Dispatches

SENATE COMMITTEE HEARS TESTIMONY ON TRUMP COUP ATTEMPT.

The full scope of the Trump administration’s efforts to nullify an American presidential election is just beginning to come into view, “Hunter” noted at DailyKos (8/8).

Trump and his top allies engaged in an orchestrated, three-pronged plan to use federal officials to cast illegitimate doubts on the integrity of the election, explicitly pressure state officials to “find” votes or otherwise alter vote totals, and counter the official congressional acknowledgement of the election’s results with an organized mob assembled specifically to “march” to the Capitol and intimidate the lawmakers carrying out that constitutionally mandated process. It was an attempted coup by Trump and his deputies, one that Trump himself continued to press even after that coup had exploded into violence.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, gave closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee (8/7). The subject of the testimony was the interactions between Rosen and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, as Clark attempted, on Trump’s behalf, to press the Justice Department into issuing false claims suggesting that they were investigating election “fraud” of the sort that Trump’s propagandists were claiming as the reason for Trump’s loss. It was untrue, and the top two Justice officials rejected Clark’s repeated proposals.

Hunter noted, “it was an attempt by Clark and other Trump allies to throw the nation into chaos by claiming the election was so flawed that its results must be overturned—a claim which Trump’s hard-right team believed would force the assembling Congress to erase the election’s counted votes and, somehow, reinstall Trump as quasilegal national leader.”

All three elements of the plan came perilously close to succeeding. They were thwarted only because individuals remained in place who believed the plan to be insanity, sedition, or both. It is the efforts by Trump-aligned officials within the federal government, using the tools granted to them by government, that elevate the events culminating in violence on Jan. 6 from insurrection to attempted coup, Hunter wrote.

In a pivotal decision, Rosen rejected Clark’s attempt, leading to yet another internal administration crisis as Trump mulled whether to fire him and install Clark in his position so that the plan could be carried out.

In a Sunday CNN appearance (8/8), Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dick Durbin said Rosen described Trump as being directly involved in Clark’s actions. “It was real, very real, and it was very specific.”

The Times reports that Rosen scheduled his testimony “quickly,” to allow him to go forward “before any players could ask the courts to block the proceedings.” That may be a self-serving interpretation of events, Hunter noted, as Clark’s efforts to overturn the election and Trump’s aborted move to fire Rosen and install Clark as acting attorney general was reported in January, even before Trump’s second impeachment trial took place. Senate Judiciary officials began their requests for documents pertaining to the plan in January, and have been battling the Department of Justice for testimony ever since.

Most significantly of all, perhaps, is that the Senate could have investigated the Trump team’s plot during the impeachment trial meant to gather evidence and come to judgment on Trump’s behavior.

The job now falls to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection: Clark, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other Trump officials tried to falsely discredit election results to provide the backing for willing insurrectionists to justify their demands that the Constitution be tossed aside for the sake of Trump’s reinstallation. The job also falls to federal investigators who now need to examine—swiftly—the criminality of the schemes.

It was not, however, a “Trump” coup, Hunter noted. “Donald Trump, a known liar and semi-delusional blowhard, had few government powers that would allow him to singlehandedly erase state election counts or make official his declarations that he had lost, after a disastrous single term, only through “fraud” concocted against him. It required the cooperation of top Republican allies, of Republican Party officials, of lawmakers, and others that would press the false claims and work both within and outside of government to give them false legitimacy. It was a Republican coup, an act of sedition backed with specific acts from Mark Meadows, from Jeffrey Clark, from senators such as Josh Hawley (R-MO), from state Republican officials who eagerly seized on the conspiracy claims specifically so that they could be used to overturn elections they had lost, and from everyday Republican supporters who decided that the zero-evidence nationalist propaganda they were swallowing up was justification enough to storm the US Capitol by force in an overt attempt to erase a democratic election.

“Here we sit, waiting with bated breath as evidence dribbles out describing the full scope of what the entire world saw in realtime, from last November to January: top Republican officials spreading knowingly false, propagandistic claims intended to undermine the integrity of our democratic elections so as to justify simply changing that election’s results and declaring themselves the victors. It was a fascist act. It continues in the states, as state Republican lawmakers use the same brazenly false claims peddled by Clark to impose new hurdles to voting meant to keep at least some fraction of the Americans who voted against the party last time from being able to vote at all the next time.

“A bit more urgency is required, here.”

BIDEN VEHICLE PLAN WOULD CUT US EMISSIONS BY ONE-THIRD. President Biden announced a plan to make cars and trucks more fuel-efficient while they are phased out for electric vehicles to reduce pollution that is heating the planet (8/5).

Biden is restoring and slightly strengthening auto mileage standards to the levels that existed under President Barack Obama but were weakened during the Trump administration. The new rules, which would apply to vehicles in the model year 2023, would cut about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced annually by the United States and prevent the burning of about 200 billion gallons of gasoline over the lifetime of the cars, according to a White House fact sheet. Biden wants to cut US emissions in half by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

Tailpipe emissions regulations enacted by the Obama administration in 2012 required that passenger vehicles sold by automakers achieve an average of 51 miles per gallon by 2025. Trump loosened the standard in 2020 to about 44 mpg by 2026. The new Biden standard would be 52 mpg by 2026.

He also signed an executive order that calls for the government to try to ensure that half of all vehicles sold in the United States be electric by 2030.

Biden proposes to overhaul the American car industry in order to better compete with China, which makes about 70% of the world’s electric vehicle batteries. In an effort that blends environmental, economic and foreign policy, Biden wants to retool and expand the domestic supply chain so that the batteries that are essential to electric vehicles are also made in American factories.

Without a radical change in the type of vehicles Americans drive, it will be impossible to cut planet-warming emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Gasoline-powered cars and trucks are the largest single source of greenhouse gases produced in the US, accounting for 28% of the country’s total carbon emissions.

The president was joined on the South Lawn by chief executives of the nation’s three largest automakers, as well as the head of United Auto Workers. The automakers pledged that 40 to 50 percent of their new car sales would be electric vehicles by 2030, up from just 2% this year, on the condition that Congress passes a spending bill that includes billions of dollars for a national network of electric vehicle charging stations, as well as tax credits to make it cheaper for companies to build the cars and consumers to buy them.

Biden has asked Congress for $174 billion to create 500,000 charging stations. The bipartisan infrastructure bill pending in the Senate includes just $7.5 billion. However, it also provides $73 billion to expand and update the electricity grid, an essential step for carrying power to new auto charging stations. A second bill, which could move through Congress this fall, could include far more spending on electric vehicles, consumer tax incentives and research. Neither proposal is guaranteed to pass in the closely divided Congress.

The International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization, concluded that the nation would need 2.4 million electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 — up from 216,000 in 2020 — if about 36% of new car sales were electric.

UN PANEL SAYS CLIMATE CHANGE MUST BE REVERSED. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out, and as expected the IPCC’s consensus has gone from dire to catastrophic, “Hunter” noted at DailyKos (8/9). “There is now little to no chance of limiting climate change to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above that of its pre-industrial average. That means we can expect the extraordinary new weather events that have pummeled the US and the world in the last few years to continue, from terrain-altering megafires to ‘heat domes’ powerful enough to wipe out tidal ecologies to regional droughts that will throw agriculture into chaos and allow the water sources supporting some cities to simply dry up,” Hunter wrote.

“Whatever the extreme weather your own corner of the world has been dealing with in the last few years has been, expect it to reoccur in worse form. While scientists have long been able to predict the theoretical impacts of cooking the planet just a little bit in theory, the most common current refrain is alarm that those impacts are now occurring much faster than previous decades of science had predicted. Things weren’t supposed to shift so suddenly, whether it be changing weather patterns or the collapse of an Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe warm.

“That’s a problem, because the IPCC report also notes that while that 1.5 degree temperature rise is now our best-case scenario, it will require herculean world efforts to even manage that. It may be just as likely that the world temperature rises to double that amount, given the seemingly impossible task of getting many of the world’s most powerful people to give a damn. At about 2 degrees Celsius, all hell breaks loose. Greenland’s ice sheet collapses. Antarctic glaciers flow into the sea. The northern ice cap is reduced to nothingness, and the dark ocean water absorbs new heat that the reflective ice had bounced back into space.

“That 2-degree tipping point? The IPCC report pins it as happening somewhere around the year 2040. Most of us here today will live to see it.

“From here until the all-but-certain 1.5 degree measure, things still get dire quickly. We can expect more powerful monsoons and hurricanes, fueled by ocean waters hotter than we have ever seen them. Much of the United States’ most important agricultural regions will be locked into permanent drought. Mass extinction events go without saying. In California and the West, ‘extreme’ fires are reshaping landscapes, carving through drought-weakened forests that may not return. Dried-up waterways will shift migration patterns and cause mass die-offs. ...

“We can either take worldwide action to curb the use of fossil fuels immediately and drastically or we can sentence ourselves to a world in which fires regularly consume entire cities, hurricanes routinely reach intensities that were once rarities, and we all choke on summer air thick with the smoke of fires half a world away—in the best-case scenario. Be angry. We saw this point coming a half century off. It wasn’t inevitable. We got here for the same reason people were long ‘confused’ over whether cigarettes caused cancer—because the people selling the products made damn sure to keep the ‘confusion’ going as long as they possibly could. There have been television shows that have lasted more seasons than we currently have left to prevent worldwide ecological and societal collapse.”

POSTMASTER GENERAL’S EX-COMPANY GETS $120M CONTRACT FROM USPS. US lawmakers and ethics advocates reiterated calls for firing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (8/6) after the Washington Post revealed that the United States Postal Service awarded a $120 million contract to XPO Logistics, a company he helped run and “with which his family maintains financial ties,” Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (8/6).

Under the contract, XPO will take over two centers that organize and load mail. Dena Briscoe, president of the American Postal Workers Union branch for Washington and Southern Maryland, told the Post that the move felt like a “slap in the face” to postal workers.

“This is the work that they’ve been doing for years and years and years,” Briscoe said, “and you’re going to segregate it away from them, put in another building, give it to a company that previously had a [top executive] that is now our postmaster general. A lot of our members are taking offense to that.”

“Louis DeJoy is a walking conflict of interest,” declared Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “He had no business being named postmaster general, and he has no business continuing to serve.”

“It’s long past time to #FireDeJoy,” added Connolly, chair of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, which has legislative jurisdiction over the Postal Service.

Connolly was far from alone in responding to the report by calling for DeJoy’s removal.

“How in the world is Louis DeJoy still the postmaster general?” asked Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). “It is long past time to #FireDeJoy.”

DeJoy still has his job because the Postal Service Board of Governors, which hires and fires the PMG, still has five Trump appointees who stand by him, including Ron Bloom, the board chair and Trump’s only Democratic appointee, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (8/6).

One of Biden’s new appointees, Ronald Stroman, himself a former deputy postmaster general, blasted DeJoy’s 10-year plan to hike postal rates while slowing down deliveries, in a public meeting (8/6). He said the plan is “strategically ill-conceived, creates dangerous risks that are not justified by the relatively low financial return, and doesn’t meet our responsibility as an essential part of America’s critical infrastructure,” GovExec.com reported.

Stroman continued: “There is no compelling financial reason to make this change. … The relatively minor savings associated with changing service standards, even if achieved, will have no significant impact on the Postal Service’s financial future.” The Postal Regulatory Commission also determined that DeJoy’s plans to slow delivery on almost half of all first-class mail won’t provide “much improvement, if any” to the agency’s finances, nor result in the agency achieving its on-time delivery goals.

Stroman also accused not just DeJoy, but also the previous board members of abandoning customers who are both most loyal to and dependent on the Postal Service—seniors, low-income households and small businesses. He also called out significant regional slowdowns forecast for Florida, Texas, Maine, California and central regions of the country as a result of DeJoy’s changes.

Bloom insists everyone “has the best interest of the Postal Service at heart.” He defended DeJoy’s 10-year plan, saying it “further embeds the Postal Service as a critical part of this nation’s infrastructure, providing reliable and affordable mail and package delivery to 161 million American households six and seven days a week.”

McCarter noted that DeJoy remains under investigation by the FBI for his political contributions before he was named postmaster general and business activities involving XPO.

AFL-CIO PRESIDENT RICHARD TRUMKA DIES. Organized labor was jarred by the sudden death of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at the age of 72 (8/5).

“Rich Trumka devoted his life to working people, from his early days as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to his unparalleled leadership as the voice of America’s labor movement,” said AFL-CIO communications director Tim Schlittner, calling Trumka “a relentless champion of workers’ rights, workplace safety, worker-centered trade, democracy, and so much more.”

Trumka, a native of coal-mining town Nemacolin, Pa., had led the 12.5-million-member AFL-CIO since 2009, when he was elected after serving as the group’s secretary-treasurer since 1995. He died of an apparent heart attack on a family camping trip.

“Rich Trumka was our brother in the truest sense of the word,” said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. She said his death represented “a tremendous loss for the entire labor movement, and for working families across the country.”

President Joe Biden said he had known Trumka for more than 30 years. “He wasn’t just a great labor leader, he was a friend,” Biden said. “He was someone I could confide in. You knew whatever he said he’d do, he would do.”

Among Democratic lawmakers offering condolences was Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who said Trumka’s memory would be honored by passing the AFL-CIO-backed Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen workers’ rights.

Under the AFL-CIO constitution, the federation’s secretary-treasurer, Liz Shuler, took over as president until its executive council can meet to elect a successor. The federation’s next presidential election was scheduled to take place this year, but was delayed until next year because of the pandemic.

DEMS MUST RAISE DEBT LIMIT ON THEIR OWN. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is preparing to hold the debt ceiling hostage again. He said Democrats should expect zero help from Republicans in their effort to raise the debt ceiling, previewing a looming fight this fall over the nation’s borrowing limit, which Congress must approve, CNN reported (8/5).

“Democrats are about to tell Republicans to go take a hike, and start keying up trillion more dollars in borrowing and spending,” McConnell said in Senate floor remarks. “They want Republicans to give them political cover for the partisan debt bomb that they’ll go right on to detonate with zero input from my colleagues.”

“They won’t get our help,” McConnell continued. “They won’t get our help with the debt limit increase that recklessly, that these reckless plans will require. I could not be more clear. They have the ability. They control the White House, they control the House, they control the Senate. They can raise the debt ceiling and if it’s raised, they will do it.”

The remarks come as House and Senate Democrats are weighing attaching the increase in the national borrowing limit to a must-pass funding bill this fall, a risky gambit that would essentially dare Republicans into backing the package or risk a potential debt default and government shutdown, according to multiple Democratic sources.

McConnell has repeatedly said Democrats must raise the limit themselves after pushing through multi-trillion-dollar measures this year, using their budget reconciliation bill that only requires 51 votes to pass, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie.

“And they damned well should,” Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (8/5). “But you know what will happen after this? The Republicans will lie about what the debt ceiling is for the next two years. They will talk endlessly about what the debt ceiling isn’t; it’s payment on debts we already owe, not an increase in what the debt may or may not be going forward. And … if they want their programs enacted, they need to push on ahead and not listen to the damn Jiminy Cricket voice telling them to be afraid of what use the Republicans might make of the process in 30-second spots.

“The signs are that we are in a different time now. The Democrats seem to have found a way to put an explosive dye-pack in which the ransom money.”

VOTERS AREN’T CLEAR ABOUT BIDEN’S ECONOMIC SUCCESS. SENATE DEMS PLAN TO CHANGE THAT. Senate Democrats have one mantra for when they finally recess: It’s the economy, stupid.

Midterm messaging about gains in job growth and gross domestic product (GDP) since Joe Biden took office are critical for Democrats, particularly as the Delta variant surge threatens to plant the seed of uncertainty about Biden in the minds of voters, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (8/9).

Several reports have surfaced in the last several months warning that voters aren’t clear enough about Biden’s accomplishments. “Even among voters who have a favorable view of Joe Biden, there is a real lack of information about the specifics of the Biden Agenda,” warned a July memo from the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country. The memo noted that Republican disinformation is partially to blame. And recent battleground district polling from the House campaign arm found Democrats falling a half-dozen points behind Republicans in the generic ballot, largely due to a gap in voters’ understanding of what Democrats have done to shore up a US economy battered by COVID-19.

Voters simply aren’t clear about Biden’s accomplishments and how relatively successful they have been in rebooting the economy and spurring job growth. July’s stellar job growth numbers, which brought unemployment down to 5.4%, were a clear indication that Biden’s American Rescue Plan has helped set the country on course to a robust recovery following a year of pandemic lockdowns, soaring unemployment, and sluggish growth. The fact that the delta variant threatens to trigger a new period of uncertainty makes it even more imperative for Democrats to convince voters of their successes in getting the country back on track and hopefully insulating it from even greater fallout.

On the bright side, that message is there for the taking given the overwhelming popularity of Biden’s agenda and many of the positive results the country has already experienced.

“Research shows that Democrats have an effective message regarding their legislative agenda and accomplishments, including: cutting taxes, growing jobs through investments in infrastructure and lowering health care costs,” pollsters at the Democratic data firm OpenLabs wrote in the memo, which was obtained by HuffPost. “Additionally, it’s particularly effective to highlight the contrast between Democrats and Republicans, who oppose these proposals while looking out for corporations and wealthy special interests.”

The House battleground polling also found that voters soured more on Republicans when they learned of the disinformation the party has spread about Jan. 6 and the vaccines. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now encouraging candidates to carry an economic message anchored by the “middle-class tax cuts” while also highlighting GOP extremism.

The OpenLabs memo recommends a targeted approach for different groups of voters.

“For women, Black voters, people who supported Donald Trump and white voters without college degrees, the memo recommends a message focused on cutting health care costs and improving health care for seniors,” writes HuffPost. “For white voters with a college degree and Biden voters, the memo suggests ‘making big corporations and the wealthy special interests who rig the rules pay their fair share’ as a compelling message.”

The memo also specifically notes that explaining how Democrats plan to pay for most of their several trillion dollars in investment in jobs and infrastructure should be a feature of the messaging. In other words, making the mega-wealthy and corporations help foot the bill for the windfall they have reaped over the last decade is highly popular.

The OpenLabs memo is based on a survey of 4,894 voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2021

Populist.com