Chicken Little Redux✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Déjà vu:  We’re back to another Chicken Little moment because unless Congress passes another funding extension, parts of the government will close down on March 1.  We’ve been here so many times before that it hard to take this sky is falling threat seriously, but we probably should because the House which is currently on vacation and not due to return until February 28 doesn’t have much wiggle room.  Neither does Speaker for now Mike Johnson who may have blown through his honeymoon period with those members of his party who’ve already shown that they have no problem pulling their “motion to vacate” card when their Speaker reaches out to Democrats to get the votes necessary to pass funding extensions. It’s not just government funding that’s at issue right now, the Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan aid package remains up in the air. Few doubt that it would pass if it made it to the House floor, but Johnson is caught between a rock and a hard place on that too, and that hard place if further complicated by Trump’s hate for all things Ukraine. By the way, Speaker Johnson spent part of his House break in Florida, not filming a new version of Where the Boys Are, but hanging with Trump at Mar a Lago where he got his marching orders in person.  It’s more than fair to assume that those orders are as follows:  do nothing to help Ukraine, don’t do anything to fund more border security, and, if closing the government is necessary to increase mayhem, go for it. On the subject of the border, last night Trump said the quiet part out loud, admitting to Fox’s Laura Ingraham that he opposes the very conservative border plan passed by the Senate because it’s good for Biden. In the same interview, he also insisted that he was entitled to take government documents, especially the super-secret ones, with him when he left office and that he’s also entitled to keep them, a notion that his one-time aide convicted liar Peter Navarro apparently shares because he too continues to sit on some documents that he took and is still refusing to return them despite a court order to do so.  

Abortion Politics:  Only the most gullible believe that Trump morally opposes abortion, what he cares about is votes and figuring out a way to recapture the Republicans and independents who have strayed to the blue side because of the Roe overturning Dobbs decision as well as their very rational fears that given the opportunity, Republican politicians will impose more restrictions including even a nationwide abortion ban. In an effort to appear a bit more flexible, Trump has been test marketing a 16-week abortion ban that allegedly would have exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.  Don’t be fooled., that 16-week number may look good on paper but does nothing for women most in need, including those requiring miscarriage care, experiencing dangerous pregnancies complications, or awaiting the results of genetic testing. As to the exceptions, if we’ve learned anything by now it’s that even when they are in state laws, they aren’t applied rationally.  Do we really need to hear more stories about women facing the loss of their fertility or worse, their lives, as they fly across the country, or overseas, for care they can’t get close to home.  And who is going to grant those rape and incest exceptions for anyone, least of all the most vulnerable. It’s not just abortion rights that are at risk, the Alabama Supreme Court is now going after IVF.  They’ve ruled that the destruction of fertilized eggs is equivalent to infanticide.  As a result, one state IVF clinic has suspended operations and others are expected to follow.  All this, while we’re still waiting for SCOTUS to rule on the “legality” of the FDA’s more than 20-year-old approval of mifepristone and whether it can even be distributed through the US mail.

Political Morass:  Some Senate Republicans are fighting to hold a show trial on Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas’ impeachment.  They know that there’s no chance that he’ll be found guilty largely because they don’t have the votes and he’s done nothing that remotely qualifies as a high crime or any crime, but they want the press they’ll get if they hold a loud rambunctious trial.  They need the Mayorkas trial in part because the House’s impeachment investigation into President Biden is proving to be a bust because it relied on testimony from a former FBI informant named Alexander Smirnov who was indicted last week by the Department of Justice’s Republican appointed US Attorney David Weiss for fabricating his testimony.  That testimony concerned invented bribes that Smirnov had claimed that Joe and son Hunter received from Ukrainian oil company Burisma during Hunter’s visit to Ukraine. It turns out that Hunter has never been to Ukraine. that there were no bribes and that the “bribe story” was fed to Smirnov by Russian intelligence. Don’t expect to hear any apologies from any Republicans, especially committee chairs Jim Jordan and James Comer who have been screaming about these alleged bribes despite all the evidence that they never happened.  

The Race:  Nikki Haley took to the podium yesterday to say that she’s remaining in the race even though she knows that she’s going to go down in flames in South Carolina.  She’s been upping her criticism of Trump, but that criticism will only matter if she withholds her endorsement when she drops out of the race and she will eventually drop out, it’s just a matter of time and money.  Trump, who previously said that he already knows who his VP partner will be,  is now teasing that his finalist list includes  Florida’s Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former candidate/tech guy Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and former Democratic Congressman/one time Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.  Poor Elise Stefanik, despite all her fangirling she doesn’t appear to have made the list.

#BringThemAllHomeNow