Former White House Counsel Don McGahn is scheduled to testify behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee, more than two years after a subpoena for testimony related to his interviews with special prosecutor Robert Mueller on the Russian interference probe, and possible obstruction by then-President Trump. The 45th president had blocked McGahn from responding to the House Democrats’ subpoena.
THIS WEEKEND: Pro-Trump Republicans will run the Georgia state GOP’s convention this weekend on Jekyll Island. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (who is not running for re-election), both of whom have criticized Donald J. Trump for refusing to accept his defeat last November, are not invited.
U.S. Adds 559,000 Jobs in May – Total non-farm payroll rose by 559,000 jobs in May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. The unemployment level dropped by 0.3% versus April, to a rate of 5.8%. Notable job gains came in leisure and hospitality, private and public education, and health care and social assistance jobs.
•••
House Democrats Propose Runaround on Infrastructure – As President Biden’s negotiations with Senate Republicans appear to be moving in the wrong direction, House Democrats, led by Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter A. DeFazio, of Oregon, are stepping in with a basic proposal for bridges, roads, rail and transit, The Washington Post reports. The $547-billion, five-year bill would set aside $343 billion for roads, bridges and highway safety, $109 billion for transit and $95 billion for rail.
While modest even compared with the GOP’s $928-billion offer (although mostly not new money), let alone the White House’s price-reduced $1.7 trillion, the rail spending is triple Amtrak’s current budget, and DeFazio says it seizes “this once-in-a-generation opportunity to move our transportation planning out of the 1950s and toward our clean energy future.”
Note: Call it third-world level or call it better than nothing (see the Trump Administration’s myriad “Infrastructure Week(s)”), the House bill seems the last, best chance for passage before the mid-terms, as long as Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, leans Republican and continues to insist on a “bi-partisan” solution in the face of White House efforts to push through the monumental American Jobs Plan. Also in its favor, according to the WaPo, the plan “seeks to overhaul rules on how states and other transportation agencies can use the money, putting environmental goals at the forefront and seeking to curb the nation’s dominance of car travel.”
•••
Pence Backs Trump — Manchester, New Hampshire, is a place where prospective presidential candidates go. Especially to such events as the Hillsborough Country GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, if you’re a Republican — the former vice president attended the dinner yesterday and arguably gave his former boss a boost, saying, according to The Washington Post, “ But I think what President Trump showed us was what Republicans can accomplish when our leaders stand firm on conservative principles and don’t back down. . . . It was four years of consequence, four years of results. It was four years of promises made and promises kept.” For a man who some think may be running for 2024, it surely sounds like Pence is positioning himself for second place, at most.
Note: Pence’s comment about “conservative principles” is curious. Conservatives don’t believe in deficit spending (something which they seemed to have rediscovered after four years of blithely ignoring that) and they do believe in free trade (another tenant that somehow got a pass).
Pence, who, along with his family, was potentially in mortal danger on January 6, 2021, as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, some of whom were chanting “Kill Mike Pence” and others who crafted a gallows that was reportedly staged to for that task, did mention the events and Trump during his speech, saying, according to the Post: “President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on that day. But I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years. And I will not allow Democrats or their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans.” The next time he speaks to the former reality TV star Pence will probably explain that the eye-to-eye comment is predicated on the fact that he is 5-foot 10, while the former guy is a magisterial 6-foot 3.
•••
Humanitarian Groups to Help Choose Immigrants – The White House has chosen six humanitarian groups to help recommend which immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S., and which should be expelled, under federal pandemic-related powers that block people seeking asylum, the AP reports. They are the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children (based in London) HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense, both of the U.S., and Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, both of Mexico.
Note: Will this deal with six humanitarian organizations alleviate President Biden’s border crisis? Seems problematic, and the surge in Mexico-U.S. crossings since Biden’s inauguration already is his biggest issue among both Democratic supporters and Republican detractors. How will these six organizations handle children crossing the border alone?
•••
Fauci Calls for Release of Chinese Medical Records – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, has called for China to release medical records of nine people working in a Wuhan laboratory who reportedly fell ill with COVID-like symptoms before the pandemic, according to the Financial Times. The records would include those of three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who may have been sick in November 2019, the month before discovery of the first COVID-19 case.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration says it will release 75% of excess vaccine supplies to COVEX, an organization that distributes such medicine to other nations short of supply.
•••
Facebook Determines Politicians Are People, Too -- It is expected that Facebook will announce today that if politicians break the platform’s hate speech rules, the consequences will be the same as occurs to people who don’t hold elective office, including censoring, demoting or outright banning, The Washington Post reports.
Note: The social network has banned Donald Trump since January 6, 2021, which some critics maintain was long after the horse had left the barn. More recently, the Facebook Oversight Board was changed with assessing that ban. And it punted, sending it back for consideration in Mountain View, California.
The rationalization for giving politicians a pass was there was “newsworthiness” associated with their rants observations.
While some people might object to what Facebook will probably do on the grounds of the First Amendment, Facebook is a commercial company so it can do what it wants: there is no Constitutional Right to be able to post. It is like: No shirt, no shoes, no Facebook.
•••
Attorney F. Lee Bailey has Died – F. Lee Bailey, the fiery defense attorney credited with O.J. Simpson’s acquittal for murder, has died in hospice care in Atlanta, age 87. Bailey came to prominence in 1966 when he succeeded in reversing the murder conviction of Dr. Sam Sheppard and went on to participate in cases including those of the Boston Strangler, Patty Hearst, and the army commander charged in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
_______________________________________