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BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER & CROOKED MEDIA Thursday, February 7, 2019 |
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| —Howard Schultz instructing the audience to applaud him because they wouldn't otherwise. |
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| CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS |
| The Trump administration, with help from Republicans on Capitol Hill, is executing a plan to defy congressional oversight on a historic scale.
On Thursday, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker threatened to no-show his long-scheduled Friday House Judiciary Committee hearing, because Democrats warned him they will compel his testimony if he refuses to answer their questions without good reason.
Weeks ago, the committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) provided Whitaker with a list of issues he intended to ask Whitaker about, so that Whitaker could determine whether President Trump intended to claim executive privilege over the answers. For Trump’s first two years in office, House and Senate Republicans made a mockery of congressional oversight by simply allowing Trump officials to decline to answer these kinds of questions.
After Whitaker failed to respond to Nadler, Democrats on the committee voted to authorize Nadler to subpoena Whitaker’s answers on the spot. In response, Whitaker threatened to not appear voluntarily unless Nadler withdrew the subpoena threat.
Republicans responded to Whitaker’s defiance by standing up for Congress’s institutional prerogatives trying to help him avoid testifying altogether if he doesn’t want to. On Thursday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee abruptly cleared Trump’s attorney general nominee, William Barr, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled his confirmation vote, in an apparent effort to hustle Whitaker out the door before he can be compelled to answer questions he doesn’t want to answer.
Republicans have also rallied to Trump’s defense against Democrats who are laying the groundwork to obtain his tax returns. The White House and Treasury Department have been very open about the fact that if Democrats do demand his tax returns, they will try to tie the request up in court through the presidential election.
The growing onslaught of investigations has rattled Trump, who is particularly freaked out that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has hired people who until recently worked at the White House. His response is very likely to steer people who work for him into contempt of Congress on an almost routine basis. Nadler and Whitaker have reportedly reached an accommodation for now. But these aren’t ordinary times, and Democrats should at least keep the possibility that they will need to escalate their tactics in mind. |
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| GREEN NUDE EEL |
| Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have introduced their hotly-anticipated Green New Deal resolution, a non-binding plan which calls for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, creating jobs, and making sure every community has clean air and water.
After establishing two primary crises—the climate crisis as well as an economic crisis of inequality and wage stagnation—the Green New Deal resolution presents 14 projects and 15 requirements aimed at addressing both.
Co-sponsoring the resolution are 60 House members, plus prominent Democrats in the Senate, including 2020 candidates Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed its introduction, but added a note of skepticism by referring to it as the “green dream” and saying “nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”
The long road ahead will require lawmakers to turn the plan into a bill or series of bills, presidential candidates to run on a Green New Deal, winning elections, and passing it into law, even if it means abolishing the filibuster. Because, Markey’s adorable optimism aside, Republicans are going to do everything in their power to kill all climate change legislation.
Read → |
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| The latest Virginia lawmaker at the center of a blackface scandal is Republican state Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment, who edited the Virginia Military Institute’s 1968 yearbook, which was filled with racist slurs and photographs of students in blackface. This is the fourth Virginia lawmaker to find himself embroiled in scandal in the past week. |
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| Prominent Democrats have called for an investigation of Virginia’s Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax in response to Dr. Vanessa Tyson’s detailed allegation that he sexually assaulted her in 2004. Listen to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s in-depth answer on Lovett or Leave It this Saturday.
American Media/the National Enquirer threatened to publish naked photos of Jeff Bezos unless he called off his private investigators and lied to the press about AMI’s motivations. Unfortunately for them, they issued the threats over email, so Bezos just published the emails.
2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record. (Note: The five warmest years ever recorded have been the last five.)
Teachers in Oakland, CA have voted overwhelmingly to strike, following a year and a half of failed contract negotiations with the Oakland Unified School District. They are asking for a 12 percent raise over three years and smaller class sizes, but the district has only offered five percent over three years.
Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) announced he will not be seeking re-election in 2020, after narrowly winning his race last year, improving Democrats’ chances of flipping the rapidly diversifying seventh congressional district.
Three more women have come forward alleging that the former president of Costa Rica, Óscar Arias Sánchez, groped and harassed them, after an activist came forward earlier this week alleging that he sexually assaulted her.
After outlets reported on grocery delivery service Instacart’s use of customers tips to subsidize minimum payment to workers, the company ended the policy, and says it will pay workers who were adversely affected by it when it was still in place. 👏
Ariana Grande put the Grammys on blast after the event’s producer falsely claimed she’s not performing because it was “too late for her to pull something together.” Grande is no longer attending the award show. |
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| Major banks in the U.S. saved more than $21 billion on taxes last year thanks to Trump’s multi-trillion dollar corporate tax cut, which lowered their effective rates from 28 percent to less than 19 percent. What did they do with this windfall, you ask? Create more jobs? Make new investments? Lend more money to people seeking loans?
Nope. They cut nearly 4,300 jobs, with plans to cut thousands more, and slowed the rate of lending, while increasing dividend payments and stock buybacks by 23 percent to juice returns for their shareholders. |
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| Today in tech dystopia hell:
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| "It is intellectually dishonest to suggest that either party’s candidate could lose because of a 3rd choice."
—Howard Schultz, who wants to make this section of this newsletter his permanent home, and has apparently never heard of Ralph Nader. |
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| Officials in Sandusky, Ohio decided that they will observe Election Day as a holiday instead of Columbus Day, to make voting, and therefore democracy, more accessible to the city’s municipal employees. Do the rest of America next! |
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