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Pandemic failures expose problems of the administrative state

State governments used an unprecedented level of executive power to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governors and other state officials tried to control entire state economies and even our private interactions. The impact these measures had on overall public health is not yet known, but there were many blunders made along the way. These failures expose some inherent problems of the administrative state — the vast landscape of departments and agencies that make up the executive branch of government.

One must separate intent from reality to understand how the administrative state functions. These bureaucracies are meant to enforce the laws the legislature creates. They should be focused on carrying out the policy goals pursued by these elected representatives. In reality, bureaucrats get their marching orders from governors.

This explains why, when governors issued controversial orders in response to the pandemic, the administrative state supported them unequivocally. Although staffed by experts who claim that they are impartial and guided only by evidence, state bureaucrats generally just went along with whatever policies their governors chose. Given their radically different responses to COVID-19, it was as if each state bureaucracy followed its own unique version of “the science.”

This highlights an important shortcoming of the administrative state: It is highly susceptible to groupthink. Governors call the tune and bureaucrats fall in line. There are no mechanisms to ensure opposing viewpoints are heard, much less considered. This feature might be useful in the rare instances when emergency action is required, but it is disastrous as a standard operating procedure.

This groupthink helps make sense of the pandemic policies that made no sense. Remember when former Mayor Bill de Blasio reopened beaches in New York City but prohibited swimming in the waters lapping those shores? Barbecuing was also specifically outlawed. For a few weeks in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer allowed the use of boats — except those powered by a motor. She permitted people to walk a golf course — but not while carrying and occasionally swinging golf clubs. The rest of this page could be filled with examples of nonsensical policies that were obviously pointless and performative.

It is difficult to imagine how governors and their bureaucratic advisers came up with these bizarre rules. The administrative state may operate in a bubble where blatantly bad ideas receive little or no substantial pushback. State officials seem disconnected from reality when they issue arbitrary orders that are unlikely to make a difference when applied in the real world.

Another problem with letting governors and the administrative state run the show is that they are susceptible to the pleading of special interest groups. One reason that schools remained closed for so long in many states and cities was the influence of teachers unions. They have a long-established, cozy relationship with government officials. Unions can more easily persuade public officials than could, say, a group of concerned but politically unsophisticated parents.

The administrative state is also plagued by overconfidence. This was on display in spades during the pandemic. Many governors and bureaucrats promised they could “defeat” this coronavirus. They were so confident in their models showing how the virus would spread that they used them to justify unprecedented lockdowns. Fortunately, these models were off by a significant factor, and their dire predictions never came to pass. But we got stuck with costly lockdowns, anyway.

Futile contact tracing was another product of the administrative state’s overconfidence. Officials and bureaucrats claimed to know how to “box in” the virus through testing and tracing. This makes sense in theory, but in the real world the administrative state proved woefully inadequate in pulling it off. Despite their best efforts, governments could identify in real-time only a small fraction of people who were actively carrying the virus or exposed to it. Eventually, they simply gave up contact tracing; it proved to be a waste of time and money, doing nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The debate about the governmental responses to the pandemic tends to focus on the role that governors played. But more attention should be paid to the administrative state on which governors relied to devise and deliver their policies. There are considerable drawbacks to depending on this bureaucratic machinery to respond to a complex phenomenon such as an easily transmissible coronavirus pandemic.

Michael Van Beek is the director of research at Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Jan. 6 panel shows few signs of slowing down despite midterm risks

So much for a clean summer wrap. 

A stream of new evidence and emerging witnesses has led the Jan. 6 committee to extend its public hearings at least another two months, creating new opportunities for investigators to explore former President Trump’s role in the Capitol attack while pushing the disclosure of potentially explosive new findings closer to the midterm elections. 

The select committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday was widely expected to mark the end of a crucial phase in the panel’s probe of last year’s riot, capping six weeks of publicly aired testimony — almost all of it from Republicans — aimed at pinning culpability for the rampage squarely onto Trump’s shoulders.

But every new revelation seems to turn up as many questions as answers, and the panel has altered its schedule to accommodate what it calls a wave of new information in need of perusal. The arrival of new witnesses has been accompanied by successful committee efforts to fight stonewalling in the form of executive privilege claims, and the panel has recently issued new subpoenas for even more evidence. 

“The dam has begun to break,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the select committee, said Thursday night. “We have far more evidence to share with the American people — and more to gather.”

With that in mind, the committee said it intends to use Congress’s long August recess to wade through the influx of new information, with designs to hold more hearings on its findings in September when lawmakers return to Washington. How many they’ll stage remains unclear, but the investigators are leaving themselves the flexibility to determine that schedule on the fly. 

“We are pursuing many additional witnesses for testimony,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who participated in Thursday’s hearing remotely after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week. “We will reconvene in September to continue laying out our findings.”

Thompson had previously said the committee would hold two additional hearings later in the year, one surrounding the release of an interim report on its findings, and another when it issues its final report. What changed this week was the announcement of new investigative hearings to precede both. 

“We’re not done. The information continues to come in. The evidence is continuing to flow in,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told CNN heading into Thursday’s hearing. “So this is … not the end of the story.”

For the House Democrats who control the chamber, there are potential rewards — and risks — in the select committee’s decision to extend its investigation deeper into the year. 

On one hand, the panel has presented compelling evidence that Trump knowingly sent an armed mob to the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying his election defeat. And that damning narrative appears to be hurting Trump’s national standing even within the GOP. 

On the other hand, the country is on edge amid a tide of rising inflation, a shooting war in Europe and a global pandemic that’s surging once again this summer. The rash of anxiety-inducing news — particularly on the economic front — has tanked President Biden’s approval rating and damaged the Democrats’ chances of maintaining their majorities in both the House and Senate. In that context, the prolonged focus on Jan. 6 could appear tone-deaf outside the Beltway, where economic uncertainty remains the paramount concern. 

Still, members of the investigative panel — and those cheering it on — maintain that Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election were so egregious that they have little choice but to conduct a thorough accounting of his effort to overturn the results.

Given the gravity of the task, Lofgren said their timeline “is unrelated to the midterm elections” even if the panel is aware it faces unofficial deadline: The midterms are expected to flip control of the House to Republicans, who would quickly terminate an investigation they consider a political witch hunt designed merely to harm Trump. 

There are still eyewitnesses the panel wants top talk to, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who was among the few figures to speak directly with Trump at the White House while the Capitol was under siege. 

As it pursues the holdouts, the committee got a boost on Friday when a federal jury found Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, guilty of contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with the panel’s subpoena to testify. 

Investigators are also waiting to learn the outcome of a legal tug of war between the select committee and the Secret Service over a series of agency communications on and around Jan. 6. An internal watchdog at the Homeland Security Department has reported that the Secret Service had “erased” text messages from those days, leading the panel to subpoena the agency for those communications. The messages were not delivered by the July 19 deadline, however, and the DHS investigator has since launched a criminal investigation. 

The mystery surrounding those texts — combined with the proximity of certain agents to Trump on Jan. 6 — has only heightened the committee’s interest in learning their content. 

“Personally, I feel like we don’t have all the facts, and it’s something that we will continue to pursue, because we need that information,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), another member of the committee, said Thursday in an interview with MSNBC. 

Among their remaining tasks, investigators will be releasing an interim report of their findings; staging another public hearing to unveil that document; and deciding when to issue their final report — complete with recommendations for safeguarding future elections — all while fielding new evidence and conducting new witness depositions, virtually on a daily basis.

The two-stage document release reflects the practical reality that the panel continues to receive new information. But the committee’s own longevity is another motivation: Its founding resolution disbands the panel 30 days after it issues its final report, creating plenty of incentive to withhold that report while new details continue to materialize and investigators continue to solicit the cooperation of hold-out witnesses. 

“When the final report is released the committee is dissolved,” Lofgren said. “And so, so long as information continues to come in, we want to avoid that result. We don’t want to prematurely cut off witnesses who want to be heard.”

Somewhere in the mix, the nine-member committee will also have to determine whether or not to recommend criminal charges to the Justice Department — a highly sensitive decision that could have a substantial influence on the power dynamics between Congress and the White House for many years to come. 

Some on the panel are already voicing frustrations that the DOJ hasn’t brought those charges already. 

“Obviously, I’m impatient,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional lawyer and member of the select committee, said Friday in an interview with  SiriusXM’s Joe Madison. “We don’t have a lot of time in Congress to do our work, because at the end of this Congress, we’re over. 

“I would like to see some motion there.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Here are the GOP candidates Democrats have helped in primaries

Democratic-aligned groups and candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars to influence GOP primaries across the country this year, hoping that their efforts will yield less-electable, more-controversial Republican nominees in the general elections. 

And while those efforts appear to be paying off in some states, they’ve also stirred concern among some Democrats that these tactics run the risk of helping elect far-right candidates to high-level public offices, especially in a political environment that is largely working against Democrats.

Here’s a look at some of the GOP candidates that Democrats have helped in this year’s primaries.

Dan Cox, GOP nominee for Maryland governor

The Republican primary for Maryland governor amounted to a high-profile proxy war between two competing GOP heavyweights: Donald Trump and outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan, a rare Republican critic of the former president who won the governor’s mansion twice in a blue state.

Hogan endorsed former state Commerce Secretary Katie Schulz in the race, while Trump backed Dan Cox, a right-wing state delegate who aggressively challenged Hogan’s approach to the Covid-19 pandemic and helped organize buses for protesters to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

Cox ultimately won the nomination this week, and he got some help from an unusual source: the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).

The DGA spent more than $1.16 million on television ads highlighting Trump’s endorsement of Cox and the first-term state delegate’s loyalty to the former president. That message ultimately helped boost Cox to victory, as the GOP’s conservative base flocked to support Trump’s hand-picked candidate.

On Friday, three days after Maryland’s July 19 primaries, multiple networks projected nonprofit executive Wes Moore to be the winner of the Democratic nominating contest for governor. (The Associated Press has yet to call the race, and the campaign of Moore’s primary opponent Tom Perez has said it’s too early to make the call.) In boosting Cox in the GOP primary, Democrats are hoping to better their chances of flipping the governor’s mansion in November, believing that a Trump loyalist like him will ultimately prove too divisive to win a statewide general election in a blue state.

Darren Bailey, GOP nominee for Illinois governor

Seeking to smooth incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s path to a second term in the governor’s mansion, Democrats also spent heavily to influence the GOP primary in favor of Darren Bailey, a right-wing state senator who once introduced a bill to split Chicago and the rest of Illinois into two different states.

Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, faced five other Republicans in the June 28 primary, including Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, a more moderate candidate who had the backing of billionaire Ken Griffin. 

But as polling leading up to primary day showed Irvin ahead of Bailey for the nomination, Pritzker and the DGA spent heavily in an attempt to talk up Bailey’s pro-Trump credentials and weaken Irvin. 

With Bailey as the Republican nominee, Pritzker appears much more likely to win a second term in November. 

Biden carried the state by roughly 17 points in 2020, and while a candidate like Irvin may have been able to court independents and some moderates in the general election, it’ll be much harder for Bailey to win over the broad support he’ll need to flip the governor’s mansion. 

Kari Lake, GOP candidate for Arizona governor

Kari Lake, a former local TV anchor, hasn’t captured the GOP nomination to replace outgoing Gov. Doug Ducey just yet. She’s still facing a tough challenge from Karrin Taylor Robson, who has the endorsement of high-profile Republicans like Ducey and former Vice President Pence.

The primary matchup is in essence a proxy war between competing factions of the GOP, making it particularly tempting for Democrats to weigh in.

In recent weeks, Democrats have more aggressively sought to boost Lake and weaken Robson, hoping that, if Lake wins the nomination on Aug. 2, she’ll ease Democrats’ path to victory in a state that has become increasingly competitive in recent years.

One recent email from the state Democratic Party, for instance, thanked Robson for past donations to Democratic candidates. And while the DGA hasn’t spent in the primary as it has in other GOP races, it’s been clear in labeling her a “MAGA” Republican in hopes of solidifying her support among Trump’s conservative base.

While Democrats are betting that a more moderate candidate like Robson will be harder to beat in November, Lake could stand a better chance of winning than a Trump-backed candidate in a place like Illinois or Maryland. Arizona may be a battleground now, but in a tough year for Democrats, it could swing back toward the GOP.

Doug Mastriano, GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor

Pennsylvania state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, didn’t face any opposition in his primary. But that didn’t stop his campaign spending heavily – only it was in the GOP primary.

Shapiro spent nearly $1 million during the primary highlighting Mastriano’s views, including his support for Trump and belief that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. In all, that’s more than twice what Mastriano’s campaign spent on its own advertising. 

Mastriano went on to capture the GOP nomination easily, defeating a more-moderate rival, former Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) by a more-than 23-point margin. The strategy was clear: Democrats, and even many Republicans, saw Mastriano as unelectable. In nominating him, their thinking went, Shapiro would have a straight shot to victory in November.

In fact, there are signs that the general election matchup between Shapiro and Mastriano may be more competitive than Democrats had hoped. Recent polling shows Mastriano trailing Shapiro by only a few percentage points – often within the margin of error.

For now, the race still appears to favor Shapiro. The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, rates the contest as “Lean” Democratic. Still, Pennsylvania is a perennial battleground and with the political environment still looking bleak for Democrats, Mastriano could still have a chance.

Source: TEST FEED1

A looming recession threatens Americans’ already precarious mental health

In the past, recessions and economic strife have been linked with worse mental health outcomes, higher rates of substance use, and in some cases, increased suicide rates.

Now, as the nation already grapples with heightened inflation, the threat of a recession, and any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States’ mental health care system finds itself understaffed and poorly positioned to meet any additional demand. 

“The mental health system has yet to be able to meet the demand of communities since its beginnings,” said Benjamin Miller, a psychologist and president of Well Being Trust in an interview with Changing America. “We’re always playing catch up.”

The Well Being Trust is a foundation that works to advance Americans’ mental, social, and spiritual health with a specific goal aimed at addressing deaths of despair. 

The term “deaths of despair” was first coined by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton who began researching the reversal of life expectancy gains seen around the year 2000. These deaths were largely driven by alcohol-related liver disease, drug overdoses, and suicides, and were concentrated among middle-aged, white American men with less than a four-year college education. 

According to Case and Deaton, loss of manufacturing jobs in rural America played a big role in the life expectancy declines.

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“Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive. It is the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self-respect that comes with the loss of marriage and of community that brings on despair, not just or even primarily the loss of money,” they wrote in their 2020 book on the subject. 

Even as the racial makeup of overdose deaths has diversified in recent years, deaths of despair consistently take a toll on men’s life expectancy. 

U.S. men also happen to have overall worse health than those residing in other high-income countries, and higher rates of completed suicides than women due to the often-lethal means employed. 

Taking all this into account, major events like COVID-19 and recessions “put more pressure on an already fragile system,” Miller said. “If you want to see the most significant fissures, the most significant cracks, watch what’s about to happen.”

One study published in 2018 in the British Journal of Psychiatry found the 2008 Great Recession was linked with at least 10,000 economic suicides in the two years immediately following the downturn. 

More recently, published studies have documented Americans’ high anxiety rates over inflation and overall worsening mental health. 

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller and colleagues used the 2008 recession as an almost proxy to anticipate what toll financial repercussions would take on the United States’ psyche.

But because the economy recovered relatively quickly from initial COVID-19 shutdowns and job losses the country now finds itself at a “unique moment” for mental health, Miller said.

Increases in depression, anxiety, and drug use that occur during economic downturns could be due to worries often coupled with financial insecurity, but also a lost sense of purpose or community among those who lose jobs. High consumer debt resulting from home buying difficulties, not to mention home foreclosures, could also contribute to these conditions and behaviors. 

For some men, these economic challenges lead to particularly acute responses, as many see themselves as the primary breadwinner for their families. Men are also more reticent to talk about mental health issues in general, Miller said, “and that’s just due to the social stigma that’s been so pervasive.” 

These risk factors underscore the importance of tailoring interventions to certain populations and open a window of opportunity to better address Americans’ deteriorating mental health. 

Since researchers began investigating deaths of despair in the early 2000s “we’ve learned which populations are at higher risk. We’ve learned what certain risk factors are that could lead to a death of despair,” Miller explained. “But what we have not done yet is robustly move to a place where we’re changing the system so that it can accommodate all these people that are in need.”

This includes improving access to mental health care by increasing affordability and bolstering the workforce, but it also constitutes better communication of mental health risks accompanying economic downturns and being proactive to target at-risk populations. 

In 2020, less than half of U.S. adults with a mental health condition got care, while in 2019, just over 12 percent of those with a substance use disorder who needed treatment received it at a specialty facility.

“One of the greatest mistakes that we’ve had as a country is that we don’t often message the power of mental health, especially in these moments, and we don’t point people towards the solutions that can help them,” Miller added. However, the national roll out of the new suicide prevention hotline this month does mark a step in the right direction, as does passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

The act, which became law in June 2022, calls for expansions of community and school-based mental health services.

But in addition to all these solutions, Miller stressed the most important action one can take is talking to others about mental health.

“We need to be comfortable sitting down at the dinner table and telling our loved ones what’s really going on in our lives,” he said. “Even if you don’t know what to say, or you don’t know what to say to the person who’s talking to you, being there and listening has power unto itself.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Atlanta-area DA represents significant legal threat to Trump

The Atlanta-area prosecutor’s investigation into Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat in Georgia poses the most significant legal threat to the former president, legal experts said, with the probe intensifying as Trump eyes a 2024 bid for the White House.

The former president’s team is keeping close watch of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation, even as it remains unclear whether Trump himself would face charges, according to one source, who noted that recent subpoenas issued to close Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had heightened concerns in Trumpworld.

“The steps her office has taken, including empaneling a special grand jury and subpoenaing high-profile witnesses, are very likely not steps she would have taken if she did not feel there was at least a significant possibility that she will move forward with charges,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“The stakes in holding Trump accountable for an attack on our democratic system of government couldn’t be higher, and the evidence is extremely compelling.”

Trump’s effort to bypass the will of voters in Georgia and a handful of other swing states he lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 election sparked congressional investigations and figure into multiple criminal probes, including by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

But it is the Georgia investigation that is proving to be more of an immediate concern among Trump allies — more so than the DOJ probe, the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol or an unrelated criminal fraud investigation in New York that appears likely to conclude without charges being brought against Trump.

“With the Manhattan criminal probe winding down, the Fulton County probe represents the most clear-cut criminal exposure facing Mr. Trump,” said Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer and partner in the Law Office of Mark S. Zaid

The Georgia investigation appears to be intensifying as Trump is weighing launching a White House campaign as early this summer.

The grand jury recently issued subpoenas to several high-profile figures, including Graham and Giuliani, as well as conservative lawyers John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell. And Willis’s office recently informed a group Republicans who served as a phony slate of pro-Trump electors in 2020 that they could face criminal charges.

The Jan. 6 panel also made Trump’s effort in Georgia the subject of one of its hearings last month. The centerpiece was Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021.

In the call, which was taped, Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find” the number of votes required to overturn Biden’s margin of victory. Raffensperger resisted Trump’s efforts and has rebutted his false claims of election fraud.

The Jan. 6 panel hearing highlighted not just how Trump relentlessly pushed Raffsensperger and others to find enough ballots to declare him the winner, but also how the former president and his allies targeted election workers who endured months of harassment as a result.

According to legal experts, a critical question that would face Willis if she pursues Trump would be whether to prosecute Trump individually, or as part of a broader conspiracy.

“There is audio, there is witness testimony, there is documentation, and all of that is currently before a special grand jury. The only question is whether Mr. Trump’s actions were sufficient to bring a criminal charge against him alone and independent of anyone else, or if the Fulton County DA will need to encompass his fragmented actions within a broader conspiracy charge tied to individuals like Mr. Giuliani and the fake electors,” Moss said.

There has been speculation that formally declaring his candidacy could insulate Trump from charges and additional investigations because he could argue they are politically motivated. Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, has also waved away claims that another White House run might be motivated as a way to deter prosecutors.

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Trump rejected the idea that he would run for president again to guard against potential legal jeopardy.

“Well, I did nothing wrong, so I don’t see that,” Trump told the outlet. “I did absolutely nothing wrong. I had a perfect phone call in Georgia, so I’m not concerned with it.”

If the House Jan. 6 committee, which wrapped up the first phase of its public hearings this week, makes a criminal referral to the DOJ to indict Trump, it would put Garland under enormous pressure.

But experts said the Georgia investigation differs from the federal probe in key ways that may make the Fulton County prosecutor more likely than Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring criminal charges against Trump.

For Garland, the decision over whether to criminally charge Trump for his effort to overturn the 2020 election results pits his mission to restore the DOJ’s reputation as a nonpolitical agency against the certainty that indicting a former president for the first time in U.S. history would unavoidably plunge the DOJ into the political realm. Although the political ramifications are difficult to overstate, the decision Willis faces over whether to bring a prosecution against Trump is less fraught than Garland’s.

“There are real dilemmas and obstacles facing Garland as he considers whether to prosecute a former president, though I think the evidence is so overwhelming and the offenses are so serious that they should override those very real concerns, but it will undoubtedly be a difficult decision-making process,” Bookbinder said.

“Willis faces some of those same concerns — charging a former president should never be taken lightly in any jurisdiction — and I’m sure she will take them very seriously, but the balance of equities pushing toward bringing any case supported by the facts and the law may well be even clearer there.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump rails against Jan. 6 committee during Arizona rally

Former President Trump attacked the work of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at a rally supporting several candidates in Arizona on Friday. 

Trump held a rally in Prescott Valley to support his endorsed candidate for governor, Kari Lake, and his endorsed candidate for Senate, Blake Masters. During his speech, he said he was watching the committee’s most recent hearing on Thursday, which focused on Trump’s actions as the riot took place at the Capitol building, and called it a “hoax.” 

Trump also denied testimony that Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave to the committee last month. 

Hutchinson said Tony Ornato, Trump’s deputy chief of staff at the time, told her about an incident in the presidential vehicle on Jan. 6 in which Trump became heated when he was told he could not go to the Capitol following his speech at the Ellipse that day. She said Ornato told her that Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel of the vehicle and lunged at a Secret Service agent. 

Hutchinson testified that Robert Engel, the agent that Trump allegedly lunged at, was present when Ornato told her of the incident and Engel did not dispute any details. 

Trump denied Hutchinson’s account, saying he would not have done that and could not physically have. He praised the Secret Service for denying the account. 

Ornato and Engel have said they would be willing to testify to dispute Hutchinson’s testimony on the incident. 

But the House Jan. 6 committee showed additional witnesses at its hearing on Thursday that seem to support Hutchinson’s testimony. 

Video testimony of a retired Washington, D.C., police officer who was part of the presidential motorcade on Jan. 6 showed him saying that he was told Trump was “adamant” about going to the Capitol and engaged in a “heated discussion” about it. An unidentified former White House employee said Trump was “irate” at not being able to go to the Capitol. 

Trump criticized members of the committee, specifically Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), as well.

He said what the “corrupt establishment” is doing to him is about preserving their power. He claimed his opponents will damage him in any way they can. 

Trump also attacked Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who testified at a Jan. 6 committee hearing last month. Bowers testified that Trump and his former attorney Rudy Guiliani pressured him to overturn President Biden’s victory in Arizona, but Bowers refused and rejected Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. 

Bowers is currently running for a seat in the Arizona state Senate, and Trump has endorsed his opponent state Sen. David Farnsworth (R). 

Trump said Bowers is a “RINO coward,” meaning Republican in name only. He said Bowers “disgraced” the state of Arizona and “did nothing” on election integrity. 

Trump said if he renounced his views, agreed to stay silent and said he would not run for any future political office, “the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop.” But he said he cannot do that.

Trump’s speech comes over the same weekend that former Vice President Mike Pence will be in Arizona to campaign for his endorsed candidate in the governor’s race, Karrin Taylor Robson.

Source: TEST FEED1

Former FBI officials including Comey, McCabe dropped from Trump civil lawsuit

A federal judge has dismissed five former FBI officials from a lawsuit that former President Trump brought against them and others, alleging that they conspired to harm his 2016 presidential run with accusations that he colluded with Russia. 

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled that the United States could be substituted in the lawsuit for former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyers Lisa Page and Kevin Clinesmith. 

The Justice Department (DOJ) successfully argued that any action these former officials took related to Trump’s claims were in fulfillment of their official duties. The ruling states that the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988 protects federal employees from civil claims that come from actions they took in their official capacity. 

Trump filed the lawsuit in March against his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and more than a dozen other officials. He alleged that they “maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative” that Trump colluded with a “hostile foreign sovereignty.” 

The complaint originally named a total of 28 individuals and organizations. 

The ruling states that Trump can argue that the five officials were acting outside the scope of their employment, but he has the burden of proving it. James Touhey Jr., a top DOJ official for the civil division and delegate of the attorney general, certified that the five were acting in their official capacity, according to the ruling. 

Middlebrooks did not rule on the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the government, deferring a decision to a later time. 

Trump did not immediately return a request from The Hill for comment. 

Former Attorney General William Barr appointed a special counsel, John Durham, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe into Trump’s campaign. Durham has attained a few indictments since 2019 but has demonstrated little evidence of a wide-ranging conspiracy to hurt Trump’s campaign.

Source: TEST FEED1

'I think the law is with us': Bannon plans appeal of conviction

Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon pledged to appeal his conviction for contempt of Congress on Friday, saying that he’s got a “long appeals process” coming up. 

“I think the law’s with us on a number of situations,” Bannon told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “I think some of this is really going to be adjudicated maybe even higher than the appellate courts. I’m feeling very confident that we’re 100 percent right on the law, but I’m going to fight this all the way.” 

Bannon said he is “never backing off one inch” in supporting former President Trump and the Constitution after being convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection for testimony and documents relevant to the investigation. 

He said he is not new to investigations, having been a witness during former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. 

Bannon served as the CEO of Trump’s 2016 campaign. 

He said the judge in his case “took away every possible defense” he could present in the case. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled against allowing Bannon’s legal defense team to argue that he was relying on his lawyers’ advice or that he had executive privilege rights in refusing to comply with the subpoena. 

Bannon said if Republicans retake control of the House after the upcoming November midterm elections, they should create a new committee on the insurrection to investigate topics like intelligence “failures”; FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Guard involvement; and the death of Ashli Babbitt. 

Babbitt entered the Capitol along with other rioters on Jan. 6. She was shot and killed while trying to enter the Speaker’s Lobby. 

Federal prosecutors declined to press charges against the officer who fired the shot that killed Babbitt, finding “no evidence” to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting was unlawful. 

“We have to get to the bottom of it, and people are going to get to the bottom of it,” Bannon said. 

He said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chairwoman of the House Jan. 6 select committee, must be defeated in her primary next month, and Republicans must have a “sweeping” victory in the House. 

“For the good of the system, this has to happen,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Touched by Uvalde, Bo Jackson donated to pay for funerals

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Former sports superstar Bo Jackson helped pay for the funerals of the 19 children and two teachers killed in the Uvalde school massacre in May, revealing himself as one of the previously anonymous donors who covered costs for families after one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.

Jackson, whose rare success in both the NFL and Major League Baseball made him one of the greatest and most marketable athletes of the 1980s and 1990s, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he felt compelled to support the victims’ families after the loss of so many children.

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting old,” said Jackson, a father of three and a grandfather as he nears 60. “It’s just not right for parents to bury their kids. It’s just not right.

“I know every family there probably works their butts off just to do what they do. … The last thing they needed was to shell out thousands of dollars for something that never should have happened.”

Jackson said he felt a personal connection to the city he’s driven through many times. Uvalde has been a regular stop for a bite to eat or groceries before a long drive farther west to visit a friend’s ranch on hunting trips.

It was his familiarity with the feel of Uvalde’s Main Street, leafy town square and the people he’d met on those stops that touched his heart when the news broke on May 24th of the shooting at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement has been heavily criticized for taking more than an hour to enter the classroom where the 18-year-old gunman carried out the attack, and a Texas House investigative report laid blame on the school district, saying a lax safety culture, spotty alert system and unlocked doors also contributed.

Three days later, Jackson and a close friend flew to Uvalde, briefly met with Gov. Greg Abbott and presented a check for $170,000 with an offer to pay for all funeral expenses.

Abbott announced it as an anonymous donation during a May 27 news conference about aid the state was giving victims.

“We didn’t want media,” he said. “No one knew we were there.”

And though Jackson suggested he hasn’t kept it a secret, he hadn’t spoken publicly about what moved him to make the trip to Uvalde and the donation until this week.

“Uvalde is a town that sticks in your mind. Just the name,” Jackson said. “I don’t know a soul there. It just touched me.”

Jackson declined to name the friend who went with him and also contributed to the donation.

Other fundraising efforts have since raised millions to assist families, and local funeral homes said they wouldn’t charge families for services. But Jackson’s donation was an early point of light for the grieving families.

Abbott’s office said Jackson’s money was “quickly directed to cover funeral costs” through OneStar, a nonprofit created to further volunteerism and community service in Texas, including Uvalde relief efforts.

“The true spirit of our nation is Americans lifting up one another in times of need and hardship,” Abbott said. “In a truly selfless act, Bo covered all funeral expenses for the victims’ families so they would have one less thing to worry about as they grieved.”

Jackson said he followed news coverage of the funerals, but he declined to say if he has been in direct contact with any of the families.

The day of the shooting, Jackson tweeted, “America … let’s please stop all the nonsense. Please pray for all victims. If you hear something, say something. We aren’t supposed to bury our children. I’m praying for all of the families around the country who have lost loved ones to senseless shootings. This cannot continue.”

When asked to elaborate on the “This cannot continue,” though, Jackson declined, saying only that he wrote what he meant.

“I don’t want to turn this into anything (but) what it is. I was just trying (with the donation) to put a little sunshine in someone’s cloud, a very dark cloud,” Jackson said.

But he also noted the regularity of mass shootings in the country.

“The last thing you want to hear is there’s an active shooter in your child’s school,” he said. “It’s happening everywhere now.”

Uvalde wasn’t Jackson’s first large-scale act of philanthropy. He hosts an annual bike ride in his home state of Alabama to raise money for disaster relief funds, an effort started after tornadoes killed nearly 250 people. The Uvalde donation was his first in response to a mass shooting.

“It’s the children. … It’s the children. … It’s the children,” Jackson said, pausing before each repetition to gather himself. “If it doesn’t bother you, something’s wrong with you.”

Source: TEST FEED1

60 House lawmakers urge Biden to declare national climate emergency

Almost 60 House Democrats are calling on President Biden to declare a national climate emergency, a move they say would grant him additional powers to address climate change.  

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Earl Blumenauer (Ore.) led the signers in a letter addressed to Biden, arguing that the president should use the “full power” of the executive branch given the “scope and urgency of the crisis.” 

“A national emergency declaration will allow the United States to mobilize domestic industry, ramp up domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, and deploy resilient energy infrastructure,” the statement reads. 

The letter comes as Biden said climate change was an “emergency” in a speech on Wednesday in Massachusetts, but stopped short of a declaration.

In the speech, Biden pledged to act on climate change after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced his opposition to a major climate spending proposal that had been stalled in Congress. With the Senate divided 50-50, all Democrats would need to back the proposal for it to proceed if no Republicans support it. 

The House lawmakers said in their statement that Biden should also declare his support for the National Climate Emergency Act, which requires a national climate emergency declaration and outlines a federal response to climate change. 

“We have the tools to build up a stronger renewable energy industry in America, generating millions of high-quality American jobs and rejuvenating our post-pandemic economy,” they said.

Source: TEST FEED1