Last Gasps for Republicans Before the Holidays
The House of Representatives has just four more session days scheduled for 2023.
Despite all the infighting there is work to be done, starting with consideration of renewing and amending section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It sunsets on December 31 and our nation’s spooks are anxious to keep the business going.
This legislation is where the big ears and eyes of the government are supposed to be told what they can and can’t do.
FISA 702 allows the government to compel communication service providers to disclose the communications of persons reasonably believed to be non-U.S. persons abroad. No warrant is required; A belief that the communications relate to foreign affairs or national security is all it takes to get around those pesky warrants usually required.
After much hemming and hawing, the House Judiciary Committee actually supported a bipartisan reform proposal. The amended legislation would renew section 702 for three more years but with a provision requiring warrants when it comes to information on Americans, with certain exceptions.
Those exemptions include situations where there’s an emergency involving an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm,” and situations in which a “cybersecurity threat signature” is used as a search term to prevent harm from malicious software.
The bill would also “drastically” lower the number of FBI officials who are authorized to conduct searches of U.S. persons. The FBI (which has an egregious history of abusing 702) and the Biden administration oppose the warrant requirement.
Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California cast one of the two votes against the amended version. He is currently campaigning to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate.
From Roll Call:
Swalwell argued the legislation would hamper the U.S. government’s ability to investigate the connections of foreign terrorists. He said the measure would leave the nation “in the blind” and take the U.S. back to the days before Sept. 11, 2001.
“And I would suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, it’s not an accident that we have not had a serious terrorist attack in America since Sept. 11,” said Swalwell.
***
Also on the list of things to probably be considered is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The NDAA authorizes funding levels and provides for the U.S. military and other defense priorities, ensuring the military has the necessary resources, equipment, and training.
House Republican hard-liners successfully maneuvered over the summer to load their version of the bill with provisions that would have rolled back a Pentagon policy of reimbursing travel expenses incurred by service members who travel out of state to obtain an abortion; prohibited specialized health care sought by transgender troops or military dependents; and ended Defense Department diversity programs.
Sanity prevailed -if sanity can be described as spending $886 billion on the military–, and compromise legislation agreed to by negotiators from both chambers stripped away those contentious provisions.
The defense policy bill includes an amendment preventing any U.S. president from withdrawing from NATO without congressional approval. The possibility of Donald Trump’s return to the White House looms large on Capitol Hill.
***
That’s about it for the serious part of the House’s pre-holiday workload. What’s left is the you-gotta-be-kidding movement to stop military aid for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to make a last ditch personal appeal.
Meanwhile GOP House members will be hearing from allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán at a closed-door meeting held at the Heritage Foundation.
From The Guardian:
A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”
Orbán is a frequent critic of aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Seen as Vladimir Putin’s closest ally inside the EU for the past few years, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the Russian president two months ago in Beijing.
Have no doubts about it, the far right flank of the GOP is allied with Putin’s ambitions, in large part because of the Russian president’s reactionary domestic policies. Anybody who hates gays and public dissent is A-Ok with them.
Finally, here’s what the House leadership considers its most critical task this week: the revenge Impeachment of President Biden.
A resolution to formalize the House GOP’s Biden inquiry will be voted on, putting lawmakers on record — including Republicans in Biden-won districts who weren’t enthusiastic about the idea.
From Daily Kos:
Just last month GOP House speaker, Mike Johnson, was reluctant to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry because "Biden’s polling numbers have been so weak, there is less of a political imperative to impeach him." But his position has shifted in the few weeks that followed. Presumably because the Ultra-MAGA wing of his party has threatened to give him the boot, as they did to former speaker Kevin McCarthy, if he doesn't fall in line. Consequently, Johnson rushed over to a diner in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Raymond Arroyo of Fox News was waiting to hear his confession…
Johnson: Well, I would say we're the rule of law team and we have to be very deliberate and careful about that. I've said several times, and it's true, that next to the declaration of war, I think that impeachment is the heaviest power that Congress has. The House specifically under the Constitution. So we have to be very methodical and careful and follow the facts where they lead. The impeachment inquiry is the next necessary step because the White House is now stonewalling our investigation.
This will put the House on a clear trajectory toward impeachment itself, starting with a series of high-profile hearings early next year and potentially finishing with a Senate trial in the middle of the presidential election.
The basis for such a trial will be allegations concerning the relationship between a father and his son. There is –to date– no solid evidence of actual wrongdoing on the president’s side. House hearings looking for such evidence have been smoke and mirrors affairs.
Here’s Fox Newstroll Peter Doocy:
“The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business. But they are gonna try again with this impeachment inquiry that’s set to start next week.”
Ultimately, what Republicans are hoping to do in service to the Dear Leader, is get evidence of son Hunter Biden’s addiction-driven behavior on TV. They’ll lift information from his (available in retail and on-line booksellers) biography and alleged pictures of his penis. In the background, viewers will be expected to hallucinate about his father, who wasn’t a public official for much of the timeframe.
These desperation-driven hearings are supposed to act as counterweights to the various criminal and civil trials faced by the former president. As of two days ago, here’s a list of what’s coming. Keep these dates marked on your calendar so you’ll know when to expect the gates of GOP bullshit to flood the media.
***
Monday’s Mélange of Links You Should Read
***
The Life-and-Death Cost of Conservative Power Via The American Prospect
As state-level policy has diverged since the 1970s (and especially since 2000), so have differences in mortality rates and life expectancy among the states. These differences are correlated with a state’s dominant political ideology. Americans’ chances of living longer are better if they live in a blue state and worse if they live in a red state. The differences by state particularly matter for low-income people, who are most likely to suffer the consequences of red states’ higher death rates. To be sure, correlation does not prove causation, and many different factors affect who lives and who dies. But a series of recent studies make a convincing case that the divergence of state-level policymaking on liberal-conservative lines has contributed significantly to the widening gap across states in life expectancy.
In a 2020 paper, a team of researchers led by Jennifer Karas Montez assembled annual data from 1970 through 2014 on both life expectancy and state policies in 18 different policy domains, including health, labor, the environment, and taxation. In previous work, one of the collaborating scholars, Jacob M. Grumbach, had shown that state-level policies over that period had polarized on a liberal-to-conservative spectrum. According to the new Montez study, which controlled for differences in state populations, the polarized shifts in state policy were associated with changes in life expectancy. States that adopted liberal policies were more likely to experience larger gains in life expectancy (and in recent years to avoid an outright decline). Connecticut and Oklahoma were the two states whose policies shifted the most, Connecticut toward the liberal side and Oklahoma toward the conservative side. In 1959, life expectancy in both states was 71.1 years; by 2017, it had increased to 80.7 years in Connecticut but only to 75.8 years in Oklahoma.
***
Politics Report: The Problem with Sunbreak Ranch By Scott Lewis at Voice of San Diego
Proponents of the plan have vacillated on its cost and size – it could be anywhere from 500 acres to 2,000. It could cost $275 million. Mullen says it is nothing compared to what we already spend, which implies we must redirect what we already spend to it. He is looking for philanthropy to cover the rest.
The idea has some objectionable aspects. It’s a remote camp where homeless people would be concentrated. They’d be allowed to leave once a day. But I suspect they wouldn’t want to be there in the first place. They congregate in city centers for the same reason cities exist: to be close to opportunities and community. We’re already stretching the limits of legal enforcement. The amount of pain and violence police would have to deliver to force people to go to a camp in the desert is inconceivable.
Like a floating airport or an NFL stadium on top of a working port terminal, Sunbreak Ranch comes from a long tradition of San Diego dreamers trying to solve major problems with imaginative visions. This is the darkest, one, though. Floating airports are fun. Internment camps are not.
***
Eligible voters are being swept up in conservative activists' efforts to purge voter rolls Via CBS News
Georgia became ground zero for the movement after Republicans in the state pushed through a law in 2021 allowing citizens to file an unlimited number of challenges against fellow voters within their own county. In the two years since the law passed, a CBS News investigation found more than 80,000 challenges have been filed against Georgia voters — many of them by a loose network of about a dozen conservative activists.
The movement is not limited to Georgia CBS News obtained video and transcripts from 11 separate sessions this year in which activists are seen strategizing how best to deploy voter challenges across the country.
For example, public records reveal a local Republican Party activist in Virginia who attended a March strategy session, then filed a slate of 43 voter challenges in August, ahead of the November election. Activists have also recently filed challenges in Washington state and Michigan, where a public records request revealed a GOP official conducted a "field investigation," going to dozens of homes to check if voters were registered to the correct
***