We begin today with Jim Saska of Roll Call’s report that Colorado Republican Ken Buck is calling it quits.
Buck, 64, announced his decision during an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in which he discussed the speakership fight that left the House rudderless and Republicans at one another’s throats for most of the last month.
Buck played an instrumental part in that chaos as one of the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to boot Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s office. He then opposed Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio in their bids for the gavel, citing their votes against certifying the 2020 election. But he ultimately voted for the new speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who also voted against certification and filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit that sought to set aside Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, which Buck himself cosigned.
“I always have been disappointed with our inability in Congress to deal with major issues and I’m also disappointed that the Republican Party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” he said on MSNBC. “If we’re going to solve difficult problems, we got to deal with some very unpleasant truths or lies, and make sure we project to the public what the truth is.”
More Republicans in disarray below the fold.
Clare Foran and Haley Talbot of CNN report that Rep. George Santos of New York survived a floor vote to expel him from the house.
The final vote was 179 to 213. Ahead of the vote, Santos defended his right to “the presumption of innocence.”
“I have a right of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I’m fighting for that right and if these guys don’t believe in that, then democracy is dead,” Santos told CNN’s Manu Raju. [...]
Freshman Reps. Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Marcus Molinaro, Brandon Williams and Mike Lawler signed the letter. The vulnerable members from New York’s congressional delegation address several specific concerns raised by their colleagues including the arguments to let Santos’ voters decide and that by removing him they are only decreasing their impossibly slim majority.
All five Republicans stuck with the GOP in July to refer a similar Democratic effort to the Ethics committees.
Dan Lamothe and Liz Goodwin of The Washington Post report that some Senate Republicans have had it with Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville over the holds he has placed on hundreds of military nominations and advancements.
Concerns about Gen. Eric Smith’s apparent cardiac arrest on Sunday, coupled with fast-moving developments in the Middle East, have surfaced repeatedly this week as officials in Washington seek an off-ramp to the bitter political dispute between Tuberville (R-Ala.) and the Biden administration that centers on the Pentagon’s travel policy for troops seeking an abortion. Hundreds of senior military advancements have been stalled as a result, dating to February.
On Wednesday night, a remarkable scene unfolded on the Senate floor as several Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa) Todd C. Young (Ind.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) confronted Tuberville, imploring him to lift his hold for the sake of national security and proposing votes on individual officers whose promotions have been delayed. Tuberville rebuffed them one by one, blocking each proposed nominee as his colleagues’ frustration continued to rise. [...]
The surprising public confrontation made clear that some of Tuberville’s Republican colleagues have hit their limit, but it remains unclear if there is enough GOP support for a Democratic plan to temporarily change Senate rules to neutralize his blockade. That proposal is set to come to a vote in the next few weeks, and would need nine Republicans to support it.
The Drama Caucus. Sheeesh!
Charles Blow of The New York Times writes that even though he has never met House Speaker Mike Johnson, the two of them are from the same area of the country, so he is well familiar with Johnson’s general profile.
We never crossed paths, but we came of age politically in the same locality, a place I know better than almost any other on Earth, shaped by many of the same cultural forces.
And for that reason, I believe that he’ll most likely be able to avoid being tagged as an extremist — at least in the short run — as America gets to know him. [...]
He is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they “love the sinner but hate the sin,” where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt.
He is what many have feared: an example of second-wave Trumpism — politicians rising in Trump’s wake who come with the same policy priorities and ideological proclivities, but in a far more congenial and urbane package, propelled by something more than personal grievance. Trumpism is a religion developed to serve a man. What happens when it evolves into a pillar of an established creed and is viewed as a way to serve God?
Johnson has taken that ethos into his politics.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe reports about the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments this past Tuesday about two local cases involving public officials blocking criticism on social media.
The court heard arguments Tuesday in the first of several cases to be decided in the months ahead that will have a massive impact on the rights and responsibilities of social media platforms and users. At issue: When do private and campaign social media posts by public officials constitute state action? It’s a crucial line for the court to draw because it will determine when an official’s decision to block members of the public from seeing their posts rises to the level of a First Amendment violation.
And while the cases involve local officials in Michigan and California, a far more prominent figure loomed large in the courtroom.
“I don’t think a citizen would be able to really understand the Trump presidency, if you will, without any access to all the things that the president said on [his Twitter] account,” Justice Elena Kagan said during arguments, pointing out the elephant in the room. [...]
This issue first landed before the court a few years back when it was asked to decide if Trump violated the First Amendment rights of citizens whom he blocked from his account during his presidency. But the justices avoided that thorny issue after Trump lost the 2020 election and the case became legally moot.
John Cassidy of The New Yorker writes about the enduring power of organized labor.
Shawn Fain, the leader of the U.A.W., has hailed the outcome of the strike as a major win for the entire labor movement, and he’s right. Like the recent deals between the Teamsters and UPS, health-care workers and Kaiser Permanente, and the Writers Guild and the Hollywood studios, the tentative agreement between the U.A.W. and the Big Three has demonstrated that, even in the fissured and outsourced economy of the twenty-first century, organized labor can still wield considerable power, especially in favorable economic conditions. That isn’t a surprise to anybody familiar with labor history, but it is a lesson that in recent decades has often been lost, or deliberately obscured.
Going into the strike, the media attention focussed on four of the U.A.W.’s basic demands: sharply higher wages, including the restoration of automatic cost-of-living adjustments; the elimination of a two-tier pay system that was introduced more than fifteen years ago ago; a pathway to unionize new electric-vehicle plants; and the restoration of defined pensions and health insurance for union retirees. In the first three areas, the union appears to have achieved what it wanted. Only in the area of retiree benefits did the auto companies manage to hold the line. [...]
Given that last year G.M. and Ford each made more than ten billion dollars in operating income, it was always going to be difficult for them to resist the U.A.W.’s wage demands. What is perhaps more surprising is the companies’ willingness to make concessions on unionizing the electric-vehicle plants that are key to the industry’s future. According to U.A.W. leadership, the agreement with Ford will enable the union to organize workers at a new battery plant that the automaker is building in Marshall, Michigan, and at a new E.V. plant in Tennessee that is a joint venture with a South Korean electric-battery company, SK Innovation. In addition, workers at existing plants, which mainly make vehicles and components for vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, will have opportunities to switch to electric-vehicle plants.
Paul Farhi of The Washington Post reports on two journalists that were arrested in Alabama for publishing material leaked from grand-jury testimony.
Publisher Sherry Digmon and reporter Don Fletcher of the Atmore News in southwestern Alabama were arrested last week after a story by Fletcher disclosed details of an investigation into the local school board’s payments to seven former school-system employees.
Digmon and Fletcher were charged by the Escambia County district attorney with revealing grand-jury proceedings, a felony under Alabama law. They face up to five years in jail.
While it’s illegal for a grand juror, witness or court officer to disclose grand-jury proceedings, it’s not a crime for a media outlet to publish such leaked material, provided the material was obtained by legal means, legal experts said.
Theodore J. Boutrous, an attorney who has represented media organizations, called the Alabama case “extraordinary, outrageous and flatly unconstitutional.”
He said the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment forbids punishing journalists for publishing information of public importance, even if the information came from a source who broke the law in leaking it. “And that applies to grand-jury information,” he said.
Jonathan Lemire, Nahal Toosi, and Alexander Ward of POLITICO report that the Biden administration is preparing for a post-Netanyahu Israel, possibly during wartime.
A current U.S. official and a former U.S. official both confirmed that the administration believes Netanyahu has limited time left in office. The current official said the expectation internally was that the Israeli PM would likely last a matter of months, or at least until the early fighting phase of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip was over, though all four officials noted the sheer unpredictability of Israeli politics.
“There’s going to have to be a reckoning within Israeli society about what happened,” said the official who, like others, was granted anonymity to detail private conversations. “Ultimately, the buck stops on the prime minister’s desk.”
The administration’s dimming view of Netanyahu’s political future comes as the president and his foreign policy team try to work with, and diplomatically steer, the Israeli leader as his country pursues a complicated and bloody confrontation with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza and attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
The White House has denied the content of POLITICO’s story.
I don’t believe a word of that denial based on my reading of Israeli media across the political spectrum and especially since the blowback that followed Netanyahu’s tweet last Saturday criticizing the military; criticism that also included the former chief of Mossad and even the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Gianluca Pacchaini of The Times of Israel reports on the private mourning of Israel’s Bedouin communities for their loved ones abducted and murdered by Hamas.
Ali sits in the circle and displays a picture of the three male abductees from his family — his brother Youssef, 53, and Youssef’s sons Bilal, 18, and Hamza, 23. They were kidnapped by Hamas in the morning of October 7 while working in the cowshed of Kibbutz Holit, less than a mile away from the Gaza Strip.
Youssef’s 17-year-old daughter Aisha was with them that morning and is now also in the hands of Hamas. The family was recently notified by the IDF that the status of all four has been modified from “unaccounted for” to “abducted.” [...]
Despite Ali’s cry, and repeated visits to the family vigil by Israeli and foreign journalists, the Bedouin community has mostly kept a low profile about its missing members. Six Bedouins were taken hostage by Hamas, local sources say, while 21 were killed during the October 7 onslaught and in rocket fire from Gaza in the following days.
“We don’t have an international voice representing us when it comes to our hostages,” Rahat Mayor Ata Abu Madighem told The Times of Israel. “Our voice is the State of Israel.”
With nearly a fourth of the hostages held by Hamas being Thai guest workers (according to Israeli sources) and 32 Thais having been murdered during the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Julian Küng of Deutsche Welle looks at the circumstances that led to roughly 30,000 Thai guest workers being hosted by Israel.
Israel has said 54 Thais are among the estimated 220 people being held hostage by Hamas, which is considered a terror organization by the EU, the US, Germany and others. Thailand's government said 32 Thais have been killed, one the highest numbers of foreign victims.
Guest workers from Thailand in Israel are considered politically neutral and a group who largely keep to themselves. Kong's wife said her husband mostly kept the company of his fellow guest workers.
"Why him of all people?" Suntree asked, crying. "He is just an innocent worker who wanted to earn money."
In Thailand, many people are wondering why so many Thais were affected by the terror attacks on October 7.
It is unclear whether Thais were specifically targeted in the Hamas terror attack. What is clear, however, is that labor migration from Thailand to Israel is linked to Palestinian-Israeli history.
Oren Persico and The Seventh Eye write for +972 Magazine that the Israeli cabinet has now approved of a plan to greatly limit and possibly shutter Al Jazeera media operations in Israel.
According to the agreed-upon version, any action the Israeli government takes against the network can only be implemented following a set process. The defense minister will have to determine that the network’s activities cause “real harm to state security,” and do not just constitute broadcasting propaganda or a blow to public morale. The Security Cabinet will then have to approve the action, and only after that will the communications minister be able to issue an order to take measures against the network.
The order, according to the regulations, can include three levels of action: shutting the offices of the media network in Israel and confiscating its broadcasting equipment; removing the channel from cable and satellite platforms; and blocking access to the network’s Israeli website (with the .il suffix). The regulations do not permit the communications minister to remove social media content in a targeted manner, and the regulations are only applicable to foreign broadcasting entities, and only when the Israeli government has declared a state of war.
As of today, Nov. 1, the regulations have been approved by the Israeli cabinet, but the approval of the security officials to issue an order to close Al-Jazeera has not yet been given. According to a report from Ynet, the reasons for the delay are twofold: first, the Israeli government is refraining from acting so long as Qatar is involved in attempts to rescue Israeli abductees held by Hamas; and second, Israeli security officials did not actually find that Al Jazeera violated censorship rules that resulted in harm to the state’s security.
Graham Bowley and Christopher F. Schuetze of The New York Times trace the development of the German Green Party from its successes in the German parliamentary elections two years ago to becoming, according to one commentator, “public enemy No. 1.”
Today the Greens are widely viewed as a drag on the government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which one poll gave a mere 19 percent approval rating. The Greens have drawn withering attacks from even their own coalition partners. To their opponents, the Greens have overreached on their agenda and become the face of an out-of-touch environmental elitism that has alienated many voters, sending droves to the far right.
In important state elections this month, all the parties in the governing coalition took a beating, but the Green Party was singled out for special attack as populists and the far right surged.
“They’ve made the Greens public enemy No. 1,” said Sudha David-Wilp, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, a research institute.
The reversal of fortunes for the Greens is the story of a party that has long struggled to transcend its roots as a niche, environmentalist party to become a more pragmatic political force capable of broader appeal to lead the country.
Finally today, Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer for his newsletter writes that the American media has largely ignored the devastation in Acapulco because of Hurricane Otis even though Otis may augur a dangerous future for other American coastal cities.
In normal times, such death and destruction in a North American city that’s long been a hugely popular tourist destination for U.S. citizens would be a Page 1, top-of-the-hour story. But in a crazy, mixed-up world from Maine to the Middle East to Capitol Hill, Hurricane Otis barely dented American news media. And that’s a shame — not only because of the human tragedy getting ignored, but because the massive storm may have been nature’s most powerful warning yet that climate change has quickly shifted from a scientific theory to a five-alarm emergency.
Less than a day out, weather forecasters were describing Otis as a tropical storm that might bring heavy rain to Acapulco, but little more. But in the course of 12 hours over the overheated Pacific waters — in what some meteorologists are calling the most extreme example of “rapid intensification” they’ve ever seen — Otis gained an astonishing 115 mph in wind speed to become a major hurricane, in what National Hurricane Center forecaster Eric Blake called “a nightmare scenario.”
“Something like this was bound to happen,” Michael Mann, director of Philadelphia’s Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, told me, as he noted that the Pacific Ocean near Acapulco was unusually warm for this time of year, the result of both record temperatures linked to fossil-fuel pollution as well as the El Niño weather pattern. “It’s going to happen to Miami. It’s going to happen to Tampa,” Mann said.
Try to have the best possible day everyone!