Chutes and Ladders ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Tick Tock:  If Congress fails to pass a continuing budget resolution, the government will shut down on Friday.  We’re facing this deadline because House Republicans haven’t been able to agree upon any of the 13 spending bills that make up the federal budget.  That’s not unusual, the inability to get individual spending bills through Congress on a timely basis is the reason both Republican and Democratic leadership so often go the continuing resolution route. However,  the failure to pass individual spending bills is the rationale that most of the Republicans who voted against former Speaker McCarthy used to justify ousting him. Newbie Speaker for now Mike Johnson has a plan to avoid the shutdown, one that also leaves him in place at least for the moment.  His plan involves splitting the continuing resolution into two parts, one that divides the 13 spending bills into two buckets.  The first bucket would extend the funding of the parts of government included in four of the spending bills through January 19, the second bucket would extend the funding for the rest of the government through February 2.  Sure, it would be far simpler to just go with a single continuing resolution, but Johnson is hoping that a little sleight of hand will give his caucus, or at least enough of them, the cover they need to vote to “cleanly” fund the government through the 🦃 🎄 holidays.  Like McCarthy before him, Johnson won’t get all of his outliers on board, but he hopes that he’ll get enough of them to cooperate and that with the help of some of Hakeem Jeffries’s Democrats and agreement of the Senate and White House, a shut down will be avoided, at least for now.  Neither of Johnson’s “packages” includes funding for Israel, Ukraine, or Taiwan.  The Senate is working on that and is expected to come up with a military aid package that also includes border security funding but does not cut the IRS because cutting the IRS, while good for Republican messaging, is stupid and in and of itself raises the deficit.            

Trump Dump:  Trump has been busy doing some messaging of his own.  Borrowing a term from Nazi era propaganda he’s taken to calling his political opponents out as vermin.  Those are the “radical leftists,” he plans to prosecute, persecute, and even hang if he returns to the Oval Office. One of the scariest things about his threatening, hate filled language is that it doesn’t outrage because we’ve come to expect it, but we should be horrified, really horrified, and offended too.  He even went after Paul Pelosi who is still recovering from having his head bashed in again this weekend.  Trump also plans to act against all undocumented immigrants and even some who hold legitimate papers. According to the NY Times, Trump’s favorite loyalist Stephen Miller’s Trump blessed newest anti-immigration strategy involves country wide raids, giant prison camps, massive deportations, the elimination of temporary protected status and birth right citizenship as well as the immediate end of the DACA program. He even plans to reevaluate the immigration papers provided to those Afghan allies who supported our troops. Trump is counting on “his” right wing judicial appointees, expecting that the new crop will uphold even the most heinous of his plans.  It’s fair to say that our immigration system is broken, but prison camps and mass deportation, we should be better than that.  On the subject of judges, one of Trump’s “crop” may not be one of his favorites for much longer.  Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon declined to delay the purloined documents case, which is scheduled to begin in March, at least for now, though she did push back certain deadlines. Trump’s defense attorneys are scheduled to start presenting their case in New York and now it isn’t just Trump who is going after “deranged” Judge Engoron.  New York Congresswoman/Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik has filed a judicial ethics complaint against Engoron, accusing the judge of using “weaponized lawfare” against Trump and calling for him to recuse himself.  Elise is trying so hard to jump to the top of Trump’s VP list. 

2024: South Carolina Senator Tim Scott insists that he doesn’t want to be on the VP list but he’s no longer running for president.  Late yesterday he surprised his staff and donors as well as Fox’s Trey Gowdy by announcing on the former Republican Representative’s Sunday Night in America program that he was suspending his campaign. Scott was polling around 2% so his decision to pull out makes sense.  He hasn’t endorsed anyone else, one sign that despite his protestations he might consider a VP spot if the front runner offered it to him. Trump, that front runner, is polling around 63% with the rest of the candidates trailing far behind with DeSantis at 15%, Haley at 8%, Ramaswamy at 7% and Christie at 3%.  While the twice impeached, multiply indicted front runner Trump was hate raging against Special Counsel Jack Smith and his family, President Biden commemorated Veterans Day and spent some quality time with the head of the United Autoworkers Union, celebrating the union’s recent deal.  Biden hasn’t received the UAW endorsement yet, but it would be surprising if he doesn’t get it at some point, especially since Trump’s contribution to the union’s fight was to visit a non-union shop, so keep an eye on that.  Also keep an eye on Minnesota squad member Ilhan Omar’s race.  She’s being primaried by fellow Democrat Don Samuels who she beat by only 2 points in 2020.  Her district, the home of many members of Minneapolis’ Jewish community and Somali immigrants is heavily Democratic, so the primary winner is a lock for the seat.  Samuels is hoping to win over voters upset about her continuous criticism of all things Israel as well as her outlier vote against sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

#BringThemHomeNow