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House Republicans want to assume the mantle of one of the nation’s most iconic investigative committees, but the differences are stark.
But Republicans and right-wing pundits have already given up on its clumsy formal title — the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” — and are now simply calling it the new “Church Committee.” By doing so, they are explicitly comparing it to the historic Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which conducted landmark investigations of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the intelligence community, none of which had previously been subject to real oversight.
The new “weaponization” subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, a right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump, and has a much different objective than the original Church Committee: The panel is widely expected to become a pro-Trump star chamber, investigating the officials and organizations that have previously investigated Trump, including the FBI and the Justice Department.
The Jordan subcommittee also seems likely to investigate the House January 6 committee, which operated when the Democrats controlled the chamber — and referred Jordan to the House Ethics Committee for his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Jordan, who stuck by Rep. Kevin McCarthy during McCarthy’s marathon bid to become House speaker last week, is now being rewarded with the mandate and resources to conduct investigations into almost any corner of the government he chooses; those probes have the potential to make the Biden administration look bad or Trump look good. McCarthy has even authorized the subcommittee to examine ongoing criminal investigations, which the Justice Department will certainly oppose.
By calling their panel the new Church Committee, Jordan and the Republicans are trying to assume the mantle of one of the most iconic investigative committees in congressional history. (I’ve spent the last several years researching and writing a book about Sen. Frank Church and his eponymous panel, which will be published in May.)
“When you reach back in history and bring a phrase from the past to the present, you get to carry a meaning into contemporary time,” observed Stephanie Martin, the Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University in Idaho, the native state of Sen. Church, the Democrat who chaired the original Church Committee. “By calling it the Church Committee,” she added, Republicans are appropriating the image “of effective change and effective oversight.”
But the differences between the Church Committee and Jordan’s new subcommittee are stark, observes Loch Johnson, who served as an aide to Church on the committee and later wrote a firsthand account of the committee’s work. “The Church Committee was strongly oriented toward following the documentary evidence that we were able to uncover,” said Johnson. “The inquiry was driven not by ideology, revenge, or anything else but the facts.” Today’s Republicans, he added, seem “motivated by ideology and a sense of grievance, starting with the ‘stolen election’ of 2020.”
Johnson and others argue that what the Republicans are creating is unlikely to be anything like the Church Committee, especially if, as seems almost certain, it descends into conspiracy theories about a mythical “deep state” that is out to get Trump and conservatives.
The existence of an anti-Trump “deep state” has become one of the most persistent conspiracy theories on the right and feeds into the anger and resentment against the government held by pro-Trump forces, including Jordan. Like all powerful and lasting conspiracy theories, it relies on some basic facts — but then turns reality on its head to reach a fantastical conclusion.
It is true that America is burdened with a sprawling and ever-growing military-industrial complex built on a network of relationships linking the Pentagon; the CIA; Homeland Security; defense, intelligence, and counterterrorism contractors; and many others in a powerful and partially hidden web that, over the past few decades, has pushed the nation into a period of nearly endless war. The traditional post-World War II military-industrial complex grew steadily for decades despite President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous warning about its rising power in his 1961 farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Its power expanded exponentially after the September 11 attacks as counterterrorism and homeland security became big businesses, making it far more difficult for the United States to ever reduce its paranoia over the threat of terrorism.
But today’s combined military, intelligence, and counterterrorism complex is a capitalistic, pro-military center of gravity in American society. It is not anti-Trump or anti-conservative, and it is definitely not a secret political organization bent on imposing “woke” views on Americans.
In fact, it was the work of the Church Committee that helped ensure that the “deep state” is nothing more than a right-wing conspiracy theory today. In the first three decades after World War II, the U.S. intelligence community faced no real oversight or outside scrutiny, and as a result, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA grew beyond presidents’ ability to control and became increasingly lawless. The reforms created as a result of the Church Committee helped to bring the intelligence community fully under the rule of law for the first time. By disclosing a series of shocking abuses of power, Church and his committee created rules of the road for the intelligence community that largely remain in place today.
The Church Committee’s work represented a watershed moment in American history — which is why Republicans are now so eager to co-opt its name. But there is no evidence that Jordan plans to follow the earlier panel’s serious and comprehensive approach. In fact, the involvement of Jordan and other House Republicans in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election already constitutes an obvious conflict of interest. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who is now House minority leader, tweeted that “extreme MAGA Republicans have established a Select Committee on Insurrection Protection.”
Rather than being a true heir to the Church Committee, Jordan’s subcommittee seems destined to follow the pattern of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Jordan and today’s Republicans are employing the same kind of resentment and grievances against “elites” that fueled Joseph McCarthy, and Jordan also seems destined to use some of McCarthy’s tactics, targeting individual officials to claim they are “woke” or part of the “deep state” — updated versions of McCarthy’s phraseology about “Communist subversion.” It’s no coincidence that Roy Cohn, who worked as chief counsel to McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, later became a key mentor to Trump in the work of launching vicious political attacks.
Previously an obscure back-bench Republican senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy surged to fame in 1950, when he falsely claimed in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, to have a list of Communists in the State Department, triggering a period of intense paranoia and witch hunting that is now known as the McCarthy era. After he became a committee chair in 1953, McCarthy switched his focus to the Army, with Cohn by his side.
By going after the State Department and then the Army, McCarthy took on two of the most important and tradition-bound institutions in the United States at the time. The State Department had not fought back successfully against McCarthy, but the Army did. After McCarthy charged Army leaders with ignoring evidence of Communist subversion at a military facility in New Jersey, the Army went on the attack, accusing McCarthy of seeking special treatment for David Schine, a McCarthy consultant and friend of Cohn’s. The charges and counter-charges ultimately led to a long-running series of nationally televised hearings that garnered huge audiences, pitting McCarthy and Cohn against Joseph Welch, an urbane outside lawyer brought in to represent the Army.
In a televised hearing on June 9, 1954, McCarthy and Welch engaged in a historic showdown, with Cohn looking on. Bitter at Welch, McCarthy publicly raised questions about the loyalty of Fred Fisher, a lawyer at Welch’s law firm. Welch’s devastating response — “Have you no sense of decency?” — has gone down in history as the moment McCarthy’s power was broken.
In December 1954, the Senate finally voted to censure McCarthy; by 1957, he was dead.
Does the shame that finally brought down McCarthy still have the power to curb Republican excesses? Johnson, Church’s former aide, isn’t so sure.
“We’re headed for something that combines a witch hunt with a circus,” Johnson said, noting that the so-called new Church Committee “is likely to make the 1950s McCarthy hearings appear, in retrospect, rather benign.”
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Ukrainian soldiers walk around the frontline near Soledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Jan. 11, 2023. (photo: ABC News)
ALSO SEE: Russian Missiles Hit Infrastructure in Kyiv
“It’s hell in Soledar” – this is how the former company commander of the Aidar Battalion, Yevhen Dykiy, curtly characterized the hottest spot on the front in an interview with Radio NV on Jan. 12.
According to Dykyi, many units were dismantling their positions and preparing for an organized retreat a week ago. But then the military was ordered to hold on, and reinforcements were sent to them.
Dykyi shared his thoughts on what the rationale for this was – and whether the order was wise or wrong.
– Yevhen, do you have many comrades-in-arms in Bakhmut and Soledar? What’s happening there now?
– To put it very briefly: it’s hell there. There are battles taking place there the like of which the world has not seen since the Second World War, which could no longer be imagined in our time.
As a person who has participated in hostilities, I’m very wary of defining heroes. I don’t believe that anyone who took up a weapon and went to war is immediately a hero. No, you just did your duty, that’s the norm. But all those who are holding Soledar and Bakhmut, really everyone who fought there for at least a few days, are real heroes.
It’s almost impossible to hold on there since the war is absolutely not like what we have already seen. It’s close contact combat all the time, these are street battles in built-up areas, or rather in what’s left of those built-up areas. These are battles in the ruins, battles for every house, for every basement.
It even happens that one entrance (to a building) is ours, and another one is theirs. One of my friends, for example, fought directly inside a school: one wing of the school was ours, and another wing of the school was under the control of the invaders. There was a fight both in the school’s corridors and in the gym.
What follows from this? Armored vehicles are of no use, they just don’t survive there at all. Accordingly, they don’t go there now. Because if they enter (the town), they can “live” for several minutes. This applies to both us and them.
Accordingly, logistics is also affected. You might get to the town and deliver something, but it’s impossible to do so within those quarters where the fighting is underway...
And now add frost to this picture. You understand that when it’s fighting, one basement is ours and another one is theirs, you can’t set up a normal stronghold with a stove, with those great warming candles, no. Unfortunately, you have to warm yourself with some minimal fires, which you can’t even light every day. Chemical heaters that are tucked under body armor vests and chemical warm insoles in shoes only help a little. By the way, they’re now worth their weight in gold.
It’s very difficult and very harmful for your health. Currently, our doctors may confirm that they have many more people with frostbite than with wounds. This is an additional problem that has to be solved on the spot.
With such a close contact battle, when our guys are mixed with theirs, of course, our artillery doesn’t work in such residential quarters. You can’t load a projectile with such accuracy to know that it was the orcs (sic, meaning Russians) that were killed, and not our guys.
But the orcs’ artillery does fire. That is, if some quarter is not only theirs, but is also mixed with our defenders, they calmly direct their artillery there. They’re absolutely calmly and deliberately killing their own soldiers to capture our guys along with theirs. This is really something inhuman, this is something from the times of the Soviet Union.
In fact, they’re lining their way there with the corpses of their own fighters. In fact, they’re covering our defenders with corpses there. But the fact that they’re suffering terrible losses doesn’t make it easier to hold on there.
And staying there is a superhuman-task. And the fact that we have withstood this assault for so long is actually already a remarkable feat.
As of today, we’re holding about a quarter of Soledar, they have already taken three quarters, including the central part of the town. But in this case, the fundamental difference is three quarters or the whole town. After all, the occupation of Soledar will be a tactical success for them, but we have still prevented them from doing so.
How many more days will our guys stay there? I can’t say. You can tell only if you are directly there, on the spot.
– You understand from the course of hostilities that Ukrainian troops will have to leave Soledar one way or another…
– Most likely. Let’s say it like that.
– But I suspect, I understand, that many political processes surround all that is happening in Soledar. At least some success is important for the Russians on the eve of mobilization. They say that it was important for (the owner of the Russian Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny) Prigozhin to promote himself. But apparently there is some political decision on the part of the Ukrainian authorities to hold Soledar. What is the expediency of this now? You say, I don’t know how many days they will stay, but there is a need to hold on. How do you think?
– This is a really difficult question for me. Here we’re already entering the realm where I can only suggest, because I’m not on the General Staff, not in the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
From the outside, it looks like there’s a political, not a military solution on both sides, and a political, not a military expediency. These, as they say in Odesa, are two big differences.
From a military point of view, the value of Soledar lies only in the fact that its capture can facilitate the subsequent capture of Bakhmut. Soledar itself is of no interest at all. If it completely goes under the control of the invaders, the already difficult life of the Bakhmut garrison will become very complicated. Then it will be necessary to repel the attack not from one direction, but from two at once.
And communications leading to Bakhmut are under a certain amount of threat. They won’t be interrupted, no, there is no need to listen to Russian propaganda reports that “if Soledar is captured, Bakhmut is immediately encircled.” No, it’s not like that at all. But a certain threat will really appear to the rear communications and, accordingly, to the provision of our troops.
That is, Soledar is not taken by itself, but as a prelude to the possible capture of Bakhmut. But Bakhmut itself has also no strategic military significance.
Here I will even refer to such an authority who is not on our side, but who understands the realities of war, the realities of the front – (Russian military blogger and convicted MH17 mass murderer) Igor Girkin. Although he rejoices in their tactical successes, this is logical, but at the same time he formulates in direct text: even if they take Soledar, Bakhmut and Siversk, this is the end of the advance.
That is, there is no question of (the Russians gaining) any control over the whole of Donbas at all. Because later they will face the powerful agglomeration of Slovyansk-Kramatorsk, where our fortified defense lines have been set up since 2014. And if they have been storming Bakhmut since September, and even if they capture it, for example, by the end of January, then it will be five months. Accordingly, they could storm Slovyansk and Kramatorsk for several years with just the same success. That is, they won’t win anything strategically.
What is it about? Most likely, it is about the internal affairs. The criminal, bandit (Wagner mercenary company owner Yevgenniy) Prigozhin wants to show that he is a real commander and rub the noses of all these staff generals, their professional soldiers, that they are all now only in defense, and he is still capable of capturing cities. This is their internal (politics).
But first of all, I think this is about politics specifically for the Russian electorate: the average Russian needs to be shown that “not everything is so clear-cut.” Because in fact everything is quite clear so far: Lysychansk is the last noticeable, sufficiently large Ukrainian town that they captured.
Lysychansk was captured in the first week of July. And since that time, since the middle of July, they have not captured any city at all, only lost them. But we continued to liberate them. It’s very important for them to show that the war is not over and already heading towards their inevitable defeat, but that it is a kind of pendulum swinging in different directions. Like “we retreated in some areas, but it’s okay that one of these areas is half of Kharkiv Oblast, and the second area is the entire right-bank Kherson Oblast together with Kherson, but we captured Bakhmut in the third area.”
This is exactly the kind of political narrative (they want): to demonstrate that they are not only in retreat and defense.
And then the question arises: why did we accept this, why did we pick up such a political promotion of Bakhmut? And here I just don’t have enough information to assess: whether we accepted their psy-op and are making a mistake, or on the contrary, this is a wise strategic decision. Because in order to understand this, you should be involved in the negotiations with our allies.
I suppose that the surrender of Bakhmut would probably cost us a lot in terms of adding arguments to those in the West who are generally against our victory but are in favor of freezing the conflict.
And it could in this case affect the supply of Western weapons to us. If there really is such a threat, then, unfortunately, we really have to hold on at any cost.
By the way, the defense of Severodonetsk played a similar role at one time. From a military point of view, Severodonetsk was held for at least two weeks too long – it should have been surrendered earlier. But just at that moment, many things were being decided by the allies.
And the resilience our defenders showed there, the length of time we forced the Russians to take in order to capture one big city, played a very significant role in making a decision about how much to help us.
Perhaps it’s a similar story now.
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The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. (photo: CNN)
Guantánamo Bay “is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law,” the letter argues.
“It is long past time for both a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused,” the letter says.
Following a slow trickle of transfers out of the facility under the Biden administration, 35 men remain imprisoned today. Over the last two decades, 779 men and boys passed through the catastrophic prison. Of those who remain there today, 20 are eligible for transfer out of indefinite detention; three are awaiting judgment from six different government agencies, known as the Periodic Review Board; three more have been convicted; and nine are involved in pre-trial hearings in the flawed military commission system. The case against accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators is ongoing and has not yet reached trial.
In the post-9/11 era, torture with impunity at CIA black sites, the failed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strikes, botched raids across a global battlefield, domestic surveillance of Muslims, and the incalculable loss of civilian life in the Middle East have defined America’s quest for national security. But Guantánamo Bay, and its earlier iteration as a detention facility for Haitian refugees in the ’90s, “is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law,” the letter argues.
“The world knows detainees were tortured, [as well as] the heinous methods, names of those who approved and participated, and that videotapes of torture were deliberately destroyed; yet not a single person has been held accountable,” Yumna Rizvi, policy analyst for CVT, told The Intercept. “The fact that all those complicit remain free, [and that] some even describe what they did without fear of prosecution, is astounding. The U.S. has lost its credibility for human rights, justice, and accountability.”
Renewed pressure and calls for the prison to finally be closed are only the beginning of ending the injustice, argues CAGE’s Mansoor Adayfi. “We need to see compensation, acknowledgement, and an apology for what happened to us,” Adayfi, a former Guantánamo prisoner, told The Intercept. “This is part of closing Guantánamo.”
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Supporters of Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro react during a demonstration against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, outside Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, January 8, 2023. (photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
“There is a wide constellation of far-right influencers from the United States... that are disseminated in the digital ecosystems of the Brazilian far-right.”
It seems unlikely that we’ve heard the end of the story on the classified documents that were found in President Joe Biden’s post-veep office and his garage. Mishandling of classified documents is serious. Whether it’s a criminal matter is a different issue entirely. There have been plenty of good comparisons between what’s known about how Biden’s team handled documents, and what former President Donald Trump did that now has him under criminal investigation for hiding documents and also for obstruction.
How classified documents got into Biden’s possession after he left office is now the subject of a special counsel investigation. There are also legitimate questions as to why it took more than two months after the Nov. 2 discovery of the documents for the public to learn of it. But that’s a political question. So far there is no publicly known evidence Biden knowingly or corruptly mishandled or hid classified materials.
For the purposes of this newsletter, what’s always concerned me about the Mar-a-Lago case isn’t document retention rules. It’s the lawlessness Trump wields by shirking subpoenas, lying to investigators and possibly obstructing justice… coupled with the anti-democratic cynicism and bad faith his supporters revel in when attacking prosecutors, threatening violence, and just plain lying about the case.
Within hours of the Biden document story breaking, Republicans called for his homes to be raided and for Attorney General Merrick Garland to be impeached. Others wailed that unlike presidents, vice presidents (like Biden, formerly) have no authority to declassify documents, which is both untrue and completely irrelevant to the case. It was a fog of false equivalency and whataboutism, all with the ultimate goal of absolving Trump of accountability. Now imagine what those same people will do with subpoena power.
Which brings us to the House GOP, which this week launched its campaign to discredit investigators and undermine the law. GOP lawmakers voted to give themselves broad powers to probe and interrupt ongoing criminal investigations and to use classified information to do it. In addition to going after Hunter Biden and government communications with social media companies, they plan to use this government power to paint efforts at enforcing the law at Mar-a-Lago or on the coup attempt as corrupt.
Some of the loudest cheerleaders for this GOP investigation are lawmakers who might have the most to lose from a thorough accounting of the coup. Rep. Scott Perry—known to Breaking the Vote readers as a multi-level coup plotter who reportedly asked for a pardon—cried “civil rights” in celebration of GOP investigations. Rep. Jim Jordan texted on Jan. 5 about how former VP Mike Pence should flip the election for Trump, then refused to tell the truth about multiple conversations he had with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6. He’ll be in charge of the select committee investigating the investigators.
MAGA Republicans have a demonstrated history of taking obscure procedural details, washing them through a Fox-led hype machine, then simply lying over and over until they’ve got a right-wing article of faith. Ever heard Trump’s indignant claim that President Barack Obama’s FBI “spied on my campaign”? It’s false, and is also entirely the product of Trumpist House Republicans, including Jordan and Rep. Matt Gaetz, going “on offense’ with their investigation of Robert Mueller.
Get ready for much more of the same now that Jordan has the gavel. As for Trumpist GOP and their coming claims of persecution, I humbly suggest checking if the Republican making them asked for a pardon for their participation in Jan. 6.
The ploys from Brazil
Last weekend’s riot at Brazil’s National Congress and other buildings in Brasilia was an awful case of deja vu. In image after image rioters seemed to be emulating the tactics and idiosyncrasies of Jan. 6 rioters. They broke through barricades, trespassed in lawmakers’ offices, pretended to use their phones, then paraded the souvenirs.
I got in touch with Michele Prado, an expert on Brazil’s far right and author of the book “Bolsonarism: The Alt-Right and Illiberal Populism in Brazil.” Americans didn’t invent the Brazilian far-right, or even its contemporary propagandists. But Jair Bolsonaro is infamous for his mimicry of Trump… both in personal style and political tactics. How deep do the ties between Brazilian authoritarians and American Trumpists go?
Prado told me, “There is a wide constellation of far-right influencers from the United States and other countries that are disseminated in the digital ecosystems of the Brazilian far-right: Ben Shapiro, Jack Posobiec, Milo Yanouppolous, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Dinesh d'Souza, (Mike) Cernovich, Alex Jones and many others. Jason Miller, specifically, sponsors events produced by Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the former president who is one of the main responsible for the abominable attack that Brazilian democracy suffered last Sunday.”
No journalist covers Latin America, and Brazil specifically, better than VICE News’ David Noriega. David and I sat down together last night on VICE News Tonight (check us out at our new time, 10 p.m. on Thursdays!) to talk about Steve Bannon and the sordid ties that bind MAGA and Bolsonarismo.
T.W.I.S.™ Notes
Recent fights over Kevin McCarthy and government documents continue to obscure a deeper truth: More coup participants are likely about to get indicted. We talk about it every day in our newsroom. From Mar-a-Lago to Georgia to the coup plot grand jury, it seems like every week is now This Week in Subpoenas.
- The Fani countdown
The special purpose grand jury that spent the last eight months investigating attempts to illegally overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election has ended. Now there’s little else to do but await charges.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis petitioned to empanel the group a year ago. Since then dozens of witnesses have appeared, including close Trump confidants, and 18 people were told they’re targets of a criminal investigation. This panel doesn’t issue indictments. It now has to submit a report that will possibly recommend criminal charges. A judge will decide after a scheduled Jan. 24 hearing whether to release that report. But the next big question is whether a separate grand jury will agree to indict anyone for trying to overturn the election in Georgia. The list of possible targets is long and includes GOP fake electors, Trumpworld characters like Rudy Giuliani, and, of course, Trump himself.
- Subpoenile dysfunction
Trump campaign officials got subpoenas last month demanding information on a huge range of coup-related topics, potentially expanding the scope of questions prosecutors are looking at in connection with Trump’s bid to stay in power in 2020 and 2021.
Officials got requests for information on issues ranging from Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines, to post-election Trump PAC fundraising, to analyses staffers may have done on whether the election was actually stolen, to who’s paying who’s legal fees.
Several reports this week suggested the DC grand jury investigating the coup plot had picked up speed, bringing in a large number of witnesses to testify. I’m no expert on grand jury proceedings, but nothing says “urgency” like staying ahead of anti-democratic Trumpist House Republicans gearing up to discredit your investigations!
- New sedition
Opening arguments began yesterday in the seditious conspiracy trial of Proud Boys “chairman” Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the militia group for planning and executing a breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Tarrio wasn’t in DC on the 6, having been banished by a judge because of another charge.
VICE News’ Tess Owen was in the federal courtroom as jurors heard how Tarrio and others texted and made videos planning and celebrating their riot operations. “We’re probably going to have a civil war now,” Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs said in a video prosecutors showed the jury. Dominic Pazzola, another member who’s now infamous for images of him smashing a Capitol window with a stolen police shield, is also on trial with the group.
- Taken Baked
Tess also has the story on Anthime Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, the far-right internet troll who was sentenced to 60 days this week for trespassing and illegally parading on Jan. 6. Gionet, who also attended the Charlottesville white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, live streamed himself in two senators’ offices during the Capitol riot.
“The relatives threw you out of the house… Now you want to go back into the house, but the crazy fucking relatives still live in the house—and they’re not leaving.” — Arizona GOP strategist Chuck Coughlin on a new effort to marginalize MAGA extremists in the state’s Republican primaries.
Se-dona with extremism — Arizona Democrats—along with Republicans who are sick of losing because of the MAGA takeover of their party—are trying to team up to bring some sanity back to the state’s elections. They’re hatching plans to make Arizona an open primary state, or maybe even go to ranked-choice voting. Either move would empower independents and make it harder for extremists to dominate primaries. But getting measures on the 2024 referendum ballot would also take a lot of money and a whopping 500,000 signatures.
Meanwhile, newly-minted Dem Gov. Katie Hobbs moved to form a bipartisan commission also with an aim to overhaul Arizona’s election rules. What does losing GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake have to say about that? She accused moderate Republicans of “scheming.” “Arizona is MAGA country, that will never change,” she said. Never!
Propagandists’ playground — Legendary ratfucker Roger Stone, QAnon leader Ron Watkins, confidence man Trump, Ali “Stop the Steal” Alexander, and (what in God’s name happened to) Michael Flynn. David Gilbert has the story on how Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter accounts of nearly every pro-insurrection figure by the second anniversary of Jan. 6.
Rampant voter fraud unlike we’ve ever seen — More of our continuing coverage of voter fraud from the party that’s Very Concerned about voter fraud. A former GOP election official in upstate New York pled guilty to fraudulently using the identities of local residents to illegally obtain 12 absentee ballots in 2021. Jason Schofield is the second GOP official in Rensselaer County, New York, to resign and plead guilty to ballot fraud. Last summer, North Troy Republican Councilwoman Kim Ashe-McPherson resigned and copped to a felony.
Still more rampant voter fraud unlike we’ve ever seen — Meanwhile, the wife of Woodbury, Iowa Republican County supervisor Jeremy Taylor was arrested by the feds Thursday and charged with 52 counts for fraudulently registering and voting in two elections. Kim Phuong Taylor is accused of falsely submitting information for dozens of registrations, ballot requests, and votes, and could face years in prison if convicted.
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A scientist works in the Moderna lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (photo: David L. Ryan/Getty Images)
The Biden administration is going to stop providing Covid vaccines for free—and Big Pharma is ready to profit from the change.
The upper end of that range, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), would represent a 4,000% markup above the cost of manufacturing the shot, which experts have pegged at roughly $2.85 per dose.
“The sheer greed is obscene,” said PVA policy co-lead Julia Kosgei, who stressed that “billions of taxpayer dollars went into the development of mRNA vaccines.”
“This vaccine isn’t just Moderna’s, it was developed in collaboration with a government agency based on decades of publicly-funded research,” Kosgei said. “It is the people’s vaccine — and it should be available and affordable for everyone, everywhere.”
Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s billionaire CEO, defended the proposed price range in an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, telling The Wall Street Journal that he believes “this type of pricing is consistent with the value” of the vaccine.
The vaccine in question was developed with the crucial help of government scientists. In 2020, Moderna admitted that 100% of the funding for its Covid vaccine development program came from the federal government — which, despite its leverage, has refused to force the company to share its vaccine recipe with the world.
Stephane Bancel, Moderna's billionaire CEO, said that "this type of pricing is consistent with the value" of the vaccine, even as the company admits that 100% of the funding for the vaccine's development came from the federal government.
Moderna’s pricing plans come as the Biden administration is transitioning away from its free coronavirus vaccine program, shifting costs onto insurers and patients — and leaving the uninsured and underinsured with potentially significant bills.
In August, the Health and Human Services Department announced that “as early as January 2023, the administration anticipates no longer having federal funds to purchase or distribute vaccines and will need to transition these activities to the commercial market, similar to seasonal flu or other commercially available vaccines.”
The Washington Post ’s Rachel Roubein noted Tuesday that “the federal government has paid far less for the company’s vaccine than the potential price for commercial insurers. Moderna’s updated booster shot cost the Biden administration about $26 per dose last summer, according to federal supply contracts.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) warned in a recent policy brief that the commercial price of coronavirus shots “could discourage vaccination.”
“The suggested average price for Covid-19 vaccines after commercialization ($96 to $115 per dose) is significantly higher than the commercial price for the annual flu vaccine ($18 to 28 per dose), and could be a cost barrier for the uninsured and underinsured, who have no guaranteed mechanism for receiving COVID-19 (or any) vaccines once federal supplies are depleted,” KFF observed. “While most consumers with public and private insurance will be protected from having to pay directly for vaccine costs, those who are uninsured and underinsured may face cost barriers when the federally-purchased vaccine doses are depleted. In addition, as private payers take on more of the cost of vaccinations and boosters, this could have a small upward effect on health insurance premiums.”
In a statement, Kosgei argued that “it doesn’t have to be like this.”
“The World Health Organization is supporting a program to share mRNA vaccine technology with producers in low and middle-income countries,” said Kosgei. “In a future pandemic, this could rapidly supply doses for the entire world, but Moderna’s patents are standing in the way. We need to learn from this pandemic and break big pharma’s monopolies.”
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A Medicare recipient. (photo: Sarah L. Voisin/WP)
Health insurers have made millions of dollars off of overpayments from Medicare. The industry is gearing up to fight any effort for the government to demand that money back.
A cash cow for big insurers, the for-profit version of Medicare has not been a great deal for the American public. Medicare Advantage plans cost the government more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare, and often wrongfully deny care.
What’s more, federal audits have found Medicare Advantage plans systematically overbilling the public — mostly by billing as if patients are sicker than they really are, a scheme known as “upcoding.” Officials estimate that the private plans collected $650 million in overpayments from 2011 to 2013.
The Biden administration is expected to finalize a rule next month to try to recoup some of these overpayments — but Medicare Advantage insurers are threatening to sue if the rule moves forward as written, according to Stat News. If insurers sue, it could further delay the government’s efforts to claw back excess payments stretching back more than a decade, as well as future overpayments.
The health insurance industry argues that regulators should allow for some level of payment errors — and should only apply new rules to audits moving forward, instead of retroactively punishing past misconduct.
“It’s crazy,” said Diane Archer, founder of Just Care USA, an organization that opposes Medicare privatization. “They overcharged. Who’s ever heard of a situation where you’re overcharged and you don’t get your money back? It’s beyond comprehension. The Medicare trust fund should not be paying out funds inappropriately, and it’s driving up Medicare [insurance] premiums.”
“Hundreds of Millions of Dollars, If Not More, at Stake”
President Joe Biden is doing nothing to slow the Medicare privatization push. Indeed, his administration has hiked payments to Medicare Advantage insurers while expanding a program called ACO REACH that allows companies to enroll seniors on traditional Medicare into private health care plans without their informed consent.
But in a significant shift, last month the Biden administration proposed new regulations to prevent Medicare Advantage insurers from wrongfully denying claims or refusing to approve services that would be paid under the traditional public Medicare program.
Consumer advocates like David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, were pleasantly surprised by the proposal — even if it came a decade late.
Lipschutz noted that the industry response to the proposed claim denial regulations has been “been pretty muted so far.”
He said insurers are far more concerned about two planned announcements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services next month that could have much greater impact on their bottom line.
“There are potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, at stake,” said Lipschutz.
Regulators could decide whether to factor insurers’ upcoding tactics into how much they pay Medicare Advantage plans. They are also expected to announce a final audit rule to prevent future overpayments and recoup some of the cost of excessive disbursements that have gone to Medicare Advantage insurers in the past.
Speaking at the annual J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference this week, health insurer Humana’s chief financial officer, Susan Diamond, said “the industry likely will go to litigation” if the final audit rule does not include a so-called fee-for-service adjuster. Such a provision would allow insurers to get away with some level of diagnosis coding and billing errors — and it would likely substantially reduce the sums that insurers would have to pay back to the government.
The dollars at stake are significant. In September, the office of the inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) released audit reports finding that even just the Medicare Advantage plan affiliated with Humana owed the government nearly $44 million worth of overpayments from 2016 and 2017.
A separate HHS inspector general audit found a Florida Humana plan overcharged Medicare by nearly $200 million in 2015.
“Prospectively, Not Retroactively”
Medicare Advantage has become a major profit-driver for the insurance industry, with government funds now accounting for a majority of most big insurers’ health plan revenues.
That’s especially true for Humana, which received more than 90 percent of its health plan revenue from taxpayers in 2021. UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health, which owns Aetna, both brought in more than 70 percent of their health plan revenue from the government.
Those insurers are part of the Better Medicare Alliance, a health insurance industry front group that spent nearly $3 million on TV ads promoting Medicare Advantage between Election Day and the end of the year, according to data from AdImpact.
The Better Medicare Alliance has called on the government to audit every Medicare Advantage plan annually “to increase program oversight and ensure that arbitrary decisions about which contracts are audited do not disproportionately impact some organizations more than others.”
The group has additionally argued that “changes to audit methodologies should be applied prospectively, not retroactively,” because doing the former “would invalidate actuarial assumptions made by health plans over more than a decade and threaten the care that seniors rely on today.”
Having the audit rule changes apply prospectively would allow insurers to retain years of overpayments.
Lipschutz said that the Better Medicare Alliance “and the folks that fund them don’t want to pay out what could be owed to the program looking backwards, so they want to try to focus on moving forward.”
While the Better Medicare Alliance does not disclose its donors, CVS Health reported donating $3 million to the group in 2021. Humana gave $2 million that year and $1 million in the first half of 2022.
Executives from CVS Health, Humana, and UnitedHealth Group serve on the alliance’s board of directors. (UnitedHealth Group does not voluntarily disclose its donations to dark money front groups like the Better Medicare Alliance.)
Humana and CVS Health also belong to America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the powerful DC health insurance industry lobby.
Last summer, AHIP submitted a comment letter opposing the Medicare Advantage audit rule, arguing it “fails to account for errors in [fee-for-service] Medicare data” and complaining that it would apply retroactively.
“Retroactive rulemaking is unfair, inappropriate, and legally impermissible,” wrote AHIP.
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Jeff Big Jeff uses a raft to move his belongings from his tent at a homeless encampment on Bannon Island, along the Sacramento River, on January 4, 2023. (photo: Gary Coronado/LA Times/Getty Images)
Storms took five lives in Sacramento county, where a year of heatwave and drought was followed by record rain
The Lewis family has owned this land for decades and weathered many storms, but this one wouldn’t be easily forgotten. Two of Lewis’s cows drowned during the deluge as they tried to swim to safety, last seen as tangles of legs caught between the barren branches of a submerged tree.
Howling winds tore at the ranch through the night, casting the rain sideways as it poured. “I thought the whole house was going to go flying away,” Lewis said, recalling sleepless nights of hurried work to secure his home and land as the storms bore down. “But all you can really do is get everything to high ground – and take a deep breath.”
Over the past two weeks, a parade of powerful atmospheric rivers has brought both relief and ruin to California. While the rain is a welcome sight in the drought-plagued state, the violent storms landed in quick succession, causing flash floods, billions of dollars in damage, and killing at least 18 people.
And with more storms to come, even a drizzle could prove dangerous in areas where the soils and infrastructure are already oversaturated.
Sacramento county has been one of the hardest hit. At least five people have died here, the highest toll anywhere in the state, including three who died in their cars on a flooded highway, and two unhoused people killed in the capital city, Sacramento, by falling trees.
Residents have had little time to dry between downpours that began in late December. By New Year’s Day, swaths of land in the rural area just south of the capital had disappeared into a vast sienna-tinged sea that swallowed stretches of road, pastures, and recently parched crops.
The tops of cars bobbed in the brown waters as emergency responders rescued dozens of people in the ensuing hours. Three drivers perished that night as they tried to navigate the floodwaters, becoming the first of storms’ many victims.
“Everybody was caught off guard,” said Tim Ehlers, a longtime resident and rancher in the area, who added that he had never seen the place flood like it did. “When it comes in it floats everything. Tires. Dumpsters. Barrels of feed. And those little cars float so fast – you can’t believe it. It don’t take much.”
Before rushing to evacuate, Ehlers and his wife, Liz, stacked things in their home on tables and chairs and shifted equipment and pickups on to friends’ properties on higher ground. There wasn’t a lot they could do with only an hour of notice before their property started to flood.
“We weren’t even able to sandbag before we started flooding,” Liz said. “There was just too much stuff to do and no one was expecting it.” But she set to work ensuring their 12 chickens stood a chance to weather the storm, securing them with food and water inside a coop with hen houses 6ft off the ground. “They stayed safe,” she added with a smile. “We didn’t lose any of them.”
By that point, water was coming in from both directions, surging in a strong current that swelled out from the banks of the river. The rain kept pouring and the water kept rising. It was time to leave. “We buttoned up what we could,” Tim said, “but when I was locking the gate, I could barely stand up.”
Record-breaking whiplash
This week, as residents savored a brief break in the rains, the immense task of cleaning up began. The toppled trees that killed two unhoused people in the capital remain unmoved, their splintered and jagged edges protruding from the muddied earth.
On Tuesday, pockets of blue pierced the silvered sky over Sacramento’s battered cityscape, offering workers enough respite from the rain to begin clearing debris. Branches littered sidewalks and soggy parks and large trunks blocked streets or lay on bashed buildings.
The floods have capped a year of brutal and record-setting weather whiplash in Sacramento. Just months before, this wreckage of trees helped the city cool down during an oppressive September heatwave when temperatures reached an unprecedented 116F.
The storms delivered a new record for the most consecutive days of rain, just one year after the city marked its longest stretch of dry days, and saw its driest November on record in 2022.
“If you asked me six months ago, I would have said things were so dry around here even the asphalt on the streets were asking for water,” said Matt Robinson, the county’s public information officer. “But things change,” he added, gazing out over the engorged Sacramento River that had swallowed stairs and paths along the edges of the city’s historic district.
In the coming, the hydrological coin is likely to flip yet again. Climate models show more shifts between the extremes are in store as the world warms.
Heat enables the atmosphere to hold more water – 4% more for each degree Fahrenheit the air warms. Heat also bakes moisture out of landscapes, drying them faster. Drought helps produce more heat, and the cycle continues. Atmospheric rivers, like those now sweeping across California, are a natural feature of the state’s weather system, but they are being supercharged.
This destructive set of storms is exactly what climate change modeling predicted would occur, said Dr Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes and a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “This pattern is consistent – where we go from a very deep drought to a flood situation.”
While the rains have put the state in a better position to weather the drought, new dangers lurk ahead. Grasses seeded by these storms could turn to fuel for future fires when the weather warms and dries. Water resources still remain scarce across the west, as basins like the mighty Colorado River – a major source for California’s farms and cities – remain in peril.
The divergent disasters have also created complications after communities, officials, and residents geared up for another dry winter had to quickly shift preparation and planning. Roads that weren’t closed fast enough became hazardous for unsuspecting drivers and confusion ensued about how to escape rising waters.
Brutal toll on unhoused people
Across California, perhaps no group has been hit as hard as the unhoused. Roughly 170,000 people across the state are homeless and most of them sleep outside, congregating in tents or other makeshift structures or in cars and RVs that leave people especially vulnerable to climate extremes.
In the city of Sacramento, an encampment community is in mourning after the loss of one of their own, Rebekah Ann Rohde, who was killed by a fallen tree. “She was my best friend,” Victoria Reyes said of Rohde, who shared more with her than just the muddied earth along the American River. “She gave me her coat when I was cold. Anytime I wanted something to eat she gave it to me,” Reyes-Mendez said. “I am going to really miss her.”
Reyes called for help as others in the small community pulled Rohde out from under the large trunk that split across her tent. Rohde died in the hospital of her injuries. “We couldn’t save her life, but we tried.” Reyes said.
She and others are bracing for another cold night in sopping clothes under swaying branches, made all the more ominous by the next round of storms scheduled to blow through. “That tree could have hit me and killed me,” Reyes said, wrapping a large coat more tightly around herself. She claims the community wasn’t warned that the weather would turn dangerous and she’s afraid of freezing to death. “Somebody has got to do something,” she said. “It is going to rain again.”
Robinson, the county spokesperson, hopes that these storms can, at least, serve as lessons for the next siege. It was bad, but could have been a lot worse, he says.
There is still time to bolster infrastructure and instruct the public so that more are ready for the next big shift in conditions. It will take money and focus, both of which are in shorter supply as other disasters become easy distractions. Preparation and adaptation together is a difficult but essential balancing act. The flip from drought to downpour was severe this time and will be just as severe when the coin flips back.
“At some point, we are going to have this episode again,” he said. “We have to keep it in the back of everyone’s mind.”
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