Conservative Pundit Warns Just How Unhinged A Second Donald Trump Presidency Could Be
Lee Moran – February 3, 2022
Conservative pundit Charlie Sykes suggested people may look back “with a certain sense of nostalgia” at Donald Trump’s first presidency if he wins the White House again in 2024.
“For all their many faults, Pence, Barr, and even Giuliani came from a different era of American politics, with lingering (and rapidly fading) memories of the rule of law and a (more or less) decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” Sykes wrote.
“But in a second Trump term, they won’t be there,” Sykes warned. “It will be all Kayleighs, Bannons, Epshteyns, McEntees, Bonginos, D’Souzas, and Stephen Millers.”
“So consider this: In Trump 2.0, we may look back on Bill Barr, Mike Pence, and — God forgive me — Rudy Giuliani with a certain sense of nostalgia, because where are those lines now?”
Senators close in on ‘mother of all sanctions’ bill against Russia
Trish Turner and Allison Pecorin- February 3, 2022
A bipartisan group of senators is within striking distance of a deal on a bill that would impose crippling sanctions on Russia for its hostilities against Ukraine.
“We are finding the path forward very clearly,” said Sen. Jim Risch, top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, indicating that the White House and other key agencies were involved in the negotiations to agree on a deal ahead of any potential invasion by Russia, which has amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border.
Asked if a deal could be announced as early as Thursday, Risch said, “I’d have to say that’s possible,” though aides to three senators involved said it was unlikely.
Top Biden administration officials briefed members of Congress on Thursday about the escalating tensions in and around the former Soviet Republic. Lawmakers leaving the more than hourlong briefing in the Congressional Visitor Center said the gravity of the message from those top officials, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director Avril Haines, added urgency to their efforts.
“Collectively, what I heard made the case that this is more pressing, more timely, and that time in this regard, if we want to be preventative, is of the essence,” said Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J. Menendez, who is the chief architect of the sanctions bill along with Risch, added that he is “cautiously optimistic that we are going to get there.”
PHOTO: In this Dec. 7, 2021, file photo, Chairman Bob Menendez, left, and Senator Jim Risch, are seated during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to examine US-Russia policy, at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Alex Brandon, Pool via AFP via Getty Images, FILE)
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is involved in the bipartisan Senate talks, agreed, saying, “The briefing, I think, will accelerate the bipartisan sanctions package.”
Despite the closeness of a deal, differences remained among negotiators on the appropriate triggers for sanctions and when and how to penalize those developing the controversial, but as-yet-inoperable Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a project that would bypass Ukraine, taking with it crucial revenue.
“I am hopeful in the next coming days we can introduce a sanctions package that imposes sanctions now for the (Russian) provocation with post-invasion sanctions that will destroy the Russian economy as we know it,” said Graham, who like many Republicans after the briefing, said he thought a Russian invasion of Ukraine was now a matter of “when” not “if.”
Some Democrats and the Biden administration want to hold back sanctions, arguing that they are more powerful as a deterrent against Russian aggression.
“Deterrence is the idea that if you do X, we will do Y. If you put penalties in place in advance, at least significant penalties, you obviously take away the stick of deterrence,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
“I think it’s very important that (the) United States put a very strong sanctions package in place,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told CNN, adding that any sanctions need to be announced in advance “to have a deterrent effect.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said sanctions against Russia must be “much more forceful than they have been” but also insisted that any sanctions be imposed after an invasion.
“I think it’s really important for us to use the sanctions if the Russians strike,” Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday. “It is important because it’s where leverage is at maximum. If they do this, then we strike.”
Pelosi said that thinking is also in line with most U.S. allies.
“This is deadly serious,” Pelosi said. “So, they have to feel the pain, and it has to be felt right up to the richest man in the world: Vladimir Putin. Nobody knows what he’s going to do except for him.”
PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia) All-Russian Public Organization at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Feb. 3, 2022. (Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via Sputnik via Reuters)
Indeed, lawmakers have said the legislation, a bill Menendez said puts in place “the mother of all sanctions,” would contain a strong recommendation that Russia be kicked out of the global financial consortium known as SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. Based in Belgium, it connects more than 11,000 financial institutions and is used as a messaging platform for the transfer of funds around the world.
If that recommendation is included in the bill, the Biden administration would still have to take action to have Russia removed, an extreme action lawmakers have said is on the table.
The White House confirmed Thursday that it is in close consultation with senators but stopped short of endorsing any deal.
“We are in very close touch with members of Congress about this legislation, which I don’t think has been formally even proposed yet,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters en route to New York aboard Air Force One. “So we are in close contact and in conversations with them.”
Psaki, however, continued to express the administration’s support for post-invasion sanctions, saying that the “deterrent” approach of “the crippling economic sanctions package” and noting that the impact is already being felt in the Russian financial markets.
Still, a number of Democrats were moving closer to the GOP position that pre-invasion sanctions were a must even if the most serious sanctions are reserved in the event of an invasion.
“I think Putin and Putin’s Russia have already committed sufficient aggression against Ukraine justifying some sanctions,” said top Biden ally Chris Coons, D-Del. “I think we should hold back the most aggressive and most punishing sanctions for now as a deterrent because the whole goal here is to keep open some space for diplomacy and to deter aggression.”
Menendez and Risch have been briefing members of their panel this week. One member — Mitt Romney, R-Utah — told ABC News he met with Risch on Wednesday night and the smaller group negotiating the package is “making good progress.”
The legislation would include a measure authored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Ben Cardin, D-Md., modeled on the World War II-era “lend-lease” program, which would use existing presidential authorities to allow the administration to provide lethal military equipment to Ukraine to protect the population from a Russian invasion.
Members hope to move any sanctions deal — which, according to two aides involved in the matter, is still in the legislative drafting stage — to the Senate floor quickly, and Sen Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who recently returned from Ukraine and is part of the talks, told ABC News he had spoken earlier in the week with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who committed to bringing any bipartisan deal to the floor for a vote quickly.
And after Thursday’s high-level briefing, it is clear that members are ready to act swiftly.
Coons said he’s “very” concerned about the situation on the ground in and around Ukraine, adding, “It’s really hard to listen to all of that and not conclude that we need to do more.”
ABC News’ Mariam Khan and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022, in Conroe, Texas.
Donald Trump appeared at a rally in Conroe, Texas on Saturday. Conroe is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is described by Rolling Stone reporter, Steven Monacelli, who attended the rally, as “…one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states.”
According to Monacelli, Trump announced that rally was the biggest ever, that the fake media wouldn’t show the crowd size and, repeated a false claim he made in Arizona about a 29-mile-long line of cars coming to the rally. Only this time it was 30 miles long.
As reported by The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, Trump encouraged people to engage in massive demonstrations in jurisdictions pursuing criminal investigations against him over Jan. 6 and tax-related issues. “Minutes later,” Blake reported, Trump said that if he were reelected, he would consider pardoning Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
And he lashed out at the prosecutors from Georgia, New York and Washington, D.C., each of them African-American, who are independently investigating him. He called the prosecutors, who happen to be African-American, “racists and they’re very sick…, mentally sick.”
Trump told his cheering mob, if any of them “do anything wrong or illegal,” he hopes to see “the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.” As if one Trump-induced riot on Jan. 6 wasn’t enough.
Unlike the folks in Conroe, and Trump’s political toadies like Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, I think enough is enough. And, like Howard Beale, the fictional news anchor in the 1975 film classic “Network,” who implored his viewers to shout from their windows, I am “as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Beale prefaced one of the most famous lines in movie history with this: I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”
Is this a Howard Beale moment? Are you as mad as hell, as I am? If yes, what do we do about it, beyond lamenting, “enough is enough?”
Ron Johnson participated in a Jan. 4, 2021, session at a Trump hotel on the potential delay of the election certification
Bill Glauber – February 3, 2022
Ron Johnson was one of three Republican U.S. senators to attend a Jan. 4, 2021, meeting convened by MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell as loyalists to then-President Donald Trump sought to gather information and rally support to delay certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
The Washington Post reported that Johnson attended the meeting virtually, while Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-North Dakota, and Sen.Cynthia M. Lummis, R-Wyoming, were in a crowded conference room with others at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Post reported: “What the senators heard from a handful of presenters were some of the most fantastical claims among those alleging that the election had been stolen — including, according to Cramer, that the 2020 vote had been influenced by foreign powers and that proper investigation required gaining access to voting machines around the country.”
The meeting came two days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Congress reconvened and certified the election results. Johnson was among those who voted in favor of certification, after first indicating that he planned to join with 10 other Republican senators in objecting to the certification.
On Dec. 16, 2020, Johnson, then head of the U.S. Senate’s homeland security committee, held a hearing on the election.
“The senator’s hearing was part of what should be ongoing congressional oversight meant to transparently address that problem,” a Johnson spokesperson said. “Following the hearing, he and his staff continued to gather information and consider allegations, that is why he joined the meeting.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Lindell said: “I called the meeting, a few people came in and did a presentation on what they had for election fraud. And that was it.”
My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks before President Donald Trump’s campaign appearance Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, at the La Crosse County Fairgrounds in West Salem.
Lindell, who has pushed false conspiracies about the 2020 election, said he never spoke individually with Johnson but praised him.
“Ron Johnson cares about Wisconsin, cares about the United States and cares about our future,” Lindell said.
Asked whether he considered Johnson to be an ally, Lindell said:
“I believe he is an ally of the American people. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, he is for the people and wants to have fair elections going forward.”
The Post also reported the existence of a Dec. 18, 2020, memo circulated by Trump allies that advocated using data from the National Security Agency and Defense Department in an effort to show foreign interference in the election.
Johnson’s office was among those to receive the memo, the Post reported.
“Staff received the memo on January 13 and took no further action,” a Johnson spokesperson said. “The request from the Washington Post was the senator’s first knowledge of this memo, he has not seen it.”
Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, a Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate, issued a renewed call for Johnson to be subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a statement, Nelson said “reports about using NSA resources provide all the more reason to place him under oath and ask him what he knew and when he knew it.”
Kevin McCarthy says Trump foes Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger will ‘have a hard time ever’ returning to Congress
Brent D. Griffiths – February 4, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney speaks during a news conference with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on July 21, 2020.Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Kevin McCarthy refused to defend two of his colleagues after the RNC’s formal censure
He suggested that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger’s congressional careers are over.
“I think those two individuals will have a hard time ever coming back to Congress,” McCarthy said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Friday that Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger’s congressional careers are effectively over, declining to support them after the Republican National Committee’s censure.
“I think those two individuals will have a hard time ever coming back to Congress,” McCarthy said on Fox News.
McCarthy, who once counted Cheney as one of his top deputies, sounded bemused as he pointed out that Kinzinger is “quitting” and that Cheney “has a very low poll rating in Wyoming.”
The RNC formally censured the two Republicans on Friday, citing their participation in the House January 6 Committee as evidence of their apostasy against the party. The resolution refers to the committee’s “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” After intense criticism, RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel later clarified that the resolution did not intend to refer to the ransacking of the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.”
Unlike Kinzinger, Cheney is running for reelection in the face of a Trump-backed primary opponent. CNN reported that McCarthy has thus far declined to take a position on whether he would support Cheney. Traditionally, the party supports all incumbents in the event of a contested race.
GOP senators attended a presentation claiming foreign interference in the election and how to seize voting machines: report
Sarah K. Burris – February 03, 2022
Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND). Image via Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) revealed that Republican senators attended a meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, that pitched a plot to seize electronic voting machines. The meeting presentation also included false claims that there was foreign interference in the 2020 election.
The Washington Post revealed in an extensive report that President Donald Trump’s allies attempted to use NSA data to prove a stolen election. But buried in the piece was Sen. Cramer outing Trump and his allies for yet another attempt to pressure elected GOP members into handing him the election.
“Cramer and Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-WY) joined some two dozen others crammed into a ground-floor hotel conference room to discuss election fraud allegations, according to Cramer and an aide to Lummis,” the Post reported. “Participants recalled that [Sen. Ron] Johnson (R-WI) also attended, via videoconference. The details of the meeting, which took place two days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, have not been previously reported. The meeting was similar to a briefing held in a congressional office building the next day for members of the House.”
The presenters offered “some of the most fantastical claims” about the 2020 election, Cramer told the Post. It included the claim “that the 2020 vote had been influenced by foreign powers and that proper investigation required gaining access to voting machines around the country.
“They wanted to get the machines,” Cramer recalled. He told the Post that the presentation included claims of election meddling by China and Venezuela. He explained that there were a “lot of theories but not a lot of evidence.”
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told the crowd that they needed Republicans to delay the election certification so they could probe the results in key states.
“We were hoping that the senators would give it 10 more days to give it back to the states,” Lindell admitted to the Post. “We were in an anomaly in history. We still are.”
The meeting was just another piece of a long-running campaign by Trump and his allies to convince officials to step in to hand him the election. The relentless, weeks-long efforts came from “high-level U.S. officials,” the report said.
Self-proclaimed technical consultants and intelligence experts flooded officials with phone calls and meetings in a kind of coordinated pressure campaign. They largely focused on the House, because Trump has more loyal supporters, but they still needed at least one Senator to object. They got what they needed when Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that he would defy orders not to challenge the election.
Cramer said that there were several who reached out with what they claimed was “evidence,” attempting to persuade him.
“I didn’t know any of them,” he said. “I had never met them before in my life.”
Each of those “experts” attending pushed to get the voting machines for their own investigation.
“The whole point was getting a message to the president and the vice president on what they should be doing to stop the certification,” Cramer said, noting that the arguments weren’t compelling.
“Honestly, I was not impressed by these people,” Cramer confessed. He said he attended the meeting because his friend Mike Lindell asked. He also brought along his wife.
Johnson also confirmed that he attended the meeting remotely, saying he had a hearing about the election and wanted to “continue to gather information.”
Both Cramer and Johnson ultimately voted to certify the election on Jan. 6.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers didn’t just kill a bill to veto our vote. He stoned the thing
Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic – February 3, 2022
Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers during the opening day of the 2022 Arizona legislative session at the State House of Representatives in Phoenix on Jan. 10, 2022.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers has once again saved Republicans from themselves.
You remember that ridiculous bill to allow the Arizona Legislature to toss out our vote if our leaders don’t like the election results? The one that would kill the state’s wildly popular early voting program used by nearly 90% of voters? That would require that all ballots – all three or four million of them – be counted by hand within 24 hours of an election?
Well, Bowers on Tuesday assigned House Bill 2596 to committee.
In fact, he assigned it to every one of the House’s standing committees – all 12 of them, reports the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nathan Brown.
No one assigns bills to 12 committees
You assign a bill to one committee if you want it to pass. You assign it two committees or three even if you want to roughen up the road a bit.
You assign it to 12?
There’s a message in there from Bowers to Rep. John Fillmore, the Apache Junction Republican who dreamed up this abomination. And to his 15 far-right fellow legislators who co-sponsored the bill, including none other than Rep. Mark Fiinchem, who is hoping to be Arizona’s next secretary of state.
As a longtime Capitol reporter, Arizona Mirror’s Jeremy Duda, put it:
“I’ve never seen a speaker or Senate president kneecap a bill as aggressively as this,” he tweeted. “Triple-assignments? Sure. Been there. But this is Bowers killing the bill, chopping it up, setting the pieces on fire, then digging up the ashes and throwing them into the ocean.”
Bowers has kept up the fight since 2020
Bowers has been one of the few Republicans at the Capitol who declined to give in to the collective psychosis that has infected some of the baser portions of his political base – including a depressingly large percentage of the Legisalture – since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
He refused early on to entertain schemes by Finchem and others to overturn the election results or call into question the integrity of the vote absent actual facts.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” this Mesa Republican said in December 2020. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
While Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, was bowing to Team Trump and the Senate’s cuckoo squad by hiring an unqualified Trump supporter to conduct what she called an “independent” audit of the election, Bowers took a pass.
Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called Bowers in November 2020 to regale him about the many ways in which the election was stolen and to suggest that the Legislature choose its own electors.
One horrible voting bill down, 69 to go
Bowers told them to get lost.
“You are giving me nothing but conjecture and asking me to break my oath and commit to doing something I cannot do because I swore I wouldn’t,” he said, recounting the phone call to The Arizona Republic. “I will follow the Constitution.”
For standing on principle, Bowers was targeted by the Arizona Patriot Party for recall and Trump supporters cruised his neighborhood, using a loudspeakers to call him a pedophile.
Since then, his fellow Republcian legislators have introduced no fewer than 70 bills to “reform” our elections, the worst of them being Fillmore’s scheme to essentially take away our vote.
Now Bowers has made an unmistakable statement without saying a word.
Twelve committees?
12?
RIP, HB 2596. And good riddance.
One down, and 69 more to go.
Btw, who co-sponsored HB 2596?
Here is a list of Republican legislators who signed on as co-sponsors to Rep. Fillmore’s bill:
Reps. Brenda Barton of Payson, Leo Biasiucci of Lake Havasu City, Walter Blackman of Snowflake, Judy Burges of Skull Valley, Neal Carter of Queen Creek,
Joseph Chaplik of Scottsdale, David Cook of Globe, Lupe Diaz of Benson, Mark Finchem of Oro Valley, Jake Hoffman of Mesa, Teresa Martinez of Casa Grande, Jacqueline Parker of Mesa and Beverly Pingerelli of Peoria. Also Sens. David Gowan of Sierra Vista and Vince Leach of Saddlebrooke.
These are the people who wanted to give the Legislature the right to throw out your vote.
‘I am doing the devils work’ — Staff at Dem firm revolt over work for Sinema
Hailey Fuchs – February 3, 2022
Sen. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing for Shalanda Young, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, in Washington. (Bonnie Cash/Bloomberg via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Since the beginning of 2020, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s reelection campaign has paid the Democratic consulting firm Authentic nearly a half million dollars for digital work and list acquisition.
Inside the firm, staffers have revolted over the contract, expressing shock and agitation that a company that professes fidelity to a set of progressive values has worked alongside a lawmaker many believe are standing in the way of progress on those values.
“I am doing the devils work,” said one employee at Authentic of the work done for Sinema, according to internal union messages reviewed by POLITICO. “I feel sick about it tbh,” chimed another.
Faced with pushback from employees, management at Authentic, one of the Democratic Party’s more prominent firms, defended itself by saying their work for Sinema was important for maintaining a Democratic Senate majority, according to those messages. But the situation grew dire enough that employees, who are unionized, were told they could be removed from the Sinema account if they felt uncomfortable with it, per the union’s contract.
“The Authentic Union views Sen. Sinema’s recent actions to block voting rights legislation as an affront to their company’s values, which they’re proud of and committed to upholding,” Taylor Billings, organizing director of the Campaign Workers Guild, which represents Authentic’s union, said in a statement to POLITICO.
The revolt inside Authentic underscores the degree to which Sinema has found herself in the crosshairs of her own party during the Biden years. The Arizona Democrat has rankled some of the biggest powers in Democratic circles with her refusal to back key components of the president’s agenda, most recently a reform to Senate rules to allow elections reform legislation to pass by a simple majority vote. Top women’s groups have suggested they might withdraw their support if her position remained the same. One-time donors have threatened to back a primary challenger. Even Sinema’s own digital firm has struggled with keeping her as a client.
A spokesperson for Sinema declined to comment on the situation at Authentic and instead noted that the senator supports voting rights legislation but not eliminating the filibuster to achieve it. Authentic did not return requests for comment.
Started in 2018, Authentic’s clients have included the presidential campaigns for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Other names touted by the firm include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. The firm has also done work for groups that have been stymied by Sinema’s opposition. One of them, Patients for Affordable Drugs, has advocated for the administration’s drug pricing agenda, which Sinema pushed successfully to slim down. Another client is Voto Latino, a grassroots group that recently announced a six-figure ad buy for the 2024 primary season as part of a new campaign called “¡Adios, Sinema!”
Internal union correspondences obtained by POLITICO reveal a base of workers at Authentic sparring with its management over its business with Sinema. Employees broached the topic of the firm’s contract after the senator’s vote against raising the minimum wage to $15-an-hour, during which she offered an infamous thumbs down with an accompanying curtsy, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Leadership at Authentic responded by making it clear that the firm did not have plans to end the contract, the person said.
A Sinema spokesperson maintained that she did, in fact, support raising the minimum wage but opposed waiving a procedural hurdle preventing it from being included in last spring’s Covid-relief bill. She was one of eight Senate Democrats to vote that way.
In mid-January of this year — as the Senate was ramping up its consideration of voting rights legislation — an Authentic employee complained once again about the firm’s contract with Sinema. “What’s the point of us supporting a client who is the antithesis of what we claim to stand for,” the employee wrote in internal correspondence, which was shared with POLITICO on the grounds that the identity of the senders would not be exposed.
“Ugh, not a good look. I feel like we have clients who would consider leaving us if they realize we work for her…” said the same employee, who also expressed fears about being passed over for a promotion if they were to say no to working on Sinema’s account. The employee also complained that the senator’s actions were effectively “letting Jim Crow 2.0 become a reality” and questioned whether the senator would reconsider if “literally no one in democratic politics wants to work with her anymore.”
“For me, the bigger question is how long until we become known as the team behind KS and it impacts all of our reputations regardless if we worked on the account,” said another member of Authentic’s staff.
Yet another employee said that “it doesn’t seem like anyone is comfortable working on her account at this point.” Employees contemplated sending a formal letter and spoke of convening over Zoom, but it was unclear whether a letter was ever sent.
Leadership at Authentic has maintained that it would not end its work on behalf of the senator. At one point, Sinema’s team offered to meet with the firm’s CEO Mike Nellis along with three employees who worked on the account to discuss the senator’s vote. The employees declined the meeting. One said the question was not about whether the Senator was aligned with their values but about how the firm responds. Another said the situation was more about where the firm stands than about the Senator.
Since the beginning of 2020, Authentic has brought in $476,776.35 from Sinema’s campaign for list acquisition along with digital and fundraising consulting. The firm was paid $44,500 in the last quarter of 2021, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Authentic’s website still lists Sinema as a client.
Despite the money being spent on digital consulting, Sinema’s Senate campaign has struggled with grassroots donors. Even as her total fundraising hauls jumped year-to-year, her haul from donors that gave $200 or less in a given cycle shrunk between 2020 and 2021. Just over 2 percent of her nearly $1.6 million raised last quarter came from those grassroots donors.
How Putin Could Slam His Head and Tumble Into an Accidental War
Dennis Murphy – February 3, 2022
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
As President Joe Biden approves the additional deployment of U.S. military personnel to Eastern Europe, the world is obsessing over one question: Does Vladimir Putin actually intend to invade Ukraine?
The conversation in the media and among experts is dominated by figuring out what the hell the Russian president really wants. But the sad truth of the matter is that—at this point—what he wants may not matter.
The past few months have seen a complicated and dangerous dance of escalation and counter-escalation between Russia and NATO. Of the two, NATO has consistently offered off-ramps for the prospect of war. Britain, Germany, France, and the United States have continued their efforts to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. At the same time, NATO has remained firm on what it will and will not give up. President Biden will not allow Russia to permanently alter the security architecture of Europe.
Russia, for its part, has talked a good game. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it does not want war. Perhaps it doesn’t. But if that is the case, then Russia’s own actions have threatened to make the situation impossible, and rather suggested the contrary. Russia will not invade, unless it is provoked. Putin has loudly declared that the West is escalating the situation in Ukraine and that NATO must pay careful attention to Russia’s red lines. Dire warnings of a “complete rupture” persist, but is that really possible? Some, of course, have suggested that if Russia wants war, then it would have gone to war already. That may be some cold comfort to a few people, but it is almost certainly misplaced.
Ukraine’s stubborn refusal to retaliate and instead focus on shoring up its defenses and appeals to NATO are no doubt frustrating Moscow. If it wanted to start a war, Ukraine has proven a good defensive actor. If Russia wanted to strike a grand bargain, then an aggressive Ukrainian response would have been useful to them. It might have even granted them additional leverage in negotiations. Either way, Moscow’s actions have largely been fruitless. NATO will not surrender Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. Likewise, if Russia wanted to make Ukraine’s security situation unstable enough to make its ascension to NATO impossible, NATO has not been obliging.
This places Russia in a quandary. Every step Putin made signaled to the world that Russia is willing to solve the Ukraine issue by force if it doesn’t get what it wants. Though Russia may still claim to be open to diplomatic efforts, it is unlikely that the U.S. or EU will accommodate Russia’s claimed red lines. It could be that Putin still believes there’s a play he could make. so perhaps he may seek some soft commitment from Germany or France about NATO expansion. That too is unlikely to succeed.
This leads to a truly impossible, and undesirable situation. Putin may not have wanted war, but he has deliberately escalated the crisis in order to have his demands be treated with a greater degree of seriousness. If NATO will not back down under current conditions, then Russia will be forced to decide between a handful of options.
The first is to neither back down, nor to escalate. A neutral, do-nothing option. It may be pursued in the short term, but Putin will eventually have to go in one direction or the other.
Though unlikely, it is not impossible that Russia may choose to de-escalate in Ukraine. Unfortunately, it would require some symbol of concession from NATO. Otherwise, Putin has placed too much of his legitimacy on confronting NATO expansion. If he fails to succeed in his aims, then that would do considerable damage to him at home. In other words, backing down will harm Putin. That places him into a lose-lose situation.
That leaves the last option: escalation. If Russia wants war, it will pursue this option. But even if Russia does not want war, it may still choose to escalate if it believes that it might grant Russia some additional leverage in negotiations with NATO.
Russia could try another attempt to provoke an incident. There may be increased naval or air exercises that either walk the line, or outright violate, Ukrainian spaces. Or it could take a more indirect approach, such as another cyber-attack. The precise method they use is not that important, only that Russia could pursue escalatory action in the hope that NATO will blink and perhaps quietly back down from some of its Ukrainian commitments.
And when that fails, Russia will be even closer to stumbling into war.
With every escalation, more uncertainty is introduced to the Ukraine situation. If Russia sends in part of its navy to Ukraine’s territorial waters, what will the NATO ships in the Black Sea do? If they do nothing, that means Russia is poised to get away with more aggressive action in the future. If they attempt to stop them, then a shooting war breaks out at sea. The same principle holds in the air.
It may be tempting for NATO to pursue some zone of exclusion in Ukrainian airspace, but in order for that defense to be credible, NATO needs to be authorized to shoot down Russian jets. That alone would be a cause for war.
In the dance of escalation and counter escalation, Putin may have misjudged what he can get away with. A move he may choose in order to gain more leverage may, instead, be the spark that ignites a new European conflict.
Sometimes intent doesn’t matter. Even something as terrible as war can happen by accident.
Missouri parent who tried to ban books for being too sexually explicit faces molestation charges
Walter Einenkel, Daily Kos Staff – February 03, 2022
Ryan Utterback presenting the case to ban books for being too sexually explicit for young adults on Oct. 26, 2021.
A Missouri father who supported the banning of books—and even assisted in a book-banning presentation in front of a school board this past October—has been accused of a “felony charge of second-degree child molestation and a misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree domestic assault,” according to KMBC 9. Ryan Utterback, 29, faces a separate case that includes the “misdemeanor charge of furnishing pornographic material or attempting to furnish to a minor.”
The allegations against Utterback are pretty gnarly, and come just a couple of months after he held blown-up pages from the award-winning graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic that depicts author Alison Bechdel’s childhood growing up secretly lesbian, and her strained relationship with her father (and her discovery, shortly before his death, that he was secretly gay). Utterback stood by while Northland Parent Association president Jay Richmond spoke in front of the Northern Kansas City District Board of Education on Oct. 26, 2021. Reading excerpts from a series of LGBTQ-positive books, Richmond demanded to know why the school board was “promoting” these allegedly sexually explicit LGBTQ stories in school libraries.
According to the allegations against Utterback, while he was doing this he was also maybe not protecting the children he was around—from him. The Kansas City Star reports that back on Christmas 2020, at a family event, Utterback allegedly laid down and fondled a 12-year-old girl, then sat up and “grabbed her and rubbed her body against his.”
In another incident, Utterback and a 14-year-old girl went to get tacos together. At some point during the ride to get food, Utterback reportedly stuck his finger inside of a hole in the girl’s jeans and began rubbing her skin. The Star says the report against Utterback quotes the court documents saying “it felt uncomfortable and that she didn’t like it at all.”
The final “probable cause statement” alleges that his girlfriend’s daughter says Utterback frequently showed her pornographic videos on his phone, starting when she was 4 years old. The Courier Tribune puts her age at 6 years old now, so these allegations go back a couple of years.
On one occasion, Utterback showed her videos of him and her mom “naked having sex,” the probable cause statement said.
The Courier Tribune adds that the first of the pronographic video allegations seem to have been made in August of 2021:
“(The child) further stated that while Utterback was at (the victim’s) house, he would be sitting on the toilet going to the bathroom and he would call (the child) into the bathroom to get him items from within the bathroom,” reads the probable cause statement in that case. “While (the child) was in the bathroom with Utterback, (the child) was shown videos of individuals engaged in sex acts by Utterback from his phone.”
Kansas City LGBTQ advocate Justice Horn, who attended the school board meeting where Utterback and Richmond spoke, told NBC News, “The moral of this story is that book bans do not protect children. Moreover, the people pushing book bans are not protecting children, and every lawmaker should take note.”
Utterback is due in court on March 10.
You can watch Utterback and his fellow aghast parent present their reasons why certain books need to be banned at around the 19-minute mark in the video below.https://www.youtube.com/embed/nSbIljoCjoc?enablejsapi=1
You can watch some of the students responses to book banning, a month later, below.https://www.youtube.com/embed/I8hGg2lVHNI?enablejsapi=1
