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The Republican attack on President Joe Biden’s plan to make child care more affordable and accessible has escalated around a defense of the right to discriminate. Republican politicians and media started by claiming, falsely, that the plan would exclude religious child care providers from receiving the new federal funds. In fact, it very explicitly includes them. But what religious groups are now howling about is that the Democratic plan does say they would have to abide by anti-discrimination rules. 

So it’s not that religious child care providers couldn’t take federal subsidies under the Build Back Better proposal. It’s that they couldn’t do that while also discriminating against staff or families and their children for any reason attributed to faith.

Biden’s Build Back Better plan would “ensure that middle-class families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care and will help states expand access to high-quality, affordable child care to about 20 million children per year—covering 9 out of 10 families across the country with young children,” according to the White House. “For two parents with one toddler earning $100,000 per year, the framework will produce more than $5,000 in child care savings per year. Nearly all families of four making up to $300,000 per year will be eligible.”

Those are the stakes for millions of families. But on the other side, you have the right to discriminate, and it’s really no contest where Republicans land.

The New York Times offers a few examples of how applying anti-discrimination rules  could affect how these programs operate: “For instance, it could bar federal funds from going to programs that refused to hire a gay employee, gave preference to applicants of their faith or failed to renovate their facilities to accommodate disabled students.” And all of these forms of discrimination are, according to Republicans, worth defending. Though many high-profile religious discrimination cases involve discrimination against LGBT people, it’s not just homophobia at work—it’s much broader than that.

Currently, some religious programs get federal money indirectly through the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, and since it is indirect, they get to dodge anti-discrimination laws. Some religious groups—not all of them, because not all religious groups put discrimination at the center of their faith—demand that that continue.

”It will be detrimental to our ability to participate,” according to a spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It would impact our ability to stick with our Catholic mission in a variety of ways.”

You’re kind of telling on yourself, there.

But as we know, it is now a central tenet of the Republican faith that religious groups—at least Christian ones—must be entitled to both discriminate and get all the same benefits as groups that do not discriminate. There’s no concept here that one can either follow the rules and get the rewards for doing so, or one can say that standing on principle is more important than extra funding. They want both. They demand both. 

We need to be specific about the kinds of things they’re proposing, because the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other groups, including a major orthodox Jewish group, are trying to tank a significant expansion of child care funding, one that would make care affordable for low- and middle-income families, over their right to shut some people out.

”Who do they want to shut out? Is it the lesbian mom you want to shut out?” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ Liz King asked, “Is it the children with autism you want to shut out? Since at least 1964, the law and basic principle has been that federal funds cannot be used to discriminate. No one should have to subsidize their own discrimination.”

Predictably, the pro-discrimination groups have found not just fierce advocacy from Republicans but a sympathetic ear in conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, setting up yet another fight between progressives in the House who think that funding discrimination would be wrong and Manchin in the Senate who thinks that blocking progress is his most winning stance.

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As House Republicans do everything within their power to stymie the bipartisan probe in the Jan. 6 attack, a new Monmouth University poll shows that nearly three-quarters of Americans support exploring whether members of Congress played a role in the attack, including 58% of Republicans. That’s a very solid majority, especially for Republicans. 

However, when it comes to investigating Donald Trump’s ties to the Capitol siege, just 40% of Republicans approve of the committee looking into anything that could implicate Trump. That’s a nearly 20% drop, suggesting that Trump’s cultists don’t mind going after congressional Republicans but stand firmly against learning anything about Dear Leader’s involvement in planning and fomenting violence that day. Perhaps not surprisingly, 70% of Republicans also support looking into potential 2020 election fraud.

Among Democrats, 91% back probing Trump’s role in the deadly Capitol siege and 89% support looking into the role of members of Congress, but just 47% support exploring possible election fraud.

It’s worth noting the 58% of Republicans who presently say they support investigating the role of congressional members. This question will likely be polled again as we learn more about the findings of the Jan. 6 panel, and if certain GOP members are found to have contributed to the siege, it will be interesting to see if GOP interest in the truth suddenly waves.

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A lone GOP Georgia senator is attempting to roll back the significant gains made during last year’s election, which handed dominant control of his county’s nearly million residents to Democrats. 

Sen. Clint Dixon’s latest manipulative (and racist) move is designed to increase commission seats, immobilize the county’s newly elected and first Black chairwoman, redraw districts, and convert the all-Dem school board to nonpartisan. Dixon claims there’s an urgent need to give Gwinnett residents more representation—something that no one seemed to care about when the GOP was in charge of the commission. 

Dixon announced Senate Bills 5 EX and 6 EX on Nov. 8, and both bills received approval from the Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee. 

According to reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Democrats now command the county school board, hold every seat on the county commission and lead the sheriff’s department, the District Attorney’s office, and several other elected positions.”

Rep. Gregg Kennard calls Dixon’s attempt to add five commission seats, making it a 7-2 split favoring Democrats, a “whitelash” against Black residents in Gwinnett county. 

These white Republicans had no issue with the configuration of our county government as long as it was white and Republican,” Kennard said in a press conference on Nov. 12.

He added: 

“For 200 years since our county’s origin, we had nothing but white governmental leadership (and) we broke the color barrier in 2018 and really broke it in 2020,” Kennard said. “And, for certain white legislators to now try to reverse those elections is nothing more than—let’s call it what it is—a ‘whitelash.’

“It’s a white response to those elections that gave us elected officials of color,” Kennard said.

Gwinnett Democrats such as Rep. Jasmine Clark are furious about Dixon introducing the bills during a special legislative session. 

“Black people running the Board of Education and Board of Commissioners does not constitute an emergency just because certain people don’t like it,” Clark said, according to the AJC. 

According to Gwinnett Daily Post, Senate Bill 6 EX would expand the county commission from four districts and a chairperson to nine district seats and chairperson.

Dixon went on the defense Sunday via Twitter, saying his proposed bill regarding the school board is intended to “simply protect children from partisan politics,” claiming that the “radical left Democrats” are attacking him and his Republican colleagues and alleging his bills “have something to do with race and some kind of power grab.” Which he says is “simply false.” 

He then goes on to announce that he’ll be adding another bill soon banning critical race theory in schools statewide to prevent students “from indoctrination from the far-left” and an end to “comprehensive sex ed.” 

Redistricting or gerrymandering is a play Republicans live by, so it’s no big surprise this would be Dixon’s move. Who cares about burgeoning crime rates or expanding Medicaid to poor Georgians? In a state with a million new potential voters since 2010 (according to the recent census), redrawing districts is the necessary power play. 

Every 10 years, state lawmakers draw state legislative and congressional districts to reflect population from the census. It gives the majority party the right to retain control and the minority party the chance to fight for its seats, knowing it lacks the votes in the General Assembly to help it.

Here’s a little gerrymandering background from the History Channel:

“In March 1812, the Boston Gazette ran a political cartoon depicting ‘a new species of monster’: ‘The Gerry-mander.’ The forked-tongue creature was shaped like a contorted Massachusetts voting district that the state’s Jeffersonian Republicans had drawn to benefit their own party. Governor (and future vice president) Elbridge Gerry signed off on his party’s redistricting plan in February, unwittingly cementing his place in the United States lexicon of underhanded political tricks.”

And, just like they did to Southern Black communities after the Civil War, Georgia Republicans today are trying to clump conservative communities together to build on their majorities.

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The announcement last week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that consumer prices rose 6.2 percent over the past year in the U.S. The pain American consumers feel is very real (though their reported milk consumption might be exaggerated), and does pose a real political challenge to President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats if it lasts well into next year.

That’s all very true. But how it’s being reported and how it’s being used by the traditional media are problematic. While the larger stories of the complexities of grocery store monopolies and how dairy farming and cattle ranching and meat production are manipulated are reported, the policy side of it is reduced to simple politics. And to this, fueling Sen. Joe Manchin’s ill-informed and stubborn opposition to President Biden’s Build Back Better plan on the basis of inflation.

Like this:

Pretty much every reputable economist (plus Larry Summers) is in agreement that this period of inflation is transitory, albeit more persistent than originally assumed, and that the way to deal with it is to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and then support the still-recovering economy with the boost from BBB. That’s what 17 Nobel laureates in economics, including Joseph Stiglitz, have argued. The investments in BBB, they assert, will increase “the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, helping to improve our low employment-working age population ratio.”

Because the bill is financed by tax increases, they argued that “the inflationary impacts will be at most negligible—over the medium term outweighed by the supply-side benefits; and their progressivity will help address one of the country’s critical problems, the growing economic divide.”

Harvard Economist Jason Fruman points out that even for those (like Summers) how have argued that the current inflation has stemmed from the $2 trillion in COVID relief overheating the economy—the theory Manchin seems to have bought into—there’s really no basis for comparison. The COVID relief was pumped into the economy all at once; the money from Build Back Better with few exceptions won’t start reaching people until this inflationary period is likely over—it’s spent over one and five and 10 years. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee predicts that inflation is “a short-run phenomenon,” and that “The fiscal impulse from the reconciliation bill in the next six to 18 months wouldn’t be that big.”

Furman argues that universal pre-K and paid family leave will be drivers in reducing inflation, by increasing the workforce and productive capacity. This year’s annual survey from Care.com found that “85% of parents, compared to only 72% in 2020, report they are spending 10% or more of their household income on child care,” and that “94% of parents have used at least one major cost-saving strategy to save money on child care in the past year, including reducing hours at work (42%), changing jobs (26%), or leaving the workforce completely (26%).” That’s a quarter of respondents saying they quit working because they couldn’t afford child care. It’s a crisis heightened by the pandemic, but by no means over.

There’s also the part about how this bill will actually be paid for by raising taxes. “Something that you raise taxes to pay for,” Goolsbee said, “doesn’t really have that strong a stimulative effect.” As currently written, though that might not last, the bill actually hikes taxes for rich people and cuts taxes for everyone else. That’s according to a new analysis from the Tax Policy Center.

People who make about $885,000 or more—the top 1%—would pay about $55,000 more than they currently do, and the top 0.1% would pay nearly 6% more than under current law. Those are the people making $4 million and more, who would pay and additional $585,000 annually, on average. It also increases corporate taxes to the tune of $830 billion. That could be one of Manchin’s true motivators in derailing the bill, which would be really ironic.

Because, as the Wall Street Journal reports, a whole lot of inflation is happening on purpose because some of the biggest U.S. companies are “seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices to match and in some cases outpace their own higher expenses, after decades of grinding down costs and prices.”

“Nearly two out of three of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies have reported fatter profit margins so far this year than they did over the same stretch of 2019, before the Covid-19 outbreak, data from FactSet show,” the WSJ reports. How fortunate for them. Glenn Richter, the chief financial officer of International Flavors & Fragrances, a supplier to big food companies, admitted that his company is exploiting the situation, because as the WSJ explains, “Widespread inflation makes it easier to broach the topic of raising prices with customers.”

If anything is going to drive inflation, it’s corporate greed. “The risk to the economy is that price hikes not only stick, but convince customers more increases are inevitable, spurring inflationary demand and sparking a vicious cycle,” says the WSJ. The best way to combat that, other than taxing the hell out of them, is with the kinds of investments in people that BBB represents.

And to get there, it’s key to understand why we’re experiencing inflation—pent-up demand, supply-chain problems, labor shortages, and corporate greed—and address them. Passing this bill could also help solve those political problems.

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As we kick off Transgender Awareness Week, which spans from Nov. 13 to 19, it’s important to celebrate all of the wins and victories the trans community has to celebrate. Whether it’s brave youth speaking out against transphobic legislation that affects them, family members showing up as allies, or peers rallying to support one another in the classroom, there’s plenty of warmth and encouragement. Unfortunately, however, there’s still a lot of violence, and according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), some of that violence is literally deadly.

According to a Nov. 9 press release from the HRC, 2021 is already the deadliest year on record for trans folks. According to the HRC, at least 45 openly transgender or gender nonconforming people have been killed so far in 2021 alone. In 2020, for comparison, at least 44 trans or nonconforming people were killed. “At least” is an important caveat as crimes against trans folks are notoriously underreported, or people are misgendered after death.

When it comes to talking about violence, it’s impossible to discuss the subject thoroughly without considering intersectionality. For example, a trans person of color may face more material or bodily harm than a white trans person. A gender nonconforming Black person may face more discrimination than a white gender nonconforming person. A queer sex worker may face a greater risk of certain violent crimes than a queer person not involved in sex work. This isn’t to say, for example, that a white, wealthy trans person faces no oppression or violence, but that they have certain innate privileges (like their race) that their trans peers might not. And this privilege can carry into all facets of life, from employment, to housing, to the legal system, for example.

With this in mind, we can discuss horrifying allegations about a trans woman’s treatment while incarcerated—in a men’s prison. As reported by Insider, Kristina Frost, a trans woman, is suing San Diego County, as well as the sheriff’s department, alleging she was forced to share a jail cell with three men last year. One of the men assaulted her while she was asleep, according to Frost, which included “closed-fist punches” to her face. The lawsuit says Frost actually had a fractured jaw as a result of the violence and has needed surgery and dentures.

The lawsuit also alleges that the cell had minimal monitoring, but that some deputies did witness the attack and didn’t intervene right away. The lawsuit also alleges that deputies misgendered Frost in person and in official documents, especially confusing to Frost as her driver’s license lists her as female. Though what someone was wearing shouldn’t matter, the suit also notes Frost was booked wearing “feminine” clothes, including a bra. Now, Frost is suing for punitive and compensatory damages. 

Trans folks are particularly vulnerable to hate, abuse, and discrimination. When it comes to fighting for justice and standing against oppression, that battle must include—and frankly, center—the most marginalized among us, and in this case (and many cases) that includes incarcerated folks.

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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When a bunch of QAnon-believing, MAGA-loving, former White House employees show up at church and begin shouting a veiled version of f**k Joe Biden via “Let’s Go, Brandon,” from the pews, that’s not a religious service, it’s a political rally; and San Antonio, Texas-based Cornerstone Church’s Rev. John Hagee needs to pay his fair share in taxes starting right now.

This is the same megachurch reverend who once said that Jesus Christ is the vaccine for COVID-19, but after getting the virus recanted. He is now, as he says, “taking the vaccine.” And in 2008 he preached antisemitic statements, such as God sent Hitler to hunt the Jews who had failed to support Israel by moving to the Middle East.

In order to cover its ass, the church was technically rented out for the “ReAwaken America” conference, but Hagee regularly engages in politics during services. This past weekend, he claimed that President Biden is the worst president ever. 

Video of the chant began spreading like a disease on social media over the weekend when throngs in attendance were egged on by event organizer Clay Clark, host of the podcast “Thrivetime Show.” 

Guest speakers at the event included former President Donald Trump confidant, Roger Stone; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton; Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow; and Alex Jones, who ranted that Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and President Barack Obama all serve Satan. 

Michael Flynn, former national security advisor to the one-term president, spoke Saturday, saying the U.S. should have one singular religion. The same QAnon devotee Flynn who’s said the U.S. government is controlled by the “deep state” by Satan worshippers and even took an oath to the bizarre Q-cult. 

The origins of the chant go back to Oct. 2, and an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown, who’d just won his first race. While being he was speaking with NBC reporter Kelli Stavast, the crowd started chanting “F**k Joe Biden.” Stavast said, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!'” in her broadcast. No one knows if she misheard the crowd or was trying to deflect. 

“Any Christian church that engages in the white Christian nationalism that John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church does has long forsaken the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. And for those confused, QAnon is incompatible with Christianity,” Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie, a minister in the United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon tweeted. 

Josh Mandel, Ohio’s former state treasurer and current Republican Senate candidate, called the chant “amazing.”

“Pastor John Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel. He is a leader among leaders in protecting the Judeo-Christian bedrock of America,” Mandel tweeted. 

But, as Rep. Joaquin Castro says, this event felt more like a political rally than a church service, leaving many to wonder how Cornerstone can maintain its tax-exempt status. 

According to the IRS, churches and religious organizations, like many other charitable organizations, qualify for exemption from federal income tax under IRC Section 501(c)(3) and are generally eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.

To qualify for tax-exempt status, the organization must meet the following requirements:

• The organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable purposes;n net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder.
• No substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation.
• The organization may not intervene in political campaigns, and the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.

Churches that indulge theocratic hogwash and politics in the pews, like Hagee’s congregation routinely witnesses, should be taxed. As Crooks & Liars so eloquently puts it: 

“Our tax laws are so biased and corrupt in favor of right-wing politics that Hagee and his ilk could convert their church to a 501-c-3 Political Action Committee and be fully within the law. We need to overturn Citizens United. Corporations are not people, even when those corporations are supported by people [who] have their butts in the pews.”

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Roughly 808,000 people became U.S. citizens in the 2021 fiscal year, up from just over 625,000 in the 2020 fiscal year, CNN reports. The numbers come as the Biden administration also naturalized thousands of former and current military service members (as well as their family members) as part of the Veterans Day observance.

It’s a good trend. Not only were U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offices seriously impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the previous administration used those service disruptions to its advantage, refusing to implement service alternatives for immigrants left in paperwork limbo. 

In just one example, Philadelphia immigrants whose naturalization ceremonies were derailed by office closures were forced to sue the federal government in June 2020. USCIS had steadily refused to conduct virtual ceremonies even though nothing stopped it from going the Zoom route. Because immigrants and their application fees nearly entirely fund the agency, office closures and service delays only intensified this crisis. But immigrants won that lawsuit, affecting thousands in the region. 

“The suit was voluntarily dismissed on Tuesday,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, when the local office “opted to quickly naturalize all of them.”

Under President Joe Biden, officials have launched an “unprecedented effort” leveraging government departments and agencies (including the V.A.) to encourage eligible immigrants to complete the naturalization process, CNN reported in July. USCIS said in a statement last week that nearly 4,500 current and former military members, along with family members, became U.S. citizens in recent ceremonies.

“The willingness to serve in our armed forces before you become U.S. citizens is truly a remarkable example of devotion to country and our highest ideals,” Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in a tweet last week. 

Ur Jaddou, who at the time of the Philadelphia lawsuit was a former USCIS official and was firmly on the side of conducting virtual ceremonies, is today the agency’s director (it’s first Senate-confirmed director in two years, actually). She oversaw one of these recent military ceremonies. But this also doesn’t mean USCIS has now been totally in the clear. Delays continuing into 2021 resulted in tens of thousands of first-time Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applicants losing out on protections (again highlighting the urgent need for Congressional relief). 

“The record for naturalizations was in 2008, with more than a million people becoming U.S. citizens, an uptick that was attributed to upcoming fee increases and efforts to encourage eligible applicants to apply for citizenship,” CNN said. Dozens of immigrant and refugee advocacy organizations in over 100 cities announced an effort this past September to naturalize two million people by 2022. Overall, more than nine million green card holders (others say nearly 10 million) may be eligible for naturalization, but “barriers like limited English skills, high application fees, and a lack of access to legal services and information prevent them from taking steps toward naturalization,” groups said.

The Biden administration must put as much effort into protecting naturalization as the previous administration put into trying to stop it. The naturalization numbers increasing this past fiscal year is an encouraging sign that the process is heading in a better direction.

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Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke announced Monday that he would challenge Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a move that gives Texas Democrats a candidate they’ve eagerly sought for months. O’Rourke is unlikely to face any serious opposition in next year’s primary, but he’ll have a very challenging task ahead of him in next year’s general election in a place where Democrats haven’t won a single statewide race since 1994.

O’Rourke, who was elected to the House in 2012 from an El Paso-based seat, emerged on the national spotlight in 2018 when he went up against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a contest that very few initially thought he could win. The Democrat, though, raised close to $80 million thanks largely to Cruz’s utter radioactivity, as well O’Rourke’s own strong social media campaign, and he held the incumbent to a 51-48 victory during that blue wave year.

O’Rourke’s near-loss, which was the closest Team Blue had come to winning a Texas Senate seat since Democrat Lloyd Bentsen earned his final term back in 1988, only magnified his stardom, but he turned down the chance to challenge Sen. John Cornyn in 2020. Instead, the former congressman launched a bid for the presidency started with solid fundraising and national coverage (though O’Rourke himself would later regret telling the Vanity Fair cover story where he said, “I’m just born to be in it”), but he struggled to maintain his momentum as the campaign continued and dropped out well before the Iowa caucus.

O’Rourke launched his bid for governor Monday by taking Abbott to task for signing the state’s infamous anti-abortion law and for the February power grid failure that resulted in massive blackouts. The former congressman also said of his foe, “He doesn’t trust women to make their health care decisions, doesn’t trust police chiefs when they tell him not to sign the permitless carry bill into law, he doesn’t trust voters, so he changes the rules of our elections, and he doesn’t trust local communities.”

Abbott’s team quickly responded by utilizing a clip from O’Rourke’s presidential bid of him advocating for a mandatory assault weapon buyback program by proclaiming, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” O’Rourke two years ago trumpeted that debate line by tweeting, “If it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on the battlefield, we’re going to buy it back,” while Abbott’s campaign is now trying to caricature him as an enemy of gun rights.

We’ve seen two October polls conducted online by YouGov for different clients, but they very much disagreed on how competitive this race is right now. The Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and Rice University survey had Abbott edging out O’Rourke just 43-42, while a poll conducted later in the month for the University of Texas at Austin for the Texas Tribune showed the incumbent up 46-37.

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House Republicans did everything they could to block a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. seat of government. Now they are promising retribution against Democrats over that probe after the Department of Justice indicted Steve Bannon for defying a congressional subpoena.

“Joe Biden has evicerated [sic] Executive Privilege. There are a lot of Republicans eager to hear testimony from Ron Klain and Jake Sullivan when we take back the House,” Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted Friday after news of Bannon’s indictment. Jordan was referring President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and national security adviser.

What potential crimes Klain and Sullivan have committed in Jordan’s view remains unclear. Perhaps it’s the vaccine rollout that has paved the way for more than 225 million Americans to receive at least one vaccine dose. Or how about that ”socialist” bipartisan infrastructure bill Democrats delivered about nine months after Biden took office? Something about that must seem very fishy after Republicans came up dry on infrastructure despite the country enduring four long years of Donald Trump.

But here’s the crux of what the GOP’s revenge pledge means: Republicans are actively promoting lawlessness by engaging in a massive cover-up of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and making common cause with people like Bannon, who actively worked to overturn the 2020 results.

And maybe that’s the point—some Republicans already did make common cause with the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 siege, and they are scared stiff about that information surfacing.

Naturally, the GOP’s chief messenger, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, really outshone Jordan with her duplicity and verve for incendiary lying.

“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.

Everyone should get ready for more baseless gaslighting from House Republicans—the select committee investigating Jan. 6 has subpoenaed at least 20 of Trump’s top aides. Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is next in line for a potential criminal contempt charge, or perhaps civil litigation, after he skipped his scheduled deposition last Friday.

Meadows apparently has plenty to hide based on his own refusal to sit for a deposition. He not only spent the entirety of Jan. 6 at the White House as Trump drank in the violence with glee, he also reportedly emailed a memo from Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis to a top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence outlining how Pence could block congressional certification of the election. Pence didn’t actually possess the constitutional power to do that, but Ellis and other Trump allies argued that he did have the authority and developed a coordinated pressure campaign around the bogus legal strategy.  

Regardless of what Jordan and others say, there’s no evidence the courts believe that Biden has eviscerated executive privilege. Opting to enable a legitimate congressional investigation into an effort to overturn a legitimate election result by launching a two-pronged legal and physical assault on Congress isn’t exactly eviscerating executive privilege. Republicans will surely launch as many investigations of the Biden White House as they can dream up if they regain control of Congress next year, but they’ll have to come up with something legitimate to get the courts on their side.

In the meantime, Jordan—who has had a lot of trouble nailing down the timing of his calls with Trump on Jan. 6—and other GOP members appear to be running interference ahead of their own potential legal exposure.

“Now that Democrats have started these politically-motivated indictments for Contempt of Congress, I look forward to seeing their reactions when we keep that same energy as we take back the House next year!” declared Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado on Saturday.

Bannon’s indictment on Friday represented a clear break from the previous five years in which the Trump administration’s stranglehold on enforcement of congressional subpoenas repeatedly shielded top Trump officials from being compelled to testify before Congress, most notably during both of Trump’s impeachment proceedings. The Trump administration’s blanket obstruction of Congress in every matter concerning potential Trump wrongdoing crippled the congressional branch from serving as an effective check on executive branch power. Trump’s takeaway—aided by Senate Republicans’ lock-step refusal to indict him, even after Jan. 6—was clearly that he would never be held to account for anything he did.

As Congress works to reclaim its constitutional oversight powers aided by a White House that actually believes in the rule of law, the question now is how much the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee can accomplish before a potential GOP takeover following the 2022 midterms and how aggressively the Department of Justice will pursue the panel’s conclusions.