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Tuesday, August 2, 2022
POLITICO NIGHTLY: How to watch tonight’s big primaries
RSN: FOCUS: Meet the Young Progressives About to Join the Squad
02 August 22
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Drinking whiskey on ice with the next wave of lawmakers determined to disrupt the status quo in Washington
Summer Lee, a Democratic congressional candidate running for a Pittsburgh-area seat, stirred the straw in her ice water as she let her remark hang in a basement bar in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood on the last Tuesday in July. She surveyed two fellow soon-to-be House progressives across our hightop: Greg Casar, running to serve a deep-blue gerrymandered strip between Austin and San Antonio, and Delia Ramirez, a candidate for a similarly safe western Chicago seat, who exchanged furtive looks as they clutched their whiskeys on ice.
I had actually asked whether there were any current federal lawmakers who they might emulate when they enter the House next year. Only Casar ventured an answer: He’d just met Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and deemed her both “brave” and “brilliant.” Details like those answered the query Lee posed. Casar had even posted a photograph of the trio after they’d first met in person the previous day. “Triple threat, coming to DC on Jan. 3!” read the caption. (Not quite the same ring as “Squad,” but a start.)
All three progressives at the table emerged from primaries to fill open House seats in places where Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rank among voters’ favorite politicians. All are candidates of color (Lee is Black; Casar and Ramirez are Latino), in their thirties, and hail from working-class backgrounds. They all ran on platforms befitting their district’s political stars, often with the aid of the same political organizations that ushered AOC into office. And, barring unprecedented political circumstances, all will be seated as members of Congress next January.
The trio agreed to meet me after attending a daylong conference about building progressive power, a subject mirrored in the conversations happening among themselves as they prepared for the coming House term. “What must we do together to move the needle in a place that’s anything but welcoming to what we are?” Ramirez says of their task. “What we are,” she clarifies, is “a threat to the status quo.”
As they gain political power, House progressives have been on the receiving end of a backlash — primarily in reaction to their demands for police reform — from party moderates, who are already seeking to deflect blame for anticipated Democratic losses this November. If midterm election forecasts are to be trusted, these likely lawmakers will begin their congressional careers in the minority party, from which they’ll seek to move the needle on the party’s agenda, rather than laws that advance it. But together in Washington for the first time since their primary victories, these newest prospective members of the House’s left flank are un-jaded, undaunted, and maybe even a bit emboldened by the inhospitable conditions that await them. “Coming in together means it’s going to be a lot harder to isolate us,” says Lee.
To these progressives, the modest progress of the Biden administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress has been a major disappointment. Casar lamented recent tragedies in his home state of Texas — the Uvalde elementary school massacre and the death of 50 migrants in the back of an 18-wheeler — as well as the imposition of one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. “We went from being five blocks to an abortion clinic to 550 miles away from one,” he says. Casar sees each as a federal failure, to meaningfully champion gun control, immigration reform, and reproductive rights, respectively. “At the core of all of this is just the federal government not having done enough,” he says.
Lee believes frustration at the stalemate in Washington keyed the primary wins of the politicians at the table. “We’re here today because of decisions [Democrats] did not make before, because of times when we were in power and squandered it,” she explains. “Our [party’s] messaging too often is a little bit of gaslighting — that what you’re experiencing is not actually what’s happening” she adds. “That’s what makes us the targets, because we’re the ones validating those voters and their understanding of what’s actually happening.”
Targets indeed, though Lee’s reasoning may not wholly explain it. Conversation at the hightop inevitably turns to “the elephant in the room,” as Lee puts it: The historic amount of money that has been spent in Democratic House primaries this year, mostly, against progressive candidates. It’s a scale of money usually reserved for tight general election races.“We can’t be the party of ‘End Citizens United’ and also be the party of, ‘As long as I like the target, I will allow this,’” quips Lee, who had a spectacular $4 million spent against her in the final weeks of the campaign.
That money was often used to make their primaries a referendum on the Squad. “They wanted me, and people like me, to feel ashamed” of allies like Ocasio-Cortez and Omar “instead of proud of them,” Lee says. Then there’s the casual racism: Casar’s opponents circulated seven rounds of mailers that conspicuously darkened his face. The trio sees the onslaught not as an indictment of their movement, but rather as their foes’ desperation. “There’s no backlash unless you’re winning,” Casar says, “unless they’re worried about something.”
What is certain is that Congress’ left flank will swell to double digits come January, a proportion they’re eager to lean on to exercise influence. “You can try to marginalize four or six or eight,” Casar reasons, “but once it’s 15 or 20 or more, you’re talking about a significant block of votes and an outsized presence of folks that speak up.” There’s something plucky about their anticipation of defying Democratic House leadership, a move few in their caucus currently attempt, fearing the retribution that almost always attends it.
This new class of progressives are more in the model of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) — who served on Boston city council before her House run — than Ocasio-Cortez, who had been working as a bartender before she won her House seat. They come with experience as both organizers and elected officials, having performed public service in antagonistic spaces: Casar’s Austin city council chafed under GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans have controlled the Pennsylvania state House for as long as Lee has served, and Ramirez went up against the Chicago Democratic machine that didn’t want her in Springfield.
“Building a coalition within those spaces has equipped us to build upon that in Congress,” Ramirez explains. “Figuring out how we build a movement and inspire people, whether we’re in the majority trying to buck leadership, or in a minority trying to inspire who the Democratic Party should be, that’s where we’re coming from,” Casar adds.
As our glasses reach empty, Lee does answer my question about which lawmakers inspire her. “I’ve never had a mentor,” she says, almost ruefully. “But I think about all the other candidates like us who come from working class backgrounds, who have had to navigate this in a different way. How can I just make sure that the next person doesn’t come up this way?”
“That should be different for you here,” Casar interjects. Lee shrugs. “My hope is that it should be different for us, right?” Casar says, looking around the table, searching his colleague’s eyes for assurance. “I guess we’ll see. We have some folks here.”
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Meet Ken Klukowski, a Trump Administration Cooperating Witness in the Justice Department’s Criminal Investigation of January 6
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Meet Ken Klukowski, a Trump Administration Cooperating Witness in the Justice Department’s Criminal Investigation of January 6
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2022 ~
Ken Klukowski
Ken Klukowski is making a lot of people in the Charles Koch network of political operatives very nervous. According to a CNN report last Thursday, Klukowski “is cooperating in the DOJ’s January 6 criminal investigation, after investigators searched and copied his electronic records several weeks ago.” Those electronic records could open a lot of secrets that the Charles Koch network has kept behind a dark curtain for far too long.
Klukowski arrived at the U.S. Department of Justice just 35 days before Trump’s term ended. According to the January 6 House Select Committee, Klukowski was “parachuted” into the Justice Department to help an environmental attorney there, Jeffrey Clark, prepare a letter to state officials which falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote totals in those states and the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump.”
This is how Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Co-Chair of the January 6 House Select Committee, described Klukowski’s involvement at the Committee’s June 23 hearing:
“Today, as Chairman Thompson indicated, we turn to yet another element of the President’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, this one involving the Department of Justice. A key focus of our hearing today will be a draft letter that our witnesses here today refused to sign.
“This letter was written by Mr. Jeff Clark with another Department of Justice lawyer Ken Klukowski, and the letter was to be sent to the leadership of the Georgia State legislature. Other versions of the letter were intended for other states.
“Neither Mr. Clark nor Mr. Klukowski had any evidence of widespread election fraud. But they were quite aware of what Mr. Trump wanted the Department to do – Jeff Clark met privately with President Trump and others in the White House, and agreed to assist the President – without telling the senior leadership of the Department who oversaw him.
“As you will see, this letter claims that the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigations have ‘identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.’ In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie.
“The Department of Justice had already informed the President of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“The letter also said this: ‘In light of these developments, the Department recommends that the Georgia General Assembly should convene in special session’ and consider approving a new slate of electors. And it indicates that a separate ‘fake slate of electors supporting Donald Trump’ has already been ‘transmitted to Washington, D.C.’ ”
An outgrowth of the Clark-Klukowski letter was a meeting in the Oval Office on January 3, 2021 – just three days before the attack on the Capitol. According to Cheney at the June 23 Committee’s hearing, “Donald Trump offered Mr. Clark the job of Acting Attorney General, replacing Mr. Rosen, with the understanding that Clark would send this letter to Georgia and other states, and take other actions the President requested.” After Trump was advised by acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and others that top officials at the Justice Department would resign, Trump dropped the plan.
Klukowski had been a writer at the right-wing outlet, Breitbart, which was formerly led by Trump White House advisor, Steve Bannon – who is now facing sentencing in October after being found guilty by a jury of defying a subpoena from the January 6 Committee to testify. Klukowski did not arrive in the Trump administration until August of 2019.
Klukowski was “parachuted” into the Justice Department from the Office of Management and Budget, where he was working under the General Counsel, Mark Paoletta. Today, both Paoletta and Klukowski are employed at the law firm, Schaerr Jaffe LLP. (Gene Schaerr is a registered lobbyist as is his law partner, Erik Jaffe.)
Paoletta is now serving as legal counsel for Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The testimony of Ginni Thomas is being sought by the January 6 Committee with a threat to subpoena her if necessary. Emails between Ginni Thomas and White House officials have turned up, showing that she was actively pushing for the White House to fight Biden’s election win. Both Clarence Thomas and Ginni Thomas have a long, problematic history with the Koch network.
In January 2008, sitting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had been treated to a four-day luxury trip to the Palm Springs area of California to attend the semi-annual gathering of big money campaign donors hosted by Charles Koch and his brother, David. (David Koch died in 2019.) According to the 2008 financial disclosure form filed by Justice Thomas, his expenses for that trip were paid by the Federalist Society, a conservative nonprofit to which Koch foundations had donated millions of dollars.
Charles Koch has been co-owner, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, a privately-owned fossil fuels conglomerate, for the past 55 years. Forbes puts Charles Koch’s net worth at $56.6 billion. Justice Thomas’ trip to the Koch event occurred in the same year that the Citizens United case was accepted by the Supreme Court. That was the Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to corporate funding of political campaigns in America.
In 2011, Wall Street On Parade broke the news that during Justice Thomas’ trip to speak at the Koch event in January 2008, he was hosted for dinner by Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at their private club, the Vintage Club in Indian Wells, California.
While the Citizens United case was pending before the Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas created a tax exempt, Tea Party advocacy group, Liberty Central, Inc., with a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation acting as her General Counsel in 2010 (Sarah Field) and a former Koch lobbyist serving on her board at inception (Matt Schlapp).
Ginni Thomas ran Liberty Central out of a post office box in a UPS building in Virginia. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central, Inc. received $550,000 from anonymous donors in 2009 and was anticipating the receipt of $2,014,000 in 2010.
The Citizens United case before her husband at the Supreme Court was decided on January 21, 2010. Eight days later, Cleta Mitchell, then a partner with the law firm Foley & Lardner, filed the application on behalf of Ginni Thomas’ nonprofit group, Liberty Central, Inc. with the IRS. But Mitchell was not an impartial attorney; she had filed an Amicus brief in the Citizens United Case.
Today, Cleta Mitchell is mired in the January 6 controversy and has resigned her longstanding position with the Foley & Lardner law firm. The controversy stems from the fact that Mitchell was on the phone call with Donald Trump, acting as his attorney, on January 2, 2021 when Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” – the number of votes Trump needed to make him the winner of the state in the 2020 election.
RSN: FOCUS: Graeme Wood | A Key 9/11 Plotter Is Dead. He Was Already Irrelevant
02 August 22
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Why Ayman al-Zawahiri’s killing won’t have much effect on global terrorism
He was also a creep and murderer. Thousands of people are dead because of him. If anyone deserved to be julienned by a Cuisinart blade dropped from the heavens by the CIA, it was Zawahiri. An Egyptian, he came of age politically around the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, in 1981. Egypt incarcerated every Islamist it could find, and Zawahiri spent years in state prisons, where he was tortured. Years later, in Tahrir Square during the revolution of 2011, I met men who said they had known him in prison. They said they hoped their old friend was well, but they had not kept up the relationship; a few years in Egypt’s state-security prisons was plenty. They had given up violence. One became a math teacher and raised a family. Zawahiri, who trained as a surgeon and came from a prosperous family, could have left the path of death, but he was incorrigible. Out of prison, he spent part of the ’90s encouraging jihad in the Caucasus, and part of it spreading death at home. In 1997, his followers hacked and shot to death 58 tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor. Eventually Egyptians lost patience with him, and he followed Osama bin Laden to Pakistan and Afghanistan—where it appears he remained until the CIA found him.
By all indications, Zawahiri got cocky. When the Taliban ruled Kabul in the late ’90s, bin Laden and Zawahiri could live fairly openly. Zawahiri might have suspected that those old days had returned, and that the Taliban’s agreement with the United States, signed in Doha, Qatar, last year, would secure Afghanistan’s sovereignty and allow an honored hero like him to live openly again. The Taliban are already grousing on Twitter about violations of the Doha agreement. But they promised at Doha not to host terrorists, so they have little standing to complain about the killing of the world’s most famous terrorist in their capital.
Zawahiri’s replacement will be younger and more energetic than the old doctor. I wish that younger man a short and skittish life. But the truth is that Zawahiri’s killing probably will not have much effect on global terrorism, because the younger jihadist generation has already ceased to regard him as a leader, spiritual or otherwise. Zawahiri’s crowning achievement, the September 11 attacks, was ultimately a one-off, and its plotters spent most of the rest of their lives on the run, or bored senseless in Guantánamo Bay. The jihadist movement that achieved something new was the Islamic State—which ridiculed Zawahiri, called him a goofball and a geezer, and set out on a path of wanton destruction against his orders. It mocked him for his deference to the Taliban and for swearing allegiance to its founder, Mullah Omar, who turned out to have been dead for years. Many of the possible successors to Zawahiri have already split off into other jihadist groups, and have long been trying to bring about carnage and a terrestrial paradise without al-Qaeda’s consent. They certainly will not seek the consent of his successor.
More interesting, I suspect, will be the attitude of the Taliban. They thought they had a country of their own, and that they would be left alone to rebuild it. They want money, and they want food for their starving people. But their critics have said that they are little more than terrorists themselves, and that anyone who claims they have softened in the past 20 years has been taken in. The presence of Zawahiri in Kabul will be used as evidence that the Taliban deserve to be treated like terrorists in perpetuity. They could not resist turning their capital into an al-Qaeda clubhouse for even a few months. Unless it turns out that the Taliban ratted on Zawahiri themselves—I doubt it—his presence will instead make the group look incapable of change, and deserving of all the skepticism it got. And that will mean a long, hungry winter ahead for Afghanistan.
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Actually kind of hilarious
Wanna know what’s a really weird sensation?
The feeling of watching your Republican opponent for U.S. Senate play tourist in the town you grew up in. 🙄
I mean, it was actually kind of hilarious to see Dr. Oz on the campaign trail in my hometown of York, PA earlier this week. He took a photo at New Eastern Market which is a *classic* York landmark.
It’s not every day a REAL New Jersey 🤩 Celebrity Doctor comes to York, PA!
New Eastern Market has been operating since the late 1880s, and my parents have been shopping there for as long as I can remember. In fact, they’ve lived in the same house (about three miles from New Eastern Market) since 1975.
Dad + Me in the 1970s
We had a family routine: After New Eastern, my brother Gregg and I would pester Mom to take us to the Hills for a new Lego kit (KiddyTown had the best selection, tbh). I can still smell the popcorn 🍿 in the lobby.
NOTHING beats summer in York when you’re a kid! In the 1980s, Gregg and I would spend countless hours at Avalon's Golf at the York Mall. They had Donkey Kong in the arcade which, of course, is in the pantheon of video games. 😎
Mom + Me in the 1980s, wearing my favorite Pyromania Def Leppard shirt.
I ❤️ York, PA and it will always have a place in my heart.
I’m grateful that York is where my parents decided to raise their family when they were just starting out on their own. And I’m grateful that Gisele and I are raising our family in Braddock, PA so they can experience the York memories of my childhood, too.
Dr. Oz, on the other hand, didn’t grow up in PA, doesn’t live in PA, and didn’t raise his family in PA.
I mean, he literally voted in New Jersey as recently as 2020. Seriously???!!!
Hopefully now you can understand why seeing Dr. Oz in my hometown is actually kind of hilarious. This guy is just so out of touch.
Send me to Washington, and I’ll fight for you with the same honesty + commitment I have for my hometown.
Thank you,
—John
John Fetterman
Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania
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