That New Trump Phone-Call Recording Sounds Pretty Bad, Huh?
Shirin Ali – December 26, 2023
“If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.” —Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, on a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call with two Republican officials about not certifying their county’s presidential election results
It seems there’s a sequel to Trump’s infamous “perfect phone call.” Last week, the Detroit News published a recording of a November 2020 phone call Trump made to local Michigan Republican officials, pressuring them not to certify their county’s election results.
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel was also on the line, pushing Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, two GOP canvassers for Michigan’s Wayne County—which includes Detroit—to reject the certification minutes after they attended a canvassers meeting. Both Palmer and Hartmann did not sign the official statement of votes for Wayne County and later tried to rescind their votes in favor of certification but failed. In the end, Wayne County overwhelmingly voted in Joe Biden, with 68 percent of the vote.
While we did already know about this call—the basic facts of it came to light when Palmer testified to the Jan. 6 committee in 2021—the details of what exactly Trump and McDaniel said weren’t known until now.
In Palmer’s testimony to the House Select Committee, she said she didn’t remember exactly what Trump told her or if he had mentioned anything about Michigan’s election. In the newly published recording, however, Trump claims there were more votes in those counties than people, and that “everybody knows Detroit is crooked as hell.” Michigan’s election director, Jonathan Brater, said that was categorically false in a December 2020 affidavit, that in fact there were “fewer ballots tabulated than names in the poll books.”
The new details raise questions about whether Jack Smith could use this to strengthen his federal election interference case, or whether Trump could face state charges in Michigan, where officials have been conducting their own election interference investigation, similar to what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did in Georgia.
Former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb told Politico the phone call shows “the depths to which Trump personally participated in fraudulently pimping the ‘Big Lie.’ ”
Michigan did ultimately send a fake certificate to the National Archives and Congress claiming that Trump won the state’s 2020 election—and 16 Republicans face felony charges for signing on to it.
This phone call echoes the infamous conversation in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find “11,779” votes to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory—the one he’s defended as “an absolutely PERFECT phone call.” (Trump now faces 13 state felony charges for allegedly trying to overturn Georgia’s election results.) Then there’s the phone call Trump had with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, in which he also pressured the governor to claim there had been voter fraud so Arizona’s election results could be overturned in his favor.
Karl Rove, a former adviser for the George W. Bush administration, told Fox News that Trump’s actions on this Michigan phone call are “what we would call election interference” and that the former president could face a situation that is similar to what he’s currently dealing with in Georgia. Rove also speculated that McDaniel might face legal ramifications. “I think that was highly inappropriate.”
Step by step, Florida Guard inches toward becoming DeSantis’ personal army | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – December 25, 2023
The creeping threat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new State Guard has increased again, this time with the news that a special unit within the organization recently took lessons at a Panhandle combat training center on things like “aerial gunnery” and treating “massive hemorrhages.”
Gun training? “Massive hemorrhages”? That sounds ominous.
This is the same guard that was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization but has become increasingly militarized, according critics, including some former guard members. As we have said before, the big danger is that DeSantis will turn the State Guard into his personal militia. In a state that is already trying to squelch dissent and target vulnerable groups, that’s a scary prospect. This latest information only bolsters that fear.
Fleeing strongmen
That holds especially true in Miami. The push to give the governor what amounts to a personal law enforcement unit should ring some terrifying bells of recognition: Too many people here have had to flee countries run by authoritarians or strongmen who keep power through force.
The reason for the special training, which was reported by the Miami Herald, apparently is to allow DeSantis to use the guard, which reports only to him — a recipe for abuse — to stop migrants at sea. That’s a far cry from using the group to distribute hurricane relief supplies or help out an overworked National Guard.
That this is happening, though, can’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Florida’s governor has gone ever more extreme as he has watched his GOP presidential nomination hopes slipping away as Donald Trump’s have grown. His language has grown increasingly incendiary. He has described his plan to shoot and kill drug smugglers at the U.S. southern border using in bloodthirsty, B-movie terms: “We’re gonna shoot them stone cold dead.”
And yet his poll numbers keep going down. According to one recent Quinnipiac University poll, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has now pulled even with him for second place in the primary — both at a mere 11%. In February, DeSantis polled at 36%. Trump, despite his betrayal of the country that many Republicans once spoke against, now has about 67% support, with less than a month before the first primary votes will be cast.
Political points?
With the State Guard, Florida’s governor is no doubt hoping for a wave of people fleeing their country on the high seas so he can unleash his soldiers on them for political purposes. When the State Guard was revived last year by the Legislature at DeSantis’ behest, there was an actual surge of migrants in the Florida Keys, mostly from Cuba and Haiti. But since then, the surge has mostly dried up.
That makes no difference to the governor. Clearly, DeSantis wants to use the State Guard as a pawn in his fight to stay relevant in the primary by focusing on a sure-fire hit with Republicans: the evils of immigration.
It’ll be hard to go any lower than Trump has, though. He recently launched a particularly horrendous attack, saying that migrants crossing the southern border are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. Afterward, he insisted — in his usual attempt at manipulation — that any similarity between his words and those in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” manifesto — “All great cultures of the past perished only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning” — was simply all in our heads.
DeSantis’ push to revive the State Guard during his presidential run was political from the start and has only become more so. This latest weapons and wounds training is part of the progression toward a potential abuse of power in Florida that he has created with the full-on support of the Legislature. And we’re the ones who will be stuck with the results after he’s gone from office.
DeSantis delivers a political smackdown as Miami teachers union struggles to survive | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – December 25, 2023
Trashing labor unions, in particular teachers unions, has become a talking point for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the presidential trail. He told California Gov. Gavin Newsom during their Fox News debate that Democrats are “owned lock, stock and barrel, by the teachers union.”
What does that look on the ground, when laws DeSantis signed singling out some types of public-sector unions start to take effect?
The results may be upwards of 30,000 school employees being left without representation to bargain for better pay and working conditions.
The state’s largest teachers union, United Teachers of Dade, is close to decertification thanks to a new law that requires unions have at least 60% of union members pay dues, the Herald reported. The law — Senate Bill 256 — was a union-busting one-two-punch that not only raised the threshold for certification from 50%, but also prohibited unions from deducting dues directly from members’ paychecks. UTD, which represents teachers in the state’s biggest school district in Miami-Dade County, has gained 800 new members, but still failed to meet the state’s stringent requirements. In November, the Herald reported union membership was at 58.4%.
‘Right to work’
The Republican anti-union spiel usually leaves out the fact that Florida, unlike many blue states, is among 26 states that have “right to work” laws. That means workers cannot be forced to join a union and pay dues as a condition of employment. In other words, teachers and school staff do not have to be part of United Teachers of Dade to benefit from the 7% to 10% pay raise the union negotiated with the school district this year,
Teacher unions became a preferred target of DeSantis during his fight to reopen schools during the pandemic and to eliminate anything he deems “woke” indoctrination in schools. The governor has gone even further by demonizing teachers, who have been muzzled on what they say about race and LGBTQ issues in the classroom.
Unions, like all organizations, have had very public shortcomings, such as protecting bad employees from accountability. But if we’re talking about unions that are too powerful, we cannot leave out police and firefighter unions, whose endorsements DeSantis and other Republican gladly accept. It turns out SB 256 exempted those unions — along with those representing corrections officers — from that 60% threshold requirement.
Union pushed back
In other words, the law affects organizations that have directly clashed with DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature. United Teachers of Dade was among the most vocal groups pushing back against the parental-rights law critics call “Don’t say gay,” laws that made it easier for organizations like Moms for Liberty to push schools to ban books, and DeSantis’ infamous “Stop Woke Act,” which bans instructions that some may interpret as making students feel guilty about being white. UTD President Karla Hernandez-Mats ran against DeSantis in 2022 as Charlie Crist’s running mate.
Meanwhile, groups like the Police Benevolent Association, the largest police union in the state, have been in lockstep with Republicans. In June, the PBA endorsed DeSantis for president, despite supporting Donald Trump in 2020.
Masked as a measure to hold unions accountable, SB 256 was a version of the same kind of political payback Disney received when it opposed the “Don’t say gay” law.
United Teachers of Dade will not face decertification immediately. It must now prove to the state that it has support from at least 30% of its bargaining unit. After that, the union must hold a vote seeking recertification and show at least 50% support. Next year, UTD must try again to meet that 60% threshold, the Herald reported, which could put it in a potentially never-ending cycle.
This is exactly the type of pain the new state law appears to seek to inflict. In Florida, opposition to the party in power comes with a high cost.
Ukraine’s effort to isolate Russia’s economy through ‘International Sponsors of War’ list
Daniil Ukhorskiy – December 25, 2023
Editor’s Note: This story was sponsored by the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM).
What do a Snickers bar, an Oreo cookie, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream have in common?
Apart from being beloved sweet treats, these products are manufactured by companies that were named “international sponsors of war” by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) for fuelling Russia’s economy and its war effort against Ukraine.
While some multinational corporations left Russia following the full-scale invasion in 2022, many stayed behind. Household names such as Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez offered a range of excuses for their continued presence in Russia. These companies are not targeted by international sanctions since they do not directly contribute to Russia’s war machine. But according to Ukrainian officials, they might as well be: the tax money that these companies pay into Russia’s coffers may be used to finance its military.
The sponsors of war list is a form of “soft sanctions” that harnesses the power of public pressure. Some companies left Russia after being listed, which the NACP claims as their success. In other cases, the Agency negotiated with companies, securing promises to cut ties with Russia. Some of these commitments are yet to be fulfilled.
The “soft sanctions” approach is praised by academia and civil society alike. Yet, some say Ukraine’s policy on isolating Russia’s economy is too arbitrary, and a centralized policy is needed to achieve victory on the economic front.
Multinationals’ Russia Problem
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the thousands of international businesses operating in Russia faced immense pressure to leave the Russian market.
McDonald’s was one of the first massive corporations to cut ties, halting sales in March 2022 and announcing a complete withdrawal two months later.
Multinationals are an important part of Russia’s economy. According to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which hosts the most comprehensive tracker of international businesses operating in Russia, these companies contributed $25 billion to the Russian GDP in 2021, and paid $2.9 billion in taxes in 2022, according to KSE and their NGO partner on the project, the B4Ukraine coalition.
According to KSE and B4Ukraine, the three most profitable sectors for multinationals in Russia are alcohol and tobacco, mass-market consumer goods, and automobiles.
According to the KSE, after April 2022, the flood of companies leaving Russia turned into a drip. The KSE chart shows that most companies decided on whether to leave by summer 2022 at the latest.
A plateau of companies that made commitments to leave (in blue) shows that after an initial surge, few multinationals decided to exit Russia. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
Shutting the door on Russia isn’t always simple, even for the companies that want to. A recent investigation by the New York Times showed that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is making withdrawal difficult and costly for foreign companies and enriching Russia in the process.
More than 1,600 foreign companies have continued business as usual in Russia. When challenged about their continued presence, some companies such as Unilever claim only to sell essential goods, while Nestlé cited worries about abandoning their staff, and Carlsberg claims to be unable to find buyers for their business.
These excuses proved thin. Dutch brewer Heineken sold its entire Russian business for the symbolic sum of one euro, showing that withdrawal is possible if a company is ready to take a financial hit. Unilever continued to sell ice cream, under the guise of “essential goods.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Unilever, Nestle, and Carlsberg but hasn’t gotten a response as of publication time.
Ultimately, most companies are cynical and profit-driven, and we cannot expect otherwise, says Glib Kanievskyi, co-founder of StateWatch, a Ukrainian transparency watchdog. Any tools that seek to isolate Russia economically must take this into account.
Who are the “sponsors of war’?
The International Sponsors of War list, launched in summer 2022, is an initiative that seeks to turn public opinion against multinationals that stay in Russia and use public pressure to incentivize withdrawal.
Of more than 1,600 foreign companies that stayed in Russia according to KSE, only 45 are listed as sponsors of war. According to Agia Zagrebelska, who oversees the sanctions policy direction at the NACP, there are three main criteria for inclusion: a substantial amount paid in taxes to Russia, any direct connections to the military, and broken promises to withdraw from Russia.
She says the NACP receives suggestions about companies from the public and civil society organizations such as StateWatch. These suggestions are then reviewed in line with the Agency’s criteria.
Some listed companies, like Unilever, snack titan Mondelez, and supermarket chain Auchan, are known worldwide for their consumer goods. Thirteen companies are based in China, a key Russian ally and its largest trading partner.
Of the three most profitable sectors identified by KSE and B4Ukraine, the NACP has widely listed alcohol and tobacco, and mass-market consumer product companies, but the automobile sector is still untouched – no Western automobile companies are on the list.
The list’s purpose is to go after a “gray zone” of companies that are not eligible for sanctions, says Zagrebelska. While there are no legal consequences to being listed, the risk of reputational damage can be enough to change company behavior.
Zagrebelska says the list allows consumers to make informed choices about their purchases, thus enacting a “direct democracy” where the public can vote with their wallets.
‘Soft sanctions’ in action
The NACP points to several companies that stopped dealing with Russia as signs of a successful policy. For instance, British manufacturing group Mondi was listed as a sponsor of war in February 2023, given their sizeable operations in Russia. They were removed from the list in November 2023 following a complete withdrawal.
While Zagrebelska admits that it is difficult to prove that the sponsors of war list had a decisive impact, she says the NACP is confident it pushes companies in the right direction.
In other instances, the NACP negotiated extensively with companies. Three Greek shipping companies saw their status change four times as they made and broke promises to the NACP. Finally, the companies were removed for good when they committed to stop shipping Russian oil entirely.
A graph of the Mondelez stock price, the blue square showing the day the company was listed as a sponsor of war by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
The stock price of Mondelez, the company behind Oreos, Toblerone, and Milka, tumbled by almost five percent after it was labeled a sponsor of war in May 2023. Mondelez has continued its operations in Russia, and its stock price has not recovered.
The snack maker’s financial troubles were likely exacerbated due to a boycott by clients in Sweden and Norway such as Scandinavian Airlines since June 2023. The Nordic companies cited the listing as a sponsor of war as the reason for their decision. Mondelez claimed they were unfairly “singled out.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Mondelez but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Wrangling with banks
One of the NACP’s most high-profile clashes was with Hungary’s OTP Bank, which operates in Russia and Ukraine and was listed as a sponsor of war in May 2023.
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister known for pro-Russia stances, was outraged by the listing, and Hungarian diplomats pushed back hard, threatening to derail EU sanctions and Ukraine aid discussions in Brussels.
According to NACP’s Zagrebelska, OTP Bank made significant concessions in discussions with EU and Ukrainian officials and demonstrated a concrete plan for withdrawing from Russia, after which the bank was removed from the list in October 2023. She could not share any details of the plan, which is set to be announced in January 2024, with the Kyiv Independent.
Kanievskyi of StateWatch was skeptical of the NACP’s claim of victory over OTP Bank. He said the likelier explanation is that NACP backed down after internal and external pressure. Passing EU sanctions was more important to the Ukrainian government, he said.
A Ukrainian official who worked closely on negotiations over OTP Bank but was not authorized to speak on the record said the NACP listing caused “a lot of fuss.” They said that the listing of OTP Bank held up the 11th EU sanctions package for up to four weeks and that Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was frustrated with the NACP’s position.
Similar discussions are ongoing about Raiffeisen, an Austrian bank with huge operations in Russia. The bank’s status as a sponsor of war was suspended last week, and Zagrebelska said that NACP is awaiting concrete documentation to show its commitment to withdrawing from Russia.
Once again, the NACP’s decision to remove the bank coincided with Austria’s approval of the latest EU sanctions package. Kanievskyi said the NACP folded to pressure, but Zagrebelska maintained her confidence that Raiffaisen will take concrete steps to withdraw from Russia. She also noted that the bank’s status is only suspended, meaning it can be easily reinstated.
Reflecting on the OTP and Raiffeisen cases, Andrii Onopriienko, a policy expert at KSE, recognized that the sponsors of war list is ultimately a political process that uses these negotiations to try and find a favorable compromise for Ukraine.
On OTP and Raiffeisen, the jury is still out. Should the banks’ promises to exit Russia prove empty, the deterrent power of the list may be weakened. On the other hand, if OTP and Raiffeisen show a real commitment to withdrawing from Russia, the “soft sanctions” and negotiation approach may be vindicated as a powerful tool of economic warfare.
Dealing with the devil?
Another source of criticism has been the inclusion of companies that continue to do business in Ukraine. Philip Morris, one of the “big four” tobacco companies, was listed among sponsors of war in August 2023, having announced a $30 million factory project in Lviv Oblast just two months before.
Japan Tobacco International (JTI), another “big four” cigarette maker is also one of the biggest multinationals still active in Russia and Ukraine, and was also listed as a sponsor of war in August 2023.
Kanievskyi questioned the coherence of listing Philip Morris as a sponsor of war and continuing close cooperation with the company. Many companies on the list maintain significant operations in Ukraine, including Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez.
According to Kanievskyi, the cause is a lack of a unified policy and legislative framework.
On the Philip Morris deal, Phil Chamberlain from the campaigning organization Expose Tobacco said that preying on countries in difficult situations to get a better deal was straight out of the “Big Tobacco” playbook. According to Chamberlain, a lack of coherent policy only makes it easier for multinationals to take advantage of the war to increase profits.
According to Hlib Kolesov, a lawyer with the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, it is hypocritical of tobacco companies to be contributing to Russia’s economy as they claim to support Ukraine amid war.
“On the one hand, tobacco companies position themselves as good partners of Ukraine, investors in its economy, in recovery, but, on the other hand, the same tobacco companies earn money in Russia and pay huge taxes to the budget of the Russian Federation,” Kolesov told European Pravda.
A picture taken on Aug. 21, 2018, shows the research and development campus of cigarette and tobacco manufacturing company Philip Morris International, in Neuchatel, western Switzerland. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet, Ilona Sologoub, an economist and head of the VoxUkraine think tank, recognized the challenges faced by Ukraine’s government in elaborating a coherent policy in this area.
Ultimately, Sologoub agreed with the NACP’s “gray area” logic. She said that “soft sanctions” fill a valuable gap, targeting companies that cannot be sanctioned because of the possible negative impact on Ukraine’s economy.
For NACP’s Zagrebelska the presumable “whitewashing” efforts by Philip Morris and other companies are too little, too late. She said she was confident that consumers can see through the efforts and will continue to pressure companies to exit Russia.
The Kyiv Independent requested a comment from Philip Morris but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Coordinated policy
Experts were broadly positive about the sponsors of war list and its contribution to Russian economic isolation. “There is no perfect solution,” said KSE’s Onopriienko, “but it is an all-out war. We all do our part.”
Kanievskyi, whose organization StateWatch collaborates extensively with the NACP, emphasized the lack of central government policy as the biggest challenge for Ukraine in this area.
He said that in the early months of the all-out war, companies were more afraid of reputational damage for staying in Russia, while now many are ready to take the risk. For him, this highlights an urgent need for a centralized policy on sanctions and other economic restrictions from the authorities. Ultimately, he says a lack of a clear policy undermines the communications efforts of the NACP which is crucial to the list’s success.
A lack of centralized policy also led to tensions over OTP Bank, with different Ukrainian government agencies pushing for different outcomes, as recounted by the Ukrainian official who worked closely on internal and external negotiations and who is not authorized to speak with the media.
The NACP and partners are looking to develop new initiatives to isolate Russia economically and increase the effectiveness of sanctions. A newly launched project tracks electronic components used in Russian weapons that continue to bypass sanctions. Zagrebelska said that in early 2024, the Agency plans to launch a mobile application allowing consumers to spot products by companies listed as sponsors or war.
In the meantime, Kanievsky underscores the importance of having a coordinated policy on the sponsors of war list. Lacking proper guidance from the central government, Ukrainian officials and civil society may struggle to do their part in isolating Russia’s wartime economy.
No ruling by the courts, not even one by the U.S. Supreme Court, will change the fact that Los Angeles’ housing costs are out of reach for most people. Many of us are one missed paycheck, illness or mistake away from ending up in a tent on the sidewalk, and an anti-camping ordinance won’t stop people from doing what they must to survive.
We are all frustrated by the street conditions, but instead of brutal sweeps that shuffle people like trash from one corner to the next, our leaders should focus on affordable housing and protecting tenants from eviction.
Rae Huang, Los Angeles
The writer is senior organizer with the group Housing Now.
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To the editor: Those of us who grew up in the 1950s never saw our cities’ sidewalks or parks overrun with tents pitched by the unhoused.
Yes, we had seen homeless encampments elsewhere. They typically were located on the outskirts of towns, along railroad tracks and on stream beds.
Back then, vagrancy laws barred people from camping within city limits. Furthermore, the number of unhoused people was kept low by two factors: Jobs were abundant, and state mental hospitals housed thousands of people who would have otherwise lived on the street.
Within a few decades momentous changes steadily accelerated homelessness. Courts struck down vagrancy laws. Psychiatric hospitals were emptied. Automation, computerization and job outsourcing to foreign countries diminished employment opportunities.
Evidently the foreseeable downsides of those changes escaped our leaders’ notice — that, or there was no political upside to addressing these downsides. It’s time to pay the homelessness piper.
Betty Turner, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: Unfortunately, homeless encampments eventually become public health hazards. How do we balance the rights of unhoused individuals against the rights of the communities affected by encampments?
Despite all the good intentions and funds that have been directed toward alleviating the problem, nothing seems to have long-term impact.
There are deeper systemic issues at play here that have to do with the income inequalities that exist in our society and need to be solved at the federal level. Until that happens (and I’m not holding my breath), local efforts will continue to have limited effect.
John Beckman, Chino Hills
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To the editor: Cities can’t remove encampments unless there is a place for unhoused residents to go.
A few months ago, The Times reported on a study that found there were more than 100 vacant, government-owned parcels in L.A. that could be used for housing. These properties could provide toilets, water, electricity and even a physical address where one could get mail.
The Supreme Court could correct Mitch McConnell’s huge mistake
Opinion by Dean Obeidallah, CNN – December 24, 2023
The holiday season is filled with classic movies like “A Christmas Carol” that tell us we still have time to right the wrongs of the past. Well, now the US Supreme Court — even without a visit from the ghost of “Christmas yet to come” — may get the chance to correct the wrongs of GOP senators like Mitch McConnell, who refused to convict former President Donald Trump during his January 6 impeachment trial.
The Supreme Court justices can do so by agreeing with the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent decision that found Trump engaged in an insurrection and was therefore “disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
As a reminder, shortly after January 6, 2021, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection. That single article of impeachment — approved by 10 House Republicans along with all the Democrats in the lower chamber — specifically cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment as a reason to move forward with the proceedings.
While the Senate failed to reach the two-thirds threshold necessary to convict Trump, the vote did garner the support of a simple majority (57-43) that included seven Republicans. That means the majority of both chambers of Congress voted in favor of removing Trump from office given his role in the January 6 insurrection.
After the vote was tallied, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor to brutally slam Trump for his actions. He declared that on January 6, 2021, “American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.” He then made it clear that Trump was to blame: “They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he’d lost an election.”
McConnell added, “Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President (Mike) Pence was in danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his vice president.”
The GOP Senate leader went on to call out Trump’s response during the attack, saying that “a mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name” and former aides and allies begged him to publicly call off the attack. “But the president did not act swiftly,” McConnell said. “Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election.”
However, despite those strong words, McConnell voted to acquit because Trump was already out of office at the time of the trial, and in the senator’s view, “We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.” If the Senate had convicted Trump instead, it could have barred him from running for federal office again.
Putting aside whether McConnell was correct from a constitutional point of view, the courts now have the power to “disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.” That is exactly what the Colorado Supreme Court did with their 4-3 ruling. As the court laid out, Trump’s goal with the insurrection, which “he himself conceived and set in motion,” was to “prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.” And like McConnell, who pointed out that Trump did not act quickly to call an end to the insurrection, the Colorado Supreme Court noted Trump “continued to support it” with his tweet that day targeting Pence.
No one knows with any certainty what the US Supreme Court will rule in this case. In fact, lost in much of the discussion is the question of whether Trump will formally appeal the Colorado ruling, as he has vowed to do.
But as I discussed Thursday on my SiriusXM radio show with Mario Nicolais — one of the lawyers who won the case to disqualify Trump from the ballot in Colorado — Trump must appreciate the risk that the US Supreme Court could rule against him. If that happens, Trump would be definitively barred from holding office ever again, whereas he would only be barred from the ballot in Colorado — a state he lost to Joe Biden by more than 13 points in 2020 — if the ruling stands.
If Trump appeals and the US Supreme Court hears the case, they will have the opportunity to uphold the US Constitution by disqualifying Trump from serving in any office for his role in the January 6 insurrection, in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. And redressing these past wrongs would make them very much like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning.
Thousands join migrant caravan in Mexico ahead of Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to the capital
Edgar H. Clemente – December 24, 2023
Migrants depart from Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023. The caravan started the trek north through Mexico just days before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Mexico City to discuss new agreements to control the surge of migrants seeking entry into the United States. (AP Photo/Edgar Hernandez Clemente)
TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — A sprawling caravan of migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba and other countries trekked through Mexico on Sunday, heading toward the U.S. border. The procession came just days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Mexico City to hammer out new agreements to control the surge of migrants seeking entry into the United States.
The caravan, estimated at around 6,000 people, many of them families with young children, is the largest in more than a year, a clear indication that joint efforts by the Biden administration and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government to deter migration are falling short.
The Christmas Eve caravan departed from the city of Tapachula, near the country’s southern border with Guatemala. Security forces looked on in what appeared to be a repeat of past tactics when authorities waited for the marchers to tire out and then offered them a form of temporary legal status that is used by many to continue their journey northward.
“We’ve been waiting here for three or four months without an answer,” said Cristian Rivera, traveling alone, having left his wife and child in his native Honduras. “Hopefully with this march there will be a change and we can get the permission we need to head north.”
López Obrador in May agreed to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba turned away by the U.S. for not following rules that provided new legal pathways to asylum and other forms of migration.
But that deal, aimed at curbing a post-pandemic jump in migration, appears to be insufficient as the number of migrants once again surges, disrupting bilateral trade and stoking anti-migrant sentiment among conservative voters in the U.S.
This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested per day at the U.S. southwest border. Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had to suspend cross-border rail traffic in the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso as migrants were riding atop freight trains.
Arrests for illegal crossing topped 2 million in each of the U.S. government’s last two fiscal years, reflecting technological changes that have made it easier for migrants to leave home to escape poverty, natural disasters, political repression and organized crime.
On Friday, López Obrador said he was willing to work again with the U.S. to address concerns about migration. But he also urged the Biden administration to ease sanctions on leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela — where about 20% of 617,865 migrants encountered nationwide in October and November hail from — and send more aid to developing countries in Latin America and beyond.
“That is what we are going to discuss, it is not just contention,” López Obrador said at a press briefing Friday following a phone conversation the day before with President Joe Biden to pave the way for the high level U.S. delegation.
The U.S. delegation, which will meet the Mexican president on Wednesday, will also include Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall.
Mexico’s ability to assist the U.S. may be limited, however. In December, the government halted a program to repatriate and transfer migrants inside Mexico due to a lack of funds. So far this year, Mexico has detected more than 680,000 migrants living illegally in the country, while the number of foreigners seeking asylum in the country has reached a record 137,000.
Sunday’s caravan was the largest since June 2022, when a similarly sized group departed as Biden hosted leaders in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas. Another march departed Mexico in October, coinciding with a summit organized by López Obrador to discuss the migration crisis with regional leaders. A month later, 3,000 migrants blocked for more than 30 hours the main border crossing with Guatemala.
Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Low-quality shells supplied to Russia by North Korea are injuring its own troops and damaging artillery, Ukraine says
Alia Shoaib – December 23, 2023
North Korea has sent Russia large quantities of artillery shells.
Ukraine’s army said some are defective, causing damage to weapons and injuring Russian soldiers.
Experts have questioned the quality of North Korean ammunition.
Russia is using low-quality, often-defective artillery shells from North Korea that can cause problems on the front lines, Ukraine’s army said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
In some cases, the North Korean-supplied shells damage cannon and mortar barrels and even injure Russian soldiers.
It is particularly a problem in the “Dnepr” grouping of forces operating around the southern Kherson region under the command of Mikhail Teplinsky, according to Ukraine’s army.
Teplinsky, the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, or VDV, was recently put in charge of the area where fighting has raged in recent weeks.
North Korea, one of Russia’s few international allies, has sent it large quantities of ammunition. One South Korean lawmaker estimated that North Korea had sent Russia at least a million shells, Politico reported.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea in August to ask for ammunition amid reports that Russian forces were suffering from shortages.
Trevor Taylor, the director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, previously told Politico that it was unclear whether the North Korean ammunition was of a reliable quality.
“North Korea runs a war economy, which we don’t,” Taylor said. “But whether the ammunition they are supplying is at the standard of reliability and safety that the Europeans would adhere to is another question.”
Meanwhile, fears of a Ukrainian shell famine are growing as Western military aid shows signs of faltering.
The Kiel Institute, which has tracked aid promised and sent to Ukraine, said in an update earlier this month that while the new US aid package was delayed to next year, the EU’s commitment to supplying one million rounds of ammunition has stalled.
Israel’s war with Hamas could also divert tens of thousands of artillery rounds intended for Ukraine, Axios reported in October.
STORY: Mexican authorities on Friday sent a planeload of migrants from Piedras Negras, near the US border, to southern Mexico to be returned to their countries of origin.
The move came just hours after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that his government will reinforce measures to contain migration.
As the United States copes with record numbers of people trying to reach the U.S. border, Mexico is looking to help.
“We will boost as much as we can to help maintain an orderly flow,” said Lopez Obrador, adding “Recently, there was an abnormal surge.”
Lopez Obrador’s comments came a day after he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Both agreed that more enforcement was needed at their shared frontier, as record numbers of migrants disrupt border trade.
This year, the number of migrants crossing the perilous Darien Gap straddling Colombia and Central America topped half a million – double that of last year’s record.
News of Lopez Obrador’s comments reached migrants as they made their way through Mexico to the U.S. border.
Honduran migrant Kerlin Silva said the new rules might mean he won’t be able to, (quote) “fulfill the American dream.”
According to the United Nations, migrants are heading through Mexico to the U.S. to escape violence, economic distress, and the negative impacts of climate change.
Lopez Obrador said Mexico would also step up containment efforts on its southern border with Guatemala as his government seeks agreements with other countries to manage the northbound migrant flows.
Top U.S. officials are set to visit Mexico next week to follow up on the call between Lopez Obrador and Biden.
It’s Time for the U.S. to Give Israel Some Tough Love
Thomas L. Friedman – December 22, 2023
Credit…Amir Levy/Getty Images
It is time for the Biden administration to give Israel more than just gentle nudges about how it would be kind of, sort of nice if Israel could fight this war in Gaza without killing thousands of civilians.
It’s time for the U.S. to stop wasting time searching for the perfect U.N. cease-fire resolution on Gaza.
It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel that its war’s aim of wiping Hamas off the face of the earth is not going to be achieved — at least not at a cost that the U.S. or the world will tolerate, or that Israel should want.
It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel how to declare victory in Gaza and go home, because right now the Israeli prime minister is utterly useless as a leader: He is — unbelievably — prioritizing his own electoral needs over the interests of Israelis, not to mention the interests of Israel’s best friend, President Biden.
It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel to put the following offer on the table to Hamas: total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, in return for all the Israeli hostages and a permanent cease-fire under international supervision, including U.S., NATO and Arab observers. And no exchange of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
What would the advantages of this approach be for Israel?
First, if I am reading the mood in Israel correctly these days, the overwhelming majority of the country today wants their 120-plus hostages returned — over and above any other war aims. Israel is a small country. Many, many Israelis know someone — or know someone who knows someone — with a loved one taken hostage or killed in Gaza.
The hostage issue is making Israelis crazy, for good reason, and it’s making rational military decision-making there impossible — especially as many experts believe the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has now surrounded himself with Israeli hostages as human shields and it will be impossible to kill him without also killing many of them. Any Israeli government that does that would sow the wind and reap the whirlwind of wrath from the Israeli public.
Second, Israel has inflicted vast damage on Gaza’s main urban areas and on Hamas’s tunnel network and killed thousands of Hamas fighters, along with, tragically, thousands of the Gazan civilians among whom Hamas embedded itself. Hamas as a military organization deserved to be punished and pummeled, and it has been considerably degraded. But that huge toll of killed, wounded and displaced Gazan civilians has produced a humanitarian disaster. And Israel has no plan — indeed, has not had a plan since the start of the war — for how this humanitarian crisis will be managed and remediated, and how to induce non-Hamas Palestinians and Arabs to come forward and partner with Israel to repair and run a postwar Gaza.
There is also increasing discomfort in the Israel Defense Forces leadership over the fact that it is being asked by the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu to fight a war in Gaza without a clearly defined political objective, timetable or mechanism to win and hold the peace.
My view: Israel should just get out and let the person who started this terrible war, knowing but not caring that it would lead to the death and destruction of thousands of innocent Gazans, manage the cleanup. And that is the Hamas leader, Sinwar. The best way to discredit and destroy Sinwar is for Israel to leave Gaza and make him come out of his tunnel, face his people and the world and own Gaza’s rebuilding on his own.
I can tell you from experience what I think will happen. On the first day, Sinwar will strut around the rubble of Gaza like a peacock, declaring how he and his men inflicted terrible damage on the Jews, and supporters will carry him on their shoulders, shouting “Allahu akbar.”
On Day 2, with the Israelis gone, they will scream at Sinwar publicly and privately: What were you thinking? Who gave you permission to launch this war? Who is going to repair my home? Who is going to bring back my loved ones? How are you going to get any help rebuilding Gaza if you keep on lobbing missiles at Tel Aviv? You thought Hezbollah, the West Bankers, Israeli Arabs and Iran would all jump full-scale into this war and rise up against the Jews. It didn’t happen — except at some American colleges — and now all we have are ruins and the dead.
How do I know that will happen? Because it’s what happened in Lebanon in 2006, when Hassan Nasrallah foolishly launched an unprovoked war against Israel, leading to enormous destruction in Shiite villages both in the south and around Beirut.
How do I know that will happen? Because it is already happening. Consider this Bloomberg report from Dec. 11:
Since the war, life in Gaza — which never was easy — has become unbearable. And while most Palestinians are furious at Israel, some are also expressing anger at Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007, when it threw out the Palestinian Authority through a brief and violent civil war. “Hand over the hostages and stop the war,” Rahaf Hneideq, a Gaza-based professor of Islamic studies, wrote to Hamas on Facebook. “Enough death, enough destruction. Stop the displacement. Don’t your people deserve that?”
How do I know that will happen? Because while polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research show support for Hamas growing in the West Bank since Oct. 7 — which are really signs of contempt for the Palestinian Authority and antipathy to the violent Jewish settlers — support for Hamas in Gaza, which usually rises during wars, has not significantly increased. Moreover, despite the increase in Hamas popularity in the West Bank, “the majority in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip does not support Hamas,” Khalil Shikaki, the director of the P.C.P.S.R., found.
And if you follow news of Hamas politics, you will have noticed reports this week of significant tension between Sinwar and Hamas leaders abroad, who have begun — to Sinwar’s apparent rage — talks with leaders from the West Bank Palestinian Authority about reunifying and revamping the Palestinian leadership after the war to enable some kind of long-term peace arrangement with Israel.
Israel has a choice: It can own Gaza’s future forever, with Israel’s completely dysfunctional relationship between the army and the far-right cabinet, which will never agree on collaborating with any Palestinian Authority, leading to Israel inheriting one of the worst humanitarian disasters on the planet. Or it can get out now, get back its hostages and let Sinwar and his friends own that problem — as they should. Let Hamas have to tell Gazans that there will be no rebuilding, just more of its endless war to destroy the Jews. Let’s see how long that lasts.
And if Hamas tries that, let the U.S. and its allies show the whole world that there is only one reason Gazans are dying another day longer, and that it is because Hamas won’t accept a cease-fire.
From the start of this war, there has been an asymmetry: Israel, a democracy, has to answer every day for its actions and mistakes and excesses. Sinwar has never had to for a minute. Time to turn the tables.
And speaking of turning the tables — Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis pray five times a day for one thing: that Israel will stay in Gaza forever. They want Israel militarily, economically, diplomatically and morally overstretched. The absolute worst news they could get is to hear that Israel is offering total withdrawal for a return of all hostages and an internationally monitored cease-fire that will include U.S. and NATO supervision.
And the absolute worst news that Russia and China could get is that Biden arranged this end to the war.
Indeed, Hezbollah will go into immediate panic mode, saying to itself: Do you mean that if we now keep shelling northern Israel we will face the total, undivided wrath of the Israeli Army and Air Force and lose all justification for our attacks on Israel? Ditto the Houthis.
Israel has done enormous damage to Hamas’s military infrastructure, but at a cost to innocent civilians in Gaza that cannot be morally or strategically justified any longer. Offering Hamas a total withdrawal and internationally monitored cease-fire — in return for all hostages — will shift all of the political, military, diplomatic and moral pressure onto Sinwar. And it won’t just be for one day, but for the future.
I also have no doubt that the Israeli Army can fortify its Gaza border, apply all the lessons of its pre-Oct. 7 mistakes and make sure Hamas can never smuggle in the arms that it did again.
No, it is not the fairy-tale ending Israelis may have hoped for after Oct. 7 — a Gaza Strip utterly free of any trace of Hamas, permanently controlled by Israel and some totally compliant fantasy Palestinian partner and all the reconstruction paid for by the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia. But that was always a fairy tale.
Perfect is never on the table in Gaza. Israel needs to coolly, rationally think through its options, and the Biden administration needs to stop whispering quietly that Israel should reconsider its war aims and tactics. The Biden team needs to engage Israelis in a loud, blunt, no-holds-barred discussion about how much it has already achieved militarily, how best to consolidate those gains and how to end this war with some kind of new balance of power in Israel’s favor — before Israel sinks itself into the quicksand of Gaza, chasing a perfect victory that is a mirage.
