SPINELESS KEVIN MCCARTHY is only SPEAKER because he granted MAGA DIM WITS power....
Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving jack smith mar a Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar a Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.
While we wait to learn more about a possible budget deal under which Republicans would agree to raise the debt ceiling before June 5, the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says will see the U.S. run out of funds, there is an interesting story coming out of Texas that might well shed light on the current dynamics in the Republican Party. On Wednesday, witnesses testified before the Republican-led Texas House General Investigating Committee about how the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, has committed crimes in office, including trying to hide an affair, using his office to help a donor, building a culture of fear in his office, using his power to retaliate against opponents, misusing official information, and abusing his office. As attorney general, Paxton is in charge of overseeing the enforcement of the law in the state. On Thursday the committee voted unanimously to recommend that Paxton be impeached and removed from office, citing 20 counts, including bribery and retaliating against whistleblowers, for his impeachment. Paxton is not unused to trouble. He has been under a felony indictment for securities fraud since 2015, successfully holding off the charges through repeated delays. In 2020, eight of his top advisors accused him of abusing his office to help a wealthy donor, Nate Paul, resist an FBI investigation. But he has maintained his popularity with Republican voters in Texas by standing as a fervent Trump supporter and attacking the Biden administration, and party leaders would not turn on him. That formula appears to be less potent than it used to be. It turns out that the House committee began investigating Paxton in March, after he tried to get $3.3 million of taxpayer money to settle a lawsuit with four whistleblowers who said he retaliated against them after they tried to expose his unsavory relationship with Paul. Apparently aware of what was about to drop, Paxton on Tuesday accused House speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, of being drunk at a public hearing and said he should resign. Once news of the committee vote dropped, Paxton on Friday attacked the “illegal impeachment scheme” and asked supporters to descend on the Texas Capitol for the impeachment vote. Paxton accused those calling for his impeachment of helping President Biden. “The House is poised to do exactly what Joe Biden has been hoping to accomplish since his first day in office: sabotage our work, my work, as attorney general of Texas,” Paxton said. He refused to take questions. Right-wing figures, including the head of the Texas Republican Party and key Trump advisors—but not Trump himself—have declared their support for him. Texas governor Greg Abbott has stayed silent. The full House will take up the question of Paxton’s impeachment tomorrow, with both Paxton’s supporters and Democratic supporters coming for the event. Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune noted today that the impeachment effort has set off “a political earthquake in Texas.” “Republicans have chosen to remain largely silent during years of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking by the attorney general. Now they will have to take a public stand,” he wrote. Local observers recognize the battle as one between far-right extremists, represented by Paxton, and Republicans who are trying to recover the party from the Trump wing. There is likely a political calculation behind this move. Texas is a crucially important state for 2024, and voters are angry at the apparent corruption of prominent Republican figures like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Some leaders are likely eager to cut loose some big fish to reassure voters that they are not, in fact, the party of corruption. But in states that are currently dominated by Republicans so thoroughly that they are essentially one-party states, there are indeed systemic corruption problems because there is not the oversight that a healthy opposition party brings. Both Paxton’s actions and his attempt to dismiss his Republican accusers as working for Biden appear to be a classic example of the behavior of political leaders in a one-party state. He has allegedly used his office to reward friends, retaliate against enemies, and avoid accountability for apparent lawbreaking. This pattern is common in authoritarian governmental systems; it was also common in the American South from about 1874 to 1965, when the Voting Rights Act that protected Black voting finally broke the one-party region dominated by white men. Tomorrow, as Republican leaders in Texas look toward the 2024 election, they are going to have to decide whether to back an apparently corrupt attorney general who is popular with the Republican base or appeal to Republicans turned off by how extreme the party has become and get rid of him. It will take a majority of the 149-member House to send the articles of impeachment to the Texas Senate for a trial. All 64 House Democrats will likely vote for impeachment. It is not clear what the Republicans will do. — https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HR02377I.pdf https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/HR02377I.htm https://apnews.com/article/texas-ken-paxton-investigation-40ba70a33235eda9a31fc2628cbd7d61 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-house-committee-wants-paxton-impeached https://www.fox4news.com/news/dade-phelan-drunk-video-accusations https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/26/ken-paxton-responds-impeachment/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/ken-paxton-impeach-republican-earthquake/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/26/ken-paxton-texas-impeachment-latest/#AbbottSilent |
26 May 23
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I’ve changed my mind. With a heavy heart, I am announcing that I will not seek or accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2024.
The poll numbers indicate that I would be a burden on the party’s national ticket next year and would also have problematic effects on many down-ballot races. It’s time to face grim political realities -- however unfortunate they may be.
While I appreciate the loyalty of so many Democrats in Congress who would like to run for the 2024 presidential nomination but would not consider running against me, I now realize that my insistence on seeking re-election has had important negative effects. And the longer I delay in announcing a change of course, the less time they’ll have to build their own national campaigns.
The specter of a second Donald Trump presidency is just too cataclysmic to allow any personal political ambition on my part to serve as an enabler to that fascistic demagogue.
I must acknowledge the fact that my capacities to defeat Trump are greatly diminished -- perhaps first and foremost because, seeking re-election, I would be representing a status quo that so many Americans are now telling pollsters they believe is on the wrong track. I have come to question the claims of my friends and boosters that I’m best positioned to defeat Trump in 2024 because I did so in 2020. To be frank, that’s malarky.
I won in 2020 largely due to big turnouts from African Americans and young people, voting for me in lopsided numbers. But, sadly, since then my support among black voters has dropped, and more than 90 percent of young Democrats told pollsters last summer that they wanted a Democratic nominee other than me.
In recent months, three of my administration’s decisions -- for oil drilling in the Arctic, a hefty boost for liquified natural gas exports, and extensive oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico -- have further eroded my standing among environmentally minded voters and young voters in particular. I’ve been told that these decisions have disappointed many Democratic activists and seemed to show a cavalier attitude toward the climate crisis that I have repeatedly labeled as “existential.”
I now believe that an open contested primary is the best path forward for Democrats as we look toward the 2024 election. I will no longer stand in the way -- which should encourage Democratic aspirants to step forward and help assure a truly open presidential primary process. Such a process of debate, and then party unity, helped us to defeat Trump in 2020. Such a process can and should do the same in 2024.
I am known for being verbose to the point of becoming stumbly and sometimes even unfathomable, so I’ll leave it there. More than a year and a half remains in my presidential term. During that time, I will concentrate on doing the best job as president that I can.
It has been reported by many journalists that I am a great believer in fate. I will not deny it. But I have come to realize that fate should not be understood as fatalism or passivity. The Democratic Party will be running against an extreme MAGA Republican Party next year. It is time to discard illusions and get on with that monumental task.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy. His next book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, will be published in June 2023 by The New Press.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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