Joyce Vance/”Civil Discourse” on Substack:
Five Questions with Brandi Buchman on the Proud Boys Trial
Joyce: Almost four months, five defendants, multiple charges including seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to conduct an official proceeding, and actual obstruction of a proceeding. It’s confusing. If you had to describe what crimes the government says the defendants committed, absent the legalese, how would you characterize it?
Brandi: At its core, the government alleges that Proud Boys ringleader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and his co-defendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola came together with an intent to stop the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, by using any means necessary—including the use of brute force.
Lovely distillation of the trial and where we are as we wait for the jury to deliberate and decide. But (see the AP story below) the Republicans are doing their best to obfuscate while the courts seek clarity.
Dan Froomkin/Press Watch:
Republicans threaten to tank economy. Media blames Biden.
Under the headline “Biden Faces His First Big Choice on Debt Limit,” New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley writes today that the issue “has put President Biden on the defensive, forcing him to confront a series of potentially painful choices at a perilous economic moment.”
Sure, Biden says he won’t negotiate, but “business groups, fiscal hawks and some congressional Democrats” want him to make a deal. So Biden, Tankersley writes, “faces a cascading set of decisions as the nation, which has already bumped up against its $31.4 trillion debt limit, barrels toward default.”
But the nation is not “barreling toward default,” nor is it “careening,” or even “drifting” there. It is being pushed there by Republicans.
Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein set off Internet pundits and the Post’s own readers over the weekend with his article headlined “Biden is running out of time to avoid calamitous debt ceiling outcomes.”
Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall tweeted: “Has there ever been a clearer example of the ‘GOP has trained us to take their legislative terrorism as a given’ mentality so clear in so much MSM reporting?”
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post:
This is what it took for Arizona Republicans to expel an election denier
State Rep. Liz Harris’s ouster is a rare case of the GOP policing its own when it comes to election-related misinformation. But there’s more to the story.
In the two and a half years since Donald Trump falsely claimed victory in the 2020 election, Republican officeholders have rarely held their fellow party members accountable for originating or spreading misinformation about the electoral system. In Arizona GOP circles, the false claims have run particularly rampant, eroding support for democracy and costing taxpayers millions of dollars as lawmakers hunted futilely for proof that the vote had been rigged.
But the case of the Arizona legislator who helped perpetuate the groundless belief that the Sinaloa drug cartel was orchestrating election fraud ended this month with an unusual twist: She was expelled from office by her colleagues, Republicans included.
The story of how Republicans decided to oust Harris — marking only the fourth time in history that an Arizona state House member has been expelled — illuminates what it takes for GOP lawmakers to police their own when it comes to election-related misinformation.
The Guardian:
Revealed: Senate investigation into Brett Kavanaugh assault claims contained serious omissions
The 2018 investigation into the then supreme court nominee claimed there was ‘no evidence’ behind claims of sexual assault
The revelation raises new questions about apparent efforts to downplay and discredit accusations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh and exclude evidence that supported an alleged victim’s claims.
A new documentary – an early version of which premiered at Sundance in January, but is being updated before its release – contains a never-before-heard recording of another Yale graduate, Max Stier, describing a separate alleged incident in which he said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party at Yale.
It has previously been reported that Stier wanted to tell the FBI anonymously during the confirmation process that he had allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh’s friends push the future judge’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party. While Republicans on the Senate committee were reportedly made aware of his desire to submit information to the FBI, he was not interviewed by the committee’s Republican investigators.
The committee’s final report claimed there was “no verifiable evidence to support” Ramirez’s claim.
It is not clear how the film’s director, Doug Liman, obtained the recording, or whom Stier was speaking to when it was recorded.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Lindsey Graham Wants a National Abortion Ban. Here’s What He Overlooks.
A new lawsuit reveals harrowing cases of women living under Texas laws banning abortion.
Senator Lindsey Graham has been pushing since 2015 for a national ban on abortion. “It’s a human rights issue. Does it really matter where you’re conceived?” he said Sunday on CNN.
But to the South Carolina Republican, it’s a human rights issue only for the fetus: “At 15 weeks, you have a developed heart and lungs. And to dismember a child at 15 weeks is a painful experience. It’s barbaric.”
You’ll notice what’s missing from his remarks: the human rights of women. And—if you want to talk about barbaric—as a Texas lawsuit makes clear, under the abortion restrictions that Texas and other states have been rushing to impose, the rights of pregnant women are being crushed. Take it from Amanda Zurawski, who testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill that her state’s laws nearly killed her.
POLITICO:
DeSantis allies go to war with an unlikely foe: Nikki Haley
When the super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis turned its fire on Nikki Haley, it said volumes about the shifting dynamics of the 2024 campaign.
Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis group, is now running an ad online attacking Haley, has polled Twitter users on a new nickname for her, and accused her in a tweet of “trying really hard to audition” to be Trump’s vice presidential pick.
The move suggested a shifting dynamic in the contest: With DeSantis falling further behind Trump in national and early-state surveys, his allied super PAC is trying to ensure that the primary remains a two-way race and that other candidates vying to be the Trump alternative do not gain traction.
“This is the DeSantis team acknowledging that he is closer to the field than he is to President Trump,” said Justin Clark, a Republican strategist who was Trump’s 2020 deputy campaign manager but who isn’t involved in a 2024 presidential campaign.
Associated Press:
GOP uses state capitol protests to redefine ‘insurrection’
Silenced by her Republican colleagues, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr looked up from the House floor to supporters in the gallery shouting “Let her speak!” and thrust her microphone into the air — amplifying the sentiment the Democratic transgender lawmaker was forbidden from expressing.
It was a brief moment of defiance and chaos. While seven people were arrested for trespassing, the boisterous demonstration was free of violence or damage. Yet later that day, a group of Republican lawmakers described it in darker tones, saying Zephyr’s actions were responsible for “encouraging an insurrection.”
It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.