up voting to restore the old dress code so the senate would once again be a place of honor and tradition. How quaint it all seems in light of what commonly happens these days in those sacred halls, mostly at the hands of the Republicans themselves. Just a week or so ago we had a US Senator from Oklahoma challenging a witness at a congressional hearing to a fist fight, right there on the senate floor. We have Supreme Court nominees blatantly lying under oath about their intentions and beliefs and suffering no repercussions.
If Trump manages to carry out his plans in a second term, it will be catastrophic A professor of public policy sounds the alarm about Trump’s 2024 agenda: I study government bureaucracies. This is not normally a key political issue. Right now, it is, and everyone should be paying attention. Donald Trump, the former president and current candidate, puts it in apocalyptic terms: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.” This is not an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will threaten our democracy. A second Trump administration would be very different from the first. Mr. Trump’s blueprint for amassing power has been developed by a constellation of conservative organizations that surround him, led by the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025. This plan would elevate personal fealty to Mr. Trump as the central value in government employment, processes and institutions. It has three major parts. The first is to put Trump loyalists into appointment positions. Mr.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo is a charlatan and DeSantis doesn’t care Ron DeSantis should be disqualified from ever holding office again on this basis alone: Professors at the University of Florida had high hopes for Joseph Ladapo. But they quickly lost faith in him. In 2021, the university was fast-tracking him into a tenured professorship as part of his appointment as Florida’s surgeon general. Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pick for the state’s top medical official, dazzled them with his Harvard degree and work as a research professor at New York University and UCLA. Professors had anticipated Ladapo would bring at least $600,000 in grant funding to his new appointment from his previous job at UCLA. That didn’t happen. They expected he would conduct research on internal medicine, as directed by his job letter. Instead, he edited science research manuscripts, gave a guest lecture for grad students and wrote a memoir about his vaccine skepticism. Ladapo’s work at UF has generally escaped scrutiny.
Today his lawyers filed a response to the gag order and MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin wrote: Trump’s team has filed its reply on the stay of the New York gag order. There is no response to, much less mention of, the court system’s documentation of the serious and extensive threats to Judge Engoron and his law clerk. https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=7vzJVI9/QEvXWmks3wQqTA==… The sole new content concerns Engoron’s rapid rejection of Trump and the other defendants’ motion for a mistrial, despite the attorney general’s position that full briefing and argument would be helpful. Team Trump’s implication is that the same unacceptable bias that drove Engoron to enter the gag order fueled his outright refusal to hear the mistrial motion. So it’s another day and another grievance for Trump without even attempting to distance himself from or disclaim responsibility for the threat environment he created and then inflamed. Sound familiar? It sure does. They aren’t even trying to make serious legal arguments in this case. This is now purely a political exercise.