It’s ridiculous that Republicans cannot elect a speaker, but it is also, at this point, unsurprising. A gaping void exists at the center of the populist strain of Republican politics; where the ideas ought to be, you too often find a long, primal scream of “Noooooooo!!!!”
- Megan McArdle
"Republicans have created a void that's becoming harder to escape"
This week's featured post is "The House, still divided".
This week everybody was talking about chaos in the House GOP
The featured post provides a quick summary of where we are and how we got here, and then references a couple of deeper essays about how the House and the House Republican caucus actually work. But if you're looking for some clear this-is-what-happens-next-and-when speculation, I don't have it.
The McArdle quote above (and the article it comes from) makes a good point: Factions compromise with other factions because they have policy goals they want to achieve. But MAGA really has no goals beyond returning Trump to power. Cutting the deficit? No. When Trump was in power and had two years of a Republican Congress, they exploded the deficit with both tax cuts and spending increases. Inflation? They complain about it, but have no plan for addressing it. Crime? Ditto.
I’m sure my Republican readers would add other things they care about: the left-wing capture of schools and education policy, the progressive drift of corporations and the mainstream media, the DEI bureaucracies metastasizing across every class of institutions, the gender-medicine doctors rushing kids onto puberty blockers and hormones. ...
But notice how few of the things on the list are things Congress can actually fix, even theoretically.
Imagine that you're an establishment Republican trying negotiate for MAGA support to become speaker, or that you're Biden trying to make a deal to keep the government open. What can you offer them that they would actually care about enough to give you something back?
If reality mattered, the House Republican infighting would smash once and for all the myth that Trump is a great deal-maker. He claims that if he were president he could bring Ukraine and Russia to an agreement in 24 hours. But the squabbling among his allies in the House has brought Congress to a standstill for three weeks with no end in sight.
Where is he, and why can't he solve it?
In the real world, without reality-TV editing to make him look brilliant, Trump is terrible at making deals. He broke two of Obama's agreements -- the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Accords -- claiming each time that he would get a "better deal". ("I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled," he said about his fantasy Paris renegotiation.) In fact, he got no deal, and in each case the country is worse off than if he had left Obama's agreements in place.
In 2017, he came within one vote of undoing another long-negotiated Obama compromise, Obamacare. He would have taken health insurance away from millions of Americans -- again with no plan to replace it beyond a fantasy.
His big diplomatic "accomplishment", the USMCA, is basically what Obama had already negotiated as part of the Trans-Pacific Parternship, another deal Trump blew up. His flashy negotiations with North Korea produced a great photo opportunity -- which benefited Kim more than anyone -- and no substantive progress on the main issue, North Korea's nuclear missiles. His trade war with China gave him great opportunities to posture, but accomplished nothing.
And then we get to Trump's #1 issue: immigration and the border. The pieces of a deal have been lying around ever since the Gang of Eight compromise passed the Senate and died in the House in 2013. Neither side likes things the way they are and everybody has something to gain from striking a deal. But even with two years of a Republican-controlled Congress, he got no immigration legislation passed, and even shut down his own government to (unsuccessfully) pressure the Republican Congress to fund his wall.
and war
There are lots of individual stories in the Israel/Gaza war, but the fundamental situation didn't change much this week: Hamas still holds hundreds of hostages. Israel is attacking Gaza from the air, but hasn't launched a ground invasion yet. Lots of people in Gaza are dying (though it looks like Israel wasn't responsible for destroying that hospital). A shipment of humanitarian aid made it into Gaza, but it's a drop in the bucket.
If Israel has a plan for resolving this situation without killing a huge number of civilians, nobody seems to know what it is. In Israel's defense, though, I haven't heard a good suggestion yet for what they should do.
Hamas released two American hostages, but there are still other American hostages in Gaza. Why them? Why now? I don't think anybody knows.
Biden gave an Oval Office speech to the nation [video, text], explaining why Israel and Ukraine deserve our support. He also said:
the United States remains committed to the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and to self-determination. The actions of Hamas terrorists don’t take that right away.
But without any viable peace plan, it's hard to take that sentiment seriously, whether it comes from Biden or from Israeli leaders.
Biden also urged Americans not to bring the Gaza conflict home, citing the murder of a six-year-old Palestinian American near Chicago. The article says the boy's mother came to the US 12 years ago, which would make him an American citizen.
We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism. We must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia.
And to all of you hurting — those of you who are hurting, I want you to know: I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all America. You’re all America.
Times like these are when I'm most grateful that Biden defeated Trump in 2020. I shudder to think of this kind of crisis going on in the world with Trump posturing and grandstanding and appealing to everyone's worst impulses.
I'm impressed that the White House text of Biden's speech includes his handful of verbal stumbles and misstatements. For example, he referred to Netanyahu as "president" rather than "prime minister". The text corrects that mistake with a strikethrough, but doesn't pretend he didn't say it.
Ukraine's summer offense didn't gain much ground, but their increasing drone and missile capability has challenged Russia's dominance of the Black Sea.
Mitch McConnell is still on board with helping Ukraine defend against Russia's invasion:
No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We're rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it's wonderful that they're defending themselves- and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They've done almost 90 billion dollars, they're housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.
I was late finding "How Not to Respond to a Terrorist Attack", which Benjamin Wittes posted the day of the the Hamas attack on Israel. But it's well worth bookmarking and coming back to after future attacks, wherever they occur and whomever they victimize.
Fundamentally, he urges humility on those of us tempted to comment quickly. What needs to be affirmed in the immediate aftermath of murder is not deep or complex, but very simple: Murder is wrong. Not "wrong, but" or "wrong, except", but just wrong. There is a strong temptation, which I feel myself, to segue past the tragedy of individual lives cut short, and to talk instead about the larger context, the need for revenge, what I think will or should happen next, how this event proves some other point I often make, and why people who disagree with me are dangerously misguided.
and the Trump trials
Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheseboro pleaded guilty and have promised to cooperate with Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis. So three of the original 19 defendants in the Georgia RICO case have now pleaded guilty.
By all accounts, Powell and Cheseboro got very good deals, which they took just before their trial was supposed to begin. Neither will do jail time.
There are two theories on how they got such good deals: Either they have really juicy testimony to offer against the other conspirators, including Trump, or Willis really, really wanted to avoid revealing all her evidence and strategy in a trial before Trump's trial. (Both Powell and Cheseboro had taken advantage of Georgia's law giving them the right to demand a speedy trial. There's still no trial date for the other defendants.)
Powell and Cheseboro are widely assumed to be two of the unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators in Jack Smith's January-6-conspiracy indictment against Trump, but neither has any deal with Smith so far. As long as that's the case, it's hard to see what they could testify to for Willis. Either might legitimately plead the Fifth Amendment rather than describe crimes Smith could still indict them for.
If either of them makes a deal with Smith, the floodgates will open.
The biggest immediate impact of the guilty pleas is its effect on Trump politically: It's hard to claim there was no crime when your former allies have already confessed to crimes.
As for where each fit into the larger conspiracy: Powell was at the center of spreading the Big Lie, as well as the effort to seize voting machines. Cheseboro organized the fake-elector scheme. I would expect Powell's testimony to be most damaging to Rudy Giuliani and Cheseboro's to John Eastman, if you're looking for the next possible dominos. And Mark Meadows was everywhere, so any new testimony might target him.
Judge Chutkan issued a gag order against Trump
All interested parties in this matter, including the parties and their counsel, are prohibited from making any public statements, or directing others to make any public statements, that target (1) the Special Counsel prosecuting this case or his staff; (2) defense counsel or their staff; (3) any of this court’s staff or other supporting personnel; or (4) any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.
and then explicitly described what is not included:
This Order shall not be construed to prohibit Defendant from making statements criticizing the government generally, including the current administration or the Department of Justice; statements asserting that Defendant is innocent of the charges against him, or that his prosecution is politically motivated; or statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of Defendant’s current political rivals, such as former Vice President Pence.
Trump predictably claimed that this order violates his First Amendment rights. This is in line with Trump's refusal to acknowledge that indictment is a meaningful act. A grand jury of ordinary Americans has found that the evidence of his criminality is sufficiently strong that a trial has to be held. That's not nothing, and it restricts a person's rights in ways that are necessary for holding a fair trial.
For example, unindicted Americans are free to travel wherever they want. But if you've been indicted, you have to be present when your trial starts. The rights you would ordinarily expect as an American have been narrowed to accommodate your trial.
Again and again, Trump pretends that his indictments are nothing, and so his rights should not be restricted in any way.
Meanwhile, Justice Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing Trump's ongoing New York $250 million civil fraud trial, fined Trump $5K for violating his previous gag order and threatened to jail him for future violations. The gag order had been issued after a Trump Truth Social post targeted Engoron's principal clerk.
Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff
As requested, Trump took down the offending post. But apparently it was still posted on his campaign web site. Trump's lawyers claimed this violation of the order was inadvertent, but at a minimum it shows Trump and his people failing to take the order seriously.
It's just a matter of time before some judge has to jail Trump for contempt, because he is in fact contemptuous.
Forbes is claiming that former Trump Organization CFO Adam Weisselberg committed perjury during his testimony at Trump's New York civil fraud trial. After the report was published, prosecutors cut Weisselberg's testimony short.
Weisselberg is still on probation after pleading guilty at a previous trial and serving three months in prison.
Significantly, perjury in the first degree is also a felony punishable by up to seven years. But perhaps most importantly, the Manhattan district attorney would not have to undertake a new prosecution of Weisselberg for perjury to move to revoke his probation. It would be enough for the DA's office simply to convince Judge Juan Merchan that Weisselberg engaged in new, criminal conduct during that [five-year] period.
and you also might be interested in ...
Threats and disasters are more newsworthy than positive trends, so it's easy to imagine the world is in worse shape than it actually is. Brian Klaas calls attention to ten charts of important trends, several of which are encouraging. For example, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty has been falling for two centuries, and falling faster in recent decades.
Rep. Jeff Jackson's podcasts have been offering a great inside view of how the House works. Now it looks like North Carolina will gerrymander him out of Congress.
As I envision my next car, I find [one, two] cautionary tales of road trips in EVs. I am leaning towards a plug-in hybrid.
A San Francisco chef describes how his idea of a restaurant has changed post-Covid: small dining room, short menu, no reservations, and a retail shop to even out revenue. He thinks this model will catch on.
and let's close with something harmonious
A barbershop quartet demonstrates that all music is really barbershop. A song just takes about 20 years to get there.
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