Much to the dismay of Republicans, the ill-advised GOP response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU) address delivered in the kitchen by a breathy, sometimes whispering, “wife and mother” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), won’t go away. The woman Britt referenced in her speech, Karla Jacinto, is also speaking out against Britt’s comments about her, denouncing Britt’s telling of events. In a CNN interview, Jacinto talked about how politicians—both in Mexico and now in the U.S.—only use her for political purposes. She talked about how the Mexican drug cartels did not traffic her: it was “a pimp who operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls to force them into prostitution.” No one contacted Jacinto for permission to use her story, and she agreed that Britt’s narrative was, at best, misleading.
The mainstream media received its share of the blame for journalists not doing due diligence; the story about Britt’s “misleading” speech broke only after free-lance contributor to several news media, Jonathan Katz, broke the story on TikTok.
Florida teachers regained some of their First Amendment rights after a settlement that students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms outside instruction. The agreement also gives permission for anti-bullying rules and Gay-Straight Alliance groups, and the “don’t say gay” law doesn’t apply to library books not used for instruction in the classroom or to books with incidental references to LGBTQ+ characters or same-gender couples, “as they are not instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is instruction on apple farming.” Supporter of the law, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office called the deal a “major win” because the law can’t “be maligned in court.” The arrangement is still wrong, but it’s a start.
E. Jean Carroll accepted the $91 million bond by Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) with one change: he can’t force her to wait 60 days or more after the appeals court rules in her favor to get paid.
Six months ago far-right Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin considered a run for the GOP president candidate; the off-year election putting Democrats in control of the legislature killed that dream—at least for now. This past week, he signed a bill legalizing same-gender marriage in the Commonwealth, regardless of federal law, mandating marriage licenses for any two people seeking a “lawful marriage” regardless of gender, race, or sex. A previous Virginia law banning biracial marriage led to the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, striking down state laws against biracial marriage.
Youngkin faced another loss after his GOP endorsements lost the election. Democrats removed his plans for a $2 billion sports arena from the state budget. He vetoed a bill overturning a book-banning bill passed by Republicans in 2021 and another returning the state to an interstate compact ensuring accurate voter rolls. Other bills he plans to veto before the April 8 deadline include banning assault weapons, creating a legal market for marijuana sales, and boost the minimum wage.
Congressional conservatives threatened to block President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address because he hadn’t submitted a budget for the upcoming year. Today, he released the budget which Republicans will reject although it cuts $3 trillion off the national debt during the next decade. This reduction and costs for healthcare, childcare, and housing would be paid by new taxes on the wealthy and major corporations. The budgetP also offers universal prekindergarten, 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, larger anti-poverty tax credits, and a new tax break for first-time home buyers. The proposed tax increases the minimum on billion-dollar corporations to 21 percent from 15 percent and on U.S. multinationals’ foreign income to 21 percent from 10.5 percent. Some tax deductions for executive compensation will be eliminated. The IRS would receive an additional $104.3 billion for the next decade to provide additional scrutiny for these people and businesses, generating $341 billion in net revenue. Congress has still not passed the current year’s budget which ends on October 1.
Peter Navarro goes to prison for four months on March 19 for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 investigative committee. He will be the first top DDT adviser to serve time for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. DDT’s son-in-law Jared Kushner found Navarro, the trade adviser, in Amazon.com for writing an anti-China book. Navarro is awaiting an opinion for his appeal from the D.C. Circuit Court. The committee had subpoenaed Navarro about his work with Bannon to force delays in the January 6, 2021 congressional session in which lawmakers certify electoral votes. Navarro also prepared three reports touting false election frauds and is fighting a DOJ civil lawsuit demanding he return hundreds of records to the National Archives, some of them pertaining to the 2020 election.
A judge permitted Steve Bannon, also jury-convicted for ignoring a committee subpoena, to wait outside prison for the result of his appeal to the same court. He has other legal problems. In 2020, he was arrested on the yacht of a Chinese billionaire for defrauding donors to his “We Build the Wall” project which didn’t build a wall. DDT pardoned Bannnon, but he faces trial in May because New York state charged him with money laundering, criminal conspiracy, and a “scheme to defraud” related to the scam. In 2022, Axios named Bannon one of GOP’s new kingmakers for his podcast The War Room which foments hatred, calling Biden “a usurper” in the White House. Jack Posobiec, a podcast guest, announced at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, “Welcome to the end of democracy!” He told his crowd that they are “here to overthrow it completely.”
A demonstration of MAGA violence was front and center at the Johnson County (KS) GOP fundraiser. Attendees paid to kick and beat an effigy of President Biden. Former GOP chair Mike Kuckelman condemned the bashing and called for the resignation of the current chair Mike Brown, an election denier, and Johnson County Republican Party chairwoman Maria Holiday.
An El Paso (TX) judge blocked AG Ken Paxton’s attempt to subpoena documents from religious shelters for migrants, stating “a real and credible concern” for the predetermined goal of shutting down Annunciation House for political reasons without “due process or fair play.” The AG and the shelters “are now obliged to litigate this matter within the guidelines set forth by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.” Paxton’s office had demanded records about the shelters’ clients, accusing it of “human smuggling” and operating an “illegal stash house.” The judge called Paxton’s office “rude and unprofessional.” Annunciation House operates several shelters in El Paso, providing humanitarian aid of food, housing, and information about claiming asylum in the U.S.
Despite her lack of political experience, Arizona’s failed election-denier gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is spreading her lies on her campaign website in her run for U.S. Senate. She claimed that the U.S. government is printing more money to cover the growing deficit, but the U.S. money supply is shrinking, something that hasn’t happened in at least 65 years, causing inflation which Biden brought back down to historic lows. The middle and working classes in the U.S. comes from stagnant wage growth while CEO pay skyrockets and the assets flow to the top.
Lake also blames bureaucracy for the nation’s problems, but the federal government has dropped from 2.8 percent of all workers during the Truman administration to 1.9 percent of workers in 2023. Federal employment peaked in April 1990 after nine years of Reagan/Bush fiscal policies. Lake should lobby for a higher federal minimum wage—now $7.25 an hour—if she wants “American workers to grow our economy.” Another solution is returning to the past, which MAGA supposedly wants, when the top tax rate was 91 percent under Eisenhower in a decade of average GDP growth of 6.9 percent. In the Democratic 1960s the GDP averaged 7.0 percent.
Another worthless Lake strategy to win votes is wooing those she denigrated such as John McCain supporters. During her run for governor, Lake bragged that her 2022 primary win, before the general election loss, had driven a “stake through the heart of the McCain machine” and she told his more moderate followers to “get the hell out.” Now she claims she was joking, ala DDT, and tried to bond with McCain’s daughter, Meghan, by saying that both of them are mothers. Meghan McCain isn’t buying it. Other offensive Lake attacks are against former Gov. Doug Ducey and her lawsuits and defamation against many GOP Maricopa County election officials, sending her to court several times.
DDT ridiculed Biden’s non-existent stutter in his SOTU address, but his own gibberish is getting worse. In his diatribe giving reasons for cutting Social Security and Medicare, a complete reversal from a year ago, DDT said:
“People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50% more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed ….”
The rest of his “word salad” is here.
Great quote from Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) meltdown when asked if DDT controls Senate Republicans, “No. I mean, I voted against things that, you know, he doesn’t like.” That’s following what DDT wants!
Nel's New Day 