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Democratic Congress was disappointment for immigration activists

The first Congress of the Biden era is ending with a significant list of legislative accomplishments under its belt, but Democrats will once again relinquish a House majority without delivering on immigration reform.

Though inaction on immigration reform has become a constant, the stakes are somewhat higher for the outgoing 117th Congress, as the fate of hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers is now in the hands of the conservative majority of the Supreme Court.

Over the past two years, a number of immigration reform bills simmered on the legislative back burner and sometimes caught flickers of national attention, but leadership never found the right time to give immigrants top billing.

House bills came early in the session

Two major immigration bills cleared the Democratic-led House in March of 2021, but the political moment to peel off the necessary ten Senate Republicans to enact a law never came.

The Dream and Promise Act would have opened legal pathways — and ultimately citizenship — for about two million recipients of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program and Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA), would have overhauled the migrant labor market, putting in place a broad deal to address deficiencies in the agricultural visa system, while implementing harsher controls to avoid hiring undocumented workers and opening a pathway to citizenship for potentially millions of agricultural laborers.

The Dream and Promise Act received unanimous Democratic support and nine Republican votes, while the FWMA passed the House with only one Democrat voting “no” and 30 Republicans voting in favor of it.

But neither the bipartisanship nor favorable public polling bolstered the bills’ momentum, and neither passed the Senate.

In the fall, President Biden attempted to push through Congress the Build Back Better Act, a $3.5 trillion economic and social package.

The bill needed no Republican support because it was moved through reconciliation, leaving Democrats to fight among themselves and ultimately reducing the size of the proposal to $1.7 trillion.

Three House Democrats, Reps. Lou Correa (Calif.), Jesús García (Ill.) and Adriano Espaillat (N.Y.), said they would not vote for the package unless it included Dreamer protections, but they were ultimately forced to scale back their demands after moderate Democrats staged a backroom campaign to minimize the bill’s immigration proposals.

Many moderates privately lobbied leadership to scale down the immigration side of the signature Democratic bill, fearing that Republicans would successfully campaign on the issue.

Ultimately, even a scaled-down version of the immigration provisions was struck down by the Senate parliamentarian, who ruled work permits were incompatible with the reconciliation process.

By the time 2022 rolled in, the two House-passed bills were frozen, with Democrats running from the immigration and border issue in an election year that was expected to yield big wins for Republicans.

Lame-duck rush

Hopes that immigration measures might move forward in a lame-duck session of Congress were lifted after Republicans underperformed expectations despite their border-centric pitch to voters.

Advocates sprung to action, pushing for legislation on the Dreamers issue and for agricultural labor. They hoped to stick the bills or major provisions of them to must-pass legislation.

Democrats threw more meat on the flame with a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants with years in the country and no criminal record to apply to regularize their papers.

Under the rolling registry bill, introduced in the House by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), undocumented immigrants would be able to apply for permanent residency after seven years in the country.

The problem with all of the proposals was that none of them clearly had backing from Senate Republicans — a necessity in the evenly-divided upper chamber.

Democrats in the House also didn’t choose to prioritize a single bill.

Asked in November which bill should be prioritized, Lofgren told The Hill, “I’d do all of them. I’m not going to pick, do all of them.”

“They all have their moral imperative, so it’s really up to the Senate, we’ve done our part,” added Lofgren, the chair of the House Judiciary Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee.

Bipartisan talks

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema – at the time an Arizona Democrat, now an independent – and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) held negotiations to exchange Dreamer protections for enhanced immigration and border enforcement, as well as a streamlined asylum process.

That deal raised hopes temporarily, but was quickly scrapped amid the year-end rush.

Meanwhile, immigrant farm workforce negotiations between Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), which had been going on for more than a year, seemed to hit a stride before ultimately dying down.

The Crapo-Bennet negotiations, which had begun as a joint effort to make the House-passed FWMA palatable to more Republicans, ultimately ran into roadblocks as the American Farm Bureau Federation pushed Crapo in one direction and the United Farm Workers union pushed Bennet in another.

“Senator Crapo and Senator Bennet were not able to reach a bipartisan agreement on critical employer-related components of the bill, despite their best efforts,” said Marissa Morrison, Crapo’s press secretary.

Though neither Crapo nor Bennet criticized each other or the process publicly, the last-minute end to a yearlong bipartisan conversation left advocates on either side angry over the wasted effort.

The Crapo camp viewed Bennet as moving the goalposts, particularly on a critical visa cap number that the two sides haggled over, and perceived Democrats as insensitive to the political jeopardy faced by a red state Republican negotiating a deal that could have granted papers to millions of undocumented immigrants.

Immigration advocates and many growers, on the other hand, recriminated Crapo and the Farm Bureau for leaving the talks so close to the end of the session.

“You don’t win when one player quits before the work is done. The American Farm Bureau – almost alone among agricultural employers – never worked to move solutions forward,” said American Business Immigration Coalition Action Executive Director Rebecca Shi.

“This may explain why Republican Senators who represent farm states were sadly absent in advancing the bipartisan House legislation. Farm workers, farmers, and anyone in America who eats will suffer as a result.”

Title 42 and must-pass bills

Border security jumped back into the headlines again in early December as a large group of mostly Nicaraguan migrants crossed the border to El Paso, Texas — complicating talks on immigration measures.

The border issue was further inflamed by a federal judge ruling that the Biden administration had to stop implementing Title 42, a border management policy begun under former President Trump.

Under Title 42, U.S. border officials can immediately expel some migrants encountered at the border, without processing them for asylum claims.

The Biden administration has expelled foreign nationals about two million times under the policy, which was supposed to be linked to public health protections during the pandemic.

Between the uptick in border crossings and the controversy over Title 42, momentum gained by Democrats and their good showing in the midterms was essentially lost.

Republicans also had an advantage in that Democrats were eager to win passage of a long-term omnibus spending bill and the National Defense Authorization Act, as the party wanted those vehicles to become law before Republicans take over the House in January.

Ultimately, that meant most controversial proposals had to go, including immigration reform.

“Lots of good things in this omni package. Lots of good funding for my district. Yet it’s hard for me to celebrate. Given that one of my top priorities is reforma and Dreamer legislation. I’m just not feeling it,” said Correa.

Source: TEST FEED1

Questions loom at CNN after difficult year 

CNN is facing a turning point in 2023, after a bruising year that brought significant change to the network’s corporate structure, editorial leadership and programming.   

People inside and around the network for much of 2022 have described a feeling of unease, which was punctuated by a round of layoffs rolled out in December by new president Chris Licht.  

Licht is the new man in charge at the cable news giant, tasked with increasing the network’s dipping profitability amid a bleak economic outlook for all major news organizations.   

Licht took over in May, replacing Jeff Zucker following the company’s sale to media conglomerate Discovery. One of Licht’s first tasks was shuttering its heavily promoted paid subscription streaming service, CNN+, less than a month after it launched.  

The failure of CNN+ underlined the corporate divisions that have made Licht’s job so difficult. CNN’s previous management was sold on the new streaming service, but its new leaders were against it even as they negotiated to buy the larger TimeWarner from AT&T.   

The CNN+ move, which reportedly caused hundreds of employees to lose their jobs, was unsettling to many inside the network and prompted Licht to say at the time he did not anticipate further cuts at the outlet.  

But it was an inauspicious start that is haunting the network and Licht heading into 2023. 

“I still don’t think there’s any confidence in him, that he can articulate a vision, or that he can take us where he says he wants to go,” one source at the network told The Hill this week. “And no matter how hard he tries, he’s not going to disabuse anyone of the notion of more layoffs coming in 2023.”  

Licht has acknowledged the underlying anxiety at the network, telling the journalist Kara Swisher in a November interview such apprehension is “completely understandable,” given what has transpired since he took over. 

“Look, that’s the beauty of working with journalists,” Licht said. “They want to know what’s the plan? This is a group of people that will follow me to the end of the earth if they believe I know what the hell I’m doing and that there’s a plan.”

CNN did not comment for this story.

Under Zucker, CNN enjoyed a boon in ratings, but had developed a reputation as being aggressively anti-Trump in its programming and overly combative in its coverage of the former president. Licht has signaled an interest in shifting that perception.  

“At a time where extremes are dominating cable news,” Licht told advertisers during CNN’s UpFront session just days after taking over, “we will seek to go a different way, reflecting the real lives of our viewers and elevating the way America and the world views this medium.”   

During his first months on the job, Licht has made a series of editorial moves that raised eyebrows inside and outside the network, particularly with progressives who saw CNN as offering too much of an olive branch to GOP or conservative viewers.  

Licht has pushed back forcefully on characterizations that he is dragging CNN to the political center.    

“The uninformed vitriol, especially from the left, has been stunning,” Licht told The New York Times in comments published this month. “Which proves my point: so much of what passes for news is name-calling, half-truths and desperation.”  

John Malone, the cable news magnate who sits on the board of CNN’s new parent company Discovery, before the sale and Licht’s hiring said he “would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists.”  

Licht has repeatedly said he is on the same page as WarnerBros. Discovery Chair David Zazlav and CNN’s other corporate leaders.  

In the end, his success may come down to ratings and revenue. Cable networks are generally seeing ratings dip, though declines at CNN have been the sharpest. In total day viewers this year, Fox News averaged 1.4 million compared to 733,000 who watched MSNBC and less than half a million at CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

“The underlying issues that will impact Licht’s tenure will be economic. And they will be driven by a board that wants to see its stock price rise,” said Margot Susca, an associate professor of journalism at American University with expertise in the economics of news companies. “This company is still 50 billion dollars in debt and doesn’t have the Trump bump. … It’s lost Trump driving audiences. I don’t think his [Licht] decisions should be looked at as political decisions; his decisions should be looked at through the lens of economics.”   

In September, Licht canceled CNN’s flagship morning show “New Day,” another Zucker brainchild, and tapped Don Lemon, one of the network’s most recognizable prime-time hosts, to anchor a revamped morning news program along with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlin Collins. The program has struggled in the ratings during its first two months.   

In prime time, CNN remains without a permanent host in the advertiser-rich 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. weekday time slots, where the race for audience share is fierce and partisan opinion programming on competitor networks reigns supreme.   

“When I hear about what’s happening at CNN today, I think that someone somewhere is trying to return to those old and earliest days of the network,” said Lisa Napoli, an author on media issues who wrote a recent book about Ted Turner and CNN’s origins. “Which is a valiant pursuit, especially to those of us who remember those days before glitz and name-brand anchors and opinion and screech domineered the landscape.” 

 Some of CNN’s challenges aren’t specific to CNN.  

News fatigue is real, particularly after the Trump presidency and coronavirus pandemic, said Frank Sesno, former director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, who previously spent years as a reporter at CNN.  

“And then there’s the confusion about ‘what is cable news anymore.’ Is it news? Is it talk radio with a camera? Is it debate and discussion,” Sesno said. “And coming out of the Zucker era and into the Licht era, CNN has very publicly said they are trying to calibrate more toward the news and less toward opinion. So there’s a swirl of change, activity and confusion and that’s what they’ve got to navigate.”  

Hanging over CNN’s political coverage in 2023 will be how much airtime to give to Trump, whose 2016 presidential run benefitted from near-constant cable news coverage. 

“We have fact checkers ready to go. We will put things in perspective. We will not let everything he does consume the news cycle,” Licht said during the November interview with Swisher. 

Trump’s specific attacks on CNN have had lasting impacts on the network Licht inherited, experts say.  

“This is a company that is trying to still shed the moniker of ‘fake news media’ and for many parts of the country that moniker stuck and trust in the network was impacted,” Susca said. “So I think Licht as a choice is really fascinating. There are few other people who know how to engage audiences that advertisers find attractive. Whether that means the audience will be informed remains a big question.”  

While Licht has acknowledged finding a path to increased profitability and reputational rehabilitation with more Americans for CNN won’t be easy, he remains committed to his vision for the network headed into his first full year as the chief executive of one of the largest news brands in the world.   

“I want CNN to be essential to society,” he told the Times. “If you’re essential then the revenue will follow.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

GOP doubts grow over Kari Lake’s future in Arizona

Republicans are expressing doubts about the future in Arizona for Kari Lake, the Trump-backed GOP gubernatorial candidate who has nearly exhausted her long-shot legal challenge to last month’s election.

Lake has dug into unproven claims of misconduct and voter disenfranchisement since her loss to Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D), most recently appealing a state judge’s dismissal of the case days before Hobbs’s inauguration.

She’s given every indication that she doesn’t want to leave the spotlight of the Arizona race, while signaling she’d like to follow in former President Trump’s footsteps by refusing to concede defeat.

Yet even as Lake insists she’ll one day be sworn in as the state’s governor — a pitch that might spark hope among her most fervent supporters — Republicans in the state are saying her continued push may just sink her further.

“It’s done in Arizona,” said Arizona Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin.

“I think the enormous amount of ill will that she’s going to create as a result of the appeal — I mean, it’s OK to file a case, but then some of the stuff she’s been saying on media and posts and just the degradation of the Arizona institutions — I think is really going to hurt her out here,” Coughlin added. “And I don’t really think she’s got a future in terms of her own electoral space here in Arizona.”

Trump used his own baseless claims about losing the 2020 election to keep his followers interested.

Lake before and after Election Day in Arizona has followed a similar course. Even before she was defeated, she had suggested she would only accept a result that showed she had won.

The Lake campaign did not return a request for comment for this story.

Trump himself has seen his stock fall since the midterm elections. The GOP failed to take back the Senate majority and did not pick up as many seats as it had hoped in the House. Several Trump-backed candidates underperformed.

That’s added to the lack of confidence in Lake’s future in the state, even as some suggested her loyalty to the former president could make her a player in the former president’s new campaign.

Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson suggested Lake could serve as a spokesperson for Trump, though he wasn’t convinced Trump will be inclined to choose her as a running mate.

“If she had won this race, if she had become governor, yes,” said Marson. “But now — you can be a lot of things in Trump World, but you can’t be a loser.”

Trump endorsed Lake in her primary against Karrin Taylor Robson, who had the backing of outgoing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) and former Vice President Mike Pence. 

Videos posted to social media show Lake appearing at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida since her loss, and the former president himself has suggested Lake should be installed as governor as Trump promoted falsehoods about Arizona’s election.

Coughlin said Lake could serve as a key surrogate for Trump when he attempts to win the state in two years.

“I see it more as a stepping stone into whatever ’24 presidential cycle holds, and how she can be a spokesperson for a Trump candidacy,” Coughlin said.

Like Trump, Lake regularly antagonized the mainstream media during the campaign, telling a group of reporters on Election Day that she would be their “worst fricking nightmare” if she won the governorship.

The former television news anchor became known for her enchanting video background and media-ready presence, and since her loss Lake has largely appeared on conservative media outlets, including on former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.

“I am standing up for the people of this state, the people who were done wrong on Election Day and the millions of people who live outside of Maricopa County whose vote was watered down by this bogus election in Maricopa County,” Lake said during an appearance on Tuesday.

Marson said that experience has given Lake another future path of potentially returning to a media gig following Hobbs’s inauguration, perhaps even joining Bannon’s show.

“This whole campaign was just an audition for either RBSN, OANN, NewsMax, some conservative outlet,” Marson said. “And so if that was her end goal, she obviously did pretty well. And she could probably get some sort of anchorship or gig on one of those channels.”

Lake’s campaign marks the latest high-profile loss for the Arizona GOP in recent years. 

Trump won the state in 2016, when Arizona had two Republican senators and a Republican governor. But the GOP has since lost both Senate seats, and now Arizona’s governorship will flip to the Democrats.

In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Trump in Arizona’s presidential election, one of only two times the Democratic candidate has carried the state in the last 70 years.

Marson and Coughlin both argued the record shows that for Arizona Republicans to prove successful in future election cycles, the party must depart from Trump-aligned candidates and again embrace mail-in voting.

“In Arizona, Republicans used to dominate early voting,” said Marson. “And I’ll tell you that that propelled Republicans election cycle after election cycle.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Afghan withdrawal left Biden frustrated, sleepless: book

The U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan left President Biden saddened, frustrated and sleepless as he faced deep criticism over its handling, according to a new book about the administration.

Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” says Biden was stunned as the Afghan forces quickly crumbled in August 2021. 

“While U.S. troops were on the ground, one of Biden’s close friends told me, the president barely slept,” Whipple wrote, according to a copy of the book obtained by The Hill

“‘You’re watching intel and holding your breath, really just praying that nothing will happen to your people,’ said a senior NSC adviser,” he added, referring to the National Security Council.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base to observe the dignified transfer of the 13 U.S. service members who died in a suicide bombing in Kabul in the final days of the pullout. The troops, as well as dozens of Afghans, died when a bomb went off near the airport, where U.S. forces were working to evacuate thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghan civilians.

During the trip, a family member whose brother was one of the fallen yelled at the president, “I hope you burn in hell.”

Whipple wrote that former White House press secretary Jen Psaki told him Biden “over the next couple of days… just felt a deep, misunderstood sadness.” 

While in Dover, Biden had spoken about his late son Beau Biden, a veteran who died from brain cancer in 2015, as the president often does to grieving family members. Psaki noted that those comments made things worse for some families of the 13 service members.

“Some of the criticism was about him praising his son,” Psaki said, according to Whipple. “And to him, and to a lot of people he’s helped through grief, that had been something that helped. That’s deeply personal.” 

Biden is known for his ability to discuss grief and connect with people over loss, largely due to the personal tragedies he has faced, but a friend of the president told Whipple that the Kabul bombing “is just a very different thing.”

“Afterward Joe Biden told a senior White House aide: ‘This is what being president is,’” Whipple wrote.

Additionally, the media roundly ridiculed Biden over the withdrawal, though Whipple wrote that the president was somewhat prepared for that. After a speech in April 2021 ahead of the full withdrawal, Biden called a friend.

“How’d I do?” he asked him, according to Whipple. The friend told Biden that he did great.

“Yeah, but the press is going to kill me,” Biden said. “I’m f—ed no matter what I say.”

A month away from the full withdrawal, Biden took questions from the press, one asking the president if he sees parallels between the Afghanistan departure and when troops left Vietnam. Biden responded that they’re not comparable, adding “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.”

A White House staffer told Whipple that he cringed when he heard the president say that comment.

“That’s a dumb thing to say, he thought, because we fly helicopters from the embassy every day,” Whipple wrote.

“The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” will be released on Jan. 17.

Source: TEST FEED1

What to look for in Trump’s tax returns

Democrats released six years of former President Trump’s tax return information last week as part of reports into the presidential audit program, revealing that the former president wasn’t receiving regular audits from the IRS and that he was reporting big business losses every year.

On Friday, Trump’s actual tax returns from 2015 to 2020 are set to be released, after Democrats said they needed additional time to redact the documents and remove personal information.

Tax experts aren’t expecting huge revelations from the raw returns, which were summarized in reports from both the Democratic-controlled Ways and Means Committee and the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). But the more detailed documents could provide additional information on key areas of interest regarding Trump’s businesses and his professional associations.

Were Trump’s losses refreshed in 2020?

The JCT report on Trump’s taxes revealed that Trump was reporting large losses every year, usually in the tens of millions of dollars, offsetting his gains and reducing what he owed in taxes — and sometimes wiping out his tax liability altogether, as in 2020.

The losses from 2015 to 2018 were actually just pieces of a larger $105 million loss, which was itself part of a $700 million loss that was broken up and reported over different years.

These broken-up losses are common accounting strategies for people in the real estate development world, who are allowed to report regular depreciation expenses as losses.

In 2019, Trump reported positive income and paid taxes, but then reported he was again in the red in 2020, leading some experts to think that Trump’s losses in that year go beyond strategic accounting and represent genuinely ailing businesses.

“Trump’s 2020 losses were not from net operating losses carried over. Rather, I think Trump’s 2020 losses were real, largely resulting from business losses he suffered at the start of the COVID pandemic. And that is why he paid zero taxes in 2020,” Steve Rosenthal of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center wrote in an email to The Hill.

“Yes, Trump generated a lot of losses in 2009, including a $700 million loss from his ‘abandonment’ of a partnership interest, some of which he carried over to future years. And Trump, apparently, continued to carryover these losses through 2018. But, by 2019, Trump had used all his carryover losses — and Trump reported positive income,” he wrote.

More information on Trump’s 2020 tax return could be a window into whether he got out of paying taxes that year due to common accounting practices or failing businesses.

Information on foreign entities and bank accounts

Trump’s foreign entanglements were one of the dominant narratives of his presidency, particularly the FBI investigation into his relationship with Russia.

Any foreign bank accounts cited in Trump’s tax returns or payments made to foreign entities are sure to receive scrutiny and could provide further insight into Trump’s relationships abroad.

“I’m going to be looking for things like foreign ownership, foreign accounts, foreign ownership of Trump businesses, payments to foreigners,” Rosenthal said. “There’s bound to be some items that may yet pop out to external reviewers that [the JCT] missed.”

“Those of us who are interested in his relationship with Russia will be looking for any kind of confirmation of what Don [Trump] Jr. said in 2008 that Trump interests had received much of their money from Russian sources,” former CIA officer and journalist Frank Snepp said in an interview.

“Obviously we’re not going to see in the tax returns a line that says ‘Russian Assets,’ but a forensic analyst would be well advised to look for anything related to the emoluments clause,” he said.

Trump also oversaw some major changes of the status quo in the Middle East, including the Abraham Accords, whereby Israel normalized relations with several Arab nations.

“Everybody who is interested in whether or not he received any money from Saudi Arabia will be looking for indications of that kind of foreign input,” Snepp said.

The profitability breakdown of Trump’s companies

In addition to Trump’s individual tax returns, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee also obtained the returns for eight of Trump’s businesses. While that’s only a small subset of Trump’s nearly 500 commercial entities, seeing which companies were most responsible for Trump’s losses will provide a clearer picture of his tax avoidance and general business practices.

The eight business returns fall into three categories, encompassing trademark LLCs, golf club businesses and two high-level holding companies.

“Those two upper-tier entities sit at the top of Trump’s LLC empire. The numbers all roll into those, and I’d like to see some aggregate numbers there,” Rosenthal said.

According to the JCT report, an IRS agent assigned to Trump’s 2018 business returns noted numerous suspicious losses claimed by Trump on his tax returns.

“With respect to 2018, the agent noted several ‘Large unusual questionable items’ (‘LUQs’) including a $12.1 million loss from the Trump Corporation … [and] $55.2 million loss for DJT Holdings,” The JCT report said.

The report also mentioned a “history of difficult negotiations between Mr. Trump’s counsel and IRS personnel.”

Unlike his real estate businesses, Trump’s trademark LLCs are expected to be profitable enterprises, bolstered by the publicity he gained during his reality television career on NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Five most interesting moments from Jan. 6 transcripts

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol is closing up its business with the released of thousands of pages of transcripts.

The interviews with various figure surrounding former President Trump have included a number of bombshells.

Here are five of the most interesting things mentioned in the interviews.

Hutchinson: Meadows burned documents during transition’

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House Jan. 6 committee that then-Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows regularly burned documents during the transition period, saying she saw him do it “maybe a dozen” times.

The panel conducted several interviews with Hutchinson, one of the committee’s star witnesses. In one of the interviews she recalls Meadows frequently burning documents though she does not pin down a specific number.

“I mean, it’s hard — I want to say once a week or twice,” Hutchinson said. “Maybe a dozen, maybe just over a dozen, but this is over a period December through mid-January too, which is when we started lighting the fireplace.” 

Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Meadows, said she was in Meadows’ office a number of times when he burnt documents. This includes an instance when Hutchinson said Meadows was in a meeting with Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry and Meadows “put a few things in the fireplace.”

“His door was propped open,” Hutchinson said. “ But I don’t know what the documents were or if they were original copies.”

Trump considered blanket pardons for Capitol breach

In his final days in office, Trump weighed the possibility of a “blanket pardon” for the Capitol breach, according to Trump’s former Director of Personnel Johnny McEntee.

“One day when we walked into the Oval, I remember it was being discussed, and I remember the President saying, ‘well, what if I pardoned the people that weren’t violent, that just walked in the building?’” McEntee told the committee.

But the idea was shot down by Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel, according to McEntee. Cipollone pushed back on the idea of pardoning Capitol breachers as well as White House staff, according to the transcript.

“I know he had hinted at a blanket pardon for the January 6th thing for anybody, but I think he had, for all the staff and everyone involved — not with January 6th, but just before he left office, I know he had talked about that,” McEntee told the committee.

“Cipollone said no,” McEntee said. “I remember Cipollone questioning on that, ‘Well, why does anyone need a pardon?’”

Jan. 6 committee agreed to shield testimony from DOJ

The Jan. 6 committee indicated that it agreed to shield the testimony of a number of witnesses from the Department of Justice (DOJ) — even those dealing with criminal proceedings stemming from the Capitol breach. 

The committee agreed to keep the testimony from the DOJ unless it described additional crimes or the committee suspected the witness of perjury, according to the transcripts.

For example, the committee told Stephen Ayers, who was sentenced to two years probation in September for actions related to the Jan. 6 riot but interviewed with the committee in June, that it had agreed with his attorney to “not to share the substance of what you say with the DOJ prior to your sentencing.”

The committee has had a rocky relationship with the DOJ, as the department sought transcripts from the panel in the summer but was rebuffed by committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who told investigators they would have to wait for the public release of the documents.

The committee agreed in July to share 20 witness transcripts with the DOJ, but Thompson said they never delivered those documents.

QAnon conspiracies in the White House

Hutchinson’s testimony also revealed that discussions about QAnon, a far-right political conspiracy group, were taking place in the White House.

Hutchinson told the committee that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) brought up QAnon multiple times directly with Trump and Meadows, as the group spread conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 election.

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene bringing QAnon up several times, though, in the presence of the president, privately with Mark,” Hutchinson said to the committee. 

In another interview with the panel, Hutchinson detailed an interaction she and Meadows had in Georgia with Green. Hutchinson said Greene approached Meadows and told him that she had many QAnon supporters who were traveling to Washington, D.C., to attend the “Stop The Steal” rally.

“Ms. Greene came up and began talking to us about QAnon and QAnon going to the rally, and she had a lot of constituents that are QAnon, and they’ll all be there,” Hutchinson said. “And she was showing him pictures of them traveling up to Washington, D.C., for the rally on the 6th.”

Donald Trump Jr. pushed White House to condemn riot

A transcript of the committee’s interview with Donald Trump Jr., released Thursday, revealed that the president’s son was pressuring Meadows to get the former president to condemn the Capitol riots on Jan. 6.

The transcript details text messages between Trump Jr. and Meadows in which the president’s son tried to influence Meadows to get his father to come out against the violence at the Capitol. 

The texts have been previously seen, but the transcript provided more information on Trump Jr.’s mindset when he sent them.

“He’s got to condemn this (expletive) asap,” Trump Jr. texted Meadows. “They will try to f—his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”

Meadows responded to Trump Jr. that he was “pushing it hard. I agree.”

Trump Jr. said in the interview that the former president does not text, so he could not reach him directly. But even in his overtures to Meadows, Trump Jr. said he wasn’t sure there were Trump supporters in the riot.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there were people in this group functioning as agitators,” Trump Jr. told the panel.

Source: TEST FEED1

Melania Trump was 'angry' with Meadows and 'wary' of lawyers ahead of Jan. 6: Grisham

Former First Lady Melania Trump distrusted most of her husband’s inner circle ahead of the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol, and was outright angry with chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to testimony from ex-White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham released Thursday.

Melania Trump was “wary” with the White House legal advisors — including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis — who were leading efforts to overturn the election, Grisham said in the newly released transcripts of her May depositions with the Jan. 6 committee.

And she added those misgivings extended Trump’s son Donald Jr. and his wife Kimberley Guilfoyle, an advisor to the president, telling the panel Melania Trump “never trusted that they were doing things in the best interest of their — Don Jr’s father.”

But the first lady was “very angry” at Meadows, both for his treatment of Grisham and for giving access to “people who were maybe harmful to the president, giving him bad advice,” according to Grisham.

“And Mrs. Trump never liked it when people would tell Trump what he wanted to hear rather than the truth or the reality of the situation, and she felt that Meadows was always just playing into his hand,” she added.

Grisham was among several members of the Trump administration who met with the Jan. 6 committee multiple times during the House committee’s investigation.

Grisham also revealed that Trump and Meadows wanted to fire White House usher, Tim Harleth, for being “disloyal” by secretely assisting with President Biden’s transition to the White House, but Melania Trump successfully urged them not to since there was only three weeks left before the inauguration, per the interview.

Grisham said she also reached out to incoming first lady Jill Biden’s staff to offer her assistance in the transition.

Grisham’s account also detailed her frustrations with Melania Trump during the insurrection on the Capitol, saying she was “disappointed” with how Ms. Trump failed to respond to the violent riots at the capitol.

“She had started to, in my opinion, drink somebody’s Kool-Aid that perhaps this election was stolen,” Grisham said.

While Grisham was watching the violence unfold at the Capitol, she said Melania Trump was busy with “a big photoshoot” with a new carpet in the White House residence.

Grisham texted the first lady to ask if she wanted to tweet that “there was no place for lawlessness and violence” during the riots, but Ms. Trump refused without explanation — at which point Grisham said she decided to resign.

“I just — I mean, I kind of was like just f— you. I mean, I’m sorry for the transcript person. But I was so, so disappointed in her,” she said. “I was more disappointed in her than I had ever, ever been, because she had a chance to take a real leadership role. And I know for a fact she was amazing at influencing her husband sometimes with these kind of things, you know.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Progressives take aim at Buttigieg over Southwest fiasco

Progressives are taking aim at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg over the Southwest airlines holiday travel fiasco that continues to cause mass delays and cancellations across the country, urging further scrutiny of the department’s practices. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a leading left-wing lawmaker on Capitol Hill, took to Twitter on Thursday to question the Transportation Department’s handling of the debacle that left travelers deserted and frenzied and administration officials scrambling.

“Nearly six months ago ⁦@BernieSanders⁩ & I called for Buttigieg to implement fines & penalties on airlines for cancelling flights. Why were these recommendations not followed?” the congressman tweeted. “This mess with Southwest could have been avoided. We need bold action.”

Khanna, who co-chaired Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, was referencing a recommendation that the Vermont senator put out in late June asking department officials to demand airlines compensate travelers for canceled or significantly delayed flights and cover their basic expenses like food and accommodations, which Khanna endorsed. 

The California liberal, who is on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, has been publicly critical of Buttigieg’s role in the process and has asked him to use more power to go after what he described in an interview with The Prospect as “unfair and deceptive practices” by the airline industry. 

The Southwest episode has caused fury among passengers trying to navigate unusually long flight delays and cancellations with minimum communication from the airline. Scenes of people stranded spread through social media and news outlets highlighting stories of travelers missing out on personal and professional obligations amid the chaos. 

The problem escalated to the Biden administration, with Buttigieg pledging to work towards a solution by talking to the Southwest CEO and other relevant parties. 

“We’ve never seen a situation, at least not on my watch, with this volume of disruptions, so this is going to take an extraordinary level of effort by Southwest,” he said in a televised interview with ABC earlier this week. “And we will mount an extraordinary effort to make sure that they’re meeting their obligations.” 

But progressives like Khanna and other figures aligned with the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party say the entire situation could have been avoided and that Buttigieg should take “bold action” to mitigate further harm.

Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, another Sanders presidential campaign co-chair and a recent House candidate, echoed Khanna’s sentiments, while David Sirota, a Sanders ally and alt-left media figure, urged more accountability by mounting pressure on Buttigieg directly to take stronger action.

“For months, state law enforcement officials of both parties have been sounding alarms about airlines mistreating their customers. But because of a four-decades-old federal preemption law, those officials cannot take action to protect consumers, even as airlines have benefited from billions of dollars of government support, and even as federal regulators have refused to use their power,” Sirota wrote in a note urging signatures linked to his newsletter.

“This is incompetence,” Turner wrote, tweeting out a link of Sirota’s reporting. “This is what placing unqualified people in positions of power to do the bidding of corporations will get you. There is a direct line from Secretary Buttigeig to the Southwest Airlines debacle and we shouldn’t pretend there isn’t.”

Sanders himself also called on the Transportation Department to hold Southwest accountable in a tweet on Wednesday.

“Southwest’s flight delays & cancellations are beyond unacceptable. This is a company that got a $7 billion taxpayer bailout & will be handing out $428 million in dividends to their wealthy shareholders,” he wrote. “@USDOT must hold Southwest’s CEO accountable for his greed and incompetence.”

Both Khanna and Buttigieg are talked about as possible 2024 candidates, though they have each downplayed that speculation. While they have pledged publicly to support President Biden if he seeks reelection for a second White House term, each has attracted attention for their divergent approaches to Democratic politics.

Buttigieg, 40, rose to prominence as the young former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who won the Iowa caucuses as a 2020 Democratic presidential contender but eventually dropped out and backed Biden. Biden ultimately tapped him to lead the Transportation Department, citing his executive experience overseeing an American city.

Khanna, 46, has also been in the public eye during Biden’s tenure, working in the House among fellow progressives to push the president to the left during his first term. He has advocated for a populist economic agenda to inspire innovation and promote financial growth for working class people.

A DOT spokesperson told The Hill that the department “has issued the largest fines in the history of the consumer protection office this year – helping to get hundreds of thousands of people hundreds of millions of dollars back.”

The spokesperson added that “in August Secretary Buttigieg pressed airlines to do more for passengers who had a flight canceled or delayed when it was under the airline’s control, such as covering the costs of rebooking, guaranteeing meals or hotels” — adding that “nine airlines now guarantee meals and hotels when an airline issue causes a cancellation or delay and all 10 guarantee free rebooking.”

The spokesperson said that the department “will hold Southwest Airlines accountable, including pursuing fines against the carrier if there is evidence that the carrier has failed to meet its legal obligations.”

Updated: 3:12 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Jan. 6 committee withdraws Trump subpoena, points to investigation's 'imminent end'

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol formally withdrew its subpoena to former President Trump on Wednesday, as the panel closes out its investigation.

“As you may know, the Select Committee has concluded its hearings, released its final report and will very soon reach its end,” committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a letter to Trump’s lawyer. “In light of the imminent end of our investigation, the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena.”

Harmeet Dhillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, celebrated the subpoena’s withdrawal in a tweet on Wednesday, saying the committee had “waved the white flag.”

“We were confident of victory in court, given precedent & refusal of prior presidents to testify in Congress,” Dhillon added. “J6 committee wasted millions for a purely political witch-hunt, total abuse of process & power serving no legitimate legislative purpose.”

The Jan. 6 committee unanimously voted to subpoena the former president in October, as it neared the end of its investigation.

“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him,” Thompson said at the time, acknowledging that the move was a “serious and extraordinary action.”

However, Trump was widely expected to dodge the panel’s requests to produce documents and sit for a deposition, and he sued to block the subpoena in November.

With the panel set to expire in the new Congress, the Jan. 6 committee held its final public meeting last week, recommending that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate Trump on four charges: inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an official proceeding.

While another of Trump’s lawyers dismissed the criminal referrals as “pretty much worthless” — noting that the Justice Department does not have to follow through on recommendations from congressional committees — Thompson has said he is confident the DOJ will eventually charge the former president.

Special counsel Jack Smith was recently appointed to lead the DOJ’s dual investigations into Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 riot and his potential mishandling of classified documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The committee’s final report, released on Dec. 22, reiterated the panel’s argument that Trump was at the center of an illegal effort to remain in power following his loss in the 2020 election and made several recommendations, including that Congress increase its ability to enforce subpoenas.

Several other Trump allies defied subpoenas from the committee, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The Jan. 6 committee recommended last week that the House Ethics Committee launch a formal inquiry into McCarthy and other representatives that refused to cooperate with the probe.

Source: TEST FEED1

Arizona attorney general recount affirms Democratic win in razor-thin race

The razor-thin Arizona attorney general race tightened even further on Thursday following an automatic recount, but the results pave the way for the Democratic candidate to be certified as the winner.

Democrat Kris Mayes led Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 280 votes out of more than 2.5 million ballots cast following the recount, a gap of 0.01 percentage points that marks one of the closest contests in the state’s history.

The state’s canvass earlier this month had shown Mayes leading by 511 votes, triggering an automatic recount under Arizona law for the attorney general contest and two other races close enough to fall within the threshold.

An Arizona judge ordered counties to keep the recount results confidential until Thursday’s hearing.

The updated standings tightened Mayes’s lead by nearly half after a discrepancy, although the judge did not specify during the hearing which county adjusted its results.

As rumors grew of the discrepancy in the hours prior to the judge’s announcement, Hamadeh on Thursday asked the judge for a delay and requested the current attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich, remain in office until “all issues are resolved.”

The judge on Thursday rejected the motion.

Hamadeh had cited Arizona’s 1990 gubernatorial race, when the sitting governor remained in office through the March following the election until a successor was certified as the winner.

That delay occurred because Arizona’s constitution at the time required a candidate to receive a majority of votes to be elected. No candidate received a majority in the general election, so officials scheduled a runoff more than three months after Election Day and delayed the certification of a winner.

The judge on Thursday declared that Mayes had received the highest number of votes in the race, and Arizona law instructs the judge to deliver a copy of Thursday’s order to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who is also governor-elect. The statute further instructs Hobbs to subsequently issue a certificate of election to Mayes.

“A shockingly high discrepancy,” Hamadeh wrote on Twitter. “Again, a recount just puts the ballots in the machine again. My legal team will be assessing our options to make sure every vote is counted.”

Hamadeh had formally contested his race’s result following the state canvass, but a judge threw out his challenge on Friday, ruling that he did not prove his case of mistakes in the election process impacting the outcome. 

The recount results were originally scheduled to be announced last week, but the judge overseeing the recount delayed the proceeding as Hamadeh proceeded with his challenge.

Thursday’s results also affirmed Republican Tom Horne’s victory in the race for superintendent of public instruction, although Democrat Kathy Hoffman previously conceded the race after trailing Horne by nearly 9,000 votes in the earlier canvass.

Horne increased his lead by 221 votes in the recount.

A state legislative seat in the Phoenix area also went to an automatic recount after Republican Liz Harris led Republican Julie Willoughby by 270 votes. The updated standings added a net gain of five votes to Harris’s lead, affirming her victory.

Source: TEST FEED1