Prime
Never say never and all that. But it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu’s dozen years as PM may be on the verge of ending. He was on the same precipice two weeks ago when his erstwhile ally and protege Naftali Bennett was negotiating to form a government with opposition leader Yair Lapid. Then the outbreak of inter-communal violence within Israel and another shooting war with Gaza led Bennett to foreswear that option and go back to negotiating with Netanyahu. Now Bennett is back to apparently finalizing that deal with Lapid.
Where Things Stand: As Commission Vote Fails, Gaetz Flirts With Idea Of Political Violence
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) continued their tour of terribleness last night.
As arguably the most Trumpy and scandal-plagued lawmakers in the House, the two have been holding a series of weird MAGA rallies around the country in recent weeks for unclear reasons — perhaps to prove their fealty to the master, to burnish their brand, or just because the two have nothing better to do. One has no committee assignments because she threatened violence against her now-colleagues on social media in the past. The other is under federal investigation for the possible sex trafficking of a minor. As Trump maintains — only the best people.
Takeaways from the Jan 6 Filibuster
Senate Republicans using the filibuster to block the creation of a Jan 6th Commission is both despicable and entirely unsurprising. But the vote itself – which was 54 Yeas and 35 neas – compels us to note and consider a few points.
Yep, I’m Starting to Worry
As far as I can tell, no one thinks HR1/S1 is going to be passed in this Congress. Negotiations over a ‘hard’ infrastructure bill currently have a White House proposal of $1.7 trillion and a GOP proposal which, once you wipe away the whip cream and sprinkles, is about $200 billion. And yet negotiations are continuing.
In recent days I see lots of complaints that ‘the Democrats’ are about to blow it on electoral reform, infrastructure and much else. This is wrong. The issue isn’t ‘the Democrats’. It’s a handful of centrist Senate Democrats who simply refuse to use the power at their disposal to pass these laws with 50 votes. In fact, it’s really just Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and probably at the end of the day just Manchin. The distinction is important because it’s easy to demoralize yourself. It’s easy for a political party to demoralize itself. It’s easy for people who have their own agendas to demoralize people because they think it serves their factional political interests. If you lived through the Obama years and think, ‘wow, did we really not learn this lesson?’ ‘what’s wrong with you people?’ well, that’s going to cause a lot of frustration and make you wonder just who’s calling the shots and what they’re thinking.
Where Things Stand: There’s A Lot More Support For QAnon Conspiracy Theories Than You’d Think
As expected, Republicans are the main group of Americans who support some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories connected to the QAnon movement.
But a lot more Americans believe in some aspects of the far-right conspiracy theory than you’d think.
Mitch Has a Big Interest in Saying the DOJ has Jan 6 Covered
Over many years and in many contexts I have argued that in cases of great public corruption and wrongdoing we place far too much emphasis and priority on criminal investigations and too little on public investigations and accountings. Both kinds of inquiry have their place. Generally both can ride in their own lane and not interfere with each other. But to the extent they bump up against each other we should prioritize the public investigations.
Take the Mueller probe. Our public interest in this or that person serving a few months or years in prison is far less than our public interest in finding out what happened and who is responsible for it. Criminal investigations are, rightly, highly secretive. Their mandate is rightly limited. That leaves the public interest too often out in the cold.
As I said, this is a longstanding belief of one and one that applies in numerous cases. But it has a particular relevance to the controversy over a Jan 6th Insurrection. Republicans are using every argument they know to deny, diminish and ‘move on’ from what happened on January 6th. Because they did it. Opposing a commission is just one part of that.
But there’s more to it than that.
Is Evangelical Support for Israel a Brittle Branch?
One of the complexities and anguishes that many American Jews feel about Israel today is not only that there is a growing cleavage between how American Jews and Israelis see the occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is also the increasing tendency, especially on the Israeli right, to say ‘who cares about American Jews?’, who make up only a tiny sliver of the US population, and focus rather on white evangelicals who make up a big chunk of the US population and have, albeit for very different reasons, a deep devotion to Israel. This fact came to the fore earlier this month, during the inter-communal violence in Israel and the fighting in Gaza, when Ron Dermer, former Ambassador to the US, said Israel should prioritize evangelicals over American Jews as the anchor of its relationship to the US. American Jews, Dermer reasoned, were in any case “disproportionately among our critics.”
Where Things Stand: Sicknick’s Mom Requests Meetings With Every Single Senate GOPer
The mother of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol police officer who died after the insurrection, is trying to pressure Senate Republicans to take the Jan. 6 commission bill seriously.