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New Mexico official ordered removed from office over Jan. 6 participation

A federal judge ordered that “Cowboys for Trump” founder Couy Griffin be removed from his position as Otero County commissioner on Tuesday over his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

New Mexico District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew found that Griffin had engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6 riot and was constitutionally disqualified from holding federal or state office, including his current position. 

“This is a historic win for accountability for the January 6th insurrection and the efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in a press release.

The watchdog group and several law firms filed lawsuits against Griffin in March, after he was found guilty of illegally entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. 

The group alleged — and Mathew agreed — that Griffin violated Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars elected officials from “engaging in insurrection or rebellion.”

Even though Griffin did not personally engage in violence, Mathew said Griffin’s decision to join the mob on Jan. 6 and trespass on restricted grounds constituted insurrection. The judge also said Griffin “normalized and incited violence” before, during and after Jan. 6.

Mathew’s decision represents the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified an elected official over the insurrection rule, according to CREW.

“This decision makes clear that any current or former public officials who took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution and then participated in the January 6th insurrection can and will be removed and barred from government service for their actions,” CREW’s Bookbinder said.

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White House stresses need for new COVID funding as fall booster campaign rolls out: ‘Congress has not stepped up’

White House officials on Tuesday reiterated calls for new COVID-19 response funding to be approved by Congress as the fall vaccination campaign begins, with officials warning that there are currently not enough resources to respond should a new surge emerge.

White House officials like COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra praised the newly authorized variant-specific booster as safe and effective.

Joined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and President Biden’s chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci, the officials said the updated vaccines would soon become widely available to most of the U.S. in the coming weeks.

“By the end of this week, over 90 percent of Americans will live within five miles of these new updated vaccines,” Becerra said. The proximity and availability of the COVID-19 boosters can be searched for on vaccines.gov.

Becerra, however, remained vague on whether there are enough updated vaccine doses available for whoever wants one when asked about the lack of new funding. The White House previously warned that additional boosters and variant-specific vaccines would not be available for everyone if new funding was not approved by Congress.

The White House cut funds from other areas of the COVID-19 response earlier this year in order to continually fund treatments and vaccines.

Becerra said the possibility of going into the fall and winter without vaccines for Americans was “unacceptable.”

“We will not have tests in our Strategic National Stockpile should we see another omicron like event,” Becerra said. “We had promised the American people we would make sure that we did not get into that, but we needed Congress to step up. Congress has not stepped up.”

“And so while we may have the vaccines today for folks for this fall vaccine effort, we don’t know what’s coming next,” Becerra said. We don’t know what the next generation of vaccine will look like if we don’t have the resources to continue that research going.”

A senior White House official said last week the administration will be requesting an additional $22.4 billion to fund the COVID-19 response along with roughly $4 billion to respond to the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.

“Without additional funding, we will have to make more difficult decisions,” the administration official said.

Jha noted during the briefing that it is “always more expensive” to respond to a new development like the omicron wave last winter than it is to prepare in advance. He predicted that if another surge of coronavirus cases comes, then Congress would likely pass another round of funding.

“It will cost the American taxpayer twice as much and will be less effective. One of the reasons to be prepared and to be on the front footing … and to be looking around the corner is it’s much more effective and it’s much more cost efficient,” Jha said.

Source: TEST FEED1

What will NATO do if radiation from Zaporizhzhia reaches its members?

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has warned that if Russia were to launch a cyber-attack on Ukraine, the effects could spread to Poland — a NATO member — triggering NATO’s collective defense principle, Article 5, and leading to a larger war.

Until recently, cyber was the big threat, and NATO was slow to respond. But it has made great progress over the last decade, including establishing a Cyberspace Operations Centre and designating cyber as a new domain alongside air, land and sea. 

Now, NATO faces a new threat. 

Recent Russian attacks on and around Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, have raised alarm about the prospects of a nuclear catastrophe, whether by intent or ‘accident.’ Such an ‘accident’ will create confusion and is an effective play from Russia’s point of view: It achieves a similar effect as using a tactical nuclear weapon, but has the benefit of plausible deniability. 

Scenarios include the nuclear plant taking a direct hit from reckless shelling, fires disrupting the power lines, or the backup generators running out of diesel. In all of these cases, it is a possibility that the cooling mechanism will fail and the nuclear core melt down, similar to what happened at Fukushima. No matter which of these scenarios might unfold, one thing is sure: Russia will blame Ukraine.

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “support and assistance” mission arrived at Zaporizhzhia on Thursday. They will assess the safety of the plant and its Ukrainian workers, who have been forced by the Russian occupiers to remain and continue operations. With this visit, which has long been called for by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the UN, comes some comfort that people who know what they are doing are in charge and will report their findings to a world audience. But there remains the risk that Russia will attempt to manipulate the IAEA mission or use their presence to manufacture some crisis.

In the event of an ‘accident,’ some think that the winds would blow any radiation towards Russia. Maybe so. But what if they blow in other directions, toward NATO members? What if power loss causes nuclear matter to burn through the structure and straight into the groundwater? These are plausible events. Regardless of how an accident unfolds, nuclear radiation — like cyber — knows no borders, and it is clear that large swathes of Europe’s population could be in harm’s way. 

So, what will NATO do?

NATO’s actions since Russia invaded Ukraine have been far more decisive than ever before. Examples are its swift and continuing condemnation of Russia’s actions by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg; pledges of tens of billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine — both military and economic — by individual NATO countries; and that over 2 million refugees from Ukraine have been welcomed in NATO countries. Poland is the stand-out and has revised its immigration laws to allow Ukrainians to stay for up to three years and to work without a work permit, and is educating over 400,000 Ukrainian children. Sweden and Finland, countries which have taken pride in their neutrality over many decades, have asked to join NATO and the U.S. Congress has already voted to approve this. There remains a continued focus on the cyber threat.

These actions have already had a deterrent effect on Russia, and several more could be taken now in light of the radiation threat:

• Condemn any interference with the IAEA resident mission.
• Support placing UN peacekeepers in and around the Zaporizhzhia plant as requested by Ukraine.
• Convene an emergency meeting — and maybe also a G7 meeting — to condemn Russia’s actions at the nuclear plant. 

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died last week, is credited with winning the Cold War, and proposing to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan that both countries give up their nuclear weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin brought red roses and paid his respects (live on TV) to the former leader as he lay in an open coffin at the hospital where he died. Despite the fact that they were lifelong ideological enemies, Putin’s gesture (though he skipped the funeral) offers some evidence that he wants NATO and the West, where Gorbachev was a hero, to see his humanity. Let’s hope we are not entering a new Cold War with Russia or China, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day historians credit NATO with heading it off?

Jane Harman is distinguished fellow and president emerita of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She served nine terms in Congress as a Democratic representative from California and was ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. She is author of “Insanity Defense: Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe.” Follow her on Twitter @JaneHarmanCA

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White House: People likely to need annual COVID-19 boosters

Top White House health officials indicated Tuesday that the public is likely to need annual COVID-19 booster shots, making this year’s updated booster similar to an annual flu shot.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that, looking forward with the COVID-19 pandemic, in the absence of a dramatically different variant, we likely are moving towards a path of vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population,” Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases doctor, said during a briefing. 

The messaging from the White House is an attempt to sell the public on the benefits of the variant-specific booster dose that was authorized last week. 

As the White House signals a shift from the emergency phase of the pandemic, officials are trying to ensure people stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots.

The “bivalent” booster shots from both Pfizer and Moderna are expected to be widely available this week, and officials said 90 percent of Americans will live within five miles of vaccination sites.

The administration will ensure the boosters remain available at no cost to the public, White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha told reporters.

“The pandemic isn’t over, and we will remain vigilant. And, of course, we will continue to look for and prepare for unforeseen twists and turns,” Jha said, adding that “variant curveballs” could undermine plans, and the highest risk individuals will likely need more than just an annual booster.

“But this week marks an important shift in a fight against the virus. It marks our ability to make COVID vaccines a more routine part of our lives as we continue to drive down serious illness and deaths and protect Americans heading into the fall in winter,” Jha said.

Administration officials say the new vaccines will be key to controlling a potential fall surge, but they will need to convince an increasingly checked-out public to get the shots. Demand for vaccines has waned with each subsequent booster campaign.

The White House is simultaneously projecting that COVID-19 is now a disease that is a part of everyday life while also urging people to be vaccinated. 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said hospitalizations are decreasing overall but increasing among older patients relative to younger ones. The virus is still killing an average of 375 people per day, a number that is “far too high for a vaccine-preventable disease,” Walensky said.

The new shots could help prevent as many as 100,000 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths per year, she said.

Source: TEST FEED1

US military to test launch ICBM on Tuesday

The U.S. military will hold a test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Tuesday, less than a month after the last such test, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said Monday.  

Air Force Global Strike Command will hold an “operational test launch” of an unarmed Minuteman III ICBM in the early morning of Sept. 7 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters. 

“This launch is a routine test which was scheduled far in advance and consistent with previous tests. This ICBM launch will validate and verify effectiveness and readiness of the system,” Ryder said.  

He added that the United States has given the Russian government an advanced notice of the launch, in accordance with standard procedures. 

The Minuteman III, which is capable of holding a nuclear payload, was last tested on Aug. 16 after being delayed for nearly two weeks due to increased tensions with China over Taiwan.  

Ryder said that the launch is being held less than a month after the last such test due to the delay of the previous launch moving the dates closer together.  

In the past year, test launches of the Minuteman III have been pushed back several times thanks to U.S. tensions with Russia over Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, as well as stresses between Washington and Beijing in relation to Taiwan.

Minuteman III ICBMs are located in underground silos in five Western states and are tested several times a year. The missiles have a range of more than 6,000 miles and can travel up to 15,000 miles per hour.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Majority of Millennials, Gen Zers who moved home during COVID-19 pandemic still live there: survey

The COVID-19 pandemic threw long term education and housing plans into flux for many Americans and the Millennials and Gen Zers who moved back in with their parents during the crisis are still feeling the ramifications.

A new survey from LendingTree shows the majority of individuals who moved back in with their parents during the pandemic still live there, more than two years after COVID-19 first struck the U.S.

Findings are based on survey responses from more than 1,300 U.S. parents, Millennials and Gen Zers recorded between July 26-29, 2022. Millennials were defined as those aged 26 through 41, while Gen Zers were those aged 18 through 25. 

Results show 32 percent of these young Americans moved back in with their parents during the pandemic, two-thirds of whom continue to live there. Just over half of these individuals said the move was out of necessity, as many focus on paying off their debt and saving to purchase a home. 

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Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they moved back in with their parents to save up for retirement.

Individuals aged 24 to 40 are most likely to live with their parents in Hawai’i, New Jersey and Florida. High costs of living in both New Jersey and Hawai’i likely contributed to this finding, researchers said, while “adult children living at home in Florida, a state where the cost of living is lower, may be at home to care for an older parent.”

Researchers said that “as of 2019, Florida had the second-highest population of residents 65 or older, with more than 1 in 5 (20.9 percent) in that age demographic statewide.”

In comparison, the co-living arrangement was least likely in North Dakota, Nebraska and South Dakota, which could be due in part to low unemployment rates in these states. 

On the parents’ end, over 80 percent said they would let children move back in as adults or have already done so, and 73 percent said they would not charge their children rent if they came back. But the majority of parents said they would expect help with household chores and for children to be employed. 

The findings come alongside reports documenting challenges young people face when it comes to buying a home, while rising inflation, stagnant wages and higher rents throughout the country all compound the financial hardships plaguing young Americans. 

“With inflation as high as it is and with rates rising, it can be difficult for anyone to make ends meet in today’s economy,” said Jacob Channel, LendingTree senior economist, in a statement. Younger individuals working in entry-level jobs may also not have enough cash flow to sustain moving out of their parents’ home, Channel added. 

Upon moving out of their parents’ homes, 73 percent of respondents said they were more likely to rent than purchase a home. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Oz says he would have certified Biden's win over Trump

Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician and Trump-backed Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, said on Tuesday that he would have voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election had he been in office at the time. 

Asked at a press conference if he would have objected to the certification of the election results, Oz said that it is the job of the Senate to approve the Electoral College vote and that, had he been in the Senate at the time, he would have done so.

“I would not have objected to it,” Oz said. “By the time the delegates and those reports were sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it, which is what I would have done.”

While Oz’s latest remarks could help him counter Democratic attacks and appeal to a broader slice of the electorate, it also puts him at risk of alienating former President Trump and some of the Republican Party’s most loyal voters.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and pushed lawmakers last year to object to the certification of the election results. The certification process on Jan. 6, 2021 was disrupted when a mob of the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. That riot is now the subject of a congressional investigation. 

Oz, who was endorsed by Trump shortly before Pennsylvania’s primary election earlier this year, narrowly clinched the nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He’s facing Pennsylvania Lt. Gov John Fetterman (D) in the general election in November.

Recent polling shows him trailing Fetterman, fueling Republican concerns that they could lose one of the most sought-after Senate seats of the 2022 midterm election cycle. 

A survey from Emerson College released last month found Fetterman leading Oz by 5 percentage points, while an earlier Franklin & Marshall College poll showed Oz trailing by 13 points.

Source: TEST FEED1

There should be no war over Taiwan

After a week of consultations and briefings in Taiwan with a team from Brookings Institution — our visit was sandwiched between those by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in time, and by Chinese missiles, airplanes and warships in space — I came back to the United States convinced more than ever that there really should be no war over Taiwan — not soon, not in a few years, not ever.

Of course, war is always bad and should be avoided when possible. But I am trying to say more than that. Specifically, none of the three governments that could begin a war over Taiwan — those in Washington, Beijing and Taipei — should see war as in its interest. To do so would be to make an even worse mistake than Russian President Vladimir Putin’s when he chose to attack Ukraine in February in the apparent belief that he could achieve a quick and relatively easy win.  This is true today and will remain so for the foreseeable future — though the United States and Taiwan should take steps to improve the odds that Chinese President Xi Jinping will see war as highly undesirable, if he does not see it that way already.

As I attempted to show in a paper released by Brookings during our Taiwan trip, it is unrealistic, if not impossible, to predict which side would win any conflict over Taiwan. That would be true even if the war were to remain limited in geography and scale. For example, China could lose most of its submarine fleet, in some scenarios, and see any blockade defeated, according to certain plausible assumptions about how well our anti-submarine warfare platforms might function as they searched for those submarines. But there is no guarantee of that outcome, either. If the submarines were particularly hard for us to find — especially likely if China can successfully attack air bases on Okinawa and ships we might use to create convoys east of Taiwan, a possibility that cannot be dismissed — we could lose much of our surface Navy and fail to end the strangulation of Taiwan by China’s submarine force. Either of these outcomes is plausible, and in my view, impossible to dismiss in advance. 

Most likely, the war would not remain limited. Neither Beijing nor Washington would accept defeat in a limited engagement. Instead, the conflict probably would expand horizontally to other regions and vertically, perhaps even to include nuclear weapons threats — or their actual use. It literally could become the worst catastrophe in the history of warfare.

Even if a war were somehow to be “winnable” — perhaps because Taiwan’s political leadership were arrested or killed and a successor regime chose to surrender rather than fight, or because the United States somehow chose to sit the war out and China rapidly prevailed — the economic consequences would be enormous. For all the talk of “decoupling” China’s economic relationship with the West, that is not really happening. Rather, some investments in areas such as high technology that might have been envisioned for China some years ago are instead being directed elsewhere, to safer harbors. But most existing trade patterns are being sustained, even in the face of America’s tariffs dating to the Trump administration. 

By contrast, if China attacks Taiwan, everything will likely change. America surely would find it unacceptable to maintain most existing economic relationships with China. Current investments and trade patterns would be wound down over the months and years to come — to the extreme detriment of both sides (especially China, and especially if most of our allies made the same policy changes, since there is nowhere else besides the Western world where China can find 1 billion wealthy consumers looking to purchase its goods).

More specifically, this is why it would be a huge mistake for each party to blunder into war:

• For Taiwan, any belief that the United States could rescue it from the jaws of an angered China would fail to appreciate the above military realities. China has the second-best military in the world and geography gives it a home-field advantage in any war over and near Taiwan. None of the weapons systems or other innovations that the Pentagon is considering today will change the basic reality that, in an era of precision-strike modern weaponry, Taiwan will be extremely hard for us to defend — even with allies and even in the best of circumstances. If Taiwan’s leaders do not understand this, they need more military briefings. Fortunately, I believe President Tsia Ing-wen does get it and will avoid the kinds of escalatory steps (such as declaring independence) that could make war likely.

• For the United States, any belief that U.S.-China war is virtually inevitable due to the “Thucydides’ Trap” (what often happens historically when a rising power meets an established superpower) is deterministic, fatalistic and foolish. Yet there are quarters of the American strategic community that hold this view. We must appreciate that, while America should not abandon its democratic friend in Taiwan, the issue of Taiwan’s future is a particularly sensitive one for not just China’s Communist Party but most of its people — akin to how we might feel if Alaska or Hawaii were to seek independence. Nor should we become so enthralled with any new defense strategy, whether of Jim Mattis or Lloyd Austin or anyone else, that we believe it somehow can restore the kind of reliable war-winning capabilities we once wielded against China in the western Pacific. The world will always be more complicated going forward.

• For the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi, deciding that Taiwan must be brought into the “motherland” by some specific date or during the tenure of the current president would be a mistake of colossal proportions given all of China’s other ambitions and needs. There is a good chance that World War III would result. This goal is simply not worth it, especially when there is considerable hope that someday — even if probably well after Xi’s rule — Taiwan and China could agree to form some kind of loose confederation.

In short, however unsatisfying, the status quo — China claiming and wanting reunification with Taiwan but not achieving it anytime soon, Taiwan wanting autonomy and self-governance but forgoing independence, and America wanting peace in the region and self-determination for Taiwan but needing to maintain vigilance indefinitely to achieve those outcomes — is much better than rolling the dice on war to try to settle the issue.

Still, there is work to do. For the United States and Taiwan, two steps in particular are crucial.  First, we need to improve our respective military modernization programs to further complicate China’s chances of a successful attack on Taiwan. That means, among other things, more tools for Taiwan to carry out a “porcupine defense” of the island (with lots of mobile anti-ship missiles, rapidly-deployable shallow-water minefields, Stingers and Javelins and other such short-range missiles, and hardened communications networks); more survivable weaponry for the United States in the western Pacific that does not require big fixed airfields or aircraft carriers to launch sensors and weapons; and better preparation for the consequences of what could be a long economic war against China (by reducing our dependencies on China to some reasonable extent).

But second, we also need to stop demonizing China, even as we do push back against its repressions of internal minorities or dissidents and its assertive behavior abroad. Among other things, that means avoiding accusations that China is committing “genocide” against the Uyghurs (a loaded term if ever there was one) and recognizing the great accomplishments it has made in recent decades in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, in China and beyond.

There will not be an easy answer to the challenge of China’s rise, and its consequences will be with us for all of our lifetimes. The goal must be, first and foremost, avoiding war so that those lifetimes can run their natural course rather than being risked in hegemonic conflict.

Michael O’Hanlon is the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of several books, including “The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint,” “Defense 101: Understanding the Military of Today and Tomorrow,” and the forthcoming “Military History for the Modern Strategist.” Follow him on Twitter @MichaelEOHanlon. 

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Trump allies see judge’s appointment of special master as big win

Former President Trump and his allies embraced the appointment of a special master to review materials taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month during an FBI search.

The former president’s defenders hailed the decision from Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — as a win for transparency and the legal process. The decision will also likely slow down any investigation into Trump’s handling of classified materials after leaving office, which could allow Trump to further cast the search as a partisan exercise ahead of the midterm elections.

“Trump will treat this order as a win, even though it is unconvincing and lacks support in pertinent precedents and is unnecessarily solicitous of Trump,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

“Trump will also see this as a win, because the judge appeared to stop the DOJ from continuing the investigation, which will slow it for some time,” Tobias added. “The DOJ will have to decide whether to appeal the ruling.”

Myriad factors could further draw out the process. Cannon asked the parties to submit names to potentially serve as the special master by Friday. But the Department of Justice (DOJ) could appeal Cannon’s ruling, something it would likely have to do before agreeing to submit names.

An appeal could extend the process, but if a special master is appointed, experts said, it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly how long it might take for the individual to go through all of the documents.

Trump’s legal team had for weeks advocated for the appointment of a special master, or a neutral third party who would sift through the seized materials to identify anything unrelated to the investigation or covered by privilege.

In Cannon’s ruling, she wrote that the eventual appointee would determine what is covered by both attorney-client privilege as well as executive privilege. The latter was viewed as an unusual step given Trump is no longer in the White House and the Justice Department is part of the executive branch of government.

In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Trump and his associates viewed it as a victory while further fanning distrust in the FBI and DOJ investigation of the former president.

Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a conservative judiciary group, touted the ruling as a “major legal victory for President Trump; major legal blow for Biden Justice Department.”

“The FBI does not get to oversee itself. GOOD,” Jenna Ellis, who led Trump’s numerous failed legal challenges to the 2020 election, tweeted about Cannon’s ruling.

“The DOJ FAILED in stopping an independent special master from reviewing the documents from illegal raid on President Trump’s home. Why was the DOJ trying so hard to stop this? Are they trying to hide something?” tweeted Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Trump’s former White House physician.

One former Trump adviser argued the ruling was a positive one for the former president if for no other reason than because it would slow down the investigation and potentially keep it out of the news cycle while the special master is appointed and then works through the numerous documents.

Trump, for his part, responded to the news by suggesting the judge’s decision invalidated the 2020 election and attacking the FBI and DOJ.

“Remember, it takes courage and ‘guts’ to fight a totally corrupt Department of ‘Justice’ and the FBI,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “They are being pushed to do the wrong things by many sinister and evil outside sources. Until impartiality, wisdom, fairness, and courage are shown by them, our Country can never come back or recover—it will be reduced to being a Third World Nation!”

The constant attacks are reminiscent of how Trump has handled previous investigations into his conduct, such as the Russia probe and the two impeachment proceedings against him. In each of those cases, he repeatedly decried them as politically motivated “witch hunts.”

The special master appointment will likely allow him to do the same, further politicizing the FBI search.

The FBI search conducted Aug. 8 has kept Trump squarely in the headlines in the lead up to November’s midterm elections.

The August raid came after authorities recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January that contained 184 classified documents, including 25 that were marked “top secret,” according to a heavily redacted affidavit that was used to justify the search last month.

Trump has used the search of his home to solidify support among conservatives, demonizing the FBI and framing the raid as an abuse of power intended to harm his chances of winning the White House again should he run for president in 2024.

At a rally with supporters in Pennsylvania on Saturday — his first since the FBI search — Trump decried the bureau and Department of Justice as “vicious monsters” and called the search of his home “a desperate effort to distract from Joe Biden’s record of misery and failure.”

While Trump has been happy to attack law enforcement over the search, some in the GOP would likely be relieved to see the fallout from the raid fade into the background with just two months until the midterms.

Trump remains unpopular with many independent voters, who will be critical in Senate races in swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin. President Biden and Democrats have been happy to elevate Trump and his attacks on the FBI to argue many Republicans don’t truly support law enforcement.

Biden spent the last week making the broader argument that Trump and his supporters are a threat to democracy.

“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said Thursday. “And that is a threat to this country.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Press: If the semi-fascist shoe fits, wear it!

Even veteran political reporters admit they’ve never seen politics as ugly as it is today. But, still, every once in a while, we get a big belly laugh. Like last week, after President Biden remarked that the “extreme MAGA philosophy” of Donald Trump and his followers is “like semi-fascism.”  

In response, Republicans exploded. How dare Biden engage in such name-calling, they thundered. This, mind you, from MAGA Republicans who, following the example of their “dear leader,” excel in name-calling. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) compared the Biden administration to “Marxist dictatorships.” On Fox News, right-wing commentator Mollie Hemingway called Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine plan a “fascist move.” And at an August 2020 campaign rally, Donald Trump warned that Joe Biden would “replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. Left-wing. We’re going left-wing all the way. Fascists! They are fascists!”  

In other words, it’s OK for Republicans to call Democrats “fascists,” but President Biden must apologize to the nation — Or resign? Be impeached? — for suggesting that MAGA Republicanism is semi-fascist?  

LOL.  

But, of course, that begs the more important question: Is Biden right? And that depends on the meaning of fascism.  

Most historians agree that, whether practiced by Italy’s Benito Mussolini or Germany’s Adolph Hitler in the 1930s, or by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan today, there are traits common to every fascist regime: cult-like loyalty to an autocratic leader; no parliamentary limits on a leader’s power; denial of free and fair elections; intolerance of, including violence against, political opposition; and outright racism and anti-Semitism. If you think MAGA Republicanism fits the bill, you’re right.  

Cult-like loyalty to an autocratic leader? Check! Whether it’s attempting to bribe a foreign leader, inciting an armed mob to attack the Capitol Building, or absconding with top-secret documents, there’s nothing for which MAGA Republicans would hold Donald Trump responsible. Not even, as he suggested, shooting someone in plain sight on Fifth Avenue. 

No limits on power? Check! On Jan. 6, MAGA Republicans, at Trump’s bidding, tried to prevent Congress from doing its job. Today, they still argue that Trump’s above the law when it comes to cooperating with the Justice Department.  

Denial of free and fair elections? Check! As recently as his rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday, Trump still refuses to accept Biden as president. He’s hardly alone. According to FiveThirtyEight, at least 120 election deniers, whose primary purpose is to negate the 2020 election, won Republican primaries and are on the ballot in November.  

Violence against political opposition? Check! Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Trump’s guest at his Pennsylvania rally, has repeatedly endorsed calls for political violence, including in 2019, when she “liked” a Facebook post suggesting a “bullet to the head” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). On Jan. 6, Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned of “riots in the streets” if the Justice Department files charges against Trump in connection with stolen classified documents.  

Racism and anti-Semitism? Check! Trump welcomed the support of white supremacists, issued a ban on Muslims entering the country, attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, and insisted there were “very fine people” among those who marched through Charlottesville chanting “The Jews shall not replace us.”  

Which brings us back to the central question: Was President Biden right in calling the politics of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans “semi-fascist?” No, Biden was wrong. He didn’t go far enough. Based on what they’ve said, what they’ve done, and their ongoing efforts to undermine democracy, Biden shouldn’t have called MAGA Republicans semi-fascists. He should have called them outright fascists, period.  

Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.” 

Source: TEST FEED1