<A House hearing featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci devolved into the type of dramatic, attention-grabbing partisan infighting that has come to define the 118th Congress.

It's a dynamic that is leading many of the House's low-key workhorses to head for the exits, making way for the ranks of more bombastic legislators to grow.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified Monday morning before the House's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

It was Fauci's first appearance on Capitol Hill since 2022, when he ended a decades-long government career that saw him emerge as the public face of the federal government's efforts to combat COVID.

The appearance came as former Fauci aide David Morens has come under bipartisan fire for using a personal email to communicate about COVID origins, bypassing federal disclosure rules.

Fauci clashed bitterly with many of the Republicans on the panel, but the testiness of those exchanges paled in comparison to the hostility he faced from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Greene refused to address Fauci with the honorific "doctor," instead referring to him as "Mr. Fauci."

"Mr. Fauci – because you're not 'doctor,' you're Mr. Fauci in my few minutes ... That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in prison," she said.

Greene repeatedly talked over and berated Fauci during her questioning, at one point cutting him off and saying: "Nah, I don't need your answer."

The Coronavirus panel is a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, which has hosted some of the most raucous hearings of the last year and a half.

It was bound to get chaotic.

As one of them, a woman holding a coffee cup, was being escorted out, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted at her: "Take your Starbucks with you!"

Democrats, who largely praised and defended Fauci during their questioning, pushed back on Greene's treatment of the former NIAID head.

Raskin, the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, asked: "In terms of the rules of decorum, are we allowed to deny that a doctor is a doctor just because we don't want him to be a doctor?"

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said it is "completely unacceptable to deny Dr. Fauci, who is a respected member of the medical community, his title."

"He's not respected. I'm not addressing him as doctor," Greene responded.

The COVID subcommittee chair, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), even stepped in to tell Greene that she "should recognize the doctor as a doctor."

"Is this what we have become? Is this what we have devolved into? No decorum," Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) lamented of Greene's comments.

Mfume and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) attempted to have Greene's comments stricken from the record, which would have restricted her from speaking during the hearing.

Garcia, who sits on all the same committees as Greene, told Axios in an interview after the hearing, "I personally don't think she should be on any committees."

"In talking to people that are retiring, I think you will hear them say that it's a very toxic place ... and there's nobody that brings more of that toxic energy and makes this place more unbearable than her."

One House Republican, asked if the outbursts at the hearing are indicative of why many lawmakers are retiring, told Axios: "Yes.">

<Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) called out Republicans’ “hypocrisy” toward the Supreme Court after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) suggested SCOTUS should intervene in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict.

“The hypocrisy of these guys. We back the blue, we back the blue. Well then the blue go and issue a search warrant on their guy and all of a sudden they want to defund the police, right?” said Swalwell in an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”

He continued, “They say they’re all for state’s rights and then they get a court that overturns Roe v. Wade and now they want a federal abortion ban. And then they say that court should be independent and respected but, by the way, if we need to we can back channel to them. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s just about serving Trump.”

Swalwell’s remarks arrive days after Chief Justice John Roberts turned down Senate Democrats’ request to meet with him regarding Justice Samuel Alito, who is the focus of reports on controversial flag displays at his properties.

The lawmakers, in their letter, asked if he’d discuss the need for Alito to recuse himself from 2020 election-related cases.

Congress could act on Alito’s flag scandal, however, it appears unlikely lawmakers would issue a subpoena to either Alito or Roberts, Politico noted.

“The Weekend” co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend, former senior adviser for the Biden 2020 campaign, tossed to a clip of Johnson’s recent remarks that he knows many Supreme Court justices personally and he thinks they’re “deeply concerned” about Trump’s hush money case.

“I think they’ll set this straight but it’s going to take awhile, you’re right, the process takes awhile to play out,” said Johnson in a Fox News appearance on Friday.

“The Weekend” co-host Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, questioned Johnson’s comments about thinking the justices were “deeply concerned.”

“For me, it’s not a dilemma for Democrats in the Senate. This is not a dilemma. You demand the conversation with the chief justice because this is fragrant [sic] violation of crossing lines politically,” he said.>

<On Monday, former President Donald Trump vented about being found guilty in New York of 34 counts of falsifying business records and suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court step in to prevent Judge Juan Merchan from sentencing him in the case.

“The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!” Trump wrote.

While the high court is unlikely to intervene in the sentencing of the former president found guilty by a jury in a state court proceeding, it is expected to issue a ruling at any time on whether the principle of presidential immunity protects Trump from prosecution in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

But whatever the court decides, the ruling will affect not only that criminal case, but at least two of the others he is facing as well. Here’s why:

Jan. 6 election interference

In April, the high court heard oral arguments on the presidential immunity question after a federal appeals court upheld Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were not part of his official presidential duties.

Chutkan has paused the Jan. 6 election interference case until the Supreme Court issues its ruling. If the court rules in Trump’s favor, agreeing that former presidents are protected from criminal prosecution unless first impeached and convicted by Congress, the trial will not move forward. If the justices rule in the government’s favor, the case could conceivably go to trial before the 2024 presidential election.

Based on the questions from the justices, most legal analysts believe that the court will not give Trump blanket protection from prosecution, but could issue a ruling that would require another court to examine each of the charges against Trump to try to clarify whether his behavior, such spreading false claims about the outcome of the election, should be characterized as an official act.

If that happens, the start date of the trial could be pushed back until after the 2024 election. That’s significant because if Trump is reelected, he could direct his attorney general to simply drop the case against him.

Georgia election interference

Trump and 14 others face felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia, stemming from their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in that battleground state, and if the Supreme Court were to rule in Trump’s favor on presidential immunity, his lawyers would quickly press Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to drop the 10 felony counts against him.

In January, Trump filed a court motion with McAfee to dismiss the state charges on the grounds that past Supreme Court precedent "shields President Trump from criminal prosecution for acts within the 'outer perimeter' of his official duties."

Proceedings in the trial are currently on hold as McAfee awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity and Trump’s lawyers pursue an appeal of McAfee’s decision to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case despite allegations of misconduct. On Monday, the Georgia appeals court scheduled the case to be heard in October.

A Supreme Court ruling on the immunity question that goes even partially in Trump’s favor would result in a new round of court challenges from Trump’s lawyers that would almost certainly drag the case into 2024 or 2025.

Classified documents

At the core of Trump’s defense in the classified documents case is his contention that, because he was president when he decided to send boxes containing classified documents to his Florida home, he can’t be prosecuted for doing so. In February, Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Aileen Cannon to drop all 40 felony counts brought by Smith on those grounds.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, has already delayed the trial so that it would very likely begin after the presidential election.

Should the Supreme Court rule that presidential immunity protects Trump from prosecution, the classified documents case could be quashed before a trial begins.>

<....Furthermore, don't believe all the crap that volunteer editors feed you. Such are trying to dissuade your examination of these dirty deeds when they should be encouraging an investigation (IF they truly cared about what is good for this website). What THEY care about is having POWER, and that includes the power to harass, silence, and DESTROY. They're striving to keep their dirty deeds from you knowing....>

Nice bit of projection here; sounds as though <you> thirst for power and the attendant ability to punish those whom you believe have 'persecuted' you.

<....MissScarlett has a long history of supporting trolling and cyberstalking when she was given the power to stop it. Instead, she pulls the plug and suspends FTB and Messiah for the simplest of posts. She has bragged of such, while doing little to correct the perpetrators, her pals in the wrong.

It is also known that Stonehenge/nok The Destroyer should never, ever be trusted with the powers granted. That's a no-brainer. I wonder who feeds into Stonehenge? [....]

<Obviously, the IT experiments on my account were NOT authorized given your statements above. The IT department has programmed itself the POWER to INVADE, RESTRICT operation, and DESTROY anything they wish in a collection, and the account itself, such as my personal forum.>....>

Do you have even the slightest substantiation for this?

<....A simple and obvious example of IT inference within my account is my PERSONAL FORUM: Mine was the first to be deliberately ALTERED (it was just WEEKS old last year, an infant -- but its function was deliberately altered; another sign that FTB's account is stalked by CGs operators on a DAILY basis).

The change made my personal forum unreadable from the forum's column unlike other members' personal forums that openly show their statements. A member has to go directly to FTB's personal forum and click on it to read it when open. I complained about this restriction! My account was not corrected, but then MissScarlett's PF was also modified to appear like mine, her forum being years older... but suddenly changed. (In other words, "she took one for the team.") Do you really think that Missy is not involved in CG coverups?? Instigator, facilitator is more like it....>

Same question as above.

<....As I have repeatedly warned, the on-going injustices against my account will continue to spread, and <the problem will continue to grow>. Punishment by removal is the only thing that will halt such dishonesty.>

You routinely perpetrate injustices against those whom you regard as your enemies.

+ + + [....]

<....The CGs operator who just slashed my adjusted profile is GUILTY, and highly likely one of the invaders deliberately destroying my collections. That dishonest person must be dismissed for the good of the company, or more destruction will happen at THEIR whim!....>

Good of you to dictate policy.

<....What's more, I have a couple game posts recently deleted at the end of May at the same time my personal forum was stripped away. That CGs operator who erased my freedom of speech should be removed.

Don't pretend nothing is wrong. FTB is not telling fairy tales here. Take action, issue severe consequences, and stop this unfairness!>

<Along-shot MAGA political stunt to personally interfere with the judge who ultimately found Donald Trump liable for bank fraud fizzled out quietly months ago, according to a state document marked “confidential” obtained by The Daily Beast.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron and his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, were cleared by a state commission of allegations of “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance.”

The decision appears to have caught by surprise the Republican congresswoman who filed the complaint. Asked on Monday about its dismissal, staff for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) responded by demanding to know on what basis The Daily Beast could assert the complaint went nowhere. Stefanik’s executive director, Alex DeGrasse, did not say whether the congresswoman had received a copy of the decision.

During Trump’s bank fraud trial last year, the former president employed allies to engage in bad faith attacks on Engoron and Greenfield. The most prominent was an ethics complaint filed by Stefanik to the state’s judicial commission, describing “serious concerns about … inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance shown”.

Although nearly all such complaints are filed and processed in secret, Stefanik announced the accusation on X in November, in what was largely seen as an attempt to get in Trump’s good graces and elevate her profile while the presumptive Republican presidential nominee narrows down his list of candidates for vice president.

“Americans are sick and tired of the blatant corruption by radical Leftist judges in NY,” Stefanik wrote in a 1,800-word post. “All New Yorkers must speak out against the dangerous weaponized lawfare against President Trump.”

In her letter, Stefanik breathlessly claimed the judge “illegally gagged” Trump—when in fact the judge merely barred the former president from launching unprecedented attacks against court staff. Stefanik also alleged that Engoron and his law clerk were “partisan Democrat donors,” drawing attention to Greenfield’s political spending but conveniently ignoring the fact she was legitimately running for local public office, to become a judge herself.

“Judge Engoron’s bizarre and biased behavior is making New York’s judicial system a laughingstock,” Stefanik wrote to the commission on Nov. 10, 2023.

But Engoron and Greenfield got the last laugh.

On March 14, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct chucked out Stefanik’s accusation. The legal process typically takes place behind closed doors, but The Daily Beast acquired a copy of the decision.

“The commission dismissed the complaint, having found no basis on the facts presented to commence an investigation,” wrote Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission administrator and counsel....>

<....As a result, Trump won’t have some of the extra ammunition he was hoping for as he seeks to appeal the half-billion-dollar judgment hanging over his real estate portfolio in New York and beyond.

In February, Engoron issued a $364 million judgment that has ballooned with interest. After struggling to find a lender willing to help him post the massive bond, Trump eventually settled on a little-known insurance company that isn’t even licensed in New York. The Daily Beast quickly discovered that the insurer is playing a corporate shell game in the Cayman Islands that fraud experts said “stinks to high heaven.”

Next to such sums, Stefanik’s doomed judicial ethics complaint might seem inconsequential—were it not for what it represented: one part of Trump’s assault on the judiciary as he faces criminal indictments and costly lawsuits.

Every time a judge hits Trump with a gag order limiting his ability to direct his loyalist MAGA brigade’s rage against the courts, prosecutors, and witnesses, the former president relies on other politicians to pick up the baton.

When Trump was indicted in Atlanta for attempting to corrupt the 2020 election in Georgia, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) used his leadership position in Congress to legally demand information about the local prosecutor’s actions. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis responded in a letter accusing Jordan of “abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution.”

The pattern repeated itself in New York, where Jordan tried to meddle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution of Trump by convening a show hearing to discuss “Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies.” Bragg sued Jordan, to stop his “intimidation.”

In Stefanik’s case, the congresswoman’s empty judicial ethics complaint picked up on allegations initially made in a Twitter screed posted by a MAGA troll in Wisconsin—one who later sued Greenfield, dropped the case, then sued her again.

These attempts to disrupt the bank fraud trial occurred while Engoron’s chambers were flooded with death threats aimed at him and Greenfield. At one point, the situation grew so severe that the U.S. Department of Justice pointed to it to support its calls for a federal gag order on Trump in his Washington-based election interference case.

In the end, Stefanik’s complaint proved to be nothing more than a distraction—like so much of Trump’s legal strategy.>

<Former GOP presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy allegedly demanded BuzzFeed hire conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson and the New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers in order to turn around things at the struggling digital media company.

Ramaswamy has acquired an 8.3% stake in the failing media firm over the last three months.

In a recent letter to BuzzFeed's board of members, the biotech entrepreneur claimed the company "has lost its way" and advised massive layoffs along with hiring right-wing figures like Carlson and NFL star Rodgers, according to The Hill.

BuzzFeed's successful journey in the 2010s came to a halt due to the pressure from other social media platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). The firm's sales plummeted after it went public in the stock market in 2021, leading to large-scale staff cuts and shutting its prominent news division last year.

Vivek Ramaswamy's suggestions for Buzzfeed's revival

Along with Carlson and Rodgers, Ramaswamy suggested that the company reach out to other prominent figures like Bill Maher and Charles Barkley, according to the New York Post.

Furthermore, the Donald Trump ally also demanded Buzzfeed to acknowledge they "repeatedly lied on issues of national importance" and "echoed easy, politically convenient narratives in pursuit of clicks."

However, BuzzFeed's leadership dismissed the stakeholder's criticisms and stated that they will not give in to his suggestions.

In a written response to Ramaswamy's letter, the firm's co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti said the entrepreneur had a "fundamental misunderstanding" about the company's workings.

"I'm very skeptical it makes business sense to turn BuzzFeed into a creator platform for inflammatory political pundits," the founder wrote, adding, "And we're definitely not going to issue an apology for our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism."

However, in an interview on Semafor's 'Mixed Signals' podcast, the Republican pointed out the opportunity to privatize the company in light of its financial crisis.

"This is a company that has more debt than cash. That debt comes due this December. So anybody who thinks that Jonah Peretti is the person in control of this business because some piece of paper says he has voting rights over the shares is delusional," Ramaswamy said.

He is BuzzFeed's second-largest Class A shareholder, with nearly three million shares. However, as of last December, Peretti and his associates held 96% of the firm's Class B shares, which could offer about 64 percent voting power.

Internet slams Vivek Ramaswamy's suggestion of commentators for BuzzFeed Netizens slammed Ramaswamy for advising BuzzFeed to hire Carlson and Rodgers to help its revival.

One user commented on MSN, "Viv just out there trying to push his MAGA agenda, They might have to rename it Buzz-kill Feed." Another remarked, "He so desperately wants to be relevant in America!"

A person wrote on X, "'We will pollute the brand with right wing grifters' he said winningly." Another asked, "So he literally wants to kill Buzzfeed?"

Someone else said, "What worries me is that as newspapers disappear, and other media get mercilessly bashed by the likes of @VivekGRamaswamy and even some within the media and then taken over, people will forget what the point of journalism is supposed to be."

An individual remarked on Facebook, "Guy thinks he has any say in business decisions by owning less than 10% of it LOL."

"Go home, 'swamy. You're irrelevant," someone else chimed in.>

Nice try, <ramitdumbass>.

<The language sounds like something from an authoritarian state or the US anti-communist purges of the 1950s, but Donald Trump is increasingly focused on one target: "the enemy within."

The 77-year-old Republican has stepped up his rhetoric against a host of domestic opponents in recent months, and looks set to go even further after his historic conviction in a criminal trial that he claims -- without evidence -- was orchestrated by his political rival, President Joe Biden.

That has raised fears of a genuine crackdown on whatever the former president deems to be dissent if he wins a second term in the White House that he has promised will focus on "retribution."

"So, you have Russia, you have China. But if you have a smart president, you always handle them quite easily, actually," Trump said in an interview with conservative Fox News on Sunday.

"But the enemy from within, they are doing damage to this country."

During his first term Trump regularly railed at the media as the "enemy of the people," but his sweep now seems wider and more indiscriminate.

In November at a Veterans Day rally in New Hampshire, Trump declared that "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within."

It was at the same rally that Trump caused an outcry by describing his domestic opponents as "vermin" and described immigrants as "poisoning the blood of the country," remarks that Biden has compared to the language of Nazi Germany.

In February at an evangelical convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump himself evoked World War II when "our country was at war with the enemy" -- but to back up his own concept of internal enemies.

"This time, the greatest threat is not from the outside of our country, I really believe this. It's the people from within our country that are more dangerous. They're very sick people," he said.

Trump, who often brings up his friendly relations with autocratic leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, returned to the theme in an interview with Time magazine last month.

"I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others," Trump said when asked if he would be willing to suspend parts of the US Constitution to deal with opponents.

- 'Suspicion and blame' -

The question is: who exactly is the enemy within that Trump talks about?

"It's not just directed at Joe Biden, you see the increase in threats against people in the legal system, judges, prosecutors," said Rebecca Gill, who teaches political science at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

In his rambling speeches, Trump has also frequently lashed out at leftwingers, the media, immigrants, communists and what the tycoon calls political elites.

"It rhymes with some of what we have heard throughout history, in fascist governments and authoritarian governments," Gill said. "It's definitely increasing."

The term "enemies from within" burst onto the US political scene when senator Joseph McCarthy used it while leading his anti-communist crusade in the 1950s.

Leonard Glass, one of 27 psychiatrists who jointly wrote a book called "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" in 2017, says Trump's main goal in echoing the phrase now is to whip up his supporters' anger.

Glass said it was a "repetitive evocation of suspicion and blame for all disappointments on those whose views are different. They are not seen as countrymen worthy of respectful debate, but instead are vile usurpers."

And with conservatives rallying around Trump, few GOP lawmakers are reining in the ex-president's aggressive rhetoric -- or their own.

Trump ally Troy Nehls, a congressman from Texas, said there would be "hell to pay" for the New York trial verdict and that there "always could be" unrest, Axios reported.

Some of the rhetoric swirling around Trump has also taken on an almost messianic tone.

Victoria Johnson, who teaches sociology at the University of Missouri, said it was aimed at the nationalist, Christian right that Trump has increasingly courted.

"'You're either with God or you're with Satan,' that kind of thinking," she said. "They align themselves with evangelicals to get the votes but he clearly isn't a religious person. It's a strategy."

She recalled the example of retired general Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor who resigned after lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, and is now leading a nationwide tour designed to raise an "Army of God.">

<Fredo, so you think Ukraine, needs fresh water from the US?

Not from, Poland, Romania, Norway, Finnland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Denmark or Austria (incomplete list).

Your really are one huge dumbass clown, aren't you?

Ukraine is explicitly asking for weapons. Humanitarian aid is also being delivered. You can do two things at the same time, apparently you are the kinda guy, who literally can't walk while chewing gum. I always thought this to be a rather silly American figure of speech, but as you are so keen to prove, there are apparently very stupid Americans like you, who'd fail at that. If I were in a more cynical mood, I would conclude, there must be something in that American water...

Humanitarian advice, don't look up when it rains, or you might drown on land.>

My .0000002 follows:

<.... apparently you are the kinda guy, who literally can't walk while chewing gum. I always thought this to be a rather silly American figure of speech, but as you are so keen to prove, there are apparently very stupid Americans like you, who'd fail at that....>

The point of this lies in its silliness really.

And, it would seem, he is quite unable to manage this herculean feat.

<....Humanitarian advice, don't look up when it rains, or you might drown on land.>

<Listen holeass -- you damn well know I have the nuts to trounce a scumbag like you. Leave my name out of your lying mischaracterizing make-believe mouth. I have nothing to do with your Ding Liren fantasy.

Oh, and I'm one of the few still remaining on this website who actually know what Greco's Mate is -- saw it a mile away, all news to you. If you'd ever put forth the effort to solve a 1001 [sic] Fred Reinfeld puzzles, you'd know what a queen sacrifice looks like instead of being soooo... surprised.

<hasbeenusetawas, is 'washed up', how the fool can't get out of his own way,> What an apt self-description had you included "mean-spirited and dishonest to the core.">

Some comments re Ding and his perceived failings:

Ding Liren vs Nepomniachtchi, 2023

Ding Liren vs Nepomniachtchi, 2023

Your prediction of who would win out, which did not age at all well:

Nepomniachtchi - Ding World Championship Match (2023)

QED

<Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on Tuesday started naming all the countries that would bar Donald Trump from entering once he is officially a convicted felon, while listing reasons he believed his Republican colleagues were “in a cult.”

“If the guy you're supporting for president has felony convictions that prevent him from going to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and the UK, you might be in a cult,” Swalwell said during Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony in a House Judiciary hearing.

Swalwell listed all the countries while Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio yelled over him to try and restore order as his time expired, and as another Republican called for Swalwell's words to be removed from the record.

“The gentlemen is out of order, the time has expired!” Jordan yelled before banging his gavel.

Swalwell’s suggestions came during a Republican-led committee’s annual oversight hearing of the Department of Justice. Garland rebuffed intense questioning from lawmakers about conspiracy theories involving the FBI and Trump’s criminal cases. The attorney general also faces calls to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena requesting records from special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation in Biden's handling of classified documents.

Swalwell during the hearing also rattled several accusations of Republicans being hypocritical when it comes to Trump.

“So, if you believe in states' rights, except when a jury in that state convicts your nominee for president, you might be in a cult,” Swalwell said. “If you claim you back the blue but want to defund the police when the police go to your nominee's house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in a cult. ... If you're supporting a guy whose felony convictions prevent him from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult.”>

Truth hurts, don't it, Gym?

<House Republicans’ push to impeach Joe Biden this year is going nowhere. So they’ve set their sights on another goal: Helping Donald Trump land blows on Biden if he wins back the White House.

The impeachment process is stalled amid intraparty skepticism, and Republicans’ primary backup plan — criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, including for Hunter Biden and potentially even Joe Biden — is also unlikely to go anywhere with the latter in office.

Against that backdrop, Republicans are outlining a growing wish list they’re hoping to see Trump’s administration deliver on if he is back in power next year, no matter which party controls Congress. Those goals include helping GOP lawmakers get the audio of Joe Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur; reshaping the DOJ and FBI in a more conservative mold; and pursuing further investigations that stem from Republicans' sprawling impeachment inquiry, even with Joe Biden out of office.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said he doesn’t expect any action from the DOJ on the party's Biden-related criminal referrals this year. But he’s looking forward to Trump picking up the matter from the White House.

“Next year. It’s not going to happen under this administration,” Norman said. He succinctly summed up the prospects of federal prosecutions stemming from GOP criminal referrals: “Under Trump? Yeah. But not under this administration.”

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) pointed to the Biden White House’s assertion of executive privilege to prevent the release of the audio from the president’s interview with Hur, which has prompted House Republicans to advance contempt findings against Attorney General Merrick Garland, who did hand over the transcript.

“Under a Trump presidency,” Armstrong predicted, "that gets litigated."

Republican lawmakers have plenty of evidence to suggest that, even with Joe Biden out of office, Trump would still want the DOJ focused on payback against his defeated foe or his current prosecutors — particularly following his conviction last week on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The former president has repeatedly promised just that in social media posts, publicly warning last year that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into him would result in "repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand” before adding: "This is a Pandora’s Box, that works two ways, and it should be closed and tightly sealed RIGHT NOW.”

Some top GOP lawmakers are even homing in on the specific Biden investigative findings they plan to highlight for a potential Trump presidency, even as some Republican colleagues acknowledge they remain short of any proof of criminal wrongdoing by Joe Biden. (Hunter Biden, for his part, is in court this week for a trial on federal gun charges and is set for a second tax-related trial later this year.)

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who wrote in a fundraising email earlier this year that Republicans would give “new leadership at the DOJ ... everything they need" for prosecutions, doubled down on that plan in an interview by promising to include material from a recent Hunter Biden-related document dump by the Ways and Means Committee, which has been receiving information from IRS whistleblowers.

The criminal referrals that Republicans are planning to send DOJ "don’t expire” this year, Comer said, adding that if the Biden DOJ doesn’t "try to uphold the law … maybe the next one will.”

Republican investigators' heightened focus on a potential Trump win comes as a growing number of their colleagues acknowledge they don’t have the votes to impeach Biden this year. They are preparing to recommend Garland be held in contempt as soon as next week after the DOJ turned over the Hur-Biden transcript but not the audio, but don’t yet have GOP support locked down for even that step.

Even if they manage to land a political blow on Garland, who is all but guaranteed to not face criminal charges, Republicans are in the dark about when, or how, the larger Biden investigation wraps.

“It’s this glacier that we’re on. People like to stop and make ice cubes sometimes, but it still keeps moving along kind of slow,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said about the state of the inquiry.

Despite that largely frozen impeachment, Republicans are quietly conducting a multi-pronged probe of Biden and his family behind the scenes. Comer recently disclosed that he had issued a new subpoena for bank records and said, in an interview, he is sorting through a sweep of documents furnished by former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, all of which will shape a forthcoming report on the inquiry....>

<....Comer has also insisted that impeachment is still on the table. And in the Judiciary Committee, two Republicans said they still expected the panel to hold hearings on articles of impeachment once the Oversight panel has released its findings. Jordan, asked about that, said “everything is on the table.”

He also said investigators would publicly release a “packet of materials” about their findings from the Biden administration —which could serve as fodder for a future Trump administration. The Judiciary panel is still locked in a court battle for the closed-door testimony of two DOJ tax attorneys who are involved in the years-long Hunter Biden federal investigation.

But underscoring the political pitfalls Republicans face, Comer is facing early pushback from the White House on ethics legislation he released with Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) that would require presidents release their tax returns — something Trump refused to do — and put more financial disclosure rules in place for family members.

That bipartisan bill has an unclear path forward after getting early resistance from some corners of the House Democratic caucus and skepticism from the White House.

“It applies to Trump in the same manner,” Comer said of the bill. “I think it would be hard to explain to the American people why you wouldn’t support it.”

As Comer separately touts his future criminal referrals as possible bread crumbs for a Trump return to office, he's getting some backup from the right flank of the conference that has pushed quixotically for impeachment this year.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), for one, has said the GOP should put lawmakers on the record even if a Joe Biden impeachment vote fails. He separately expressed hope that, “while we probably don't have the votes for impeachment,” any criminal referrals that spawn from the inquiry "would still be available for a new [attorney general].”

Trump allies off Capitol Hill have particularly leaned on Jordan to use his congressional perch to investigate the Trump investigators, arguing that his work could be used as the basis for renewed investigations in 2025. And Jordan took new steps on that front following Trump's New York felony convictions, pushing for testimony from top prosecutors.

But when it comes to the Biden impeachment inquiry, House Republicans continue to face a steady stream of criticism from Fox News and other conservative media outlets about their failure to deliver on a big promise to the party base. Even some members of the House’s right flank have publicly kvetched that they believe it should have moved faster and been more aggressive.

Jordan said in a brief interview that he was “sure” a Trump administration would be more willing to re-investigate some of the GOP’s biggest sore spots or hand over information Republicans have sought. Providing information that a previous president asserted executive privilege over while in office would be a historic step — but one Democrats acknowledge is a possibility.

House Republicans have also hinted they would sue the Biden administration over the Hur-Biden audio this year, but the resulting court fight could drag on for months.

Jordan also predicted that Trump would remake the DOJ, which Republicans have increasingly soured on since Trump first rode to power in 2016. The House GOP’s right flank wanted to overhaul the DOJ and the FBI more quickly this Congress, but those proposals have stalled thanks to opposition from the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House — and resistance from some Republican colleagues about compromising the agencies' independence.

Republicans are planning to try to use the upcoming government funding debate to try to target Smith's probe, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's, but face the same hurdles.

“I think a Trump administration means a change in these agencies. … That’s a big part of it,” Jordan said.>

< The recent actions of the restructured Republican National Committee (RNC) leadership have led to increasingly desperate fundraising emails and advertisements from the GOP.

Reportedly, the official Senate Republicans account on X, formerly Twitter was flagged by the Community Notes team for sharing a misleading Ted Cruz advertisement and provided additional context to clarify the disingenuous nature of the post, according to MeidasTouch.

What prompted X to mark the Senate Republicans' tweet with Community Notes? The X account, Senate Republicans, claimed in their now-deleted tweet, "It's going to be deleted! Big Tech is about to deleted [sic] Ted Cruz's message in 11 minutes! View it below before it's too late"

The tweet was deemed misleading by the Community Notes team, who provided background to the post.

"This post is misleading. The message doesn't violate any of X's content rules, and if it did, it could not be a promoted post. Besides, there is no way to anticipate when a post will be deleted," they wrote.

The advertisement in question has elicited responses dating back to May 16th, indicating that its presence on the "Big Tech" platform significantly predates the brief 11-minute window asserted by Senate Republicans.

This sustained visibility raises concerns regarding "Big Tech's" role in allowing the ad to remain active for an extended period.

The advertisement prompts X users to "unlock the message here" through a link that diverts to a donation page featuring conspicuous text and a pop-up soliciting funds.

Notably, the content on the donation page entails Sen Ted Cruz leveraging his diminished polling figures as a call to solicit donations from conservative voters.

This sharply contrasts the Senate Republicans' assertion that the message would be expunged within 11 minutes.

Internet slams Ted Cruz and the Republican party

People online derided the Republican Party for reaching new lows in order to attract voter attention.

One person remarked, "Ted Cruz has been a huge disappointment. He has wasted his God given intelligence and career to lick Trump's boots and gravel for whatever attention he can get from this nasty man and his clueless followers."

Another person said, "Ted Cruz should be disconnected from all media access and posts. He is just to stupid to be heard. This guy Teddy wants to support a man that said his wife is ugly and his father tries to kill Kennedy. Trump called Ted 'Lying Ted' so many times and Ted just stood there and said give me more boss. Bend me over, I don't care. Ted is a worthless scumbag. He belongs in Cancun." [sic]

Another person commented, "When are these REPUBLICANS going to STOP LYING to the AMERICAN PUBLIC?! But then again ELON MUSK is the MAIN person that's ALLOWING this GARBAGE to be printed! They have 'NO SHAME' this how they FUNCTION these days, and don't CARE about if it's TRUE!" [sic]

One person wrote, "A fraud and a grifter, just like the convicted felon he calls his fellow republican! All of the republican fraudsters need to be investigated to the fullest and held accountable for crimes they have committed. This isn't about YOU OR YOUR PARTY! ITS ABOUT THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY!"

Another person quipped, "Say it isn't so.....Cancun Cruz said something misleading??? Well, tip me over with a feather."

Another person argued, "The republican party has become one big snake pit."

Finally, a person claimed, "I'll be really glad when Cruz doesn't get re-elected.">

<In this era of political correctness and cancel culture, it’s amazing what you just can’t say anymore. Like, for example, that the rule of law is good and worthy of respect.

That’s what the Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan is finding out. Last week, minutes before a jury announced that it had found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felonies, Hogan, who is running in Maryland, posted on X: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

This is extremely mild stuff. Once upon a time, respecting the rule of law was not controversial. Not anymore. Chris LaCivita, a Trump aide who is also a top Republican National Committee official, replied, “You just ended your campaign.” And on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the RNC co-chair (and Trump daughter-in-law) Lara Trump refused to say whether the RNC would support Hogan’s campaign but attacked the anodyne statement furiously.

“I will tell you one thing. I don't support what he just said there. I think it's ridiculous,” she said. “He doesn't deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point and, quite frankly, anybody in America, if that's the way you feel. That's very upsetting to hear that.”

This is deeply corrosive. Lara Trump is well within her rights to be upset about anyone criticizing her father-in-law. The RNC can even cut Hogan off if it wants; political parties can back or not back whomever they choose. And anyone is entitled to questionable arguments about the verdict. But although Trump wasn’t ready to announce anything as drastic as a decision about political spending, she had no hesitations about blasting Hogan for respecting the rule of law, a hallmark of the American experiment.

(One person who’s probably not upset about all of this is Hogan, a former governor who’s trying to win a Senate seat in a very blue state and who has been running ads on TV saying that the GOP can’t rely on his vote. What better way to demonstrate that than a public feud with the RNC?)

Less than 15 years ago, when Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court for its ruling in Citizens United in his 2010 State of the Union speech, he faced a chorus of critics from both the right and the left, saying that such a public attack on the justices was inappropriate. Today, as Lara Trump attacks the rule of law itself, “responsible” Trump-skeptical conservatives are criticizing her, but rather than recoiling from the substance, they seem mostly worried that she is endangering the GOP’s chances at winning a Senate seat: “Internecine warfare may make for some lively prime-time cable news segments, but it’s no way to run a national party,” writes Noah Rothman. What about a nation, though?

In a separate interview over the weekend, Donald Trump suggested—or, depending on your view, made a veiled threat—that if he were sentenced to jail, mass violence might result. These flashy statements rightly drew a great deal of attention. But as my colleagues Ali Breland and Juliette Kayyem wrote, the immediate danger of serious violence seems low.

Lara Trump’s statements are less flashy, but they, too, pose a great danger in the long run. Scholars who study threats to democracy have found that the words and actions of political leaders are an essential factor in driving the spread and effect of anti-democratic attitudes. The presidential scholar and occasional Atlantic contributor Tim Naftali predicted on Friday that trashing the judicial system would become a new litmus test for any Republican who wants to remain in Donald Trump’s good graces. He’s already being proved right.>

<Before he broke down in tears on the witness stand in the civil fraud case brought against the Trump Organization, corporate controller Jeffrey McConney, overcome by how “very proud” he was of his work at the company, signed an agreement that netted him a $500,000 severance payment.

His colleague Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, did a lot better. Before he checked into Rikers Island, where he was sentenced to a five-month stint for lying under oath, the loyal accountant got a severance payout of $2 million; in exchange, the 76-year-old explicitly promised that he would never criticize the company and its owner, Donald Trump, or voluntarily “provide information to, or otherwise cooperate in any way with” law enforcement.

As ProPublica reported Monday, McConney and Weisselberg are just two of the people who testified in trials involving the former president and who happened to also receive big raises or other payouts from Trump's campaign and company. Others included a campaign aide whose salary doubled to more than $53,000 – per month – and another who got a 20 percent raise, herself, in addition to her daughter landing a $222,000 gig on the Trump campaign.

“If you’re not outraged, you should be,” commented Katie Phang, a legal analyst with MSNBC who says the payments suggest that testimony favorable to Trump is being rewarded, if not purchased. “Is this bad? ‘Cause it seems bad,” chipped in George Conway, a conservative attorney and Trump critic.

It could all be a coincidence. In 2024, however, there is a record that one can review.

Take Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager who handed over internal polling to an agent of Russian intelligence: After he was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, Manafort assured a colleague that he would be fine, saying he had spoken to Trump’s personal attorney and was told that Trump and company are “going to take care of us.” Manafort, who refused to cooperate with investigators, later received a pardon.

A former Trump White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, did cooperate with those investigating the January 6 insurrection. But as she was preparing to tell investigators what she know about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, she received a message claiming that her old boss, ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, “knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Timothy Heaphy, an attorney who worked as chief investigative counsel for the January 6 committee, does not believe in coincidences. Even though Trump has never been charged with witness tampering, Heaphy argued that does not mean it’s not happening.

“In these cases you never have direct evidence of the sort of attempt to corruptly influence testimony – you don’t need it, because the power of the person providing the benefit is such that it’s clear what the intent is,” Heaphy said on MSNBC. “The mob boss doesn’t say, ‘Hey, if you don’t do this, I’m going to kill you.’ But it’s clear, right? Because of the power imbalance and the provision of the benefit that engenders loyalty.”

It is also hard to prove, or at least no prosecutors have been confident enough to charge Trump over. MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace argued that reflected timidity, not the facts, and has contributed to the apparent pattern identified by ProPublica.

“There’s a consequence to never holding Trump accountable,” she said. “If someone’s going to keep doing this thing over and over again, the system has failed.”

Trump and his acolytes, as ever, insist that the former president has done nothing wrong. A campaign official told ProPublica that the money flowing to the nine witnesses was a product of business as usual: standard raises for performance or, for example, lawyers working more hours on Trump’s cases (one attorney, Jennifer Little, received $1.3 million from a Trump PAC after providing favorable testimony before a Georgia grand jury).

But former assistant U.S. attorney Richard Signorelli doesn’t believe any innocent explanation.

“Buying off witnesses constitutes alleged obstruction of justice,” he posted on social media. But he doesn’t blame Trump alone. The former president “wouldn’t get anywhere close to destroying us without his many craven enablers,” Signorelli wrote, “including lawyers unfortunately.”>

<Judge Aileen Cannon is planning on holding a sprawling hearing on Donald Trump’s request to declare Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel invalid, signaling the judge could be more willing than any other trial judge to veto the special prosecutor’s authority.

The planned hearing also adds a new, unusual twist in the federal criminal national security case against the former president: Cannon on Tuesday said that a variety of political partisans and constitutional scholars not otherwise involved with the case can join in the oral arguments on June 21.

It’s an extraordinary elevation of arguments in a criminal case first filed a year ago this week that likely won’t see trial until next year, if at all.

Similar challenges from Trump and other high-level targets of special counsel probes have flopped from coast to coast in recent years: Hunter Biden’s attorney didn’t get anywhere with judges in Los Angeles and Delaware; Paul Manafort’s arguments fell flat when the former Trump campaign chairman challenged special counsel Robert Mueller’s authority; and Andrew Miller, a former associate of Roger Stone, also lost his challenge to Mueller’s authority.

Even with other federal trial-level judges allowing special counsels’ criminal prosecutions, Cannon could rule differently.

Cannon’s signal of willingness to entertain challenges to the special counsel comes in the same week Republicans are bearing down on Attorney General Merrick Garland for his use of special counsels.

The issue, now before Cannon in the Southern District of Florida federal court, is likely to remain in the political debate at least until Cannon holds a hearing on the legal power of the special counsel to prosecute a defendant, on June 21.

Cannon has already taken a drastically different tack from other trial-level federal judges who have handled criminal cases charged by recent special counsel’s offices – of which there have been five since Trump became president.

While others have moved swiftly to trial – including special counsel David Weiss trying his case against Hunter Biden in Delaware this week, eight months after indictment – Cannon has moved slowly on pre-trial issues from Trump and his two co-defendants. Many of the most substantive legal questions to be decided in the classified records case, which the Justice Department first brought against Trump last June, aren’t yet ripe for a decision.

And it is highly unusual for a federal trial judge to allow a third-party group unaffiliated with a criminal case to argue in court as part of a defendant’s legal challenges to the case itself. That work is essentially reserved for defendants’ teams to bring and argue in courts across the country, opposite Justice Department prosecutors. Allowing third parties to argue in court is even rare in appeals situations.

“The fact these motions are even being entertained with a hearing is itself ridiculous. That third parties are being allowed to opine at the hearing is absurd,” Bradley Moss, a national security law expert based in Washington, DC, told CNN.

But Cannon has been convinced by three separate groups of lawyers that they should be able to argue before her. Two of those groups support Trump’s position to dismiss the case against him and say the special counsel, for various constitutional reasons, doesn’t have authority to prosecute. A third group says the Department of Justice’s use of a special counsel should be upheld.

Two former Republican-appointed US attorneys general, Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, are part of the groups of so-called “friends of the court” that side with Trump and whom Cannon will hear from. The three groups will be allowed to argue, in addition to Justice Department and defendants’ lawyers, for 30 minutes each, according to the court record.

Meese and Mukasey have special insight to share with the judge, they say, given their former roles leading the Justice Department.>

<Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene fired back on Tuesday at Dr. Anthony Fauci's comments that the Georgia Republican congresswoman's vocal criticism of him regarding the COVID-19 pandemic led to a number of death threats, blaming him for the threats.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified on Monday morning on Capitol Hill before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic and was questioned about the origins of COVID-19 and the federal response to it.

Fauci, who has faced repeated criticism from Republicans over his handling of the pandemic, was a leader in crafting the U.S. response to the COVID-19 virus that has killed more than 1.2 million Americans since 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Commenting on the hearing, Fauci told CNN on Monday that whenever someone in the media or in Congress "gets up and makes a public statement that I'm responsible for the deaths of X number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus, immediately...it's like clockwork, the death threats go way up.

"So that's the reason why I'm still getting death threats. When you have performances like that unusual performance by Marjorie Taylor Greene in today's hearing, those are the kind of things that drive up the death threats because there are a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense."

Newsweek has reached out to Greene's office and Fauci via email for comment.

In response, Greene fired back on Tuesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, as she rebuffed Fauci's comments and said he was responsible for his own death threats due to his "non-scientific, tyrannical policies."

"No one should get death threats and I get them ALL THE TIME," Greene wrote. "But lucky for Mr Fauci, he has Secret Service Protection at the tax payers [sic] expense. I DO NOT, and have to pay for my own security and am a gun owner. It's not my comments that have people furious at Mr Fauci, it's the FACT that his ridiculous, non-scientific, tyrannical policies DESTROYED people's lives and he's a narcissistic a** hole and liar which is why SO MANY people hate him.

"Under Mr Fauci's leadership, viruses have been turned into deadly bioweapons...Mr Fauci belongs in prison for crimes against humanity!!!"

This comes after Fauci faced hostility from Greene during the hearing as she refused to address him as "doctor," called for him to be prosecuted "for crimes against humanity" and said he "belongs in prison."

She also repeatedly talked over Fauci during her questioning, including at one point cutting him off, saying: "Nah, I don't need your answer."

Death threats also became a point of discussion during the hearing as Fauci described what he and his family received while director of the NIAID.

In response to a question from Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell, Fauci said he received "everything from harassments by emails, texts, letters of myself, my wife, my three daughters."

He added that "there have been credible death threats, leading to the arrests of two individuals...and credible death threats means someone who was clearly on their way to kill me. And it's required my having protective services essentially all the time.">

<Gov. Ron DeSantis accused the federal government Tuesday of not doing enough to help the state recover from hurricanes, as he urged Floridians to take advantage of a sales tax holiday on emergency supplies for the storm season.

“We don’t typically depend on the federal government for anything because we figure that is not a place where you want to be,” DeSantis said at a Home Depot store in Fort Myers. “Hurricane recovery is a bottoms-up thing. You don’t want Washington directing anything.”

The governor didn’t mention more than $9 billion that Washington pumped into Florida following Hurricane Ian in 2022, an amount that doesn’t include aid sent to help recover from other hurricanes since the governor took office in 2019.

Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, said the governor’s comments were “ridiculous.” Hurricanes and other major natural disasters are times when politicians come together, regardless of their party affiliation, and work together to get federal help, he said.

“To suggest you don’t need federal assistance is just over the top,” Jewett said. “Maybe he’s just ratcheting up the political side of things. It’s never a bad time to bash (President) Joe Biden if you’re Ron DeSantis.”

And it’s incorrect to suggest Florida has had to go it alone, he said.

“The federal government has a huge role to play in helping communities recover,” Jewett said.

At the event, the governor did tout state legislative measures to beef up the reinstated State Guard, provide grants for people to harden their homes against future storms, and the tax break for hurricane supplies, which will run this month until June 14.

DeSantis also mentioned the $500 million emergency fund the Legislature provides him each year to use at his discretion during natural disasters.

DeSantis’ thinking about federal support for disaster relief has changed over the years.

Eleven years ago, as a freshman member of Congress, DeSantis voted against a $50.5 billion aid package for victims of “Superstorm Sandy” in New York. He called it an “irresponsible boondoggle,” and an example of the “put it on the credit card mentality” he’d come to Congress to eliminate.

But when Hurricane Ian tore through the center of Florida two years ago, DeSantis sought and received from Biden a major disaster declaration.

DeSantis made his comments Tuesday in one of the counties hardest hit by Ian, a devastating Category 5 storm that caused up to $117 billion in damage and was responsible for 84 deaths, making it the most expensive hurricane on record in Florida.

It caused a 10- to 15-foot storm surge that destroyed thousands of homes, roads and bridges and other infrastructure. It wreaked havoc on the electric power grid, leaving more than 9 million people without power.

Within a year after Ian struck, the federal government had provided $9.27 billion in recovery assistance to Florida.

That included $1.13 billion in grants from FEMA to 386,000 homeowners in 26 counties, loans totaling $1.94 billion from the Small Business Administration, and $4.4 billion paid out by the National Flood Insurance Program for more than 47,300 claims filed.

It also includes more than $1.8 billion tapped by FEMA to reimburse state and local applicants for emergency response, debris removal and repair or replacement of public facilities.

In addition, Florida farmers received millions of dollars from the Department of Agriculture, employment assistance from the Department of Labor and housing aid from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

To this day, FEMA continues to dole out millions in aid to Florida counties affected by Ian, including $6.7 million for debris removal expenses in Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, $15.4 million in Lee County, $16.4 million in Charlotte County and $6.4 million in Orange County.

“Floridians pay a lot of dollars in federal taxes and are well represented in Congress and deserve to get federal aid in the aftermath of a disaster,” Jewett said.>

How quickly they forget.

<Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) squirmed in a GOP Colorado primary debate when the talk turned to her removal from a Denver theater last year for inappropriate behavior during a “Beetlejuice” performance.

“Do you want to talk about the theater thing?” asked Channel 9’s Kyle Clark, the moderator of Friday’s debate for Colorado’s 4th congressional district. Boebert has switched from the 3rd district after only winning a tiny majority in 2022.

“Uh, sure,” Boebert replied, who was booted from the venue for vaping and groping her date. She told Clark she’d “owned up” to the incident and “gone on that public apology tour” for which she was “grateful for the mercy and grace that has been shown.”

“But I’m not going to continue to live life in shame and be beat up by this,” she added, before trying to change the topic and talk about her legislative record.

“We’re not gonna do that,” said Clark.

He later drilled down into the nature of Boebert’s apology.

“I just want to make sure. Did you apologize for the behavior that went on with you and your date? Or did you apologize for lying to voters about what you did that night and the disrespect that you showed to service workers that night? What specifically were you apologizing about?” he asked.

Boebert answered, “I don’t believe there was disrespect. There were things that were absolutely taken out of context.”

“There’s video of your interactions with service workers. I’m just asking, are you apologizing for the lying to voters or the business in the theater,” Clark responded, a nod to security tape footage of her ejection.

“So, I mean, I think it’s been very mischaracterized. I’m apologizing for you, Kyle Clark, getting footage and releasing that, and people seeing this in a very private moment,” Boebert said of the very public incident.>

<U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been accused of entertaining Donald Trump’s every legal defense, no matter how absurd, bogging down the classified documents case she’s had for a year with motions and hearings that would never happen in another court.

Since being randomly assigned the case last June, Cannon has dutifully considered the former president's every legal argument with the utmost seriousness, repeatedly delaying the case – by far the most serious she’s ever presided over – and recently scrapping the scheduled trial date, citing all the motions she’s allowed to pile up without ruling on, with no sign that she’s anywhere close to setting another.

Instead of tossing the claim aside, as another judge might, Cannon has treated as legitimate the argument that Trump, using only the power of his mind, could unilaterally declassify the nation’s secrets, including battle plans and information on nuclear weapons programs (Trump himself, in a recording obtained by prosecutors, denied he had that power). And she’s treated the defense and prosecution “very differently,” The New York Times reported, chastising the latter for actions that she’s allowed from the former, such as making legal arguments in court that were not first submitted in written form.

But Cannon, even in the eyes of her many critics, has outdone herself with a ruling made public late Tuesday. Now it’s not only Trump’s lawyers who will be arguing on Trump’s behalf: she’s scheduled a hearing where right-wing attorneys will make the argument that it’s actually the Biden administration that broke the law. Set for June 21, the lawyers will argue that it was illegal for the Department of Justice to appoint special counsel Jack Smith to handle Trump’s alleged theft of the nation’s secrets.

It is one thing for a judge to accept an amicus brief, wherein an outside party submits legal arguments relevant to the case, and another to spend time on oral arguments from lawyers who don’t even represent either side.

“The issue is Judge Cannon seems to be just entirely unable — or unwilling — to be normal,” commented Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of constitutional law at Georgia State University. “She's not up to the job as far as I'm concerned,” he continued, noting that he’s never seen a district court judge schedule such a hearing for arguments from lawyers not even involved in the case. Cannon, Kreis concluded, “is an absolute hack.”

It’s not like the arguments are novel, either. All the way back in 2018, then-President Trump was raging against special counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia, declaring that his appointment “is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!” At the time, David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford University, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1988 decision ruled that the executive branch does indeed have the right to allocate its powers to an independent counsel, making it not even “remotely plausible” to argue such an appointment violates the Constitution.

It’s also an argument that’s been tried in court multiple times before, all of them unsuccessfully. Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, tried it in his case, CNN noted, and Hunter Biden gave it a shot too.

But it’s one that conservatives are insisting on making, at least with respect to Trump and Smith. “Improperly appointed,” states the amicus brief from Ed Meese, attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and part of the group that will argue in Cannon’s courtroom, “he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift, or Jeff Bezos.”

At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland – confronted by Republican lawmakers making the same claims – noted that his office’s ability to appoint special counsels had been in effect for decades now. “The matter that you’re talking about,” he told Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., “has been adjudicated.”

It’s one thing for the arguments to be made in Congress, according to legal experts, and another for them to be treated seriously in a district court.

“The fact these motions are even being entertained with a hearing is itself ridiculous. That third parties are being allowed to opine at the hearing is absurd,” national security lawyer Bradley Moss told CNN.

"Not normal (at) all,” added CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams. “There is literally no reason why the judge needs to have additional folks come in at the oral argument.”>

<Republicans are rallying around Donald Trump in the wake of his unprecedented conviction in New York, claiming that the U.S. justice system is being “weaponized” for political purposes to specifically tear down the former president, who is running for another term in the Oval Office.

“The prosecution of President Trump wasn’t about justice. It was about weaponizing the Democrat-controlled Justice Department to attack their political opponent,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Trump isn’t the only high-profile figure who is in legal trouble amid an election year, however. Longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), who recently switched parties; Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas); and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter; are also facing federal charges, with both Menendez and Biden standing trial this week. When HuffPost pointed this out to Trump-supporting GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week, they doubled down on their “weaponization” claims and said there was reason to cast doubt on the justice system writ large.

“It does look like from time to time the DOJ has been guilty of having political motives ― I guess every layer, not just the Department of Justice ― but every layer of justice seems to have a little bit more political play than it has in the past,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told HuffPost.

“You gotta cast a skeptical eye toward all of it right now,” he added.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another member of the Senate judiciary committee, said the DOJ has “gone from sticking their big toe in the water to jumping in the deep end.”

“It seems the courts are involved in every election that’s occurring, and I don’t think it’s a good development,” he continued, saying that the DOJ could have perhaps waited to bring some charges until after the November election.

Much of the GOP’s attacks on the New York case against Trump have focused on the credibility of Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, accusing both of being biased against Trump. They’ve even suggested Biden was behind the whole thing by somehow ordering Bragg to charge Trump for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star, even though presidents have no control over state-level prosecutors.

Attorney General Merrick Garland roundly rejected that allegation during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, calling it a “conspiracy theory” and “an attack on the judicial process itself.”

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) also noted during the hearing that the Justice Department had chosen not to prosecute Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) over sex trafficking allegations.

“He is a living testament to the fact and direct evidence that you have not weaponized the Justice Department. He was investigated for sex trafficking and while many expected a prosecution, you chose not to prosecute,” Cohen said to Garland, the hearing witness.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from insisting the Department of Justice is singularly focused on prosecuting Trump, however.

Asked about Hunter Biden standing trial this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters he didn’t think one case disproved their theory that Trump is being persecuted. He also complained that the DOJ chose not to charge Biden for his handling of classified documents.

“We have rogue prosecutors around the country that have dragged President Trump through this process because of who he is. Everybody knows if it wasn’t him, the charges in Manhattan would never have been brought,” he said....>

<....Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended the younger Biden from charges that he illegally purchased and possessed a gun while abusing or being addicted to drugs in 2018, a violation of federal law.

“I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing,” Graham told HuffPost. “I don’t see any good coming from that.”

Hunter Biden admitted that he was habitually using crack cocaine at the time. He, too, has argued he’s being unfairly targeted by the Justice Department and has pleaded not guilty.

Democrats dismissed the GOP’s attempts to wave off Trump’s historic conviction in New York, a first for a former president who is expected to be formally picked for the Republican presidential nomination next month.

“All these cases show that no one is above the law and prosecutors are making decisions based on the facts and statutes,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “The justice system is working.”

The Justice Department is also pursuing separate charges against Trump for hoarding classified documents after his presidency and attempting to overthrow his 2020 election loss. But those cases aren’t likely to proceed until after the November 2024 election.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a vocal Trump critic, said he didn’t “see the kind of weaponization that might be suggested” in the way the Department of Justice prosecutes cases. Still, he disapproved of the New York case against the former president, calling it “not an appropriate first step.”

Most Republicans are still supporting Trump despite the fact that he’s now a convicted felon, and many are heartened by the fact that it helped his presidential campaign raise over $50 million in just one day, contributing to a massive $140 million haul in May.

But not every Republican is pleased. Asked if she could believe that her party is rallying around a convicted felon, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another Trump critic, said, “I never thought we would.”>

<As we head into a record-breaking $16 billion election cycle, a wave of members of Congress have tried to address the growing demand from voters to set reasonable limits on campaign spending. From Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, which would prohibit publicly traded corporations from using super PACs and so-called “independent spending” to influence elections, to multiple House bills and Senate legislation aimed at reducing foreign spending in our elections, these members are heeding the call from their constituents to curb the corrupting influence of billionaires, global corporations and foreign actors.

Election spending has exploded since 2010, when the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision opened the door for corporations, unions and dark money special interest groups to spend unlimited money on elections. Billions of dollars now pour into races up and down the ballot, and spending rules and anti-corruption guardrails continue to be dismantled. Just look at last month’s Federal Election Commission decision allowing candidates to raise unlimited money to influence ballot initiatives. Ballot initiatives are a law-making process for voters in 26 states, originally adopted as a reform in the last Gilded Age to enable the citizenry to bypass or curb corrupt legislatures. Like everything in American politics today, the ballot initiative process is too dominated by those who have the money to spend.

Members of Congress should be commended for trying to confront the toxic influence of unrestrained money in our political system. But until we address the reason why so much money from so few now controls our elections, things will continue to get worse.

The problem is a constitutional one, and requires a constitutional solution.

In the past few decades, in cases like Citizens United, the Supreme Court essentially rewrote the Constitution, deciding that the First Amendment prohibits Americans from having fair and even-handed spending rules to protect the integrity of our elections and the votes of all Americans. For the first 200 years of American history, no one thought that the First Amendment stripped Americans’ ability to limit spending in elections. Now, a handful of lawyers and judges have decided otherwise, and all Americans are paying the price.

For example, 86 percent of Maine’s voters approved a ballot initiative in November to stop foreign government owned or controlled corporations from spending money to influence elections there. Such foreign entities spent $100 million in the state’s election in the previous three years. Earlier this year, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction to block the law, explaining that the law likely violated Citizens United.

Foreign influence is a threat to self-government. Foreign actors exploit dark money groups disguised as domestic organizations to funnel money and carry out electioneering activities in local, state and federal races. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine), who introduced their own legislation last year to curtail foreign influence in elections, point out the blatant national security risks associated with the campaign finance system’s opacity, writing that “it is undeniable—foreign agents and individuals, with agendas of their own, can affect our electoral process, and by extension, our daily lives.”

Such threats should compel us to create lasting reform to secure our elections, representation and free speech. We must amend the Constitution....>

<....An amendment will affirm that Americans and our representatives at the state and congressional levels may set reasonable limits on political spending. American Promise, the organization I founded, advocates for the For Our Freedom Amendment, which has widespread support from around the country and across the political spectrum. Twenty-two states have called on Congress to adopt such an amendment, and polling shows that 73 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats support it.

The Founders gave us the amendment process to serve as a safeguard against harmful forces that threaten our freedom and ability to self-govern. Throughout our history, amending the Constitution has driven profound changes in our elections. Seven of the 27 amendments to the Constitution refined voting processes and expanded voter enfranchisement, bringing government closer to the people it’s supposed to represent. Left unaddressed, the current pay-to-play political system threatens that hard work of generations of Americans and the very foundations of democracy.

Voters are losing the ability to hold their elected leaders accountable, and unchecked election spending is contributing to a growing distrust in our governing institutions, fostering both actual and suspected corruption among those in office and intensifying the erosion of government’s ability to work for the people, not just those cutting the biggest checks. That’s why Americans increasingly view candidates as beholden to wealthy donors, and nearly two-thirds of voters from both parties believe that reducing the influence of money in politics should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year.

American Promise will share this message loudly at this month’s National Citizen Leadership Conference, where citizens from across the country will converge on Washington to connect with representatives in Congress and share our vision for advancing the For Our Freedom Amendment. If representatives and other candidates for office are truly resolved to reverse Americans’ lost faith in their government and address unrestrained political spending, they should pledge support for the For Our Freedom Amendment, get the necessary two-thirds vote in Congress done and return the amendment to the states for prompt ratification.>