Category: Politics

This week, lawmakers are trying to reach a last-minute agreement on tough immigration and border security proposals tied to a $100 billion legislative package that would provide foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. The frail deal—being brokered by a bipartisan group of senators led by Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.)—seems increasingly unlikely to materialize before the end of the year.

Still, the possibility has prompted President Joe Biden to tell press that he would be “willing to make significant compromises on the border.” Several new outlets, including CBS News, have since reported that the administration is considering a number of proposals that would likely appease Republicans clamoring for more border enforcement. Among them would be the use of a Title 42-like authority to summarily expel migrants without hearings; the allowance of mandatory detention of migrants; and the expansion of fast-tracked deportations beyond the border. 

During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington this Tuesday, Biden said that “holding Ukraine funding hostage in an attempt to force through an extreme Republican partisan agenda on the border is not how it works.” But it is unclear if that is true.

“Everything I’ve heard over the last 24 hours supports the reports that the White House has agreed in principle to what could be the most anti-immigrant and anti-asylum legislation in almost 30 years,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, posted on X:

Everything I’ve heard over the last 24 hours supports the reports that the White House has agreed in principle to what could be the most anti-immigrant and anti-asylum legislation in almost 30 years.

This is a moment of crisis for immigrant rights. The time to act is now. https://t.co/ashY6mLvay

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) December 13, 2023

Some of these proposals are not new. “They have been tried and have failed to do exactly what they’re claiming they’re going to do for border security and to decrease the number of people coming,” says Maribel Hernández Rivera, director of policy and government affairs, border and immigration at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“These proposals that are on the table are not good faith proposals,” she continued. “They’re about inflicting harm, about cruelty, about separating families. They’re about making sure that we close any possibility for legal pathways and any possibility for refuge.”

Mother Jones spoke with Rivera about the nature of the proposals and what they represent for the US asylum system and immigrant communities.

In the past few weeks, the immigrant rights advocacy community appears to be on crisis mode, alerting the public to the possibility that some of the most draconian and restrictive immigration proposals in years could become legislation. How do you see this current moment?

The proposals that we have been hearing are most definitely some of the most detrimental proposals for immigrant rights. Not only that, they codify what former President Trump and Stephen Miller brought to our nation in the past administration—fear for immigrants. And really: the sake of their policies was for cruelty for cruelty sake.

What we are seeing right now is those proposals being revived and taken seriously. It has never been the case that these policies are taken seriously by people who understand immigrant rights and want to make sure that we have our civil rights and civil liberties. It is really distressing to hear that the White House and Congress are even considering them. We should not be normalizing these type of cruel proposals. 

There are three big things happening with these potential measures. One is definitely an attempt at gutting the asylum system. Two: they’re bringing in this state of fear within the United States; people already in the United States are going to be fearful of being removed without having access to a hearing, to a lawyer. And then number three, they’re talking about increasing detention and increasing mass incarceration of immigrants and people who are going through the process.

Those three things are a massive rewriting of our immigration system. 

Can you break down for readers of Mother Jones what is problematic about the proposals being floated around with raising standards for asylum?

The way [the asylum system] works right now is that if somebody comes to the United States and they seek asylum, they come into contact with immigration services, they have an initial screening to see whether they have a credible fear. In that credible fear screening, what they are showing is whether or not there’s a significant possibility that [the asylum seeker] if deported will risk persecution on account of a protected ground. We give them the opportunity to go to a court hearing where they can express their case.

But what we have heard about in these proposals is increasing that standard for a credible fear screening from “significant possibility” [of facing persecution] to “more likely than not.”

Asylum hearings and asylum cases are very complex, so what people are showing is they’ve been persecuted—whether it’s been torture, whether it’s been violence—and how their life is at risk if they go back. You need to make sure that [the asylum seeker] has time to prepare their evidence, you need to make sure that they have time to see a lawyer, you need to make sure that they have somebody who can translate. If we change and increase the standards for the initial screening interview, what that means is that many more people who might eventually be able to qualify for asylum if they were given the opportunity to have a hearing—they will no longer have that opportunity. Instead, what’s going to happen is they’re going to be sent back. 

Already, some people are coming to our borders are subjected to higher standards [as part of the Biden administration’s restrictions on asylum] and we are seeing the opportunities to present their case in front of a judge are decreasing. However, the number of people who are coming to the border and the number of people who are seeking protection is not decreasing. There is little correlation between increasing the credible fear standards with decreasing the numbers at the border.

Besides raising the standards for that initial asylum screening interview, one of the proposals reportedly under consideration would be to bring back a Title 42-like authority to allow US officials to summarily expel migrants, even without the semblance of a public health imperative. What would the impact be of reviving something akin to Title 42?

Title 42 is a Trump-era policy clearly brought by Stephen Miller. I was at the border when Title 42 ended and I saw the consequences of that policy. Even people who might have an asylum claim and might eventually be able to get asylum if given the opportunity to have a hearing, those people were just immediately being expelled. They had zero opportunity to express their case to anybody. Title 42 sent people back to places where they were in danger. We saw people at the Mexico border in camps that had no running water.

To bring back an expulsion authority that is similar to Title 42 is unconscionable. It blows your mind to think: Is that what we are considering after we saw the consequences? It should not even be on the table.

Yet another proposal has to do with mandatory detention for new border arrivals, but there’s general agreement that the United States doesn’t have the capacity to detain all migrants. What would that look like in practice given that reality?

It’s a simple visual: sprawling detention camps. Detention camps everywhere. It has been shown that if asylum seekers get processed and are let go into their communities, they will come back to [immigration] court. There’s data that shows that, so there’s no need to detain people. What has happened when we have seen these detention camps has been the separation of families, the separation of children, and then mass deportations without people having access to a lawyer.

The other really important thing is: Who does this profit? It profits private prison companies because currently our immigration detention centers are mostly run by private companies. Private companies should not be profiting from the suffering and the separation of families. 

By building mass detention camps, what are we doing? Well, now we’re building the infrastructure that a future Trump presidency can just use to put all of the immigrants in one place. We have seen what Trump is saying he’s going to do if he’s elected again. So at the moment when we know he is calling for mass deportations, mass raids, for terrorizing immigrant communities—why would we create the infrastructure to allow him to do so?

We’ve also heard about the possibility of expanding what’s called expedited removal, or fast-track deportations, nationwide.

That idea of having a nationwide expedited removal came from President Trump and Stephen Miller. It’s faster deportation, where people are order removed from the United States without basic due process. People don’t have access to a court hearing, people don’t have access to an attorney; people pretty much have no recourse if there’s an incorrect deportation. We have seen people being erroneously deported—US citizens, people who have been seeking asylum, residents, unaccompanied children. The mistake is not a minimal mistake. The mistake is life or death. And this resulted in terror to immigrant communities. People were afraid of leaving their houses because of such policies. The people who will be affected will be immigrant communities, but it will also be brown and Black people whether or not they are immigrants because what happens is racial profiling. 

The White House is showing willingness to make compromises and concessions to Republican lawmakers’ demands. Is it the case that the Biden administration is caving in to political pressure on this issue?

Unfortunately, although this administration began by providing proposals that would give a pathway to citizenship for people who are in the United States and used the parole process to allow a lot of people to have legal pathways, at the same time, we have seen this administration capitulate to anti-immigrant proposals.

When President [Biden] was elected, he said people should not be in cages, that is still the case. We should not have private detention. We should not be turning away people who are coming to our borders seeking refuge before we give them an opportunity to present a case.

He was going to make sure that our asylum system was strong, which was different from what the previous administration did. The previous administration tried to eviscerate our asylum system. President Biden began by saying: No, that’s not what’s going to happen; we are a nation that believes in the humanity of immigrants, that is going to make sure that we’re abiding by both international and US laws. That should not change.

What’s happening, which is surprisingly distressing, more than anything, is basically the congressional leadership in the White House is holding a far-right extremist position. What has happened? I don’t know. But what I can tell you is that immigrants are still human beings. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

It has been decreed by the authorities that armistice has been reached in the war between Godly Christian Americans and Bud Light, which bombed Pearl Harbor and did 9/11 back in the spring by sending one (1) can of beer to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, with her face on it.

As the New York Daily News reports, the announcement was made by Kid Rock, the decider of these things. “I think they got the message,” he told Tucker Carlson, the other decider. Indeed, it was Kid Rock who started it all, when after Bud Light sent one (1) (un) (واحد) can of beer to Mulvaney, Mr. Rock attempted to shoot a bunch of Bud Light with a machine gun. He did this because he is a normal man with normal feelings who doesn’t even need any therapy.

Bud Light “deserved a black eye and they got one,” Rock told Carlson, but added that he does not want “to hold their head underwater and drown them because they made a mistake.”

Oh certainly not! All the months between April and now, all the histrionic boycotts, have been a measured and moderated reaction from people who are functioning adults and definitely should be allowed to be alone with children. But let’s not overreact, says Kid Rock.

Or maybe it did go a little bit overboard, oops:

“Hopefully, other companies get it, too. But you know, at the end of the day, I don’t think the punishment that they’ve been getting at this point fits the crime,” the singer rambled. “I would like to see people get us back on board and become bigger because that’s the America that I want to live in.”

New York Daily News notes that Monsieur Rock publicly drank a Bud Light in August and his bar sells it, so it’s possible his heart wasn’t as far into the boycott as it seemed.

As for Tucker, well, El Chico de Roca did make this announcement on his Twitter basement Unabomber she-shed show. Tucker also this week interviewed Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White, who positively exploded Bud Light all over him and got his pants messy. The UFC is doing a partnership with Anheuser-Busch, you see.

White has been defending the deal to MAGA idiots ever since, sounds like, but with Tucker he seems to have found a somewhat receptive audience. Tucker laughed along with him as he said, “If you consider yourself a patriot, you should be drinking gallons of Bud Light.”

But wait, said Tucker. Isn’t he supposed to be boycotting? No, said White:

“You should have Bud Light drums stacked in your garage. They are way more aligned with you than these other beer companies. That, I guarantee you. Take it from someone who is in the know, who does business with beer companies. You are way more aligned with Bud Light than you are with any other beer company,” White said.

Of course on Monday, Tucker talked to Megyn Kelly, an absolute loser TERF who’s completed her transition into the Libs of TikTok woman’s less pizzazz-y understudy. Kelly asked if Tucker talked to Kid Rock about Bud Light. He said “I don’t know” about continuing to spank Bud Light, because aren’t you supposed to stop spanking when the behavior changes?

Then he went like this:

“This is my job as a parent,” Tucker said. “I improved you with punishment!” But Megyn Kelly wasn’t there with him, because Bud Light hasn’t actually apologized to lunatic white fascist Bible-beating scumbags like them. And Tucker caved, because he’s a cuck.

WHY WON’T THEY APOLOGIZE TO US! They whined at each other for the rest of the segment, and theorized that it’s possible that Bud Light is actually not sorry for sending one (1) (אחד) can of beer to a transgender person with their face on it. “Maybe they would do it again,” Megyn Kelly complained. “I want them to care about ME and MY area of the world,” she said, thereby renewing her Karen card for the next 10 years with one sentence.

OK so you know that thing where true believer fascist Christian lunatics get murderously angry when they realize that the people they thought were on their side — who they really really really thought hated LGBTQ+ people and Black people and educated people and people with integrity as much as they do — are actually on the side of money and maybe don’t care that much about them at the end of the day?

Those people are mad.

Perhaps maddest of all is Matt Walsh, who as we all know is obsessed with trans people and obsessed with the Bud Light boycott and the Target boycott and the boycott of anything that’s ever nice to trans people.

Walsh tweeted yesterday morning, “Just reminding you that the Bud Light boycott is still on.” And he’s been inconsolably crying about it ever since.

Ari Drennen from Media Matters collected these tweets, all of which deserve to be read and savored. She said, “There’s something so horrifying spellbinding in a grown man throwing a public temper tantrum because other people have lost interest in his obsession with Dylan Mulvaney and returned to drinking a beer that he’s admitted he doesn’t even drink.”

Dear God. Readers, that is a mere sampling of his Twitter feed. And that’s not even to mention the absurd meltdown’s he’s having on his show, as he seethes against conservatives who just don’t fucking care anymore, and about how Bud Light needs to “grovel at [their] feet.” Media Matters has the great big huge transcript.

Sorry, Matt Walsh’s kids! Daddy can’t read you a story tonight! He has to tweet a million more times about the transgender lady who makes him feel inferior!

Sorry, Matt Walsh’s wife! For literally everything!

By the way, one of those Walsh tweets above says this is the “one time in modern history when conservatives have staged an effective boycott against a major corporate brand.”

We’ve been saying since the beginning that about a year from now, this would all be forgotten, and all the histrionics from white conservative fascists would have amounted to nothing. Guess what? We just checked with Barron’s, and it looks like Anheuser-Busch’s stock price is almost back to where it was back in April, when Kid Rock had his little tantrum:

Heckuva job, losers.

But we get it.

Walsh is one of the sick ones who truly believes in this. For the people still on board, this is their meaning in life, where previously there was only fireworks accidents and the memorial services that come just after. When they march up to the counter at the gas station on their daily Skoal runs and plop down Miller Light, they know they are freedom fighters.

And now it’s … over? After all these months where we’ve heard little else from these social lepers?

Yeah, it’s gonna be a rough comedown.

They should have a Bud Light to take the edge off!

Is This The Right Amount To Get Mad At Beer?

Let’s Decipher What Matt Walsh And Michael Knowles Really Mean When They Say Vile Things About Trans People

[New York Daily News / Newsweek]

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Sunak promises ‘gear shift’ in taxation to tackle poll slump…

“Rishi Sunak has vowed to control spending to pave the ground for tax cuts next year as the Conservatives prepare for a tough re-election battle after years in government when the tax burden has increased to a record high. “Our priority, going forward, is to control spending and welfare so that we can cut taxes,” the prime minister said in an interview with The Spectator magazine as polling showed his popularity falling to its lowest level to date… Sunak is facing the toughest stretch of his 14-month premiership as a YouGov poll on Wednesday showed his popularity had slipped to the same level as Boris Johnson’s at the time of his resignation last year. The prime minister this week had a net favourability score of -49 according to the poll, representing a 10-point drop from late November.” – FT

• Critics are taking glass half-empty approach, he says – Daily Telegraph
• Prime Minister savaged in brutal PMQs takedown – The Sun
• There’s ‘nothing tetchy’ about me, Tory leader insists as his popularity falls – The Times
• 2019 Conservative voters prefer Farage to Sunak – Daily Mail
• Tories are in worse position than when I was leader, says Johnson – Daily Telegraph

Comment:

• Farage is back to strike the fear of God into the Tories – Jonathan Saxty, Daily Express

>Today: Emily Carver’s column: With the clock ticking as the next election approaches, why not throw the kitchen sink at boosting growth?

>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Starmer couldn’t wipe the grin off Sunak’s face

…as he ‘cements Meloni bond’ with visit to Right-wing convention in Rome

“Rishi Sunak will visit Rome on Saturday to meet Giorgia Meloni and attend a Right-wing political convention. The two prime ministers have struck up a rapport since they took office last year, and Mr Sunak has accepted an invitation to attend a political festival called Atreju 2023. The event is organised by Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and has in the past attracted hard-Right figures such as Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, and Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary. This year it has been thrown open to a broader range of politicians including Edi Rama, the socialist premier of Albania. Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s Right-wing Vox party, will also be a guest.” – Daily Telegraph

• Elon Musk is among other speakers at the political gathering – The Times

>Today:

ToryDiary: The Middle East. As America after 9/11, so Israel after 7/10.

Rwanda 1) One Nation Tories aim to amend Rwanda bill to comply with international law

“The One Nation group of centrist Tories is considering tabling amendments to Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill to protect the controversial legislation against breaches of international law. Conservative MPs on the party’s moderate wing are concerned the government could cave in to demands from the right to harden the bill to avoid them voting it down in the new year. Former justice secretary Robert Buckland, a member of the One Nation group, is considering tabling an amendment of his own to make the bill legally more safe so it is compatible with the European convention on human rights, the Guardian can reveal. He denied that such an amendment would “wreck” the bill, saying he wanted the prime minister’s Rwanda plan to succeed.” – The Guardian

• Sunak attempts to calm tensions within fractured Tory party as factions exert pressure – FT

More:

• More than 150 mostly Albanian asylum seekers have disappeared since June – Daily Mail
• Tiny amount of small boat migrants returned as eye-watering cost of barge revealed – The Sun
• Just 1,182 removed from the UK since 2020 – Daily Mail
• Asylum seeker centre fights break out almost every night between different nationalities – Daily Mail

>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Andrew Gimson’s Commons sketch: The total abstainers fail to spoil Sunak’s evening

Rwanda 2) Cates claims Sunak has indicated he is ‘open to negotiations’ on the scheme

“A Tory rebel has denied being “duped” by the Prime Minister as she insisted he could still make changes to his Rwanda plan. Miriam Cates, one of the key founding members of the right-wing New Conservative group, said she had been assured by Rishi Sunak that he was “open to negotiations” on changes to the bill. Members of the group, along with the other so-called “five-families” Conservative groups, had threatened to vote against the Rwanda bill in parliament, warning that they did not believe it would be strong enough to discourage small boat crossings into the UK. She added that she had been assured by the PM that his lawyers were “open to negotiations” on the scheme – and shot down accusations of being “duped” by him.” – Daily Express

• Braverman slams Bill as it ‘will not stop the boats’ – Daily Express

Comment:

• A Christmas truce for Sunak, but the Right will be itching for a fight in the New Year – Jason Groves, Daily Mail
• Badfellas: a Tory drama that has run its course – Iain Martin, The Times

>Yesterday:

Rwanda 3) Robert Shrimsley: Rwanda fight is really a battle for control of the Conservatives

“Sunak’s rebels don’t so much want the win as the issue. A failure to control both legal and clandestine immigration is their battering ram for the takeover of the party. Their purism will also help build their narrative of any defeat — that Sunak is a tax-raising globalist afraid to stand up to the liberal elite by pulling the UK out of the ECHR. Rebellion is a win-win. Either they force Sunak on to their territory or they get to blame his “moderation” for defeat. This story will help browbeat future leadership contenders into committing to withdrawal from the ECHR — the logical next step for Leave ideologues for whom Brexit will never be done.” – FT

• Sunak’s hope has become Keir Starmer’s fear – Tom Harris, Daily Telegraph
• Are strong borders and lower immigration too much to ask? – Matthew Goodwin, The Sun
• Obsession with Rwanda is out of all proportion to the effect it will actually have – Stephen Glover, Daily Mail

Constitutional comment:

• It’s a Trojan horse to facilitate quitting European Court of Human Rights – Nando Sigona, Daily Express
• Britain needs rescuing from the Tory cult of immaculate sovereignty – Rafael Behr, The Guardian
• We may be headed for an unprecedented constitutional crisis – Mark Elliott, Daily Telegraph

>Yesterday:

Foreign students who flunk their degrees could be denied visas, suggests Cleverly

“Foreign students who flunk their degrees here could be denied visas. Home Office advisers yesterday floated the idea of graduates needing a “certain grade” in order to stay in the country. And Home Secretary James Cleverly has tasked the Migration Advisory Committee to review the route used by nearly 100,000 students to find work after their studies… It followed confusion over whether the new £38,700 salary rule for migrants would apply to those already here. Legal migration minister Tom Pursglove said the increased family visa threshold would not be applied retrospectively. Prof Bell said it would only have a minimal impact on net migration. But he said the Government’s package last week was likely to slash annual arrivals by 300,000.” – The Sun

• Post-study visa scheme fuels low-wage migration, experts warn – FT

>Yesterday: Matt Goodwin’s column: My polling suggests that immigration could be a powerful springboard for a Farage comeback

Gove to ease housebuilding targets for councils in England

“Michael Gove will next week announce a relaxation of housing targets for local authorities in England, which developers worry will mean far fewer homes being built amid a housing crisis. The housing secretary will outline the government’s new planning system and sources briefed on the plans said they would confirm he was giving councils far more freedom to set lower housing targets. Gove is also expected to allow authorities to allocate less land to future development if local officials can argue that more development would damage the character of an area or require building on greenbelt land. Gove first said he intended to make the planning changes a year ago after heavy lobbying from Conservative backbenchers, and especially Theresa Villiers, whom some critics have called the “nimby queen”.” – Daily Mail

• Conservatives continue to empower selfish opponents of the new homes Britain desperately needs – The Times

>Yesterday: Rafe Fletcher in Comment: Experience overseas shows it is not inevitable that young voters abandon the right

Badenoch says single-sex spaces must be protected because predators outnumber trans people…

“The government is having to move to protect single-sex spaces because there are “more people who are predators than there are people who are trans”, Kemi Badenoch has said. Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, said that “for many years, many transgender people were living their lives peacefully, nobody had an issue”… Badenoch also said the inclusion of transgender people in the government’s promised conversion therapy ban was holding up the legislation, which did not appear in the King’s Speech. The ban was first promised by Theresa May’s government in 2018, before it was downgraded to exclude transgender people by Boris Johnson.” – The Times

• Top Tory reported to police over ‘man with wig’ trans row vows to keep speaking up for women’s rights – Daily Mail

More:

• We Tories know what a woman is and will keep on saying so – Rachel Maclean MP, Daily Mail

…as she condemns London plague study after MP calls it ‘woke archaeology’…

“A new front has emerged in the culture war as Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, condemned an academic study an MP described as “woke archaeology” that examined whether ethnicity was a risk factor with medieval plague. Badenoch said the research into 14th-century London risked damaging trust in modern health services and that she had written to the Museum of London, where the lead author of the study in question works. During equalities questions in the Commons, Philip Hollobone, a Conservative MP cited the study, asking Badenoch… to “ensure that such sensationalist research findings and woke archaeology have no impact at all on current health and pandemic policy”. “I do agree,” Badenoch replied. “I am not even sure whether we can call it just sensationalist or woke.”” – The Guardian

• Badenoch’s velvet façade slips and her steely core emerges – Madeline Grant, Daily Telegraph

…and hails £868bn exports bonanza

“Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has said the Government’s “export success stories” are allowing Brexit Britain’s trade to boom. Official figures have revealed an eight per cent hike in overseas trading with sales hitting £868 billion in a year. Ms Badenoch said the £62 billion total year-on-year increase in current prices has proved the Brexit naysayers are wrong… The records released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the yearly increase at £62 billion though once it is adjusted for inflation and excluding precious metals if falls to £14 billion. UK services exports are at record levels and up more than six per cent, adjusted for inflation, in the year to October 2023, according to the ONS.” – Daily Express

• UK willing to legislate on post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland – FT
• New ‘not for EU’ labels on supermarket food explained as farmers slam Brexit deal – Daily Express

Davis steps in to stop attack on rough sleeper

“David Davis put his former SAS reservist skills to the test this week when he intervened to stop an attack on a rough sleeper near parliament after the Rwanda vote. The 74-year-old Tory MP was on his way home on Tuesday night after voting in favour of the legislation to deem Rwanda a safe country for migrants when he saw two men “kicking seven bells” out of a rough sleeper. The attackers beat the man to the ground and repeatedly kicked him in the head, a witness told the Evening Standard. Davis intervened, fought them off and then took the victim, named Gareth, to the safety of his Westminster flat. Gareth slept on his sofa and Davis took him to A&E in the morning. “He was still bleeding,” Davis said. “It’s fortunately nothing permanent other than a few scars, I think.”” – The Times

Lineker tweets may have breached BBC guidelines, says new boss

“The incoming chairman of the BBC has said that Gary Lineker appeared to breach its social media guidelines this week when he ridiculed MPs including Grant Shapps. Samir Shah said that during an interview with cross-party politicians for his pre-appointment scrutiny hearing concerns were raised about a series of messages sent by the Match of the Day host. “The more recent tweets in which he identified two politicians does, on the face of it, seem to breach those guidelines,” said Shah. “I’m not sure how egregious it is but it does and I imagine the BBC is looking into it that and considering its response.” … Shah said that in his role as chairman it would be his responsibility to ensure that the guidelines, which were introduced in September following a review, are fit for purpose.” – The Times

• Shapps ‘blasts’ host in impartiality row – Daily Express
• Match of the Day star sparked new clash over Rwanda – Daily Mail

Editorial:

• He must quit if he cannot comply with the BBC’s impartiality rules – The Times

Johnson’s ethics adviser investigated by watchdog

“Boris Johnson’s former ethics adviser has been placed under investigation by the House of Lords standards watchdog. Lord Geidt, who also served as private secretary to the late Queen for a decade, is alleged to have broken parliamentary rules banning peers from providing parliamentary advice or services. Under the code of conduct, peers are not allowed to accept payment or reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services. Geidt was contacted for comment. A source close to him said: “He has complied with the rules at all times and I am confident the inquiry will show this.” The crossbench peer helped set up a new firm on November 6, according to Companies House records.” – The Times

Drakeford resigns as first minister of Wales…

“Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, has announced his resignation. Drakeford, 69, who has led the Welsh parliament for five years, told the Senedd on Wednesday that he would stand down with immediate effect, saying the “time has now come.” A leadership contest to find his successor will now be held. His resignation comes a day after he launched an inquiry into one of his government’s ministers. Drakeford said it had been a “great privilege” to serve as the party’s leader in Wales… Drakeford said he was confident the process to find his successor would be concluded by the end of the spring term in March. He added: “That would enable the name of the winner of that contest to be put to the Senedd before the Easter recess.” Sir Keir Starmer said Mark Drakeford was a “true titan” of Welsh and Labour politics.” – The Times

Comment:

• Lockdown zealot who leaves Wales in an abysmal state – Andrew Pierce, Daily Mail
• Steady operator thrust into the spotlight by Covid – Steven Morris, The Guardian

Editorial:

• If Drakeford’s Wales is the blueprint for a Labour government, God help Britain – The Sun

…amidst reports of ‘tensions with Starmer’

“Mr Drakeford’s exit follows tensions with Labour’s national leader Sir Keir Starmer, who recently admitted to ‘challenges’ in his relationship with the Welsh administration in Cardiff. Sir Keir has also attempted to backtrack from a past claim that Mr Drakeford’s Welsh Government would be a ‘blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK’. The Labour leader today hailed Mr Drakeford as a ‘titan’ of Welsh politics, but Sir Keir’s spokesman wouldn’t say whether he was sad to see the First Minister go… As the pandemic eased, Mr Drakeford saw a slide in his approval ratings among Welsh voters as he was confronted by various crises in public services.” – Daily Mail

• Did Labour leader squeeze out first minister for damaging Labour? – Daily Mail

More Labour:

• Former Siemens chief to lead new Labour rail review – FT

Bankrupt Birmingham council applies to raise council tax to help plug £300m hole in finances

“Birmingham City Council will apply for permission to raise council tax by more than 5 per cent to help plug a predicted £300 million hole in its finances. Europe’s largest local authority is essentially bankrupt after it admitted it had an estimated £760 million equal pay liability which is believed to be growing by millions every month. The Labour-run council is under pressure as it faces a looming January 7 deadline to reveal how it will raise the funds, and may now increase taxes above the ‘referendum limit’ – the amount councils in England can put up the levy without consulting residents first.  The council has faced anger from residents who have criticised its spending on projects such as the Commonwealth Games, with one north Birmingham local calling it a ‘vanity project’ and saying ‘it’s no wonder the council has gone bankrupt’.” – Daily Mail

• Specialist school bills council nearly £2.5m for accommodation, care, and teaching of a disabled child – Daily Mail

>Today: Shaun Bailey AM in Local Government: The Mayor of London must face up to the challenge of the AI revolution

News in Brief:

• Labour won’t learn from Drakeford’s failures – Henry Hill, UnHerd
• The Tory right is at war with reality – David Gauke, New Statesman
• Cop’s pledge to move away from fossil fuels is a farce – Ross Clark, The Spectator
• Why Singaporean healthcare works – Tim Worstall, The Critic
• Cameron is right to rein in Yousaf – Henry Hill, CapX

Here, good cause exists for limiting access to the sensitive, supplemental heuristic material in the manner that the government proposes. As government counsel persuasively explained at the November 13, 2023 hearing, the material at issue is neither evidence against the defendant nor is it exculpatory evidence. Instead, the information is best understood as a supplemental expert disclosure. It was provided to the defense, at the Court’s urging, to ensure that the defense was fully apprised of the heuristics used in Chainalysis’s Reactor software, which the government’s experts, Luke Scholl and Elizabeth Bisbee, used to cluster certain blockchain transactions at issue in the case. This supplemental expert disclosure did not exist at the time either of the government experts prepared their reports, and the government itself came into possession of the material from Chainalysis only as an intermediary, before passing it along to defense counsel.

The government also explained that the sensitive, supplemental heuristic information provides a more granular account of the behavioral heuristics that Reactor employs than the account previously disclosed to Sterlingov, defense counsel, and an array of defense experts in Bisbee’s expert report and appendices. That additional detail includes “exactly how” specific behavioral heuristics are “implemented and weighed,” and, significantly, it “includes information about the kickouts”—that is, “what behavior would cause Chainalysis not to cluster” a given address. Armed with this information, those bent on preventing the government (or its expert) from clustering addresses, and thereby identifying their owners and connecting them to potentially illicit transactions, could readily adjust their conduct to evade detection.

By way of analogy, consider criminal enterprises that engage in sophisticated bank robberies. Imagine that the government can identify those enterprises by tracking down shell companies that have engaged in certain behaviors—say, opening a new bank account within x hours of a robbery and making deposits into that account between one and y hours post-robbery and then never again. Imagine further that the government has studied the behavior of particular criminal enterprises and knows that for Enterprise A, “x” equals 48 hours and “y” equals 12 hours, but that for Enterprise B, “x” equals 24 hours and “y” equals 6 hours. Armed with details about their behavioral patterns, the government would be able to identify which criminal enterprise likely robbed a particular bank. And were that information ever to be made public, both Enterprise A and Enterprise B would be able to evade detection by changing their distinctive behaviors.

As the government explains it, the defense—including Sterlingov—has long had access to the general methodology that Chainalysis uses. To continue the analogy, they know that the government pays attention to the timing of account openings and deposit patterns. But what the sensitive, supplemental heuristic information discloses is the precise temporal windows—the x and y values—used for each of the services, and darknet marketplaces, at issue.

The testimony elicited during the multiple Daubert hearings in this case confirm that the sort of cat-and-mouse dynamic described above is far from hypothetical. To take just one example, services like Chainalysis (as well as defense expert, Ciphertrace) rely on the fact that when multiple addresses contribute bitcoin to fund a single transaction, the contributing addresses are likely owned by the same entity. {This phenomenon is often referred to as the “co-spend” or “common spend” heuristic, and its origins can be traced back to the white paper on bitcoin authored by its pseudonymous inventor [Satoshi Nakamoto].} That is because, in order to contribute bitcoin to a transaction, an individual must have the private key to the address that originally held the bitcoin in question. Private keys are like bank account passwords—for obvious reasons, account owners are unlikely to share them with strangers. “Coinjoin” services, however, permit individuals to contribute bitcoin to each other’s transactions, without sharing their private key information with one another, thereby defeating (or at least frustrating) the assumption that when multiple addresses fund a single transaction, they are controlled by one entity. In response to the advent of coinjoin services, law enforcement clustering products like Chainalysis’s Reactor and Ciphertrace’s Inspector, in turn, have developed (or have attempted to develop) methods of detecting the presence of coinjoin services.

In this manner, each disclosure of how the government (or its experts) cluster or track bitcoin transactions ups the ante in the detection-evasion, cat-and-mouse game. Indeed, the government alleges that Bitcoin Fog, a bitcoin mixing service, was itself designed and employed to help bitcoin users avoid clustering and tracing of their on-chain activities. Against this backdrop, the Court finds that the government’s concern regarding providing Sterlingov, the alleged administrator of Bitcoin Fog, with personal access to the granular behavioral heuristics used by Chainalysis is both valid and substantial.

At the November 13, 2023 hearing, the Court inquired whether the granular heuristics in the sensitive, supplemental information remain confidential and in use today, given the speed with which technology develops. In response, the government assured the Court that these heuristics “are still used for clustering … being actively built and tested by Chainalysis now” and that the government is relying on this clustering “in very significant criminal cases and significant national security cases where [the government has] a very important and compelling interest [in] not allow[ing] [the government’s] adversaries to … contravene those measures.” In short, the measures and details at issue are neither inactive nor obsolete.

The Court also inquired whether at least portions of the sensitive, supplemental information might be disclosed without posing a risk to ongoing criminal or national security investigations. In response, government counsel stated:

Your Honor, we did review in the Court’s opinion and order the suggestion that we look at whether there [are] things that may be less sensitive. What we found [is] that really anything that was less sensitive was really in the prior report and if we went through to try and redact out what would be considered active and sensitive, we would essentially … be eliminating [from the attachments] the additional columns that were added to this report[,] so it would put [the] defense pretty much back at what the original attachments [to the Bisbee report] were.

And[,] then[,] with the report[ ] itself, we would—it would look like a series of black boxes without anything really in the way of substantive information that would be of any sort of use to the defendant.

Defense counsel, who have had access to the sensitive, supplemental material for several weeks now, did not disagree with this assessment or with the government’s more general representation that disclosure of the information would permit those engaged in illicit bitcoin transactions to evade clustering or tracking.

Rather than take issue with the government’s characterization of the sensitive, supplemental information or with the risk that disclosure might undermine ongoing law enforcement and national security activities, the defense argues that the government’s request is impermissibly premised on the assumption that Sterlingov is guilty of the crimes with which he is charged (and that, as such, he cannot be trusted to comply with the supplemental protective order, and he has the means and the motive to use the supplemental heuristic information to evade clustering in the future). The defense is, of course, correct that every criminal defendant is presumed innocent unless and until the government carries its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But that does not mean that the Court is required to ignore the government’s concerns regarding ongoing criminal and national security investigations.

This concept is not novel. Indeed, it is the very premise of the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”) that, at times, it is appropriate to limit a criminal defendant’s access to sensitive information that his or her counsel can review, notwithstanding the presumption of innocence. And, although CIPA deals with uniquely sensitive information, it does not stand alone; to the contrary, it is not unusual for courts to limit access to sensitive information to defense counsel alone, barring access by the defendant himself. Finally, the defense ignores the fact that a grand jury has made a finding of probable cause in this case, which, in other contexts, has been deemed sufficient to trigger significant, adverse consequences, such as an arrest or temporary loss of employment.

The Court, accordingly, finds (1) that the government has carried its burden of demonstrating good cause for limiting the disclosure of the sensitive, supplemental heuristic information to counsel and qualified experts who are needed to assist counsel and who are prepared to sign a reasonable protective order, and (2) that this good cause extends to the entire sensitive, supplemental production….

The Court must also consider whether Sterlingov’s need for access to the sensitive, supplemental information is sufficient to trump the government’s showing of good cause … or, more significantly, whether denying Sterlingov the requested access would violate his rights under the Fifth or Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. The facts of this case do not support his request ….

In its prior decision, the Court raised the question whether Sterlingov was seeking access to the sensitive, supplemental information so that he could actively assist in his own defense or was merely positing that he, like every other criminal defendant, is entitled to have access to any and all information pertaining to the case against him. At the November 13, 2023 hearing, which was held in part so that counsel could answer just this question, Sterlingov’s counsel made clear that he was pressing only the latter contention. Counsel made no mention of any special expertise or knowledge that Sterlingov might bring to bear, and counsel has failed to take the Court up on its invitation to seek leave, if necessary, to make any such showing in an ex parte submission….

Nor can the Court discern any reason why, as a matter of constitutional law, Sterlingov needs access to the highly technical information at issue. As noted above, the information is not evidence that the government intends to offer against Sterlingov, nor did it even exist at the time Sterlingov was charged. Rather, the information simply provides more granular detail about the behavioral heuristics (referred to by Chainalysis as “Heuristic 2”) used by Reactor to cluster and attribute addresses that, according to the government’s experts, show that Bitcoin Fog was used to launder large amounts of cryptocurrency associated with certain darknet sites.

Notably, moreover, the parties seem to agree that the information at issue has no bearing on the core question of whether Sterlingov operated Bitcoin Fog. And, even with respect to the question of how many transactions (and thus how much money) traveled from addresses affiliated with darknet sites to Bitcoin Fog, and vice versa, the parties seem to agree that many (although not precisely how many) such transactions occurred. As the Court observed at the hearing—without disagreement from the defense—the defense’s own expert, Jonelle Still of Ciphertrace, seemed to concede at her Daubert hearing that a substantial portion of Bitcoin Fog’s activity involved darknet customers. The dispute is only about how big a portion that was.

To be sure, it is possible that the magnitude of Bitcoin Fog’s transactions with darknet sites might have some bearing on whether the jury believes that the Bitcoin Fog administrator was aware that Bitcoin Fog was being used to launder illicit gains. But the Court has no reason to believe that the more detailed behavioral heuristics described in the sensitive, supplemental information will shed substantially more light on that question than the large quantity of less sensitive expert disclosures already have. Given ample opportunity to show otherwise, the defense simply reverts to ipse dixit, asserting: “To the extent the government is maintaining that it’s not important to the defense, we just disagree with that” for “reasons [that] are obvious.” The Court does not doubt that thorough preparation for trial will include review of this supplemental information, which may (or may not) include detail useful to counsel for cross-examination of the government’s experts regarding the magnitude of Bitcoin Fog transactions traceable to the darknet. But, beyond that, the value of the information is far from obvious.

Finally, the Court notes that Sterlingov has long had access to reams of information relating to Chainalysis’s efforts to connect hundreds of thousands of darknet bitcoin transactions to Bitcoin Fog. All that is at issue here is the most granular detail regarding the assumptions used in one category of heuristics (Heuristic 2) that Chainalysis employed to draw those connections. It is important that defense counsel (with the assistance of an expert, if necessary) have access to that more detailed information to ensure that no stone is left unturned in preparing Sterlingov’s defense. But, as defense counsel conceded after having reviewed the sensitive, supplemental material, he is unsure whether or how he will make use of the information in cross-examining the government’s expert, nor has he identified (at the hearing or in any ex parte filing) anything in the supplemental material that Sterlingov himself needs to review in order to assist counsel in preparing the defense.

The Court, accordingly, concludes that Sterlingov has failed to identify any reason why he personally needs to review the sensitive, supplemental information, which might overcome the government’s showing of good cause.

Conservative women are pushing back vehemently against the idea that Republicans must embrace pro-contraception messaging to win back the White House in 2024.

Politico reported Wednesday morning that “Kellyanne Conway is going to Capitol Hill on Wednesday with a message for Republicans: Promote contraception or risk defeat in 2024.” Conway reportedly believes the Republican Party can persuade voters that they are not anti-woman by pushing pro-contraceptive messaging.

“This is a mistaken strategy,” warned Alexandra DeSanctis Marr, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Statistics actually suggest that increased access to birth control increases the abortion rate because it leads to more unplanned pregnancies.”

“[Kowtowing] to the Left by promoting abortifacients isn’t a winning GOP strategy,” tweeted Lauren Baldwin, government relations coordinator at the Conservative Partnership Institute. “American women deserve better than this.”

‘Women Will Be Caught in the Crossfire’

Pro-life groups have previously argued that to counteract the Left’s messaging on abortion—namely, that Republicans are extremist and are pushing pro-life policy because they want to control women—the GOP should focus on the joy of adoption, the lifesaving work of pro-life pregnancy centers, and the unique strengths of women and mothers.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, pushes Republicans not to “ostrich” it by ducking their heads into the sand when they are asked about abortion but instead to highlight their Democratic opponent’s extremism (given that Democrat politicians will often not name a single restriction on abortion that they will support).

Some, like “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” host Prudence Robertson, fear that Conway’s strategy will only cause more harm to women and further embattle the GOP. Robertson called the idea a “damaging strategy” in a Wednesday tweet.

“Women will be caught in the crossfire for the sake of political wins,” she predicted. “Studies show skyrocketing rates of depression for women on birth control (73%). Not to mention this flies in the face of her [Conway’s] Catholic faith.”

Emma Waters, a research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, pointed to Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark Supreme Court case that struck down state laws outlawing birth control, even for married couples, pointing out that this case was decided only eight years before Roe v. Wade “wrongly allowed abortion.”

“Casual sex = unplanned pregnancies = more abortion,” she said, above a screenshot of the Politico story. “This is NOT the pro-life answer.”

National Review writer Madeleine Kearns warned that “a culture that treats unborn children as disposable begins by treating sexual partners as disposable.”

“You can’t curb the former by encouraging the latter,” she added.

EWTN News contributor Catherine Hadro slammed the strategy in a tweet citing the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute’s numbers on contraception.

“You want to focus in on it?” she asked. “OK. Here’s @Guttmacher’s own numbers, which reveal half of U.S. abortion patients used contraception the month they became pregnant. This is not a pro-life strategy.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. 

The decision text from Cop28 has been greeted as “historic,”  for being the first ever call by nations for a “transition away” from fossil fuels, and as “weak and ineffectual” and containing a “litany of loopholes” for the fossil fuel industry. An examination of the text helps to explain this contradiction.

Reducing Fossil Fuel Use

The text states the huge challenge with crystal clarity:

Limiting global warming to 1.5C [above pre-industrial levels] with no or limited overshoot requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to the 2019 level and reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. [Countries] further recognise the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C pathways.

The problem is that carbon emissions are not plunging as required—they are still rising. So the text on action is vital. The previous draft suggested measures that countries “could” take. The final agreement is somewhat stronger and “calls on” countries to do the following:

Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

This is good but, due to objections by China and India, fails to quantify the goals. That means countries could choose whatever baseline suits them, undermining the target.

Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power.

This is no stronger than the text from Cop26 in 2021, which is disappointing as the dirtiest fossil fuel must unquestionably be phased out rapidly. Next in the decision text comes the pivotal paragraph:

Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.

Extraordinary as it might seem, this is the first time the root cause of the climate crisis—fossil fuels—have been cited in a decision text in nearly 30 years of UN climate talks. But “transitioning away” is weaker than “phasing out.” The latter was supported by 130 countries but fiercely opposed by petrostates. In the real world, fossil fuels are actually being phased up, with many new fields being exploited. Is “transitioning away” a strong enough signal to halt these investments? Probably not, but at least the direction of travel is finally clear.

A ‘Litany of Loopholes’

Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage (CCUS), particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production.

Fossil fuel states such as Saudi Arabia pushed very hard to include CCUS, as they see it as a way to continue their lucrative business, with the emissions being trapped and buried. But the vast majority of leaders and scientists see an extremely limited role for CCUS; it is expensive, currently far from the scale required, and does not even trap all emissions. The idea that it can allow fossil fuel firms to continue anything like business as usual is a “fantasy,” says the boss of the International Energy Agency.

Subsidizing the fossil fuels that drive global heating has been compared to pouring petrol on a fire: coal, oil, and gas get $7 trillion a year in support—that is $13 million a minute.

Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.

This is the first time such a call has appeared in a global UN decision, but “inefficient” is seen as a weasel word enabling nations to largely do as they please. The G20 promised the same in 2009, with no progress to date. Another weasel word is “transitional fuels”—it is code for fossil gas.

Recognises that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security.

This is the biggest win for the fossil fuel industry—it almost amounts to a poison pill in the agreement. It legitimizes gas burning on the basis that it is less polluting than coal, though liquefied natural gas  may actually be even worse than coal due to methane leaks. It is worth noting that the US, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, is planning a huge LNG expansion. The time for transitional fuels is long past; renewables are cheaper, faster and more secure.

What’s Not There

What is missing from the text is as important as what is in it, most importantly on finance. Money is needed to build out clean energy (mitigation), prepare vulnerable communities for escalating climate impacts (adaptation) and for recovery after disasters (loss and damage). The text acknowledges that trillions of dollars of investment will be needed, but fails to provide numbers on what will be provided and when. Without funding, all talk of climate action is cheap.

A global plan for adaptation, in UN-speak, was the top priority for some of the most vulnerable countries. But the text is weak and lacks specifics.

One last concern relates to ending the destruction of forests.

Results-based payments for policy approaches and positive incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries.

This text raises the specter of rich nations paying to restore or protect forests in developing nations rather than reducing their own emissions.

Today, Hunter Biden stuck with his stated desire to only speak to vile fascist MAGA Republicans in a public setting, where they can’t immediately run to the Fox News cameras and lie about what happened behind closed doors. He was supposed to show up for that deposition today. He did not.

This morning in a press conference, Biden explained that James Comer, Jim Jordan and Jason Smith — Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means chairs, respectively — have pathologically spread “distortions, manipulated evidence and lies” about him and his family, and that there is no “fairness or decency” in what they are doing. “They have lied over and over about every aspect of my personal and professional life.” They make up pretend lies about Joe Biden getting a prosecutor fired in Ukraine because of a bribe, when the historical record clearly shows Biden was simply enacting the stated policy of the US and the entire western world in demanding the firing of that corrupt prosecutor.

(You know who knows that? Every Republican who was in Congress working on foreign affairs at the time.)

They showed naked pics of Hunter Biden in Congress. (Because let’s be clear, MAGA Republicans are obsessed with his dick. They just are.)

“They have taken the light of my dad’s love, the light of my dad’s love for me, and presented it as darkness. They have no shame.”

But yet Hunter Biden said all these words from Capitol Hill, a golf ball’s distance from those shitbags’ offices. He was there for that public hearing, the one Comer, Jordan and their third wheel Smith refuse to have, because they’re scared Hunter Biden will humiliate them. He was right there. “What are they afraid of?” he asked. (That’s a long list.)

“Where’s Hunter?” he asked. “I am here.”

“Here I am, Mister Chairman. When you said ‘we can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose.’ Well, I’ve chosen. I’m here to testify at a public hearing today, to answer any of the committee’s legitimate questions. Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say.”

Biden had a lot more to say, about how his dad wasn’t involved in his businesses, but his parents saved his life from addiction, and how grotesque and amoral it is that these MAGA scumbags are trying to use this as grounds for an impeachment inquiry. (Republicans are set to vote on that today.)

He came off really, really well, as this clip from Fox News demonstrates:

Comer, Jordan and Smith — and Marjorie Taylor Greene and the rest of the Republican gutter trash — were furious Hunter Biden had the audacity to stand in front of those TV cameras and tell the truth about them. And he didn’t even come inside for the closed-door deposition they needed for their propaganda lies!

Escaped wrestling coach Jim Jordan threatened today to hold Hunter IN CONTEMPT. It’s funny because Jordan, a rank seditionist who helped make January 6 happen, famously defied a congressional subpoena from the January 6 committee. (“You fucking did this,” Liz Cheney said to him that day as the Capitol was being attacked by foul-smelling MAGA terrorists, as she smacked his tiny unworthy hand away to prevent it from touching her.)

Ohhhhh, Jordan had some bitchin’ to do.

“Mr. Biden’s counsel and the White House have both argued that the reason he couldn’t come for a deposition was because there wasn’t a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry. Well, that’s going to happen in a few hours. We think it’s going to pass. We think the House of Representatives will go on record with a power that solely resides in the House to say we are in an official impeachment inquiry phase of our oversight. And when that happens, we’ll see what their excuse is then. They should have been here today, but once we take that vote, we expect him to come in for his interview, for his deposition. And frankly, we’ll also, I think, look at contempt proceedings as we move forward.”

OK little buddy, you bet.

There was also an official statement from Jordan and Pigfuck McHeeHaw AKA James Comer:

“Hunter Biden today defied lawful subpoenas and we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” said House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan in a joint statement. “We will not provide special treatment because his last name is Biden.”

Comer also said today, “I don’t know anyone in more trouble than Hunter Biden, and he just got in more trouble today,” and if we don’t finish this paragraph now, our laughing is going to give us an aneurysm. (Who wanna compare and contrast Hunter’s pissant indictments with the trouble Donald Trump is in?)

At the end of the Republicans’ presser today, Marjorie Taylor Greene chimed in to demand why nobody is asking Hunter Biden about sex trafficking. We guess that’s some stuff she learned by clicking too many pop-up ads on AOL, but even Comer looked at her like she was a moron.

The Republican House is expected to approve a formal impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden this afternoon, not based on any evidence, because they don’t have any — Senator Chuck Grassley admitted that again today — but because their ejaculatory devotion to Donald Trump requires them to do everything they can to distract from Trump’s two impeachments and 91 criminal charges and swindle the American people into thinking both sides do it and that it’s all political.

Also, Trump gave them an order to impeach Biden, and what their lord and savior demands, their lord and savior gets.

Walking toward the Capitol today, GOP Rep. Troy Nehls was asked what Republicans think they’ll gain from this impeachment inquiry. He responded, “All I have to say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby.”

As Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern just said on the House floor, the Republicans are doing this because they’re mad the terrorists didn’t finish the job on January 6.

That’s what this is about.

Good luck, pigfucks.

When Did Jim Jordan Talk To Trump On January 6? Last Week, All The Time. About What? All Of It, Nothing.

James Comer Sick Of Being Outsmarted By Evil Genius Archnemesis [CHECKS NOTES] Steve Doocy

James Comer Will Hold Hunter Biden In Contempt If He Keeps Threatening To Tell Congress The Truth On Live TV

Brian Kilmeade Boned All The Biden Impeachment Conspiracy Theories On Live TV, Whoops, That’s A Wrap!

Ron Johnson, Walking Simpson’s ‘You Tried’ Gif, Releases Biden Ukraine Report

Marjorie Taylor Greene Enters Hunter Biden’s Cock Into Congressional Record

If We Could Keep This Hunter Biden Investigation About Hunter Biden, That Would Be Great, Mmkay?

[videos via Aaron Rupar / CNN]

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WIC serves nearly 40% of all infants in the United States, but the program is being put at risk by House Republicans as nearly 2 million parents and young children could be denied help under WIC by September.

Due to higher-than-expected participation and food costs, the White House is very concerned about the urgent need to fully fund the WIC program in 2024. This is all the more urgent given that “infant mortality is linked to women’s health status with healthier moms having healthier babies” and healthier babies are more likely to survive infancy. Yet, House Republicans have been messing around with Women, Infants and Children funding this year, but due to their chaotic approach to governing, the threat they pose to WIC has grown at a time when need is increasing.

The current failure to pass a budget including WIC is putting nutrition security for millions of women, infants, and children at risk.

WIC used to be bipartisan

“For 25 years, it (WIC) has been a no-brainer on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Director of the Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden said on a call with reporters in which PoliticusUSA participated. “There has been bipartisan support from Congress to make work available to every eligible person who applies. The Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly requested that Congress fully fund WIC in the fiscal 2024 year. The Congress so far hasn’t done so. If Congressional Republicans pass the budget without fully funding WIC, states will have no choice but to cut the number of people they serve.”

House Republicans are unable to agree on a budget, and so they’ve been punting with Continuing Resolutions. The problem with this approach for WIC is that it leaves food banks, moms and other vulnerable people with less certainty about the future and the longer this goes on, the uncertainty takes bigger cuts out of help.

“For nearly 50 years we could have the funding it needed to assist anyone who was eligible to participate, it didn’t matter which party controlled the White House or Congress,” Georgia Mitchell, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer of the National WIC Association, said. “If there was a need that need was met. Today, however, that compact is on really shaky ground. Raising participation and higher food costs means WIC needs more funding to do its job. The Biden administration has recognized the need and asked Congress for additional funding. That request however came months ago and Congress has not acted even worse, some in Congress are proposing to slash with funding by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small explained how the CRs are threatening the program:

“Through the two recent continuing resolutions Congress allowed USDA to send funding to state and current funding at a faster rate. But what they didn’t do is commit to paying for the difference over the course of the whole year,” she said during the call. “And that puts states and moms and kids in jeopardy forcing them to hold on to a hope and a prayer that Congress is going to provide before resources run out. Now, if Congress does not address the needed funding when they ultimately pass a full-year appropriation, the impact of cuts would be magnified because all of the cuts would have to be absorbed in the last months of that year. So between April through September.”

“Here’s the scale of the problem. If Congress were to fund the program for the rest of the year, proportionately to what they’re doing in the congressional resolution or in the continuing resolution, there would be a billion-dollar shortfall. It’s one and a half months of benefits for all pregnant and new moms, babies, and toddlers on the program today. This is especially troubling because WIC serves nearly 40% of all infants in the United States.”

States will likely have to put applicants on waiting lists to reduce costs, which would start with postpartum women who are not breastfeeding, next will be children one-five years old. IF there’s still not enough funds, then the cuts would hit pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants.

Why is the White House sounding the alarm? The Deputy Secretary said it’s likely at the billion-dollar shortfall level that the waiting list could hit all categories.

What’s at risk:

“Families who participate in WIC have longer and safer pregnancies with fewer premature birth and infant deaths,” Grace Hou, Illinois Deputy Governor for Health and Human Services said.

Yet, a new analysis from the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found “If Congress fails to do so and continues WIC’s current funding level for the rest of the fiscal year, WIC would face a roughly $1 billion shortfall in 2024.”

The above-linked analysis contains a state-by-state breakdown as well.

In The Larger context of the kind of country and people we are:

All of this is happening within the larger context of Republicans claiming to care about babies so much that they seek to force women and girls into medical torture, pain, suffering and health crises.

With WIC, Republicans have a chance to do something concrete for babies and pregnant women, and instead of acting, they are ensuring uncertainty and fear prevail.

Last spring, House Republicans came for food stamps in the debt ceiling deal and followed that up with proposed cuts to funds for WIC in the USDA annual spending bill.

Republicans justify these cuts as necessary because they want to cut costs, but they do not seek to cut costs in really impactful ways, such as by cutting their corporate tax giveaways or subsidies to oil and gas or collecting the correct amount of taxes from the wealthy.

For a party that professes to care so much about babies that it has stolen individual liberty from women and girls and in certain Republican-led states, monitors and legally intimidates anyone who helps women or girls get abortion medical care they need, it simply doesn’t make sense that they do not want to feed pregnant and post-partum women (e.g., nursing moms), infants and young children.

Funding WIC should have been priority one for House Republicans, but instead, they’re holding an impeachment inquiry based on Trump-driven fiction about President Biden, while putting pregnant women, infants, breastfeeding moms and children at risk.

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Kate Cox asked the Texas Supreme Court to give her permission to abort her unborn baby, a baby that has a condition known as trisomy 18. On Monday, her lawyers said that she will go to another state to end the baby’s life. That same day, the court said Texas law didn’t require her to ask its permission.

Trisomy 18 is a condition where a baby has an extra copy of chromosome 18, making it highly likely that the baby will die in the womb or shortly after birth—though some babies with trisomy 18 do survive, such as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s daughter. Cox’s lawyers have argued that by not aborting her baby, Cox is jeopardizing her health and future fertility.

The same day that Cox’s lawyers said she would seek an abortion in another state, the Texas Supreme Court said in its opinion that “a pregnant woman does not need a court order to have a lifesaving abortion in Texas.”

The court ruling also noted that Cox’s doctor, Damla Karsan, “asked a [lower] court to pre-authorize the abortion, yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.” 

Further, the ruling stated:

A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion. Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function. The law leaves to physicians—not judges—both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient.

Pro-life experts argued to The Daily Signal that abortion activists and the media are twisting the news to fit their own purposes.

“The Center for Reproductive Rights and an abortion-crusading doctor provoked this confrontation, apparently for political purposes,” said Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

“They filed an unnecessary lawsuit and claimed unjustified confusion about what the state law requires in order to create an highly public flashpoint in the conflict over abortion,” he added.

Sarah Parshall Perry, also a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center, emphasized that in Texas, pregnant women do not need a court order to have a lifesaving abortion.

“Which begs the question: Why did she and her doctor seek one?” Perry questioned. “Physicians make in-the-moment professional judgments regularly. The difference here is that the doctor claimed ignorance as to what her ‘reasonable medical judgment’ could actually entail. Kate Cox could have stayed right where she was and received the abortion she sought.”  

Pro-life activists expressed strong sympathies for the mother but stressed the importance of valuing the innate dignity of every life.

Katie Daniel, state policy director at SBA Pro-Life America, emphasized to The Daily Signal that “it’s always a heartbreaking situation to be told your child may not have long to live.”

“Compassion and care should have been given to both Kate Cox and her baby, and sadly, that did not happen,” she said. “There are two patients involved, and targeting one of them for brutal abortion will never be the compassionate answer.”

“It’s shocking that a judge would create her own judicial bypass around the state’s law to allow for an abortion,” Daniel added. “Texas law protects mothers who need lifesaving care in a medical emergency, which a doctor can provide without deliberately taking a patient’s life and without involving the court.”

The American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists also expressed deep sorrow for the Cox family and the “tragic diagnoses and health challenges” that they have faced.

“Though we cannot speak to the specifics of her case without her medical records, we do know that life-affirming medicine does allow women to obtain treatment for pregnancy complications, as does the Texas law,” AAPLOG said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “However, a fetal diagnosis of trisomy 18, in and of itself, is not a threat to the mother’s life. With properly informed consent and a health care team that’s committed to honoring the dignity and value of both mom and baby, mothers can receive quality care in Texas, and their babies can be given a chance at life.”

The organization noted that laws protecting the preborn exist “in part to affirm the dignity of fetal human beings with life-limiting conditions rather than ending a preborn child’s life prematurely simply because it is predicted to be shorter than most people’s.”

“A more life-affirming option is perinatal palliative care, in which parents can be supported by medical staff and grief counselors as they care for their child, regardless of the length of his or her life,” AAPLOG’s statement said. “Perinatal palliative care has been shown to yield better mental health outcomes for grieving parents and respects the value of both mom and baby, unlike induced abortion. That’s the kind of dignified care that our patients deserve.”

“Relatable” podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey argued on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “a fatal diagnosis of an unborn child is not a justification for killing them.”

“When the choice is between dismemberment and delivery, you deliver,” she stressed. “You show them love and dignity. You give them a funeral. You don’t discard them like medical waste. Either way, the baby has to come out. The choice is between allowing the baby to come out whole or in pieces.”

“While we can have compassion for the tragedy of receiving such a devastating diagnosis, we should never use a diagnosis to justify murdering an innocent baby,” she told The Daily Signal on Tuesday afternoon.

And Lila Rose, president of the pro-life organization Live Action, defended the unborn baby’s life on X as well.

“A baby with Trisomy 18 has the same dignity and worth as you or me,” Rose said. “They deserve love and care for however many moments, days or years they have on earth—not the extreme torture of dismemberment by an abortionist.”

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