Stupid idea...

Reports of F-35’s demise are greatly exaggerated

Harry Lye

Countering claims that the US Air Force could buy a clean-sheet design fighter to replace the F-16 means the F-35 project has failed; US Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown, Jr on Thursday said the F-35 was the ‘cornerstone’ of the US tactical air capability.

During a press briefing last week, US Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown, Jr compared the F-35 to a Ferrari, saying he wanted to ‘moderate’ how the aircraft was being used. The USAF has the ambition to order a total of 1,763 F-35As; the model was originally seen as a replacement for the F-16.

Brown said: “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ [fighter], we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight.”

Brown’s comments about a new F-16 replacement and the recent acquisition of the F-15EX have been seen by many as a signal that the F-35 project has failed, however, it can also be seen as an acknowledgement that the Lockheed Martin stealth jet is not a magic bullet that will solve all of the USAF’s problems.

Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) research fellow and editor of RUSI Defence Systems Justin Bronk told Air Force Technology that Brown’s desire to explore options for a ‘fifth-generation minus’ clean-sheet design to replace the F-16 was a recognition that the F-35 is not an affordable replacement for the entire US Air Force fleet due to its operating costs.

Bronk added that in the regard the programme ‘has failed’ but added: “However, the aircraft itself is performing extremely well in exercises and frontline deployments – far outstripping any other existing option, and acquisition costs are stable at around $80m per aircraft – lower than many ‘4.5-generation’ rivals.”

During a Thursday media roundtable, Brown refuted claims the F-35 was a ‘failure’, saying the fighter was the ‘cornerstone of our [US Air Force’s] TacAir [tactical air] capability’.

Brown went on to say: “The F-35 is the cornerstone of what we’re pursuing. Now we’re going to have the F-35, we’re getting it out, and we’re going to have it for the future. The reason I’m looking at this fighter study is to have a better understanding of not only the F-35s we’re going to get but the other aspects of what complements the F-35. And looking 10 to 15 years out, because I want to be able to understand as I start trying to make decisions is what do we want to look like as an air force 15 years from now, with the F-35 as the cornerstone of our capability.”

When asked if the ongoing TacAir study would make a recommendation on the number of F-35s the US should look to acquire as its final fleet, Brown said: “What I want to do is do the study, and right now the number is the number that we’ve already laid out [1,763 F-35As]. And we’ll look at the study and what I’ve asked the team to do is give me provide me with options on how to take a look at this because I want to make sure we have the right capability.

“And that includes continuing to buy the 1,763 like we’ve already outlined, but we also have to take a look at it to make sure it has the capability we need with block four but also is affordable. I know we’re working with Lockheed Martin and others to ensure we do that because there are some cost pressures as well. But the intent is to continue on the number that we’ve laid out. And in using that study to help inform how we best get there.”

Answering a question on the future of the F-35 fleet from Air Force Technology during a Wednesday press briefing, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Darlene Costello said: “There’s ongoing analysis, of course, always. And so those numbers, our programme of record is 1,763 at this point, and every year, the department at writ large looks at what is the right force. You’ve heard the chief reference ongoing analysis.”

Bronk added that if the F-16 replacement does go ahead, the F-35A would still nonetheless form the ‘backbone’ of the US Air Force’s tactical fighter jet capability when it comes to high-end operations in contested areas in the coming decades. However, he added this would likely see the eventual fleet size shrink from the proposed 1,763 to one of between 600 and 1,000 jets.

Even this figure, Bronk added, was “still a huge programme of record” that would easily generate sustained investment from the US in capability growth throughout the rest of the aircraft’s service life for both the US and allied users of the aircraft.

In response to the same question, the US Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition officer Lieutenant General Duke Richardson said: “When Chief Brown was talking about that he was talking about the age of the fighter fleet and he was talking about the average age being 29 years of age. And so, he talked about it from that context; one of his priorities is actually digital acquisition.

“We’ve got a Chief here that’s fully embracing this, the things that Miss Costello and I are talking about today. And so, he’s got that in his mind, he’s seeing it applied to things like NGAD [Next Generation Air Dominance], to GBSD [Ground Based Strategic Deterrent], to T-7 to some other things. I mentioned some of the weapons programmes that were starting. He’s thinking about, is there a way to refresh my fighter fleet quicker. The other part that he mentioned is this idea of the tac air study.”

The US currently has two ongoing tactical air studies, one of which is being conducted by the USAF and the other through the Joint Staff, assessing what in Richardson’s words “that ultimate fighter fleet would look like.”

Richardson added: “I think chief Brown is very interested in making sure that he has the right tool for the right job, he would not want to apply one tool to every job, especially if it’s an expensive tool.

“We are so early in that process in terms of what those results will come out to be, or what sort of future programme they might even end up in. I wouldn’t be able to go any further than that, certainly until that study completes out, and I think we’re a couple of years out from that.”

Bronk added that the “analysis of General Brown’s alternative approach” would likely run into challenges due to the challenges of trying to create a “clean sheet relatively low-observable multirole fighter with open software architecture” for less than $80m – the current unit cost of an F-35A.

Bronk added: “ It would also require Congress to authorise another clean-sheet fighter programme alongside the US Air Force’s ongoing efforts to replace its KC-10 tankers with the troubled KC-46, replace the B-2 and B-1 bombers with the new B-21, supplement the F-22 fleet with the new NGAD, introduce highly-automated UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles] to supplement fighters in combat via the Skyborg programme, and replace the F-15C/D air superiority fleet with new F-15EXs.”

Development of the US Air Force’s next-generation air dominance or NGAD has also been seen by some as a threat to the F-35 or a tacit acknowledgement that the fighter does deliver what the air force wanted, however, Brown said the service did not plan to divert funding from the F-35 programme to pay for the future fighter.

Commenting on NGAD and F-35, Brown said: “As far as NGAD versus F-35. We’re not going to take money from F-35 to do NGAD. We’re going to look at some of the other parts of the fighter force to take a look at NGAD, to help fund NGAD. It’s [we] want to keep the F-35 on track, but also look at NGAD.”

NGAD made a stunning entrance to the public spotlight last summer when the USAF’s former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper announced the service had already built and flown a full-scale prototype of the aircraft.

Brown added: “Part of this is you look at some of the older platforms we have, and this is why I wanted to kind of do this study so I can see… as we bring in NGAD, and we start bringing down some of the older aircraft; one, to help get our average age down, but two, to make sure we don’t have a big gap in capability as we go forward as well.

“When I think about that capability, I’m also thinking about the threat that we see today but the threat we’re projecting for the future. I want to have an understanding, which is why the study to me is important so we don’t just build something without thinking about the threat but also thinking about the complete fighter force. Not just the F-35 or NGAD.”

Hosts booed

CPAC hosts booed for asking attendees to wear masks

"When you’re in the ballroom, when you’re seated, you should still be wearing a mask," CPAC deputy director Carly Patrick said.

By QUINT FORGEY

Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference were met with boos on Friday morning as they encouraged the crowd inside a Florida hotel ballroom to put on face masks in compliance with the host venue’s policies.

The awkward moment unfolded early on the first day of programming at the American Conservative Union’s annual confab and represented a confusing shift in rhetoric from prior speakers who uniformly mocked coronavirus-related restrictions in a series of sharply partisan remarks.

Just after former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel finished his speech by leading the audience in chants of “freedom,” ACU executive director Dan Schneider and CPAC deputy director Carly Patrick took the stage to deliver a more sober message to the attendees gathered at the Hyatt Regency Orlando — who appeared overwhelmingly maskless.

“I know this might sound like a little bit of a downer, but we also believe in property rights, and this is a private hotel,” Schneider said. “And we believe in the rule of law, so we need to comply with the laws of this county that we’re in. But a private hotel, just like your house, gets to set its own rules.”

Patrick went on to explain that “we are in a private facility, and we do want to be respectful of the ordinances that they have as their private property. So please, everyone: When you’re in the ballroom, when you’re seated, you should still be wearing a mask.”

“So if everybody can go ahead, work on that. I know, I know, it’s not the most fun,” Patrick continued, as scattered shouts of “freedom” gave way to louder complaints from the crowd.

“You have the right to set [your] own rules in your own house,” Schneider interjected. “And we’re borrowing somebody else’s house. So we need to comply with their rules. So thank you all for putting on your masks. I wear a mask when I’m in the halls, and we’re going to comply with their rules.”

Schneider and Patrick’s pleas came after numerous speakers had criticized the pandemic measures put in place by Democratic state and local officials across the country, as well as the advice of public health experts.

But their comments particularly clashed with earlier remarks by ACU Chair Matt Schlapp and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who boasted at the opening of Day One of the conference: “Welcome to our oasis of freedom!”

Texas Fiasco

The Texas Fiasco Makes the Case for Creating a National Power Grid

Connecting America’s regional grids, albeit pricey and difficult, could help usher in the future of energy.

MATT SIMON

You could point fingers in several directions for the outages that stemmed from last week’s polar vortex obliteration of the Texas power grid. You can’t rightly blame Earth for doing what it does, but you could certainly condemn the state’s deregulation of its energy system. Texas also remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and the power plants that run on them failed en masse. So you might blame those operators, but you can’t blame renewables for this one.

But you’re not likely to see many people pointing fingers at the obscure yet fascinating eccentricities of the fragmented United States energy grid. And you’re even less likely to hear that what happened in Texas could help spur the country to better prepare its grid for the ascent of renewables—and our descent into the ravages of climate change.

In the future, the central challenge for the US will be obtaining power that is both clean and “firm,” in the parlance of energy nerds. “The real failing of Texas was the reliance upon the natural gas backbone as the firm power source, which of course wasn’t so firm, as they later learned,” says David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. He’s a coauthor on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report coincidentally released today called The Future of Electric Power in the United States. “If you want to decarbonize the grid, and keep power reliable, then you’ve got to have a clean, firm power source,” he continues. “That’s the central goal.”

But the US grid isn’t going to make the wide-scale sharing of clean energy easy—exporting solar energy from the Southwest, for instance, and wind energy from the Midwest. That’s because the mainland grid is divided into three sections. The Western Interconnection and the Eastern Interconnection meet at the eastern borders of Colorado and Wyoming, splitting the country in two. The Texas Interconnection is divorced from both in the name of energy independence, though it doesn’t trace neatly to the state’s borders—some of the panhandle is actually part of the Eastern Interconnection. And in the northern and southern parts of the US, our grids intertwine with those run by our neighbors. There’s a Quebec grid that exchanges power across the border with New England. The Pacific Northwest similarly exchanges with British Columbia, and Southern California with a little bit of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula.

Each of these grids more or less does its own thing: Utility companies generate power and ferry it around their territories. These utilities are typically owned by a state, a municipality, or investors. The utilities regularly exchange power within an interconnection as energy demand waxes and wanes in a given area thanks to heat waves or cold snaps. So, for instance, in the West, high-voltage transmission towers carry electricity between Washington, Oregon, and California. But neither the eastern nor the western half of the national grid sticks tendrils into Texas in a way that would have let the state borrow large amounts of power when facing a massive, sudden freeze.

First of all, Texas would have had to fall back on a neighbor that was far enough away to not also be suffering an extreme cold snap. (Nearby states would be dealing with their own high energy demand and generation problems.) Even then, Texas could draw maybe 1 gigawatt of power from the Eastern Interconnection on a good day. For perspective, the state’s entire grid uses 60 gigawatts.

It’s not that the Western and Eastern Interconnections don’t exchange any power at all—they do it here and there at the local level. But they’re not thoroughly connected by those big high-voltage lines, which are the only way to carry electricity long distances. The Rocky Mountains quite effectively separate East and West. “It’s really evolved that way because in that part of the country, there just wasn’t much infrastructure,” says Jeff Dagle, chief electrical engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “And so nobody had an economic reason to build a bunch of high-voltage transmission lines to connect the grids together.”

And there’s another engineering challenge: The Western and Eastern Interconnections each hum at their own uniform frequency. If you had two meters and plugged one into a wall socket in San Francisco and the other in Seattle, you’d see the same readout. “Every motor, every generator, everything in that grid is running at the same speed in that entire grid,” says Dagle. “It’s kind of cool to think about.” But if you plugged a meter into a socket in New York City, it would be humming at the Eastern grid’s frequency. And, of course, you’d get a different reading in Dallas.

To get the Western, Eastern, and Texas Interconnections to talk to one another, they have to do so at the same speed. Electrical stations along their borders are indeed equipped to do this to exchange power across the interconnections, but “they’re very small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things,” says Dagle. “They’re really there for the economic value of the local utilities, being able to buy and sell power across that interface. But they’re kind of insignificant as it relates to the overall functioning of the grid.”

Texas also remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and its various methods of energy generation all failed to some degree when the polar vortex hit. The state gets 40 percent of its power from natural gas, but those facilities are outdoors, so their works froze up; they just weren’t prepared for such extreme cold. “You would not build a plant like that in Minnesota—you would put it indoors,” says Dagle. “So that’s fundamentally part of the problem.”

Texas’ coal and nuclear plants suffered frozen equipment too. Of all the state’s lost energy, 61 percent came from the failure of those two sources and natural gas. The other 39 percent of the loss came from wind and solar—solar panels snowing over and half of the state’s turbines freezing up. (The remaining still-spinning turbines played no small part in keeping the grid from total collapse. And it’s worth noting that proper weatherization allows wind turbines to keep spinning in freezing temperatures.)

This dearth of power coincided with extra-high demand for it. In the extreme cold, everyone needed to heat their homes, drawing electricity for powering space heaters or natural gas for central heat systems.

What could we do to create a grid that’s less prone to such disruptions? Build infrastructure to better link the interconnections. “They could build stronger ties between the Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection and Texas to share power, and it actually would benefit them greatly,” says Ben Kroposki, director of the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who studies the national grid.

Take a look at the map above. That WI-EI Seam is the border between the Western and Eastern Interconnections. All the blue in the Midwest marks where wind is an abundant resource. The gold in the Southwest means abundant solar. The green bathing Texas is both. While the state is still highly dependent on fossil fuels for energy generation, it’s actually rich in renewable resources. If all the interconnections actually played nice with one another, Texas could be the place where they met in the middle, exporting solar and wind energy to its neighbors and importing their power when needed. You know, like during a polar vortex.

Notice the time stamps at the bottom of the map. The peak load in most places is between 4 pm and 9 pm, Kroposki says, as people return home and cook dinner and turn on heaters or AC units. If it’s 2 pm in Arizona, the sun is blazing on solar panels just as folks on the East Coast are ramping up their energy usage. “You could be pushing solar energy back east,” Kroposki says. Then as the Midwest moves out of peak usage, it could push wind energy back west.

Also, on the days the sun isn’t shining in the Southwest, those states could import wind power from Texas or the Midwest. If the wind refuses to blow in the Midwest, those states could import solar power from the Southwest or Texas. Ironically enough, Texas—the utility outlaw—could be a uniting force between all these regions.

But the country needs to build out high-voltage lines to more intimately intertwine the three regions. “These kinds of things would help integrate more renewables, because you could geographically distribute them,” Kroposki says. “You could put more renewables in the locations where the resources are really good, and move the power easier around the country.”

“The thing that holds all of this up is: Who’s going to pay for this infrastructure?” Kroposki adds. “It benefits everybody, but not in a way that’s easy to collect dollars from.” Realistically, the funding would come down from the feds. President Joe Biden has, after all, promised to build out green energy infrastructure to create 10 million jobs.

Prepare for mountains of red tape, though. We’re talking about miles upon miles of lines crossing through multiple states, each with their own regulatory hurdles. “I think we’re in a world where it’s going to continue to be difficult to site large, long-distance transmission lines, and we suggest greater authority for [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] to be able to do that,” says Victor, the coauthor on that National Academies report. “But we’re under no illusion that you’ll wave a magic wand to make that problem easy.”

While we’re waiting for that to happen, there may be another way to reinforce our grids with renewables on the local level: microgrids. Northern California’s Blue Lake Rancheria, for instance, has loaded up on solar panels and batteries so it can “island” itself from the main grid if necessary. Last fall—the peak of the state’s increasingly dire wildfire season—the local utility cut power to swaths of California to keep from sparking a blaze, and some 10,000 locals headed to the rancheria for fuel and supplies.

Without power, gas pumps don’t work and water treatment plants go offline, so you get an additional water crisis, as happened in Texas. But in this case, the rancheria served as a powered-up oasis. “The Blue Lake microgrid is a small drop in the bucket for the California grid, so it didn’t make a big difference,” says Peter Lehman, founding director of Humboldt State University’s Schatz Energy Research Center, which helped develop the microgrid. “But it’s a role model for how we can respond to those situations in the future.”

On a bigger scale, a city’s microgrid could incorporate fire and police stations, hospitals, water treatment plants, evacuation centers, and maybe even a grocery store or two. But these microgrids remain expensive. Battery prices are still high (though they’re falling), and each microgrid has to be purpose-designed for a given town. “It’s still costly to do this,” says Lehman. “But it’s a question of, how do we spend our money as a society? We’re essentially buying insurance. It’s an insurance policy against what just happened in Texas and what just happened in California.”

In the end, microgrids and a more integrated national grid could live in harmony. Microgrids would allow municipalities to become more energy-independent so they can keep the lights on following extreme temperatures and natural disasters, while a more robust network of high-voltage lines would make it easier to shuttle renewable energy around. “It could well be that the grid of the future is one that has a huge amount of decentralization, but still there’s a backbone of the central grid that provides vital services,” Victor says. “In that sense, you could have the grid of the past and the future simultaneously.”

Easy way...

The suicide of the ex-USA Gymnastics coach who faced abuse charges was an 'escape from justice,' former gymnast says

By Mallika Kallingal and Amanda Watts

The death of John Geddert, the US Olympic team coach who was charged with 24 felonies in connection with the abuse of young gymnasts, was an "escape from justice," said Sarah Klein, one of the many athletes who reacted to his suicide on Thursday.

"He tortured and abused little girls, myself included, for more than 30 years and was able to cheat justice," said Klein, who had identified herself as the first to be abused by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.

Geddert, who took his own life Thursday after news of the charges, was the former owner of Michigan's famed Twistars Gymnastics Club. It was one of the places Nassar had admitted to sexually abusing young female athletes. Twistars has since been sold and renamed.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel called Geddert's death "a tragic end to a tragic story for everyone involved."

The attorney general's office had "no indication" Geddert "intended to flee or hurt himself or others," a spokesperson for the office said in a statement Friday. The office had "been in contact with his attorney," the spokesperson said, and was "assured of his cooperation."

Geddert was facing 14 counts of human trafficking-forced labor resulting in injury, six counts of human trafficking of a minor for forced labor, and one count each of continuing criminal enterprise, first-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and lying to a peace officer during a violent crime investigation.

In her statement Thursday, Klein also blamed officials at the top gymnastics organizations for "enabling" Geddert.

"Geddert was a narcissistic abuser. His suicide is an admission of guilt that the entire world can now see. Also guilty are his enablers including the top officials at USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee who promoted him, enabled him and allowed him to coach Team USA," Klein said.

Other gymnasts were equally troubled.

Rachael Denhollander, the former gymnast who first made Nassar's abuse public in a September 2016 story in the Indy Star tweeted, "Geddert's choice today was his, and his alone. What each survivor did was put an end to the abuse and save others."

Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman said she was "sick to my stomach."

She added in a tweet: "Thinking of the survivors out there. Wish there was more I could say to ease the pain & suffering."

Klein was one of over 150 victims who spoke about how they went to Nassar to receive treatment for sports injuries only to be sexually assaulted and told it was a form of treatment.

"The bravery of Geddert's many victims will stand for all time in stark contrast to his cowardice. As a survivor and a mother of two young girls, my only comfort is in the knowledge that I can rest my head on the pillow every night knowing that John Geddert will never terrorize and abuse another child," Klein said.

She also called Geddert "an intimidating coach" who made it difficult to speak up.

Sarah Klein says John Geddert was "able to cheat justice." 

Sarah Klein says John Geddert was "able to cheat justice."

"My abuse by Larry Nassar began at the age of 8 while I was training at John Geddert's elite gymnastics gym. The abuse continued throughout my time training at Geddert's gym, more than 10 years. Geddert was an intimidating coach and maintained a culture of fear that made it impossible for young girls to approach him and report Nassar's abuse," she said.

Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in 2018, after more than 150 women and girls said in court that he sexually abused them over decades.

USA Gymnastics, for its part, said that it had hoped the criminal charges would lead to justice through the legal process.

"With the news of his death by suicide, we share the feelings of shock, and our thoughts are with the gymnastics community as they grapple with the complex emotions of today's events," the statement said.

Experiencing the downside

Saudi Arabia is experiencing the downside of betting on the Trump family

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

In diplomacy, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Saudi Arabia is experiencing the downside of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's decision to bet the farm on the Trump family.

"The President's intention -- as is the intention of this government -- is to recalibrate our engagement with Saudi Arabia and have counterparts communicate with counterparts," Joe Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Wednesday before today's call between her boss and MBS's father, King Salman. It doesn't get much blunter than that.

The fact that the first chat between Biden and the monarch took this long tells its own story. As does the President's decision to end support for Saudi operations in the Yemen war. His willingness to engage on the Iran nuclear deal is also a disappointment for Riyadh.

The US will soon release an intelligence report expected to find MBS complicit in the murder and dismembering of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Thanks in part to the close relationship between fellow princelings MBS and former first son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Kingdom initially got a pass for the Washington Post columnist's killing.

Atrocities like the killing of Khashoggi are incompatible not just with human decency, but also with the Biden administration's focus on democracy. The new White House also has no intention of emulating former President Donald Trump by anchoring its Middle East policy on Saudi Arabia and right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who also had to sweat for weeks before his Biden call.

Snubbing MBS is a public signal that the US is looking for a behavioral change. Avoiding the crown prince will be sustainable for only so long: He is already the driving force in Riyadh, the King is 85 and Saudi Arabia's petroleum riches and strategic position mean it will remain an important US ally.

But for the next four years, it's going to be tougher to get Biden's ear. And the flattery and glowing orbs that entranced Trump are unlikely to work.

Pussy...

Proud Boys leader has no sympathy for lawmakers targeted by Capitol riot

By Mallory Simon, Sara Sidner and Anna-Maja Rappard

The leader of the far-right Proud Boys group does not care that lawmakers were terrorized by rioters inside the US Capitol on January 6 as they tried to do their jobs. 

 "I'm not gonna cry about people who don't give a crap about their constituents. I'm not going to sympathize with them," Enrique Tarrio says. 

 More than a dozen people affiliated with the often violent, far-right  "Western Chauvinist" group have been charged for their roles in the insurrection, so CNN sat down with Tarrio to hear if he had any explanation or justification for their actions, or if he would now change tack. 

He gives pointed responses, but then adds lots of caveats.

 What he has not done is change his mind about the role the Proud Boys played on January 6 or his feelings about the targeting of members of Congress despite the release of so much stunningly violent video. The attack left five people dead and dozens of police officers injured.

The day after the attack, Tarrio posted a photo of House members crouched down and hiding, with a caption, "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny ... When the government fears the people ... There is liberty." He told CNN he was quoting Thomas Jefferson, though there is no evidence the third President ever said that, according to his foundation.

"When they support drone-bombing children in the Middle East ... [and] those people are dead and they're just cowering because a group of misfits came into the Capitol, I'm not going to be sympathetic," Tarrio tells CNN.

He doubles down, dismissing the specter of a mob that had hammered on doors to the House and Senate trying to get to those inside: "I'm not going to worry about people that their only worry is to be reelected."

Tarrio was not at the Capitol on January 6. He was ordered to stay away from Washington, after being arrested in the city two days prior to the insurrection on a misdemeanor charge in connection to the burning of a church's Black Lives Matter banner  in December, in addition to weapons charges. He admitted to both to CNN.

He says over and over that he doesn't support the attack on the Capitol, but he won't condemn the attackers either.

It's not that simple, he says. "I think condemn is a very strong word."

Tarrio says he understands what got people so frustrated. Donald Trump supporters have felt demonized after being called "deplorables" and have been angry about protests that have turned violent in places like Portland and Minneapolis, shutdowns due to coronavirus and being kicked off popular social media sites, he says. Some, though not Tarrio, believe the lie that the election was stolen.

Tarrio believes members of his organization got caught up in the moment, adding he might have done the same if he had been there.

But he is also adamant the group never had plans to storm the Capitol.

Notoriety's double-edged sword

Court documents show the Proud Boys are perhaps second only to the Oath Keepers when it comes to an organized group facing the most charges.

Proud Boys are accused of conspiracy, making threats to assault a federal officer, stealing a police officer's shield, robbery, theft and destruction of government property, carrying a dangerous weapon, assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, and removing barriers and fences at the Capitol.

Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from New York, used the stolen riot shield to repeatedly smash through a window at the Capitol.

Footage of the attack shows the pro-Trump mob entering through that broken window.

Tarrio says Pezzola merely "mess[ed] up." "I just don't see an egregious [act like] he assaulted somebody or he hurt somebody."

He believes his members -- along with some others in the right-wing, anti-government Oath Keepers -- are being scapegoated because of their notoriety.

He says his men -- and they are all men -- were not violent that day and are being charged with felonies for trespassing and interrupting Congress.

"They need a head to roll. They need heads on pikes," Tarrio argues. "The FBI and the DOJ [are] using the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as their go-to, to show the people that they did something."

The profile of the Proud Boys did soar after Trump told the group to "stand back and stand by" when he was asked to denounce extremists during the first presidential debate.

The Proud Boys did fundraise and sell merchandise off that mention, and Tarrio seems happy to report that their membership doubled in the days following.

But he is unwilling to accept more scrutiny along with more attention. Instead, he is quick to deflect.

While happy to criticize the violence sometimes associated with anti-fascist protesters known as Antifa in cities like Portland, Oregon, he won't acknowledge the role of Proud Boys in the same violent clashes, saying they fight only to defend themselves.

He's even backing down on calling for Antifa to be declared a terrorist organization, not because his loathing of them is any less but because he fears the same classification could be used against his group and others to "silence their freedom speech."

Canada recently did make that choice, adding the Proud Boys to its list of terrorist groups. But Tarrio insists he had changed his mind about Antifa before that decision. Tarrio disagrees with Canada's designation and says the Canadian Proud Boys are considering their legal options to fight it.

Tarrio is close to Trump confidant Roger Stone and even revealed he had been called to testify in front of a grand jury regarding Stone.

Stone was then facing seven counts for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the probe to find out if the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia. A jury convicted Stone on all seven counts but Trump later pardoned him. During that case, an investigation was launched as to whether Stone had threatened the judge after a post appeared on his social media account showing a picture of the judge and what investigators thought could be a target behind her head. Stone testified that a person working with him on his social media accounts had chosen the image.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz first reported last week that a grand jury had been convened in 2019. Tarrio said he testified because he had access to Stone's phone a couple of times to post social media content.

Tarrio says he had nothing to do with posting that image.

What comes next

The Proud Boys leader says he has proof that his group never had any bad intentions on January 6. That proof, he says, is in internal communications in the days, weeks and months before the insurrection and is different from the public messages seen on Parler or Telegram. But in the next breath he says he won't share the claimed exoneration, at least not yet. He's waiting for the right moment when it has the biggest impact on the cases against his men.

He says yes, he told his group not to wear their normal colors for the rally on January 6. But, he says, that wasn't planning to evade authorities, it was just to trick Antifa.

Tarrio admitted he was an informant for the FBI and other agencies after he was convicted in a federal fraud case, but he now says the FBI is not to be trusted and improperly uses its power.

He says that after what happened on January 6, though, his group is looking at changing some of its tactics.

"I think right now is the time to go ahead and overthrow the government by becoming the new government and running for office," he says.

What a stupid fuck...

A Capitol rioter texted his ex during the insurrection to call her a 'moron,' feds say. She turned him in.

Timothy Bella

Standing on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, Richard Michetti allegedly took a break from the rioting to argue with his ex-girlfriend over text message. After sending photos and videos of the mob and boasting how he had avoided tear gas, Michetti parroted President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud.

"If you can't see the election was stolen you're a moron," Michetti wrote in a text to the woman, according to court documents.

The next day, the woman he had insulted promptly told the FBI that her ex was at the Capitol, handing over to law enforcement the string of texts, photos and videos he had sent to her.

Michetti, who lives in Ridley Park, Pa., has now been charged with knowingly entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and obstruction of Congress. If convicted, Michetti, who was arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Philadelphia, faces up to 20 years in prison, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Neither Michetti nor his attorney, federal public defender Kathleen Gaughan, immediately responded to a request for comment late Wednesday.

Michetti joins the growing list of more than 200 people who have been charged in the insurrection. Many of the alleged rioters were identified by law enforcement through text messages sent to family and friends that bragged of their presence in D.C. last month.

The ex-girlfriend, who is not named in a 10-page statement of facts, told the FBI that Michetti had texted her on Jan. 5 that he was taking a train to Washington from his home in the Philadelphia suburbs. Michetti told her that he was going to Washington because he believed the election had been stolen - a false claim relentlessly echoed by Trump following President Biden's win.

After Trump urged his supporters in a Jan. 6 speech in front of the White House to march to the Capitol as Congress was certifying the election results, Michetti, wearing a Chicago White Sox hat, dark hoodie and surgical mask, joined the thousands who breached the building minutes later, federal agents said.

"It's going down here," he texted his ex at 2:06 p.m., court documents show. "We stormed the building they held us back with spray and teargas and paintballs."

The Trump supporter told his former partner that while his eyes were burning, he and the thousands there were doing the right thing to "stop the vote it's fraud this is our country."

Around 4:30 p.m., after Trump finally called for rioters to "go home" hours into the insurrection, Michetti, who sent the woman two videos from inside the Capitol, called his ex a "moron."

"This is tyranny," he texted her later that evening. "They . . . told us 'we rigged the election and there's nuthin you can do about it' what do you think should be done?"

After reaching out to law enforcement the next day, Michetti's former partner was interviewed by FBI special agents on Jan. 11 and helped identify her ex in photos and videos sent to authorities by other tipsters. Footage from Capitol security cameras also captured the Delaware County man in various parts of the building, including the Rotunda, federal agents said. The FBI also got a receipt from Michetti's one-night stay at a hotel one block away from the Capitol that showed he had checked out on the day of the insurrection.

Michetti was released this week on unsecured bail with electronic monitoring, according to the Morning Call. His next court appearance by video is scheduled for Monday in federal court in Washington.

Mars landing site...

Stitched together on planet Earth, 142 separate images make up this 360 degree panorama from the floor of Jezero Crater on Mars. The high-resolution color images were taken by the Perseverance rover's zoomable Mastcam-Z during mission sol 3, also known as February 21, 2021. In the foreground of Mastcam-Z's view is the car-sized rover's deck. Broad light-colored patches in the martian soil just beyond it were scoured by descent stage rocket engines during the rover's dramatic arrival on February 18. The rim of 45 kilometer-wide Jezero Crater rises in the distance. In the coming sols, Perseverance will explore the ancient lake-delta system in the crater, hunting for signs of past microscopic life and collecting samples for potential future return to planet Earth.

Pit Stop

Comet Makes a Pit Stop Near Jupiter's Asteroids

After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found a temporary parking place along the way. The object has settled near a family of captured ancient asteroids, called Trojans, that are orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. This is the first time a comet-like object has been spotted near the Trojan population.

The unexpected visitor belongs to a class of icy bodies found in space between Jupiter and Neptune. Called "Centaurs," they become active for the first time when heated as they approach the Sun, and dynamically transition into becoming more comet-like.

Visible-light snapshots by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the vagabond object shows signs of comet activity, such as a tail, outgassing in the form of jets, and an enshrouding coma of dust and gas. Earlier observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope gave clues to the composition of the comet-like object and the gasses driving its activity.

"Only Hubble could detect active comet-like features this far away at such high detail, and the images clearly show these features, such as a roughly 400,000-mile-long broad tail and high-resolution features near the nucleus due to a coma and jets," said lead Hubble researcher Bryce Bolin of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Describing the Centaur's capture as a rare event, Bolin added, "The visitor had to have come into the orbit of Jupiter at just the right trajectory to have this kind of configuration that gives it the appearance of sharing its orbit with the planet. We’re investigating how it was captured by Jupiter and landed among the Trojans. But we think it could be related to the fact that it had a somewhat close encounter with Jupiter."

The team's paper appears in the February 11, 2021 issue of The Astronomical Journal.

The research team's computer simulations show that the icy object, called P/2019 LD2 (LD2), probably swung close to Jupiter about two years ago. The planet then gravitationally punted the wayward visitor to the Trojan asteroid group's co-orbital location, leading Jupiter by about 437 million miles.

Bucket Brigade

The nomadic object was discovered in early June 2019 by the University of Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescopes located on the extinct volcanoes, one on Mauna Kea and one on Haleakala. Japanese amateur astronomer Seiichi Yoshida tipped off the Hubble team to possible comet activity. The astronomers then scanned archival data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field survey conducted at Palomar Observatory in California, and realized that the object was clearly active in images from April 2019.

They followed up with observations from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which also hinted at the activity. The team observed the comet using Spitzer just days before the observatory's retirement in January 2020, and identified gas and dust around the comet nucleus. These observations convinced the team to use Hubble to take a closer look. Aided by Hubble's sharp vision, the researchers identified the tail, coma structure and the size of the dust particles and their ejection velocity. These images helped them confirm that the features are due to relatively new comet-like activity.

Although LD2's location is surprising, Bolin wonders whether this pit stop could be a common pull-off for some sunward-bound comets. "This could be part of the pathway from our solar system through the Jupiter Trojans to the inner solar system," he said.

The unexpected guest probably will not stay among the asteroids for very long. Computer simulations show that it will have another close encounter with Jupiter in about another two years. The hefty planet will boot the comet from the system, and it will continue its journey to the inner solar system.

"The cool thing is that you're actually catching Jupiter flinging this object around and changing its orbital behavior and bringing it into the inner system," said team member Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "Jupiter controls what's going on with comets once they get into the inner system by altering their orbits."

The icy interloper is most likely one of the latest members of the so-called "bucket brigade" of comets to get kicked out of its frigid home in the Kuiper belt and into the giant planet region through interactions with another Kuiper belt object. Located beyond Neptune's orbit, the Kuiper belt is a haven of icy, leftover debris from our planets' construction 4.6 billion years ago, containing millions of objects, and occasionally these objects have near misses or collisions that drastically alter their orbits from the Kuiper belt inward into the giant planet region.

The bucket brigade of icy relics endure a bumpy ride during their journey sunward. They bounce gravitationally from one outer planet to the next in a game of celestial pinball before reaching the inner solar system, warming up as they come closer to the Sun. The researchers say the objects spend as much or even more time around the giant planets, gravitationally pulling on them—about 5 million years—than they do crossing into the inner system where we live.

"Inner system, 'short-period' comets break up about once a century," Lisse explained. "So, in order to maintain the number of local comets we see today, we think the bucket brigade has to deliver a new short-period comet about once every 100 years."

An Early Bloomer

Seeing outgassing activity on a comet 465 million miles away from the Sun (where the intensity of sunlight is 1/25th as strong as on Earth) surprised the researchers. "We were intrigued to see that the comet had just started to become active for the first time so far away from the Sun at distances where water ice is barely starting to sublimate," said Bolin.

Water remains frozen on a comet until it reaches about 200 million miles from the Sun, where heat from sunlight converts water ice to gas that escapes from the nucleus in the form of jets. So the activity signals that the tail might not be made of water. In fact, observations by Spitzer indicated the presence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas, which could be driving the creation of the tail and jets seen on the Jupiter-orbiting comet. These volatiles do not need much sunlight to heat their frozen form and convert them to gas.

Once the comet gets kicked out of Jupiter's orbit and continues its journey, it may meet up with the giant planet again. "Short-period comets like LD2 meet their fate by being thrown into the Sun and totally disintegrating, hitting a planet, or venturing too close to Jupiter once again and getting thrown out of the solar system, which is the usual fate," Lisse said. "Simulations show that in about 500,000 years, there's a 90% probability that this object will be ejected from the solar system and become an interstellar comet."

Not funny and a couple very nice...

 

Airstrike in Syria

U.S. carries out airstrike in Syria after rocket attacks

The strike was defensive in nature, but was a response to the three attacks endangering Americans in Iraqi this month.

By LARA SELIGMAN

President Joe Biden ordered an airstrike on facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in eastern Syria on Thursday night in response to three separate rocket attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

The strikes destroyed several facilities at a border control point used by a number of Iran-backed militia groups linked to the attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement.

“These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel,” Kirby said.

The president chose the "middle" option from a broad range of military options, according to a senior defense official. During the operation, U.S. fighter jets dropped seven 500lb precision bombs on seven targets, the person said. All bombs hit their targets, a crossing used by the militia groups to move weapons and other goods across the border. Officials expect minimal casualties.

The targets were chosen based on their affiliation with the militia groups officials believed executed the attacks in Iraq, the official said.

The airstrikes were designed to damage the militia group's ability to conduct future attacks, a second defense official told POLITICO. The U.S. military alone carried out the operation, without the aid of allies.

However, Kirby said the U.S. conducted the strike "together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with Coalition partners."

"The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel," Kirby said. "At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

Reuters first reported the news.

The retaliatory strike comes more than a week after a dozen rockets believed to be linked to an Iran-backed militia group targeted coalition forces outside Irbil International Airport, killing one non-U.S. contractor and wounding nine more people, including five Americans.

Then on Saturday, at least four rockets struck Balad Air Base, which houses American contractors who provide support to Iraq's fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, wounding one person.

And on Monday, two rockets fell near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone. No injuries or casualties were reported.

Biden initially faced criticism for not immediately pinning blame for the attacks on Iran, which has frequently carried out similar strikes against U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq. Some have been fatal.

The decision to strike in Syria instead of Iraq was likely made to avoid causing issues for the Iraqi government, which remains a partner in the counterterrorism fight against ISIS, said Mick Mulroy, former Pentagon official who oversaw Middle East issues. Mulroy advised the Biden team during the transition at the Pentagon.

The strikes were likely "calculated and scaled" to avoid any escalation, while sending a message that "Iran’s use of militias as proxies will not allow them to avoid responsibility," Mulroy added.

Thursday's strike came as the Biden administration strives to renew negotiations with Iran after former President Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, sparking escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran.

The U.S. maintains 900 troops in Syria and has no immediate plans to reduce the number, according to two other defense officials. The troops are there to support local forces fighting ISIS remnants, but also to serve as a buffer against Iranian influence.

Scrambled the party’s usual lines

‘Repeal and replace’ is dead. Republicans can’t figure out what comes next.

The pandemic and Biden’s incremental policies have scrambled the party’s usual lines of attack.

By JOANNE KENEN

Former President Donald Trump is gone and so are his promises to throw out Obamacare. Now the Republican party is left with figuring out what comes after “repeal and replace.”

GOP lawmakers rarely mention Obamacare, and a GOP-backed challenge to the law at the Supreme Court doesn’t appear to be a major threat. Republican attacks on Democrats pursuing a “government takeover” of health care through a single-payer system don’t quite sizzle when President Joe Biden has made clear he wants nothing to do with it. And long-favored Republican designs on shrinking the health care safety net isn’t great policy or politics in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis.

Which leaves a big fat question mark about what vision of health care Republicans will offer to voters as the country emerges from the pandemic, after a decade in which implacable opposition to the Affordable Care Act was part of the GOP’s core identity.

“Republicans don’t run on health. If they do, it’s always negative danger warning, not positive improvement optimism. It’s in their DNA,” said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute who has advised candidates on health care over the years.

“If the Republicans have a health care agenda, they haven’t shown their cards,” said Drew Altman, who runs the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some ideas they do tout — about drug prices, for instance — are “pinpricks” that wouldn’t lead to fundamental change, he said. Other ideas they’ve pushed in recent years, like Medicaid work requirements, would shrink rather than expand the number of people covered and government dollars spent.

Nowhere has the post-repeal Republican vacuum been more evident than in two days of Senate confirmation hearings this week for the likely next Health secretary, Xavier Becerra. Republicans seldom mentioned the landmark health care law, let alone critiqued it, across five-plus hours of testimony. They spent almost as much time quizzing Becerra, a longtime House member who is now California attorney general, about an obscure federal drug discount program called 340B that pharmaceutical companies and hospitals are feuding over than they did about the health care wars of the past decade.

At one point, when Becerra promised to use the top perch at the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the Affordable Care Act rather than push for the “Medicare for All”-style system that he has championed in the past, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), replied: “I appreciate hearing that.”

Obamacare has played a huge role in every election since Barack Obama himself won the presidency promising health reform in 2008. His health law was one reason Democrats lost control of the House immediately after its passage — and why they won back the chamber a few years later after Trump’s failed, unpopular repeal drive. Health care again could play a pivotal role in determining control of Congress in the 2022 midterms.

But now Obamacare is firmly implanted in the U.S. health care system and viewed more favorably. It’s still not embraced by large numbers of conservative voters, but public attitudes have softened toward many of its key components. Keeping young adults on their parents’ health plans until age 26 and protecting the tens of millions of people with pre-existing conditions is now the American way.

“The ACA has become sort of embedded in popular consciousness, whether people realize it or not,” said Nicole Huberfeld, an expert on health law at Boston University. Given that Republicans couldn’t repeal the law when they ran the government, she added, “Maybe they’ve learned to move on.”

Republicans no doubt will figure out some kind of health care message between now and the 2022 elections. But it’s TBD. And it may not center on the ACA.

Miller expects Republicans will return to arguing about the deficit, and that could bring back battles over Medicare and Medicaid. But the shaky finances of the Medicare trust fund didn’t feature prominently in the Becerra hearings either. Becerra was able to answer plain vanilla questions about Medicare with pledges to work with Republicans to protect the elderly.

Republicans could also try to shape some health care spending and small print that’s crucial to the industry, Miller said, though that’s not likely to be an election changer. Some of the Republican populism that’s now channeling anger toward tech giants and social media companies could also target “Health Care Inc.,” he said.

But it may be time for something completely different — and possibly less partisan, said David Winston, president of the Winston Group, a strategic planning and survey firm. Winston, who has advised congressional Republicans for a decade and used to work for Newt Gingrich, noted that amid the pandemic, people are thinking differently about their health — not just their health insurance.

“It’s an important structural change,” he said. And that may mean that Congress finally moves beyond the Obamacare wars, and delves deeper into things like personalized medicine, immunology and health technology. Lawmakers from both parties have already expressed an interest in expanding telehealth, which has been crucial during the pandemic. Congress, he said, would be left trying to figure out how to nurture innovation — without breaking the bank.

Not everyone on the Hill is ready to turn to that. While Becerra is likely to be confirmed with some bipartisan support, most of the “no” votes from the Republican side will arise from Becerra’s strong support of abortion rights — not broader disagreements over the direction of the health care system. That, and contraception coverage, particularly his involvement in a lawsuit involving an order of Catholic nuns called Little Sisters of the Poor, were by far the most acrimonious exchanges in his hearings before the Senate Finance and HELP committees this week.

Becerra deflected attacks on his past support for single-payer, or Medicare for all, by noting that he will work for a Biden administration, which is committed to strengthening the ACA. Several proposals to expand on the law, including more generous subsidies to purchase health insurance, are in Biden’s stimulus plan now pending in Congress.

Becerra also remarked that as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee for 24 years, he helped write the historic law. “I was in those rooms,” Becerra told Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who reminisced about drafting the ACA.

Robert Blendon at the Harvard School of Public Health, who has been polling on health care for years, said the current Republican quandary echoes the old debates between the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan wings of the party. Nixon, embracing what would become known as “managed competition,” favored a high-level federal framework to protect people from high health costs, with states in charge of setting the rules for a robust private insurance market.

In some ways, Nixon envisioned Obamacare Lite — or more accurately, Obamacare Very Very Lite. The ACA is a more robust, more expensive, and more heavily regulated framework, with states overseeing health insurance markets and the feds writing the rules and picking up much of the tab.

The Reagan wing, in contrast, didn’t see much of a federal role in protecting access to care or shielding people from health cost calamities. Reaganites, Blendon said, believed Nixon’s vision would be the first step on the slippery slope to single-payer.

Sometime between now and the 2022 elections, Republicans will have to move beyond that divide. Whatever they come up with, it will likely focus on giving states more leeway to regulate their health insurance markets. Even if Republicans are no longer threatening to upend the ACA, they still complain that its coverage is still too costly.

“Republicans want access to insurance,” Blendon said. “They just don’t want their health care controlled by federal government.” But how to guarantee that access — and who does the guaranteeing if not the federal government — remains the unanswered question.

Group of racist love their delusions..

Republican leaders split while CPAC prepares to unite around Trump

The annual confab is already showing how top GOP officials are making wildly different bets on the future of their party.

By MELANIE ZANONA and OLIVIA BEAVERS

Jason Smith was, quite literally, caught in the middle of his party’s tug of war this week.

The Missouri Republican lawmaker stood at the microphones alongside House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for their weekly news conference, usually a staid affair where GOP leaders project unity before a dubious Capitol Hill press corps. Then Smith watched McCarthy and Cheney clash over Donald Trump's role in their party — all live on C-SPAN.

Should Trump be speaking at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando? McCarthy offered an immediate "yes." Cheney said it’s up to CPAC, but then forcefully restated her position against the former president "playing a role in the future of the party, or the country."

Asked later if it was awkward to witness his leadership give such conflicting visions on Trump, Smith replied: “Hasn’t that been happening all year?"

The episode perfectly captured the civil war raging inside the not-so-post-Trump GOP. And those divisions will be on full display this weekend during CPAC, an annual party gathering where the action of late has become very much about one man — Donald John Trump — and very little about conservatism or policy or much of anything else.

McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who have separately trekked to Mar-a-Lago to schmooze with Trump, are both slated to speak at the conference. So is Trump, in what will be his first public political speech since leaving office.

Not speaking: Cheney, who unapologetically voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riots, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who didn’t vote to convict Trump but condemned him nonetheless and has cut off communication with the ex-president. Cheney did, however, speak at a Reagan Institute event this week, where she urged Republicans to "make clear we aren't the party of white supremacy” and called for any commission on Jan. 6 to look into Trump’s lies about the election.

Even before CPAC gets underway, the event is already showing how the top Republican leaders in Congress are making very different bets about the future of the GOP — and how it could be years before anyone finds out who is right.

In one camp, there are the Republicans like McCarthy and Scalise who have calculated that getting cozier with Trump and his base is the best way to boost the party’s prospects in the next election. In the other are establishment-minded pols like McConnell and Cheney, who counsel a more traditional brand of conservatism after the GOP lost both chambers of Congress and ultimately the White House under Trump.

Yet even McConnell — despite his reservations — told Fox News on Thursday that if Trump were the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, he would support him.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) acknowledged that questions about the GOP’s identity are “clearly not settled yet.” But, he added: “the narrative that Republicans are fractured is greatly exaggerated.”

“Time is going to heal that,” he said, because “we’re united in the minority.”

For now, though, tensions are undoubtedly simmering as the party argues over its future. That includes a confrontation earlier this week involving freshman Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), who pushed back against former Trump aide Stephen Miller over his immigration views at a Republican Study Committee meeting. She made the case that the party needs to chart a different path in attracting Hispanic and Latino voters, while Miller has advocated for a hardline approach to curbing both illegal immigration as well as legal.

Not to mention, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has kept up her controversial antics, earning some rebukes from her colleagues this week for posting an anti-transgender sign outside her office amid a heated debate about a LGBTQ rights bill.

"This is sad and I'm sorry this happened. Rep. Newman's daughter is transgender," tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who noted that "this garbage must end" in order to restore the GOP. Greene's decision to antagonize Newman "represents the hate and fame driven politics of self-promotion at all evil costs," he wrote.

All of this is unfolding as Republicans were looking to move past the Cheney and Greene drama that consumed the party this month, when the GOP was forced to decide the fates of both GOP women. McCarthy maneuvered the party to stand by both: Cheney would keep her leadership post following an effort by conservatives to oust her, and Republicans wouldn’t kick Greene off her committees — though Democrats ultimately voted to do so.

But conservatives are now reviving their attacks on Cheney after this week’s press conference. The comments about Trump, while hardly new for Cheney, show how the party’s fissures can rip apart at any moment.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), chair of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, says he still wants Cheney to resign from leadership after he was asked about her latest remarks.

“I don’t think it was appropriate at all,” Biggs told POLITICO. “It is consistent with the pattern she's shown the last four weeks where she is basically dissing the vast majority of Republicans … I think she’s not reading and understanding where the Republican Party is at right now.” Biggs warned that if Cheney continues to criticize Trump publicly, the party could “go through the whole same rigmarole again” in challenging her role in leadership.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another close Trump ally, also tweeted after the Cheney-McCarthy presser: “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.”

Primary contests could be the next battlefield between the GOP’s warring factions. Last month, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has positioned himself as Trump’s enforcer within the party, flew all the way to Wyoming to campaign against Cheney. Patching in Donald Trump Jr. through a speaker phone, he criticized Cheney’s leadership, called for a “change at the top” and even mocked her father’s shooting skills.

Then in early February, after McCarthy defended his deputy in a closed-door conference meeting, Gaetz sought to shift the responsibility for Cheney’s apostasy to the GOP leader.

“Kevin put it all on the line for Liz. Every House Republican knows it,” he tweeted on Feb. 7.

While Cheney’s fiercest critics haven’t changed their minds, neither have her defenders.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Congresswoman Cheney,” said Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), the only GOP freshman who voted to impeach Trump. When asked about the revived Cheney criticism, Meijer replied: “Our conference already held a meeting and discussed this very subject. Asked and answered.”

Pro-Trump primary challenges, especially in critical swing districts, could imperil the House GOP’s efforts to win back the majority. And the targeting of Cheney in particular could put McCarthy in a bind — forcing him to choose between a member of his own leadership team, whom he vouched for, and the Trump wing of the party, whom he can’t afford to alienate.

McCarthy dodged repeated questions from POLITICO on Thursday about Cheney, while allies insisted they have a good working relationship. But he did touch on the topic during an interview on Fox News, saying “the idea a Republican would join cancel culture is wrong” when asked about her latest comments on Trump.

“I've got to bring people together,” McCarthy later added. “Yes, we've gone through a rocky time, but we've done that before.”

But at least one leader has vowed to jump to Cheney's defense: McConnell indicated during a POLITICO interview this month that he might get involved in her reelection campaign.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), however, argued that the split in the party between the anti- and pro-Trump forces shouldn’t be so cut and dry: “Why do I have to choose?”

He also said it’s OK for Cheney and McCarthy to have different views on Trump. And to anyone in the conference who has a problem with that?

“Man up,” Crenshaw said.

Well of course he would, he likes getting ass fucked...

McConnell would support Trump if he got 2024 Republican nomination

The remark comes amid a row between the former president and the Senate minority leader in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — an event for which McConnell blamed Trump.

By MATTHEW CHOI

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he would support Donald Trump in 2024 if he became the Republican presidential nominee, less than two weeks after condemning the former president for the Capitol insurrection.

“The nominee of the party? Absolutely,” McConnell told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday when asked whether he would back Trump if he got the nomination.

The remark comes amid a dramatic, public row between the former president and McConnell in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — an event for which McConnell blamed Trump in scathing statements on the Senate floor. Trump in turn blasted McConnell last week as an “unsmiling political hack” who is weakening the Republican Party.

During his interview with Baier, McConnell stopped short of offering his immediate support for Trump in what is likely to be a crowded Republican 2024 field. McConnell stressed that numerous other Republicans had also hinted their intentions of a 2024 presidential run.

“There’s a lot to happen between now and ’24,” McConnell said. “I’ve got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president, plus some governors and others. There’s no incumbent. It should be a wide-open race and fun for you all to cover.”

McConnell signaled his desire to move on from the 2020 elections and focus instead on retaking the House and Senate in 2022. When asked about Trump’s role in the Republican losses in the special elections for Georgia’s Senate seats, McConnell flatly said: “I don’t have any further observations to make about that. We’re looking forward.”

McConnell also rebuffed Trump’s attack against him that he was injuring the party’s prospects. McConnell maintained that there was no “civil war” within the party and that it remained competitive with Democrats in razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.

The specter of a Trump run in 2024 continues to hover over the party, with the former president remaining popular among Republican voters. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) predicted on Tuesday that Trump would win the nomination in 2024 should he make another go at the White House.

Targets Republicans

Liberal group targets Republicans who voted to overturn 2020 election

The Voter Protection Project expects to spend $10 million in total on midterm House and Senate races.

By HOLLY OTTERBEIN

A liberal voting rights group is pledging to spend at least $1 million to oust 20-plus Republican members of Congress who voted to contest the presidential election results.

The Voter Protection Project, which shared its plans first with POLITICO, is releasing its target list on Friday. Each of the House members and senators in the PAC’s crosshairs has been singled out in part because they won their last races by single digits.

The list, which the organization dubs the “Treason Caucus,” includes Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Rick Scott (Fla.). Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) are among the House members the PAC is looking to unseat.

“These are people who perpetuate the big lie [that] this election was stolen from Donald Trump,’” said Andrew Janz, founder of the Voter Protection Project, who ran against Nunes in 2018. “These are people who — after insurrectionists and domestic terrorists tried to overthrow an election — these are the same members of Congress, same politicians, who went back on the House floor, on the Senate floor, and voted in support of these insurrectionists by trying to invalidate a legal and fair election.”

A total of 139 Republican House members and eight senators voted to object to the election results in January, shortly after a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Separately, the group is making public another target list of more challenging races — tagged “Most Wanted” — which includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.).

The Voter Protection Project, which said these two groups are its initial priorities for the midterm elections, expects to spend $10 million in total on the midterm races. The PAC poured more than $8 million into the 2020 election cycle.

Despite the absence of new House redistricting maps, the group said it wants to begin recruiting and fundraising for Democratic candidates immediately. A major question facing the party is whether it can continue to excite grassroots donors, volunteers and rank-and-file voters at the same rate it has in recent years now that Trump is no longer in office to motivate them.

”Now is not the time to let up pressure on a desperate Republican Party who has been sent to the minority by voters,” said Voter Protection Project Executive Director Heather Greven in a statement. “VPP isn’t wasting any time by naming our top early targets and building a war chest to take on the enemies of voting rights and Democracy.”

A turd by another name...

Marjorie Taylor Greene posts anti-transgender sign across hall from lawmaker with transgender child

By Chandelis Duster

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing sharp criticism after she posted an anti-transgender sign outside of her office, directly across the hall from another lawmaker who has a transgender child.

The antagonizing move by Greene comes as the House is expected to pass the Equality Act, a bill that would ban discrimination against LGTBQ Americans, later Thursday, after the Georgia Republican's attempt to block the act failed on Wednesday. It also follows a string of incendiary statements and actions by the freshman Georgia congresswoman, who was removed from her committee assignments earlier this month after violent past comments were unearthed.

Illinois Rep. Marie Newman, whose daughter is transgender, posted a video on Twitter of her hanging the pink and blue transgender pride flag outside her office Wednesday afternoon, captioning that Greene tried to block the act "because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is 'disgusting, immoral, and evil,'" adding, "thought we'd put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door" with winking and transgender flag emojis.

That evening, Greene retweeted Newman's post and added a video of her hanging a sign that reads "There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE ...Trust The Science!"

"Our neighbor, @RepMarieNewman, wants to pass the so-called 'Equality' Act to destroy women's rights and religious freedoms. Thought we'd put up ours so she can look at it every time she opens her door," Greene captioned the tweet with winking and American flag emojis.

Newman told CNN Thursday the back-and-forth with Greene was never meant to be a fight and that she is unconcerned with Greene's reaction to her flag.

"It was a statement I felt very necessary. ... I felt as though she needed to hear from us," the Democratic congresswoman told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day." "And what I mean by that is that I just wanted to make a statement so that she sees LGBTQ+ people and so the symbolism was simply to put the flag out there so she has to see our community every day. You know, I'm immensely proud of my daughter and that's all anyone is asking for is to be treated as anyone else and that's what I want representative Greene to see."

Newman later said, "She can keep going with whatever she's doing and I have no interest in it" and that she is concerned about getting vaccines rolled out. "If she's going to spend time running to FedEx and creating goofy signs, have at it."

Asked for comment on Newman's remarks, Nick Dyer, communications director for Greene, told CNN in an email Thursday, "the sign says it all."

Greene's action drew bipartisan backlash, including from Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an outspoken critic of Greene, who was one of 11 GOP lawmakers who voted in favor of stripping her of committee assignments.

"This is sad and I'm sorry this happened. Rep. Newmans daughter is transgender, and this video and tweet represents the hate and fame driven politics of self-promotion at all evil costs," Kinzinger tweeted, adding "this garbage must end" in order to restore the GOP.

Virginia Rep. Don Byer, a Democrat, tweeted Wednesday Greene's "cyberbullying her colleague's child" with an "ugly, bigoted attack is absolutely beyond the pale" and called for fellow lawmakers to support Newman.

Opposition to the Equality Act

Greene, has a history of making offensive statements, pushing conspiracy theories and while arguing against the passage of the Equality Act on the House floor Wednesday she made inflammatory statements.

"It is one thing to stop discrimination of a class of people, but it's another thing to completely violate and destroy the rights of girls and women in order to achieve this." Greene said.

In her argument that equality for a group of people would take away equality for others, Greene also claimed that this legislation would make sports unfair.

"Biological women cannot compete against biological men. Biological little girls, cannot compete against biological little boys and they shouldn't have to," she said.

Greene also said the bill would "put trans rights above women's rights, above the rights of our daughters, our sisters, our friends, our grandmothers, our aunts. It's too much."

Transgender athletes in recent years have fought against legislation aimed at limiting their participation due to their gender identity. Many argue such policies violate Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law in education credited with leveling the playing field for women in sports.

Her past extremist comments and behavior has concerned lawmakers, even prompting Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat, to move her office away from the Georgia congresswoman after a heated exchange over Greene not wearing a mask in a hallway on Capitol Hill.

The vote on the Equality Act comes at an important moment for transgender rights, as the Biden administration has taken steps to aid the effort, including ending former President Donald Trump's ban on transgender military service people. Also on Thursday, a Senate confirmation hearing will take place for Biden's pick to serve as assistant health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, who would make history as the first out transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate.

Yes and people like to eat shit too..

What Mitt Romney gets *exactly* right about Donald Trump

Analysis by Chris Cillizza

Mitt Romney is no fan of Donald Trump. In fact, the Utah Republican senator may be the single most prominent critic of the 45th President within the GOP.

Mitt Romney is also a political realist. Which is why he said this of Trump at a New York Times "Dealbook" event earlier this week:

"He has by far the largest voice and a big impact in my party. I don't know if he's planning to run in 2024 or not, but if he does, I'm pretty sure he would win the nomination."

Romney is right. Exactly right.

For all of the hand-wringing among people like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney about the need to excise Trump from the future of the Republican Party, the truth -- as told by poll after poll of GOP voters -- is that the overwhelming majority of them want the billionaire businessman to stick around.

Need proof? A recent Quinnipiac University national poll shows that three-quarters of Republicans (75%) want Trump to "play a prominent role" in the GOP going forward.

"President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party," tweeted Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a leader of the House Freedom Caucus and one of Trump's most loyal supporters, on Wednesday.

The simple truth that Romney exposes is that, like it or not, Trump would be an overwhelming favorite to win the 2024 Republican nomination if he chose to run. 

Those trying to be Trump 2.0 (Missouri's Josh Hawley, Arkansas' Tom Cotton, and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley) would either drop their own candidacies or watch their chances dim significantly.

Those trying to move the party totally beyond Trump (Nebraska's Ben Sasse, Maryland's Larry Hogan) will have to demonstrate that there is anything close to a majority coalition within the GOP that supports their post-/anti-Trump views.

Meanwhile, Trump has 100% name identification, all the fundraising cash he would ever need and the majority of the party base with him.