Groundhog Day Again ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Shadows: As you likely noted, Judge Engoron who had earlier said he would do his best to issue a ruling in Trump’s NY tax fraud case by the end of January has not. Instead, a court spokesman said yesterday that the much-anticipated ruling will come in early to mid-February.  One possible reason for the delay is that Barbara Jones, the retired federal judge serving as special court appointed monitor overseeing the Trump Organization’s financial reports has identified “certain deficiencies” in the company’s financial information. Specifically, she has uncovered an undocumented $48 million loan that Trump received from an entity affiliated with his building in Chicago. Trump reported the loan on his financial statement as a liability for several years but it’s not clear that the loan ever existed.  Since the fraud case is all about illegal financial sleight of hand, it’s thought that in addition to making sure that his final opinion is bullet proof, Engoron is taking the “now you see it, now you don’t” loan into consideration as he determines just how much to penalize Trump.  Also, there’s still no ruling from the Washington DC appeals court which largely explains why the January 6^th election interference case which had been scheduled to start on March 4 has been temporarily removed from Judge Chutkan’s schedule. That March 4 date had always been aspirational but seeing it erased from the docket is depressing. Nothing much is happening in Florida either though Judge “loose” Cannon did have a sit down with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, something about Smith wanting to keep the contents of some of the most top secret of the “purloined” documents away from the prying eyes of Trump and his legal team.  The news out of Fulton County is also somewhat depressing. District Attorney Fani Willis says that she’s not going to recuse over the allegations about whether her relationship with one of her special counsels involved him paying or more likely sharing costs of a vacation getaway but is due to explain more about their relationship today and is expected to have to go through the details with her judge.  All these delays and screw-ups are depressing and not just for us but for Nikki Haley who really needs Republican voters, or at least the few who care about presidential candidates being knee deep in slimy muck, to see Trump fined bigly for his misdeeds while also seeing more visible evidence of his other crimes. She needs some of that to happen before South Carolina’s February 24 Republican primary if she stands any chance of narrowing Trump’s SC lead, currently projected to be 26 points.  Worth noting that while Nikki Haley isn’t Trump, neither is she quite the model candidate that anti-Trumpers and even some Biden skeptical voters would like to believe she is, and it’s not just her anti-abortion position which while not as restrictive as some in her party, is pretty awful.  This week when asked about the shenanigans going on in Texas where Governor Greg Abbott, another one auditioning hard for Trump’s VP slot, has been threatening to secede Texas from the US, she said: sure, states can secede if they want to. She really needs to brush up on the events leading to the Civil War, that not so little skirmish that she earlier asserted had little to do with slavery.

Legislative Morass: On Wednesday, in an impressive bipartisan vote of 357 to 70, the House passed a $78 billion tax bill that would expand the child tax credit while also extending some business tax credits. In all 188 Democrats joined 168 Republicans in voting to approve the bill while 23 Democrats and 47 Republicans voted against it.  That’s the good news, the not so good news is that Senate Republicans, especially the so-called pro-life contingent have serious reservations about funding that benefits children and are especially concerned about passing a bill that would make President Biden “look good” in the run up to the election as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley put it.  Grassley isn’t the only Republican concerned about that, it’s just that his 90-year-old brain has no filter, so he says things out loud that others just think. It’s almost as if Republicans are playing a legislative version of rope a dope. House Republicans pass a tax bill but insist that they won’t consider a border security bill because Trump wants the border to fester and hates all things Ukraine.  Senate Republicans are still considering a border security bill that also includes funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan because House Republicans say they had to tie border security to foreign aid funding to get House support, but House Republicans then say that the bill should it make it to them will be dead in their water because that’s where Trump wants it.  To add to the mess, there’s another set of government funding deadlines coming up in March and if the House votes to impeach Homeland Secretary Mayorkas, then the Senate will have to push everything aside to hold an impeachment trial. The only possible good news is that it’s not clear that House Republicans have the votes to impeach Mayorkas. Republican Ken Buck says he’s a definite no on impeachment and even the Wall Street Journal is on record saying it’s a stupid thing to do.  One more House thing, early voting for the February 13 special election to fill the seat vacated by George of many names Santos begins tomorrow,  Tell your friends, to vote!  

Fog: Iran is concerned about just how damaging the US response to their “surrogates” drones and bombs and other mayhem will be. There’s an expression for that: FAFO. The UN says that they’ll run out of funding for UNRWA in a few weeks.  FAFO applies there as well but unfortunately the sufferers are going to be civilians because somehow or other Hamas always seems to obtain resources. A lot of press yesterday about Biden sanctioning the Israeli settlers who’ve attacked Palestinians and Israeli peace activists in the West Bank.  Those sanctions, which include banning the settlers who’ve committed bad acts from using the US financial system and from obtaining visas, are probably as much to win back pro-Palestinian voters in swing states like Michigan as they are to punish the settlers because the presidential election looms and “the salty mouthed” Biden who Politico reports has taken to calling Trump a “sick f-ck” in private particularly when referring to said SF’s awful jokes about the assault of Paul Pelosi’s needs to win the swing states. Once again, we’re hearing that there’s a ceasefire/prisoner release in the works. But we hear that a lot.  Sigh.

#BringThemAllHomeNow