•The Taliban has agreed to allow 200 people, including Americans, to fly out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, CNN reports Thursday. The refugees had been held for several days after the U.S. military’s August 30 withdrawal.
•September 20 will be the first day of a full session in the House of Representatives, leaving one week, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s malleable deadline, for a vote on President Biden’s $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill.
•The Hustings would like to post this Saturday your thoughts and reflections on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., alongside comments from our regular columnists. Please email editors@thehustings.news with your respectful comments of up to 100 words. Though this is not a partisan political debate, please tell us if you have a preference for posting your thoughts in the left or right column. Comments will be edited for length and clarity.
White House Defends Removal of Trump Allies from Military Boards – White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Thursday explained the rationale for President Biden’s removal of 11 Trump administration appointees to various military advisory boards: Then-President Trump’s incitement of the January 6 insurrection was sufficient reason for the removal. That from Politico.
On Wednesday, Trump administration official Russ Vought shared on social media a White House letter requesting he resign from a military advisory board, or face termination by 6 p.m. Eastern time, The Washington Post reports. He said he would not step down.
CNN reported that among the 11 Trump allies who received the termination letter were former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.
Note: Implicit in Psaki’s justification for the removals is that the January 6 insurrection is connected with earlier reports suggesting the Trump White House was plotting an “inside coup” by attempts to use the military against Joe Biden’s November election victory. That a former contestant on Dancing With the Stars had any official standing is disturbing in itself.
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Clyburn: Room for Negotiation on $3.5-trillion Budget Resolution – There is room to negotiate down from $3.5 trillion on the Senate’s reconciliation bill, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-SC, told Jim Acosta on CNN’s The Situation Room Wednesday (per The Hill). “I think that there is a lot of room for people to sit down and negotiate,” Clyburn said. “It may be, when sitting around the table, you may not need $3.5 trillion to do what the president wants done and what the current country needs done.”
Note: Clyburn’s comments do not take into account the so-called Squad and progressive House Democrats who believe $3.5 trillion is not enough – that $6 trillion to $10 trillion is more like it. Is Clyburn confident that a sufficient number of moderate Republicans will cross the aisle and support a discounted, bi-partisan reconciliation bill?
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Trump Praises a Fallen Statue – In response to the removal and dismantling a 21-foot-high bronze statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump put out a message lauding the “genius” of the Confederate general, a traitor to the United States of America.
On his Save America fund-raising website, Trump said: “Just watched as a massive crane took down the magnificent and very famous statue of ‘Robert E. Lee On His Horse’ in Richmond, Virginia. It has long been recognized as a beautiful piece of bronze sculpture. To add insult to injury, those who support this ‘taking’ now plan to cut it into three pieces, and throw it into storage prior to its complete desecration. …
“Our culture is being destroyed and our history and heritage, good and bad, are being extinguished by the Radical Left, and we can’t let that happen!” … Trump goes on to say that if Lee had been able to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan, “that disaster would have ended in complete and total victory many years ago.”
Note: The embarrassment we are suffering is predicated on a former president who has, evidently, zero understanding of (1) history or (2) the Constitution. As it says in Article III, Section 3, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
Lee’s statue became a centerpiece of Richmond’s row of statues about 130 years ago, some 25 years after the treasonous Confederacy lost the Civil War. After its removal Wednesday the only statue remaining is that of tennis legend Arthur Ashe, who in 1996 became the first Black man represented on Monument Avenue.
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On the Other Hand – Democrat leadership hopes Trump’s status as de facto leader of the GOP will prompt a big turnout for the party in the midterms, Nathan L. Gonzales writes in a Roll Call analysis Thursday. The expectation by both Republican and Democratic analysts is that next November’s elections will overturn Democrats’ five-member majority in the House of Representatives and its 51-50 vice presidential tiebreaker in the Senate in favor of the GOP. But this theory posits that if Trump announces a 2024 presidential bid before the November 2022 midterms, Democratic turnout will be greater than usual, as it was last November in Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, and enough to retain the party’s majorities.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash