Ugh, I ran out of time to write an article this week, as I’ve been dealing with a sinus infection along with managing a massive email transfer project over the last few days. I have been able to put together my regular “Signals and Noise” section below, however. I’ll be back, hopefully at full strength, next Sunday.
Signals and Noise
Citing non-existent election fraud, former president Don Trump—who fomented an insurrection in 2021, dined with white supremacists and anti-Semites a few weeks ago, and is the frontrunner to win his party’s nomination for president in 2024—called for the suspension of the Constitution yesterday (“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”). Trump also sent a video of support to a group raising funds for Capitol rioters, declaring, “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning to use violence to prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden, which culminated in the events of 1/6.
Is this now-deleted Tweet from the House Judiciary Committee some sort of word game? Like, are we supposed to guess what these three have in common? Which one doesn’t belong? A round of FMK?
And from that same day two months ago, here’s Tucker Carlson defending Kanye West.
Ronald Brownstein writes for The Atlantic that the “role of white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point.” (Writes Brownstein, “Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under Trump who focused on domestic extremism, told me she believes the backlash—however belated—combined with the GOP’s disappointing performance in last month’s midterm elections, could mark a turning point….Yet others remain unconvinced that the GOP is ready to fundamentally break with Trump or ostracize the coalition’s overtly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic white supremacists and Christian nationalists. ‘I think what we are looking at is the entrenchment of extremism, and that’s what is so worrisome,’ Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told me.”)
William Saletan of The Bulwark catalogs all the ways Republicans have tried to avoid criticizing Trump for eating dinner with anti-Semites.
A must-read reality check, by A.B. Stoddard, of The Bulwark: “Yes, He Will Burn It All Down” (“Republicans are behaving as if Trump will take the hint, react appropriately to the roast they have coordinated, and go away. Team Normal even seems to think they can create a virtual smoke-filled room and convince the other potential 2024 contenders to keep the field small so Trump can’t win the nomination with a plurality of the vote like he did in 2016. Given what they have experienced since 2015, and what they have consented to, why do Republicans think this can work?”)
“The greatest danger in American politics is not recognizing that there are great dangers. The same people in 2015 and 2016 were confidently asserting Donald Trump could never, ever under any circumstances win the Republican nomination, and there were never any circumstances where Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton… I know that the Republicans who right now are acting very bold and the donors who are acting very frisky – as Trump starts winning primaries, they will bend the knee, they will break, they will fall, they will all come back into line.”—Veteran Republican campaign strategist Rick Wilson
The White House’s 2023-24 strategy: Make the extremist elements of the GOP the faces of the Republican Party.
President Biden requested and the DNC approved a new presidential nominating schedule. According to the new plan, South Carolina will hold a first-in-the-nation primary on the first Saturday in February followed by New Hampshire and Nevada the following Tuesday. Georgia would vote a week later, followed by Michigan two weeks after that. Kicked to the curb: Iowa, which has only picked the Democratic winner of an open-seat presidential election once (Barack Obama, in 2008). Iowa and New Hampshire intend to defy the plan. It remains unclear if Republican state elections officials will go along with Democrats’ plans.
Congress is back for its December lame duck session. Bills up for consideration: A federal same-sex marriage law [Actually, it got PASSED: Here’s Vox on the bill’s shortcomings], reforms to the Electoral Count Act (important since Trump is running for president again), a year-long appropriations bill, a potential debt ceiling hike, funding for Ukraine, a defense appropriations act, and an assault weapons ban (which is almost certainly doomed.) The Senate probably doesn’t have enough time to clear all of this, so some bills will need to be combined with others if they hope to pass . Complicating this is the looming Republican take-over of the House, which will make many of these bills hard if not impossible to pass in the new year.
It looks like there’s momentum to enact a year-long appropriations bill rather than a continuing resolution that would kick the funding issue to the new Congress. Apparently no one trusts a Kevin McCarthy-led House to get a year-long bill passed, including McCarthy himself. (One Republican senator told Politico they don’t want to hand McCarthy a legislative grenade with the pin already pulled.)
Still uncertain: If McCarthy has the votes to become Speaker.
The new House Democratic leader is Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Democrats want to revive the pandemic-era child tax credit.
The
potentialaverted rail workers strike has Democrats tied up in knots. President Biden asked Congress to ratify the deal his administration cut between the workers and the railroad companies. That deal, however, only allows for one day of paid leave. The House amended the deal to allow for seven days of leave, but despite interest from Republican senators Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio in boosting paid leave to a week, there weren’t enough Republican votes to break the filibuster in the Senate. Progressive pro-labor Democratic senators are unhappy with the bill yet most were unwilling to break with Biden and set in motion a strike that could cripple the nation’s economy at a time when shipping demands are high. The Senate ultimately approved Biden’s deal 80-15, with several Democrats voting no. An amendment to increase the number of paid-leave days to seven failed despite receiving a majority of votes(!), including six Republicans. (The only Democrat to oppose the amendment? I’ll give you a hint: His initials are JM and he’s from WV.)Kevin McCarthy wants a committee to investigate the committee that investigated the 1/6 insurrection. McCarthy sent a letter to the panel telling them to preserve all their records—a step already required by law—
and not take any of their documents with them when they leave office.In a TruthSocial post, Don Trump has confessed that he took documents from the White House. (“When will you invade the other Presidents’ homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?”) BTW, the National Archives has confirmed that no living former president took documents with them upon leaving the White House.
Trump wants Kari Lake installed as governor of Arizona even though Lake lost her election. No credible accusations of voter fraud have emerged.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, the election-denying Cochise County Board of Supervisors is refusing to certify the results of their county’s election to protest Lake’s “alleged” defeat. But if they actually follow-through on their threats, their withheld votes would hand the statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction race to the Democrats and flip their congressional seat from Republican to Democrat, which would further cut into Kevin McCarthy’s narrow House majority.
The MyPillow guy is running for chairman of the RNC against Ronna McDaniel. I don’t think he’ll win, but what happens when he loses?
And Amanda Carpenter of The Bulwark raises a great question: If Ronna McDaniel has presided over Republican losses in 2018 and 2020 and a major underperformance in 2022, how come she’s cruising to another term as head of the RNC?
Not a great look when a candidate in a post-Election Day run-off election in Georgia has to declare, “I’m a resident of Georgia.” Also: During an interview with CNN, Georgia’s Republican Lieutenant Governor stated—after waiting almost an hour in line to vote—that he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Herschel Walker and left his ballot blank.
Following the 2022 midterms, half of all states will now have veto-proof state legislative majorities.
Meanwhile, Reid Wilson of Pluribus reports the number of districts where racial or ethnic minorities make up the majority or near-majority of the population has dropped even though those groups account for almost all of the United States’ population growth in recent years.
Nate Cohn of the New York Times found a disturbing trend for Democrats in the 2022 election: Turnout among Black Americans has continued to fall from Obama-era highs.
In Alaska, 8 of the 11 members of the Republican caucus in the state senate have formed a majority coalition with the 9 members of the senate’s Democratic caucus. (The three remaining Republicans are far-right Republicans.) If you recall, Alaska has ranked-choice voting, which may encourage this sort of bipartisanship.
Mark Leibovitz of The Atlantic writes in an excellent profile that everyone who knows Ron DeSantis knows he has a big problem: He just isn’t a personable guy. Some hypothesize Trump would have him for lunch in a debate.
Mike McIntire of the New York Times looks at a disturbing new trend: Protesters (and counter protesters) showing up at rallies with guns. In about 75% of the cases, the armed protesters support right-wing views. Important to note: While the protesters would ostensibly argue they brought their guns to the rally for the purpose of self-defense, the guns are also being used to effectively silence speech through intimidation. That sets up a clash between the First and Second Amendments.
The U.S. economy grew 2.9% in the third quarter despite worries about a looming recession.
And gas prices are back to where they were pre-Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some forecasters predict the nationwide average for a gallon of gas could drop below $3.00 by Christmas.
As China has instituted another series of lockdowns to counter a new surge in COVID cases, the biggest wave of civil disobedience to hit the country in decades has brought the police out in full force to squelch protests. (The Chinese government continues to pursue a draconian “zero-COVID” strategy that has pinched the personal finances of many citizens and put a damper on the national economy. Complicating China’s efforts to reopen is its failure to vaccinate millions of elderly citizens. Also fueling the protests: Scenes of large crowds at World Cup events.) Some protesters have called for the removal of Xi Jinping, a serious civil offense in China. Others have taken to brandishing blank sheets of paper to voice their disapproval yet avoid arrest.
Twitter is struggling to disseminate posts about the protests coming out of China. After Elon Musk took over, the anti-propaganda division within Twitter was scaled back. This has allowed (presumably) the Chinese government to spam Twitter with adult content linked to cities where protests have occurred, which effectively buries the news coming out of China. This proves how naive Musk is as a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist.”
Russia is using missile strikes to pummel Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, routinely leaving over half the country without electricity and heat as it heads into winter. Yet according to John Leister of AP, the mood in Kyiv is one of hope, resilience, and defiance.
The U.S. and NATO are scrambling to supply Ukraine with weaponry as supplies on both sides of the conflict are running short. One defense expert said a day of fighting in Ukraine is equal to a month of fighting in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports Russia is now firing 1980s-era cruise missiles stripped of their nuclear warheads at Ukraine.
Catherine Belton and Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post report economic sanctions are beginning to send the Russian economy into a downward spiral, with tax revenues from fossil fuels down 20% and consumer spending down 7%.
The Economist looks at a possible new nuclear arms race (complicated by hypersonic missiles and cyber weapons) taking shape between the United States and Russia and China.
With President Jair Bolsonaro refusing to accept the outcome of his nation’s recent elections, protests in Brazil have intensified, with protesters calling for the military to intervene to keep Bolsonaro in power. Bolsonaro has not condemned violence associated with the protests; instead, he has said their concerns are legitimate and called on protesters not to interfere with people’s travel.