•According to WaPo political reporter and Peril co-author Robert Costa; “Political reporters are on the democracy beat.” Coming today at thehustings.news, we begin a three-column debate on whether January 6 was a ‘dress rehearsal’ for a potential pro-Trump coup in 2024. Join the conversation and send comments to editors@thehustings.news. Please be civil.
And the Latest 1/6 Select Committee Subpoenas Go To – The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection issued six more subpoenas Monday, as it awaits Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland’s next move on how to handle a contempt of Congress charge against Stephen K. Bannon. As with Bannon, this list of five men and one woman includes no one who was a federal employee, working for the Trump administration –- and thus has no basic claim to executive privilege -- when allegedly planning on January 5-6 to overturn the November election in favor of Donald J. Trump. The list, per The New York Times:
•Michael Flynn: Former national security advisor to President Trump.
•John Eastman: Attorney who drafted the memo on how Trump could use Vice President Pence and Congress to try to invalidate election results.
•Bernard Kerik: Former New York City police commissioner who participated in a planning meeting at the Willard Hotel January 5. Then-President Trump in 2020 pardoned Kerik for ethics violation convictions.
•Bill Stepien: Trump campaign manager who supervised its conversion into the “stop the steal” campaign.
•Jason Miller: Senior advisor to the campaign who participated in the January 5 Willard Hotel meeting.
•Angela McCallum: Trump campaign national executive assistant, she reportedly left a voice mail message for an unknown Michigan state representative asking whether she could “count on” the rep to help appoint an alternative slate of electors.
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House GOP Blowback on Infrastructure Vote – Punchbowl News says rank-and-file Republican members of the House of Representatives are pushing leadership to strip of their committee posts 13 GOP colleagues who voted for President Biden’s $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill last Friday. The acrimony is reportedly roiling House GOP leadership, all the way up to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
Much of the anger is directed at Rep. John Katko, R-NY, who joined 12 other Republicans in the 228-206 passage of the bill and is ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee. Katko also was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment.
Several other Republicans who voted for the bipartisan bill hold ranking committee posts, according to Punchbowl News, and three of the 13 have already announced they will not run for re-election next year.
Note: This is all political, of course. Republican House members are angry that members of their party handed Biden his first major legislative victory, even on a bill that has widespread support across the country. The 13 Republicans gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who lost six progressives on infrastructure, a cushion on the vote.
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Two for SCOTUS Today – In Ramirez v. Collier, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule definitively on the rights of a convict on death row to receive spiritual comfort and advice prior to execution, per SCOTUSblog. The case involves a Texas policy that has excluded all spiritual advisors from the state’s execution chambers.
Also today, in United States v. Vaello-Madero, the court will consider equal protection challenging Puerto Rico’s exclusion from federal safety net programs (again, SCOTUSblog). The case involves Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, a Puerto Rican-born U.S. citizen who was living in New York City in 2012 when he became seriously ill and began receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI). When he returned to Puerto Rico to be closer to family, the SSI stopped. Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, though is excluded from such safety net programs.
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Going in the Wrong Direction? — Sixty-two percent of Americans polled by Morning Consult say that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. Since early May, when the number was 50%, those thinking that things aren’t going where they are supposed to be has been heading upward. If there is any satisfaction in the numbers, which are compiled each week, it is that on January 15, 2021, those who said “wrong track” was at 79%, a peak.
Note: One of the primary problems of the Biden Administration is a remarkable inability to message. Until that gets fixed the wrong-way perception will not change. It isn’t going to happen by having Biden stand in front of a White House podium intoning a script, but by having enthusiastic people out there talking about things that are going right, whether on Wall Street (how often did Trump take credit for a rising stock market?) or Main Street (the jobs numbers improved, but no Democrats are beating a drum about it).
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics