Category: Republican Reality

Trump is using a peculiar strategy to maintain his power over the GOP: experts

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Experts speaking to Newsweek say Donald Trump’s stalling when it comes to announcing whether or not he’ll run for president in 2024 could be a strategy to help maintain his grip over the Republican Party.

“There’s no doubt that Trump’s choice to delay announcing whether he will run for president extends his influence over the Republican Party,” Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Center on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek. “The longer he holds out making a decision, the more the anticipation around his candidacy grows, the more ability he has to play kingmaker within the party for the 2022 midterms, and the more he can freeze out other potential GOP candidates in 2024.”

“For Trump, there’s little cost to waiting,” he continued. “If he’s genuinely eyeing the White House in 2024, securing the Republican nomination seems, if not preordained, highly likely given his resilient support within the party. If he’s not interested, then telling his supporters now can only prematurely diminish his stature and hasten his irrelevance.” Continue reading.

Republican leaders’ claim that the Jan. 6 commission bill would not allow GOP staff hires

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“Remember, this commission, the appointment of the chair goes to Schumer and Pelosi and they appoint the staff. All the staff would be Democrats.”

— House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in an interview on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, May 18

Commission staff “would only be appointed by the Democrat chairman” and “Republicans would not have a say in that.”

— Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), in remarks, May 19

“We need to read the fine print. Even though the commission appears to be balanced, my staff tells me that in fact the majority — the chair, who will be determined by Pelosi and Schumer — control all the staff hiring.”

— Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in a news conference, May 18

The House passed a bill to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, similar to the 9/11 Commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The vote on Wednesday was 252 to 175, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.

The Jan. 6 commission members would be split equally between Democrats and Republicans. But they would need a staff: investigators, lawyers, aides, the works. Continue reading.

30 House Republicans introduce bill to stop government from fighting racism

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The bill was filed by Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah.

Thirty House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would prevent the federal government from supporting efforts to fight racism, sexism, and gender discrimination.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) and has 29 co-sponsors, including Reps. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Brian Mast (R-FL), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Ronny Jackson (R-TX).

H.R. 3235, if passed, would reinstate an executive order issued by Donald Trump that prevented the federal government from funding programs that included material on combating racism and gender stereotypes in the workplace. Continue reading.

Sen. Ted Cruz insulted a ‘woke, emasculated’ U.S. Army ad. Angry veterans fired back.

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The first half of the TikTok video shows a muscular Russian man with a shaved head doing push-ups, jumping out of a plane, and staring down the scope of a rifle. The second half shows a brightly animated U.S. Army ad telling the true story of Cpl. Emma Malonelord, a soldier who enlisted after being raised by two mothers in California and graduating at the top of her high school class.

The U.S. Army said its ad showcases the “the deeply emotional and diverse” backgrounds of its soldiers. But to Sen. Ted Cruz, who retweeted the TikTok on Thursday, the contrast with Russia’s campaign instead made American soldiers “into pansies.”

“Holy crap,” Cruz said in his viral tweet. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea …” Continue reading.

GOP senator: No corporate tax hikes because ‘we can’t put laws on private companies’

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Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville is proposing legislation regulating investment in private companies.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) argued on Tuesday that taxes on corporations cannot be increased because “we can’t put laws on private companies.” Increasing the corporate tax rate to fund social services, Tuberville said, would also cause companies to leave the United States.

Tuberville made his comments during an appearance on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” to promote his Prohibiting TSP Investment in China Act, which would prohibit the federal Thrift Savings Plan pension fund from investing “in any security of an entity based in China or in a subsidiary that is owned or operated by a Chinese company,” as he said in an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal on May 17.

While arguing that “something has to be done” about the investments, Tuberville said, “The one thing that can’t be done is we can’t raise the corporate income tax.” Continue reading.

The Party Of Surrender…To Tyranny

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When the violent mob finally dispersed from the Capitol late on January 6, it left behind a troubling choice that Republican congressional leaders are only now being forced to make.

This week, they had to decide whether to fulfill their constitutional oath by supporting a full and independent investigation of that day’s terrible events, which inevitably will reveal all the dimensions of former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection, or to surrender to Trump by attempting to kill that investigation while muttering excuses that only underline their cowardly dereliction.

We know how that went. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with a majority of their caucuses, showed abject obedience to the would-be dictator, who now rules the Republican Party with a clenched fist. He publicly ordered the pair of them to oppose the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex, as the legislation is titled, and they heeled like whipped dogs. Continue reading.

Giuliani’s legal profession does not shield him from seizure of electronics, prosecutors say

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NEW YORK — Rudolph W. Giuliani, the onetime personal attorney to former president Donald Trump, cannot claim his profession should have shielded him from the search warrant for electronics executed at his home and office last month, federal prosecutors argued in a filing unsealed Thursday evening.

The former New York mayor, through his attorneys, has argued that because of the extensive business-related communications authorities are likely to find on his phones and computers, it is impossible for the Justice Department to sort through his data without infringing on the rights of his clients.

In late April, FBI agents acting on a warrant obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan seized 18 electronic devices from Giuliani’s New York home and office, including some belonging to employees of Giuliani Partners. A phone belonging to D.C.-area attorney Victoria Toensing also was recovered. Continue reading.

Filibuster brawl amps up with GOP opposition to Jan. 6 panel

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The battle over the chamber’s 60-vote threshold will erupt as soon as next week.

The filibuster has been on hiatus since Joe Biden took over. Senate Republicans are about to change that — over a bipartisan commission to probe the Capitol riot.

After more than four months of letting their power to obstruct lie unused in the Senate, the 50-member Senate GOP is ready to mount a filibuster of House-passed legislation creating an independent cross-aisle panel to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. If Republicans follow through and block the bill, they will spark a long-building fight over the filibuster’s very existence.

The filibuster has spent months of lurking in the background of the Senate’s daily business, but the battle over the chamber’s 60-vote threshold will erupt as soon as next week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is plotting to bring the House’s Jan. 6 commission bill to the floor and daring Senate Republicans to block it. Continue reading.

Trump administration secretly obtained CNN reporter’s phone and email records

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration secretly sought and obtained the 2017 phone and email records of a CNN correspondent, the latest instance where federal prosecutors have taken aggressive steps targeting journalists in leak investigations.

The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, between June 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017. The letter listed phone numbers for Starr’s Pentagon extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cell phones, as well as Starr’s work and personal email accounts.

It is unclear when the investigation was opened, whether it happened under Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration was looking for in Starr’s records. The Justice Department confirmed the records were sought through the courts last year but provided no further explanation or context. Continue reading.

Opinion: The threat of violence now infuses GOP politics. We should all be afraid.

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American politics is being conducted under the threat of violence.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has a talent for constructive bluntness, describes a political atmosphere within the GOP heavy with fear. “If you look at the vote to impeach,” she said recently, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” The events of Jan. 6 have only intensified the alarm. When Donald Trump insists he is “still the rightful president,” Cheney wrote in an op-ed for The Post, he “repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6.” And there’s good reason, Cheney argued, “to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again.”

Sometimes political events force us to step back in awe, or horror, or both. The (former) third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives has accused a former president of her party of employing the threat of violence as a tool of intimidation. And election officials around the country — Republican and Democratic — can attest to the results: Death threats. Racist harassment. Armed protesters at their homes. Continue reading.