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The ‘spin’ doesn’t tell the full story of Biden’s Middle East trip

Political spin can be a wonder to behold, especially when at least a few of the accomplishments of a presidential trip are debatable. To some, the absence of a handshake between President Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would suggest the kingdom’s effective ruler was still being treated as a “pariah.” But the Washington Post, for which the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi wrote opinion pieces, was outraged, treating the fist bump the two exchanged as a gesture of reconciliation to be condemned, even though others earlier had argued that such a greeting itself was insulting.

The current received wisdom is that Biden’s Saudi Arabia visit, which followed on trips to Israel and the West Bank, was a success, despite additional reports of a clash of views on Khashoggi and human rights when the two men sat down for talks.

But, define success. It apparently doesn’t include Saudi help on oil, a factor in U.S. inflation which, if not tackled, could be catastrophically disastrous for the Democratic Party in this fall’s midterm elections. Amos Hochstein, the president’s adviser on energy security who was sitting in the delegation in Jeddah, was asked yesterday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about the accomplishments of the trip. He listed its historic nature, the direct flight of Air Force One from Israel to the kingdom, the opening of Saudi airspace to all, the ceasefire in Yemen, agreements on food security, before the interviewer interrupted to ask, “And what about oil?”

Hochstein evaded any admission of failure by referring to Saudi oil production already “increasing by 50 percent” in the past couple of months. It was an obscure point about a quota increase that had been brought forward, rather than actual output going up by half, but it got him out of a corner. He said there would be a “few more steps in coming weeks.”

Over on CNN, Jared Bernstein, a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, was asked whether the visit achieved anything. He replied: “We saw Saudi Arabia say that it would increase its capacity for oil production, and I refer you to them for more information on that.”

The information from the Saudi side is that the kingdom aims to increase capacity to 13 million barrels per day by 2027. Don’t get too excited too quickly. As I wrote in an analysis on July 14 for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, current Saudi oil production is about 10.5 million b/d, with another 1 million contributed by gas liquids, which are near oil. On top of that, Saudi spare capacity is estimated by well-informed experts as around 1.5 million (although how quickly the kingdom can get that flowing and for how long is debatable). In other words, Saudi Arabia already has 13 million b/d capacity; it just isn’t using it. And 2027? Five years is an awfully long time to wait.

A further reminder/clarification of Saudi oil policy came from Adel al-Jubeir, the minister of state for foreign affairs, who told the media in Jeddah of “the kingdom’s longstanding policy of working to ensure that there is adequate supply of crude oil on the markets.” Defining “adequate” is what the issue is all about. Past Saudi references to “reasonably priced” oil are no longer used. As students of Economics 101 will recall, supply and demand are always balanced by price, and Saudi ideas of a suitable price are higher than ours.

If there is good news on oil, it isn’t because of Saudi policy. The price has already slipped in the past couple of months from around $120 per barrel to about $100, apparently as a consequence of fears of an inflation-induced recession, particularly in China. On CBS, Hochstein spoke of gasoline prices coming down to around $4 per gallon, noting that in some places in the U.S. it is already below that.

The president’s adviser then switched the conversation to climate change, and the bill that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn’t want to support. It was, he said, about investing “in the future” and whether we want “the U.S. to lead or the Chinese to lead us.”

That’s fighting talk, and a reminder of the adage that all politics are local, i.e., domestic. Despite a shift of focus, the Biden trip to the Middle East does represent a range of possible other non-oil diplomatic advances. These will need to be worked on incoming months, but without presidential involvement.

Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Follow him on Twitter @shendersongulf.

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Pence endorses Robson for governor in Arizona, clashing with Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday endorsed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, who is running in a primary against former news anchor Kari Lake, who is backed by former President Trump.

Robson tweeted Monday that she was “honored” to have received the endorsement of Pence.

“He has been a warrior for the sanctity of Life; limited government; law & order; opportunity for all; & the knowledge that our freedoms are granted by God,” Robson wrote. “I’m proud to have him on our team.”

Robson also shared a statement from Pence, who said he thinks she is the best chance to defeat President Biden’s agenda in The Grand Canyon State.

“As Arizona Democrats pursue the reckless Biden-Harris agenda, Karrin Taylor Robson is the only candidate for Governor that will keep Arizona’s border secure and streets safe, empower parents and create great schools, and promote conservative values,” Pence said.

Trump endorsed Kari Lake in the gubernatorial race in September of last year. She is a former Fox 10 news anchor who continues to peddle Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Pence, who appears to be gearing up for a possible 2024 run against Trump, has endorsed other candidates running against rivals backed by his former boss before, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who prevailed over his Trump-endorsed opponent in May.

Arizona’s GOP Gov. Doug Ducey also announced his endorsement of Robson earlier this month, calling her a candidate that “conservatives can trust.”

The race between Robson and Lake is becoming a closely watched contest ahead of the August 2 primary.

A poll from HighGround Public Affairs released last week shows a virtual dead-heat between Lake and Robson, with Lake earning 39 percent of the vote from likely voters and Robson earning about 35 percent. That’s tighter than in April, when a previous poll showed Lake carrying a double-digit lead.

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America’s wealth inequality is a domestic IED, ready to ignite

Last Thursday, July 14, Bastille Day, marked the storming of that infamous Paris prison in 1789, which ignited the French Revolution. Given what many believe are dire conditions in the U.S. today, are we in America headed for a Bastille-like assault on government? 

If the statistics reported last week by Capital & Main are remotely correct, the smell of cordite may be in the air and a domestic IED (improvised explosive device) waiting to detonate. 

Consider the report: “The top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent of American households hold close to the same amount of wealth. …It’s one of the statistics most frequently cited to describe the problem of economic inequality in the United States today. Here are some others: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent—135 million people —-are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero.”

When this economic inequality is combined with a society that is increasingly embracing incivility and political violence, a level of political polarization unseen since 1861 and the presence of perhaps 400 million firearms, it has the makings of a domestic IED.

Divisions between red and blue are driving the nation further apart on ideological and emotional grounds. Consensus is also missing on action over virtually every issue, from abortion and access to ballot boxes to education, guns and police. That about two-thirds of Democrats do not want President Biden to run for reelection in 2024 is another symptom of a failing political system. 

Depending on the poll, more than three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. This prompts two critical questions. First, who among the Democrats and Republicans could lead the country in a better direction? And second, who or what might ignite this domestic IED, intentionally or otherwise?

With the 2024 presidential election 28 months away, no one can confidently answer the first question. At this point in previous elections, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were by no means clear winners or even competitive. It would seem implausible, though not impossible, that 2024 could see a repeat of Biden versus Trump. But in today’s bizarre world of politics, no scenario can be entirely dismissed.

The answer to the second question of who might ignite this IED is easier: America’s most disruptive president, Donald Trump, should he run again. But pledging to end America’s wealth inequality would be his ticket back to the White House. Properly organized, many millions of Americans could be recruited to this movement.

Ironically, even if the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 leads to criminal proceedings, that could be to Trump’s advantage. A trial would tear the nation apart along party lines over prosecuting a former president. As Trump summoned his followers to Washington to reverse a “stolen election” on Jan. 6, he could do the same in this case but on a nationwide basis.

Should the Jan. 6 Committee hearings go nowhere, Trump could still create a modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille not to reverse an election but to correct an outrageous wealth disparity.  

Trump is not the only possible IED igniter. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping understand the danger this wealth inequality poses to America and do not lack the means to help detonate this IED in the U.S.

Many will dismiss these warnings, as did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. But make no mistake: America’s wealth inequality is an IED that’s ready to detonate.

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D, is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the primary author of “shock and awe.” His latest book is, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and that World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

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Federal agencies lay the groundwork to ignore the Supreme Court

In Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Supreme Court held that land designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as “critical habitat” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) must be habitable for the species the Service seeks to protect. But the Service recently jettisoned the rule defining “habitat” that it adopted to comply with Weyerhaeuser. In doing so, it undermined the Supreme Court’s holding in Weyerhaeuser, ignored the Constitution’s separation of powers, and reinstalled a regime of capricious habitat designations.  

The ESA permits the Service to list species as endangered or threatened and to designate lands as “critical habitat” for species. A decade ago, the Service declared over 1,500 acres of the Poitevent family’s Louisiana property as critical habitat for the endangered dusky gopher frog. That designation would have restricted the family’s ability to use their land, potentially costing them millions of dollars in lost economic benefit. 

But there was one problem: the frog had not been seen anywhere in Louisiana for over 50 years. And individual dusky gopher frogs could not have survived on the Poitevents’ land without significant modification. In other words, the Poitevents’ land was not a “habitat” for the frog. After years of litigation, the Supreme Court made it clear in Weyerhaeuser that, under the ESA’s plain meaning, any designation of critical habitat must first be “habitat” of the protected species. As the court explained, under the ordinary understanding of how the English language works, adjectives modify nouns, so designated property must be habitat before it can be critical habitat. 

But the ESA does not define “habitat” and the Supreme Court left it up to the lower court or the Fish and Wildlife Service to define the term in line with the ESA’s text.  

Before Weyerhaeuser, the agency — in what can be described only as a regime of regulatory adhocracy — never consistently defined what constitutes “habitat” under the ESA. Instead, relying on claimed “expertise” and a belief that the statute enacts a broad “conservation purpose” to exclude all other goals, it determined what private property it would designate in individual circumstances. In other words, the Service apparently made it up as it went along, effectively enacting a precautionary regulatory principle unmoored from the statute’s text. And Weyerhaeuser shows that this regime could lead to overbroad and unjustifiable habitat designations, potentially causing property owners severe economic harm. 

After Weyerhaeuser, the Service went through a notice and comment rulemaking process to define “habitat.” Its rule cited Weyerhaeuser’s holding and sought to implement the statute as written by Congress. By defining the term, the Service also provided the regulated public with essential guidance on how it would implement the ESA and limited its own ability to engage in case-by-case determinations. 

President Biden, as part of his broader policy agenda to use federal agencies to remake federal environmental law, directed the Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the rule defining habitat and thus return to the pre-Weyerhaeuser ad hoc regime. So, the Service has abandoned the ESA’s text and announced an intent to return to a malleable “biologic” definition of habitat that it will define and redefine on a case-by-case basis. Only this approach, the Service claims, will conform with the statute’s broad “conservation” purposes. 

Yet, in doing so, the Service disregards the Supreme Court’s direction to apply the statute as passed by Congress and instead seeks to self-aggrandize its authority at the expense of the rule of law. Sadly, executive agencies acting as roving lawmakers by relying on broad statutory purposes, rather than the text of a statute, is not isolated to critical habitat designations under the ESA. 

Federal agencies long have relied on the Clean Water Act’s (CWA) general purpose of protecting the navigable waters of the United States from pollution to claim near limitless authority to act as federal land-use planners. Indeed, these agencies have asserted they can regulate everything from ditches to seasonal puddles as “navigable waters” because these non-waters might, under some circumstances, affect pollution levels in navigable waters. 

The Supreme Court is set to address the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority under the CWA next term in Sackett v. EPA. In 2007, the Sacketts sought to build a single-family home on a vacant lot in a built-out residential subdivision near Priest Lake, Idaho. But shortly after breaking ground, they became embroiled in a 15-year legal battle with the EPA over whether their property is navigable water subject to federal authority. In its brief to the Supreme Court in Sackett, the government repeatedly cites its interpretation of the CWA’s general purpose as a justification for asserting federal authority over private property that often — as is true with Sackett’s property — does not fall within any plausible definition of navigable waters. 

The Supreme Court should hold that the EPA cannot regulate the Sacketts’ property. But, almost as importantly, it must provide a clear legal definition of what private property falls within the EPA’s authority under the statute. If the court does not give a definitive definition, it will provide the EPA with room to engage in the same linguistic mischief the Fish and Wildlife Service is using to circumvent Weyerhaeuser.

The Constitution’s separation of powers requires federal agencies to implement the laws passed by Congress by following the laws’ text. When agencies can ignore this principle and redefine a statute’s meaning case-by-case, it enables executive jiggery-pokery. The Fish and Wildlife Service has returned to this regime under the ESA; the Supreme Court should prevent that from happening under the CWA in Sackett. 

Frank Garrison and Charles Yates are attorneys at Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a nonprofit legal organization that defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse. PLF has represented both the Poitevents and the Sacketts.

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The Hill's Morning Report — Biden, Trump both squeezed by their parties

President Biden this week will try to move beyond the fist bump and other controversies from his Middle East trip, only to find himself stepping back where he’s been, facing economic and political troubles he cannot mend alone.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) walked away from Biden’s centerpiece domestic agenda again last week, writes The Hill’s Niall Stanage, who examines at least five times the centrist senator has derailed Democratic legislative ambitions. Efforts to revive lingering portions of the president’s shrinking platform were nixed by Manchin, who said he is worried about high inflation and would like to wait to reexamine the terrain in September. The president — who previously signed into law major COVID-19 spending and bipartisan infrastructure and gun safety changes — said he’d sign whatever Congress can pass in the weeks ahead.  

The Hill: Manchin’s decision to oppose provisions dealing with climate change in a pending reconciliation measure prompted fury amid worries about a warming planet.

Manchin is not the only pain point among Biden’s political allies. Supporters fret about cracks forming within the Senate Democratic base in a 50-50 chamber where every senator can be a king. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that Democrats, nervous about the midterms and alarmed about the president’s 39 percent job approval, are becoming more openly lukewarm about Biden’s seeking reelection in 2024. 

Inflation above 9 percent and gasoline still above $4 a gallon are contributing to polls that show three-quarters of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Many Democratic incumbents, famous for their hand-wringing in the best of times, eye the top of the 2024 ticket with some trepidation. 

Biden — a man who at 79 has seen fate during his life and said he will seek a second term if he is healthy — is nevertheless infuriated by the withering narrative about his presidency that has taken shape halfway through his term. He believes he defeated former President Trump once and could do it again if the 45th president seeks a rematch (The Hill).

“So many people are counting him out, but when you put it in those terms … when you see he’s the only one who could win, we’d be crazy not to rally behind him. Because who else is there at the moment?” one top Democratic donor said of Biden.

Some progressives, unpersuaded that lameduck one-term presidents become anchors around their parties, somehow want Biden to lead as president by stepping to the sidelines.

“Unless Biden comes to his senses and announces that he won’t run again, a contentious battle for the nomination seems very likely,” Normon Soloman, founder of the progressive network RootsAction, told The Hill. 

On Sunday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was twice a presidential candidate, unloaded on both Biden and Manchin during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” He said Biden should not have “rewarded” Saudi Arabia with a visit last week because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was implicated in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

“If this country believes in anything, we believe in human rights, we believe in democracy,” Sanders said. “And I just don’t believe we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that” (The Hill).

Sanders also accused Manchin of “intentionally sabotaging” the president’s domestic agenda by blocking proposed climate and tax provisions in budget reconciliation with an announcement on Friday. His colleague’s interest in delay, Sanders added, was part of a pattern during Biden’s presidency and “nothing new” (The Hill).

Here’s what else we’re watching this week:

Today, balloting by the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party resumes with a handful of contenders to succeed outgoing Boris Johnson as prime minister. The list is expected on Thursday to be narrowed to two candidates, whose names will be put to a vote in the weeks ahead among the country’s 200,000 Conservative Party members (Reuters). … The trial of former President Trump’s ally and ex-White House adviser Stephen Bannon begins today with jury selection. Bannon was indicted in November on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena, but he has since said he’s willing to appear before investigators with the Jan. 6 committee (The Hill and The Associated Press). … The penalty-only trial of Nicholas Cruz, 23, who has pleaded guilty of killing 17 people in Florida at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, starts today in order to determine whether Cruz is put to death or serves life in prison without the possibility of parole (The Associated Press).

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Iran. What does he want from Tehran? Lethal drones to use in Ukraine, according to U.S. officials. Putin will attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey (The Associated Press). 

On Wednesday, Italy’s government, currently in limbo, is expected to feature a presentation to parliament by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who said last week he wanted to resign. Supporters are encouraging him to reconsider (The Associated Press). The Italian government on Sunday teetered closer to collapse (Politico).

Related Articles

▪  The Washington Post: Biden questioned over accomplishments of Saudi Arabia visit. 

▪  The Associated Press: Biden’s realism approach runs head-on into liberal pressure.

▪  The Wall Street Journal: Senate climate setback puts pressure on Biden to use executive powers. 

▪  Dan Balz, The Washington Post analysis: How much will Biden’s rough week affect Democrats in November? 

   LEADING THE DAY

➤ MORE IN CONGRESS

The House select committee examining the events of Jan. 6 convenes its eighth hearing on Thursday. The star witness for the primetime event is former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who was featured via video during last week’s hearing. The committee will focus on Trump’s hours of inaction on Jan. 6 while a mob of supporters broke into the Capitol. The president, who was repeatedly advised that day by allies to tell supporters to halt the rioters, held back as he watched news coverage of the violence on TV (The Hill).

The committee’s witness testimony and evidence, which will result in a report later this year, continue to raise questions about whether members of the panel will deliver a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the former president and to what extent federal prosecutors have kept pace with evidence to date (The Hill).  

Panel member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said the committee could hold additional hearings beyond this week. “This investigation is not winding down. We may be towards the end of this tranche of hearings. We may have more hearings in the future. … So we’re getting to the bottom of what we need to know,” he said (The Hill). 

The Hill: Deleted Secret Service text messages relevant to Jan. 6 are to be sent to the investigative committee by Tuesday, member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told ABC’s “This Week.”

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ POLITICS

Some analysts say the outcome of the fall’s midterms is difficult to predict. Yet both parties are impatient about waiting for November to begin the 2024 presidential race. 

Potential GOP presidential contenders already are traveling the country, getting their faces seen and their stump speeches heard, warily eyeing Trump’s next move and the investigations that circle him. Two GOP examples: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has spent six months in the job and is already spending time outside his state(ABC News) and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who recently spent time in New Hampshire (Fox News).

The Hill’s Julia Manchester reports that the former president faces rising chances of a 2024 primary challenge and points to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the emerging  Republican who is frequently mentioned as a potential alternative to Trump.

▪ The Hill: Who would surround Trump if he were to run and win the presidency a second time?

▪ Bloomberg: Trump allies line up a shadow government, mindful of 2016’s transition chaos. 

▪ The Hill: Growing support for political violence raises alarms.

📝 Introducing NotedDC, The Hill’s curated commentary on the beat of the Beltway. Click here to subscribe to our latest newsletter. 

OPINION

■ Make birth control more accessible, by The Washington Post editorial board. https://wapo.st/3PhJIjp

■ Democrats are scapegoating Biden for their own misjudgments, by Ramesh Ponnuru, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3IM4vcH

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at noon.

The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. to resume consideration of the nomination of Nina Y. Wang to be a district judge with the U.S. District Court in Colorado.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. He has no public events on his schedule.

Vice President Harris will address the NAACP National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J., at 11:30 a.m. She will hold a roundtable with New Jersey state legislators at 1:05 p.m. in the Atlantic City Convention Center to discuss the fight for reproductive rights. The vice president will depart the Garden State at 2:50 p.m. to return to Washington. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel from Bali, Indonesia, to Seoul, Korea, for meetings and events. She will tour LG, one of Korea’s largest companies, and deliver remarks. Later, Yellen will have lunch with female entrepreneurs. The secretary will meet with Bank of Korea’s Rhee Chang-yong. Yellen will speak with women economists who work at the Bank of Korea and take their questions. The secretary will meet with Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. The secretary will also meet with Choo Kyung-ho, deputy prime minister and minister of economy and finance. 

First lady Jill Biden will attend an Equality PAC finance event at 12:15 p.m. She will speak at 6:30 p.m. at a Military Child Education Coalition summit in Washington, D.C. 

The White House daily briefing is scheduled at 3 p.m.

🖥  Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE  

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Russia is targeting Ukraine’s long-range missiles and artillery weapons after Western-supplied weapons were used to strike Russian supply lines (Reuters).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has thrown down the gauntlet for the U.S. and allies to help Kyiv bring an end to the war with Russia by December. The Hill’s Laura Kelly reports on the shifting dynamics behind such a timeline. 

Reuters: Zelensky suspended Ukraine’s spy chief and top state prosecutor pending investigations on Sunday, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies. The officials were not fired, as Zelensky said in a video address on Telegram, a presidential aide said today.  

The Biden administration remains under pressure to deliver to Ukraine more offensive and defensive rocket systems. Experts believe a faster influx of such lethal aid can more quickly end the war that began in February (The Hill). 

In Western Europe, July’s extreme heat continues to leave its mark (The New York Times). … France is fighting wildfires today and trying to evacuate 3,500 people (The Associated Press).

In Sri Lanka, acting president Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday declared a state of emergency giving him broad authority amid growing protests demanding his resignation two days before the country’s lawmakers are set to elect a new president. The Indian Ocean island nation is engulfed in an economic crisis that has triggered political uncertainty.

➤ PANDEMIC & POX

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha on Sunday said Americans should be aware that rising COVID-19 cases signal that “we’re still in the middle of this pandemic.” Interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” he said omicron’s cousin, BA.5, is the most highly transmissible to date and “immune-evasive,” leading to high levels of reinfection and breakthrough infections (The Hill). 

The Hill’s Peter Sullivan reports that the impact of the highly transmissible BA.5 version of the coronavirus sparked new calls for a next generation of Operation Warp Speed to fund and accelerate vaccines that are customized to new variants. 

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,023,799. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 348, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of today, 77.8 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66.4 percent is “fully vaccinated,” according to the Bloomberg News global vaccine tracker and the government’s definition. The percentage of Americans who have received third or booster doses is 31.8.

Major U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are experiencing high demand for monkeypox testing, treatment and vaccinations as the virus spreads. The federal government says more vaccine doses will be distributed, possibly this week (SFist). … The U.S. has failed to contain the monkeypox outbreak and is “at the cusp” of seeing the virus become endemic, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday (Axios). … Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) told CBS on Sunday, “We need more vaccines. We’ve gotten just over 8,000 doses. We estimate that we need about 100,000 doses to address the current target population.” The District is prepared to help at-risk people, who are primarily gay men, bisexual men and men who have sex with men, Bowser said. “As the vaccine is available, we’re going to be ready to distribute it.” 

➤ STATE INVESTIGATIONS

The massacre of 19 elementary school students and two teachers by a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 involved top-to-bottom failures by Robb Elementary School officials, who failed to follow established safety plans, and by responding law officers, who “failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” according to conclusions in a 77-page report released Sunday by a specially created Texas House committee (Austin American-Statesman). 

The report says 376 law enforcement officials rushed to the school, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the 18-year-old gunman was finally confronted and killed, according to the report (The Associated Press).

▪ The Hill: Five takeaways from the damning Uvalde school shooting report.

▪ CNN: New law enforcement bodycam video from May 24 shows what unfolded after police arrived.  

➤ SPORTS

🏌In what ESPN called a “Sunday stunner,” Australian golfer Cameron Smith captured his first major title by overcoming Rory McIlroy in the British Open in St. Andrews, Scotland. The stage had been set for McIlroy to end his eight-year drought in the majors and cap off a week of celebration at the home of golf in the 150th Open. Smith’s 8-under 64 was the lowest final round by a champion in the 30 times golf’s oldest championship has been played at St. Andrews.

THE CLOSER

And finally … What would a summer newsletter be without a roundup about sharks? 

Up the Atlantic seaboard, lifeguards, surfers and toe-dippers are on alert for sharks, which are splashing through headlines this month as they bump, bite and chomp their way around their own environment. 

Robert Hueter, the chief scientist of Ocearch, an organization that researches and tracks marine species, told The New York Times last week that the shark population is rebounding after declining as much as 90 percent from the 1970s to the 1990s, depending on the species. 

“Are we back to the way it was in 1950 or 1960?” he said. “No, we’re not even close to that. People who weren’t alive then think there are more sharks than ever before, but really, the ecosystem is still resetting.”

Hueter also told the Times that with climate change, shark populations that usually ventured no farther north than the Chesapeake Bay area have moved up the coast to the New York Bight, the wedge formed by the shorelines of Long Island and New Jersey.

Cape Cod, Mass., is popular with sharks, including great whites, as well as tourists, meaning that precautions are widely advertised. “The sharks are here because the gray seals have come back,” Brian Carlstrom, superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore, told the Cape Cod Sunday Journal.

▪ CBS News: Shark attacks are up across the United States.

▪ NBC10 in Boston published shark photos taken near Cape Cod and posted by the Atlantic White Shark Conservation and Recovery’s Sharktivity app.  

▪ 🦈 Discovery’s annual “Shark Week” begins on Sunday.

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver. Follow us on Twitter (@alweaver22 & @asimendinger) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

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Cracks form in Biden’s Senate Democratic base

Cracks are beginning to form in President Biden’s support among Senate Democrats who are becoming less bullish about him running for re-election in 2024 after recent polling shows that most Democratic voters want a different nominee in two years.  

Senate Democrats say Biden’s unpopularity is one of their biggest challenges heading into the midterm election and are worried about data showing that young Democratic voters, whom they need to turn out in large numbers to win, are especially unenthusiastic about the 79-year-old president.  

The relatively cautious and pragmatic members of the Senate Democratic caucus represent the top ranks of the party establishment. They have been careful not to criticize Biden during months of a disappointing stalemate over his signature legislative agenda, the Build Back Better framework focused on climate change and social spending.  

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has urged his colleagues to stay unified and positive throughout the negotiations, and to avoid criticizing either Biden or centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who on Thursday again delivered a blow to the measure.

But the growing disaffection among Democratic voters with the president and the direction of the country are becoming impossible to ignore.

A growing number of senators aren’t promising to back Biden in 2024 no matter what — though they don’t want to speak on the matter publicly. 

One Democratic senator who requested anonymity pointed to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showing that 94 percent of Democrats under the age of 30 would prefer another Democratic serve as the party’s standard bearer in 2024.  

“It shows there’s a strong reservoir of sentiment to bring in a change of administrations,” said the lawmaker, who said the midterm election results will be impacted by Biden’s low approval rating.  

The senator said “I think we have a shot” to keep the Senate majority, an optimistic view shared by many Senate Democrats, but warned Biden will weigh on Democratic candidates and predicted that younger rising stars will begin to jockey for the party’s nomination starting in 2023.  

“I think following the midterms we’re going to see a number of younger folks saying we want to be in that conversation and I don’t think you’ll see a complete domination of the primary in the way you might normally see for an incumbent who’s in a strong position,” the senator said.  

One of those younger rising stars is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who made the rounds with Democratic senators on Capitol Hill Thursday, further fueling speculation about his presidential ambitions.  

Newsom was careful not to criticize Biden’s age or his inability to get things done in Washington but he identified what he sees an inability of Democratic leaders in the White House and Congress to get their message out effectively.  

He said political leadership is shifting to states such as California that aren’t hampered by the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires a bipartisan supermajority to pass major legislation.  

Newsom said he’s proud of the work Biden has done but added “that one of our challenges” is communicating effectively with younger voters.  

“We are unable to even communicate the basics in an effective way,” he said. “There are so many things that are being done, have been done. No one believes it, no one knows it and that’s a frustration I have fundamentally.” 

“That’s one of my critiques of the Democratic Party, broadly, is our incapacity to communicate a positive alternative agenda, to set the tone and tenor of the agenda [instead] of being constantly on the defensive,” he said.  

Newsom said he doesn’t think Biden’s age is the problem, despite polling data showing that 33 percent of Democratic primary voters who want a new nominee in 2024 think that Biden is too old to run for a second term. 

“I’m with Bobby Kennedy. What the world needs is the qualities of youth, not a time of life,” he said. “I think we get so fixated on your date of manufacture as opposed to your quality of imagination.”   

Senate Democrats have complained for months about their ineffectiveness in letting voters know about their accomplishments in the 117^th Congress.  

Of course, it’s not lost on them that Biden has the bully pulpit and as president is his party’s communicator-in-chief.  

Senate Democrats don’t want to publicly question Biden’s viability as a candidate in 2024 but privately they’re holding back on endorsing another White House term until they see how the midterms play out.  

“You got to ask me after 2022,” said another senator.  

The senator said Biden’s numbers and high inflation are “tough” for Democratic candidates this year but argued that Republicans failed to recruit top-tier candidates in New Hampshire, Missouri and Arizona, giving Democrats a better chance of winning races in those states.   

The senator said the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs versus Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down the right to an abortion, “has injected a completely different dynamic into this” by revving up Democratic voters ahead of November.  

A third Democratic senator didn’t want to even touch the subject of Biden’s politically viability, telling The Hill, “I’m not going to do the politics.” 

A fourth Democratic senator said Biden’s strongest attribute heading into 2024 is his track record of beating Trump in a head-to-head election. Polls showing him leading the former president in another hypothetical matchup.  

The New York Times/Siena College poll that showed 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone other than Biden to be the nominee in 2024 also showed him beating Trump 44 percent to 41 percent.  

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), whose name has been floated as a potential presidential candidate, said that if Democrats can pass prescription drug reform through the budget reconciliation process as well as legislation to improve U.S. competitiveness with China, Biden’s numbers will likely tick up.  

He said “people are unhappy.”

“They don’t like Trump, they don’t like Biden, they don’t like politicians generally right now. People are in a sour mood because of a lot of things that are beyond the president’s control. Inflation is mostly about the pandemic and corporate CEOs taking advantage of it,” he said.  

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said younger Democratic voters, whom polls show are disaffected with Biden, are understandably frustrated by the Washington’s inability to address climate change.  

“I think young voters have every reason to be impatient with Congress generally and I think we have a lot more work we need to do on climate, and that includes taking a much more aggressive stance against the climate denial operation that the fossil fuel industry continues to fund and maintain,” he said.  

Asked if Biden needs to show more leadership in fighting climate change denial, Whitehouse said: “I’m not going to be a critic on that right now.”  

Source: TEST FEED1

Bannon's trial over defying Jan. 6 committee set to begin

Steve Bannon, ex-President Trump’s former White House strategist and campaign CEO, is headed to trial this week on two contempt of Congress charges, the first to result from a refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. 

The trial, which begins Monday morning with jury selection, falls amid the select panel’s series of public hearings, which have featured damning testimony and evidence about Trump and his inner circle during the riot and in the weeks leading up to it. 

Bannon, who had vowed to turn the case into “a misdemeanor from hell” for Democrats, faces up to a year in jail on each count.

The trial will mark the first time a member of Trump’s inner circle has had to face a jury as a result of the Jan. 6 investigations. Trump’s former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, will go to trial in November in a similar case.   

The select committee had subpoenaed Bannon last year for documents and testimony as part of the investigation. When he refused to comply, the House voted to hold him in contempt, sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department. 

Last week, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols twice rejected Bannon’s requests to delay the trial over concerns about potential juror bias amid the public attention on the Jan. 6 committee. 

Bannon’s lawyers on Wednesday said in a renewed motion to delay the trial that an hourlong CNN documentary airing Sunday could prejudice potential jurors. 

“The Special Report documentary, broadcast [on] this broadly disseminated network undoubtedly will be extraordinarily inflammatory and overwhelming prejudicial for a prospective juror, beginning service in this trial the following day,” they wrote in a court filing. 

Nichols, a Trump appointee, disagreed, saying that any concerns about prejudice could be addressed during the jury selection process. 

Federal prosecutors are hoping to make a straightforward case that Bannon did not comply with a lawful subpoena. They said they intend to call just two witnesses – Kristen Amerling, the select committee’s general counsel, and an FBI special agent named Stephen Hart – and reserved the possibility of calling a third, Sean Tonolli, another committee counsel. 

Bannon’s defense team has pushed to include various arguments that could complicate the government’s case with mixed results in the pretrial proceedings. 

Nichols has rejected the defense’s effort to mount a defense that Bannon was relying on the advice of his lawyers when declining to come forward with the information the select committee demanded.  

The judge also said the defense would not be able to call Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or other lawmakers to testify at trial. 

At a pretrial hearing last week, David Schoen, one of Bannon’s attorneys, expressed frustration that Nichols had significantly limited how the defense team could proceed at trial. 

“What’s the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?” Schoen asked, according to The Associated Press. 

“Agreed,” the judge responded. 

But Nichols also denied the Justice Department’s effort to exclude any evidence related to Bannon’s recent and sudden offer to testify before the select committee. The judge said he would consider the issue during trial. 

Bannon’s reversal came earlier this month, when his lawyer sent a letter to the select committee saying Trump had agreed to waive executive privilege and allow his outside adviser to testify. 

But prosecutors said they had interviewed Trump’s own attorney in June, who told them that the former president had never even asserted executive privilege regarding Bannon in the first place. 

“Even the Defendant’s claim that the reason he is now willing to testify is because the former President is ‘waiving’ executive privilege is subject to question given all of the evidence and law that has been addressed in this case, of which he must be aware, demonstrating that executive privilege never provided a basis for total noncompliance in the first place,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing earlier this month.  

The defense team has said they may call Bannon to the stand, but the decision likely won’t be made until the trial is underway. 

Bannon and Trump have had an up-and-down relationship since the 68-year-old political strategist joined the 2016 campaign. Bannon briefly served as a White House political strategist in 2017 before apparently losing favor with Trump.

Still, the then-president pardoned Bannon on his last day in office, when his ally and still-vocal defender was facing fraud and money laundering charges related to a nonprofit that was fundraising off plans to privately finance the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.

The select committee’s hearings have renewed interest in information that Bannon might possess. Last week, the panel presented White House records showing he spoke with Trump twice on the day before the attack. 

They also played a clip of a Jan. 5 appearance Bannon made on a right-wing talk show after his first call with the then-president in which he predicted there would be mayhem the following day. 

“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said in the clip. “It’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack.” 

“I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen,” he added. “It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different, and all I can say is strap in.”

Source: TEST FEED1

This week: Jan. 6 panel returns to primetime, House takes up contraceptives bill

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol is taking its case back to primetime this week, holding what could be its final hearing of the summer, focusing on then-President Trump’s inaction during the riot.

The hearing, scheduled for Thursday at 8 p.m., is the panel’s eighth presentation since it began laying out its argument to the public last month that Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to keep himself in power. It is the second time the committee has made its case in primetime.

House lawmakers this week are also slated to vote on a bill protecting access to contraceptives, a direct response to last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In a concurring opinion to the bombshell ruling, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called for reconsidering the case protecting a married couple’s right to use contraceptives — sparking fear and anger among Democrats.

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said he wants to hold a vote on a bill this week to allocate tens of billions of dollars to the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry, aiming to boost the U.S.’s competitiveness with China.

Senate Democrats will also likely continue talks on a potential budget reconciliation package after moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he would not support adding climate spending or tax increases on the wealthy to the measure, citing the latest report showing soaring inflation.

Primetime Jan. 6 hearing

Thursday’s primetime hearing from the Jan. 6 committee will focus on Trump’s actions, or lack thereof, during the 187 minutes between when the president left the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and posted a video on Twitter urging his supporters to leave the Capitol.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who is leading this week’s hearing alongside Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that the presentation will review “minute by minute” what Trump was doing during the 187-minute time frame.

“I will start out it’s pretty simple. He was doing nothing to actually stop the riot,” Luria said, referring to Trump.

Kinzinger told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the committee had “filled in the blanks” of what went on during that block of time.

The committee has not yet formally announced any witnesses for the hearing. Luria said the presentation will feature new faces the public has not seen during previous hearings.

The Virginia Democrat did mention one name — former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone. The panel interviewed Cipollone for more than seven hours earlier this month, after weeks of publicly urging him to sit down under oath.

On Sunday, Luria said the ex-White House counsel’s testimony was “very valuable,” teasing that clips of the conversation will be presented Thursday.

“This will be our eighth hearing. This is the end of this kind of grouping,” Kinzinger told CBS, adding that additional hearings may be held when the committee releases its final report, or if new witnesses come forward.

The committee also expects to receive information Tuesday from the Secret Service in response to a late-night subpoena issued on Friday requesting text messages and action reports related to the events of Jan. 6.

The request for information came after the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security told lawmakers that it could not obtain “many” text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 because they were deleting during a “device-replacement program.” The Secret Service has denied acting maliciously.

House to vote on bill protecting access to contraceptives

The House is scheduled to vote on a bill this week protecting access to contraceptives, less than one month after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas penned a concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, suggesting the court revisit a married couple’s constitutional right to birth control.

The legislation, titled the Right to Contraception Act, would codify the right to obtain and use contraceptives, and the rights of healthcare providers to deliver contraceptives and relevant information to their patients.

The Rules Committee is scheduled to consider the bill on Monday. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) teed up the vote in a statement on Friday, directly targeting Thomas’ concurring opinion.

“In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, Justice Clarence Thomas made it very clear that the extremist ruling that ended Roe v. Wade could be used to overturn other precedents, and he specifically referenced the case that recognized Americans’ constitutional right to access contraception,” he said.

The justice said the high court should “reconsider” all substantive due process precedents the bench has set, including Griswold v. Connecticut, which protects access to contraception.

The House vote comes the week after the lower chamber passed a pair of bills protecting abortion access — a move in response to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Senate to vote on bill to bolster semiconductor industry

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is looking to hold a vote this week on a bill to boost the semiconductor industry, which he has told his colleagues could come as early as Tuesday.

The legislation, titled the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America bill, would allocate between $52 billion and $54 billion in assistance to the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry in an attempt to make the U.S. more competitive with China.

The bill also includes a tax credit for semiconductor manufacturers.

Passage of the bill would cap off more than a year of negotiations in the upper chamber, but it is unclear if the bill can secure 60 votes and overcome a legislative filibuster.

The bill isnot as expansive as a version of the bill that cleared the Senate in June 2021, frustrating some Democrats. The earlier legislation was worth an estimated $250 billion and would have funneled funds to scientific research, robotics, semiconductors and supply chains for critical items.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has threatened to vote against the measure, which he has called a corporate giveaway to massive microchip companies.

At least one Republican, however, appears to be on board — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week expressed an openness to a narrow measure focused on the domestic semiconductor manufacturers.

The Kentucky Republican’s support is significant, considering over the July 4 recess he threatened to tank the entire legislative push if Democrats continued working on a budget reconciliation bill to lower drug prices and raise taxes on pass-through business income.

Talks continue on budget reconciliation bill

Senate Democrats are likely to continue discussions on a budget reconciliation bill this week, after moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he would not support adding climate spending and tax increases on the wealthy to the measure.

Manchin told Schumer last week that if Democrats want his help moving a reconciliation bill next month, it can only include a provision to lower prescription drug prices, and a two-year extension of expiring health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

That statement was a departure from his previous commitment to close a tax loophole on wealthy individuals and couples who are paid more than $400,000 and $500,000 in pass-through income — funds that would have been used to expand the assets available for Medicare’s hospital trust fund by three years.

The West Virginia Democrat said he had a change of heart after data released by the Labor Department on Wednesday showed that annual inflation hit 9.1 in June.

“I said, ‘Oh my goodness, let’s wait now. This is a whole new page,’” he told West Virginia broadcaster Hoppy Kercheval in an interview on Friday.

The senator said he asked Schumer to wait until the inflation numbers for July are released, and until lawmakers can review the Federal Reserve interest rates for July.

Source: TEST FEED1

Juan Williams: McConnell teeters on the high wire

How long can Mitch McConnell stay up on that high wire? 

On his right, the Senate Minority Leader is juggling the prospect of another Trump campaign and a party bent on intensifying divisive social issues.

To his left, he is trying to get a grip on center-right suburban voters to regain his balance. But the suburbanites are running away, repulsed by the culture wars that excite his party’s base.  

McConnell described his predicament earlier this month by saying, “It’s no secret that we’ve lost ground in suburban areas.” 

He recently admitted to a desperate effort to reach suburban voters by backing a meager gun control bill.  

But violent crime is inextricably tied to easy access to guns — something McConnell’s party refuses to confront. In fact, even the wimpy recent bill was opposed by most of his Senate Republican conference. 

Huge majorities of Americans, including suburban voters, want real gun control, including background checks and total bans on the sale of assault weapons. 

McConnell is losing his political balance because he doesn’t want the midterms to be decided by Trump and right-wing culture war issues. He wants the midterms to be a referendum on President Biden.  

In the last few weeks, however, the political ground has shifted badly for McConnell. 

The findings of a New York Times/Siena College survey “suggest that the wave of mass shootings and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have at least temporarily insulated the Democrats from an otherwise hostile national political environment while energizing the [Democrats’] predominantly liberal activist base,” the Times reported last week. 

Similar results were revealed by left-leaning pollsters Navigator Research after the May leak of the Supreme Court’s decision. 

The poll found “half of American believe Republicans are focused on the wrong things.”  

An earlier Navigator survey found voters shifting away from the GOP after being given “examples of culture war policies supported by Republicans, including book bans, restricting abortion rights, punishing companies that disagree with their views and more.”  

This means Republicans are increasingly vulnerable, according to Bryan Bennett, a pollster who advises Navigator, if Democrats “remind the public that the Republican Party is actively blocking a popular economic agenda from President Biden and Democrats in Congress while pushing deeply unfavorable and extreme positions on social issues.” 

Democrats currently have a prime example of the GOP’s misplaced focus. 

McConnell and his Senate Republicans are blocking a bill to lower prescription drug prices and extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. 

McConnell wants to deny Democrats the chance to take credit for helping Americans with a basic pocketbook issue. He is even willing to hold up a separate bill to improve U.S. competitiveness against China on the production of semiconductor chips in order to stop the bill to cut drug costs. 

This is a repeat of the obstruction strategy used by McConnell to block President Obama’s legislative agenda. 

But this time, McConnell is the one being unbalanced because he needs suburban voters in swing states across the nation this fall. Those voters will likely decide competitive Senate races in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. 

Meanwhile, Trump is hinting he will soon announce a new campaign for president.  

The media storm around that prospective campaign will make the midterms even less about President Biden and more about the “Ultra-MAGA” extremists.  

If Trump is officially back in campaign mode, McConnell will be further unbalanced. Extremism will reign among Republican voters who have taken a culture-war loyalty oath to Trump’s egotistical fiction that Democrats stole the 2020 election. 

Sixty-one percent of Republicans still buy the “Big Lie” about the election, according to the Times poll. And 72 percent of Republicans say the Jan. 6, 2021, mob violence by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol was nothing more than an overly zealous protest. 

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 investigation is picking up speed as more Republican witnesses testify to the extremist violence orchestrated by Trump in his attempt to stay in office.  

McConnell has been up on the high wire before. 

Trump and his numerous controversies cost the GOP the House in 2018 and the Senate in 2020. 

Before that, McConnell was storm-tossed by right-wing populism under the Tea Party banner and opposition to the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.  

Republicans won the House in 2010 but the Tea Party’s extreme rhetoric cost the party in statewide elections and left the Senate with a Democratic majority. 

In 2012, the GOP’s reliance on culture wars led to the GOP’s nomination of extreme candidates that lost big in general elections. 

In this cycle, the same problem exists. The best example is the fading GOP opportunity to win Georgia as the result of the many problems surrounding Trump’s handpicked candidate, former football star Herschel Walker. 

Once again, McConnell faces a crash landing because he can’t control right-wing mania in his party.   

As the Jan. 6 Commission prepares its final report — and potentially a recommendation that Attorney General Merrick Garland prosecute Trump — the GOP’s hopes of taking back the Senate are increasingly in peril. 

To keep his balance, McConnell needs to drop the “Ultra-MAGA,” culture wars baggage. Otherwise, the midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s extremism, and he will take the fall. 

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Ex-Trump counsel gears up for starring appearance in Jan. 6 hearing

Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel who fiercely defended Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, is gearing up to be the star witness against the former president as the Jan. 6 committee winds down its public hearings with a detailed look at Trump’s three hours of inaction as the riot unfolded.

Cipollone has been a reluctant participant in the investigation, rebuffing initial requests for an under-oath interview with the House select committee, which was able to secure his 11th-hour cooperation only via subpoena.

His marathon deposition on July 8, however, has proven a gold mine for the panel, providing confirmation for some of the core allegations to emerge from the year-long probe into the Capitol insurrection and Trump’s role in provoking it. 

Not only did Cipollone tell investigators that Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud were fallacious, but also that the president’s legal team told him repeatedly that the election was lost and he should concede defeat. 

Cipollone also verified a White House visit on Dec. 18 from several prominent figures in the Stop the Steal movement — including Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney; Sidney Powell, another conspiracy-minded lawyer; Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor; and Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com — who sought to convince Trump to have the Pentagon seize voting machines in battleground states.  

Many of those details had been presented publicly in earlier hearings, including just days earlier when Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, had described Jan. 6 as a chaotic day of tension and infighting at the White House, where Cipollone had scrambled to convince a resentful president to intervene while the Capitol was sacked.

Still, to have Cipollone — a Trump loyalist and the public face of his first impeachment defense — siding with the critics in debunking Trump’s claims of a “stolen” election has been something of a coup for the select committee. It’s an unusual alliance that the panel members have been only happy to forge. 

“In general, Pat Cipollone was able to corroborate every major element of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results in 2020. He was aware of all of it, and he tried to throw up some legal guardrails at different points,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional lawyer who sits on the select committee. 

“It’s a remarkable thing that the lawyer who defended Trump in the first impeachment trial had to try to talk Donald Trump down from the Big Lie and to play defense against this group of outside advisors who really wanted to stage a military coup by having the U.S. military take over election machines.” 

Cipollone’s interactions with Democrats weren’t always so welcome. 

In 2019 and 2020, when Cipollone fought to defend Trump from charges that he’d abused his powers in dealings with Ukraine, Democrats in Congress railed against the reserved White House counsel, not least for his argument that the administration had no obligation to cooperate with the congressional investigation. 

“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at the time. 

More than two years later, the Jan. 6 committee had been similarly frustrated with Cipollone’s refusal to participate under oath. In its public pleas for Cipollone’s cooperation, investigators stressed that they saw him as one of the few voices in the White House that day pushing for Trump to take some kind of action.

“Our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right — they tried to stop a number of President Trump’s plans for Jan. 6,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the committee, said during a hearing last month.  “But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally.”

That sentiment grew exponentially following the explosive June 28 testimony from Hutchinson, who relayed Cipollone’s escalating frustration as other officials, notably Meadows, declined to confront Trump as a mob of his supporters stormed violently into the Capitol. 

“I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, ‘The rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the president now,’” Hutchinson said. 

When Meadows responded that Trump “doesn’t want to do anything,” Cipollone lost patience, Hutchinson testified. 

“Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your f’ing hands,” Cipollone responded. “This is getting out of control. I’m going down there.”

It was Hutchinson’s remarkable narrative that led the committee to get more aggressive in pursuing Cipollone’s testimony — cooperation they won by issuing him a subpoena shortly after her appearance. 

“Without Cassidy Hutchison, I’m not sure if Pat Cipollone would have been in when he was,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), the second of the two Republicans on the nine-member committee. “She was very heroic in what she did. And she’s compelled at least him and other witnesses to come forward.”

Cipollone’s fly-on-the-wall insights will likely be featured in Thursday’s prime-time hearing on Capitol Hill, where the committee is promising to explore the 187 minutes between the start of the Capitol attack and the release of Trump’s message for the mob to stand down.

Cipollone was one of the few to speak directly with Trump that day, allowing him to fill gaps left by Meadows, who turned over his text messages but refused to sit down for a deposition with the panel’s investigators, even under subpoena.

In December, the House voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress, though the Justice Department declined to bring charges.

Cipollone told the committee that he pushed back on White House plans to seize voting machines during the Dec. 18 meeting.

“That’s a terrible idea for the country,” he said. “I don’t understand why we even have to tell you why that’s a bad idea for the country.”

Other witnesses who may be featured in the next hearing include Ivanka Trump, who is said to have spoken with her father at least twice on Jan. 6, according to earlier testimony.

Pence National Security Advisor Keith Kellogg said Ivanka Trump had characterized Mike Pence as “a good man” after overhearing her father’s angry call with the vice president. And she returned to Trump’s office later that day amid encouragement from other aides, who hoped her close relationship with her father would help her to reach him in a way other staffers couldn’t.

“I think she went back in there because Ivanka can be pretty tenacious,” Kellogg told the committee behind closed doors.

Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, is also reportedly in negotiations with the committee to appear publicly. 

In a portion of her videotaped deposition already shown by the committee, she criticized Trump for attacking Pence in a 2:24 p.m. tweet — after the Capitol had already been breached. 

“The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire,” Matthews told the committee privately.

Yet the featured witness is expected to be Cipollone, who spent a full day with the committee behind closed doors, only a sliver of which has been revealed publicly. Leading the discussion in Thursday’s hearing will be Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Kinzinger, who characterized Cipollone as a crucial figure in the wide-ranging investigation. 

“He’s able to corroborate some folks; he’s got kind of unique perspectives. It’s all going to be important,” he said. 

“I’m not gonna reveal anything from the upcoming hearing because we want to keep that til we’re there,” he added. “But … I think his interview was key.”

Source: TEST FEED1