A group led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is driving a White House effort to purge government officials seen as “disloyal” to President Donald Trump and replace them with vocal supporters who regularly appear on Fox News, according to Axios.
Trump recently rehired Johnny McEntee, a 29-year-old personal aide to Trump who was abruptly fired in 2018 amid an investigation over “serious financial crimes,” to lead the presidential personnel office and purge officials believed to be “anti-Trump,” Axios reported last week.
This effort has apparently been in the works since at least 2018, when Thomas’ group Groundswell submitted a number of memos urging the firing of so-called “Never Trump” and “Deep State” officials as aides complained that the government was filled with “snakes,” according to the report.
Thomas has spent a “significant amount of time and energy” urging White House officials to pursue the purge, the outlet reported.
Trump recently abruptly withdrew the nomination of Jessie Liu, the former US attorney for the District of Columbia, to a top Treasury Department role after a memo from Thomas’ group alleged that she was “unfit for the job.” The memo argued that Liu should be removed because she did not act on “criminal referrals of some of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers,” had signed a sentencing memo recommending prison time for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and had not sought to indict former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe.
The memo was authored by Barbara Ledeen, a longtime Republican Senate staffer and close friend of Flynn. Ledeen was involved in the Trump campaign’s efforts to obtain stolen Hillary Clinton emails and was named extensively throughout former special counsel Bob Mueller’s report.
Another memo urged the firing of numerous State Department officials accused of undermining Trump, including top US diplomat David Hale, who later testified in the impeachment inquiry. The group also previously led a successful effort to oust former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who replaced Flynn.
A third memo obtained by Axios showed that the group recommended the administration hire a number of Trump loyalists, including many who had touted his supposed accomplishments in appearances on Fox News.
The memo recommended former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, a frequent guest on the network, for a senior Department of Homeland Security position and suggested Fox News regular Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who has repeatedly run for office without success, for a post as counterterrorism adviser or in Homeland Security.
The memo also urged the White House to add Derek Harvey, a longtime aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who was reportedly involved in efforts to discredit the Russia investigation, Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian officials and attempts to leak the Ukraine whistleblower’s name, to the National Security Council. Indeed, Harvey briefly held a position there before he was ousted by McMaster. Groundswell also recommended Ben Weingarten, a Trump supporter who writes for the far-right Federalist, for the National Security Council.
Chris Plante, a right-wing radio host who attacked women who have accused Trump of rape and sexual assault on Fox News, should be White House press secretary, the memo argued.
The memos were written after conservative activists “funneled names” to Thomas during meetings at the offices of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal activist group headed by frequent Fox News guest Tom Fitton.
The group’s meetings with Trump were first reported by the New York Times in January 2019, when the group complained that officials were blocking Trump supporters from jobs in the administration. Though the administration acted on some of the group’s recommendations, efforts to purge the executive branch of officials seen as disloyal have apparently gained steam since Trump’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial.
McEntee will report directly to the president and has already ordered a freeze on all political appointments while he identifies officials he feels should be removed. He also informed Cabinet secretaries that the White House would select all their deputies moving forward, according to the Times. (Igor Derysh, Salon)
TRUMP INCOMPETENCE AND CUTS TO HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE ARE THREATS TO NATION’S HEALTH. The world is at the tipping point for a COVID-19 pandemic, but Mark Sumner writes at Daily Kos (2/24), “Avoiding disaster still seems possible.” That depends, though, on the US responding effectively, and with impeached president Donald Trump at the helm, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (2/24), the chances of that happening “feel frighteningly slim.”
Start back in April 2018 when then-National Security Adviser John Bolton pressured Tom Bossert, who was in charge of the Department of Homeland Security’s global health efforts, to resign along with his whole team. Then, a month later, the White House forced out Bossert’s counterpart at the National Security Council, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, and eliminated his entire team, which was responsible for leading the US response to deadly pandemics. There is no senior administration official now solely responsible for global health security, coordinating and directing the various departments among the agencies responsible for public health and epidemic response. That’s barely the beginning of this administration’s failures, though.
Even before that, the Centers for Disease Control was forced to cut 80% of its efforts at preventing global disease outbreaks because its funding had been so severely reduced. The cuts to staff were so drastic that the number of countries the CDC was working in reduced from 49 to just 10. The cuts to the CDC and other health programs would continue in the latest Trump budget: a 10% cut to Health and Human Services; another 16% cut to the CDC; cuts to the World Health Organization of 53% and to the Pan American Health Organization of 75%; and $3 billion from global health programs among agencies.
What the cuts that have already been made to CDC mean is that it is hampered in screening for coronavirus. Right now, there’s a problem with the CDC’s test for the virus, so only three of the more than 100 public health labs around the country have verified the CDC’s test for use. Right now, the test is also very expensive at $250 a pop and the HHS doesn’t have the funds readily available to cover that, as well as the rest of the response to the outbreak. The administration is planning to request emergency funds from Congress, but it could be as little as $1 billion. That’s not going to go very far when just one screening test costs $250. In comparison, the Obama White House requested $6 billion to fight the 2014 Ebola outbreak, receiving $5.4 billion from Congress.
Add on top of that simple and gross mismanagement by the administration, when the State Department was allowed to overrule the CDC and allow 14 passengers from the Diamond Princess who were infected but without symptoms to fly home from Japan to the US along with uninfected passengers. Even with that happening a week ago, it was clear that asymptomatic people could transmit the virus.
In the face of a government that seems woefully ill-prepared to deal with a global pandemic spreading across the US, what do you do? As Mark wrote, get your flu shot and wash your hands. And work like hell to get a Democrat into the White House and to take back the Senate, because we need a government that’s prepared to handle the next pandemic.
DEMS DID SOMETHING BIG ON CONTROLLING DRUG COSTS BUT NOBODY IS PAYING ATTENTION. Donald Trump, in his State of the Union speech (2/4), called on Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to “dramatically” lower the cost of prescription drugs. House Democrats stood up when Trump mentioned drug pricing and held three fingers in the air, for HR 3, the “Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act,” which the House passed in December. The bill would limit out-of-pocket costs of drugs for seniors in Medicare Part D, the program’s drug benefit. It would limit the ability of drug companies to raise prices year after year, by tying price increases to inflation. And it would allow the federal government to negotiate directly with manufacturers over drug prices, as authorities in other countries do. That could slash the price of everything from insulin to cutting-edge, breakthrough treatments for cancer for the vast majority of Americans.
The bill passed the House 230-192 with two Republicans joining 228 Democrats to support the bill (12/12), Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell has flatly refused to consider the bill and Trump has said he opposes it too.
Jonathan Cohn noted at HuffPost (2/22) the bill sets financial boundaries for the discussions by requiring that the negotiated prices not exceed 120% of the average of what six other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the U.K.) pay. For newer drugs not yet available in other countries, the law has a separate set of guidelines.
The hard part of any proposal like this isn’t so much giving the government the right to negotiate, Cohn noted. It’s giving drug companies reason to go along. There are a number of ways to do this, including threatening to exclude high-priced drugs from formularies and breaking patent rights (or having government manufacture drugs directly) when the drugmakers refuse to negotiate.
HR 3’s solution is slap drugmakers with a tax that would quickly rise to 95% of sales revenue any time manufacturers block a product from negotiation. The tax would not be deductible as a business expense — which means, according to an assessment by the Congressional Budget Office, manufacturers could conceivably lose money outright in such instances, depending on the details and circumstances.
That threat would be enough to compel the drug industry to negotiate, the CBO predicted, and it would produce huge savings for the government: $456 billion over 10 years. An analysis by the independent firm Avalere found that the savings could be even bigger.
Trump has praised a bipartisan bill from Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). That bill includes the first two parts of the House bill, the extra financial assistance in Medicare and the limits on year-after-year price increases, but not the provision for price negotiation, which is a nonstarter with conservatives. Even without that provision, McConnell has so far resisted bringing a bill to the floor and, so far, Trump hasn’t prodded him to do so.
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE POPULAR, BUT PUBLIC OPTION FOR MEDICARE IS MORE POPULAR. The Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking the popularity of the Affordable Care Act since April 2010 reported that 55% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the program, an all-time high, compared with 37% unfavorable, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (2/24). And health care in general, ahead of the 2020 election, is a top issue for Democratic voters, independent voters, “and the crucial group of voters who haven’t made up their minds yet—swing voters,” KHH noted.
“This is timely information for the Supreme Court, as it is still considering whether to expedite a challenge to the constitutionality of the law before November. It did not add the challenge to the Affordable Care Act for expedited review to its April calendar this week, which makes it just a little bit more likely that they punt on taking it up until after the election,” McCarter noted.
KFF also found that 52% of the public favor a Medicare for All plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan, while two-thirds (66%) favor a public option that would allow Americans under 65 to buy into Medicare to compete with private health insurance.
JUDGE ORDERS GEORGIA TO DISCLOSE VOTER PURGE RECORDS. US District Judge Eleanor Ross has ordered Georgia officials to open its complete files on the mass purge of over half a million voters from the rolls to investigative reporter Greg Palast, Nicole Powers reported for the Palast Investigative Fund (2/8).
Palast has been fighting Gov. Brian Kemp (R) for six years to force the of release his hidden purge lists and methods.
Palast said, “Kemp and the new Secretary of State of Georgia want to keep the lid on their methods for removing literally hundreds of thousands of low-income, young and minority voters on the basis of false information. They cannot hide any more. This is a huge win and precedent for reporters trying to pry information from the hands of guilty officials.”
A key issue at stake was the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge lists secretly provided to Georgia by the Kansas Secretary of State in 2015 and 2017. Kemp had turned over Georgia’s voter rolls to Kansas official Kris Kobach, who worked closely with Donald Trump, and is known for his racially biased vote suppression techniques.
Palast claimed the Crosscheck lists, which Kemp obtained from Kobach, were “at least 99.9% wrong. Kemp’s office claimed he did not use the lists to purge voters, an assertion contradicted by his GOP predecessor. Moreover, Zach D. Roberts of the Palast investigative team obtained the Georgia 2013 purge list provided by Kobach through (legal) investigative techniques — so we know, and the judge knows, he has more squirreled away.
“Kemp finally turned over evidence that he purged 106,000 voters, overwhelmingly voters of color, that were on the Crosscheck list. But that’s just the tip of the purge-berg.”
Palast’s co-plaintiff, Helen Butler, is executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda, a non-partisan group founded by civil rights legend Rev. Joseph Lowery. Lowery told Palast, “It’s Jim Crow all over again.”
One of Kemp’s defenses was that he turned over Georgia’s confidential voter information to Kobach so it could be used to purge voters in 29 other states, but not Georgia. Kobach’s list showed thousands of Michigan voters who’d supposedly also registered or voted in Georgia. Michigan removed tens of thousands of voters with names like “James Brown” and “Mohammed Mohammed” — almost all with mismatched middle names.
The Michigan purge based on Georgia voters was key to Trump’s official victory margin of 10,700 in Michigan, putting Trump over the top in the Electoral College.
Palast said, “The evidence is overwhelming that Kemp used the Crosscheck list in some way to purge Georgians — 106,000 is not a ‘coincidence’ — I do want to find out why Kemp was using Georgia voter rolls to remove voters in other states.”
The Crosscheck list identifies over half a million Georgians — including one in seven African-Americans in the state — as having moved out of Georgia, according to an investigative report on Kemp and Kobach published by Palast in Rolling Stone in 2016.
AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ADMINISTRATION COSTS FOUR TIMES MORE THAN CANADA’S SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM. The cost of administering health care in the US is four times as much as it does in Canada, which has had a single-payer system for 58 years, according to a new study.
The average American pays $2,497 per year in health care administrative costs — which fund insurer overhead and salaries of administrative workers as well as executive pay packages and growing profits — compared to $551 per person per year in Canada, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in January. The study estimated that cutting administrative costs to Canadian levels could save more than $600 billion per year.
The data contradicts claims by opponents of single-payer health care systems, who argue that private programs are more efficient than government-run health insurance. The debate over the feasibility of a single-payer health care has dominated the Democratic presidential race, where Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., advocate a system similar to Canada’s, while moderates like former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg warned against scrapping private health care plans entirely.
Canada had administrative costs similar to those in the United States before it switched to a single-payer system in 1962, according to the study’s authors.
But by 1999, administrative costs accounted for 31% of American health care expenses, compared to less than 17% in Canada.
The costs have continued to increase since 1999. The study found that American insurers and care providers spent a total of $812 billion on administrative costs in 2017, more than 34% of all health care costs that year. The largest contributor to the massive price tag was insurance overhead costs, which totaled more than $275 billion in 2017.
TRUMP BUDGET PROPOSAL ATTACKS POSTAL SERVICE. The federal budget proposed by President Trump would move to privatize the US Postal Service. The budget would implement recommendations of the 2018 White House Task Force that include service cuts, lower pay and for postal workers and accelerated outsourcing and privatization of postal work.
American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein called it “another broadside attack” on postal workers, at a recent Texas AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention:
“The President’s Budget is another broadside attack by this White House on postal workers, our union and our customers’ well-deserved right to a public Postal Service that meets their needs,” said APWU President Dimondstein. “It doubles down on the Task Force proposals which would deteriorate the mail, lead to the loss of thousands of decent jobs, and set the Post Office up to be sold off to the highest bidder.”
A week earlier, the House of Representatives passed the USPS Fairness Act, with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill would repeal the mandate that the Postal Service pay for health care benefits 75 years in advance, which led to the manufactured financial crisis in the Postal Service. Nonetheless, the White House budget calls on USPS to resume prefunding payments, no matter their impact on postal finances.
“Simply put, this is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of dedicated and hardworking postal workers who make the Postal Service the most efficient post in the world and this country’s most trusted institution,” Dimondstein said. “Our collective struggle to defend the public Postal Service and our jobs must continue, from the workroom floor to the streets, from the ballot box to Congress and the White House.”
SOME POLLS JUST DON’T LOOK RIGHT. A Quinnipiac poll of battleground states (2/20) startled a lot of Democrats when it showed the top Democratic presidential contenders leading Donald Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania but showing Trump leading Democrats by seven points (for Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders) to 11 points (for Klobuchar), but the Wisconsin results could be an outlier. The same poll found 62% of respondents in Wisconsin think the country’s on the right track. But In These Times found a less rosy picture in Wisconsin.
“The total number of jobs in Wisconsin has fallen over the past two years. The total number of Wisconsin manufacturing jobs declined in 2019. Wisconsin employers have been hurt by Trump’s trade wars—the all-American brand Harley-Davidson, for example, shifted its motorcycle production overseas and laid people off because of retaliatory tariffs in the EU, sparked by Trump. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made goods are arguably hurting Wisconsin companies. And the big Foxconn deal (Trump lofted a golden shovel at the plant’s 2018 groundbreaking) is projected to create only 1,500 of the 13,000 promised jobs (but the company will still receive massive tax breaks from the state).”
Charles Pierce noted at Esquire (2/21), “And the state’s signature industry, the dairy industry, is rapidly becoming a basket case. The state lost 10% of its dairy farms last year, an unprecedented debacle, and the farmers still in business are hanging on to their personal economies—and, hell, their emotional health—by a thread. So, no, I don’t believe that 62% of Wisconsinites believe the country’s headed in the right direction. Everyone calm down.”
From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2020
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