The Conversation -- April 20, 2024

Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats. In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.... Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered. The legislation includes $60 billion for Kyiv; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. It would direct the president to seek repayment from the Ukrainian government of $10 billion in economic assistance, a concept supported by ... Donald J. Trump, who had pushed for any aid to Kyiv to be in the form of a loan. But it also would allow the president to forgive those loans starting in 2026. It also contained a measure to help pave the way to selling off frozen Russian sovereign assets to help fund the Ukrainian war effort, and a new round of sanctions on Iran. The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as Tuesday and send it to President Biden's desk, capping its tortured journey through Congress."

Donald Trump Has Been Asking, "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?" Let's Check. Top News in the NYT, April 20, 2020. Bernie Sanders: "We are the richest country in the history of the world, but at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, that reality means little to half of our people who live paycheck to paycheck, the 40 million living in poverty, the 87 million who are uninsured or underinsured, and the half million who are homeless. In the midst of the twin crises that we face -- the coronavirus pandemic and the meltdown of our economy -- it's imperative that we re-examine some of the foundations of American society, understand why they are failing us, and fight for a fairer and more just nation."

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Ellen Nakashima & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "Laboring into the early hours of Saturday morning, Congress reauthorized for two years a surveillance program that U.S. spy agencies regard as one of their most valuable tools and that critics on the left and the right say intrudes on Americans' privacy. The 60-34 vote in the Senate came a week after the House renewed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables U.S. intelligence agencies to gather without a warrant the digital communications of foreigners overseas -- including when they text or email people inside the United States. The measure now goes to President Biden's desk for a signature." CNN's report is here.

Annie Karni of the New York Times: "The House took a critical step on Friday toward approving a long-stalled package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and other American allies, as Democrats supplied the crucial votes to push the legislation past Republican opposition so that it could be considered on the floor. The 316-94 vote cleared the way for the House to bring up the aid package, teeing up separate votes on Saturday on each of its parts. But passage of those measures, each of which enjoys bipartisan support from different coalitions, was not in doubt, making Friday's action the key indicator that the legislation will have the backing needed to prevail. The rule for considering the bill -- historically a straight party-line vote -- passed with more Democratic than Republican support, but it also won a majority of G.O.P. votes, making it clear that despite a pocket of deep resistance from the far right, there is broad bipartisan backing for the $95.3 billion package.

"The vote was an enormous victory in the long effort to fund to Ukraine as it battles against Russian aggression, a major priority of President Bidenthat has met with bitter resistance from the right. It was a triumph against the forces of isolationism within the G.O.P. and a major moment of bipartisan consensus in a Congress that for the past year has been mostly defined by its dysfunction." (Also linked yesterday.) An NBC News story is here.

Finally, MTG Gets the Respect She Deserves. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "Russian state TV broadcasters who once treated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as a joke now believe she's worthy of being taken very seriously. The Daily Beast's Julia Davis reported that Kremlin-approved broadcasters have been ecstatic at the ways the Georgia congresswoman has taken a lead role in trying to block Congress from passing more military aid to Ukraine, which has been trying to fend off an unprovoked Russian invasion for the past two-plus years. According to Davis, broadcasters have felt especially gratified that Greene has been reciting Kremlin propaganda about the Ukrainian government being filled with 'Nazis,' despite the fact that the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish."

The Trials of Trump & the Trump Mob

Jesse McKinley & Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: "The final jurors for Donald J. Trump's criminal trial were selected on Friday, with lawyers preparing to offer opening statements on Monday in a landmark proceeding.... The day was marked by an intensity of emotion from the start. Several prospective jurors asked to be excused, and some became upset, with one saying she had become too nervous to continue the process. Then word quietly began to spread about the man who had set himself on fire in a park across the street from the courthouse. The courtroom proceedings continued, but the stir was noticeable.... An afternoon hearing at which the judge was to determine the questions prosecutors could ask the former president if he were to testify proceeded as scheduled.... Even as jury selection was concluding, Mr. Trump filed an appeal for another emergency pause of the trial, arguing that the case should be stopped until a full panel rules on his bid to move the trial out of Manhattan. An appeals court judge denied the request. Justice [Juan] Merchan seemed weary of the defense's efforts to continually file motions that might delay the trial."

New York Times reporters liveblogged developments on Friday, Day 4 of the Trump 2016 criminal election interference case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. Bedtime for Bonzo started awfully early. According to a couple of Maggie Haberman's observations: "Trump has taken his seat. His hair is uncharacteristically messy.... [AND] Trump appears to have fallen asleep in court again. It happened several times just now. His eyes were closed for extended periods and his head dropped down twice."

MB: But my favorite remark came via Jesse McKinley at the other end of the court day: "'Sir, can you please have a seat?' the judge says to Trump, as he rises before court is adjourned." According on on-air reports I heard later, Trump did sit down as ordered to do. You will notice that it turns out that at least one official does indeed call Trump "Sir," so perhaps it is no longer a reliable signal of a fictional account. YET the judge calls Trump "Sir" in the same way a cop would tell a vagrant to move along: "Sir, you can't lie down on a bench next to the children's playground." That is, "Sir' is used in this case not as an address showing special respect but as a generic address designed not to convey disrespect, and perhaps employed ironically. (Also linked yesterday.)

Nate Schweber & Matthew Haag of the New York Times: "A man set himself on fire on Friday afternoon near the Lower Manhattan courthouse where jurors were being chosen for the criminal trial of ... Donald J. Trump. The man doused himself with accelerant at around 1:35 p.m. in Collect Pond Park, across the street from the courthouse. Onlookers screamed and started to run, and soon, bright orange flames engulfed the man. It was unclear what motivated his action. People rushed over to try to extinguish the fire, but the intensity of the heat could be felt several hundred feet away. After a few minutes, dozens of police officers rushed over and tried to smother the flames. The man, who appeared to be alive, was loaded into an ambulance and rushed away." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Rebecca Shabad, et al., of NBC News: "A man who set himself on fire Friday outside the courthouse where ... Donald Trump's hush money trial is taking place has died, New York City police said early Saturday. The man, whom police identified as Maxwell Azzarello of St. Augustine, Florida, was in the designated protest area outside."

Dan Mangan of CNBC: "The New York Attorney General's office on Friday asked a judge to effectively void a $175 million bond posted by ... Donald Trump to secure a much larger monetary damage award in his civil business fraud case as he appeals the judgment. The AG's office in a filing said Trump and other defendants in the case had failed to show there is enough identifiable collateral to back the bond for the judgment in Manhattan Supreme Court. The filing notes that the surety Trump used to obtain the bond, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, is 'a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state's insurance department, had never before written a surety bond in New York or in the prior two years in any other jurisdiction, and has a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.'... Lawyers for AG Letitia James asked Judge Arthur Engoron to require Trump and other defendants to put up a replacement bond within seven days of ruling on the issue.... A hearing on the bond dispute is set for Monday."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has handed down her harshest Jan. 6 sentence to date -- five-and-a-half years -- to Scott Miller, a Maryland man and former Proud Boys leader who assaulted multiple officers in a violent attempt to breach the Capitol. Chutkan based her sentence, delivered on Friday, in part on Miller's 'aggressive' actions at the Capitol but also on his private writings that called for racial and religious violence against minorities and Jews. She said the evidence of his 'violent ideology' -- his embrace of Nazism and his purported belief that Washington, D.C., residents should be executed -- troubled her despite Miller's insistence that he had disavowed those beliefs soon after Jan. 6.... Chutkan, who is in line to preside over the criminal trial of Donald Trump for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, emphasized her belief that the Jan. 6 mob attack was 'close to as serious a crisis as this nation has ever faced.'"

Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "Three [Four??] California men who were associated with the 'Three Percenter' militia group and convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack were taken into custody Friday after a judge ordered them to serve sentences ranging from 21 to 33 months in federal prison, far below what the government had requested. Erik Scott Warner, Felipe Antonio Martinez, Derek Kinnison and Ronald Mele were all found guilty of felony obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges after a trial last year.... The felony charge they were convicted of -- obstruction of an official proceeding -- is currently before the Supreme Court, where some of the justices seemed skeptical of the way the government had used the charge.... If the Supreme Court guts the charge, two of the defendants could end up only serving 12 months in prison on their misdemeanor convictions."

Presidential Race

"Sleepy Don." Patrick Svitek of the Washington Post: "The [Biden] campaign has increasingly put a spotlight on reports that Trump has appeared to doze off during his hush-money trial in New York.... 'A feeble and tired Donald Trump once again falls asleep in court,' the campaign said Friday on X, responding to a New York Times live blog entry saying Trump 'appears to have fallen asleep in court again.' Later Friday, Biden's campaign labeled Trump 'Sleepy Don' in a news release saying he had a 'nightmare week' that included getting 'some shut-eye.' The digs are notable because Biden's campaign and the White House have otherwise avoided commenting on the trial itself."

** Michigan. Shane Goldmacher & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "The prospect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatening to upend the presidential race went from an idea to a reality in one of the country's most consequential battlegrounds on Thursday, when Mr. Kennedy qualified for the ballot in Michigan. The decision by the Natural Law Party to grant Mr. Kennedy its ballot line in November ensures he will be a factor in a pivotal swing state where the presidential election is expected to be incredibly close and where President Biden has already shown vulnerability with key Democratic constituencies.... Mr. Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat and the scion of perhaps the nation's most famous Democratic family, is running as an independent in 2024 and polling higher in early surveys than any third-party candidate since Ross Perot, the self-funding billionaire who ran in the 1990s. His independent candidacy has earned him the estrangement of his own family -- who campaigned this week with Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania -- and many of his previous colleagues from the environmental movement, who denounced his candidacy publicly on Friday." ~~~

     ~~~ Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times: By accepting the fake nomination of Michigan's Natural Law Party, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got on the Michigan ballot "without having to gather a single signature, avoiding a costly and arduous organizing effort, not to mention the possibility of having to fight court challenges to those signatures.... [It is primarily the project of Doug Dern, a Michigan bankruptcy lawyer.] Mr. Kennedy was formally nominated at a brief convention held Wednesday morning in Mr. Dern's law office. The only two attendees were Mr. Dern and the party's secretary."

Trump Plans Massive Voter Intimidation Squad. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "... Donald Trump's political operation said Thursday that it plans to deploy more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers across battleground states to monitor -- and potentially challenge -- vote counting in November. The initiative -- which the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee described as 'the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation's history' -- will include training poll watchers and workers as well as lawyers."

Donald Trump Has Been Asking, "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?" Let's Check. Top News in the NYT, April 19, 2020: "Sloppy laboratory practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused contamination that rendered the nation's first coronavirus tests ineffective, federal officials confirmed on Saturday." (Also linked yesterday.)

** Jeanne Whalen & Lauren Gurley of the Washington Post: "Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., passed a historic vote to join the United Auto Workers, the union said Friday, becoming the first Southern auto factory to approve a union with an election since the 1940s. The union's unofficial vote count, which still must be confirmed by federal labor officials conducting the ballot, showed 73 percent of workers had voted yes by 10 p.m. E.T. on Friday night. It will take a simple majority for the vote to pass. The vote marks a victory for the UAW and for organized labor, which has faced years of difficulty organizing factories in Southern states."

Jonathan Edwards, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than 100 people protesting the war in Gaza were cleared off Columbia University's campus, arrested and charged with trespassing on Thursday. The arrests came a day after the university's president pledged during a congressional hearing on antisemitism to balance students' safety with their right to free speech. Having been summoned by Columbia President Minouche Shafik in what she described as 'an extraordinary step' to keep the campus safe, New York Police Department officers in riot gear entered the encampment with zip ties in the early afternoon and systematically arrested protesters, who offered little resistance.... Columbia's gates have been closed all week, so only people with a university identification can get in; it was a peaceful student protest, [student body president Tejasri Vijayakumar] said.... Students who participated in the encampment would be suspended, Shafik said in a letter to New York police." Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "Apparently strongly committed to not being the latest pelt for angry donors, Columbia's leadership appeared before Congress yesterday and agreed to various investigations and firings without even suggesting that academic freedom might be an important consideration in the process. Today, they demonstrated that they got the campus free speech 'speech members of Congress disagree with' message[.]... If there's any evidence that this protest was a threat to student 'safety' that would justify an immediate and recently unprecedented crackdown by armed police, the administration certainly doesn't seem to be providing it." Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Moira Donegan of the Guardian: At the GOP-run House hearing, "Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president..., made only tepid defenses of academic freedom, instead favoring wholehearted condemnations of the protesters, assents to bad-faith mischaracterizations of the students as antisemitic and genocidal, and public, apparently on-the-spot, personnel decisions that removed some pro-Palestinian faculty and staff from their positions.... The police raid against Columbia students that followed the next day can be seen as an extension of the policy of appeasement and pre-emptive compliance with the anti-Palestinian, anti-student Republican right that Shafik adopted in her testimony.... It is worth stating plainly what happened at Columbia: the raid was nothing less than the product of collusion between a university administration and rightwing politicians to suppress politically disfavored speech." Thanks to RAS for the link. See also the discussion in Friday's Comments thread. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Oh, and this from Donegan's column: "The arrested students were charged with 'trespassing' on the campus that they are charged more than $60,000 a year to attend." ~~~

~~~ Update. Sharon Otterman & Stephanie Saul of the New York Times: "A day after Columbia's president, Nemat Shafik, called in the police to arrest some 100 students and take down their encampment, the activists showed little sign of losing steam. There were heaps of blankets and deliveries of water bottles and food. Dr. Shafik's decision drew criticism on Friday from the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization. 'We have lost confidence in our president and our administration, and we pledge to fight to reclaim our university,' the group said in a statement Friday. In addition, a pro-Palestinian coalition of faculty and staff at Columbia, Barnard and Teachers colleges called upon faculty to boycott graduation and academic events, until the university lifts student suspensions and withdraws financial support from Israel, among other demands. But not all faculty members agreed with the criticism. Vincent A. Blasi, a Columbia law professor who has spent decades studying civil liberties issues, said the university had articulated a 'reasonable' policy to govern protests and had every right to punish students who violate it."

The Effects of the Epistle of Saint Samuel to the Women of Jackson, Mississippi: ~~~

~~~ ** Amanda Seitz of the AP: "One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to check her in. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn't offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal."

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Pennsylvania Senate Race. Hee-Haw. Katie Glueck of the New York Times: David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, is soon to become Pennsylvania's GOP candidate for U.S. Senate. "Interviews in Mr. McCormick's hometown, as well as a review of public records, news coverage from his childhood and his own words, suggest that he has given a misleading impression about key aspects of his background. He has explicitly said and strongly implied that he grew up on a farm, claimed in 2022 that he had 'started with nothing' and that he 'didn't have anything,' and he and his campaign have recently described his parents as schoolteachers. In fact, Mr. McCormick is the son of a well-regarded college president who later became chancellor of higher education systems in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. He largely grew up in the president's sprawling hilltop residence, which students called the president's mansion, at what is now Bloomsburg University.... The family did own a farm several miles from the school.... But it was also often known locally as a place where his mother raised Arabian horses...."

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Israel/Palestine, et al. CNN's live updates of developments Saturday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Israel carried out a military strike on Iran early Friday, a US official told CNN, in a potentially dangerous escalation of a fast-widening Middle East conflict that Iranian officials have so far sought to play down. Israel has not commented and Iran has not identified the source of the attack. An Iranian official said air defenses intercepted three drones close to an airbase in Isfahan province, where explosions were reported. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the G7 countries are 'committed to de-escalating' tensions between Israel and Iran. Meanwhile, the US has imposed sanctions on two organizations for fundraising on behalf of violent Israeli extremists in the West Bank, and the EU also sanctioned 'extremist settlers.'"

Niger. Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "More than 1,000 American military personnel will leave Niger in the coming months, Biden administration officials said on Friday, upending U.S. counterterrorism and security policy in the tumultuous Sahel region of Africa. In the second of two meetings this week in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell told Niger's prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, that the United States disagreed with the country's turn toward Russia for security and Iran for a possible deal on its uranium reserves, and the failure of Niger's military government to map out a path to return to democracy, according to a senior State Department official...."

Comments

[RAS]

"The Right Wing Media Has Destroyed Our Confidence

Collapse of trust in government is a purely American phenomenon. Why? Because we have Fox News and the others don’t. Oh, they have tabloids and conservative newspapers and so forth, but nothing like Fox News, which makes its living by spreading outrage over the way the country is run.

The power of Fox News is truly spectacular. Outrage sells, and the fact that one of the two major parties amplifies Fox uncritically means it has a surprisingly large influence in setting the agenda for the mainstream media too."

[Bobby Lee]

Question for MTG: Fish or cut bait?

[Akhilleus]

25 years after Columbine, the GQP-NRA-Supreme Court cult of violent death abides.

“TikTok profiles with the shooters’ names and photos are festooned with hearts and ribbons and fans of the shooters declare their love and admiration in the comments. Videos splice together old footage and stills of the shooters.

First-person shooter simulations of the Columbine massacre regularly pop up on TikTok where they fetch tens and even hundreds of thousands of views.”

Any word from Party of Traitors supporters of Guns 4 Everyone? I mean, aside from Thots N Prayrz?

“The first sign that gun zealots would remain unmoved in the face of Columbine came when the National Rifle Association, perhaps the single most bloodstained non-government organization in the nation’s history, went ahead with its planned annual convention in Denver just days after the massacre, and its representatives delivered a message of defiance.

If anything, Republicans in Colorado and beyond have only hardened their crazed position on gun ‘freedoms,’ and, since Columbine, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court in several Second Amendment rulings have warped gun rights into an American suicide pact.”

So that would be a big NO.

The NRA may technically be non-governmental, but they still have thousands of elected officials on the right as guardians of their mission of guns, guns, guns.

And death, death, death.