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Trump's Mar-a-Lago document stash has drawn FBI attention
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How did classified material make its way to Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump when he skipped town ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021? That’s a question for the FBI, which the agency has started investigating, according to reports. (A spokesperson refused to confirm or deny such an investigation when asked by The Washington Post, but there are multiple reports it’s happening.)
Unfortunately, the FBI investigation is currently blocking a parallel investigation by the House Oversight Committee, which Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee chair, expressed concern about in a recent letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the FBI investigation itself is an interesting addition to the long list of investigations into Trump’s various activities both in public office and in private business. Just Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked for Trump to be held in contempt of court in a separate investigation.
RELATED STORY: House committee wants to know why Justice Department is blocking its investigation of Trump records
The New York Times reports that such an investigation would likely not target any specific individual. The questions asked, to start, would be whether the material involved was properly classified, whether it was mishandled, whether there was any chance that anyone got improper access to it, and, well, how it got to Florida along with many other White House records that should have stayed with the government rather than arrived at a private resort and club.
Nonetheless, Trump has been on the defensive about those 15 boxes of records, saying in a recent statement, “The fake news is making it seem like me, as the president of the United States, was working in a filing room.” In other words, “Don’t blame me, it was my underlings.”
In addition to the FBI and House investigations of the mishandled records, Trump faces investigations by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the New York attorney general (as previously mentioned), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis. That’s in addition to several lawsuits, including with his niece Mary Trump, magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, and his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
RELATED STORIES:
New York AG Letitia James asks judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court
Ex-prosecutor: Trump is guilty of fraud beyond a reasonable doubt
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago document stash contained ‘top secret’ documents, information on COVID-19 pandemic
Ukraine update: It's not as simple as 'give Ukraine the most modern weapons'
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The war news lately has become one endless civilian massacre after another, so I take solace in focusing on the military side of the story. It’s not that I want to ignore or gloss over war crimes, it’s that it’s deeply triggering to me. Remember, I came to the United States as a war refugee. I’ve lived the life of a child noncombatant in the midst of armed conflict. And my personal experience was nowhere near as horrible as that of many people, either in El Salvador in the late 70s and 80s or in Ukraine today. It’s too much.
Civilians always bear the brunt of war. Always.
The reaction on social media always turns to “we need to give Ukraine everything they request, give them all the weapons!” The sentiment is understandable. We are mostly helpless, sitting on the sidelines of unspeakable horror. And it’s certainly understandable for Ukrainians to ask for it all. They are the ones doing the dying as the rest of the world is paralyzed by Russia’s nuclear weapons.
But each news of fresh massacres changes the equation slightly, erodes constraints. NATO armor and artillery were once off-limits to Ukraine. Today, Czech armor is already in Ukrainian hands, and more is on the way from several countries. Slovakia sent Soviet-era air defenses that logistically fit into Ukraine’s current stock. The U.K. has sent advanced air defense systems, and artillery is on tap. Several countries are sending armored personnel carriers. The U.S. is sending switchblade suicide drones, which truth be told, feels more escalatory than anything, given their ability to strike deep behind Russian lines and their overall nastiness. Those switchblades will soon be the most effective killers on that battlefield.
When the West began its first tentative shipment to Ukraine, Russia threatened retaliation. Before the war, it even made vague nuclear threats if anyone intervened. Today, Russia is rendered mostly mute. The war isn’t over, but it already has been defanged. When Finland first began discussing NATO membership, Putin spokesman’s thundered, “It is obvious that [if] Finland and Sweden join NATO, which is a military organization to begin with, there will be serious military and political consequences.” Yesterday, after news that Finland was moving forward with an application, the Kremlin’s response was sad and pathetic: “We’ll have to rebalance the situation. We’ll have to make our Western flank more sophisticated in terms of ensuring our security.”
As for Ukraine’s new goodies from the West? Russia is essentially mute. And the floodgates have opened. NATO’s Eastern Bloc nations are all moving from Soviet-era equipment to NATO standard gear. Why waste the money to keep old equipment in deep storage? And NATO’s Western flank, including the United States, has entire armies worth of old equipment (like American humvees) being replaced by newer gear. Expect more and more of it to make its way to Ukrainian hands.
Still, that doesn’t mean everything. Mark Hertling, former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe discusses some of those logistical challenges in this thread.
Looking it up, an M1 Abrams tank mechanic goes to school for six months to learn to maintain it. Then, he or she goes to their unit, where they spend several years learning the craft under the watchful eye and guidance of non-commissioned officers with 10 to 20 years of experience. (We previously talked about why noncommissioned officers are so incredibly important.)
The training on those systems is long, and that’s just the baseline! Think of what you learned in college or trade school, and what you learned at your subsequent jobs. Full training is ongoing and takes years to master. And that’s on a $3 million tank! As Hertling puts it, “The T72 is an old Chevy; the M1 is a Ferrari.” One is easy to maintain; the other is a nightmare without proper training and equipment. In fact, the M1 is so complex, that it needs several different kinds of maintenance personnel to keep one running. And as Hertling notes, if you do it wrong, the tank’s engine and transmission can blow.
Let’s look at the Patriot missile defense system, which sure would come in handy in Ukraine.
With launchers and radar (all of which would be a new Russian military priority to destroy) 60 missiles would cost $10 billion, or an initial startup cost of $33 million per missile. And once they’re launched, that’s it. A T-72 costs $500,000 to 1.5 million per copy. An M1 costs $2.5 to 9 million, all depending on how it’s kitted out. Ukraine, in total, has received a little over $2 billion in U.S. military aid.
Financially, Ukraine could outfit entire tank regiments for the cost of a Patriot system. But let’s say, “Give Ukraine anything it wants, regardless the cost!” The world doesn’t work that way, but sure, let’s make that assumption.
A Patriot operator undergoes 20 weeks of training. Once again, that’s just the baseline. Soldiers then go to their units and spend years, if not decades, perfecting their craft. But as always, pressing the button to fire is the relatively easy part. It’s maintaining the equipment that is the real challenge. A Patriot system repairer has a 53-week advanced training. That’s a full year! And I keep repeating this because it’s true—that’s the baseline. That’s just good enough to get placed in a line unit where NCOs with 10 to 20 years of experience continue the training.
It would be literally impossible for Ukraine to operate and maintain this level of complex hardware anytime within the next year, absent a “foreign legion” of experienced Patriot operators and maintainers to run the systems. I’ll assume that’s not a realistic option.
Now imagine the maintenance requirements for aircraft.
I’ve already written about systems in NATO stocks that could immediately be put to use by Ukraine. There is a lot, including over 1,000 T-72 tank variants, artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, and—just as important—fuel and ammo compatible with their existing army. Even planes! Though they are nowhere near the game-changer people think they are.
But Ukraine stopped Russia dead in its tracks and began to roll them back with simple, infantry-borne weapons like anti-tank and anti-air missiles. And all those hundreds of thousands of reserves in western Ukraine? They need helmets, body armor, and vehicles to transport them. I get that body armor is not sexy, but anything that allows more Ukrainians to engage in the field is worth its weight in gold, and is far more efficient use of resources than expensive high-end military gear.
This commercial system from UARM costs $1,260. Outfitting their entire reserves of 300,000, plus their 70,000 territorial defense force (TDF) members, would cost $466 million. Heck, there is a waiting list to join the territorial defense forces. Rounding up to $500 million would provide body armor for another 30,000. More, likely, with volume discounts. The more TDF Ukraine has, the more regular army units are available to go on the offensive.
This stuff isn’t as exciting and sexy as MiG-29s, I get it. But that’s the kind of gear the United States and allies have been sending to Ukraine, allowing it to have the battlefield impact it has had. (The U.S. alone has sent 45,000 sets of body armor and helmets.)
As for going on the offensive, armor, artillery, and Switchblade killer drones are the name of the game, and that’s exactly what’s starting to flood into Ukraine. Will Ukraine ask for more? Of course. Why not? They even asked Germany for submarines, which is laughably absurd. But Ukraine would be in a different place without the flood of Western armaments that have delivered exactly what Ukraine needed to turn the tide of the war.
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Friday, Apr 8, 2022 · 5:40:26 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Ukraine could well end this war with more armored vehicles than it had when it went in.
The rejoicing for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continues
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Good history was made in Washington, D.C., on April 7, 2022. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson became Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson, ready to take a seat on the highest court in the land when the new term begins in October. In the 233-year history of the Supreme Court, there have been 115 Justices, and 108 of them have been white men. In 1967, one barrier was broken with Thurgood Marshall’s confirmation. It took another 14 years for a woman, Sandra Day O’Connor to reach the bench. It took another 41 years for a Black woman to get there. Forty. One.
Which is just part of why the joy of this day is irrepressible. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who showed up just when he needed to during the confirmation hearings, to inject some humanity, some reverence for the moment, and some joy, reflected after the vote.
“Today is a day of healing for a lot of people. Today is a day of triumph for a lot of folks. And it’s definitely a day of celebration to see this glass ceiling shattered in what is a Jackie Robinson moment for America,” Booker said.
The middle students at Imani middle school in Houston, Texas, speak to that. “When you read about in books the amount of suffering that people have gone through who look like I do, the milestone, this is another milestone,” one of them said.
“It’s very inspiring,” seventh-grader Marley Brailey said. “It just shows that I can do this if I put my mind to it, that can be me. It’s just so inspirational that’s the best word that I can use to describe it.”
In Dayton, Ohio, Taylor Tyler is in her last year of law school at the University of Dayton and she wholeheartedly agrees. “It just means that as a black woman [I] have a place in law,” she said, while watching the confirmation with her fellow students. “Seeing someone that looks like us sends the message that you can do anything, you can do what you want. Just because you’re in a field that’s more dominated by people that don’t look like you, or don’t sound like you and talk like you, doesn’t mean you don’t have a place.”
But it’s in Georgia, where this moment was made possible by the hard work that got the Reverend Sen. Raphael Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff elected, that the celebration is sweetest.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, CEO of the King Center, Dr. Bernice King, called the confirmation a “powerful moment in the history of this nation.” She added, “What a reminder that change can come. Let’s embrace it and keep working for true peace.”
Stacey Abrams, whose Fair Fight Action helped mobilize so many voters in Georgia in 2020, applauded Jackson’s “intellectual rigor, compassion, and fortitude.”
“Congratulations, America!” she tweeted.
Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson tweeted: “I’m sure that Dr. King, who was assassinated 54 years and three days ago, beams with pride as our nation lives out the true meaning of its creed—that all men and women are created equal. I congratulate Judge Jackson and her family.”
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens wrote that Justice Jackson’s “confirmation is historic, and I am confident that she will be a diligent and thoughtful addition to our nation’s highest court. […] While we still have much work ahead of us to ensure this country lives up to its highest of ideals, today we take one more step toward a more perfect union.”
And Sen. Raphael Warnock tweeted after the vote, “Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
That Vice President Kamala Harris, who shattered her own glass ceiling—two of them!—presided over the vote made it that much sweeter. So is what she quietly did on the Senate floor. She motioned Sens. Warnock and Booker to her desk, and gave them each sheets of blank stationery from the Office of the Vice President, and an assignment: “Write a letter to a young Black woman in their lives to mark the historic day.”
Here’s how Sen. Warnock’s completed his assignment, a letter to his daughter, Chloé.
“Dear Chloé, today we confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote. “In our nation’s history, she is the first Supreme Court Justice who looks like you—with hair like ours. While we were voting on the floor of the Senate, a friend of mine—the Vice President of the United States—handed me this piece of paper and suggested I write a note to someone who comes to mind. By the way, she is the first Vice President who also looks like you!”
“So I wrote this note to say you can be anything, achieve anything you set your head and heart to do. Love you! Dad.”
Former Republican staffer sentenced to 12 years in prison for operating child pornography ring
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On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced Ruben Verastigui has been sentenced to 151 months in prison on a federal charge of receipt of child pornography.
A Washington, D.C., resident, 29-year-old Ruben Verastigui has spent his entire career in conservative circles, including as an aide to the Trump re-election campaign and stints as a digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference and the Republican National Committee.
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The Department of Justice detailed the evidence against Ruben Verastigui, and this case is extremely disturbing.
[Warning: Graphic description of the DOJ’s case is listed below]
According to the government’s evidence, from April 2020 through Feb. 2021, Verastigui was active in an online group devoted to trading child pornography and discussing child sexual abuse. Verastigui shared child pornography videos with another member of the group and made numerous comments about sexually abusing children. Verastigui indicated his preference for babies, saying they were his “absolute favorite,” and solicited another group member for videos of babies being raped. The other group member promptly sent Verastigui a video of a baby being raped, to which Verastigui responded enthusiastically. The other group member then sent Verastigui numerous other videos of child pornography.
Verastigui is just one of numerous Republican staffers to face child pornography charges in recent years. Chase Tristan Epsy, a lawyer for Alabama Gov. Kay Ivy, was arrested in 2021 for soliciting a minor.
As usual, it seems the howls of Republicans are pure projection.
And last, but not least, Verastigui was a featured speaker at the 2013 anti-choice rally in Washington, D.C.
Jan. 6 holds the potential to be a potent issue for Democrats and swing voters this fall
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If there’s one thing Democrats can learn from Republicans, it’s that a relentless focus on juicing their base is crucial for the midterms. What separates Democrats from Republicans, however, is that many issues they champion also resonate with a broad majority of the country.
Although some Democrats have been squeamish about the Jan. 6 investigation, it’s an issue the Democratic base feels passionately about. But it could also yield dividends with swing voters.
The Washington Post‘s Jacqueline Alemany sifted through a focus group conducted last month by Lake Research Partners with “new midterm voters, high-information voters and/or White voters who started participating in electoral politics after the 2016 election.” It’s fair to guess the group had a Democratic lean (though we don’t know for sure—they did not ask for party affiliations), and here’s what several of them had to say about accountability for Jan. 6, especially among lawmakers.
- “I just don’t get why you can support treason and then try to be part of the government that you were trying to overthrow,” said Gabby from Madison, Wis.
- “It’s treason,” said Mark from Chicago. “It makes me want to move to their district and vote against them,” he added.
- “I feel like for me, it’s just very frustrating and it’s a matter of, if these were Black people or minority folks in the U.S. the perspective would be completely different. It just feels like a double standard to me,” said Chandler, who didn’t specify where he lived.
- “Horrible. It’s horrible what happened. Horrible,” responded Sarae from Baltimore. “I am frustrated, angry. I want to vote, because I want the right person to win and make a change in the world moving forward for my child and for my child’s child, because it’s scary.”
I’m willing to bet that, for many Democratic voters, accountability for Jan. 6 is imperative. They want the probe, they want the evidence to come out, and ultimately, they would like to see heads roll—particularly those of the planners and inciters. Fortunately, the bipartisan panel is conducting an aggressive investigation that hasn’t pulled any punches so far. That needs to continue because Democratic base turnout is critical in November.
Swing voters, or at least Trump-to-Biden voters, are a bit of a trickier nut to crack. Listening to the most recent The Focus Group podcast by The Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell, it’s clear that Trump-Biden voters are both reality-based and pretty well-informed about Jan. 6 (in contrast to the more deluded takes from many GOP base voters). Remember, these are mainly Republican-identified voters who cast a ballot for Trump in 2016 and then switched to Biden in 2020 because Trump was just that bad.
Asked about Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, one woman offered, “I think some of it had to do with Trump inciting the extremists. And I think that his language, the words he used, his rhetoric was encouraging to those people who were on the far right to go and do what they did.”
Here’s another woman: “One of the reasons I didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 is because he throws fuel on the fire, and is very inciteful and instigating in his language and responses, and I think all of that was just a perfect storm. … But I would say that it was Trump’s lack of action that would ultimately be responsible because he could have stepped up and said, Hey, no, guys, this isn’t okay. And he didn’t. He basically gave them go-ahead to be violent and attack the Capitol.”
A male voter: “I’d lay the blame at Trump’s feet. Beginning in early 2020, he started laying the groundwork for the election being fraudulent with no basis in reality. … Anybody who’s paying attention, who’s honest with themselves, how can you not blame him? If not the entire set up, the fact they came right from a rally he was at to the Capitol. I mean, you’re just not paying attention if you can’t draw the line between those two, literally and figuratively.”
Pretty good, right? Trump-Biden voters clearly get it, and they rightly lay at least some, if not all, of the blame at Trump’s feet. Much like Biden’s competent handling of Ukraine, Jan. 6 seems to be an issue that helps reaffirm their decision to reject Trump in 2020. Thus, these are voters Democrats would like to engage again in November.
The problem is, according to Longwell, nearly everyone in this group of voters says “it’s time to move on from Jan. 6,” and they don’t have much faith in the congressional committee.
One woman: “They should spend their time and effort doing something else than figuring out who’s to blame for something that is way in the past.”
One man on the Jan. 6 panel: “Is it still going? I thought it was over.”
Another woman: “I don’t trust it because it’s yet another committee, commission, whatever…” In so many words, she said it would likely devolve into partisanship even though it’s technically bipartisan.
So Jan. 6 accountability is a tougher sell to this group. Most of them felt like the Jan. 6 panel was a wasted effort, didn’t exactly trust it, and wanted to move on for one reason or another.
Still, my overall takeaway for these voters is that reminding them of Trump’s corruption and his continued grip on the GOP is a very worthwhile endeavor. From Jan. 6 to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, these Trump-Biden voters genuinely feel good about their decision to vote against Trump.
The good news is: The Jan. 6 panel is actually doing pretty damn good work at a rapid pace. Headlines around the probe, criminal referrals, prosecutions, and court rulings naturally keep the issue percolating. Democratic voters crave seeing that, and swingy voters who are at least minimally paying attention will be continually exposed to Trump’s crimes one way or the other.
But the Democratic sweet spot for reaching swingy voters on Trump/GOP corruption is likely the issue of Ukraine, which very clearly isn’t in the past and most certainly isn’t a waste of time. Indeed, it’s both urgent and existential, and Trump-Biden voters have expressed disgust about Trump’s recent appeals to Putin. Reminding swing voters why Trump and his dominance of the Republican Party continues to be so dangerous is precisely where the term “Trump-Putin axis” could be such a great attack line for Democrats.
Ultimately, Democrats need base turnout with a sliver of Trump/GOP defections sprinkled on top. Jan. 6 continues to provide openings in both respects.
New York AG Letitia James asks judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court
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Donald Trump isn’t complying with a court order to turn over documents and should be held in contempt of court, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a filing Thursday.
“Mr. Trump should now be held in civil contempt and fined in an amount sufficient to coerce his compliance with the Court’s order and compensate OAG for its fees and costs associated with this motion,” the filing argued. James is asking for $10,000 a day or another amount state Judge Arthur Engoron considers “sufficient to coerce his compliance.”
RELATED STORY: Trump ordered to testify in New York state investigation
At issue are documents James is seeking from Trump as an individual. His lawyers argue that the documents are in the possession of the Trump Organization, which has a different deadline for turning them over. But according to James, Trump is “highly likely to have been in possession, custody, or control of numerous documents” she’s seeking, and didn’t explain what he did to look for them before insisting that only the Trump Organization would have had them.
Trump had an early March deadline, which James’s office extended to March 31. But on March 31, Trump’s lawyers responded with a list of 16 objections to the subpoena rather than with the documents themselves, a move that James described as “more delay and obfuscation.” Trump attorney Alina Habba responded, “We are prepared to adamantly oppose the frivolous and baseless motion filed by the Attorney General’s office today.”
Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka have also been ordered to testify in the same investigation, but they are appealing. Eric Trump, who was already deposed, repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
James is conducting a civil investigation into Trump’s business practices, including whether he valued his properties differently according to what helped him financially at any given moment, inflating their values when he wanted a bank loan and depressing them when it came time to pay taxes. On Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said his criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices is continuing despite the resignation of two prosecutors, one of whom said Bragg was killing that investigation.
If Trump’s claims about his own wealth are true, a fine of $10,000 a day should be nothing. But 1) Trump’s claims about his own wealth have been shown to be seriously exaggerated, and 2) it would still be fun to watch him forced to fork over $10,000 a day.
RELATED STORIES:
Trump’s accounting firm says they can no longer represent his organization, calls data ‘unreliable’
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Letitia James must have Trump scared: He’s suing to kill New York attorney general’s investigation
Idaho judge scolds Ammon Bundy before jail sentence, saying he needs to be 'held accountable'
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Ammon Bundy is headed off to Ada County jail after he thoroughly ticked off an Idaho judge. Bundy was convicted in March for an April 2020 trespassing charge at the Idaho Capitol Building. He was given community service, one year of probation, and a $3,315 fine.
But Bundy had to Bundy. He submitted to the court that he had fulfilled his 40 hours of public service—by working on his own campaign for Idaho governor.
RELATED: Ammon Bundy says he’s leaving Republican Party in order to take over Republican Party
According to KTVB, Judge Annie McDevitt said, “The whole point of pubic service is to give back to the community in ways that do not serve yourself.”
Ada County Prosecutor Whitney Welsh called the Capitol protest “our own little mini January 6” and showed a video of Bundy threatening two law enforcement officers, telling them he will find out where they live, saying, “I’ll come after you, each one of you personally.”
Buh-bye.
The horror of Bucha finally shakes Russia trade bill loose from Senate Republicans
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Senate Republicans apparently decided that while they can be on the wrong side of history when it comes to voting for the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, they need to shake off their growing reputation as the party of Putin. The stories and images that emerged this week of Ukrainian corpses in the streets, of mass graves, of executions and rampant destruction in Bucha increased pressure to finally force action.
After three weeks of obstruction, Republicans finally allowed a vote to revoke permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus and to codify the gas and oil bans President Joe Biden had already imposed. When they decided to let it happen, they did so unanimously.
The House then moved quickly to pass both. For three weeks, the Senate has been wrangling over Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) objections to the reauthorization and expansion of the Global Magnitsky Sanctions that were included in the bills.
The 2012 Magnitsky Act imposed sanctions on Russian officials believed to be responsible for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who exposed corruption among high-level government officials. Since then, the law has been expanded to allow the White House to impose visa bans and sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world it deems responsible for “gross” human rights violations and acts of significant corruption. The bill from the House expands sanctions and travel bans to individuals who are responsible for “serious” human rights violations, and that’s what caused Paul’s objections. He succeeded in getting the language changed back to the original. Mostly, he succeeded in creating a three-week delay.
Once that objection was negotiated away at the end of last week, there were more unspecified obstacles from other senators, presumably Republicans, that remained undisclosed. One of the sweeteners they added for Republicans was passing a lend-lease program to expedite the provision of U.S. military hardware to Ukraine. President Biden can already use his executive authority to provide materials under the Arms Export Control Act, but this bill creates some waivers of requirements in the law to make the process more efficient. The House did not act on that before leaving for recess Thursday afternoon.
With passage of the PNTR bill, Russia and Belarus join Cuba and North Korea as the only countries denied normal trade status. It will result in higher tariffs for their products, and directs the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office to work with partners in the World Trade Organization to get them to also revoke favored nation status for Russia and suspend its membership in the WTO.
The oil embargo bill codifies the ban Biden had already enacted on oil, gas, coal, and other petroleum products, but requires that if the embargo is going to be lifted, the president certify to Congress that Russia has negotiated an agreement to withdraw troops from Ukraine, end hostilities, poses no threat to any NATO member, and recognizes Ukraine’s total sovereignty and the right of its people to freely choose their own government. Congress could reject that certification. The PNTR bill also includes these certification requirements for Russia and Belarus to regain normal trade status.
Those bills are headed to Biden.
The House, meanwhile, spent Thursday re-passing those bills so they could go on to the president, and passing a $55 billion package to provide more COVID-19 relief for restaurants and other small businesses that are still struggling because of the pandemic.
The biggest chunk of the package, $42 billion, would go into the existing Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a grant program created in the American Rescue Plan. Out of the 300,000 restaurants and bars that tried to get grants from the program last year, only about one-third secured help. The other $13 billion in the bill would go toward other types of small business, particularly entertainment venues and travel-related businesses.
The House is reportedly looking at funding clawed back from fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans and grants to pay for it. Senate Republicans, who have the power to kill it, are skeptical.
With that done and Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed to the Supreme Court (YAY!!!!), Congress left Washington for two weeks. Since Capitol Hill is in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak reaching from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and through the House to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), it’s probably a good thing they’re all getting away from each other. Ironically, they left with the latest COVID-19 supplemental bill still languishing in the Senate.
Ukraine update: 'This is an evil that has no limits'
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On Thursday evening, Ukrainian officials announced that, in anticipation of major battle in the area, they were evacuating a broad swatch of eastern Ukraine. Residents in a number of cities and towns were urged to show up at bus stops and train stations. From there, they would be taken out of the conflict zone and delivered to Kyiv or other locations where they would be safe.
On Friday morning, Russia bombed the train stations in at least four locations. At least 35 people, gathered with a handful of their belongings, seeking to escape the invasion, were killed on the station platform at Kramatorsk. How many have died in other locations is still unknown.
Informed of this latest tragedy, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy replied in a way that captured the whole nature of the last 43 days of this invasion: “Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield,” said Zelenskyy, “they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits.”
It was Ian Fleming’s arch-villain Auric Goldfinger who uttered one of the most memorable lines in fiction, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” When it comes to missiles and bombs directed at civilian targets, Russia is far past those bounds. What they’re doing is something that goes beyond even the terrible label of war crime. It is war crimes as a strategy. It blows past depraved indifference into the realm of cold and calculated malevolence.
While the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol might have been the most visible instance, there are multiple towns and cities where Russia has bombed or shelled every hospital and medical facility. They’ve fired missiles directly into schools and kindergartens. They’ve targeted water plants and electrical supplies. As Russia has done in so many places before, they relentlessly targeted civilian homes. Perhaps most odious of all, they deliberately sought out locations marked as shelters, those places where frightened people huddled together when the air raid sirens sounded, and struck those locations with bombs and missiles.
Terrible things happened in World War II, where governments—including, and perhaps even especially, the United States—resorted to widescale bombing of cities in an effort to reduce an enemy’s ability to continue the war. Millions of dumb munitions were dropped in places like Dresden in the hopes that some would find their targets, and the knowledge that many would end human lives. This isn’t World War II, and that’s not what this is about.
This is directed artillery fire and precision-guided munitions that have been deliberately targeted to cause the most pain, the most death, the most ongoing harm, to civilians. It’s a strategy to deprive people of their homes, of their health, and where if fails to take away their lives, of anything that might make those lives tolerable. What makes it far more terrible is that if Russian forces were actually seeking to limit their strikes to military targets, and to hit civilian areas only when they were intermingled with military equipment, they could. The Russian military didn’t just choose not to do that, they chose to do the opposite. They chose to preferentially attack civilians and civilian infrastructure.
It is a malignant strategy. A despicable strategy. One for which sufficiently vile adjectives do not exist. It’s little wonder Russian soldiers are engaged in horrendous crimes as individuals when their leadership is showing them that causing pain and suffering is the goal.
Yes, it’s war. Terrible things happen in war. Etc. Etc. That doesn’t make Russia’s actions any more tolerable or acceptable. What is clear is that any end to this invasion that doesn’t see the Russian military and civilian leadership, as a whole and as individuals, answering for these crimes, is unacceptable.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 · 1:06:54 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
How horrific can an image be without showing any bodies? This horrific. (Hopefully Twitter will put a filter over this, but I can’t guarantee). Every item on these bricks tells an awful story. A story of frightened families looking to get away, and of a malevolent force that destroyed them for no reason.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 · 1:20:33 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
At least one S-300 system has been delivered by Slovakia. It was seen traveling along rail lines in Ukraine yesterday, but reporters who spotted it kept quiet. Just in case.
These are older, but still capable, systems, somewhat on par with the Patriot missile batteries familiar during the Gulf War. They’re a bit less capable of taking down missiles than the Patriot, but they have a greater range and they’re familiar to Ukrainian operators and technicians.
A quick look at the radar tower that goes with this system may make it seem that they’re somewhat less mobile than other systems, but the S-300 can supposedly be ready to go at a new location in as little as 6 minutes.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 · 1:34:46 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
MSN explains the “filtration camps” where Ukrainians kidnapped from Mariupol and other areas under Russian occupation are sent.
“The filtration camps, described as large plots of military tents with rows of men in uniforms, are where deported Ukrainians are photographed, fingerprinted, forced to turn over their cellphones, passwords and identity documents, and then questioned by officers for hours before being sent to Russia. … Ukrainian officials say more than 40,000 people have been forced into Russia against their will since last month.”
This is a term that goes back to World War II, when the Soviet Union held millions in such camps and used them for relocating whole populations, including from areas of Ukraine. They were also used during Russia’s two wars in Chechnya, where at least 200,000 people were relocated starting with time in these camps.
By the statements of Russian officials, at least 430,000 people have been exfiltrated from Ukraine to Russia.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 · 1:36:28 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Russian officials making certain that, should any external media clips sneak over the new iron curtain, Russian citizens aren’t concerned by all those dead children and civilians.
Morning Digest: Tennessee court blocks GOP's new state Senate map for a very unusual reason
This post was originally published on this site
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
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Leading Off
● TN Redistricting: A panel of three state court judges has blocked Tennessee’s new state Senate map from being used this year for violating the state constitution, though the court allowed new districts for the state House to take effect. The judges ordered that lawmakers “remedy the constitutional defect” in the Senate map by April 21 and extended the candidate filing deadline from April 7 to May 5, though Republicans say they plan to appeal.
In theory, a remedy ought to be extremely simple. At issue is an unusual provision in the state constitution that requires Senate districts in the same county to be numbered consecutively. However, in the map that the Republican-run legislature passed in February, the four districts contained either wholly or partly within populous Davidson County—home of the state capital of Nashville—are numbered the 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st, so you can see the problem.
This isn’t, however, an arbitrary or meaningless requirement, as law professor Quinn Yeargain, an expert on state constitutions, explains in a fascinating thread. When Tennessee amended its constitution in 1965 to increase senators’ terms from two years to four, the state also staggered the chamber, meaning half of all seats are up for elections every two years, trading between even- and odd-numbered districts. Drafters therefore included the consecutive number provision to ensure that large counties would not go four years between Senate elections, and indeed, under the prior map, Davidson’s four districts were numbered in order, from 18 to 21.
It’s not clear why the Republican lawmakers who crafted the new Senate map chose to violate this rule, as it’s hard to discern a reason why they’d want an extra district in the Nashville area to go before voters this November (odd numbers are up this year): The 17th is safely red while the 19th and 21st are safely blue. Only the 20th, which Joe Biden would have won by a 56-42 margin, is potentially swingy, but it won’t be up until 2024. Given the GOP’s intent to appeal the ruling, though, there’s likely some motivation behind the decision.
In the same case, plaintiffs had also asked the court to block implementation of the new map for the state House on the grounds that it splits too many counties, but the judges declined to do so. However, in a footnote, they noted that their ruling is only an “interim Order that does not bind the Panel” as it proceeds to a “full, expedited consideration of this case on the merits.”
Redistricting
● VT Redistricting: Republican Gov. Phil Scott has signed Vermont’s new legislative maps, which were recently passed by wide bipartisan majorities in the Democratic-run state legislature.
1Q Fundraising
- AZ-Sen: Mark Kelly (D-inc): $11.3 million raised, $23.2 million cash-on-hand
- NC-Sen: Cheri Beasley (D): $3.6 million raised, $5.1 million cash-on-hand
- NH-Sen: Donald Bolduc (R): $100,000 raised
- NV-Sen: Catherine Cortez Masto (D-inc): $4.4 million raised, $11 million cash-on-hand
- WA-Sen: Tiffany Smiley (R): $1.65 million raised, $2.65 million cash-on-hand
- IA-02: Ashley Hinson (R-inc): $950,000 raised, $1.8 million cash-on-hand
- NC-04: Clay Aiken (D): $440,000 raised
- WV-02: David McKinley (R-inc): $466,000 raised, $1 million cash-on-hand
- WY-AL: Harriet Hageman (R): $1.3 million raised, $1 million cash-on-hand
Senate
● IA-Sen: Former Rep. Abby Finkenauer is out with a poll from GBAO that gives her a wide 64-15 lead over retired Navy Vice Adm. Mike Franken in the June Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
● NC-Sen: Rep. Ted Budd’s allies at the Club for Growth have dropped a survey from WPA Intelligence that finds him outpacing former Gov. Pat McCrory 44-31 in the May 17 Republican primary, which is also well over the 30% Budd would need to avoid a runoff. That’s very different from the 31-25 McCrory lead that Budd’s own pollster, Meeting Street Research, found about a month ago. During the intervening time, however, an unaffiliated group called North Carolina Values Coalition released its own survey from Vitale and Associates that did have Budd ahead by a small 32-29.
Meanwhile, a Club affiliate called School Freedom Fund is spending at least $1.25 million on an ad campaign that portrays McCrory as a liberal enabler. The narrator proclaims that as governor, McCrory “put liberals in charge of the state textbook commission, appointing a Democrat [sic] majority.” The voiceover continues in histrionic terms, “His commission mandated textbooks written by radical woke professors pushing critical race theory, teaching our kids to hate America.” The spot doesn’t actually object to anything in those textbooks but instead uses a brief clip of a history professor the narrator says was a member of the commission explaining, “The Constitution is soaked in slavery.”
● OK-Sen-B: A new super PAC called Okieway is spending at least $475,000 on an ad campaign starring outgoing Sen. Jim Inhofe urging viewers to back his former chief of staff, Luke Holland, in the June Republican primary.
The senator spends the first third of the spot recounting his career before telling the audience, “Luke started in our mailroom and quickly rose to be chief of staff.” Holland is then shown sitting with Inhofe and asking his former boss, “We got to conserve the things that are best about America, wouldn’t you agree?” Inhofe unsurprisingly does, though he responds in the negative when Holland inquires, “You think I should pick up flying?” Inhofe concludes by imploring the audience, “This last time, I’d sure appreciate your vote … for Luke Holland.”
● PA-Sen: Honor Pennsylvania, which AdImpact says has already spent $9.8 million for rich guy David McCormick ahead of the May 17 GOP primary, is running a new commercial touting him as someone who will “stand up to Joe Biden.”
Governors
● HI-Gov: Democratic Rep. Kai Kahele says he’s still considering whether to join the open race for governor but did not provide a timeline for when he’d reach his decision, merely telling Civil Beat’s Chad Blair that he’d let him know “if I do decide to run.” Blair, though, writes, “Word on the street is that that announcement will come in early May shortly after the Legislature adjourns.” Hawaii’s filing deadline is two months away.
● OH-Gov: Former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley’s new spot for the May 3 primary stars Ohio’s most prominent Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown. “As the mayor of Dayton, Nan Whaley put workers first, focusing on manufacturing, attracting investment and jobs with decent wages,” says Brown. “Nan led her city through crisis after crisis, bringing people together, never dividing them.”
● WI-Gov: Fight for Wisconsin, which supports businessman Kevin Nicholson, has publicized a poll from Remington Research Group that shows him trailing former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch 42-29 in the August GOP primary. The memo did not include numbers testing state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, an election denier who entered the race in February; instead it released a matchup that includes businessman Eric Hovde, who has not announced a bid, and showed him in third with 4%.
The PAC argues that this poll shows the primary has “has significantly tightened just within the last two months,” but it didn’t release any earlier numbers from Remington to make that case. Instead, the group referred to a January survey from WPA Intelligence that had Kleefisch up 59-8 to make its case for “a dramatic 38-point swing towards Nicholson,” a statement that violates a cardinal rule of polling analysis: Never directly compare polls taken by separate pollsters to find a trendline because every firm uses a different methodology.
Fight for Wisconsin also says this new survey was conducted following a “nearly $1 million ad buy” for Nicholson. That ad argues that, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Kleefisch just talk and do nothing, Nicholson is a man of action. The only thing the narrator actually points to Nicholson doing, though, is “organiz[ing] thousands of Wisconsinites to support our police, get kids back in school, and stop crazy teaching.”
House
● FL-22: Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Ben Sorensen announced Wednesday that he would compete in the August primary to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Ted Deutch. Sorensen joins a primary that includes Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz, who’d had the field to himself for a month, and commercial airline pilot Curtis Calabrese, a recent entrant.
● GA-06: Former state ethics commission chair Jake Evans’ new spot for the May 24 Republican primary features him standing in front of a jarringly bad green-screen image of the Supreme Court as the narrator proclaims that he’s “the only candidate who took the fight for President Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court, so only legal votes would count.” Evans was part of a 2020 amicus brief that tried to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mail-in ballots for an additional three days; what his ad doesn’t mention, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution does, is that his side lost.
Evans’ other commercial has a different narrator praising him as the one candidate who “defended our religious liberties against liberals in court, protecting a church’s right to its own property.” The AJC also explains that this is a reference “to a lengthy zoning dispute between an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention and the City of Clarkston.”
● IA-01: 314 Action, which is supporting Democratic state Rep. Christina Bohannan, has released an internal from Public Policy Polling that shows her trailing Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks by a tiny 43-42 margin. This is the first poll we’ve seen of the contest for this southwestern Iowa seat, which Trump would have carried 50-48.
● NC-04: The state AFL-CIO has endorsed state Sen. Valerie Foushee in next month’s Democratic primary.
● NC-13: Politico’s Natalie Allison reports that the Club for Growth has launched a $1.2 million ad campaign in support of law student Bo Hines ahead of the May 17 Republican primary for this newly drawn swing seat. The spot, which is almost identical to the one it’s currently airing for Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, tells viewers that Hines is Trump’s endorsed candidate, believes in term limits, “will never compromise on election integrity,” and opposes “socialist green energy schemes.”
However, not everyone in this suburban Raleigh district is as enamored with Hines as the Club and Trump. Several conservative activists tell Allison that they feel Trump made a bad call by backing Hines, whom she describes as a “Charlotte native who most recently resided two hours away in Winston-Salem,” thanks to his weak ties to the area. She adds that Hines’ team says he’s “in the process of moving” to the district and “intends to update his voter registration in time to vote in the upcoming primary.”
On the Democratic side, state Sen. Wiley Nickel has earned the backing of the state AFL-CIO.
● NM-02: Physician Darshan Patel announced late last month that he’d turned in enough signatures to advance to the June Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell, and the secretary of state has confirmed that he’ll be on the ballot. In mid-March, Patel lost the state party convention to Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez 80.4-19.6, but he argued that his total should be rounded up so he’d have the 20% needed to make the ballot without gathering petitions. A party spokesperson said at the time they’d leave the matter up to state election officials, but we never heard whether any decision was made.
● OK-02: Businessman Guy Barker, who is also the secretary-treasurer of the Quapaw Nation, has announced that he’s joining the busy June Republican primary for this safely red open seat in eastern Oklahoma.
● OR-04: Airbnb executive Andrew Kalloch’s new ad for the May 17 Democratic primary has him arguing, “The price of gas, housing, prescription drugs, soaring. The old way of doing things isn’t working.” Kalloch continues by telling the audience, “I’m running for Congress to bring a new generation of leadership that puts Oregon first, not the special interests.”
● TX-15: The first poll we’ve seen of the May 24 Democratic runoff is a Lake Research Partners internal for businesswoman Michelle Vallejo, and it shows her leading Army veteran Ruben Ramirez 39-29.
● VA-02: Former Rep. Scott Taylor announced on Thursday, which was the day that candidate filing closed in Virginia, that he’d support Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans’ bid to take on Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria rather than run again himself.
● WV-02: The National Journal‘s Erin Covey reports that two different outside groups are airing ads supporting Rep. David McKinley ahead of his May 10 Republican primary showdown with his Trump-backed colleague, Rep. Alex Mooney.
Covey writes that Defending Main Street, which is a super PAC set up all the way back in 2013 to stop anti-establishment candidates from winning GOP primaries (you can see how that went) has deployed $250,000 on an anti-Mooney buy, though a copy doesn’t appear to be online. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has launched what NBC says is a $160,000 campaign that praises McKinley for wanting to “increase oil and gas exploration on federal lands.”
Mayors
● Los Angeles, CA Mayor: The Los Angeles Times reports that billionaire developer Rick Caruso has already spent close to $7 million on TV advertising, as well as around $1 million more for digital ads, ahead of June’s nonpartisan primary, while none of his many rivals have aired their first TV spots yet. One of Caruso’s many spots touts him as someone who “won’t defund the police” but will instead ”invest in making L.A. safer with 1,500 new officers,” while another features a testimonial from former police chief Bill Bratton.
● Louisville, KY Mayor: Developer Craig Greenberg’s first TV ad for the May 17 Democratic primary features his wife, Rachel Greenberg, describing how the candidate survived a murder attempt on Valentine’s Day at his campaign office. “We are lucky that we made it and that everyone in that room was safe and can move forward together,” Rachel Greenberg says. “Many people that are struck by violence don’t have that luxury. Craig understands that.”