Sleepy, Grumpy Don ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Seven and Counting:  Forget world turmoil and bombs and rockets, the Trump New York election interference/hush money trial is dominating the news cycle.  The biggest takeaways from the trial are that seven jurors have been selected so far, Trump who keeps nodding off managed to stay awake long enough to give at least one potential juror the evil eye and may be fined for that as well as for violating his partial gag order, and presiding Judge Juan Merchan expects, or at least hopes to have all the jurors in time for opening arguments on Monday.  For the record, the judge didn’t say that he wouldn’t let Trump attend son Barron’s May 17 high school graduation, he just said that it would depend on where things stood in court at the time, not that the truth matters to Trump who immediately lambasted Merchan for keeping him away from Barron’s graduation.  Just a reminder that if Trump, who reportedly didn’t go to his other kids’ graduations, had spent more time with Barron when he was four months old and less time with a certain porn star this case wouldn’t be happening.  Also, Trump who has probably never been to a bodega before went to one in Harlem to highlight the “skyrocketing” murder rate that exists only in his fevered mind, on right wing TV, and as a Republican talking point at least according to that left wing, communist rag The Wall Street Journal which reported this week that homicides have “plummeted” in major US cities including New York.  On the subject of right- wing news outlets and their habit of reporting faux news, Smartmatic, one of the two electronic voting system companies defamed after the 2020 election, reached an out of court settlement with OAN yesterday. The details of the settlement are sealed. Smartmatic is still suing Fox, the company that forked over a settlement payment of $787 million to Dominion, the other voting system company which is still suing OAN.

Republicans in Disarray:  Democrats aren’t in unison, particularly on aid to Israel, but House Republicans are so dysfunctional that their disagreement on passing Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid is providing Hakeem Jeffries’ team with lots of cover.  Yesterday, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie said that he’s on team MAGA Margie and will support her efforts to force a motion to vacate, the mechanism that could signal the end of Speaker for now Mike Johnson’s speakership. Massie and MAGA Marge are riled up over Johnson’s cockeyed multi-step plan to get foreign aid through the House.  It’s not the cockeyed part that bothers them, it’s that Johnson, who says he’s not resigning despite their efforts to boot him, is trying to get any funds approved for those “corrupt” “Nazi” Ukrainians, something that many others in his fractious caucus, particularly the ones who still believe in trying to push back against Putin’s territorial ambitions, care about. Johnson’s plan involves breaking the foreign aid into parts so that pro-Israel Republicans who don’t want to fund Ukraine can vote to fund Israel without voting to fund Ukraine.  From Johnson’s point of view, the multi-part legislative plan has the added benefit of shining a bright light on the “Squad” Democrats, who won’t vote to fund anything having to do with Israel. To make matters even more difficult for Johnson, a few other members of his fractious soon to be only one vote majority caucus are still holding out for the additional border funding and immigration restrictions that Johnson following the orders of Trump failed to bring up for a vote.  Of course, the House could just vote on the foreign aid package already approved by the Senate, there are likely enough votes to pass that more straightforward legislation in the House.  However, Johnson’s problem is that he doesn’t have the votes to do so without a lift from Democratic and the Orange Guy isn’t on board.  Further complicating the passage of any legislation is that Johnson can’t get anything to the floor of the House for a vote without first getting it passed through the House Rules Committee which former Speaker McCarthy stacked with right wing crazies in order to secure their support for his short-lived Speakership.  Of course, Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries could lend a helping hand by giving Johnson a few Rules Committee votes, something Jeffries might do even though the minority party doesn’t generally support the majority party’s Rules Committee votes.  That would help get foreign aid legislation passed but ultimately would lead to Johnson’s demise turning his “I am not resigning” assertion into “where’s the exit”  because bipartisanship is one of those things that the Republican right despises just about as much as they hate Ukraine.  Fun ahead.      

Vibes:  While passing key legislation isn’t their forte, House Republicans are a bit better at impeaching so yesterday a contingent of them, including MAGA Marge, marched the articles of impeachment of Homeland Secretary Mayorkas over to the Senate.  As you may recall, House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas a few weeks ago, not because he committed any high crimes but to protest the border policies of President Biden, the guy they really want to impeach.  The Biden impeachment is currently on the back burner not because they don’t want to impeach him but because a few members of the Republican majority, mostly from swing districts, don’t want to move forward with a presidential impeachment based on vibes rather than actual crimes, mostly because they fear doing so will lose them their seats.  Senate Majority Leader Schumer is trying to minimize the length of the Mayorkas impeachment trial down to a New York minute and though it might turn out being a little longer, it’s clear to everyone that the Democratically controlled Senate will not vote to convict Mayorkas.

Fog:   Justice Clarence Thomas was inexplicably MIA on Monday, but reappeared yesterday to hear arguments before SCOTUS about whether or not a key obstruction law can be used to charge January 6 insurrectionists.   Any ruling that results in the tossing of those charges would free many, though not all, of the January 6 crowd, and would also complicate Special Counsel Jack Smith’s efforts to prosecute Trump so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the conservative SCOTUS Justices are leaning in that direction. Given Ginni Thomas’ involvement in the events of January 6, Clarence should have recused himself but of course he didn’t. A number of experts who aren’t really experts have “concluded” that Iran didn’t mean to do any damage to Israel but only launched those 300 plus drones and missiles their way to make a statement.  Forget about that, Iran intended to do lots of damage they just failed miserably largely because the US, UK, France, Jordan and maybe even Saudi Arabia stepped up. Notably the multipronged attack that Iran launched is similar to the military strategy being employed by Russia against Ukraine where it has been effective because Ukraine doesn’t have the resources or allied air support since, at least so far, no one wants to trigger a NATO war with Russia, a country that unlike Iran which is close to but still without a nuclear arsenal, has plenty.  It’s highly likely that Israel will respond to Iran’s attack at some point, maybe soon, maybe not so soon.  The only question is whether or not the Israeli response will be “measured” whatever that means and how Iran which is doing a lot of saber rattling will respond.  Worth noting that Iran’s surrogate Hezbollah has been and continues to launch deadly projectiles at Israel from Lebanon.  Also, Hamas continues to play Lucy and the football with a ceasefire for hostage deal.  Every time one is reported to be close, Hamas reduces the number of hostages they’re willing to exchange.

#BringThemAllHomeNOW