Wednesday News & Notes
JULY 28, 2021 -- 14TH AMENDMENT GRANTS CITIZENSHIP TO FORMERLY ENSLAVED, 1868
•President Biden will announce a new rule today requiring that all federal employees take a coronavirus vaccine or face repeated testing mandates, The Washington Post reports. The new rule follows tightened policies recently mandated for government empoloyees in New York City and in California.
•Biden’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Spain is Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon, currently First Lady Jill Biden’s chief of staff, and former ambassador to Uruguay under President Obama, per Politico. Biden also intends to nominate Mark Gitenstein, ex-ambassador to Romania as representative to the European Union, Patricia Mahoney, currently ambassador to the Republic of Benin as ambassador to the Central African Republic, and Laura S.H. Holgate as American representative to the Vienna office of the United Nations as well as U.S. rep to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Emotional Testimony from Four Officers, as Republicans Blame Pelosi – Capitol Police Officer Aquillino Gonell compared the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol to his time in Iraq as an Army officer.
“On January 6, for the first time, I was more afraid to work in the Capitol than in my entire time in Iraq.”
When Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, one of two Republicans on the nine-member House Select Committee investigating the 1/6 insurrection asked Gonell what he thought of ex-President Trump’s description of rioters as “a loving crowd,” Gonell replied that “if that was all hugs and kisses, we should go to his house and do the same thing.”
Gonell later apologized for that last comment, that he didn’t mean to really suggest a riotous crowd descend upon Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Washington Metro Police Officer Daniel Hodges described the pervasiveness of Christian symbols among the January 6 rioters, alongside the MAGA flags, Confederate flags and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. “It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians,” he said.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn described strong racial epithets directed to him. The rioters, terrorists – whatever you want to call them – were almost all white, mostly male and mostly middle-aged though with some younger insurrectionists, and Dunn and his colleagues in the Capitol and Metro police departments said they were all pro-Trump. … Not “Antifa, not Black Lives Matter, not FBI,” Gonell said.
“The indifference to my colleagues is disgraceful,” Metro officer Michael Fanone, who was tasered, stripped of his badge and beaten to the point he is still recovering from the injuries.
After this first round of hearings, committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-CA, told NPR the panel has to investigate the role of white nationalists at the insurrection, and why Capitol and Metro D.C. police did not get support radioed in, and who, as Dunn put it, was the “hit man” who put out the job on Capitol Hill that day. Schiff said subpoenas of Donald Trump and members of his administration remains possible.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the other Republican on the panel, said the committee still doesn’t know what happened because “many in my party have treated this as yet another partisan fight.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-MS, says the committee plans to obtain materials compiled for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in February, according to Roll Call. A second hearing is expected in August.
To that point, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who replaced Cheney as the House of Representatives’ third-most powerful Republican earlier this year, held a pre-emptive news conference, flanked by rejected committee nominee Jim Jordan, of Ohio, to blame the January 6 insurrection on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Note: Pro-Trump House Republicans and their supporters in the hard-right punditocracy seemed desperate for a diversion Tuesday. By afternoon, the pro-MAGA rhetoric had extended to criticism on the Twittersphere of Simone Biles’ withdrawal from U.S. team gymnastics at the Tokyo Olympics.
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Speaking of Trump – Here’s how the headline in The Texas Tribune describes it: “In a major upset against a candidate backed by Donald Trump, Jake Ellzey wins runoff for Fort Worth-area congressional seat.” Ellzey, the Texas state representative who was endorsed by former Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-TX on Tuesday beat Susan Wright for the seat. Wright’s husband, Ron Wright, originally won Texas’ sixth district election last November, but died of COVID-19 early this year.
While fellow Republican Ellzey trailed Wright 14% to 19% among 24 candidates in the special election to replace Ron Wright, Ellzey beat the “longtime Republican activist” by 52.92% to 47.08% in the runoff, with 93% of the precincts in, the Tribunereports.
Note: While it’s just the first real test of Trump’s post-administration primacy in the Republican Party, it will bolster the anti-Trump GOP’s resolve to fight party primaries promised for next year against those whom the former president considers inadequately sycophantic.
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Senate Negotiators Reach Deal on Capitol Hill Security – Senate negotiators have reached an agreement for $2.1-billion in emergency funding to bolster Capitol Hill security and to pay for relocation of Afghanis who aided the U.S. government in the war, Roll Call reports. The Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-VT, with Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, as ranking member, will forward the bill to the full Senate.
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Brooks’ Speech is Not Protected, Justice Department Rules – Broad protection of speech by Congress members and federal employees does not extend to comments Rep. Mo Brooks, R-AL, made to Trump supporters at a January 6 rally ahead of the Capitol insurrection, the Justice Department said in a court filing, according to The Washington Post. The court filing, which drew the legal line over attempts to stop Electoral College results, gives the green light to a lawsuit filed against Brooks by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-CA.
--Edited by Todd Lassa