<Judge Scott McAfee on Thursday approved an expedited trial for two of Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, severing their case from those of the other 17 defendants.

Trump and 18 co-defendants were charged last month over their efforts to reverse the ex-president's defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis used Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to have all 19 defendants in the case stand trial together.

But Judge McAfee said that severing the remaining 17 defendants was "a procedural and logistical inevitability" and said the courthouse "simply contained no courtroom adequately large enough to hold all 19 defendants," as ABC News reported.

This ruling "was a big win for Trump and the other defendants," Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor, told Salon. "They'll get a preview of the witness testimony before they are tried and will be able to more effectively prepare for cross-examination and rebutting the prosecution's arguments." Rahmani also said it was a loss for federal special counsel Jack Smith as well as for Willis, and speculated that Smith might wonder "why Willis took a 'kitchen sink' approach instead of the more targeted strategy that he did, charging only Trump."

Fani Willis' case against Meadows to move forward after federal court ruling

Severing the two defendants' cases will have a "series of ramifications," including increasing the workload on the Georgia prosecutors and creating more strain on the state's judicial resources, said Temidayo Aganga-Williams, a white-collar partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and a former investigator for the House Jan. 6 select committee.

Chesebro and Powell, who are now set to go to trial Oct. 23, appeared in court on Thursday to request that all transcripts of the Georgia special grand jury be unsealed, and that they be allowed to speak to the grand jurors who indicted them in August on charges related to the 2020 election. They appear to be suggesting that perhaps not all the grand jurors had thoroughly reviewed the entire 98-page indictment, which is not entirely implausible given that the jury appeared to reach a decision after meeting for just one day.

"Their legal strategy is clearly to leave no stone unturned," Aganga-Williams said, adding that in a case of this importance that's actually how it should be" "With a prosecutor's office handling 19 defendants that include a former president, defendants aggressively filing every defensible motion is certainly to be expected." This case will be an "epic legal battle," Aganga-Williams added, and "it is only just beginning."

Judge McAfee suggested that he might allow Chesebro and Powell's defense team to speak to the grand jury, but likely not the defendants themselves. That was the best way, he said, to "accommodate the case law" governing grand jury secrecy while still allowing the defense "to make sure that the grand jury fulfilled its duty in a manner recognized by law," as reported by The Messenger.

Since grand jury proceedings are typically kept confidential, even this concession would be highly unusual. "Chesebro and Powell are likely asking for this information to find shortcomings in how the Fulton County district attorney obtained the indictment," Aganga-Williams said. Even a minor procedural failure on Willis' part could lead to a defense motion to dismiss all charges. "This would be a long shot," Aganga-Williams said, but "any effort that forces Willis to start from scratch will surely be worth a try for these defendants."

McAfee has not yet ruled on Chesebro's motion to unseal transcripts from the special grand jury, which is not the same jury that the defense team hopes to address. This would be the first Fulton County panel convened by Willis, which conducted investigations and recommended charges but did not have the power to indict anyone.

Although this trial will not include Donald Trump, Aganga-Williams said the former president will be at great legal risk. "If Willis can successfully handle this first trial, it could spell doom for Trump," Aganga-Williams said, and potential convictions of both Chesebro and Powell could "lead to a cascade of cooperation that only strengthens the state's case" as more co-defendants turn against their leader.>

<One of the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justices tapped to investigate impeaching newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz for taking Democratic Party money accepted donations from the state Republican Party when he was on the court.

The former justice, Republican David Prosser, gave $500 to the conservative candidate who lost to Protasiewicz, did not recuse from cases involving a law he helped pass as a lawmaker and was investigated after a physical altercation with a liberal justice.

Prosser is one of three former justices tapped by the Republican Assembly speaker to investigate the criteria for taking the unprecedented step of impeaching a current justice. Speaker Robin Vos has floated impeachment because Protasiewicz accepted nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party and said during the campaign that heavily gerrymandered GOP-drawn legislative electoral maps were “unfair” and “rigged.”

The impeachment threat comes after Protasiewicz’s win this spring handed liberals a majority on the court for the first time in 15 years, which bolstered Democratic hopes it would throw out the Republican maps, legalize abortion and chip away at Republican laws enacted over the past decade-plus.

It also comes at the same time that Assembly Republicans passed a sweeping redistricting reform bill Vos described as an “off ramp” to impeachment and Senate Republicans voted to fire the state's nonpartisan elections director. Both moves take on heightened importance in Wisconsin, one of a handful of swing states where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a point.

Vos won’t say who he’s chosen for the secret, three-judge impeachment review panel, but Prosser confirmed to The Associated Press that Vos asked him to participate. None of the other eight living former justices, six of whom are conservatives, have told the AP they have been picked. Justices are officially nonpartisan in Wisconsin, but in recent years the political parties have backed certain candidates. Others, like Prosser, formerly served in partisan positions.

A former liberal justice, Louis Butler, said he was not asked. Four former conservative justices — Jon Wilcox, Dan Kelly, 7th U.S. Circuit Court Chief Judge Diane Sykes and Louis Ceci — told the AP they were not asked.

Ceci, 96, is the oldest living former justice. He served on the court from 1982 to 1993 and served one term as a Republican in the state Assembly in the 1960s.

Ceci, interviewed at his suburban Milwaukee home in a retirement high-rise, said he doesn’t know anything about the impeachment threats Protasiewicz faces beyond what he reads in newspapers. Vos has not approached him about serving on the panel, he said.

A seventh former justice, Janine Geske, told the Wisconsin State Journal she was not asked. Vos said former Justice Michael Gableman, whom Vos fired from leading an investigation into the 2020 election, was not on it....>

<.....The most recently retired justice, conservative Patience Roggensack, declined to comment to the AP.

“I can’t talk to you right now,” she said Thursday, adding that she was on her way to a college class before hanging up.

Roggensack and Prosser voted to enact a rule allowing justices to sit on cases involving campaign donors. In 2017, a year after Prosser left the court, Roggensack voted to reject a call from 54 retired justices and judges to enact stricter recusal rules.

Roggensack, in 2020, sided with the conservative minority in a ruling that fell one vote short of overturning President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. And she endorsed Dan Kelly, the conservative opponent to Protasiewicz in this year’s election. Prosser donated $500 to Kelly, who replaced Prosser on the court after he retired.

Prosser served on the Supreme Court from 1998 to 2016 and also spent 18 years before that as a Republican member of the Assembly — two years as speaker.

There were numerous times during Prosser’s years on the court where he did not recuse himself from cases involving issues he had voted on as a member of the Legislature.

Prosser did recuse himself from cases involving the constitutionality of a cap on medical malpractice damages because he was speaker of the Assembly when the cap was instituted. But in 2004 he changed course and authored the majority opinion upholding the law he helped pass. He dissented from a 2005 Supreme Court ruling overturning the law.

Prosser also refused a request to recuse in 2015 from considering three cases related to an investigation into then-Gov. Scott Walker and conservative groups that supported him. The groups in question had spent $3.3 million to help elect Prosser in 2011.

He defended hearing the cases, saying that because the money was spent four years earlier, enough time had passed to make them irrelevant.

Prosser then voted with the majority to shut down the investigation.

Prosser was also embroiled in one the court’s most contentious periods in 2011, accused by a liberal justice of attempting to choke her. Impeachment was never raised as a possibility, even though police investigated but no charges were filed. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission recommended the court discipline him but nothing happened because the court lacked a quorum when three justices recused.

In 2016, Prosser received $25,000 of in-kind contributions from the Wisconsin Republican Party. Less than three weeks later he resigned with nearly three years left on his term.

Vos said Prosser’s past wouldn’t affect his ability to fairly offer advice on how to proceed.

“First of all, all he is doing is giving advice on whether or not someone ought to recuse and the criteria for impeachment,” Vos said. “That has nothing to do with what happened before when he was on the Supreme Court.”

Prosser said the charge given to him by Vos was investigating “whether there’s a legitimate reason for impeaching” Protasiewicz.

When asked whether he thinks the panel should include liberals, Prosser said, “I’m really not going to answer that question.”

“I really don’t know what the process is going to be, who’s going to be doing the writing,” Prosser said. “I just really don’t know.”

No matter who is on the impeachment review panel, Democrats say the process is a joke.

“The entire concept of having a secret panel deliberating in secret to advise an Assembly speaker on an unconstitutional impeachment on a justice who has yet to rule on a case is a farce,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “This is a charade.”

Vos said impeachment may be warranted if Protasiewicz doesn’t step down from hearing two Democratic-backed redistricting lawsuits seeking to undo Republican-drawn legislative maps.

Vos argues that Protasiewicz has prejudged the cases. She never said how she would rule on any lawsuit.

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, impeachment is reserved for “corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor.”

It is up to each justice to decide whether recusal in a case is warranted, and the conservative majority of the court adopted a rule saying that justices don’t have to recuse if they accepted money from parties arguing a case. Other current justices have also been outspoken on hot-button issues before they joined the court and all but one have taken money from political parties.

When asked Thursday if the panel would include liberals, Vos dodged the question.

<Retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) revealed to journalist McKay Coppins that one Republican lawmaker confided to him that he wanted to vote to impeach former President Donald Trump but feared doing so due to threats to his family.

A news analysis written by Vice News' Todd Zwillich argues that this kind of intimidation is entirely how Trump's "MAGA" movement has been designed to operate.

In fact, Zwillich believes that Romney's revelations show that "MAGA Republicans are making clear that a GOP in which dissenters literally fear for their lives—and vote accordingly—is now the only game in town."

With this in mind, Zwillich notes that this is what we should see as the true motive behind House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) decision to cave to MAGA demands to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden this week.

In particular, Zwillich says that the impeachment gambit simply looks like a way for Republicans to obscure the allegedly criminal conduct of the man whom polls suggest is the runaway favorite to be the party's 2024 presidential nominee.

"McCarthy is launching impeachment specifically to obscure Trump’s attack on democracy, and possibly his felony convictions for it," he argues. "He’s doing it to slide past voters the horror of Jan. 6, the same horror that compelled him to condemn Trump — just days before supplicating to him.">

How 'bout it, <fredthejackal>? Still wishing to napalm me? Still comparing me to Hitler?

<Former President Donald Trump "flubbed numbers, misstated facts, or omitted critical context" after boasting that he had "all the facts" to NBC News moderator Kristen Welker during her debut as the new host of Meet the Press on Sunday, according to NBC News correspondent Jane C. Timm's fact-check.

"Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more" on "at least" eleven occasions, Timm writes. "Trump's presidency was marked by repeated false, exaggerated, and misleading claims. Some of those claims drove policy, while another triggered an impeachment. Trump's false view that the election was stolen helped land him and dozens of others in legal trouble in Georgia. One senior aide — during a Meet the Press interview — even coined the phrase 'alternative facts' in defense of the president."

Below are four of Trump's most notable whoppers.

Immigration:

・Trump: "Millions of illegal immigrants coming into our country, flooding our cities, flooding the countryside. I think the number is going to be 15 million people by the time you end this, by the end of this year. I think the real number is going to be 15 million people."

・Timm: "There's no evidence that 15 million people will cross the border this year. That's more than the total number of people, 11.4 million, that the U.S. government estimates are here without legal authorization."

The January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol:

・Trump: "These people on January 6th — some of them never even went into the building, and they're being given sentences of many years."

・Timm: "This is missing critical context. Some of the defendants who received some of the longest sentences of any January 6th participants — including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — did not enter the Capitol building themselves but received lengthy sentences after they were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Some of the most vicious assaults of the Capitol attack were committed by January 6th participants who never stepped foot in the building, and some of those individuals received significant sentences, too."

The 2020 election:

・Trump: "If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged."

・Timm: "Trump and his supporters brought more than 50 lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the election; none were successful in overturning the results."

Bacon:

・Trump: "Things are not going right now very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times. Food is up horribly — worse than energy."

・Timm: "Inflation has absolutely raised the cost of many consumer goods, including food. But Trump's exaggerating the price of salt-cured pork: In U.S. cities on average, the cost of sliced bacon is up by about 12% from the end of Trump's term in office, though at one point in 2022, it was 30% more expensive than it was at the end of 2020.">

<Police in a southern Chinese city said they have detained some staff at China Evergrande Group’s wealth management unit in the latest trouble for the heavily indebted developer.

A statement by the Shenzhen police on Saturday said authorities “took criminal coercive measures against suspects including Du and others in the financial wealth management (Shenzhen) company under Evergrande Group.”

It was unclear who Du was. Evergrande did not immediately answer questions seeking comment.

Media reports about investors’ protests at the Evergrande headquarters in Shenzhen in 2021 had listed a person called Du Liang as head of the company’s wealth management unit.

Evergrande is the world’s most heavily indebted real estate developer, at the center of a property market crisis that is dragging on China’s economic growth.

The group is undergoing a restructuring plan, including offloading assets, to avoid defaulting on $340 billion in debt.

On Friday, China’s national financial regulator announced it had approved the takeover of the group’s life insurance arm by a new state-owned entity.

A series of debt defaults in China’s sprawling property sector since 2021 have left behind half-finished apartment buildings and disgruntled homebuyers. Observers fear the real estate crisis may further slow the world’s second-largest economy and spill over globally.>

G'ahead: cry about this post.

<Based upon recent speeches made by the leading contenders for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, there appears to be a growing rift between what evangelicals want as the top priority of the next GOP administration and what the potential nominees are offering.

According to a report from the Guardian's David Smith, the surge of conservative voters Donald Trump has brought into the party who are not affiliated with churches has watered down the need to keep evangelicals happy and that showed in the speeches delivered at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit on Friday.

As the report notes, the elephant in the room is the question of banning abortions as a key plank for the GOP ticket which evangelicals see as a priority and contenders for the nomination are treading carefully on based upon recent election results.

Case in point, Smith notes, was Trump's comments on Friday where he seemed to be hedging on making abortion a centerpiece of his campaign.

Writing, "... even as the former president basked in the religious right’s moment of triumph, he went on to deliver a warning," Smith reports Trump told the crowd, "I will say politically, it’s a very tough, it’s a very tough decision for some people, but very, very hard on elections. Very, very hard ... We had midterms and this was an issue, you know.”

The former president was not the only one dancing around the issue.

"Other top Republican candidates for 2024 also trod carefully on abortion, " Smith wrote before adding, "The tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did not mention the word at all. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, cited his state’s six-week abortion ban in a single sentence. Only Mike Pence, the devout former vice-president, unambiguously committed to a 15-week 'national standard.'"

"The caution signaled Republicans’ awareness of how politically radioactive the issue has become, as evidenced by last year’s midterm elections and other votes in states such as Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin," the Guardian report stated.

According to Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, there is a reason candidates are not fully embracing the topic.

"Evangelical voters may find their leverage over Republican candidates waning," the Guardian report states, with Burge writing for Politico, "... the religious right’s grip on the party is weakening with every election cycle."

Taking up the case of the former president he explained, "That’s because Trump’s real base of support in the 2016 primary contest came from a rising group in the GOP whose impact has been largely unnoticed: Republicans who hardly ever darken the door of a church, synagogue or mosque.”>

<Former President Trump’s presence is looming large over House Republicans’ decision to push ahead with an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Trump has publicly called for House Republicans to impeach his successor and has privately spoken with members of the conference on the topic. The former president also suggested in an interview this week that the push for Biden to be impeached may partly be a tit-for-tat effort in response to Trump’s impeachment.

“I think had they not done it to me, and I’m very popular, they like me and I like them, the Republican Party, perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them,” Trump told Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show.

“And this is going to happen with indictments, too. … And I think you’re going to see that as time goes by, you’re going to see Republicans when they’re in power, doing it,” he added. “And it’s a shame when that happens. I’m not in favor of that, but that’s what’s going to happen because that’s human nature.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) this week directed House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden, a move that came as he faced growing pressure from conservative members of the House to move forward with the process.

In the months that the House Oversight Committee has been investigating the Biden family’s business dealings, it has not found that the president directly financially benefited from his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings or proven he made any policy decisions because of them.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to see House Republicans impeach his predecessor, even as several members of the conference have expressed reservations.

The former president wrote in a late August post on Truth Social that Republicans should impeach Biden, or they would “fade into OBLIVION.”

Last weekend, Trump dined with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at his Bedminster, N.J., property. While a Trump adviser declined to comment on the contents of their conversation, Greene was among the earliest advocates for impeaching Biden, dating to when she joined the House in 2021 and Republicans were in the minority.

The former president on Tuesday spoke with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, shortly after McCarthy announced plans to move forward with an impeachment inquiry, underscoring the degree to which Trump remains in the loop with House GOP leadership.

Democrats have seized on Trump’s comments to make the case that House Republicans are only pursuing an impeachment inquiry into Biden for revenge.

“Donald Trump argued what we already know: Republicans’ baseless impeachment inquiry is motivated by politics and revenge,” the Democratic National Committee said in a statement. “Trump’s admission comes after he had been telling his allies in the House to use the same debunked conspiracy theories to pursue their political stunts in an effort to help Trump’s presidential campaign.”

Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was impeached twice during his four years in office.

The first time in 2019 was over his attempts to pressure Ukrainian leadership to investigate the Biden family as his administration withheld military aid.

The second time came in 2021 in the days after the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, when Trump supporters stormed the complex to try and halt the certification of the 2020 election results. Trump had for weeks claimed the election was stolen and had urged his supporters to protest at the Capitol....>

<.....In addition to Trump himself hovering in the background of the House proceedings, the former president’s first impeachment is already factoring into the discourse over how Republicans are handling their inquiry into Biden.

Republicans in 2019 jeered Democrats after they opened an impeachment inquiry without holding a full House vote on the matter.

The Trump Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion at the time concluding that the House “must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation” for the inquiry and subsequent proceedings to be valid.

Now, the tables have turned. Democrats are ridiculing Republicans and accusing McCarthy of hypocrisy because he did not authorize the impeachment inquiry with a full House vote.

Biden, meanwhile, could lean on the Trump-era opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel to push back on the House GOP probe as illegitimate.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week called the probe into Biden a “baseless inquiry that the House Republicans can’t even really defend themselves.”

Experts said that with House Republicans finally moving forward with an impeachment inquiry against Biden, it reflects a new era of politics where impeachment is used as more of a cudgel and as a tool of retribution.

Dave Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College, argued Republicans have faced pressure from their base voters all year to impeach Biden, just as Democratic lawmakers faced pressure from their voters to impeach Trump upon taking the majority in 2019.

“We’ve moved from a time where we went 200-plus years with one impeachment, and then we’ve had three in the last 25 years,” Hopkins said. “And I’m guessing in the next 25 years, there won’t be zero.”>

<Rhetoric expert, Professor Jennifer Mercieca, explained that the way that new "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker held the interview with Donald Trump had no hope of ever being able to adequately fact-check the president.

"Meet the Press" conducted the interview "live to tape," with the claim that they would be fact-checking him. Mercieca outlined that in an hour-long show, there simply isn't enough time to cover the pile of false claims.

"His whole 'reality' is layers upon layers of lies. It's honestly a waste of time," she said. "He lives in a very dark fantasy world. So does the whole right-wing media audience. It's a real shame."

When Trump answers a question, she explained that "he tells 20 lies in the process and you can't stop each of those 20 lies." Especially, she noted, when the reporter simply wants to get to the answer of their actual question.

"It's called a 'gish gallop' by old-timey propaganda folks," she said.

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan wrote about it for The Atlantic when his book about winning debates and arguments came out. The gish gallop "aim is simple: to defeat one’s opponent by burying them in a torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments. Trump owes much of his political success to this tactic—and to the fact that so few people know how to beat it. Although his 2024 campaign has been fairly quiet so far, we can expect to hear a lot more Gish Galloping in the coming months."

Mercieca said that Trump uses a "tone" that makes him sound like a reasonable man, while saying "insane" things. It ultimately confuses the listener.

Comedian Eddie Izzard made that part of her standup routine, where she explained that experts say that it isn't what you say but how you say it and the way that you look. She uses the American National Anthem as the perfect example,

"If you're lost in the middle of it and you're singing the words — you know the Tannoy systems in stadiums, it doesn't matter," she said. "All people care about is the look. There's figures on this, 70 percent of what people react to is the look. Twenty percent is how you sound, and 10 percent is what you say. So, if you look good and sound good, just standing up there — Bahhh wair sa fahhhh!"

Izzard goes on to sing the American national anthem without saying any of the words, but being loud and proud.

"Big mouth!" she proclaims. "The eyes! Use the hand! And keep confirming and denying" in the gestures.

"I'm not sure who the audience is for this interview," said Mercieca about the Trump interview. "I assume MTP viewers are high information voters. Highly engaged/high information voters in the reality-based community would see through his lies. Low-information voters wouldn't know better, but they're not watching this."

"Fascism throughout the interview," she continues. "He calls himself a hero, a martyr. Everything is corrupt, according to him. He is the only truthteller, according to him. The only one who has common sense and wants what is good for the nation. Consuming fascist propaganda like this makes you even more vulnerable to fascist propaganda. It is engineered/designed to create the conditions under which fascism flourishes. You cannot put Trump on TV without normalizing fascism in America."

She cited his tactics including "ad hominem, tu quoque, conspiracy, lies, false accusations of corruption, attacking the interviewer, [and] frame warfare."

"Every response he gives is an evasion," she closed. "He will never answer your questions to your satisfaction. You cannot hold him accountable. You just can't. Trump using anchoring (they like me, we're the same) to talk about his relationship with fascist leaders while also claiming that he wants peace is the kind of rhetorical trick that confuses the brain and makes it difficult to understand what he actually believes.">

<Fox News anchor Shannon Bream confronted House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik on Sunday about House Republicans' "paralyzed chaos" and their low approval rating.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's tenure leading the House GOP conference has been marked by tense divisions between the right-wing hardliners who make up the House Freedom Caucus and more mainstream Republicans. These tensions are coming to a head amid legislative battles over appropriation bills to fund the government, with the most conservative members of Congress threatening to sink funding bills they do not view as sufficiently fiscally conservative.

Due to Republicans' slim majority in the House of Representatives, they can lose only a handful of votes on any given legislation without turning to Democrats for support. The Freedom Caucus contains more than enough to sink these bills, and failure to strike a deal to fund the government through the next fiscal year by the end of the month could result in a government shutdown, fueling economic concerns for millions of Americans.

McCarthy on Wednesday was forced to cancel a vote on the Pentagon appropriations bill due to a lack of support from the conference's conservative flank, underscoring the challenge he faces as he tries to avert a shutdown.

Bream, the anchor of Fox News Sunday, questioned Stefanik about these tensions during the congresswoman's interview appearance on the program. Bream referred to an Axios article that was published on Wednesday that described "paralyzed chaos" in the Republican conference.

The article outlined McCarthy struggling to pass the Pentagon and an agriculture appropriations bill, a divisive impeachment inquiry for President Joe Biden that has faced criticism from more moderate Republicans and Representative Matt Gaetz's pledge to file a motion to vacate the speakership if McCarthy introduces legislation for a continuing resolution to extend current levels of funding through December to allow more time for negotiations.

"Axios puts it this way, 'Republicans have fallen into a state of paralyzed chaos with no obvious exit ramp in a government spending fight of their own creation.' Our brand new Fox News poll also puts congressional approval at 19 percent, so you guys run the House now. What do you tell the American about the fact that we can't even move a defense bill to fund our troops?" Bream asked.

Stefanik, a New York Republican, responded by saying she is optimistic that House Republicans will pass appropriations bills, emphasizing that she has had "productive" conversations with her colleagues.

"Well, we're in a very good place. I've been engaged in a conversation with members of Congress, as well as Speaker McCarthy over the weekend. We are working through this, and I am optimistic that we will continue to move the appropriations process forward, and that includes the DOD [Department of Defense] appropriations bill, but also includes the continuing resolution to ensure that we do not face a government shutdown," Stefanik said.

Stefanik also expressed agreement that House Republicans need to reign [sic] in inflation, a key priority for conservatives, but said McCarthy's support among House Republicans "remains strong," despite rebellion from the conference's right flank. She predicted the House speaker would survive a motion to vacate, but cast doubt that a motion will be filed.

Newsweek reached out to Stefanik's office for comment via email.

Other reports, however, have suggested relations remained strained between McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus. McCarthy reportedly lashed out at the caucus during a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with Politico reporting that he said, "If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the f****** motion.">

<The Supreme Court’s decision siding with Black voters in an Alabama redistricting case gave Democrats and voting rights activists a surprising opportunity before the 2024 elections.

New congressional maps would have to include more districts in Alabama and potentially other states where Black voters would have a better chance of electing someone of their choice, a decision widely seen as benefiting Democrats.

It's been more than three months since the justice's 5-4 ruling, and maps that could produce more districts represented by Black lawmakers still do not exist.

Alabama Republicans are hoping to get a fresh hearing on the issue before the Supreme Court. Republican lawmakers in Louisiana never even bothered to draw a new map.

Khadidah Stone, a plaintiff in the Alabama case, said the continuing opposition was “appalling” but “not surprising.” She noted that Alabama is where then-Gov. George Wallace blocked Black students from integrating the University of Alabama in 1963.

“There is a long history there of disobeying court orders to deny Black people our rights,” she said.

A similar dynamic is playing out in Florida, where Republicans are appealing a ruling favorable to Black voters to the Republican-majority state Supreme Court.

Lawsuits over racially gerrymandered congressional maps in several other states, including Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, quickly followed the Supreme Court’s landmark Voting Rights Act decision in June. But the continued pushback from Republican legislatures in control of redistricting means there is great uncertainty about whether –- or how soon -– new maps offering equal representation for Black voters will be drawn.

Whether the Republican strategy proves to be a defiance of court orders that the Supreme Court will shoot down or a deft political move will be become clearer over the next month.

Shawn Donahue of the State University of New York at Buffalo, an expert on voting rights and redistricting, said the Supreme Court could put a quick end to the delays and “summarily affirm” the decision of a lower court panel that rejected the latest Alabama congressional map. That map continued to provide just one majority Black district out of seven in a state where Black residents comprise 27% of the population.

“You could have some of (the justices) just kind of say — ‘You know what, I didn’t agree, but that’s what the ruling was,’” Donahue said.

The Supreme Court also could agree to hear Alabama’s challenge, bringing the state’s redistricting plans back to the court less than a year after it rendered its opinion in the previous case.

Republicans want to keep their map in place as the state continues to fight the lower court ruling ordering them to create a second district where Black voters constitute a majority or close to it. The state contends the Supreme Court set no such remedy and that the new map complies with the court's decision by fixing the problems it identified — such as how the state’s Black Belt region was split into multiple districts.

“A stay is warranted before voters are sorted into racially gerrymandered districts that are by their very nature odious,’ the state attorney general’s office wrote in the stay request.

The stakes are high. With Republicans holding a slim majority in the U.S. House, the redistricting cases have the potential to switch control of the chamber next year.

Shortly after its decision in the Alabama case, the Supreme Court lifted its hold on a similar case from Louisiana, raising hopes among Democrats that the state would be forced to draw another Black majority congressional district.

But even if the court rejects Alabama’s latest plan, it would not necessarily bring an instant end to the case in Louisiana, where U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick has ruled that a second majority-Black district must be drawn.

Dick has three days of hearings scheduled to begin Oct. 3. But her initial order blocking the 2022 congressional map drawn by Louisiana’s GOP-controlled Legislature -- which maintains white majorities in five of six districts in a state where about one-third of voters are Black — remains on appeal. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is to hear arguments Oct. 6.

Louisiana’s lawyers argue that the Black communities the plaintiffs and the district court seek to include in a second majority Black district are too far-flung, even under the Alabama precedent.

The high court’s decision in the Alabama case “did not present a free pass to future plaintiffs to establish (Voting Rights Act) liability without proving that the relevant minority population is itself compact,” Louisiana said in its argument....>

<.....The voting rights advocates suing the state argue that the plans they have suggested so far are “on average more compact” than the plan the state is trying to preserve.

Stuart Naifeh, who is a plaintiff as part of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in Louisiana that the court is considering the maps drawn by only the plaintiffs because the Legislature chose not to draw any. Louisiana state Rep. Sam Jenkins Jr., a Democrat, said he is optimistic now that the matter is in the courts.

“We had the opportunity to do the right thing, which would have been fair for all the people of Louisiana,” he said. “I am disappointed that the court still has to come in and make our state do what is right.”

Louisiana’s argument against a second district has less merit than Alabama’s, said state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat. Louisiana has just one majority Black congressional district out of six even though Black residents account for one-third of the state's population. That lone district encompasses both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

“These are two distinct cities, two distinct regions, two distinct interests and needs, and it only makes sense to have these two large communities to anchor individual congressional districts,” Duplessis said. “We have shown that there is a multitude of ways to draw a map that has two majority Black districts that meet all the criteria for fair redistricting.”

A similar case is playing out in Florida, though not in federal court.

A state judge ruled earlier this month that a redistricting plan pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential contender, should be redrawn because it diminishes the ability of Black voters in north Florida to pick a representative of their choice.

The state is appealing that ruling, and the case might be fast-tracked to the Florida Supreme Court, where five of the seven justices were appointed by DeSantis. Both sides are requesting a quick resolution before the next legislative session in case districts need to be redrawn for the 2024 elections.

The new map essentially drew Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, who is Black, out of office by carving up his district and dividing a large number of Black voters into conservative districts represented by white Republicans. DeSantis contended the previous district extended 200 miles just to link Black communities, violating the constitutional standards for compactness.

Angie Nixon, a Black state representative from Jacksonville, was one of the Democratic lawmakers who led a protest against the DeSantis map. She said she is still hopeful the state's high court will ultimately deliver the outcome wanted by voting rights groups.

Nixon said groups have been organizing to get more people engaged.

“We are going to use this as an opportunity to serve as a catalyst to get people moving and get people out to vote,” she said.>

<In 2020, North Carolina seemed the model of an evenly-divided swing state. Then-President Donald Trump barely won, beating Democrat Joe Biden by just over a percentage point. Meanwhile, the state's Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, won reelection by a relatively comfortable 5 points.

Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina's congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP.

But it's the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes over Democrats' objections and this week could vote to wrest power from the governor over how the state's elections are run.

In both cases, Republicans are expected to override the governor's veto thanks to their legislative supermajorities.

Those major changes will come on the heels of similar power plays by the Republican legislative majority in Wisconsin, another battleground state where the GOP has lost a series of statewide races.

Republican lawmakers there are trying to fire the state's nonpartisan elections director and are considering impeaching a newly elected justice on the state Supreme Court. Her victory earlier this year gave the court a liberal majority that could strike down the Republican gerrymander that has given the party its outsized statehouse clout. Wisconsin voters have elected Democrats to all but one of the statewide executive offices that are decided on a partisan basis.

While both parties engage in gerrymandering, the dynamics in North Carolina and Wisconsin go beyond mere redistricting fights and offer a vivid illustration of how Republicans are attempting to maintain power regardless of their level of support among voters. The moves could give the GOP disproportionate influence over everything from partisan redistricting to the certification of next year’s presidential election.

“The fact that these are both purple states is ironically what leads to the brass knuckles politics we see in Wisconsin and North Carolina,” said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. In both states, he said, Republican politicians feel “they need to act because they could legitimately lose power.”

Republicans in Wisconsin and North Carolina are aided by their parties' geographic distribution during statehouse elections. Democrats are clustered in two metro areas of each state — Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin, and Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. That makes it more likely that even fairly drawn legislative districts covering urban areas will be overloaded with Democrats, leaving fewer of the party's voters to compete elsewhere and giving the GOP an edge in the remaining seats.

In North Carolina, even with the congressional delegation splitting evenly last year, Republicans won close to a supermajority of seats in the state legislature. They achieved that status this year when a Democratic House member switched her party.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, said less than 15% of the precincts were competitive statewide in 2022.

“It doesn't take much creativity to tilt districts one way or another,” he said.

The GOP-controlled North Carolina General Assembly had tried to tilt districts more aggressively, drawing maps that favored them even more. Their plan was struck down by the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court as an illegal gerrymander.

But Republicans are now in the majority on the court, which has signaled that the legislature is clear to draw the districts to more aggressively favor the party next year. That could lock in their supermajority status for several more election cycles.

That's occurring as the legislature muscles through two election bills that are propelled partly by Republican voters' lingering beliefs of Trump's lies that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election. One bill would end the state's three-day grace period for mailed ballots arriving after Election Day and loosen poll-watching rules in a way that critics worry could lead to intimidation of voters....>

<.....The other is potentially more consequential. It would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state election board and give that authority to the legislature.

Bill proponents say having leaders of both major parties picking equal numbers of board members would promote bipartisanship and consensus election policies.

But critics say having a board split evenly between the two parties would lead to gridlock, creating a situation where the stalemates would be settled by the Republican-controlled legislature or the Republican-dominated courts — a possibility that could include next year's presidential contest.

The legislation also could lead to the possible ouster of the state's respected elections director just months before the presidential election. There have been no widespread problems or concerns with voting in North Carolina under her watch.

“I’ve spoken out against these moves that are not about election security,” Cooper told reporters this past week. “They are only about keeping and gaining power for Republicans.”

Republicans contend the legislature should have more supervision of voting and other key regulatory functions. A bill already vetoed by Cooper would erode his appointment powers to boards that set electricity rates, make environmental policies and build roads.

“The legislature is the elected body closest to the people of North Carolina and has the ability to recruit a qualified, diverse roster of appointees,” Republican state Sen. Warren Daniel, a sponsor of the broader appointments bill, said recently.

That's been a theme of North Carolina governance for centuries. The state has stood out for having an unusually strong legislature and weak governor, who was the last in the nation to be able to veto legislation, only gaining that power in 1997.

“Our state was founded with the notion that the legislative branch would be the branch with the most authority,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in June. “Our state’s not set up with three separate co-equal branches. It was clearly contemplated and spelled out in the (state) Constitution that the legislative branch was to have the most authority because it’s the closest to people.”

That stands in sharp contrast with Wisconsin, where until recently the Legislature acted like a fairly typical law-making body. But since Republicans won the statehouse in 2010 and drew heavily gerrymandered maps that guaranteed their party's control of both chambers, the Legislature has become increasingly confrontational with the states' Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Republican lawmakers blocked Evers from installing many appointees on state boards. Last week, the state Senate voted to fire the state's nonpartisan election director, drawing an immediate legal challenge. After voters overwhelmingly elected a Democratic-backed justice to the state Supreme Court earlier this year, flipping the majority from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years, the Legislature threatened to impeach her — even before she had heard a case.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos offered to drop the impeachment if Democrats agreed to a new redistricting process he cast as nonpartisan, something Evers rejected as a sham proposal. To Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator, the sharpness of Evers' rejection symbolized the depths to which Wisconsin politics have plunged.

“Nobody wants half a loaf; they'd rather starve,” Schultz said. He reserved most of his scorn, however, for the Legislature's maneuvers.

“We see increasingly desperate measures to hang onto power,” he said.>

<Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a n***** in my life. I like n******—in their place—I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n****** are gonna stay in their place. N****** ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a n***** gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that n***** throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'>

<Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), one of the hardline congressional Republicans who has vowed to vote against a continuing resolution aimed at averting a government shutdown, released his list of demands for what he needs before getting on board with keeping the federal government open.

Writing on Twitter, Ogles put out a list of items that would need to be on offer in exchange for backing the continuing resolution – and roughly all of them are nonstarters for the majority of Congress.

"1. Fund wall, close border," the list began. "2. Establish House 'Byrd' Committee on Reduction of Non-Essential Spending 3. Release J6 Videos 4. Holman Rule - Defund Mayorkas and Jack Smith."

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been reluctant to release all of the security footage taken from the January 6th Capitol riots on the grounds that it could expose security vulnerabilities inside the building.

What's more, the chances that the House of Representatives, let alone the Democratic-led United States Senate, would vote to defund the man leading multiple criminal prosecutions against former President Donald Trump is simply outside the realm of possibility.

Over the weekend, the House Freedom Caucus and the Main Street Caucus got together and came up with a continuing resolution that would keep the government open for at least another month. However, hopes for that resolution quickly died when multiple House Republicans came out firmly against it shortly after it was announced.>

<Late last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shocked people who follow American conservatism after a spokesperson issued a statement distancing the institution from Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad and subject of the breakout summer hit film Sound of Freedom. Ballard had “betrayed his friendship” with a prominent LDS leader, the statement to Vice declared, and his fundraising activities were deemed “morally unacceptable.”

It was a rare and stunning rebuke for a church that rarely speaks out about individual members. It was also a blow to Ballard, a rising star rumored to be eyeing the Utah Senate seat that is opening up due to Mitt Romney’s decision to retire. Then, on Monday, Vice revealed that Ballard’s resignation from Operation Underground Railroad earlier this year came after an internal investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving seven female employees.

Even with this news, the dispute between Ballard and the church might appear odd to many observers. The LDS church is more commonly known for cracking down on progressive voices, after all.

Yet there has been a growing divide between the LDS church and far-right-wing members for over a decade now. The radicalization of American conservatism—with its denunciation of mainstream news sources, forfeiture of traditional norms, and embrace of partisan-based “alternative facts”—has had severe consequences within Mormon culture. The erupting fight between Ballard, a growing hero on the far right, and Latter-day Saints leaders is just one point of public exposure for a much broader phenomenon.

The Latter-day Saints church has had no shortage of schisms in its 200-year history. Scholars have identified over 400 religious “expressions” that date back to the “Church of Christ,” the name of the first church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.

For any church to thrive, leaders must always balance competing tensions. On the one hand, they are forced to adapt to changing circumstances; conversely, they must also appeal to eternal truths that transcend evolving societies. So when institutions like the LDS church are believed to be tipping too far to the former impulse at the expense of the latter, there is often cause for discomfort, especially from conservative believers who denounce modern society as corrupt.

Added to this tension, in this specific historical situation, is the growing radicalization of the American right. White evangelicals have, for much of the 20th century, developed competing foundations for truth and moral values that are in opposition to what are deemed “secular” principles. Questions surrounding gender, history, and knowledge are answered through tribal politics rather than intellectual inquiry. Even religion itself is more commonly understood through a political prism.

Latter-day Saints, who had long been a target of American evangelicals who deemed their religion invalid, suddenly became their compatriots in battle during the culture wars of the 1970s and 1980s. Due to their ability to deliver on key social issues, like opposition to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, they were folded into the coalition known as the religious right. This granted the faith new social acceptance and cultural power. However, it also resulted in increasingly blurred boundaries between religious authority and far-right principles. As with white evangelicals, the doctrine of partisanship became inseparable from the doctrine of Christ.

Such an overlap makes it difficult, therefore, when the two spheres come into conflict. It explains why, for instance, so many American Mormons were hesitant to follow the church’s counsel to get vaccinated and wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explains why Mormons came in second to white evangelicals in polls determining which denominations were most likely to believe Donald Trump’s lies concerning the 2020 election.

Disputing church authority on secular issues is common, of course. But the divisions become more potent when they concern supposed religious truths.

Tim Ballard has made a career by cultivating a certain image. He is a “patriot” dedicated to saving women and children from nefarious evils in the world. Ballard frequently speaks of global cabals dedicated to feasting on the innocent; observers have often identified how much of his discourse relates closely to QAnon conspiracies. Operation Underground Railroad, founded in 2013, claims to have emancipated more than 6,000 women and children and to have helped capture over 5,000 criminals. Yet experts have disputed these claims and have argued that OUR’s approach does more harm than good in the field....>

<.....Not that this criticism bothers Ballard. In his carefully cultivated narrative, Ballard is the strong man who is standing up to waves of misinformation as a heroic truth-teller. In the past few years he’s become a rising star in the right-wing mediaverse, meeting with Donald Trump in the White House and testifying before Congress, as well as a global celebrity through Sound of Freedom.

Ballard’s brand of revisionist truth-telling has been especially popular within the LDS community. He wrote a series of books, marketed by the Latter-day Saints publisher Deseret Books, on America’s founding figures—the pilgrims, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln—that utterly dismiss existing scholarship. Washington, Ballard argues, was visited by the Angel Moroni, the same divine figure who delivered the gold plates to Joseph Smith; Lincoln, conversely, was inspired to write the Emancipation Proclamation after reading the Book of Mormon.

Scholars have frequently pointed out the shoddy historical work in these books, but no bother: Ballard and his supporters have a well-developed script to dismiss secular threats to God’s truth.

Nor is Ballard alone in offering revisionist histories of the faith. There has been a growing number of Latter-day Saints who are uncomfortable with the church’s professionalized historical department shattering traditional myths. Most jarring for many is the increasingly clear picture of Smith’s practice of polygamy that this department has produced. After a new church-sponsored historical essay admitted that Smith had up to 40 plural wives, it shocked and angered LDS members who missed the earlier, simpler depictions of the faith’s founder. Many of these members congregated around Denver Snuffer, a lawyer who denounced church leaders for giving up sacred doctrines in a quest for social acceptance. He declared that Smith never practiced polygamy but that plural marriage was introduced by Brigham Young, Smith’s successor.

Snuffer was excommunicated in 2013, but his conspiracies, especially those that tell a declension narrative about the church, continue to be popular. More recently, a new conspiracy, led by Phil Davis, a Utah chocolatier, has gained popularity by borrowing from broader fears concerning the “deep state.” A multipart documentary produced by this group alleges that Smith’s death at Carthage Jail in 1844 was an “inside job” performed by apostles, rather than an anti-Mormon mob. This and several other “alternative facts” efforts reveal a growing dissatisfaction in a particular conservative segment of the church with mainstream truths.

Though Ballard has certainly flirted with QAnon conspiracies in the past, he has not been part of these groups that directly challenge the church. His problems with the church, according to Vice, were initially related to him apparently using the name of church apostle M. Russell Ballard (no relation) as part of his fundraising. Speculatively speaking, one might imagine that today’s news of the allegations of sexual misconduct could provide further reason for the church’s anxiousness to distance itself from him. The statement to Vice was not clear about what particular actions were deemed “morally unacceptable,” after all....>

<....In a previous age, such allegations would likely end someone’s career. Yet in the era marked by a conservative base pledging fidelity to someone like Donald Trump, Ballard is poised to take advantage of a playbook that has already been prepared.

Ballard’s first public remarks after the church’s statement last week came in what appears to be a well-choreographed monologue at a Revolutionary War monument in Boston. The site, indeed, symbolizes secession. “It’s not true,” he insisted, dismissing the allegations that he was using Apostle Ballard’s name in an unauthorized way. “All the press” was spreading lies. While at first he said, “I don’t believe the church did this,” Ballard’s speech eventually came to a crescendo, describing a grand conspiracy. It was not a coincidence, he claimed, that there was a coordinated attempt to smear his name just as it became known he might run for the Senate. “I pray to God,” he concluded, that the church “wasn’t part of this.”

“Thank you for filming,” Ballard told those gathered around him by the monument. He encouraged them to send their videos to news outlets. Ballard is nothing if not a showman.

Others were quick to back him up. Far-right media personality Glenn Beck, who is also a Latter-day Saint, offered his support on X in a since-deleted thread, claiming that “effectively excommunicat[ing] church members” was something his “church never used to do.” (The thread was deleted within hours of being posted, before Vice published the sexual misconduct allegations on Monday.) And social media was filled with accusations that Vice had made up the statement (despite it being confirmed by other outlets), that the statement was given by a rogue public relations worker, or that church leaders had lost their spine.

It is yet to be seen what the entire fallout will be. But whether or not Ballard publicly breaks with the church, the dispute is yet another example of conservative angst within an evolving church that continues to wrestle with how to control its members. As the Latter-day Saints tradition remains firmly entrenched within America’s far-right circles, disputes over final authority, historical truth, and moral initiatives will continue to be contested space.>

<Last Tuesday, former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney tweeted this in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that the criminal indictments of Trump are politically motivated:

“Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party. Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it."

In reality, the Putin wing of the Republican Party has taken over the Republican Party. The GOP no longer believes in the values of liberal democracy. It has become a cesspool of authoritarian nihilism.

As Mitt Romney told the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, “a very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

The GOP is now a rogue elephant — increasingly dangerous, out of control, and on a rampage.

Knowing that most of the American public rejects it, it’s busily repressing votes through extreme partisan gerrymandering and new barriers to voting.

Notwithstanding zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden, it’s seeking to impeach him.

Even though there’s still no basis for Trump’s big lie that he won the 2020 election, most Republican lawmakers continue to support it.

A growing number of House and Senate Republicans are questioning America’s commitment to defending Ukraine.

House Republicans are about renege on the deal they made before the debt ceiling was lifted, and shutter the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans are threatening to impeach a State Supreme Court justice who disagrees with their agenda. Tennessee Republicans have expelled Democratic lawmakers who supported an anti-gun protest.

Alabama Republicans are denying Black voters the opportunity to elect another representative to Congress. Florida Republicans have suspended an elected official because they don’t like their policies.

The GOP engaged in authoritarian antics before Trump (see: Gingrich, Newt), but Trump has pushed the Party over the edge, morally and politically.

Trump has so profoundly poisoned the Republican Party — filling it with election deniers, bigots, paranoids, and anti-democracy zealots — that it won’t recover its capacity to govern even after Trump leaves the stage.

Frankly, I don’t give a fig about the Republican Party. But I do care deeply about this nation. And America needs two major political parties capable of governing. Right now, only the Democratic Party has that capacity.

As long as the Trump Republican Party exists, it poses a profound danger to American democracy.

What should be done, and who should do it?

America needs a third party that stands for all the things conservative Republicans stood for before Gingrich and Trump — limited government, fiscal prudence, a strong defense against dictators and autocrats, and the stability and integrity of the nation’s major institutions.

Is Mitt Romney the person to start such a Real Republican Party? He’s now basking in the adulation of the Washington establishment because he had the courage to utter some truths about Trump when the former president was in power and just announced he won’t be running again.

But Romney is too elitist and too, well, 2012.

The person to lead it is Liz Cheney. She should run for president on a third-party Real Republican ticket....>

<.....I’m sure there are plenty of anti-Trump Republicans willing to support this effort. Some of them, I expect, have enough money to get the Real Republican Party on the ballot in most states. There’s still time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not endorsing Liz Cheney for president. I’ve disagreed with too many of her policy ideas and votes over the years.

I’m merely suggesting that it would be good for all of us if she took the reins of a new Republican Party — good for Republicans, good for Democrats, good for democracy, good for America.

When it comes to the survival of American democracy, Liz Cheney has displayed more courage and integrity than any other member of her party.

Six days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump — Cheney charged on the House floor that “the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”

The next day, Cheney joined just nine other House Republicans and 222 Democrats in voting to impeach Trump. (Few, if any, of these principled Republicans remain in the House today. Most have resigned or been purged.)

Then, as vice chair of the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigating the causes of the Jan. 6 attack, Cheney ceaselessly and tirelessly helped lay out the case against Trump.

To get revenge, Trump did everything possible to end Cheney’s career. He selected Cheney’s opponent in the 2022 Wyoming Republican primary, Harriet Hageman — who rallied behind Trump and amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — and made sure Hageman won.

I think it would be a fitting rebuke to Trump — as fitting politically as his criminal convictions will be legally — to have Liz Cheney create a new Real Republican Party that replaces the squalor of Trump’s (and Putin’s) GOP.

What do you think?>

<The United Auto Workers are now on strike, and writers and actors have been striking against Hollywood studios for months. These work stoppages are clearly frustrating for the extremely wealthy, but I’m happy to say one anonymous executive had the courage to share his thoughts with the strikers.

Dear striking poors:

I am a wealthy executive involved in both the auto and film industries, and I’m writing today to politely ask you to halt your labor strikes before you do any more harm to me or my family, including my three purebred Tibetan mastiffs: Hampton, Belvedere and Harrumph.

Your unwillingness to accept the generous, more-than-zero wages you’re being offered is rude, and I don’t think you’ve given much thought to how your work stoppage might inconvenience people like me who are more important than you. Thanks to your “desire for an equitable wage,” several of my children have been forced to consider what it would be like to work for a living, and we’ve had to wean the mastiffs off wagyu to a wagyu-Angus cross, which has a lower marbling score that has made them impish.

Striking workers think they deserve an equitable wage? HAH!

Before I go on, you should know my bona fides. I have spent my entire adult life working in board rooms that at times have served unbottled water and had humidity controls that fluctuate too much for my taste. I once perspired. While amassing a great fortune, I have devoted myself to philanthropy, making sure my second mansion (of four) is clearly visible from the street so underprivileged people can see it and feel inspired.

Like the CEOs at the Big Three auto companies, my pay has increased by 40% over the last decade, so you can imagine my shock when the roughnecks at the United Auto Workers union said their workers should see a similar pay increase.

What a preposterous suggestion. If we executives start increasing worker pay at the same rate we increase our own pay, we might wind up with less of the more-money-than-we-know-what-to-do-with that we currently have. That’s a nonstarter.

If I don’t have more money than I know what to do with, I might start figuring out what to do with the money I have, and next thing you know I might be distributing that money more equitably among the people who helped me get that money in the first place.

THAT WOULD BE LUDICROUS!

How dare Hollywood writers and actors demand they be paid more than 100 times less than me!

The same goes for the striking Hollywood writers. Is there a Los Angeles Times analysis showing that the pay for Hollywood executives is up 53% from 2018 and is more than 100 times that of the average writer’s pay?....>

<.....I don’t know. I can’t find that copy of the Times because butler No. 4 accidentally left it in the spot where I like to build my money forts. Do you expect me to knock down a perfectly good money fort just so I can learn something that might make me feel empathy for another human being? (I’m kidding, my empathy gland was removed during my last plastic surgery!)

Look, all I know is your recalcitrance is putting me at risk. If these strikes go on much longer I could slip from the top 0.0001% to the top 0.001%, which would be mortifying.

We don't need you striking workers to build our cars

You all think you’re SO special and talented that you deserve some say in whether it’s “fair” that families in the top 1% in America earn more than 26 times what families in the bottom 99% earn – or that the top 10% of the population has seen its real income grow by 145% since 1980 while the bottom 50% has seen only 20% income growth.

As if we, the proud elites who deserve the hard-earned money we’ve made watching you all work hard, even need you silly people.

Republican or Democrat? Florida and Michigan show voters which side has a heart.

I bet my son Binkley could build a car just as well as any of you ungrateful union types.

BINKLEY! BUILD ME A CAR!

Oops. I forgot Binkley is on a wellness retreat recovering from the trauma of getting mud on his shoes during the daylong brie famine at this year’s Burning Man.

Regardless, I'm sure I can find competent people to build cars for me, people who wouldn't make outrageous demands like the reinstatement of pensions, job security and the return of benefits cut during the Great Recession of 2008.

UAW, WGA and SAG must call off their strikes
The bottom line is this: STOP STRIKING!

It’s unseemly and it’s un-American. This country was built on the exfoliated and pilates-strengthened backs of important people like me, and I will not stand idly by while you hoi polloi grouse and moan about your wages being preposterously out of line with executive wages.

Would it help if we offered you free soup? You seem to like that stuff.

Of course if we do that, next you’ll be asking for spoons or bowls or something. It’s a slippery slope.

Disney, Netflix better listen: Pay your writers and actors, or you'll have to answer to us, the un-entertained

Think about how these strikes might be harming the wealthy

Meanwhile my family and I are wrecked with worry over our mastiffs’ gastronomic issues and wondering if we’ll have to cancel this year’s vacation No. 7. (It’s not like we can just return the island we bought!)

Shame on all of you for selfishly demanding things that mathematically and morally make sense. WE WILL NOT YIELD TO YOUR DEMANDS!

(Unless we have to bump the mastiffs down to USDA Select. That might be a bridge too far.)>

<House Republicans’ newly announced impeachment inquiry into President Biden compares unfavorably with Donald Trump’s impeachments in many ways.

An op-ed by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) published by The Washington Post on Friday spotlighted one of the most significant: the intraparty pushback.

Buck, the member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus who has emerged as an unlikely critic of the GOP’s “weaponization” and impeachment efforts, was unsparing. Rather than merely saying the inquiry was premature or counterproductive, he argued it was effectively based on a myth.

Central to the GOP’s impeachment effort is the idea that then-Vice President Biden’s push to oust Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in 2015 was corrupt. To hear members of Buck’s party and conservative media tell it, that’s because Shokin was looking into Burisma, the Ukrainian company whose board included Hunter Biden.

Except that appears to be the opposite of what was happening; the Obama White House and others in the West wanted Shokin out because he was soft on corruption.

As Buck takes care to emphasize:

The dominant narrative in right-wing media is that Shokin was an anti-corruption zealot with an active investigation into Burisma, the company where Hunter Biden held a seat on the board of directors, and from which he reportedly received large monthly payments. The truth about Shokin is much more complicated and runs counter to the GOP’s “gotcha” narrative. In reality, Shokin was deeply enmeshed in Ukraine’s culture of corruption and, far from being a beacon of transparency, was viewed by many in the West — including some conservative Republican senators — as an obstacle to anti-corruption reforms. There is, in fact, no evidence that Shokin was engaged in an investigation of Burisma, or that Joe Biden’s role in his firing was in any way connected to Burisma.

Not content to let the point pass in a couple of paragraphs, Buck continued:

These facts — like all facts — are stubborn things.

Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history. Their inquiry, formally announced by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday, rests heavily on a fictitious version of Shokin’s career, with the alleged investigation of Burisma at the center. It’s a neat story, and one that performs well in certain media circles. But impeachment is a serious matter and should have a foundation of rock-solid facts.

“The GOP’s ‘gotcha’ narrative.” “No evidence.” “Itching for an impeachment.” “An imagined history.” “A fictitious version of Shokin’s career.”

Buck could have just said it’s too early to be talking about impeachment. He could have said the alleged offenses aren’t impeachable. Instead, he went after the supposed facts underlying impeachment, accusing his own allies of effectively inventing a justification to do something they already wanted to do. (Indeed, Buck predicted 17 months ago that Republicans would impeach Biden.).....>