I’m not sure what DeSantis thinks he’s getting out of this but it’s so on brand I just have to mention it. If there’s anything offensive and destructive going on in Republican politics he wants to be in the middle of it: In the high-stakes fight that is threatening to shut down the federal government next month — and tear House Republicans apart — Ron DeSantis is taking sides. The Florida governor spent about 30 minutes on the phone Wednesday with conservative Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Bob Good of Virginia — leaders of the cadre that is pushing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to embrace a shutdown if Democrats won’t agree to hard-right policy demands. DeSantis’ message, according to a person familiar with the call: “I got your back. Keep fighting.” The call is the latest signal that DeSantis is working to insert himself into the spending fight on the Hill in a bid to elevate his standing among Republican primary voters.
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Marge the sadist: On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene. It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election. “I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview… Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” Ain’t she sweet? She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr.
Welcome to the third world At least one Republican congressman told Sen. Mitt Romney (R-outcast), McKay Coppins recounts in The Atlantic, that he “wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety.” A Republican senator in leadership urged Romney not to vote to convict Trump dujring his second impeachment trial. “You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children.” Romney tells Coppins he is paying $5,000 per day out of pocket for security since Jan. 6, 2021. On his way to work with a police excort that day, he recalls: If somebody wants to shoot me, he thought, what good is it to have these guys in a car behind me? Romney is not the only one worried about his security. Along with special prosecutor Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, D.A.
Bloody Tradies! For those looking for an excuse to use “gobsmacked.” An X-post video clip from Tuesday: Gurner Group founder Tim Gurner tells the Financial Review Property Summit workers have become “arrogant” since COVID and “We’ve got to kill that attitude.” Financial Review: The current unemployment rate needs to rise by 40 per cent to 50 per cent to boost the Australian economy’s productivity, Tim Gurner has said. “In my view, we need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he said. Gurner told the Summit that the cultural shift towards a more pro-employee climate had led to tradies pulling back on productivity. “When there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude.” Gurner has received some blowback over his remarks about “tradies.” “Just a reminder corporate profits and CEO pay are at historic highs,” wrote Greens MP Stephen Bates.
Evidence-free since … pretty much forever We’ve seen this show before. Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended for bringing meritless lawsuits, unsupported by evidence, alleging massive voter fraud in the 2020 election. He had it, oh yes, massive amounts of evidence he hyped endlessly before cameras but never produced to be independently scrutinized. House Republicans are playing that game again with their budding Biden impeachment inquiry. “What actual evidence do you have as opposed to allegations to show to the American public that would merit an actual impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden?” the off-camera reporter asked Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) Perry did not take it well. Mediaite: Notably, during a CPAC event in March Perry made clear his penchant for political revenge. Perry, whose cell phone was seized by the FBI during its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, fantasized aloud at CPAC about “leftists” and “Marxists” “quaking in fear” and “losing weight because they’re not eating” because they are so afraid the government may jail them.
McCarthy snaps to On August 28th, Donald Trump had had enough of his House Republicans dilly-dallying around. He took to his social media platform Truth Social and issued an order: The Republicans in Congress, though well meaning, keep talking about an Impeachment ‘Inquiry’ on Crooked Joe Biden.Look, the guy got bribed, he paid people off, and he wouldn’t give One Billion Dollars to Ukraine unless they ‘got rid of the Prosecutor.’ Biden is a Stone Cold Crook-You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven. These lowlifes Impeached me TWICE (I WON!), and Indicted me FOUR TIMES – For NOTHING!Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US! Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy heard him loud and clear. On Tuesday he announced that he was unilaterally ordering an impeachment inquiry into the president during his term as Vice President nearly a decade ago. No one was surprised that he went back on his stated principle that an impeachment inquiry can only be launched with a full vote of the House or the still binding determination by Trump’s Department of Justice which came to the same conclusion.
Vladimir Putin could barely contain his excitement Tuesday while discussing Donald Trump, telling a forum in Vladivostok that the criminal cases against the former president are “good” for Russia and that the Kremlin took delight in Trump’s claim he’d swiftly force an end to Moscow’s war against Ukraine. “As for the persecution of Trump… for us, what is happening in these conditions, in my opinion, is good, because it shows the whole rottenness of the American political system, which cannot claim to teach others about democracy,” Putin said, echoing the former American president’s own oft-repeated claim that “what’s happening with Trump is a persecution of a political rival for political motives.” The man who is responsible for trying to kill his rival with poison and then locking him up in a prison camp for life says what? Trump’s response: Hmmm. I’d guess he didn’t really think that through. (But when does he ever think anything through?) But I’m sure Putin doesn’t care.
A chilling laboratory of authoritarianism I thought this piece by Don Moynihan was one of the best analyses I’ve seen of the attack on democracy we’re seeing in Wisconsin. It’s long but if you have time, read the whole thing. You’ll understand what’s happening in Wisconsin but also where the Republicans are headed nationally. This is who they are now: “DEMOCRACY IS A SYSTEM IN WHICH parties lose elections,” according to the political scientist Adam Przeworski. By that measure Wisconsin is not really a democracy. Sure, the Republican Party of Wisconsin routinely is defeated in statewide elections. Indeed, since 2018, they have lost fourteen of seventeen such races. But can they be said to really lose when they refuse to accept their defeat and instead use power accrued by undemocratic means to minimize or even reverse those losses? In this, Wisconsin was the pre-Trump canary in the coal mine, alerting us to the undemocratic depths to which the GOP would descend. The state’s Republicans then became bolder following Trump’s Big Lie example.
Good to know According to the DC Circuit, congressional reps can foment coups and there’s nothing anyone can do about it: A top House conservative’s conversations with allies in Congress and the Trump White House about overturning the 2020 election are off-limits to special counsel Jack Smith, an appeals court ruled in a newly unsealed court opinion. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that prosecutors’ effort to access the cellphone communications of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) with colleagues and executive branch officials violated his immunity under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, which shields members of Congress from legal proceedings connected to their official duties. “While elections are political events, a Member’s deliberation about whether to certify a presidential election or how to assess information relevant to legislation about federal election procedures are textbook legislative acts,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the opinion issued last week. The decision breaks new ground in a decadeslong tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch.
My interview with @RepMattGaetz last night. On not having the votes but threatening countless attempts to oust McCarthy anyway "I’m going to do it over and over again until it works" pic.twitter.com/BJeOtgvHDG — Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) September 13, 2023 That was a good interview by Phillips. Gaetz thinks he’s going to best McCarthy. And he will make his life miserable. But who does he think will take MyKevin’s place?