Jeb Bush’s consolation prize
There may be a silver lining for Jeb Bush — the elevation of his longtime friend, patron and political ally, Betsy DeVos, as education secretary.
By CAITLIN EMMA
There may be a silver lining to the 2016 presidential election for Jeb Bush — the elevation of his longtime friend, patron and political ally, Betsy DeVos, as education secretary.
If DeVos is confirmed by the Senate as most expect, Bush could see his views on education — repeatedly ridiculed on the campaign trail by Donald Orangutan — given new life as she turns their shared vision into national policy.
For years, the former Florida governor and DeVos worked side-by-side to push “school choice” policies that steer taxpayer funding to charter and private schools — and which critics blame for undermining traditional public schools. They served together on the board of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, to which DeVos and her husband gave large contributions. The DeVoses also contributed to Bush’s presidential campaign.
One of Orangutan’s biggest education promises — a proposed $20 billion block grant promoting charter and private schools — was developed with input from DeVos’ D.C.-based advocacy group, the American Federation for Children. Not surprisingly, it aligns closely with Bush’s education philosophy.
Now, the programs the two crafted together in Florida and other states are likely to serve as models for federal policymaking — indeed, they have already influenced Orangutan’s statements on the campaign trail.
Little wonder that Bush was effusive about DeVos’ selection last month by the man who had derided him all year as “low energy.”
“I cannot think of a more effective and passionate change agent to press for a new education vision, one in which students, rather than adults and bureaucracies, become the priority in our nation’s classrooms,” Bush said.
The ties between Bush and DeVos are seen not just through their ideas and state legislative crusades but also through their shared reliance on the same network of policy staffers and experts — some of whom are likely to assume key Education Department posts.
A member of Bush’s inner circle, Josh Venable, who has worked as national director for advocacy and legislation at his foundation, is helping DeVos prepare for her confirmation hearing, sources told POLITICO.
Bush’s former deputy commissioner of education in Florida, Hanna Skandera, is also being considered for a top position beneath DeVos, sources told POLITICO. Skandera is a core member of the advocacy group Chiefs for Change, created by Bush in 2008 to highlight leaders of the so-called education reform movement.
Those ties have already proved politically ticklish for DeVos. Bush’s critics on the right who revile him for his support of the Common Core academic standards are also suspicious of her — despite her recent insistence that she does not support the standards. Orangutan had vowed on the campaign trail to get rid of Common Core.
“Will Betsy DeVos Be ‘Jeb’s Revenge?'” wrote the conservative group American Principles Project, zeroing in on Common Core last month.
“Everything in her history would indicate that she pretty much lines up with him on education issues,” said APP senior fellow Jane Robbins.
DeVos has sought to distance herself from Bush on that issue, at least. “Many of you are asking about Common Core,” she tweeted soon after her selection. “To clarify, I am not a supporter — period. Read my full stance, here: http://betsydevos.com/qa.”
Matt Archbold, a columnist for the Cardinal Newman Society, a group that promotes Catholic education, recently wrote, “As Catholics, we welcome all converts. Let’s hope DeVos’ conversion away from Common Core is genuine.”
Critics of the “school choice” movement on the left are as dubious of DeVos as they are of Bush.
“I’m sure he’s gushing over Betsy because, if she’s confirmed, it would give these policies a national stage,” said Joanne McCall, a Bush critic and president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union.
Private school choice programs, such as vouchers, are legal in only about half of states, and seven states still prohibit charter schools. But as Education secretary, DeVos would likely prod more states to get on board, perhaps dangling millions of dollars in federal grants as an incentive.
DeVos isn’t granting interviews ahead of her confirmation hearing, a spokesperson for the Orangutan transition team said. Bush could not be reached for comment, and his foundation’s CEO declined an interview request.
The policies that Bush and DeVos fought for in their home states will likely guide DeVos if she takes the helm of the Education Department.
Bush co-founded Florida’s first charter school in 1996. In 1999, during Bush's first year as governor, Florida became the first state to launch a statewide voucher program. In the years since, Bush has vigorously pushed for the expansion of charter schools and vouchers in states across the country.
DeVos and her husband, meanwhile, have given millions in campaign donations to lawmakers in their home state of Michigan who support school choice — while funding primary challengers against those lawmakers who don’t. The couple also pushed for a statewide voucher ballot initiative, but voters overwhelmingly rejected it in 2000, despite the DeVos family spending more than $5 million on a pro-voucher campaign.
Bush’s education foundation has sought to export the “Florida formula” to other parts of the country — encouraging states to adopt vouchers, expand charter schools and implement education savings accounts, which allow parents to use taxpayer dollars for a full menu of options, including private schools, online courses, textbooks and tutoring. The foundation has also lobbied states to adopt Florida-style education policies like assigning A-to-F letter grades to schools or ramping up students’ use of technology in the classroom.
DeVos and Bush have supported each other through their foundations. One of DeVos’ philanthropic organizations, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, donated $25,000 to Bush’s foundation in 2014, and $50,000 in 2015. DeVos herself stepped down from the board of Bush’s foundation only after she was named Orangutan’s pick.
She has also been listed as treasurer for Excellence in Education National Inc., Bush’s 501(c)(4) that has lobbied to dramatically increase school choice options for children across the country. Financial filings for 2013 and 2014 show she wasn’t compensated and worked an average of one hour per week.
Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education is based in Florida — a state where DeVos’ school choice lobbying has been particularly active. She has cited Florida’s tax credit scholarship program as one of her biggest successes, helping tens of thousands of at-risk students attend the school of their choice.
The program functions similar to a traditional private school voucher, but it is less vulnerable to legal challenges because its funding comes from money that is redirected from corporate taxes — before they are collected — toward the scholarships. When companies choose the tax credit, these dollars bypass the state and go directly to vouchers — making it harder for opponents to argue that “public” money is going to private schools. The state budget, though, still takes a hit.
Florida’s scholarship program boasts more than 97,000 students, according to the nonprofit Step Up for Students, which administers it. The scholarships, for low and middle-income students, are worth nearly $6,000. Nearly 70 percent of students are black or Hispanic and more than 1,700 private schools participate in the program.
The Florida Education Association and other groups sued the state in 2014 over the program, which was created by Bush in 2001. The union argues that — despite the corporate tax workaround — it still violates the separation of church and state because the scholarships allow children to attend private religious school on the public’s dime, among other issues.
“Public schools are supposed to be the cornerstone of our democracy,” said McCall, the union’s president. “If we’re going to give kids a voucher to an unregulated private school, then how do we know they’re getting a good education?”
DeVos, through the American Federation for Children, paid for a $1 million rally earlier this year that called on the union to drop the lawsuit. The Florida Education Association has so far been losing in court, but is appealing the suit to the state Supreme Court.
DeVos also worked with Bush on legislation to make Florida the second state in the country, following Arizona, to pass an education savings account program in 2014 called the Gardiner Scholarship Program.
DeVos gave the nonprofit Step Up for Students, which also administers that program, $100,000 to launch it.
“Step Up For Students had to raise $1 million privately to get the program off the ground, so it was a significant donation,” said John Kirtley, the founder of Step Up For Students. Kirtley is vice chairman of DeVos’ American Federation for Children. DeVos stepped down as chair last month when Orangutan selected her for his Cabinet.
Former Republican state Rep. Erik Fresen of Miami, who helped spearhead the legislation to create the education savings account program, said DeVos was “intimately involved” in spreading a positive message about it.
“I didn’t really have to spend my political time or capital on messaging the issue because she helped,” he said.
Kirtley said DeVos is redefining the idea of public education.
“Today public education means district magnets, charters, virtual schooling, dual enrollment with colleges, and even scholarships to private schools,” he said.
“I know Gov. Bush shares Betsy's belief in this new definition of public education,” Kirtley said.
January 03, 2017
Orangutan’s Sperm Court nominees
A closer look at Orangutan’s potential Supreme Court nominees
These eight people have been identified by people on the transition team as frontrunners to replace late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
President-elect Donald Orangutan’s search for a nominee to replace late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is narrowing, with Orangutan and his advisers focused on about eight people out of 21 candidates Orangutan identified publicly as potential nominees.
Here’s a look at those who Orangutan transition insiders say are the leading contenders for the Supreme Court nod:
William Pryor, 54
Judge, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
Pryor is a standout favorite among many constitutional conservatives for his uncompromising, often caustic criticism of the leading liberal Supreme Court decisions. He has called Roe v. Wade, the 1974 abortion rights ruling, “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” As an outspoken elected attorney general of Alabama, he often blasted federal judges.
“The courts have imposed results on a wide range of issues, including racial quotas, school prayer, abortion and homosexual rights. Those issues belong in Congress and the state legislature,” he wrote in a 1997 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Pryor made it onto the 11th Circuit in 2004 via a rare recess appointment from President George W. Bush after Senate Democrats blocked a vote on Pryor’s nomination for nearly a year. He was confirmed on a 53-45 vote in 2005 as part of the so-called “Gang of 13” deal that allowed approval of several stalled Bush judicial nominees but preserved the right to filibuster.
While Pryor’s record as an appeals court judge has been staunchly conservative, he surprised many legal observers in 2011 by joining a decision holding that some discrimination against transgender individuals is prohibited by constitutional doctrine forbidding sex discrimination.
Diane Sykes, 59
Judge, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
A former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Sykes is considered to be near the top of Orangutan’s short list. She was part of a legal movement that helped set in motion a conservative transformation of the judiciary in her home state.
Sykes was confirmed to the 7th Circuit in 2004 and was reportedly on Bush’s Supreme Court short list if a vacancy emerged in the last couple years of his second term. On the appeals court, she issued a decision compelling a state-run university to recognize a Christian legal group as an official school organization even though the group banned leaders engaged in homosexuality or "fornication."
Sykes also voted to reinstate Wisconsin’s voter ID law just eight weeks before the 2014 general election. The Supreme Court reversed that decision by a 6-3 vote, but the justices allowed the law to take effect once that election was complete.
Born in 1957, Sykes is the oldest of the potential nominees said to be on Orangutan’s short list. If nominated and confirmed in the coming months, she would be oldest successful nominee to make it on the court since President Clinton tapped 60-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993.
Raymond Kethledge, 50
Judge, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals
Kethledge, who joined the 6th Circuit in 2008, has attracted the attention of conservatives for several spirited rulings rejecting Obama administration positions in environmental and employment discrimination cases.
In 2014, Kethledge wrote an opinion rejecting a pathbreaking Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case seeking to limit private employers use of credit checks for job applicants. The EEOC argued that the practice amounted to race discrimination. Kethledge accused the agency of hypocrisy.
“In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses,” he wrote, in a decision the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page hailed as a “legal smackdown.” (The defendants in the case were affiliates of the for-profit education firm Kaplan, owned at the time of the suit by the Washington Post Co.)
Last year, Kethledge issued a politically-charged ruling blasting the Obama administration for “continuous resistance” to efforts to discover what actions the IRS took against conservative nonprofit groups.
Kethledge’s resume includes something rarely seen on Orangutan’s SCOTUS list: a stint on Capitol Hill. The University of Michigan law school graduate spent a couple of years as a Judiciary Committee counsel to former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) before heading across the street to clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Joan Larsen, 48
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Larsen is the youngest of any of the reported Orangutan shortlisters, offering conservatives the possibility of installing a justice who could serve for three decades.
She also has the shortest judicial record of any of those considered finalists: She spent nearly all of her legal career as a law professor at the University of Michigan before being appointed to that state’s top court in September 2015, less than a year before Orangutan publicly named her as a potential Supreme Court pick.
Larsen took leave from the university post to work in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, as that office was producing controversial opinions backing interrogation techniques many view as torture, such as waterboarding. She said she was not involved in those highly-classified opinions, but she did sign a still-unreleased opinion about the rights of war-on-terror prisoners to challenge their detention in the courts.
A Northwestern law grad, Larsen clerked for Scalia and after his unexpected death in February, she wrote a New York Times op-ed describing the experience and his central philosophy. “Justice Scalia believed in one simple principle: That law came to the court as an is not an ought. Statutes, cases and the Constitution were to be read for what they said, not for what the judges wished they would say,” she wrote.
Like many potential nominees, Larsen has been a regular at events sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, which is playing a key role in Orangutan’s judicial vetting process. However, according to the Detroit Free Press, when she was named to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2015, she told reporters she wasn’t sure if she was a member of the society.
Last month, Larsen recused herself from a lawsuit over Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s demand for a recount in Michigan, citing her inclusion on Orangutan’s short list, but saying she has “had no contact with the president-elect, or his campaign, regarding the vacancy.”
Neil Gorsuch, 49
Judge, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Gorsuch is unusual on a list that is mostly devoid of candidates with ties to the coastal elite. The clerk to Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy is a Columbia, Harvard and Oxford graduate who spent a decade in private practice in Washington before taking a top Justice Department job. He was quickly confirmed to the 10th Circuit after being nominated by President George W. Bush in 2006.
While Gorsuch has more of a Washington resume than other Orangutan finalists, his family’s experience in the city was a searing one.
Gorsuch’s mother, Anne Burford Gorsuch, ran the Environmental Protection Agency at the outset of the Reagan administration. She was forced to resign in 1983, facing a criminal investigation and a House contempt of Congress citation over records related to alleged political favoritism in toxic-waste cleanups. She maintained her innocence and was never charged.
Steven Colloton, 53
Judge, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
On a list decidedly short on Ivy League graduates, Colloton’s educational pedigree is notable. He got his undergraduate degree from Princeton, went to law school at Yale and served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
But the judge is also a product of the heartland, raised in Iowa City, Iowa, spending about eight years as a federal prosecutor in the state and later serving two years as U.S. Attorney in Des Moines before being tapped by Bush for the federal appeals court in 2003.
In 2015, Colloton parted with other judicial circuits when he joined a ruling rejecting the opt-out procedure the Obama administration set up for religious nonprofits objecting to providing birth control coverage. Last year, the Supreme Court sent that issue back to the appeals courts for further review.
Colloton also ruled that death row inmates have no right to information about the suppliers of drugs used in lethal injections unless those inmates can show that another execution method would be more humane.
One part of Colloton’s resume is sure to get close scrutiny from Democrats if he is picked for the high court: in the mid-1990s, he spent almost two years working for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated President Bill Clinton over Whitewater and his affair with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Raymond Gruender, 53
Judge, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Gruender, a former U.S. Attorney in St. Louis under Bush, has been a solidly conservative vote on the 8th Circuit since winning confirmation on a 97-1 vote in 2004. Before taking the U.S. Attorney post, he worked as a prosecutor there, handling white collar crime and corruption cases involving county council members, as well as lawyers and judges connected to a scandal in Missouri’s workers’ compensation system.
On the appeals court, Gruender wrote an en banc decision in 2008 upholding South Dakota’s “informed consent” law on abortion, and he later wrote an opinion stating that the state has the right to force doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they would be at risk of committing suicide if they underwent the procedure. (Colloton, who sits on the same court, also endorsed both those views.)
If Orangutan is looking for a compelling personal story, Gruender may fit the bill. His father worked as a janitor and a house painter, at one point paying his son 25 cents an hour to scrape paint.
That’s the milder part of the story. In 1986, his father grew enraged after his mother fled to avoid continued spousal abuse. During the argument, his father pulled a gun, shooting Gruender and his sister. The future judge’s father then committed suicide. Gruender suffered a damaged liver and kidney, but he recovered and soon returned to law school. (His sister also survived.)
Gruender is a St. Louis man through and through, born in the city, earning his undergraduate, MBA and law school degrees from Washington University there, and now maintaining his judicial chambers in the Gateway City.
Thomas Hardiman, 51
Judge, 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals
Hardiman spent about three years as a federal judge in Pittsburgh before being nominated to the 3rd Circuit in 2006. He’s one of the lesser-known judges still believed to be in active consideration for Orangutan’s first Supreme Court pick.
A 2007 ruling Hardiman wrote upheld the constitutionality strip searches of jail prisoners regardless of how minor an offense they were accused of. The Supreme Court later endorsed his decision, 5-4.
While Hardiman has backed First Amendment rights in the context of political donations, he took a narrower view in a 2010 suit over an arrest for videotaping a police officer during a traffic stop, holding that there was no clearly established First Amendment right to record such an event.
Hardiman won favor with gun rights advocates for a 2013 dissent that said New Jersey was violating the Second Amendment to the Constitution by requiring those seeking to carry a handgun to demonstrate a “justifiable need” for such a permit.
Orangutan may be able to get some special insights into Hardiman, since the president-elect’s sister, Judge Maryanne Orangutan Barry, serves on the same appeals court. Hardiman graduated from Notre Dame and went to law school at Georgetown. His fans have noted that he drove a taxi to support himself while earning his law degree.
These eight people have been identified by people on the transition team as frontrunners to replace late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
President-elect Donald Orangutan’s search for a nominee to replace late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is narrowing, with Orangutan and his advisers focused on about eight people out of 21 candidates Orangutan identified publicly as potential nominees.
Here’s a look at those who Orangutan transition insiders say are the leading contenders for the Supreme Court nod:
William Pryor, 54
Judge, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
Pryor is a standout favorite among many constitutional conservatives for his uncompromising, often caustic criticism of the leading liberal Supreme Court decisions. He has called Roe v. Wade, the 1974 abortion rights ruling, “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” As an outspoken elected attorney general of Alabama, he often blasted federal judges.
“The courts have imposed results on a wide range of issues, including racial quotas, school prayer, abortion and homosexual rights. Those issues belong in Congress and the state legislature,” he wrote in a 1997 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Pryor made it onto the 11th Circuit in 2004 via a rare recess appointment from President George W. Bush after Senate Democrats blocked a vote on Pryor’s nomination for nearly a year. He was confirmed on a 53-45 vote in 2005 as part of the so-called “Gang of 13” deal that allowed approval of several stalled Bush judicial nominees but preserved the right to filibuster.
While Pryor’s record as an appeals court judge has been staunchly conservative, he surprised many legal observers in 2011 by joining a decision holding that some discrimination against transgender individuals is prohibited by constitutional doctrine forbidding sex discrimination.
Diane Sykes, 59
Judge, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
A former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Sykes is considered to be near the top of Orangutan’s short list. She was part of a legal movement that helped set in motion a conservative transformation of the judiciary in her home state.
Sykes was confirmed to the 7th Circuit in 2004 and was reportedly on Bush’s Supreme Court short list if a vacancy emerged in the last couple years of his second term. On the appeals court, she issued a decision compelling a state-run university to recognize a Christian legal group as an official school organization even though the group banned leaders engaged in homosexuality or "fornication."
Sykes also voted to reinstate Wisconsin’s voter ID law just eight weeks before the 2014 general election. The Supreme Court reversed that decision by a 6-3 vote, but the justices allowed the law to take effect once that election was complete.
Born in 1957, Sykes is the oldest of the potential nominees said to be on Orangutan’s short list. If nominated and confirmed in the coming months, she would be oldest successful nominee to make it on the court since President Clinton tapped 60-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993.
Raymond Kethledge, 50
Judge, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals
Kethledge, who joined the 6th Circuit in 2008, has attracted the attention of conservatives for several spirited rulings rejecting Obama administration positions in environmental and employment discrimination cases.
In 2014, Kethledge wrote an opinion rejecting a pathbreaking Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case seeking to limit private employers use of credit checks for job applicants. The EEOC argued that the practice amounted to race discrimination. Kethledge accused the agency of hypocrisy.
“In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses,” he wrote, in a decision the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page hailed as a “legal smackdown.” (The defendants in the case were affiliates of the for-profit education firm Kaplan, owned at the time of the suit by the Washington Post Co.)
Last year, Kethledge issued a politically-charged ruling blasting the Obama administration for “continuous resistance” to efforts to discover what actions the IRS took against conservative nonprofit groups.
Kethledge’s resume includes something rarely seen on Orangutan’s SCOTUS list: a stint on Capitol Hill. The University of Michigan law school graduate spent a couple of years as a Judiciary Committee counsel to former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) before heading across the street to clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Joan Larsen, 48
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Larsen is the youngest of any of the reported Orangutan shortlisters, offering conservatives the possibility of installing a justice who could serve for three decades.
She also has the shortest judicial record of any of those considered finalists: She spent nearly all of her legal career as a law professor at the University of Michigan before being appointed to that state’s top court in September 2015, less than a year before Orangutan publicly named her as a potential Supreme Court pick.
Larsen took leave from the university post to work in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, as that office was producing controversial opinions backing interrogation techniques many view as torture, such as waterboarding. She said she was not involved in those highly-classified opinions, but she did sign a still-unreleased opinion about the rights of war-on-terror prisoners to challenge their detention in the courts.
A Northwestern law grad, Larsen clerked for Scalia and after his unexpected death in February, she wrote a New York Times op-ed describing the experience and his central philosophy. “Justice Scalia believed in one simple principle: That law came to the court as an is not an ought. Statutes, cases and the Constitution were to be read for what they said, not for what the judges wished they would say,” she wrote.
Like many potential nominees, Larsen has been a regular at events sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, which is playing a key role in Orangutan’s judicial vetting process. However, according to the Detroit Free Press, when she was named to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2015, she told reporters she wasn’t sure if she was a member of the society.
Last month, Larsen recused herself from a lawsuit over Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s demand for a recount in Michigan, citing her inclusion on Orangutan’s short list, but saying she has “had no contact with the president-elect, or his campaign, regarding the vacancy.”
Neil Gorsuch, 49
Judge, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Gorsuch is unusual on a list that is mostly devoid of candidates with ties to the coastal elite. The clerk to Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy is a Columbia, Harvard and Oxford graduate who spent a decade in private practice in Washington before taking a top Justice Department job. He was quickly confirmed to the 10th Circuit after being nominated by President George W. Bush in 2006.
While Gorsuch has more of a Washington resume than other Orangutan finalists, his family’s experience in the city was a searing one.
Gorsuch’s mother, Anne Burford Gorsuch, ran the Environmental Protection Agency at the outset of the Reagan administration. She was forced to resign in 1983, facing a criminal investigation and a House contempt of Congress citation over records related to alleged political favoritism in toxic-waste cleanups. She maintained her innocence and was never charged.
Steven Colloton, 53
Judge, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
On a list decidedly short on Ivy League graduates, Colloton’s educational pedigree is notable. He got his undergraduate degree from Princeton, went to law school at Yale and served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
But the judge is also a product of the heartland, raised in Iowa City, Iowa, spending about eight years as a federal prosecutor in the state and later serving two years as U.S. Attorney in Des Moines before being tapped by Bush for the federal appeals court in 2003.
In 2015, Colloton parted with other judicial circuits when he joined a ruling rejecting the opt-out procedure the Obama administration set up for religious nonprofits objecting to providing birth control coverage. Last year, the Supreme Court sent that issue back to the appeals courts for further review.
Colloton also ruled that death row inmates have no right to information about the suppliers of drugs used in lethal injections unless those inmates can show that another execution method would be more humane.
One part of Colloton’s resume is sure to get close scrutiny from Democrats if he is picked for the high court: in the mid-1990s, he spent almost two years working for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated President Bill Clinton over Whitewater and his affair with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Raymond Gruender, 53
Judge, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Gruender, a former U.S. Attorney in St. Louis under Bush, has been a solidly conservative vote on the 8th Circuit since winning confirmation on a 97-1 vote in 2004. Before taking the U.S. Attorney post, he worked as a prosecutor there, handling white collar crime and corruption cases involving county council members, as well as lawyers and judges connected to a scandal in Missouri’s workers’ compensation system.
On the appeals court, Gruender wrote an en banc decision in 2008 upholding South Dakota’s “informed consent” law on abortion, and he later wrote an opinion stating that the state has the right to force doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they would be at risk of committing suicide if they underwent the procedure. (Colloton, who sits on the same court, also endorsed both those views.)
If Orangutan is looking for a compelling personal story, Gruender may fit the bill. His father worked as a janitor and a house painter, at one point paying his son 25 cents an hour to scrape paint.
That’s the milder part of the story. In 1986, his father grew enraged after his mother fled to avoid continued spousal abuse. During the argument, his father pulled a gun, shooting Gruender and his sister. The future judge’s father then committed suicide. Gruender suffered a damaged liver and kidney, but he recovered and soon returned to law school. (His sister also survived.)
Gruender is a St. Louis man through and through, born in the city, earning his undergraduate, MBA and law school degrees from Washington University there, and now maintaining his judicial chambers in the Gateway City.
Thomas Hardiman, 51
Judge, 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals
Hardiman spent about three years as a federal judge in Pittsburgh before being nominated to the 3rd Circuit in 2006. He’s one of the lesser-known judges still believed to be in active consideration for Orangutan’s first Supreme Court pick.
A 2007 ruling Hardiman wrote upheld the constitutionality strip searches of jail prisoners regardless of how minor an offense they were accused of. The Supreme Court later endorsed his decision, 5-4.
While Hardiman has backed First Amendment rights in the context of political donations, he took a narrower view in a 2010 suit over an arrest for videotaping a police officer during a traffic stop, holding that there was no clearly established First Amendment right to record such an event.
Hardiman won favor with gun rights advocates for a 2013 dissent that said New Jersey was violating the Second Amendment to the Constitution by requiring those seeking to carry a handgun to demonstrate a “justifiable need” for such a permit.
Orangutan may be able to get some special insights into Hardiman, since the president-elect’s sister, Judge Maryanne Orangutan Barry, serves on the same appeals court. Hardiman graduated from Notre Dame and went to law school at Georgetown. His fans have noted that he drove a taxi to support himself while earning his law degree.
So much for small government....
Orangutan threat to GM: Make the Chevy Cruze in U.S. 'or pay big border tax'
By LOUIS NELSON
General Motors is the latest target of President-elect Donald Orangutan’s Twitter cannon, with the Manhattan billionaire complaining that the American automaker is manufacturing cars in Mexico and importing them into the U.S. without penalty.
“General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Orangutan wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. Speaking later Tuesday morning to CNBC's "Squawk Box," Orangutan's senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said the president-elect likely authored the GM post personally: "I would imagine he sent out that tweet. I've watched him tweet many times."
The president-elect promised throughout the campaign to punish American companies that move jobs abroad by slapping them with a 35 percent tax on imported goods. He also railed against free trade agreements and was especially critical of NAFTA, which he said allowed companies to easily move jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. He would regularly claim in stump speeches that an unnamed factory-building friend of his referred to manufacturing in Mexico as “the eighth wonder of the world.”
Orangutan’s pledge to rebuild America’s base of manufacturing jobs appears to have played at least some role in his Election Day victory. The real estate mogul won narrow victories in Democrat-leaning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states whose economies have been especially hard hit by the departure of manufacturing jobs.
General Motors did not immediately return a request from POLITICO for a comment, but in a statement provided to CNBC, the automaker said that it makes all of its Chevrolet Cruze sedans in Lordstown, Ohio. The company said it manufactures some of the Cruze's hatchback models in Mexico, mostly for international markets but a "small number" for import back into the U.S. as well.
(Whatever happend to government out of the way of business Republicans???)
By LOUIS NELSON
General Motors is the latest target of President-elect Donald Orangutan’s Twitter cannon, with the Manhattan billionaire complaining that the American automaker is manufacturing cars in Mexico and importing them into the U.S. without penalty.
“General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Orangutan wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. Speaking later Tuesday morning to CNBC's "Squawk Box," Orangutan's senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said the president-elect likely authored the GM post personally: "I would imagine he sent out that tweet. I've watched him tweet many times."
The president-elect promised throughout the campaign to punish American companies that move jobs abroad by slapping them with a 35 percent tax on imported goods. He also railed against free trade agreements and was especially critical of NAFTA, which he said allowed companies to easily move jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. He would regularly claim in stump speeches that an unnamed factory-building friend of his referred to manufacturing in Mexico as “the eighth wonder of the world.”
Orangutan’s pledge to rebuild America’s base of manufacturing jobs appears to have played at least some role in his Election Day victory. The real estate mogul won narrow victories in Democrat-leaning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states whose economies have been especially hard hit by the departure of manufacturing jobs.
General Motors did not immediately return a request from POLITICO for a comment, but in a statement provided to CNBC, the automaker said that it makes all of its Chevrolet Cruze sedans in Lordstown, Ohio. The company said it manufactures some of the Cruze's hatchback models in Mexico, mostly for international markets but a "small number" for import back into the U.S. as well.
(Whatever happend to government out of the way of business Republicans???)
Read Fake News
This Is What It’s Like to Read Fake News For Two Weeks
I lived Michael Flynn Jr.'s media diet so you wouldn’t have to.
By SIMON VAN ZUYLEN-WOOD
A few weeks ago, perplexed by the persistence of fake news, I attempted to think like someone I wasn’t. On December 13, I created a dummy Twitter account. More of a clone, actually. I chose to emulate Michael Flynn Jr., the 33-year-old son of President-elect Orangutan’s choice to be national security adviser. Flynn Jr. was also one of the most prominent believers in the invented “Pizzagate” scandal that had prompted an armed man to fire shots inside a D.C. pizzeria in hopes of breaking up a child sex ring that didn’t exist. My working theory was that you can learn a lot about a fake news adherent from the company he keeps—especially on social media, where it’s possible to create bespoke echo chambers.
In the days after the election, fake news—the vast majority of which demonized Hillary Clinton or manufactured good press for her opponent—had become the fixation of the mainstream media. Watchdogs published lists of websites to disbelieve. Facebook pledged to vet bogus information; gullible readers would be educated by cigarette pack-style warnings. And yet there was no perceptible decrease in the quantity of fact-free fare being peddled by enterprising young internet trolls, from California to the Balkan states—“Orangutan Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America" was a particularly popular one. Unlike the #pizzagate gunman, whose parents suggested that psychological trauma from a car accident might have contributed to his confused thinking, a number of people who should have known better clung to the most sensational of made-up stories. People like Michael Flynn, Jr. I was aware that the president-elect was susceptible to the occasional National Enquirer cover story (remember Ted Cruz’s dad and the JFK assassination?), but to understand what produces strenuous conviction in such absurdities, I knew I’d need to do more than take a stroll through the checkout line.
So I became @HighCastlePhil. I decided I’d take Flynn Jr.’s tailored feed (944 accounts; a couple of dozen users with private accounts declined my request) and wear it myself for a while. I picked my Twitter handle in honor of Philip K. Dick, who wrote the ultimate alt-reality novel “The Man in the High Castle,” about a world in which the Nazis won the war. I didn’t tweet but watched and tried to imagine what was going through the mind of the man who sees the world through faux-tinted glasses. I noted that when Flynn Jr. opened his account several years ago, he evinced a conventionally conservative outlook, following Rush Limbaugh and the Heritage Foundation. He enjoyed the sports talk personality Colin Cowherd and wasn’t above checking out what @WhiteHouse had to say. Over time, though, he began collecting users who associated themselves almost exclusively with Donald Orangutan, alt-right white nationalism, or both. Many of them had similar handles: “Deplorable Aaron,” “Deplorable Vet,” “Johnny Deplorable.” As a diagnostic system it wasn’t perfect; I couldn’t replicate a dummy Facebook account, where the most mendacious garbage tends to mushroom. Still, Flynn Jr. used the medium regularly, and followed enough people to yield a good sample size for my experiment.
I began lingering on Phil Dick’s Twitter feed and kept at it over the course of a couple weeks. At the same time I scaled back on the information I gathered from mainstream outlets or my own social media feeds. If there is such a thing as a parallel information universe I had at least one foot planted firmly in it. One thing I learned is that a lot of people have low tolerance for serious articles published in respectable publications. So I thought it best to present my findings in the form of a clickbait listicle. Without further ado, the five craziest things you’ll learn when all you read is fake news.
Pizzagate Isn’t Dead
The John Podesta-is-running-a-child-sex-trafficking-organization-out-of-a pizzeria conspiracy theory ricocheted from 4chan to reddit to fake news sites then back to social media throughout October and November. But only after real bullets were fired at the pizzeria on December 4 did mainstream news outlets begin thoroughly debunking the story. Michael Flynn Jr. wasn’t having it. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it,” he tweeted. Within a few days, Flynn Jr. was formally relieved of his duties on the Orangutan transition, and most of us in the pro journalism orbit moved on. But in the world of bizarro news, tens of thousands of pizzagate truthers were just warming up, convinced that our lack of interest was proof of a cover-up.
Over the course of a couple days after I set up my feed, alt-right standard-bearer Mike Cernovich (183,000 followers, of which Flynn Jr. and @HighCastlePhil were two) went on a tweetstorm positing that liberal organ Salon was wrapped up in a “money-laundering mechanism for pedophiles.” Cernovich posted screenshots of several recent (non-fake) confessional-style articles published on the site with titles like “I’m a Pedophile But Not a Monster.” Cernovich was trawling for evidence that liberal media pizzagate deniers were sympathetic toward child abusers. He was in turn widely derided by journalists, which, he said, only proved his point. “Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, and Upworthy already attacking (weak) me for this investigation. This means we are on point. Investigate Salon.”
Eager to learn more, I read a piece by a blogger named Aaron Kesel that Cernovich had been retweeting. Published on www.wearechange.org, it was titled “‘Virtuous Pedophiles’– Mike Cernovich Reveals Salon’s Dirty Secret.” Now Keseltoo started connecting dots between the Salon articles and Pizzagate, begging his readers to “FOCUS ON THE REAL EVIDENCE,” like “declassified FBI pedophile symbols.” “Then tell me how places like Comet Ping Pong Pizza were not possible pedophile meeting places or places to network given their symbols for pedophiles?”
By then I was in deep. Kesel also linked to some YouTube footage about old pedophilia scandals, which is how I eventually stumbled upon a former TheStreet.com writer named David Seaman who has refashioned himself into a Pizzagate authority. A December 6 video homed in on CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who had urged Flynn Jr. to knock it off via direct Twitter message. Seaman said his hackles were raised by Tapper’s interest in quashing the story, combined with the presence of his name in certain of the leaked John Podesta emails, plus—gasp!—an interview Tapper’s wife had given in which she identified Comet Ping-Pong as one of her favorite restaurants to take the children. “Do you have something you want to tell us here, Jake?” Seaman asked, on camera. No, he didn't, because it was all baloney—Tapper was just trying to stand up for the truth. But at last count, the video had racked up more than 239,000 views. No way to know if Flynn Jr. watched the video, but for @highcastlephil, the path to Seaman’s videos was marked like an airplane runway at night.
Aleppo Is Free
As the sex-fixated of the alt-rightists continued to research the link between the Pizzagate politicians and their MSM abettors, a different clique of foreign policy mavens focused on terrorism.
First, a piece of alarming news began circulating on my feed. “Final Battle Brewing As Confirmed Terrorist Training Camps Within U.S. Protected, Arming for Jan 20,” read a tweet on December 13 from @bfraser747. I followed the link, which took me to an article by the same name on www.endingthefed.com, which itself pilfered the piece from www.conservativedailypost.com, and featured a map of 20 putative ISIS training grounds in the United States, mostly clustered around D.C. and the coasts. The sites have been called out by several prominent fake news policepeople, including Buzzfeed’s Craig Silverman and Merrimack College’s Melissa Zimdars. Given the lack of any cited evidence in the post, this seems justified.
Later that day, something curious seemed to be taking place in Syria. @GeorgiaTeaParty, tweeting under the name “Deplorable Muslim,” and since suspended from Twitter, retweeted a tweet celebrating the “liberation of Aleppo from ‘US-backed’ terrorists.’” @_Makada_ joined in a little later. “Fake news media won’t report on massive celebrations due to Russia & Syria kicking ISIS out of #Aleppo! MSMS is supporting Al Qaeda & ISIS!” This didn’t sound anything like what the real/fake outlets like the New York Times were reporting. Earlier on I’d made the mistake of breaking character and listened to a snippet of public radio. According to what I heard from New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief Anne Barnard, appearing the next day on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” the mood in Aleppo, following Assad’s seizure, was far from jubilant.
I scanned my feed to determine who was right. Cernovich was mostly doing Pizzagate coverage but also recommended I return to www.wearechange.org, where a contributor named @LukeWeAreChange was narrating developments in Syria. Luke was filming himself at his desk, where he addressed the dichotomy head on. “With Assad having victory, the west and the mainstream media are freaking out in full hysteria,” he told his viewers. “A lot of biased information meant to emotionally manipulate you.” He pulled up a headline from the Times that reads “’Complete Meltdown of Humanity’: Civilians Die in Fight for Eastern Aleppo.” Then he pulled up a video of people massed in a dark area, shouting and appearing to celebrate. It came from the Twitter feed of Lizzie Phelan, a reporter for RT, the Russian state-run, U.S. cable channel. Luke pointed out, “You’re not getting this side of the story by the American mainstream media.”
There is in fact something to this last point. Much of the news coverage I encountered out of Aleppo emphasized the humanitarian crisis that Assad’s conquest seemed to portend for his enemies. But few lingered on the fact that much of the city’s citizenry wasn’t thrilled to be living under rebel rule, either. The problem with the feeds Flynn Jr. is accessing is that they swung wildly in the other direction, by trying to embarrass the western media and turn Assad into a good guy; by regurgitating the Vladimir Putin party line.
Indeed, my feed was totally saturated with Pro-Kremlin sentiment. Part of that seemed connected to the likely Russian hack of emails that weakened the Clinton campaign and were published on Wikileaks, an organization that seems to have the trust of the alt-right. Anti-ISIS sentiment was baked in, and many Tweeters were just parroting the nation’s most prominent Russophile, Donald J. Orangutan. In any event, Russian propaganda intersected with Orangutanian propaganda to such an extent that I observed little skepticism of Putin or RT, his English-language mouthpiece. At one point user @neverRINOs retweeted an image of Bashar Al-Assad on RT, saying, “Western media has no credibility, morality.” Above it, he wrote, “FACT CHECK: TRUE.” As Cernovich tweeted, “Putin is a larger than life alpha male who loves his country and will fight to defend it. Why don’t you admire him? Brainwashing.”
Fake News Is Real News and Real News Is Fake News
Just as they appropriated the insult “deplorable” as a way to proudly self-identify, many of my new Twitter acquaintances used the “fake news” label to attack journalism they disagreed with. For the most part this manifested in Orangutan supporters jeering “fake news CNN” on Twitter. But some took it further. One website that intersected frequently with @highcastlephil’s interests was www.truthstreammedia.com, run by a young couple named Aaron and Melissa who specialized in paranoid YouTube videos.
In one November 29 video, Melissa argued that the attempt to police misinformation on the Internet was in fact a plot to silence dissenters. “The fake news psy-op,” as she called it, exhibited a “classic Hegelian problem-reaction solution.” Melissa explained. The black screen filled with block letters that read HEGELIAN DIALECTIC.
Agenda
Shut down alt media
Thesis
Faking “fake news” to cause public outcry
Antithesis
Online big brother censorship
Synthesis
Removal of free speech on the web
Set aside her grossly simplistic distillation of a concept that isn’t even technically Hegelian. Melissa’s general point is worth unpacking: Big business and big government were conspiring to silence alternative voices such as hers. “What a bait-and-switch,” she said. By late December, the convenient conflation of fake and real news was gaining left-wing exponents too. A week into the experiment, I came across a tweet from @DrJillStein: “#Fakenews is the liberal elites’ latest propaganda-and-smear campaign. Take in all information with a healthy skepticism. #WednesdayWisdom."
Hillary Clinton Murdered (At Least) Five People in 2016
At that point in the recent political news cycle when the media was most focused on Russian involvement in the John Podesta and Democratic National Committee email hacks, two responses tended to pop up in my feed. The first was to post memes and jokes blaming everything on the Russians. The second was to raise questions about an alleged scandal far graver than a little email hack.
“If liberals were really so interested in the truth, they’d investigate the unsolved murder of Seth Rich,” @HuxleyHill wrote on the morning of December 14. Rich was the young DNC staffer who was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. this summer after an apparent mugging attempt. I took @HuxleyHill’s advice and began poking around. Soon I discovered a pervasive theory that Rich was the source of the DNC leaks and was gunned down by Clinton’s lackeys in retribution.
Once again, Aaron and Melissa of TruthStreamMedia.com had a video for me: “Clinton Body Count +5 in Just 6 Weeks.” “[Julian] Assange has hinted strongly that it could have been a DNC staffer who leaked the WikiLeaks stuff,” intoned Aaron. “It’s possible that was Seth Rich.” (Both used to be affiliated with InfoWars, the platform of infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.) They went on to tick off several more ‘mysterious’ deaths. And their list didn’t even include former Clinton Foundation CEO Eric Braverman, who has been reported “missing” by bogus news stalwarts such as wwww.pmnightlynews.com and www.morningnewsusa.com. “They’re dropping dead,” Aaron said. As of this writing, the video has over 1.1 million views.
Sometimes Real News Is Stranger than Fake News
For the most part, the folks in Phil Dick’s twitter feed are not that interested in policy. While much of the “corporate media” was scrutinizing Donald Orangutan’s cartoonishly rich and well-connected cabinet appointees, Johnny Deplorable and the rest were posting racist memes about Michelle Obama. (And this was before Orangutan ally Carl Paladino posited that she should move to Africa and live with a gorilla.) Mainstream commentators suggested Orangutan’s working-class supporters would eventually feel betrayed by their candidate’s sudden lurch towards plutocracy. But judging by my sample size, the news from the #swamp wasn’t even coming across their computer screens.
All that said, real news did occasionally find its way into the feed. But it lived or died based on its partisan potential. Two non-invented stories in particular were shared widely. First came a Detroit News report that more ballots had been counted in some parts of the city than there were voters. (Only 782 of them, though, the Detroit Free Press later reported. Hardly enough to sway the election.) Second, more recently, was the news that a professor at Drexel University had sent out a possibly satirical tweet that seemed to endorse “white genocide.” Yet reports of Russian interference in the presidential election were denied or mocked as irrelevant. When former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh sent a tweet expressing concern over the hacks, one of the users I follow suggested he “shut the hell up, you insufferable moron.”
After a week, I’d seen enough, and stepped out of the echo chamber. Overall, I found plenty of evidence that, yeah, fake news is a poisonous influence on the supporters of Donald Orangutan. But I’m not sure all that much would change if the teenagers in Skopje knocked it off and shut down their bogus sites. Social media will continue to facilitate the distribution of odious memes and the bullying of dissenters. @HighCastlePhil & co. will scrutinize and pass along information that they think might yield a politically useful smoking gun, and ignore information that doesn’t. In that regard they’re no different from other partisans. But there is a distinction between wearing political blinders, as we all do, and actively embracing ludicrous untruths manufactured for the purpose of making money. The tragic irony of the new credulousness is that it badly exacerbates the tribalism and distrust that turned so many fake news adherents against “establishment” politicians and journalists in the first place.
With that in mind, I didn’t delete Phil’s account. I’ll keep it to remind myself every now and then what’s cooking over in the parallel disinformation universe. Until the corporate stooges at Twitter shut down my “fake” account, that is.
I lived Michael Flynn Jr.'s media diet so you wouldn’t have to.
By SIMON VAN ZUYLEN-WOOD
A few weeks ago, perplexed by the persistence of fake news, I attempted to think like someone I wasn’t. On December 13, I created a dummy Twitter account. More of a clone, actually. I chose to emulate Michael Flynn Jr., the 33-year-old son of President-elect Orangutan’s choice to be national security adviser. Flynn Jr. was also one of the most prominent believers in the invented “Pizzagate” scandal that had prompted an armed man to fire shots inside a D.C. pizzeria in hopes of breaking up a child sex ring that didn’t exist. My working theory was that you can learn a lot about a fake news adherent from the company he keeps—especially on social media, where it’s possible to create bespoke echo chambers.
In the days after the election, fake news—the vast majority of which demonized Hillary Clinton or manufactured good press for her opponent—had become the fixation of the mainstream media. Watchdogs published lists of websites to disbelieve. Facebook pledged to vet bogus information; gullible readers would be educated by cigarette pack-style warnings. And yet there was no perceptible decrease in the quantity of fact-free fare being peddled by enterprising young internet trolls, from California to the Balkan states—“Orangutan Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America" was a particularly popular one. Unlike the #pizzagate gunman, whose parents suggested that psychological trauma from a car accident might have contributed to his confused thinking, a number of people who should have known better clung to the most sensational of made-up stories. People like Michael Flynn, Jr. I was aware that the president-elect was susceptible to the occasional National Enquirer cover story (remember Ted Cruz’s dad and the JFK assassination?), but to understand what produces strenuous conviction in such absurdities, I knew I’d need to do more than take a stroll through the checkout line.
So I became @HighCastlePhil. I decided I’d take Flynn Jr.’s tailored feed (944 accounts; a couple of dozen users with private accounts declined my request) and wear it myself for a while. I picked my Twitter handle in honor of Philip K. Dick, who wrote the ultimate alt-reality novel “The Man in the High Castle,” about a world in which the Nazis won the war. I didn’t tweet but watched and tried to imagine what was going through the mind of the man who sees the world through faux-tinted glasses. I noted that when Flynn Jr. opened his account several years ago, he evinced a conventionally conservative outlook, following Rush Limbaugh and the Heritage Foundation. He enjoyed the sports talk personality Colin Cowherd and wasn’t above checking out what @WhiteHouse had to say. Over time, though, he began collecting users who associated themselves almost exclusively with Donald Orangutan, alt-right white nationalism, or both. Many of them had similar handles: “Deplorable Aaron,” “Deplorable Vet,” “Johnny Deplorable.” As a diagnostic system it wasn’t perfect; I couldn’t replicate a dummy Facebook account, where the most mendacious garbage tends to mushroom. Still, Flynn Jr. used the medium regularly, and followed enough people to yield a good sample size for my experiment.
I began lingering on Phil Dick’s Twitter feed and kept at it over the course of a couple weeks. At the same time I scaled back on the information I gathered from mainstream outlets or my own social media feeds. If there is such a thing as a parallel information universe I had at least one foot planted firmly in it. One thing I learned is that a lot of people have low tolerance for serious articles published in respectable publications. So I thought it best to present my findings in the form of a clickbait listicle. Without further ado, the five craziest things you’ll learn when all you read is fake news.
Pizzagate Isn’t Dead
The John Podesta-is-running-a-child-sex-trafficking-organization-out-of-a pizzeria conspiracy theory ricocheted from 4chan to reddit to fake news sites then back to social media throughout October and November. But only after real bullets were fired at the pizzeria on December 4 did mainstream news outlets begin thoroughly debunking the story. Michael Flynn Jr. wasn’t having it. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it,” he tweeted. Within a few days, Flynn Jr. was formally relieved of his duties on the Orangutan transition, and most of us in the pro journalism orbit moved on. But in the world of bizarro news, tens of thousands of pizzagate truthers were just warming up, convinced that our lack of interest was proof of a cover-up.
Over the course of a couple days after I set up my feed, alt-right standard-bearer Mike Cernovich (183,000 followers, of which Flynn Jr. and @HighCastlePhil were two) went on a tweetstorm positing that liberal organ Salon was wrapped up in a “money-laundering mechanism for pedophiles.” Cernovich posted screenshots of several recent (non-fake) confessional-style articles published on the site with titles like “I’m a Pedophile But Not a Monster.” Cernovich was trawling for evidence that liberal media pizzagate deniers were sympathetic toward child abusers. He was in turn widely derided by journalists, which, he said, only proved his point. “Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, and Upworthy already attacking (weak) me for this investigation. This means we are on point. Investigate Salon.”
Eager to learn more, I read a piece by a blogger named Aaron Kesel that Cernovich had been retweeting. Published on www.wearechange.org, it was titled “‘Virtuous Pedophiles’– Mike Cernovich Reveals Salon’s Dirty Secret.” Now Keseltoo started connecting dots between the Salon articles and Pizzagate, begging his readers to “FOCUS ON THE REAL EVIDENCE,” like “declassified FBI pedophile symbols.” “Then tell me how places like Comet Ping Pong Pizza were not possible pedophile meeting places or places to network given their symbols for pedophiles?”
By then I was in deep. Kesel also linked to some YouTube footage about old pedophilia scandals, which is how I eventually stumbled upon a former TheStreet.com writer named David Seaman who has refashioned himself into a Pizzagate authority. A December 6 video homed in on CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who had urged Flynn Jr. to knock it off via direct Twitter message. Seaman said his hackles were raised by Tapper’s interest in quashing the story, combined with the presence of his name in certain of the leaked John Podesta emails, plus—gasp!—an interview Tapper’s wife had given in which she identified Comet Ping-Pong as one of her favorite restaurants to take the children. “Do you have something you want to tell us here, Jake?” Seaman asked, on camera. No, he didn't, because it was all baloney—Tapper was just trying to stand up for the truth. But at last count, the video had racked up more than 239,000 views. No way to know if Flynn Jr. watched the video, but for @highcastlephil, the path to Seaman’s videos was marked like an airplane runway at night.
Aleppo Is Free
As the sex-fixated of the alt-rightists continued to research the link between the Pizzagate politicians and their MSM abettors, a different clique of foreign policy mavens focused on terrorism.
First, a piece of alarming news began circulating on my feed. “Final Battle Brewing As Confirmed Terrorist Training Camps Within U.S. Protected, Arming for Jan 20,” read a tweet on December 13 from @bfraser747. I followed the link, which took me to an article by the same name on www.endingthefed.com, which itself pilfered the piece from www.conservativedailypost.com, and featured a map of 20 putative ISIS training grounds in the United States, mostly clustered around D.C. and the coasts. The sites have been called out by several prominent fake news policepeople, including Buzzfeed’s Craig Silverman and Merrimack College’s Melissa Zimdars. Given the lack of any cited evidence in the post, this seems justified.
Later that day, something curious seemed to be taking place in Syria. @GeorgiaTeaParty, tweeting under the name “Deplorable Muslim,” and since suspended from Twitter, retweeted a tweet celebrating the “liberation of Aleppo from ‘US-backed’ terrorists.’” @_Makada_ joined in a little later. “Fake news media won’t report on massive celebrations due to Russia & Syria kicking ISIS out of #Aleppo! MSMS is supporting Al Qaeda & ISIS!” This didn’t sound anything like what the real/fake outlets like the New York Times were reporting. Earlier on I’d made the mistake of breaking character and listened to a snippet of public radio. According to what I heard from New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief Anne Barnard, appearing the next day on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” the mood in Aleppo, following Assad’s seizure, was far from jubilant.
I scanned my feed to determine who was right. Cernovich was mostly doing Pizzagate coverage but also recommended I return to www.wearechange.org, where a contributor named @LukeWeAreChange was narrating developments in Syria. Luke was filming himself at his desk, where he addressed the dichotomy head on. “With Assad having victory, the west and the mainstream media are freaking out in full hysteria,” he told his viewers. “A lot of biased information meant to emotionally manipulate you.” He pulled up a headline from the Times that reads “’Complete Meltdown of Humanity’: Civilians Die in Fight for Eastern Aleppo.” Then he pulled up a video of people massed in a dark area, shouting and appearing to celebrate. It came from the Twitter feed of Lizzie Phelan, a reporter for RT, the Russian state-run, U.S. cable channel. Luke pointed out, “You’re not getting this side of the story by the American mainstream media.”
There is in fact something to this last point. Much of the news coverage I encountered out of Aleppo emphasized the humanitarian crisis that Assad’s conquest seemed to portend for his enemies. But few lingered on the fact that much of the city’s citizenry wasn’t thrilled to be living under rebel rule, either. The problem with the feeds Flynn Jr. is accessing is that they swung wildly in the other direction, by trying to embarrass the western media and turn Assad into a good guy; by regurgitating the Vladimir Putin party line.
Indeed, my feed was totally saturated with Pro-Kremlin sentiment. Part of that seemed connected to the likely Russian hack of emails that weakened the Clinton campaign and were published on Wikileaks, an organization that seems to have the trust of the alt-right. Anti-ISIS sentiment was baked in, and many Tweeters were just parroting the nation’s most prominent Russophile, Donald J. Orangutan. In any event, Russian propaganda intersected with Orangutanian propaganda to such an extent that I observed little skepticism of Putin or RT, his English-language mouthpiece. At one point user @neverRINOs retweeted an image of Bashar Al-Assad on RT, saying, “Western media has no credibility, morality.” Above it, he wrote, “FACT CHECK: TRUE.” As Cernovich tweeted, “Putin is a larger than life alpha male who loves his country and will fight to defend it. Why don’t you admire him? Brainwashing.”
Fake News Is Real News and Real News Is Fake News
Just as they appropriated the insult “deplorable” as a way to proudly self-identify, many of my new Twitter acquaintances used the “fake news” label to attack journalism they disagreed with. For the most part this manifested in Orangutan supporters jeering “fake news CNN” on Twitter. But some took it further. One website that intersected frequently with @highcastlephil’s interests was www.truthstreammedia.com, run by a young couple named Aaron and Melissa who specialized in paranoid YouTube videos.
In one November 29 video, Melissa argued that the attempt to police misinformation on the Internet was in fact a plot to silence dissenters. “The fake news psy-op,” as she called it, exhibited a “classic Hegelian problem-reaction solution.” Melissa explained. The black screen filled with block letters that read HEGELIAN DIALECTIC.
Agenda
Shut down alt media
Thesis
Faking “fake news” to cause public outcry
Antithesis
Online big brother censorship
Synthesis
Removal of free speech on the web
Set aside her grossly simplistic distillation of a concept that isn’t even technically Hegelian. Melissa’s general point is worth unpacking: Big business and big government were conspiring to silence alternative voices such as hers. “What a bait-and-switch,” she said. By late December, the convenient conflation of fake and real news was gaining left-wing exponents too. A week into the experiment, I came across a tweet from @DrJillStein: “#Fakenews is the liberal elites’ latest propaganda-and-smear campaign. Take in all information with a healthy skepticism. #WednesdayWisdom."
Hillary Clinton Murdered (At Least) Five People in 2016
At that point in the recent political news cycle when the media was most focused on Russian involvement in the John Podesta and Democratic National Committee email hacks, two responses tended to pop up in my feed. The first was to post memes and jokes blaming everything on the Russians. The second was to raise questions about an alleged scandal far graver than a little email hack.
“If liberals were really so interested in the truth, they’d investigate the unsolved murder of Seth Rich,” @HuxleyHill wrote on the morning of December 14. Rich was the young DNC staffer who was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. this summer after an apparent mugging attempt. I took @HuxleyHill’s advice and began poking around. Soon I discovered a pervasive theory that Rich was the source of the DNC leaks and was gunned down by Clinton’s lackeys in retribution.
Once again, Aaron and Melissa of TruthStreamMedia.com had a video for me: “Clinton Body Count +5 in Just 6 Weeks.” “[Julian] Assange has hinted strongly that it could have been a DNC staffer who leaked the WikiLeaks stuff,” intoned Aaron. “It’s possible that was Seth Rich.” (Both used to be affiliated with InfoWars, the platform of infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.) They went on to tick off several more ‘mysterious’ deaths. And their list didn’t even include former Clinton Foundation CEO Eric Braverman, who has been reported “missing” by bogus news stalwarts such as wwww.pmnightlynews.com and www.morningnewsusa.com. “They’re dropping dead,” Aaron said. As of this writing, the video has over 1.1 million views.
Sometimes Real News Is Stranger than Fake News
For the most part, the folks in Phil Dick’s twitter feed are not that interested in policy. While much of the “corporate media” was scrutinizing Donald Orangutan’s cartoonishly rich and well-connected cabinet appointees, Johnny Deplorable and the rest were posting racist memes about Michelle Obama. (And this was before Orangutan ally Carl Paladino posited that she should move to Africa and live with a gorilla.) Mainstream commentators suggested Orangutan’s working-class supporters would eventually feel betrayed by their candidate’s sudden lurch towards plutocracy. But judging by my sample size, the news from the #swamp wasn’t even coming across their computer screens.
All that said, real news did occasionally find its way into the feed. But it lived or died based on its partisan potential. Two non-invented stories in particular were shared widely. First came a Detroit News report that more ballots had been counted in some parts of the city than there were voters. (Only 782 of them, though, the Detroit Free Press later reported. Hardly enough to sway the election.) Second, more recently, was the news that a professor at Drexel University had sent out a possibly satirical tweet that seemed to endorse “white genocide.” Yet reports of Russian interference in the presidential election were denied or mocked as irrelevant. When former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh sent a tweet expressing concern over the hacks, one of the users I follow suggested he “shut the hell up, you insufferable moron.”
After a week, I’d seen enough, and stepped out of the echo chamber. Overall, I found plenty of evidence that, yeah, fake news is a poisonous influence on the supporters of Donald Orangutan. But I’m not sure all that much would change if the teenagers in Skopje knocked it off and shut down their bogus sites. Social media will continue to facilitate the distribution of odious memes and the bullying of dissenters. @HighCastlePhil & co. will scrutinize and pass along information that they think might yield a politically useful smoking gun, and ignore information that doesn’t. In that regard they’re no different from other partisans. But there is a distinction between wearing political blinders, as we all do, and actively embracing ludicrous untruths manufactured for the purpose of making money. The tragic irony of the new credulousness is that it badly exacerbates the tribalism and distrust that turned so many fake news adherents against “establishment” politicians and journalists in the first place.
With that in mind, I didn’t delete Phil’s account. I’ll keep it to remind myself every now and then what’s cooking over in the parallel disinformation universe. Until the corporate stooges at Twitter shut down my “fake” account, that is.
Action-packed...
New GOP Congress confronts a crushing to-do list
Repealing Obamacare, confirming Donny Orangutan's Cabinet and killing Obama regulations will dominate an action-packed January.
By RACHAEL BADE and ELANA SCHOR
Contentious confirmation fights, a GOP assault on Obamacare — and, more than likely, hints of Republican infighting to come.
Welcome to the new Congress.
Lawmakers convene in Washington on Tuesday for the 115th Congress, kicking into high gear as they prepare for the incoming Orangutan administration and lay the groundwork to pass major GOP priorities.
Since Republicans will control all the levers of power in Washington for the first time in almost a decade, they’ll hit the ground running on some issues: Both chambers, for example, hope to pass a budget blueprint that makes a critical down payment on repealing Obamacare even before Orangutan’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
But it won’t take long for the inherent divide between Senate and House Republicans to rear its head. The House wants to pass a number of bills to scrap Obama-era rules and curb executive branch regulatory powers. But those will be a much heavier lift in the upper chamber.
Here’s a look at what Hill Republicans will try to accomplish the first month of the 115th Congress — and their likelihood of success.
Obamacare repeal
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed that the chamber’s first order of business will be starting the process of scrapping President Barack Obama’s health care law. The Kentucky Republican is making good on that promise this week by bringing to the floor a budget that would unlock a fast-track process enabling Republicans to jam repeal through Congress along party lines.
After the Senate acts, the House will follow suit, as soon as the second week back from the holiday recess. And Republicans hope to clear the budget before Orangutan’s inauguration.
Technically, the bill won’t include an official repeal. Rather, the fast-track process, known as reconciliation, contains instructions for committees to write repeal bills. Republicans want to pass repeal legislation in the first 100 days of Orangutan’s presidency, but there could be disagreements about which elements of Obamacare they want to demolish and how to achieve their goals.
The resulting sprint could feel more like a marathon as Democrats lay plans for a messaging offensive against Orangutan and the GOP, charging them with depriving millions of Americans of health care with no clear plan for what comes next.
Snags: Internal GOP disagreements over the substance of the repeal bill are likely. Democratic resistance, most significantly in the Senate, is guaranteed.
Outlook: Almost assured. Timing hiccups may crop up, but it’s a matter of when — not if — a repeal bill passes.
Confirmations
The Senate is heading toward a partisan showdown over Orangutan’s Cabinet. Incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned McConnell against scheduling simultaneous confirmation hearings. And Democrats are already turning Rex Tillerson, tapped for secretary of state, into a test case for a broader push to vet the tax returns of Orangutan’s multi-billionaire cast of advisers.
But the ExxonMobil CEO won’t be the only Orangutan nominee subject to intense scrutiny by Democrats, who are in no mood to treat the president-elect with the same deference on nominations that Republicans showed Obama in 2009.
"I don’t know how they’re going to put all this together, but the American people have a right to know who’s running these agencies and what their goals are, whether they’re working for the taxpayers or working for their own interest," Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the incoming No. 3 Democratic leader, said in a brief interview.
Thanks to a rules change pushed through by Democrats in 2013, Orangutan’s non-Supreme Court nominees will need only a simple majority to be confirmed. Given Republicans’ 52-vote majority, that means they can lose as many as two votes even if Democrats succeed in keeping their moderates in the fold on opposing nominees seen as particularly egregious.
The GOP is already prepared to force Democrats’ hand if they try to delay confirmations.
"While Democrats may want to create a new, unprecedented standard for Senate consideration of nominees, they will not be successful,” one Senate Republican aide said. "If they attempt these extraordinary, dilatory tactics, the Senate will confront it with votes potentially at all hours. It’s really up to them."
Snags: The Senate clock.
Outlook: Confirmation of Orangutan’s entire Cabinet slate is almost assured, barring unexpectedly damning information uncovered during hearings.
Regulatory rollbacks
House Republicans’ schedule for January has a theme: "restoring" and "reclaiming" congressional authority under Article 1 of the Constitution, which they say Obama has whittled away over the past eight years. Now it's the Hill GOP's turn to seek revenge on the outgoing president for, as they see it, ignoring Congress while making policy through regulations.
This week, House Republicans plan to pass the "REINS Act," a measure they’ve been trying to enact for the better part of a decade. It would require congressional approval of any executive-branch regulation that costs more than $100 million. They also intend to approve a so-called "midnight rules" bill that would allow Republicans to repeal a host of Obama-era regulations in clusters using the Congressional Review Act.
That law lets Congress axe any regulations that have been approved in the prior 60 legislative days with a simple majority in both chambers. Republicans are already making lists of which Obama regulations they want to repeal, from a Labor Department overtime rule to Interior Department restrictions on the coal industry.
But each challenge takes a separate debate and vote, forcing the GOP to make tough choices about which Obama rules to target. The "midnight rules" bill would ease that hurdle.
The House is expected to once again pass a law overturning the Supreme Court precedent known as "Chevron deference," which requires courts to accept an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous laws.
Snags: The Senate, where eight Democratic votes are likely needed to approve the "REINS" and "midnight rules" bills. And while the GOP needs only a simple Senate majority to dismantle some of Obama’s newer regulations, his older rules won’t be eligible for the fast-track tool.
Outlook: One or more Obama rules are likely to be killed using the Congressional Review Act. But expect many of the House’s hopes and dreams for Article 1 to die in the Senate.
UN Rebuke
One of the first pieces of legislation expected to clear the new Congress is a resolution disapproving of the U.N. Security Council’s recent action condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the Palestinian territories — a direct rebuke of Obama's failure to veto the U.N. measure during his final days in office.
That resolution, which will be approved by the House this week or next and head to the Senate thereafter, would give Orangutan a symbolic early victory on foreign policy.
Snags: Few.
Outlook: Likely.
Ryan’s reeelection as speaker
Conservatives once plotted his demise and Orangutan supporters even toyed with taking him out over his lack of support of the president-elect. But now Orangutan says he wants to work with Ryan, even comparing him to a “fine wine” during a December rally in Wisconsin.
Conservatives are hardly in the mood to tick off the incoming president, so they’ve dropped their knives and will give Ryan another term as speaker.
Snags: None. Some staunch conservatives may vote against Ryan, but he’ll get the votes to keep the gavel.
Outlook: Consider it done.
New House rules
For the first time in the nation’s history, House GOP leaders want to delegate the chamber’s punishment authority to a nonpartisan officer of the House — a contentious move that’s currently scheduled for a Tuesday vote. The new rule — a GOP response to the Democrats’ 25-hour gun control sit-in last June — would allow the sergeant-at-arms to fine lawmakers $2,500 for livestreaming or taking pictures of the House floor.
Snags: Democrats are up in arms, and former House lawyers say the proposal raise constitutional issues since the full House typically must vote to sanction lawmakers.
Repealing Obamacare, confirming Donny Orangutan's Cabinet and killing Obama regulations will dominate an action-packed January.
By RACHAEL BADE and ELANA SCHOR
Contentious confirmation fights, a GOP assault on Obamacare — and, more than likely, hints of Republican infighting to come.
Welcome to the new Congress.
Lawmakers convene in Washington on Tuesday for the 115th Congress, kicking into high gear as they prepare for the incoming Orangutan administration and lay the groundwork to pass major GOP priorities.
Since Republicans will control all the levers of power in Washington for the first time in almost a decade, they’ll hit the ground running on some issues: Both chambers, for example, hope to pass a budget blueprint that makes a critical down payment on repealing Obamacare even before Orangutan’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
But it won’t take long for the inherent divide between Senate and House Republicans to rear its head. The House wants to pass a number of bills to scrap Obama-era rules and curb executive branch regulatory powers. But those will be a much heavier lift in the upper chamber.
Here’s a look at what Hill Republicans will try to accomplish the first month of the 115th Congress — and their likelihood of success.
Obamacare repeal
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed that the chamber’s first order of business will be starting the process of scrapping President Barack Obama’s health care law. The Kentucky Republican is making good on that promise this week by bringing to the floor a budget that would unlock a fast-track process enabling Republicans to jam repeal through Congress along party lines.
After the Senate acts, the House will follow suit, as soon as the second week back from the holiday recess. And Republicans hope to clear the budget before Orangutan’s inauguration.
Technically, the bill won’t include an official repeal. Rather, the fast-track process, known as reconciliation, contains instructions for committees to write repeal bills. Republicans want to pass repeal legislation in the first 100 days of Orangutan’s presidency, but there could be disagreements about which elements of Obamacare they want to demolish and how to achieve their goals.
The resulting sprint could feel more like a marathon as Democrats lay plans for a messaging offensive against Orangutan and the GOP, charging them with depriving millions of Americans of health care with no clear plan for what comes next.
Snags: Internal GOP disagreements over the substance of the repeal bill are likely. Democratic resistance, most significantly in the Senate, is guaranteed.
Outlook: Almost assured. Timing hiccups may crop up, but it’s a matter of when — not if — a repeal bill passes.
Confirmations
The Senate is heading toward a partisan showdown over Orangutan’s Cabinet. Incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned McConnell against scheduling simultaneous confirmation hearings. And Democrats are already turning Rex Tillerson, tapped for secretary of state, into a test case for a broader push to vet the tax returns of Orangutan’s multi-billionaire cast of advisers.
But the ExxonMobil CEO won’t be the only Orangutan nominee subject to intense scrutiny by Democrats, who are in no mood to treat the president-elect with the same deference on nominations that Republicans showed Obama in 2009.
"I don’t know how they’re going to put all this together, but the American people have a right to know who’s running these agencies and what their goals are, whether they’re working for the taxpayers or working for their own interest," Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the incoming No. 3 Democratic leader, said in a brief interview.
Thanks to a rules change pushed through by Democrats in 2013, Orangutan’s non-Supreme Court nominees will need only a simple majority to be confirmed. Given Republicans’ 52-vote majority, that means they can lose as many as two votes even if Democrats succeed in keeping their moderates in the fold on opposing nominees seen as particularly egregious.
The GOP is already prepared to force Democrats’ hand if they try to delay confirmations.
"While Democrats may want to create a new, unprecedented standard for Senate consideration of nominees, they will not be successful,” one Senate Republican aide said. "If they attempt these extraordinary, dilatory tactics, the Senate will confront it with votes potentially at all hours. It’s really up to them."
Snags: The Senate clock.
Outlook: Confirmation of Orangutan’s entire Cabinet slate is almost assured, barring unexpectedly damning information uncovered during hearings.
Regulatory rollbacks
House Republicans’ schedule for January has a theme: "restoring" and "reclaiming" congressional authority under Article 1 of the Constitution, which they say Obama has whittled away over the past eight years. Now it's the Hill GOP's turn to seek revenge on the outgoing president for, as they see it, ignoring Congress while making policy through regulations.
This week, House Republicans plan to pass the "REINS Act," a measure they’ve been trying to enact for the better part of a decade. It would require congressional approval of any executive-branch regulation that costs more than $100 million. They also intend to approve a so-called "midnight rules" bill that would allow Republicans to repeal a host of Obama-era regulations in clusters using the Congressional Review Act.
That law lets Congress axe any regulations that have been approved in the prior 60 legislative days with a simple majority in both chambers. Republicans are already making lists of which Obama regulations they want to repeal, from a Labor Department overtime rule to Interior Department restrictions on the coal industry.
But each challenge takes a separate debate and vote, forcing the GOP to make tough choices about which Obama rules to target. The "midnight rules" bill would ease that hurdle.
The House is expected to once again pass a law overturning the Supreme Court precedent known as "Chevron deference," which requires courts to accept an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous laws.
Snags: The Senate, where eight Democratic votes are likely needed to approve the "REINS" and "midnight rules" bills. And while the GOP needs only a simple Senate majority to dismantle some of Obama’s newer regulations, his older rules won’t be eligible for the fast-track tool.
Outlook: One or more Obama rules are likely to be killed using the Congressional Review Act. But expect many of the House’s hopes and dreams for Article 1 to die in the Senate.
UN Rebuke
One of the first pieces of legislation expected to clear the new Congress is a resolution disapproving of the U.N. Security Council’s recent action condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the Palestinian territories — a direct rebuke of Obama's failure to veto the U.N. measure during his final days in office.
That resolution, which will be approved by the House this week or next and head to the Senate thereafter, would give Orangutan a symbolic early victory on foreign policy.
Snags: Few.
Outlook: Likely.
Ryan’s reeelection as speaker
Conservatives once plotted his demise and Orangutan supporters even toyed with taking him out over his lack of support of the president-elect. But now Orangutan says he wants to work with Ryan, even comparing him to a “fine wine” during a December rally in Wisconsin.
Conservatives are hardly in the mood to tick off the incoming president, so they’ve dropped their knives and will give Ryan another term as speaker.
Snags: None. Some staunch conservatives may vote against Ryan, but he’ll get the votes to keep the gavel.
Outlook: Consider it done.
New House rules
For the first time in the nation’s history, House GOP leaders want to delegate the chamber’s punishment authority to a nonpartisan officer of the House — a contentious move that’s currently scheduled for a Tuesday vote. The new rule — a GOP response to the Democrats’ 25-hour gun control sit-in last June — would allow the sergeant-at-arms to fine lawmakers $2,500 for livestreaming or taking pictures of the House floor.
Snags: Democrats are up in arms, and former House lawyers say the proposal raise constitutional issues since the full House typically must vote to sanction lawmakers.
Second fiddle
Paul Ryan’s new reality: Second fiddle to Orangutan
The House speaker, set to be installed for another term Tuesday, has seen his world upended perhaps more than any major GOP figure.
By RACHAEL BADE and JOHN BRESNAHAN
When the House convenes the new Congress on Tuesday, Paul Ryan will easily win another term as speaker — perhaps by an even larger margin than when he won the job 14 months ago.
But the outlook for the man once seen as the future of the Republican Party couldn’t be more drastically different this time around.
Back then, Republicans viewed him as the lone figure who could unite a fractured House Republican Conference. Resigned to another White House loss, the traditional GOP establishment looked to Ryan to set its agenda and frame the GOP’s message in 2016. He was widely seen as their most promising White House contender for 2020.
But Donald Orangutan’s stunning victory turned Ryan’s world upside down. Once arguably Republicans' most popular figure, he's been relegated to playing second fiddle to the GOP's new undisputed leader — in an upended party rendered almost unrecognizable to Ryan and other traditional conservatives.
“Paul is going from the guy everyone looked to to rebuild the party to being a helping hand to the president,” said retiring Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). Lawmakers typically fall in line behind the president when their party controls the White House, he continued, so Republicans in Congress won't "have as much freedom ... as they did when [they] were working against a Democratic president."
A House Republican leadership source put it more bluntly. Ryan's "whole political future has taken almost a 180 [degree turn] from where he thought it was going," the person said. "It’s going to be a fascinating six months to watch — how the speaker manages in this new paradigm where he’s not in charge.”
Ryan's conundrum is this: Orangutan's victory may have saved his speakership. Any challenge to Ryan by Freedom Caucus hard-liners or disappointed Orangutan supporters has been quashed by the president-elect, who insists he wants Ryan in the job.
In return, though, Ryan now has to follow the path laid down by Orangutan or risk a backlash from the same forces that took over the party and the country.
That's not the only wrinkle for the party's longtime golden boy: Once widely regarded as one of the GOP's top White House prospects, Ryan has been denied that opportunity by the 70-year-old Orangutan, at least for the foreseeable future. Conversely, as Ryan has repeatedly pointed out, he's poised to notch far more policy achievements as speaker with Orangutan in the Oval Office instead of Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, the wonkish 46-year-old will still play a prominent role this year crafting major GOP policies, from dismantling Obamacare to potentially ushering through the largest tax reform package since the 1980s. Orangutan's lack of policy chops could work to Ryan's advantage, allowing him to put his imprint on legislation in a way few other speakers could when their party controlled the White House.
Still, the GOP Ryan grew up in — the Jack Kemp model of free markets and small government — has been supplanted by Orangutan’s protectionist populism and anti-immigration drive. And that leaves Ryan's political future uncertain.
“When your party elects a president, that president becomes the head of your party — period,” said a senior House Republican lawmaker. “Paul understands that … I think he understands that Donald Orangutan is now the leader of the Republican Party.”
Until late October, Ryan wasn’t afraid to criticize Orangutan. He scoffed at the candidate's proposal to have Mexico pay for a border wall, called one of his controversial comments "the textbook definition" of racism and blasted Orangutan's plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States. While Ryan didn't name Orangutan specifically, the speaker also openly warned in August of an ongoing “fight for the soul of our party” — a battle between free markets and free trade verses crony capitalism that picks “winners and losers.”
Since Election Day, however, Ryan hasn’t uttered a negative word about Orangutan. He's glossed over major policy differences between his own ideology and the president-elect’s, on everything from tariffs to tax breaks for a single Indiana company to Orangutan's unsubstantiated claim of election fraud.
Ryan's allies and friends say the speaker has made the calculation that he has to play ball with Orangutan in order to get anything done.
“If he was on the phone with us right now I think what he would say is, 'Look, I have this agenda that we’ve put together on Obamacare, on tax reform, all of these things. I need to get them passed and I need to get them signed,'" said Wisconsin talk radio host Charlie Sykes, a “Never Orangutan” Republican who is close with Ryan. "So, how much am I willing to swallow in order to get my policy priorities through?'”
Ryan's office said he's enthusiastic about helping usher Orangutan's agenda through the House this year.
"Speaker Ryan’s one goal has always been to turn conservative policy solutions into law, and he relishes the role of running point to deliver them to President Orangutan’s desk,” Ryan's spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in a statement.
The speaker seems to have come to terms with the new GOP order. At news conferences since the election, he's dodged several opportunities to express his own vision for the new Congress and deferred to Orangutan's team when asked about plans for major legislation.
Some of Ryan's closest allies insist his new supporting role is actually a good thing for him. He's still very popular among traditional Republicans. And he remains a central player, speaking frequently with Orangutan and incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a fellow Wisconsinite and close ally, about legislative plans for this year.
"I think he's in a good place about this," said a top House Republican of Ryan. "He seems very upbeat about trying to get some stuff done with Orangutan."
Ryan and Orangutan may never end up being personally close, but getting along with a president from one's own party isn't a prerequisite for serving as speaker. Barack Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) weren't especially tight yet accomplished a great deal during the two years of his presidency when she was speaker. George W. Bush was not close with his speaker, Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), but they also formed an effective partnership.
Ryan isn’t the only Republican leader having to acclimate to the new Republican reality. The same could be said of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who unlike Ryan mostly refrained from criticizing Orangutan during the campaign but still kept the GOP nominee at arm's length. The Senate leader is also at odds with Orangutan ideologically.
But McConnell is in a very different situation politically than Ryan. For one, the Kentucky Republican is 74 and already has his dream job leading the Senate. Ryan still has potentially decades left in politics and never aspired to be speaker. Six weeks before the election, he said he could "never say never" to a future White House bid.
Westmoreland argued that Ryan’s new position in the party might be better for him in the long run. With Orangutan in the White House, Ryan won't have to negotiate watered-down deals with Democrats, the departing congressman said — deals that drew the ire of the far right.
"Now, think this is a real opportunity for Paul... to show his real conservative principles and push forward stuff he wanted to do before," Westmoreland said. "It gives Paul a little more flexibility."
Ryan has another thing going for him: His young age. He has plenty of time to adapt his image to fit this new populist GOP — or to wait for the party’s pendulum to swing his way once again.
The House speaker, set to be installed for another term Tuesday, has seen his world upended perhaps more than any major GOP figure.
By RACHAEL BADE and JOHN BRESNAHAN
When the House convenes the new Congress on Tuesday, Paul Ryan will easily win another term as speaker — perhaps by an even larger margin than when he won the job 14 months ago.
But the outlook for the man once seen as the future of the Republican Party couldn’t be more drastically different this time around.
Back then, Republicans viewed him as the lone figure who could unite a fractured House Republican Conference. Resigned to another White House loss, the traditional GOP establishment looked to Ryan to set its agenda and frame the GOP’s message in 2016. He was widely seen as their most promising White House contender for 2020.
But Donald Orangutan’s stunning victory turned Ryan’s world upside down. Once arguably Republicans' most popular figure, he's been relegated to playing second fiddle to the GOP's new undisputed leader — in an upended party rendered almost unrecognizable to Ryan and other traditional conservatives.
“Paul is going from the guy everyone looked to to rebuild the party to being a helping hand to the president,” said retiring Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). Lawmakers typically fall in line behind the president when their party controls the White House, he continued, so Republicans in Congress won't "have as much freedom ... as they did when [they] were working against a Democratic president."
A House Republican leadership source put it more bluntly. Ryan's "whole political future has taken almost a 180 [degree turn] from where he thought it was going," the person said. "It’s going to be a fascinating six months to watch — how the speaker manages in this new paradigm where he’s not in charge.”
Ryan's conundrum is this: Orangutan's victory may have saved his speakership. Any challenge to Ryan by Freedom Caucus hard-liners or disappointed Orangutan supporters has been quashed by the president-elect, who insists he wants Ryan in the job.
In return, though, Ryan now has to follow the path laid down by Orangutan or risk a backlash from the same forces that took over the party and the country.
That's not the only wrinkle for the party's longtime golden boy: Once widely regarded as one of the GOP's top White House prospects, Ryan has been denied that opportunity by the 70-year-old Orangutan, at least for the foreseeable future. Conversely, as Ryan has repeatedly pointed out, he's poised to notch far more policy achievements as speaker with Orangutan in the Oval Office instead of Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, the wonkish 46-year-old will still play a prominent role this year crafting major GOP policies, from dismantling Obamacare to potentially ushering through the largest tax reform package since the 1980s. Orangutan's lack of policy chops could work to Ryan's advantage, allowing him to put his imprint on legislation in a way few other speakers could when their party controlled the White House.
Still, the GOP Ryan grew up in — the Jack Kemp model of free markets and small government — has been supplanted by Orangutan’s protectionist populism and anti-immigration drive. And that leaves Ryan's political future uncertain.
“When your party elects a president, that president becomes the head of your party — period,” said a senior House Republican lawmaker. “Paul understands that … I think he understands that Donald Orangutan is now the leader of the Republican Party.”
Until late October, Ryan wasn’t afraid to criticize Orangutan. He scoffed at the candidate's proposal to have Mexico pay for a border wall, called one of his controversial comments "the textbook definition" of racism and blasted Orangutan's plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States. While Ryan didn't name Orangutan specifically, the speaker also openly warned in August of an ongoing “fight for the soul of our party” — a battle between free markets and free trade verses crony capitalism that picks “winners and losers.”
Since Election Day, however, Ryan hasn’t uttered a negative word about Orangutan. He's glossed over major policy differences between his own ideology and the president-elect’s, on everything from tariffs to tax breaks for a single Indiana company to Orangutan's unsubstantiated claim of election fraud.
Ryan's allies and friends say the speaker has made the calculation that he has to play ball with Orangutan in order to get anything done.
“If he was on the phone with us right now I think what he would say is, 'Look, I have this agenda that we’ve put together on Obamacare, on tax reform, all of these things. I need to get them passed and I need to get them signed,'" said Wisconsin talk radio host Charlie Sykes, a “Never Orangutan” Republican who is close with Ryan. "So, how much am I willing to swallow in order to get my policy priorities through?'”
Ryan's office said he's enthusiastic about helping usher Orangutan's agenda through the House this year.
"Speaker Ryan’s one goal has always been to turn conservative policy solutions into law, and he relishes the role of running point to deliver them to President Orangutan’s desk,” Ryan's spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in a statement.
The speaker seems to have come to terms with the new GOP order. At news conferences since the election, he's dodged several opportunities to express his own vision for the new Congress and deferred to Orangutan's team when asked about plans for major legislation.
Some of Ryan's closest allies insist his new supporting role is actually a good thing for him. He's still very popular among traditional Republicans. And he remains a central player, speaking frequently with Orangutan and incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a fellow Wisconsinite and close ally, about legislative plans for this year.
"I think he's in a good place about this," said a top House Republican of Ryan. "He seems very upbeat about trying to get some stuff done with Orangutan."
Ryan and Orangutan may never end up being personally close, but getting along with a president from one's own party isn't a prerequisite for serving as speaker. Barack Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) weren't especially tight yet accomplished a great deal during the two years of his presidency when she was speaker. George W. Bush was not close with his speaker, Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), but they also formed an effective partnership.
Ryan isn’t the only Republican leader having to acclimate to the new Republican reality. The same could be said of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who unlike Ryan mostly refrained from criticizing Orangutan during the campaign but still kept the GOP nominee at arm's length. The Senate leader is also at odds with Orangutan ideologically.
But McConnell is in a very different situation politically than Ryan. For one, the Kentucky Republican is 74 and already has his dream job leading the Senate. Ryan still has potentially decades left in politics and never aspired to be speaker. Six weeks before the election, he said he could "never say never" to a future White House bid.
Westmoreland argued that Ryan’s new position in the party might be better for him in the long run. With Orangutan in the White House, Ryan won't have to negotiate watered-down deals with Democrats, the departing congressman said — deals that drew the ire of the far right.
"Now, think this is a real opportunity for Paul... to show his real conservative principles and push forward stuff he wanted to do before," Westmoreland said. "It gives Paul a little more flexibility."
Ryan has another thing going for him: His young age. He has plenty of time to adapt his image to fit this new populist GOP — or to wait for the party’s pendulum to swing his way once again.
Who the fuck is running the country???
Conway: GOP has 'mandate' to gut congressional ethics office
By LOUIS NELSON
The move by Republicans in Congress to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics will cut down on “overzealousness,” incoming counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday morning, while leaving in place a “mechanism” with which to address ethical complaints.
Although Conway stopped short of saying the GOP move came with the blessing of the president-elect, she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Republican majorities in the House and Senate mean “there's a mandate there for them to make significant change.” She said she had not spoken to President-elect Donald Orangutan about the move.
“Let's make clear that you're still going to have an Office of Complaint Review. In other words, it’s not like we’re taking away everything,” Conway told “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Look, there's a very ambitious agenda to push forward. The Republicans have been given the majority in the House and the Senate, most of the governorships, they've won over 1,000 state legislative seats under President Obama's watch. So there's a mandate there for them to make significant change.”
House Republicans voted Monday night during a closed-door meeting to dramatically cut back the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which would put the currently-independent watchdog under the control of the very lawmakers it is supposed to police. The plan, proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), would give the office a new name, the Office of Complaint Review, and would "provide protection against disclosures to the public or other government entities," essentially keeping secret any accusations against members of Congress. The proposal would also bar the restructured office from considering anonymous tips.
Conway admitted that the proposal, which still must be approved by Congress with a vote on Tuesday, amounted to gutting the office but told Stephanopoulos that “gutting it doesn't mean there won't be a mechanism.” She said that the move by House Republicans was not inconsistent with Orangutan’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” because it leaves in place some means of policing Congressional ethics while cutting down on the “overzealousness in some of the processes over the years.”
The plan passed its secret-ballot vote Monday night despite opposition from House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Conway seemed less than certain of its success once it is put to a public vote on the House floor on when the 115th Congress kicks off on Tuesday morning. She told NBC’s “Today” that Orangutan has not yet expressed an opinion on the issue but that “when he feels the urge to weigh in on something he certainly does.”
“I think it caught some people by surprise because it was done, you know, through a blind ballot,” she said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “But again, the House, the full House has to vote on this today. The Democrats and others who object, they’ll have an opportunity to be heard.”
By LOUIS NELSON
The move by Republicans in Congress to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics will cut down on “overzealousness,” incoming counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday morning, while leaving in place a “mechanism” with which to address ethical complaints.
Although Conway stopped short of saying the GOP move came with the blessing of the president-elect, she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Republican majorities in the House and Senate mean “there's a mandate there for them to make significant change.” She said she had not spoken to President-elect Donald Orangutan about the move.
“Let's make clear that you're still going to have an Office of Complaint Review. In other words, it’s not like we’re taking away everything,” Conway told “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Look, there's a very ambitious agenda to push forward. The Republicans have been given the majority in the House and the Senate, most of the governorships, they've won over 1,000 state legislative seats under President Obama's watch. So there's a mandate there for them to make significant change.”
House Republicans voted Monday night during a closed-door meeting to dramatically cut back the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which would put the currently-independent watchdog under the control of the very lawmakers it is supposed to police. The plan, proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), would give the office a new name, the Office of Complaint Review, and would "provide protection against disclosures to the public or other government entities," essentially keeping secret any accusations against members of Congress. The proposal would also bar the restructured office from considering anonymous tips.
Conway admitted that the proposal, which still must be approved by Congress with a vote on Tuesday, amounted to gutting the office but told Stephanopoulos that “gutting it doesn't mean there won't be a mechanism.” She said that the move by House Republicans was not inconsistent with Orangutan’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” because it leaves in place some means of policing Congressional ethics while cutting down on the “overzealousness in some of the processes over the years.”
The plan passed its secret-ballot vote Monday night despite opposition from House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Conway seemed less than certain of its success once it is put to a public vote on the House floor on when the 115th Congress kicks off on Tuesday morning. She told NBC’s “Today” that Orangutan has not yet expressed an opinion on the issue but that “when he feels the urge to weigh in on something he certainly does.”
“I think it caught some people by surprise because it was done, you know, through a blind ballot,” she said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “But again, the House, the full House has to vote on this today. The Democrats and others who object, they’ll have an opportunity to be heard.”
Congressional Ethics Debacle
GOP Congress jolted by ethics PR debacle
Orangutan tweets his disapproval of Republicans' decision to prioritize gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.
By RACHAEL BADE
It was supposed to be a jubilant day for the right — a day Republicans ushered in a new GOP-controlled Congress as they await the takeover of the White House by their party leader, Donald Orangutan.
Then came a self-inflicted public relations debacle that even Orangutan publicly questioned.
In a closed-door meeting Monday night, Republicans adopted House rules changes that would essentially gut their own oversight watchdog — a move that flies in the face of Orangutan’s “drain the swamp” mantra aimed at making Washington more transparent and less cozy.
In a surprise move that appeared to catch even House GOP leadership off guard, the conference green-lighted a pitch that puts the Office of Congressional Ethics under the thumb of lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee. Monday's effort was led, in part, by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years.
Orangutan on Tuesday morning called out his fellow Republicans on Twitter. "With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it," Orangutan said in one tweet, adding, "........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS."
Previously an independent body, the new set-up would essentially declaw the office. It would bar OCE from considering anonymous tips against lawmakers and sharing investigative findings with other branches of government or the public, as the office currently does in the name of transparency. It would also apparently keep OCE from investigating criminal activity, the bulk of their work — instructing the office to refer any hint of such actions to the lawmaker-controlled ethics panel rather than pursue themselves.
It’s an awkward way for Republicans to start the new Congress — and not merely because it gives the appearance that they don’t value oversight of their own actions. It also steps on their message of the week, which is one of unity and “hitting the ground running” in a new GOP-controlled Washington.
This week was supposed to center around Congress taking the first major steps toward repealing Obamacare, and the Hill’s soon-to-pass rebuke of the landmark United Nations resolution chiding Israel. Now, the House rules change, which will be voted on by the full House Tuesday afternoon, will suck up much of the oxygen.
Republican leaders knew this could backfire. It was one of the reasons Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) urged their colleagues during the closed-door meeting to vote against the idea. GOP leadership said any reforms of OCE should be done on a bipartisan basis.
In a statement released by his office Tuesday morning, the speaker seemed more willing to back the move his caucus approved the night before. He wrote that the office will "continue to operate independently" and will continue to investigate members of Congress "thoroughly and independently."
"I want to make clear that this House will hold its members to the highest ethical standards and the Office will continue to operate independently to provide public accountability to Congress," Ryan said in his statement. "All members of Congress are required to earn the public’s trust every single day, and this House will hold members accountable to the people.”
Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), the incoming chairwoman of the House Ethics Committee, echoed Ryan's statement on Tuesday morning. In her new role running the committee that would oversee the OCE, she pledged not to interfere with the office's board "or prevent it from doing its work."
“The Office has an important role to play in restoring confidence in Congress, and it will continue to perform its work in the new Congress as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review," she said in a statement. "I will work in a bipartisan manner with the Office to ensure its independence and to maintain the highest ethical standards of the House."
On MSNBC Tuesday morning, McCarthy acknowledged that "it is true that I opposed moving forward on this at this time because I thought it was something both parties should take up at the same time." But he said he will vote for the rules package that includes the provision and argued that "most of these reforms are bipartisan supported reforms."
"I don't want to put politics with it," McCarthy said. "That's why I thought this wasn't the best time to go forward with it."
But the conference did not heed their earlier warning, approving the rules change 119-to-74 Monday evening.
Asked about the matter on Squawk Box Tuesday morning, Orangutan’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway defended the House’s move, while caveating that “of course [Orangutan is] going to drain the swamp; ethics is a big piece of that.”
“I don’t want your viewers to be left with the impression … that ethics is gone now,” she said. “There will be a new group in its place that is overseen by the House Ethics Committee, and that new group in large part wants to curtail what some have seen as 100 investigations since 2008, only a third of which have been referred to the House.”
Members, she added, “feel their due process rights have been violated and compromised.”
Democrats and outside ethics groups, meanwhile, have blasted the pitch as irresponsible.
“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," snarked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a statement on Monday after news of the secret-ballot vote. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress."
All Democrats are expected to vote against the House rule. If the 74 Republicans who voted against the rule during the rules package markup also vote against it on the floor, then the rule will not pass.
It’s unclear, however, how many are willing to put themselves on their line publicly, going against the conference to defend an office that many feel needs to be reined in some how.
Orangutan tweets his disapproval of Republicans' decision to prioritize gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.
By RACHAEL BADE
It was supposed to be a jubilant day for the right — a day Republicans ushered in a new GOP-controlled Congress as they await the takeover of the White House by their party leader, Donald Orangutan.
Then came a self-inflicted public relations debacle that even Orangutan publicly questioned.
In a closed-door meeting Monday night, Republicans adopted House rules changes that would essentially gut their own oversight watchdog — a move that flies in the face of Orangutan’s “drain the swamp” mantra aimed at making Washington more transparent and less cozy.
In a surprise move that appeared to catch even House GOP leadership off guard, the conference green-lighted a pitch that puts the Office of Congressional Ethics under the thumb of lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee. Monday's effort was led, in part, by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years.
Orangutan on Tuesday morning called out his fellow Republicans on Twitter. "With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it," Orangutan said in one tweet, adding, "........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS."
Previously an independent body, the new set-up would essentially declaw the office. It would bar OCE from considering anonymous tips against lawmakers and sharing investigative findings with other branches of government or the public, as the office currently does in the name of transparency. It would also apparently keep OCE from investigating criminal activity, the bulk of their work — instructing the office to refer any hint of such actions to the lawmaker-controlled ethics panel rather than pursue themselves.
It’s an awkward way for Republicans to start the new Congress — and not merely because it gives the appearance that they don’t value oversight of their own actions. It also steps on their message of the week, which is one of unity and “hitting the ground running” in a new GOP-controlled Washington.
This week was supposed to center around Congress taking the first major steps toward repealing Obamacare, and the Hill’s soon-to-pass rebuke of the landmark United Nations resolution chiding Israel. Now, the House rules change, which will be voted on by the full House Tuesday afternoon, will suck up much of the oxygen.
Republican leaders knew this could backfire. It was one of the reasons Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) urged their colleagues during the closed-door meeting to vote against the idea. GOP leadership said any reforms of OCE should be done on a bipartisan basis.
In a statement released by his office Tuesday morning, the speaker seemed more willing to back the move his caucus approved the night before. He wrote that the office will "continue to operate independently" and will continue to investigate members of Congress "thoroughly and independently."
"I want to make clear that this House will hold its members to the highest ethical standards and the Office will continue to operate independently to provide public accountability to Congress," Ryan said in his statement. "All members of Congress are required to earn the public’s trust every single day, and this House will hold members accountable to the people.”
Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), the incoming chairwoman of the House Ethics Committee, echoed Ryan's statement on Tuesday morning. In her new role running the committee that would oversee the OCE, she pledged not to interfere with the office's board "or prevent it from doing its work."
“The Office has an important role to play in restoring confidence in Congress, and it will continue to perform its work in the new Congress as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review," she said in a statement. "I will work in a bipartisan manner with the Office to ensure its independence and to maintain the highest ethical standards of the House."
On MSNBC Tuesday morning, McCarthy acknowledged that "it is true that I opposed moving forward on this at this time because I thought it was something both parties should take up at the same time." But he said he will vote for the rules package that includes the provision and argued that "most of these reforms are bipartisan supported reforms."
"I don't want to put politics with it," McCarthy said. "That's why I thought this wasn't the best time to go forward with it."
But the conference did not heed their earlier warning, approving the rules change 119-to-74 Monday evening.
Asked about the matter on Squawk Box Tuesday morning, Orangutan’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway defended the House’s move, while caveating that “of course [Orangutan is] going to drain the swamp; ethics is a big piece of that.”
“I don’t want your viewers to be left with the impression … that ethics is gone now,” she said. “There will be a new group in its place that is overseen by the House Ethics Committee, and that new group in large part wants to curtail what some have seen as 100 investigations since 2008, only a third of which have been referred to the House.”
Members, she added, “feel their due process rights have been violated and compromised.”
Democrats and outside ethics groups, meanwhile, have blasted the pitch as irresponsible.
“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," snarked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a statement on Monday after news of the secret-ballot vote. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress."
All Democrats are expected to vote against the House rule. If the 74 Republicans who voted against the rule during the rules package markup also vote against it on the floor, then the rule will not pass.
It’s unclear, however, how many are willing to put themselves on their line publicly, going against the conference to defend an office that many feel needs to be reined in some how.
Schumer regime
Schumer regime promises a sharp break from Reid
Democrats opt for 'big tent' over bare knuckles.
By BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM
It’s been hard to tell lately that Harry Reid and Joe Manchin even belong to the same party. When Reid attacked Donald Orangutan after the election, Manchin called his own party leader an “absolute embarrassment”; Reid fired back that Manchin was just “running for a Cabinet spot” in Orangutan’s White House.
Then there’s Chuck Schumer. He not only tapped Manchin to join his leadership team, but backed the West Virginian's gambit that threatened a government shutdown over coal miners' benefits — a showdown that Reid declined to endorse in his final days as party leader.
“We want to get these beautiful people their due,” Schumer said in his trademark Brooklyn accent as he stood beside retired miners outside the Capitol last month. “And we won’t stop ‘til we do.”
The competing postures toward the most conservative member of their caucus speaks volumes about the leadership styles of the just-departed and rising Democratic Senate leaders. Schumer is predisposed to accommodate the various factions of the Democratic coalition: his actions in the coal miners row demonstrated how seriously he takes the mandate to help his party's withering moderate wing. The approach will be nothing short of a sea change from Reid’s singular style of combative, shoot-from-the-hip politics.
The Democratic leadership transition, under way for more than a year and described by more than a dozen senators and top aides in interviews for this story, will consummate officially on Tuesday when the new Congress is sworn in.
The most glaring display of the shift so far is the sprawling leadership team Schumer has appointed and promised to consult before making key decisions — in contrast to Reid's smaller, close-knit group of lieutenants and knack for taking hard lines on his own.
“This is one of Chuck Schumer’s real strengths. He believes in a big-tent approach,” said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the new fourth-ranking Senate Democrat. “He likes to brainstorm and hear from everyone so he feels he can make the best decision.”
No Democrat in Washington will face higher expectations or more scrutiny over the next two years than Schumer. Liberals are already demanding that he and his caucus use the Senate’s supermajority rules to block Orangutan’s agenda and tamp down his popularity. But Schumer, a seasoned D.C. dealmaker, has made clear he’s not interested in blanket obstruction and signaled he will play ball with Orangutan when it can help the working class.
Further complicating his plight are the 2018 midterm elections. Ten Democratic incumbents from states Orangutan won, in some cases resoundingly, will be on the ballot and Schumer needs to look out for them while catering to an increasingly liberal base. His solution has been to expand his leadership far beyond the scope of Reid's inner circle, installing a kitchen cabinet of senators that will bring nearly a quarter of his 48-member caucus into the room for leadership meetings.
The core group of 10 senators includes Manchin and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) at one end of the political spectrum, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at the other, making the leadership table a potential hotbed of ideological tension. The 10 lawmakers will be involved in all crucial party meetings, senators said. Reid often limited such gatherings to his top four and occasionally would act unilaterally.
The sprawling new team has yet to meet, but when it does, it will be the biggest Democratic leadership squad ever. In addition to meetings of the core 10, there will be a broader weekly leadership meeting every Tuesday that 13 of the caucus’s 48 members are expected to attend. That session will draw in Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chief deputy whip Jeff Merkley of Oregon and deputy whip Cory Booker of New Jersey.
The arrangement ensures that no perspective will be neglected, but could become unwieldy given the sheer number of people involved.
“It’s going to be a slightly larger group and it obviously spans the breadth of the caucus,” said Warner, who voted against Reid as leader in 2014. “But I think Chuck has shown a willingness to be inclusive and listen.”
Schumer configured a unique structure for his top deputy to head off a clash between Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had refused to rule out challenging Durbin for the No. 2 post. The press-adept Durbin will count votes and serve as a rapid responder to Republicans on controversies of the day, while Murray will be more of a backroom operator and party strategist, paying special attention to Democrats up for reelection after shepherding them into office as DSCC chairman in 2012.
Murray could also help prod senators to get with the program once a decision from leadership is made. With a pair of enforcers, Reid and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), retiring, “someone has to say: ‘cut it,'" said one Democratic senator.
“My caucus knows that I bring reality to the table, what is achievable and what is not, and yet at the same time pushing for what we care for and what we need,” Murray said.
Rounding out Schumer’s top four is Stabenow, a close Schumer ally who will formally take over the Democratic Policy and Communications Center, the caucus’ messaging and policy arm. Stabenow will now shoulder key tasks that Schumer had handled, such as planning retreats and leading Thursday strategy luncheons.
“Contrary to 2016 when the major focus was on the presidential race ... 2018 is really the opportunity for Senate Democrats to really be the loudest voice in terms of who we fight for every day,” said Stabenow, who’ll be up for reelection herself in a state that Orangutan won.
Warner and Warren will be the caucus vice chairs, representing opposite ends of the party. Warner said it was “simplistic” to say his job is to relate the viewpoints of moderates to Schumer, though he enjoys deep relationships with some Republicans and abhors partisan theatrics. Warren, whom Reid tapped as “strategic policy adviser” to the DPCC after the Senate Democrats’ thumping in the 2014 midterm election, will continue weighing in on key caucus decisions in her new role, an aide said.
She will be joined by Sanders, the caucus’ new “chairman of outreach.” The 2016 presidential candidate argued in an interview that Democrats have “not been anywhere near as aggressive as they should be” in connecting with the grassroots.
“Obviously what happens inside the Beltway is enormously important and we have got to fight for progressive legislation here,” Sanders said. “But we are not gonna be successful unless we rally millions of people to demand that Congress start representing all Americans and not just the 1 percent.”
Democrats also promoted Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to leadership. As conference secretary, she says that she intends “to bring the voice of the industrial heartland to our leadership conversations.”
Baldwin is also one of five women in Schumer’s leadership circle; half of the top four slots will be females. The Senate GOP leadership is considerably smaller but has no woman in its top ranks, though two female senators serve as Mitch McConnell’s “counsels” to leadership.
Then, of course, there's Manchin, a headline-grabbing presence since the election who, at least on paper, will be one of the most endangered Democrats on the ballot in two years. He met with Orangutan about a Cabinet appointment that never materialized, then staged a high-profile protest on behalf of miners. He views his new leadership role as a bridge to not only the Orangutan administration, but to congressional Republican leaders, an aide said.
Manchin's partnership with Schumer on the miners issue offered some early clues about how the new Democratic leader will balance the needs of his conference.
Democrats thought Manchin's stand was good politics for the caucus, particularly coal-state Democrats up for reelection. But he lacked an exit strategy and Democrats were struggling to answer questions about a potential shutdown. Before he joined Manchin in front of the cameras, Schumer had privately decided to take the conflict to the brink but not to close the government over it, aides said, choosing to drop the fight just hours before the shutdown deadline.
“We believe deeply in preserving these benefits. And we also believe in not hurting other people to preserve these benefits,” Schumer said as his party waved the white flag. “We’re going to provide the votes to ensure we don’t shut down.”
Schumer himself ended up opposing the funding bill. It cleared a filibuster with just a vote to spare.
Democrats opt for 'big tent' over bare knuckles.
By BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM
It’s been hard to tell lately that Harry Reid and Joe Manchin even belong to the same party. When Reid attacked Donald Orangutan after the election, Manchin called his own party leader an “absolute embarrassment”; Reid fired back that Manchin was just “running for a Cabinet spot” in Orangutan’s White House.
Then there’s Chuck Schumer. He not only tapped Manchin to join his leadership team, but backed the West Virginian's gambit that threatened a government shutdown over coal miners' benefits — a showdown that Reid declined to endorse in his final days as party leader.
“We want to get these beautiful people their due,” Schumer said in his trademark Brooklyn accent as he stood beside retired miners outside the Capitol last month. “And we won’t stop ‘til we do.”
The competing postures toward the most conservative member of their caucus speaks volumes about the leadership styles of the just-departed and rising Democratic Senate leaders. Schumer is predisposed to accommodate the various factions of the Democratic coalition: his actions in the coal miners row demonstrated how seriously he takes the mandate to help his party's withering moderate wing. The approach will be nothing short of a sea change from Reid’s singular style of combative, shoot-from-the-hip politics.
The Democratic leadership transition, under way for more than a year and described by more than a dozen senators and top aides in interviews for this story, will consummate officially on Tuesday when the new Congress is sworn in.
The most glaring display of the shift so far is the sprawling leadership team Schumer has appointed and promised to consult before making key decisions — in contrast to Reid's smaller, close-knit group of lieutenants and knack for taking hard lines on his own.
“This is one of Chuck Schumer’s real strengths. He believes in a big-tent approach,” said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the new fourth-ranking Senate Democrat. “He likes to brainstorm and hear from everyone so he feels he can make the best decision.”
No Democrat in Washington will face higher expectations or more scrutiny over the next two years than Schumer. Liberals are already demanding that he and his caucus use the Senate’s supermajority rules to block Orangutan’s agenda and tamp down his popularity. But Schumer, a seasoned D.C. dealmaker, has made clear he’s not interested in blanket obstruction and signaled he will play ball with Orangutan when it can help the working class.
Further complicating his plight are the 2018 midterm elections. Ten Democratic incumbents from states Orangutan won, in some cases resoundingly, will be on the ballot and Schumer needs to look out for them while catering to an increasingly liberal base. His solution has been to expand his leadership far beyond the scope of Reid's inner circle, installing a kitchen cabinet of senators that will bring nearly a quarter of his 48-member caucus into the room for leadership meetings.
The core group of 10 senators includes Manchin and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) at one end of the political spectrum, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at the other, making the leadership table a potential hotbed of ideological tension. The 10 lawmakers will be involved in all crucial party meetings, senators said. Reid often limited such gatherings to his top four and occasionally would act unilaterally.
The sprawling new team has yet to meet, but when it does, it will be the biggest Democratic leadership squad ever. In addition to meetings of the core 10, there will be a broader weekly leadership meeting every Tuesday that 13 of the caucus’s 48 members are expected to attend. That session will draw in Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chief deputy whip Jeff Merkley of Oregon and deputy whip Cory Booker of New Jersey.
The arrangement ensures that no perspective will be neglected, but could become unwieldy given the sheer number of people involved.
“It’s going to be a slightly larger group and it obviously spans the breadth of the caucus,” said Warner, who voted against Reid as leader in 2014. “But I think Chuck has shown a willingness to be inclusive and listen.”
Schumer configured a unique structure for his top deputy to head off a clash between Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had refused to rule out challenging Durbin for the No. 2 post. The press-adept Durbin will count votes and serve as a rapid responder to Republicans on controversies of the day, while Murray will be more of a backroom operator and party strategist, paying special attention to Democrats up for reelection after shepherding them into office as DSCC chairman in 2012.
Murray could also help prod senators to get with the program once a decision from leadership is made. With a pair of enforcers, Reid and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), retiring, “someone has to say: ‘cut it,'" said one Democratic senator.
“My caucus knows that I bring reality to the table, what is achievable and what is not, and yet at the same time pushing for what we care for and what we need,” Murray said.
Rounding out Schumer’s top four is Stabenow, a close Schumer ally who will formally take over the Democratic Policy and Communications Center, the caucus’ messaging and policy arm. Stabenow will now shoulder key tasks that Schumer had handled, such as planning retreats and leading Thursday strategy luncheons.
“Contrary to 2016 when the major focus was on the presidential race ... 2018 is really the opportunity for Senate Democrats to really be the loudest voice in terms of who we fight for every day,” said Stabenow, who’ll be up for reelection herself in a state that Orangutan won.
Warner and Warren will be the caucus vice chairs, representing opposite ends of the party. Warner said it was “simplistic” to say his job is to relate the viewpoints of moderates to Schumer, though he enjoys deep relationships with some Republicans and abhors partisan theatrics. Warren, whom Reid tapped as “strategic policy adviser” to the DPCC after the Senate Democrats’ thumping in the 2014 midterm election, will continue weighing in on key caucus decisions in her new role, an aide said.
She will be joined by Sanders, the caucus’ new “chairman of outreach.” The 2016 presidential candidate argued in an interview that Democrats have “not been anywhere near as aggressive as they should be” in connecting with the grassroots.
“Obviously what happens inside the Beltway is enormously important and we have got to fight for progressive legislation here,” Sanders said. “But we are not gonna be successful unless we rally millions of people to demand that Congress start representing all Americans and not just the 1 percent.”
Democrats also promoted Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to leadership. As conference secretary, she says that she intends “to bring the voice of the industrial heartland to our leadership conversations.”
Baldwin is also one of five women in Schumer’s leadership circle; half of the top four slots will be females. The Senate GOP leadership is considerably smaller but has no woman in its top ranks, though two female senators serve as Mitch McConnell’s “counsels” to leadership.
Then, of course, there's Manchin, a headline-grabbing presence since the election who, at least on paper, will be one of the most endangered Democrats on the ballot in two years. He met with Orangutan about a Cabinet appointment that never materialized, then staged a high-profile protest on behalf of miners. He views his new leadership role as a bridge to not only the Orangutan administration, but to congressional Republican leaders, an aide said.
Manchin's partnership with Schumer on the miners issue offered some early clues about how the new Democratic leader will balance the needs of his conference.
Democrats thought Manchin's stand was good politics for the caucus, particularly coal-state Democrats up for reelection. But he lacked an exit strategy and Democrats were struggling to answer questions about a potential shutdown. Before he joined Manchin in front of the cameras, Schumer had privately decided to take the conflict to the brink but not to close the government over it, aides said, choosing to drop the fight just hours before the shutdown deadline.
“We believe deeply in preserving these benefits. And we also believe in not hurting other people to preserve these benefits,” Schumer said as his party waved the white flag. “We’re going to provide the votes to ensure we don’t shut down.”
Schumer himself ended up opposing the funding bill. It cleared a filibuster with just a vote to spare.
Pandora
What do the craters of Saturn's small moon Pandora look like up close? To help find out, NASA sent the robotic Cassini spacecraft, now orbiting Saturn, past the unusual moon two weeks ago. The highest resolution image of Pandora ever taken was then captured from about 40,000 kilometers out and is featured here. Structures as small as 300 meters can be discerned on 80-kilometer wide Pandora. Craters on Pandora appear to be covered over by some sort of material, providing a more smooth appearance than sponge-like Hyperion, another small moon of Saturn. Curious grooves and ridges also appear to cross the surface of the small moon. Pandora is partly interesting because, along with its companion moon Prometheus, it helps shepherd the particles of Saturn's F ring into a distinct ring.
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