It’s a well known fact that the corporate news industry attracts dumb people who want to be on television in the same way the porn industry attracts troubled kids from broken homes. This is especially true at Fox News — where the talent contracts seem to come, these days, with a full-frontal lobotomy.
Just consider Sandra Smith.
Smith is not a journalist —she’s pretending to be one on TV. She’s never done any investigative reporting in her life. She was a stock trader who briefly worked at Bloomberg News before moving to the Fox Business channel — and she did not distinguish herself in any of these roles. This was self-evident when Fox’s top airhead conducted an interview with Rep. Mo Brooks this weekend that went viral on Twitter because Mo Brooks essentially ended her career on air.
Sandra Smith felt the need to make one of those idiotic “there was no cheating in the 2020 election” statements probably written by Paul Ryan himself. She then pushed back on Mo Brooks because she “had been reading the Wall Street Journal” — another Rupert Murdoch media property! — which she wanted to be very clear she was quoting from verbate!
That really sums up the TV career of Sandra Smith in one word: verbate!
She means verbatim, of course, but what do you want from a woman whose reporting experience in the world of politics is so thin that it might as well be a starving model? (Could she pass a 5th grade civics exam? I have my doubts. Mo Brooks has to explain to her that Congress is in charge of federal election law!) Sandra is also the only human being who thinks that the old British propaganda outfit Reuters is some kind of international fact-checking NGO! She’s a wacky liberal who probably declined to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 because, at the last minute, she filled out her ballot with the name of the more deserving candidate: her hairdresser.
This leads to my final point: the only reason to watch Sandra Smith is because you want to get your information from someone who knows less than you do.
The rest of the interview was just as disgraceful: Smith harassed Brooks about so-called “red flag” gun laws, about the NRA’s endorsement of Brooks, and about calling for a return to traditional moral values.
Now you would think that a call for returning to traditional moral values would be uncontroversial at Fox News — but you would be wrong. You forgot that you’re dealing with Sandra Smith who manages to twists the words of Mo Brooks into an insult of single parents!
Just watch the entire interview.
Notice that Sandra Smith is trying to talk over Mo Brooks throughout the interview. She thinks it’s her job to get the last word on everything. When he brings up various facts about election fraud, she interrupts him to bring up whether he’s been “subpoenaed about January 6th.” It’s a hostile hit-and-run interview conducted by a Murdoch bimbo.
This is the smirking face of neo-liberalism haunting America. “How can anyone bring up election fraud on our channel? We’re Fox News! And we called it early for Biden!”
The good news is that Sandra Smith will soon join her discredited Fox News colleagues Chris Wallace (“Jen Psaki is the greatest press secretary in history!”) and Melissa Francis (“Don’t bring up George Soros!’) and Jedediah Bila (“Who cares if Josh Hawley’s book gets canceled!”) in the dustbin of history where they belong. There was a time when closet liberals could work at Fox News in plain sight without annoying their core audience — but those days are long gone. There’s no middle ground left in American politics (or in American society) in the post-Trump wasteland created by the Biden regime.
We’re all living in the nightmare created by the frauds who called Arizona early. Pissed off doesn’t even begin to describe the mood of the GOP electorate. There’s no time slot in existence where Fox News can hide Sandra Smith from the wrath of its viewers until the whole thing blows over — because it’s never going to blow over.
“Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.”
Former President Barack Obama shakes hands with Joe Biden after Biden spoke about the Affordable Care Act, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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Left critics and self-hating Democrats believe that Obama was a Republican-indulging compromiser. So did Biden and his appointees, who were determined to outdo Obama using narrow Democratic control of Congress. Why they blew it.
This is a piece from a new source for me called the Washington Monthly. Many of the articles are left leaning, but this one does make some sense. I’ll highlight some of the comments I agree with. Most of this article is Bullshit. But I felt all should see how the left thinks.
In July 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank banking bill. Its passage marked his administration’s third major legislative accomplishment, joining the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act. The former, known as “the stimulus,” helped cut short the Great Recession. It also powered a clean energy revolution. From the beginning to the end of the Obama administration, wind power capacity tripled and solar power capacity increased by an astonishing 2,500 percent. The ACA, or “Obamacare,” expanded health insurance coverage, helping to reduce the percentage of uninsured Americans from 14.7 in 2008 to 9.2 in 2021. To fund expanded coverage, the ACA imposed new taxes on the wealthy, which, in concert with subsequent tax code changes, subjected the richest 1 percent of households to their highest tax burden since 1979. And Dodd-Frank’s reorganization of the financial regulatory system, according to the financial reformers at Better Markets, succeeded in “making a financial crash much less likely.”
At the same point, 486 days into his administration, Joe Biden’s scorecard is not as full. His biggest victory is the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Biden signed was significant as well, but his failure to extend the law’s poverty-fighting child tax credit expansion beyond December 2021 mars its legacy.
From the new book This Will Not Pass by the New York Times reporters Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, we know that Biden had hoped to surpass Obama’s legislative output and impact. The president is quoted as saying to an adviser, “I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his.” (And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is quoted as having told a friend, “Obama is jealous of Biden.”)
But 16 months into Biden’s presidency, it seems unlikely to be as transformative as Obama’s. It may succeed in many respects; great foreign policy achievements may be in store; a burst of bipartisanship could dampen our polarization. But the window for sweeping progressive legislation appears to be closed. Any last-ditch “reconciliation” bill this year, somehow earning Senator Joe Manchin’s approval and a barely sufficient 50 Senate votes, will have to be much smaller than the Build Back Better bill, meant to be Biden’s crowning legislative achievement. Truly ambitious party line legislation beyond this year would necessitate a Republican collapse, allowing Democrats to control Congress despite high inflation and Biden’s poor approval ratings.
The value of comparing these two administrations is not to settle some presidential pissing contest but to determine how best to enact progressive change.
We learn from This Will Not Pass that the Biden administration was heavily influenced by critics of Obama’s conciliatory approach, some of whom came from within that administration itself. According to Burns and Martin,
The people [Biden] had put in place at the highest levels of the White House largely aligned with [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and Pelosi in their view of congressional Republicans. Mostly veterans of the Obama administration, they were haunted by their party’s last experience governing in an economic crisis, in 2009, when a newly inaugurated Democratic president and his top staff had spent months pleading and horse-trading for Republican support on various essential priorities and come away with little to show for it. [White House Chief of Staff] Ron Klain was among the Biden aides who [were] clear-eyed about the early missteps of the Obama administration …
The Obama administration, Klain believed, had moved too slowly in its early days to address the recession, and it had done too little to explain to the public what it was doing … Klain fretted that there was a risk Democrats would make the same mistakes again: allowing a drawn-out negotiation over dollar figures and time-tables to overshadow the real benefits the administration wanted to give voters.
Such a narrative became popular in progressive circles, driven by pundits like the New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman. In January 2009, Krugman deemed Obama’s $775 billion stimulus proposal “not enough” to deal with an estimated $2.1 trillion of lost production in the Great Recession. Five years later, Krugman called the stimulus, despite its positive policy elements, a “political disaster” that ended up “discrediting the very idea of stimulus.” Krugman also criticized Obama in August 2009 in response to reports that he was “backing away” from a “public option” during health care negotiations: “It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased.”
Obama revealed his real-time response to such complaints in his memoir, A Promised Land. Attempts to include a public option were dropped toward the end of the process at the behest of moderates in the Democratic caucus, enraging many progressives. Obama wrote,
I found the whole brouhaha exasperating. “What is it about sixty votes these folks don’t understand?” I groused to my staff. “Should I tell the thirty million people who can’t get covered that they’re going to have to wait another ten years because we can’t get them a public option?” It wasn’t just that criticism from friends always stung the most. The carping carried immediate political consequences for Democrats … all the great social-welfare advances in American history, including Social Security and Medicare, had started off incomplete and had been built upon gradually, over time. By preemptively spinning what could be a monumental, if imperfect, victory into a bitter defeat, the criticism contributed to a potential long-term demoralization of Democratic voters—otherwise known as the “What’s the point of voting if nothing ever changes?” syndrome—making it even harder for us to win elections and move progressive legislation forward in the future.
I find Obama’s explanation sensible. Yet inexplicably to me, many Obama administration veterans favor the Krugman view. Even more bizarre, Biden, after pushing back on progressive Obama critics in the 2020 primaries, surrounded himself with such critics once in office. The result was a Biden administration less attuned than his Democratic predecessor’s at determining what could be achieved with the Senate votes available.
Yes, Obama had more Senate Democrats to work with than Biden’s 50. Obama began his presidency with 58 Democrats. In late April 2009, Senator Arlen Specter switched parties to make it 59. In early July 2009, Al Franken was sworn in as the 60th Democratic senator following a grueling recount. Then the number was knocked back to 59 in February 2010 after Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won the special election to succeed the deceased Senator Ted Kennedy.
With such a big majority, you might think that Obama could have plucked just about anything off the progressive wish list and made it law, using budget reconciliation—the procedurally complex filibuster-proof process Biden used last year to pass the American Rescue Plan with just 50 Senate Democrats. But Obama’s big majority included a sizable and stingy moderate faction, and not just in the Senate. In 2009, the House had 255 Democrats, but 49 were moderate Blue Dogs, more than enough to deny Pelosi a majority.
As Michael Grunwald explained in his history of the 2009 stimulus, The New New Deal, Obama “had to make sure Blue Dogs in the House and centrist Democrats in the Senate didn’t jump ship,” because even before the inauguration, “they were already sounding alarms about runaway spending.” In December 2008, then Vice President–elect Biden was compelled to publicly state that the emerging package “will not become a Democratic Christmas tree.” That effectively cut off any talk about using reconciliation for the first major bill of the Obama administration. And when a Senate version of the stimulus grew to $930 billion, a group of moderate Republicans and Democrats came together to scale it back to $780 billion.
Following the February 2009 passage of the Recovery Act, Democratic leaders wanted reconciliation available for the rest of Obama’s agenda, but fellow Democrats stymied them. When putting together the budget resolution—the parliamentary precursor to a budget reconciliation bill—Democrats agreed to include health care and education as eligible for the reconciliation process. But a Republican motion explicitly denying the same privilege for any climate change bill was embraced by 26 Senate Democrats and passed overwhelmingly—an omen that the Senate was not going to be hospitable to any ambitious climate change bill.
Even though health care made the cut, Democrats said at the time that the reconciliation option was a last resort. Reconciliation bills can only include budget-related provisions, and many health care reform proposals wouldn’t qualify (a procedural obstacle that fatally compromised Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare using reconciliation in 2017). Then Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad said, “Virtually everyone who has been part of these discussions recognizes that reconciliation is not the preferred way to write this legislation. But the administration wants to have a reconciliation instruction as an insurance policy.”
In turn, Obama calibrated his legislative agenda to meet the limits of what the 60th vote would allow. For the Recovery Act, after helping to limit the price tag, the 58th, 59th, and 60th Senate votes came from Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and—before his switch—Specter. (Senate Democrats were united in support, though eight House Democrats broke ranks.) For Obamacare, the 60th vote came from Democrat-turned-independent moderate Joe Lieberman, who refused both the public option as well as a Medicare buy-in option for those turning 55. For Dodd-Frank, it came from Scott Brown (offsetting the loss of progressive Democrat Russ Feingold), who demanded that a proposed tax on banks be stricken from the bill. It was.
Student loan reform did piggyback on a reconciliation package used to finish up the Obamacare process, accommodating changes sought by the House weeks after Senate Democrats lost their 60th seat. Fifty-six Senate Democrats passed that follow-up bill, with three Democrats joining Republicans in opposition.
Some progressives never cottoned to the horse trades required to win those votes and partly blamed watered-down legislation for the poor Democratic performances in the 2010 and 2014 midterms and even Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. The Biden presidency offered the opportunity to prove the alternate theory of the case. Don’t strain for the 60th vote. Use the reconciliation process. Go big with 50 votes. Don’t even bother with Republicans.
But whatever the merits of reconciliation, basic legislative competence still requires accommodating the determining vote, be it the 60th vote in regular order or the 50th vote in reconciliation.
Biden simply did not do that in his pursuit of a wide-ranging Build Back Better bill. In December, he didn’t rush to take Manchin’s $1.8 trillion offer, apparently because it left out an extension of the expanded child tax credit. As Biden hesitated, Manchin announced his opposition to the entire bill and revoked the offer. Biden was understandably reluctant to give up on a program that had successfully slashed child poverty and had the makings of a signature policy achievement. But it was politically foolish to presume that the one-year expansion of the credit—slipped into the American Rescue Plan reconciliation measure—would be extended indefinitely without first securing Manchin’s support.
Krugman and others charged Obama with having “wasted time” by trying for months to win Republican support for the Affordable Care Act, support that never materialized. But Obama wasn’t just chasing Republicans; he was also chasing Senate Democrat moderates. However long it took, he found the votes he needed. Notably, Obamacare (and the student loan reform that rode along with it) was an anomaly. Every other bill Obama signed into law was passed thanks to mathematically necessary Republican support. It’s far more accurate to charge Biden with having wasted time on Build Back Better, as he spent months trying to wear down Manchin and ended up with nothing. Biden took less time getting the 60 Senate votes needed to pass an infrastructure bill precisely because he let those moderates who held the determining votes take the lead on negotiations.
Getting the historical narrative correct matters. Democrats should have been telling a positive story of Obama’s presidency, one where landmark laws made America better, and he became the first Democratic president to win reelection with more than 50 percent of the popular vote since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Instead, Democrats told a narrative that lacked historical perspective, blaming an inevitably imperfect legislative record for midterm losses, even though such defeats are common for the president’s party. Amazingly, Joe Biden, of all politicians, a figure who has lived through decades of Washington history, got suckered into accepting a flawed narrative. No wonder his legislative strategy was similarly flawed.
In 1942, Catalina Island was closed to tourism and shifted to support the American troops as a training center for the U.S. Maritime Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and the Office of Strategic Service (O.S.S.).
Today, we give our respects to those who have fallen in the service to this great country. In honor of their sacrifice, we are pleased to announce that in 2022, the 80th anniversary of Catalina’s involvement in WWII, we will be hosting “Norman Rockwell in the 1940s: A View of the American Homefront”.
“Norman Rockwell in the 1940s: A View of the American Homefront” has been organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Image credits.
Norman Rockwell
Fireman, 1944
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 27, 1944
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. CurtisLicensing.com
Norman Rockwell
Liberty Girl, 1943
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, September 4, 1943
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. CurtisLicensing.com
Norman Rockwell
Rosie the Riveter, 1943
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. CurtisLicensing.com
Norman Rockwell
The Homecoming, 1945
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 26, 1945
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. CurtisLicensing.com
At least 135 teachers and teachers’ aides have been arrested so far this year on child sex-related crimes in the U.S., ranging from child pornography to raping students.
An analysis conducted by Fox News Digital looked at local news stories week by week featuring arrests of teachers and teachers’ aides on child sex-related crimes in school districts across the country. Arrests that weren’t publicized were not counted in the analysis, meaning the true number may well be higher.
The analysis found that at least 135 teachers and teachers’ aides have been arrested in 41 states between January 1 and May 13, which works out to about an arrest a day on average. The vast majority of the arrested educators were men.
Of the 135 arrests, at least 102, or 76%, involved alleged crimes against students.
The 135 educators included 117 teachers, 11 teachers’ aides and seven substitute teachers.
On April 11, police in California charged Anthony James Phillips, a 61-year-old former teacher at Cupertino Middle School in Sunnyvale, with aggravated sexual assault of a child, forcible penetration with a foreign object, and forcible penetration with a foreign object upon a child.
Phillips is accused of raping a student in 2009 when he was still a teacher at Cupertino.
Anessa Paige Gower, a 35-year-old former biology teacher at Making Waves Academy in Richmond, California, was charged with 29 counts of child molestation on April 8.
Gower is accused of sexually abusing seven students between 2021-2022 when she was a teacher at Making Waves, with allegations including forcible sodomy of minors and sharing sexually graphic photos over online platforms. She is due back in court on June 2.
The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens released a new trailer on Tuesday, teasing her upcoming documentary, titled “The Greatest Lie Ever Told: George Floyd And The Rise Of BLM.”
The trailer shows a sneak peek of Owens’ look behind the curtain in Minneapolis, Minnesota — where George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin sparked a firestorm of protests and riots across the nation — on the two-year anniversary of his death.
“Get a look at the fiery new documentary that only Candace Owens and The Daily Wire would dare bring you. On the 2-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Candace revisits Minneapolis and the violent, racially-divided aftermath that fueled BLM’s global rise—and filled its coffers. Tune in May 23 for the global premiere event,” the website added to the tease.
Owens has been critical of Floyd from the beginning, and of the political Left for rushing him to sainthood. In an opinion piece for The Daily Wire, Owens mocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for claiming that Floyd’s name would “always be synonymous with justice.”
“George Floyd’s name will always be synonymous with justice? You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “I am not an intellectual coward who will simply accept the lie about George Floyd and the way that he lived as the truth just because the mob demands it. And believe me, it’s a lie.”
Article was first printed here on the Morning Dispatch. here.
Happy Wednesday! Start your day off with impeccable vibes by watching 22-year-old Cubs prospect Christopher Morel hit a 417-foot home run in his first-ever major league at bat before a roaring Wrigley Field crowd.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman sailed to victory over Rep. Conor Lamb in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary. He will face either Dr. Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick in the general election; the Republican primary was too close to call as of this newsletter and is likely headed to an automatic recount.
Rep. Ted Budd defeated former Gov. Pat McCrory in North Carolina’s Republican U.S. Senate primary. He will face former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, in November.
Also in North Carolina, beleaguered GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn was narrowly defeated by state Sen. Chuck Edwards.
Trump-backed state Rep. Doug Mastriano easily won Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial primary, and will face Josh Shapiro—currently the state’s Democratic attorney general—in the general election.
Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little was renominated, fending off a primary challenge from Janice McGeachin, the state’s Trump-backed lieutenant governor.
Ukrainian forces that had held out in a Mariupol steel plant for months laid down their arms on Tuesday, ending a battle for the city that tied up Russian forces, slowing Russian advances elsewhere. Ukraine hopes to organize a prisoner exchange to return the more than 260 Ukrainian fighters from Russian custody.
Senior White House officials told reporters on Tuesday the Biden administration is planning to ease some sanctions on Venezuelan oil in an effort to both increase global supply and encourage negotiations between President Nicolas Maduro’s government and the U.S.-backed opposition. The move will potentially allow Chevron to restart operations in the country, and let European companies divert more Venezuelan crude back to Europe.
The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday it is amending the emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to allow children between the ages of 5 and 11 to receive a booster dose at least five months after their initial shots. A CDC panel will meet later this week to make its formal recommendation.
Nestlé—the parent company of Gerber baby food—said it will begin flying extra baby formula to the United States from Switzerland and the Netherlands after the FDA announced it would be more “flexible” allowing imports from overseas producers in light of ongoing shortages. The company is prioritizing formula made for children with allergies, but ramping up production across the board.
The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that U.S. retail sales increased 0.9 percent in April, a drop from the 1.4 percent month-over-month increase in March but the fourth straight month of growth. The statistic is not adjusted for inflation, however, so higher prices likely accounted for much of the increase.
The Chinese Communist Party’s near-total lockdown of Shanghai appears to be nearing an end, with select stores and manufacturers allowed to resume activity in recent days as local officials report community Omicron transmission has slowed. Hundreds of thousands of people reportedly remain in mandatory isolation—either in facilities or at home—as the country continues to pursue a zero-COVID strategy.
The Department of Justice is suing businessman and Republican fundraiser Steve Wynn in an effort to force him to register as a foreign agent, alleging he lobbied Trump in 2017—on behalf of the Chinese government—to extradite a businessman who had criticized the Chinese Communist Party.
Pennsylvania Senate Too Close to Call
We’ll have to wait at least one more day—and probably more than that—to update the narrative about former President Donald Trump’s lasting grip on the Republican Party. After helping J.D. Vance win a come-from-behind victory in Ohio last month, Trump’s next big test was in Pennsylvania, where he endorsed TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz over businessman and former Treasury official Dave McCormick and commentator Kathy Barnette to replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey. As of this writing, the race remained too close to call.
McCormick—an Army veteran who went on to serve in the Bush administration and as CEO of a large hedge fund—led for almost the entire night, blowing his sagging late poll numbers out of the water. But Oz hung around and finally surpassed McCormick around midnight, when more than 90 percent of the vote had come in. When we hit send on this newsletter, Oz led by 0.2 percentage points—about 2,700 votes—with 94 percent of the electorate tabulated.
North Carolina Says Goodbye to Madison, Hello to Ted
North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn. (Photo By Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images.)
Cawthorn had several built-in advantages as an incumbent, plus support from former President Donald Trump and strong fundraising numbers. But in addition to the aforementioned scandals, Cawthorn earned himself some high-powered Republican enemies—GOPposition, if you will—when he briefly sought to leave his district for another one, before returning to the 11th when redistricting made it what he thought would be an easier win. “He made a self-interested calculation,” J. Michael Bitzer, a politics and history professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, told The Dispatch. “That, I would have to believe, would leave a sour taste in voters’ mouths.”
While Cawthorn was exploring other options, state Sen. Chuck Edwards entered the race. The more traditional 61-year-old businessman ran primarily on securing the border, balancing the budget, pursuing energy independence, and improving education—and he picked up a few key endorsements in the process. “There’s no one thing that put me in a position to where [for] the first time in my career I’m opposing a sitting Republican,” GOP Sen. Thom Tillis—also of North Carolina—toldCNN, explaining his disdain for Cawthorn. “I’ve never done it. But it’s the totality. It’s a lack of seriousness.” Tillis endorsed Edwards, and a super PAC aligned with the senator spent more than $1 million on ads opposing the 26-year-old representative.
Republican Self-Sabotage?
The McCormick-Oz race may still be too close to call, but the other high-profile GOP election in Pennsylvania last night very much wasn’t. State Rep. Doug Mastriano—whom Trump endorsed last weekend—ran away with the gubernatorial primary, securing 44 percent of the vote to former Rep. Lou Barletta’s 20 percent and Bill McSwain’s 16 percent.
Audrey was at Mastriano HQ last night, and drove home from Pennsylvania at 1 a.m. to make sure this story was up on the site today.
Mastriano is popular among Republican primary voters, but he may have a … bit of an electability problem come November.
Winning the general election will be no cakewalk for Mastriano in a state that in the past has skewed more purple than red. An ardent supporter of Trump, Mastriano attended the “Save America” march that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol last year, and was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Both Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report had initially rated the general election race a tossup but changed the race to “leans Democrat” after Mastriano’s victory.
Worth Your Time
John McWhorter’s latest New York Times column argues we need multiple terms to describe the many different concepts “racism” has come to encompass. “We increasingly apply the term in reference both to violent hate crimes and to the fact that, for example, in the aggregate, Black students don’t perform as well on standardized tests as some of their counterparts,” he writes. “But while we tend to use the term ‘racism’ for both things, it isn’t readily obvious to most how both prejudice and a differential in performance are versions of the same thing, referred to with one word. One of the thorniest aspects of today’s race debate is that we have come to apply that word to a spread of phenomena so vast as to potentially confuse even the best-intended of people.”
McDonalds’ decision to permanently pull out of Russia is about a lot more than just burgers and fries, Ian Birrell argues at UnHerd. “Removal of the Golden Arches from Moscow spotlights the arrival of another Cold War between democracy and dictatorship,” he writes. “For the moment, it is focused on Russia after Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine. But his allies in China are looking hungrily at Taiwan as they watch this war play out—another reason why this fight is so important. The retrenchment by McDonalds comes after the pandemic focused corporate minds on the pitfalls of long supply chains while exposing how Beijing’s rulers could not be trusted after a global battle broke out against a mysterious new disease that emerged within its borders. Even now, they resist global efforts to discover the truth about Covid’s origins. Russia was already cutting itself off from the West—like China—with a war on foreign media and technology firms to protect the ruling circle of thieves even before the imposition of wartime sanctions and exodus of foreign firms. Now McDonalds is the perfect illustration of how Ukraine’s existential struggle for survival is accelerating the divide between autocracies and liberal democracies.”
People who protest in front of private residences in Florida can face jail time and fines under a bill signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. https://t.co/YCA2uT0sWM
Toeing the Company Line
In Tuesday’s Uphill, Haley outlines a bill congressional Democrats will attempt to pass in the wake of Saturday’s mass shooting. “The legislation would create dedicated domestic terrorism offices in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice, and the FBI,” she notes. “But Republicans and some progressives have raised concerns that new authorities could infringe on Americans’ civil liberties.”
Political scientist Yascha Mounk returned to The Remnanton Tuesday for a conversation with Jonah about his new book on sustaining diverse democracies. What are the true dangers of tribalism and populism? What does healthy patriotism look like?
David’s latest French Press (🔒) takes the Heritage Foundation to task for opposing Congress’ latest Ukraine aid package. “The sheer pettiness of the objections—especially in light of the urgency of the tactical and strategic situation—is remarkable,” he argues. “The Ukraine aid represents a whopping .06 percent of federal expenditures. It is relatively immaterial to our national spending crisis. It’s a rounding error in the American budget. But it’s not a rounding error on the battlefield.”
Steve, Jonah, and Andrew were joined on last night’s Dispatch Live by GOP strategist David Kochel. What have the primaries held thus far told us about the Republican Party? If you missed the discussion—or want to watch it again—Dispatch members can do so here.
On the site today, Charlotte shares details from Mark Esper’s new book, Eric Edelman explains what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is up to with efforts to oppose Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership, and Vlad Kobets and David J. Kramer warn that the West can’t let Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko off the hook.
Daniel Miranda, 2, with his grandmother, Juana Maria Lara, during a July immigration rights protest in D.C. (Michael Blackshire/The Washington Post)
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The great replacement can be very scary. I myself don’t believe that there’s a movement to get rid of white people. I do believe that some loon politicians and progressives want the undocumented here in order to change the political balance. Over 50% of the people ( 20% Democrats ) believe this.
Last December, the Associated Press and NORC conducted a large national poll examining conspiratorial ideas including this one.
Friday the 13th was Jen Psaki’s last day as the Bagdad Ali of the White House. I want to thank Joel B. Pollak for this list.
Yes some — particularly in the establishment media — have called her the “best ever,” perhaps because the job of explaining Joe Biden’s failures is simply so difficult. Here are some of the most memorable moments of her tenure, for better or for worse:
17. COVID and masks. Despite sanctimonious lectures about pandemic precautions, Psaki somehow managed to contract COVID twice. She also struggled to explain the White House’s double standards on wearing masks on federal property.
16. “Circle back.” Psaki drew mockery from conservatives over her repeated promises from the podium to “circle back” with reporters when she did not know the answer to questions — or perhaps when she knew, but preferred not to answer.
15. Hoaxes. Psaki repeated some — not all — of the famliar liberal hoaxes about Trump, most notably the “bleach” hoax, insisting — despite glaring evidence to the contrary — that he had told Americans to inject bleach to cure COVID (he did not).
14. Defaming Kyle Rittenhouse. In the midst of the Rittenhouse trial, Psaki criticized “vigilantes with assault weapons.” After Rittenhouse was acquitted, she refused to walk back Biden’s false claim that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist.”
13. War on “misinformation.” Psaki vowed her briefings would fight “misinformation,” and defended — to her last week — the Biden administration’s “disinformation” office. But she herself spread disinformation about Russia, and Hunter Biden.
12. Space Force snub. Psaki appeared to snub the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces when she mocked a reporter’s query about whether Biden intended to continue Donald Trump’s addition to the military. She later clarified that she supported it.
11. Major dog cover-up. When Biden’s dog, Major, was accused of biting a Secret Service agent, Psaki downplayed the incident. Later, documents suggested that Psaki misled the public about the real threat the dog posed to agency staff.
10. Border denial. Psaki made it clear she did not want reporters to ask about the crisis at the southern border, chastising reporters for “maddening” questions about it. She claimed Biden’s policy was more “moral” and “humane” than Trump’s.
9. Refusing to condemn protests at Supreme Court justices’ homes. It took Psaki days to condemn violence after a draft opinion reversing Roe was leaked, and she actually encouraged the arguably illegal protests outside the homes of justices.
8. Dismissing the idea of free COVID tests. Psaki initially scoffed at the idea of sending free COVID tests to every American as too costly to undertake. A few days later, mid-omicron wave, the administration belatedly began doing so.
7. “Don’t Say Gay’ demagoguery. It was Psaki who started the false — yet effective — claim that Florida had passed a law that literally prohibited people from saying “gay.” The law actually restricts sexual instruction of any kind to K-3 children.
6. Doocy. Among many examples of the Biden administration failing to respect the press, one of the worst was Psaki saying that Fox News made Peter Doocy — one of the few critical voices in the press corps — sound like a “stupid son of a bitch.”
5. Defending inflation. Psaki test-drove several excuses for inflation, first claiming that it was transitory (“inflation is going to come down next year”), then trying to put a positive spin on it as the by-product of an otherwise wonderful economy.
4. Admitting Biden skipped D-Day. Among other clean-up jobs, Psaki had to explain Biden’s unfortunate failure to commemorate the anniversary of D-Day in 2021. She told reporters that the historic occasion was still “close to his heart.”
3. Vacationing while Afghanistan fell. Psaki and many other members of the administration had to be called back from summer vacation when Afghanistan began to fall to the Taliban, a failure that has since defined perceptions of the president.
2. Hunter Biden dodges. Psaki repeatedly (and successfully) dodged questions about Hunter Biden, his laptop, and his connection to his dad’s finances, claiming they were a private matter or the under the purview of the Department of Justice.
1. Baby formula. Psaki’s advice, when asked what parents should do if worried about their babies amid a national shortage of baby formula, was to “call their doctor.” Neither she nor the White House had any solace to offer American families.
One example when Psaki called it right: she did, finally, admit that communism is a “failed ideology,” as Cubans protested in the streets against their oppressive regime. But that, sadly, is all the Biden administration was willing to do to help them.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced Thursday the country plans to apply for NATO membership “without delay,” arguing such a move would strengthen both Finland’s own security and the defense alliance as a whole. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the accession process will be “smooth and swift” once Finland formally applies, and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby praised the decision as “historic.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, threatened to retaliate with “military-technical” measures if Finland follows through on the move.
The Interior Department canceled plans this week to auction off oil and gas leases for two regions in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the coast of Alaska, citing legal challenges and “a lack of industry interest” in the drilling rights. Industry groups disputed that characterization, noting the decision likely means the Biden administration will not auction off any leases for offshore drilling until at least 2023.
In light of ongoing shortages, President Joe Biden announced Thursday he had instructed his administration to crack down on any “price gouging or unfair market practices” related to baby formula, cut some restrictions on baby formula imports, and allow states to loosen certain Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) requirements.
North Korea conducted another set of ballistic missile tests on Thursday, according to Japanese and South Korean military officials. The country—which is currently dealing with an unmitigated COVID-19 outbreak—launched three missiles off its east coast yesterday, each traveling about 225 miles before landing in the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
At least 11 people were confirmed dead on Thursday after a boat believed to be carrying migrants capsized near Puerto Rico. A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said a Customs and Border Protection aircraft spotted the makeshift vessel Thursday morning, and that at least 31 survivors were rescued.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday the producer price index—a measure of what suppliers and wholesalers are charging their customers—increased 0.5 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, down from March’s 1.6 percent month-over-month increase and February’s 1.1 percent. Annual PPI inflation came in at 11 percent, just shy of last month’s record-high 11.2 percent.
The January 6 Select Committee announced Thursday it had issued subpoenas to five Republican House members—Reps. Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—citing their refusal to voluntarily testify before the committee about their “relevant knowledge of the events on or leading up to January 6th.” It’s unclear whether the lawmakers will comply with the subpoenas—there’s little precedent of an investigative committee using such tactics against fellow House members—or whether the Justice Department will pursue contempt charges if they don’t.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs—increased by 1,000 week-over-week to 203,000 last week.
A New Leader in the Philippines …
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., president-elect of the Philippines. (Photo by TED ALJIBE/AFP via Getty Images)
In 1986, Philippine ruler Ferdinand Marcos Sr. fled to Hawaii with his wife and kids, 90 of his closest friends, and a fewessentials: jeweled cufflinks, gold bricks, tiaras, and crates of cash. (His wife Imelda’s 3,000-pair shoe collection stayed behind.) A military-backed, pro-democracy uprising had ended a decades-long rule characterized by human rights abuses and corruption that earned the family as much as $10 billion.
Marcos Sr. died three years into his self-exile, but his family has spent years working its way back into power in the Philippines—his son Ferdinand “BongBong” Marcos Jr. served as a provincial governor and senator and in 2016 lost a bid for vice president. This week, Marcos Jr. was elected president of the Philippines by about a 15 million vote margin, as public polling predicted. He’ll take office June 30, and President Joe Biden called Wednesday to congratulate him on the win.
“To the world: Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” Marcos Jr. said in a statement delivered by his spokesman this week. He campaigned on national unity and—with the help of social media—portrayed his father’s rule as a golden age. Fact check group Tsek.ph found 92 percent of false posts it checked about Marcos Jr. were favorable toward him, while 96 percent of posts with misinformation about his primary competitor were negative toward her. The independent news outlet Rappler—founded by journalist Maria Ressa, whom Charlotte profiled last year—has suggested Marcos Jr. conducted a disinformation campaign on social media to launder his family’s reputation, beginning as early as 2014.
Critics worry he’ll shut down efforts to investigate his family’s crimes. Amnesty International estimates Marcos Sr.’s security forces imprisoned more than 70,000 people, torturing many of them. The Presidential Commission on Good Government has recovered less than $4 billion of the wealth the Marcos family and associates accrued. Imelda Marcos, 92, was found guilty of graft in 2018 but posted bail and has appealed the conviction. As president, Marcos Jr. could close the commission and scrap the case against his mother.
Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” killed more than 7,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch, and he promised after leaving office to “search for drug peddlers, shoot them, and kill them.” Filipinos elected Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, as Marcos Jr.’s vice president, and he says he’ll allow International Criminal Court officials investigating Duterte’s killings into the country—“but only as tourists.”
… and in Hong Kong
A hop, skip, and a two-hour plane ride from the Philippines, Hong Kong also chose a new leader this week.
Britain returned Hong Kong to China’s sovereignty in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” agreement, under which Hong Kong could keep its political freedoms and market economy for 50 years. But this agreement has come under pressure in recent years as Beijing exerts more control over the “special administrative region’s” governance. Many critics regard the city’s new leader as a further departure from Hong Kong’s promised freedoms.
Beijing loyalist and former Deputy Secretary for Security John Lee is best known for leading the brutal police crackdown on Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests. He has also helped implement the city’s new National Security Law, which outlaws “secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces” and has led to the arrests of more than 150 people and squashed most pro-democracy political groups and independent news outlets. (The city’s foreign correspondents club recently suspended its human rights award for fear of violating the new laws.) The U.S. sanctioned Lee in 2020 for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and its citizens’ freedom of expression.
Lee’s election Sunday is the first since changes to Hong Kong’s election laws last year that Beijing implemented to ensure only “patriots” hold office. In his role as chief secretary last year, Lee led the vetting of members of the approximately 1,500-person committee that, this year, was responsible for electing him. The only candidate in Sunday’s election, he won 99 percent of the vote and will be sworn in on July 1 when his predecessor, Carrie Lam, steps down after a five-year term marked by crackdowns on pro-democracy protests and a tumultuous COVID-19 situation.
“[The election result] fully demonstrates the new vitality of the democratic practice in Hong Kong and the true democratic spirit,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday. After all, a full 1,416 of Hong Kong’s approximately 7.5 million residents voted for Lee.
Other countries pointed out the disconnect. In a joint statement on Sunday, the G7 nations expressed “grave concern” over “a continued assault on political pluralism and fundamental freedoms.” Days after the election, Hong Kong national security officers arrested four prominent pro-democracy activists—including 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen—under the national security law. They’ve since been released on bail pending investigation.
“I look forward to all of us starting a new chapter together, building a Hong Kong that is caring, open and vibrant, and a Hong Kong that is full of opportunities and harmony,” Lee said in a victory speech. He’s pledged to improve Hong Kong’s governance and housing, as well as enact laws fighting treason, secession, sedition, and subversion.
“In Lee, Beijing gets its ‘designated enforcer,’” said Samuel Chu, founder of pro-democracy advocacy group The Campaign for Hong Kong. “Lee is a puppet elected through a sham process who will face no political opposition, no independent and free press, and no freedom of speech, assembly, or expression. Today, John Lee won and the people of Hong Kong lost.”
Capital Tensions High After Draft Supreme Court Opinion Leak
When Politico published a leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito showing the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, it wasn’t just Washington, D.C. that was turned upside down. A couple of quiet neighborhoods in Maryland and Virginia, were too.
Abortion-access activists have organized a handful of protests outside conservatives justices’ homes in recent days, hoping to use public pressure to influence the court’s final ruling. Harvest and Audrey observed some protests outside Alito’s home in Alexandria and Brett Kavanaugh’s in Chevy Chase, and they report what they saw in
But we were told that voter fraud doesn’t exist. One loon in Northern California went as far as saying that in all 50 states that there was one case of voter fraud and it was a Republican.
A Democrat Virginia Board of Supervisors’ member has been indicted on 82 mostly election-related felony charges a Commonwealth Attorney announced May 3.
“The Special Grand Jury indicted Trey Adkins and Sherry Lynn Bailey for several election related offenses,” said Commonwealth Attorney Zack Stoots in a Facebook statement. “Adkins was also indicted for embezzlement of public funds while being in a position of public office.”
“During each election cycle, Mr. Adkins relied on a number of absentee ballot applications and votes,” Clevinger reportedly said. “He personally campaigned to a number of homes in the Knox District and in 2019, took hundreds of ballot applications to residents, filled them out and turned them in to the local Registrar.”
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