•It’s voting rights week as President Biden and Vice President Harris take to the road, beginning in Georgia, to promote a couple of voting rights bills ahead of Martin Luther King Day next week. Hill Democrats are said to be losing confidence in whether Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) will support either of two bills, or the filibuster reform necessary to get one of them passed.
•Scroll down our front page at https://thehustings.news to read “The Trump Coup Must be Stopped” and join our contributors in the left and right columns with your comments. Email us at editors@thehustings.news or leave a comment on this page.
U.S.-Russia Security Talks in Geneva – The U.S. and Russia meet in Geneva this week to discuss the Russian troops gathered near Ukraine’s eastern border. While the Biden administration has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine, again, with threats of economic sanctions, Putin is warning against any further expansion of NATO into Eastern European countries that once were part of the Soviet Union.
“There are confidence-building measures, there are risk-reduction measures, all of which, if done reciprocally, I think can really reduce tensions and address concerns, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in his most diplomatic language, on ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Blinken also expects discussion over Russian troops aiding the post-Soviet authoritarian government in Kazakhstan over widespread protests there.
Note: Almost impossible to imagine this diplomatic meeting even taking place under the anti-NATO isolationism of the Trump administration. Putin clearly thinks he still has the upper hand, but he understands how much more compromised his position is versus a year ago.
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Rounds Acknowledges Reality, And Says It Out Loud -- Yesterday, South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds, went on national television and stated of November 2020, “The election was fair, as fair as we’ve seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency.” The subordinate clause, “as Republicans” is what makes this notable.
Note — Mike Rounds is the junior senator from South Dakota. He assumed office in January 2015. John Thune, also a Republican, is the senior senator. Rounds was the governor of South Dakota from 2003 to 2011. The present governor, also a Republican, is Kristi Noem — self-described in the first sentence on the state’s governor’s website as “a wife, a mother, and a lifelong rancher, farmer and small business owner.” It also points out on that webpage, that her response to COVID-19 has been, well, not really a response: “Governor Noem never ordered a single business or church to close and never issued a statewide shelter-in-place order.” South Dakota has had 281 deaths per 100,000 people.
Anyway, Sen. Rounds simply stated what has been acknowledged by essentially everyone with the exceptions of the man who was soundly thrashed by Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and those who he has managed to persuade there is an alternate reality.
But because he is (a) a Republican and (b) from a so-called “Red State” (a distinction, if you think about it, which must make Vladimir Putin giddy), that he makes news with that observation. (See: We’re going on about it, too.)
Another interesting thing that Rounds said yesterday, in relation to whether Trump might be in some serious legal trouble related to the January 6 insurrection, “But that shield of the presidency does not exist for someone who is a former president.”
Again: if you are no longer president, then you don’t have the privileges of being, well, president. Let’s say Trump wanted to take a trip. Could he take Air Force One? Let’s say Trump wanted to practice drawing on maps with a Sharpie. Could he do it on the Resolute Desk?
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Meanwhile, in Wisconsin – Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) promised a self-imposed two-term limit when he beat Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold in 2010. Since then, he has gone full-Trump, even giving January 6 insurrectionists every description from “peaceful patriots” to “fake Trump protesters” to people on “a normal tourist visit,” so of course he has decided to run for a third term in the state both Donald J. Trump in 2016 and Joseph R. Biden in 2020 won by less than one point.
The field of Democratic challengers already has topped the half-dozen mark according to Roll Call, led by Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who would become the first Black senator from Wisconsin, as well as state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, whose father is co-owner of the 2021 NBA championship team.
Note: This is gearing up to be the next epic race, after last November’s Virginia gubernatorial election to gauge the strength of ex-President Trump’s influence over a loyal minority core of supporters and over the GOP itself. Between now and November, Johnson’s political fate will rely heavily on whatever action Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland takes against Trump for his influence on the insurrection.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash