Watching and Waiting, Again 🌻 🌻 🌻

Indictment, Indictment: Not that it seems to matter much to Teflon Don’s base, but we are on indictment watch, again.  The Washington DC grand jury hearing evidence about Trump’s January 6 related criminal activity is scheduled to meet tomorrow, and it’s widely expected that they’ll vote out some indictments assuming they are ready to do so because there are reports that the jury is still hearing testimony from more witnesses. Though he hasn’t testified before the grand jury, former senior Justice Department official Richard Donoghue revealed that he has been interviewed by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, not all that surprising since he previously testified before the January 6^th committee where he said that on the run up to insurrection day, Trump had urged Justice Department officials including then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressman.”  Special Jack’s team has also met with Chris Krebs, the former Head of CISA, the US cybersecurity and defense agency, who Trump fired for saying that the 2020 election had been the most secure one ever conducted in US history.  And because Rudy Giuliani and his cronies are always in the mix, Tim Parlatore, the lawyer representing Guiliani’s former Police Commissioner, convicted felon Bernie Kerik said that he provided thousands of pages of documents detailing Kerik’s investigation into the election that was done at Rudy’s request to Special Jack’s team over the weekend. That investigation found bupkis despite all of Rudy’s claims otherwise though the one-time mayor’s claims did cause Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss to go into hiding. Last night Rudy conceded that he made defamatory statements about the two workers but claims that they were okay because his statements were “constitutionally protected.”

Red Alert:  To date seven Republican candidates including Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie and Doug Burgum have reached both the polling and contribution thresholds to qualify for the first Republican debate which is scheduled to take place on August 23.  To meet the donor requirement the RNC requires that a candidate have at least 40,000 unique donors with at least 200 donors in at least 20 states/and or territories.  Burgum, the North Dakota Governor with little name recognition but lots of money, met the qualification by gifting donors $20 gift cards for their $1 donations.  Though former VP Pence has lots of name recognition, he’s short cash which together with his anemic popularity particularly among those who haven’t forgiven him for failing to deliver the election to Trump explains why he still hasn’t qualified for the debate state.  He’s not alone, neither has former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former Texas Congressman/CIA agent Will Hurd, Texas Businessman/Pastor Ryan Binkley, Right Wing radio host Larry Elder or entrepreneur Perry Johnson. While Ronny De, who continues to defend his slavery was beneficial for slaves curriculum while denying he had anything to do with it, will be on the stage, he continues to face speed bumps, both literally and figuratively.  Yesterday he was in a car accident when his motorcade was forced to brake suddenly and he also cut one third of his staff, including the “genius” responsible for using swastika like images in his campaign tweets as well as the homoerotic anti-Trump commercial, the one that accused Trump of being an advocate for all things-LGBTQ. Naturally, Trump hasn’t committed to participating in the first debate, maybe because he knows that Christie will eviscerate him.  

Oy:  As previously noted, Israel is a hot mess. As feared and over the objections of a large segment of the population, their parliament passed the first leg of Bibi Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan, scraping the “reasonableness” clause that allowed Israel’s Supreme Court to overrule government decisions. Unlike the US, Israel doesn’t have a constitution so eliminating that reasonableness clause severely reduces the power of the country’s Supreme Court to moderate the right’s most extreme actions. Though we have a Constitution that gives our Supreme Court power our democratic principles are teetering too because ignoring SCOTUS rulings is apparently a thing here as well, at least in Alabama where Republicans are ignoring the recent Supreme Court ruling that ordered the redrawing of the state’s congressional map to include another Black majority district.  The state’s Republicans tinkered with the map but failed to do what they were supposed to do. Twenty-six percent of Alabamans are Black however only one of the state’s seven congressional representatives is Black and absent further litigation that results in another revision to the map it will stay that way. Then there’s Ohio where far more than enough pro-choice voters have signed a petition to put an amendment guaranteeing abortion rights on this November’s ballot.  That’s the good news, the not so good news is that Ohio is having a special election in August where voters will be given the option to make the passage of amendments more difficult by raising the threshold to 60% from a simple majority while also requiring that petition organizers would need to meet signature requirements in all of Ohio’s 88 counties as opposed to the 44 now required. The point of the special election is to sabotage the effort to put the right to abortion up to a vote. In Texas, the good news is that multiply indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton is currently sidelined awaiting an impeachment trial.  The bad news for those who believe he should be permanently kicked to the curb is that the judge for his trial will be Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick whose campaign coffers were recently gifted with a $3 million contribution from Paxton.  The other bad news is that Texas Governor Abbott has recently installed a lethal 1000-foot floating barrier in the Rio Grande river to make it more difficult for migrants to cross into the US, that despite the fact that migrant crossings are currently down. A neat idea unless you think that killing and maiming people is a bad thing.  The Department of Justice is now suing Texas which is making the publicity seeking Abbott very happy.  And, then there’s Kevin McCarthy, in an effort to maintain his speakership and make his mango god happy, he’s now promising to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.  He pretty much acknowledged that there’s no evidence that Biden committed any impeachable crimes but says that the whole point of an inquiry is to find one.  Joe’s son, Hunter’s plea bargain is supposed to be finalized today, unless of course it isn’t.