Republicans Think Yellen Is Crying Wolf

The debt ceiling remains the story of the week. And since Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen dropped the bombshell that the country could hit the ceiling on June 1, there has been a whole bunch of posturing from partisans on both sides. The latest: Many Republicans, particularly in the Senate, say that they think Yellen is fudging things, and that the drop-dead point is not nearly so close as the Secretary suggests.

The notion here, of course, is that the Secretary is scared witless of a default on the debt, and wants to do everything possible to encourage a resolution. Ideally, that resolution would come well before the ceiling is reached, because a close call harms the credit of the United States, even if a default is avoided. So, Yellen could have motivation to lie outright (not too likely) or to be exceedingly over-cautious and pessimistic (much more plausible). And it should be noted that, in making her announcement, the Secretary conceded that she was not certain about the June 1 date, and that the real date could be weeks after that (or more).

The upshot here is that while Democrats, from the President on down, are warning that the sky is about to fall, Senate Republicans feel a little less urgency to get something done. If they are right that June 1 is too early, then their lack of urgency probably won't be a problem. If they are wrong, however, then it could be big trouble. Of course, we can't really know how a game of chicken will play out until the pressure gets intense. It's easy enough on May 3 to take a casual approach. If we get to May 20 and Yellen says, "We have better numbers now, and we were basically on target with June 1," then we'll see if the rubber hits the road or not.

And as long as we are on this subject, we wondered yesterday why House Democrats had to keep their "secret" solution to the debt-ceiling mess (a discharge petition) under wraps. Reader M.P. in Chicago was able to answer that for us:

The reason for keeping the scheme under lock and key is that the plan could otherwise have been foiled by any House committee with jurisdiction over the "Breaking the Gridlock Act" bill.

Once a committee sends a bill to the floor of the House within the time period prescribed by House rules, a discharge petition may no longer be used to discharge that bill from committee. Had the Republican leadership got wind of the Democrats' plan in time, any of the committees with jurisdiction could have voted to send the bill out of committee to the House floor, where it would almost surely have languished.

In theory, a discharge petition could be employed to force a floor vote on a bill that has been voted out of committee, but the clock would begin to run anew when the bill reaches the floor. That would delay action on the bill well beyond June 2023, by which time the United States would likely have defaulted on its debts.

Based on the above, it was imperative that the "scheme" be kept "under lock and key" until the requisite number of legislative days had elapsed without committee action on the bill. Only then could the discharge petition process be employed without further delay.

Thanks, M.P.! We really should have put that together, and appreciate that you picked up the slack for us.

And that's it for today's episode of Debt Ceiling Theater. (Z)

Trump Legal Blotter: You Lose Some and You Lose Some

Normally, it's "You win some, and you lose some." But Donald Trump, of course, is a trailblazer. A trendsetter. A revolutionary. And so yesterday, he had bad news on the legal front, and then he followed that with... more bad news.

Let's start in Washington. Special counsel Jack Smith does not send out press releases or tell reporters what he's up to, but he can't keep (all of) his court filings a secret. And so, the news came out yesterday that Team Jack is investigating the handling of surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago, and the failure to properly comply with subpoenas for same. Smith has issued a whole bunch of new subpoenas, and several senior Mar-a-Lago employees are expected to visit the capital this week for a nice talk with the grand jury. It's not entirely clear what's going on here, but it does bring to mind the line from Sir Walter Scott: "O! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Moving on to New York, Trump took an embarrassing loss courtesy of Robert Reed. That's the Robert Reed who sits as a judge on the New York County Supreme Court, not the Robert Reed who played the father on The Brady Bunch. Recall that after The New York Times ran several stories about Trump's tax returns, aided by information from Trump's niece Mary, the then-president sued both the newspaper and the niece. Yesterday, Reed dismissed the suit against the Times and, to add insult to injury, ordered Trump to pay the newspaper's court costs. He doesn't even like to pay his own lawyers; it's surely going to be galling to him to pay the other side's lawyers. The suit against Mary Trump is technically still in effect, but in his ruling on the Times suit, Reed effectively gutted Donald's basis for going after Mary, observing that she was legally entitled to have and share the documents she gave the Times. So, a dismissal is surely coming soon.

Also in New York, Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina advised the judge in the ongoing E. Jean Carroll lawsuit that the former president won't be mounting a defense of any sort. This could basically mean one of two things:

• The case that the plaintiff mounted is so weak that there is no need to respond to it.
  
  
• The witnesses that the defense might put up, including both Trump himself and one person who was scheduled to testify on his behalf, are such lousy witnesses, and are so at risk of being shredded on cross-examination, that silence is the wiser option.

This news would only be a "loss," and thus consistent with the theme of this item, if it was #2. You can probably guess which of these explanations we think is the correct one. (Z)

Joe Biden: Guilty

Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on the show of Fox entertainer Sean Hannity to discuss the misdeeds of Joe Biden. The Senator thinks there is an excellent chance the President will be impeached, observing that:

It doesn't have to be a high crime or misdemeanor because the Constitution specifies that impeachment lies for treason, bribery, other high crimes or misdemeanors. Bribery is explicitly noted in the Constitution. And I gotta say, the evidence, not only against Hunter Biden, but the evidence against Joe Biden being complicit and profiting from this corruption is growing and growing and growing.

Hannity nodded, agreeing that the odds are excellent that Biden will face a trial in the Senate.

Now, at this point, you might be wondering if we buried the lede, inasmuch as we did not explain exactly what the evidence against Biden is, or who it is that he might have taken a bribe from. It's actually not so much that we buried this information as it is that we don't know it. In that way, we're not terribly different from Cruz, who hasn't actually seen the evidence either, and who is not entirely certain that the evidence, you know, actually exists.

What's prompting this "discussion," such as it is, is a letter that Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and AG Merrick Garland yesterday. Here's the key passage:

We have received legally protected and highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures. Based on those disclosures, it has come to our attention that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose.

Comer and Grassley want a copy of the form they describe, and Comer sent a separate letter, with a formal subpoena, demanding that Wray provide it.

Since the details here are thin, it's hard to know what to make of this. We pass the news along because there was a time in, say, July 1972, that claims being made about the Nixon administration seemed highly implausible, and yet proved to be true. So, maybe there's something here. That said, we are strongly inclined to doubt it for three, or perhaps four, reasons:

1. Republicans have been aching to impeach Biden since well before he became president. Cruz wants to impeach Biden with little or no knowledge of the new "evidence" against the President. This does not speak of a political faction that has carefully assessed the situation and soberly made the decision that something must be done.
   
   
2. By the time of the Watergate scandal, Nixon had a decades-long résumé of sleazy and unethical behavior. The break-in and cover-up were not a departure, they were a predictable result of a politician who felt the rules did not apply to him. Biden does not have such a résumé.
   
   
3. Even if Biden is a secret sleazy operator, it is hard to believe that he suddenly forgot how to cover his tracks, and that he suddenly began to leave a paper trail, after half a century in politics.
   
   
4. This is the reason that we aren't especially confident about, but we include it, just in case. As you can see above, the assertion is that the "criminal scheme" took place while Biden was VP. However, the subpoena actually asks for a document "created or modified in June 2020." That is, of course, well after Biden was VP. There could be an explanation for that discrepancy, like the FBI didn't look into the matter until Biden was a presidential candidate, and so did not create paperwork until that time. On the other hand, this could also be evidence of slapdash, rush-to-judgment work by Comer and Grassley.

Presumably, we will soon learn more details, and we'll see if there's any "there" there. On the other hand, the House GOP breathlessly handed over some amount of 1/6 footage to Tucker Carlson, with promises that the Fox entertainer would blow up the dominant narrative of that day, and would expose the truth of what really happened. And since then, the only thing that has blown up is Carlson's career. Maybe this "bribery" story will quietly fade away, too. (Z)

NYT Reveals (Allegedly) Fatal Tucker Carlson Text

As long as we are on the subject of Tucker Carlson, there have been at least half a dozen media outlets, since he was fired, that claimed to have the scoop on what really led to his ouster. The latest attendee at that particular party is The New York Times, which yesterday revealed the text message that supposedly triggered the Fox entertainer's termination.

Here, should you care to read it for yourself, is the "fatal" text message, sent by Carlson to one of his producers:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

There is much here that is disturbing, like Carlson's embrace of Death Wish-style vigilante revenge fantasies. But the key portion, according to the Times' reporting, is "It's not how white men fight." In other words, yet another victim of racism. Of course, in this case, it's his own racism, as opposed to the racism of others.

Fox News is a very strange place, inasmuch as Carlson went on the air every weeknight to share thinly-veiled dog-whistle racism with millions of people and was rewarded with an eight-figure contract. But the moment he tossed off one racist sentence in a private text message, he was canned. At least, that's the case if you believe the Times' reporting.

To their credit, the three reporters who worked on this story do not suggest this text was the entirety of the reason Carlson was fired, merely that it was the icing on the cake (presumably, white icing on a white cake). And we can certainly believe that, particularly given the concern that this message could come to light in open court, which would not be good for Fox if it ends up duking it out with Smartmatic or with one of the several women who have sued over a hostile workplace environment.

That said, nobody really knows which straw broke the camel's back outside of the Murdochs and Fox CEO Suzanne Scott. And none of them is talking. It may also be instructive that dirt about Carlson keeps drip, drip, dripping out. It's almost like someone wants to keep the focus on the shame of Tucker, and off the fact that Fox just paid out nearly $800 million because its hosts tell baldfaced and defamatory lies on the station's airwaves. (Z)

No Presidential Run for Youngkin?

This isn't too much of a surprise, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), who might plausibly be a slightly kinder, gentler alternative to Donald Trump/Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), has made it official and announced he won't be running for president in 2024. Probably.

As you might guess from that wording, Youngkin is being at least a little bit weaselly here. What he actually said was that he would not be running for president "this year." Since it's currently 2023, he could honor that pledge, and yet launch a campaign on Jan. 1, 2024. And in case there's any doubt that the Governor is keeping that technicality in mind, he dispatched an aide to explain to reporters that this did not mean a run was completely off the table. "This was not an announcement or a definite decline," explained the Youngkin lackey.

We guess this is a reasonably sound approach. Donald Trump is sucking up all the oxygen and most of the endorsements, and may have this thing sewn up pretty soon. In that case, there's always 2028, and no need for Youngkin to aggravate The Donald. On the other hand, if Trump and DeSantis both falter, then the Governor is the kind of candidate who might plausibly pick up the pieces. He's whackadoodle enough (maybe) for the Trumpers but normal enough (maybe) for the sane Republicans. That's pretty much how he managed to win the gubernatorial election in 2021.

That said, if Youngkin does decide to change course and to enter the race, he probably can't wait until "next year." There are the Republican candidates' debates later this year, and he would really need that opportunity to introduce himself to a national audience. Further, January 1 is really too late to seriously contest Iowa, New Hampshire and the other early contests. And if a candidate waits until Super Tuesday to get serious about collecting delegates, well, ask Rudy Giuliani how that worked out.

What it amounts to is that Youngkin is a soft "no" right now, and it's probably 3-4 months until Youngkin moves from the limp Sherman to the full Sherman. (Z)

No Fourth Term for Inslee

Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), who has been on the job for 11 years, is the longest-tenured governor in the country right now. In part, that's a testament to his political skill and his effectiveness. In part, it's a testament to the fact that Washington is one of only 14 states that doesn't have term limits for governors. Although a fourth term is his for the asking, Inslee announced this week that he's not interested, and that it's time to pass the torch to the next generation.

Like most states with a deep blue hue, the Democratic bench in Washington is deep. Thus far, only state-level officials have expressed interest, with state AG Bob Ferguson declaring yesterday and state Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz all-but-certain to jump in. Of course, both of the state's senators are Democrats, and so too are eight of the ten members of the House delegation, and any of them could decide they might like to try something new. The blue team also controls just shy of 60% of the seats in both chambers of the state legislature, so a candidate or two could come from there.

The Republican bench, of course, is much less crowded. The two current Republican members of the House delegation (Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers) are in safe districts and not likely to be interested in giving that up for a longshot chance at the governor's mansion. The most likely candidate(s) are probably former House members, like Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dave Reichert. Whoever runs from the red side of the aisle is going to face the daunting fact that the Democrats have held the governorship of Washington since 1985, currently the longest uninterrupted streak in the country for the blue team (and third overall to the stranglehold that the Republicans have on the South Dakota and Utah governorships). And in case you're wondering, Washington hasn't elected a Republican senator since 1994. So, anywhere you look, the odds for a member of the GOP to win statewide are pretty grim. And for governor, Washington has a top-two primary, so there's a decent chance that no Republican makes it to the general election.

As to Inslee, he once had presidential aspirations, though that didn't work out too well for him. He's not likely to challenge Joe Biden in 2024, while a successful run in 2028 would have Inslee turning 79 just weeks after being sworn in. We do not imagine that the American people would have an appetite for multiple octogenarian presidents in the same decade. So, one has to assume that this is the end of line for the Governor after a distinguished career in public service. (Z)

Talking About Abortion, Part II: T.C.'s Story

Brace yourself for a Titanic-sized non sequitur. Here is a picture of the reading that (Z) assigns to students for the lecture about the Philippine-American War:

You get the point, presumably. To help the students understand the subject, they get an anti-war perspective and a pro-war perspective. That approach, used by pretty much all history professors, shows up throughout the readings for the course: "10 Rules for Building a Successful Business" by Sam Walton is paired with "Wal-Mart's Unfortunate Labor Force;" "The Southern Manifesto" is paired with "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.; "Beatlemania Arrives in America" by Tom Wolfe is paired with "Communism, Hypnotism, and The Beatles," by David Noebel.

Since the Dobbs decision came down, we have gotten lots and lots of questions about abortion rights. Many of those questions, we are able to answer. Some of them, which ask for the perspective of anti-abortion activists, we are not. In view of that, given our instincts as teachers, we recruited several people who actually are in a position to answer those questions. We selected 10 questions that readers put forward, and got answers from three anti-abortion readers. The answers were long enough that we could not run all of them in one fell swoop. So, we ran the first three questions and answers, and we have seven more questions and answers still in the bank.

The response to this first set of questions and answers was... very mixed. Some folks very much appreciated hearing the anti-abortion perspective, even if they don't agree with it. Here's one example, from J.L. in Chicago, IL:

I am strongly pro-choice but disagree with the recommended course of action (stopping the conversation with anti-abortion readership) from C.W. in Carlsbad.

One of the common lines from our side on abortion is, "If you don't like abortion, don't have one." That does not make quite as much sense as those saying it would like it to, but the idea does apply here: "If you don't like part of the content on this site, don't read it." I don't know that I have skipped content because it would upset me, but certainly have done so because it did not interest me. I do not think it has ever even occurred to me to suggest that others be barred from reading it.

There is a lot to criticize the right for these days but one of the unfortunate and quite serious offenses of at least portions of the left is suppression of speech one dislikes. As a Jewish child growing up in Chicago, I supported the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, IL (a suburb, then and now, with a sizable Jewish population and then with far more living Holocaust survivors) and I still think I was right. So, I am not being selective on this principle and, as I say, I am pro-choice, anyway. But, I want to hear people with whom I disagree and, even if I don't, I want others to be allowed to do so.

Others, including C.W. in Carlsbad, suggested that we push the eject button immediately, with the main reason being something along the lines of "the three anti-abortion readers aren't saying anything I haven't heard before." We've thought very carefully about that line of argument, and have a couple of responses. The first is that people who are very close to/involved in this issue are likely to have been exposed repeatedly to ideas/arguments/rhetoric that aren't nearly as familiar to those who aren't as close to/involved with this issue. To use an analogy, (Z) probably isn't going to get much out of a History Channel documentary on the Civil War, but that isn't necessarily true for all viewers.

The second response is that if a question is posed to the trio of anti-abortion readers, and the trio all come up with answers that seem similar and unsatisfactory, that is information. Again, to use an analogy, if Ted Cruz is asked ten times why it's OK for him to run for a third term when he promised to serve only two, and he hems and haws every time, that tells us something.

With all of this said, we should have planned things out better, and followed the model suggested by the readings in (Z)'s U.S. history course. Fortunately, the mail inbox has solved that problem for us. We've gotten a number of heartfelt messages from people who have personal experiences with abortion, along with a lot of interesting comments from people responding to the three questions and answers we ran. So, this is the plan. We've already run Q&A Set #1. Today, we will run a message we got from reader T.C. in Saint Paul, MN, about her experience with abortion (she gave explicit permission to share the story, and her gender is necessarily revealed by the content of her narrative). Tomorrow, we'll run a carefully curated set of comments from readers in response to the questions and/or the account from T.C.

We'll repeat this trio next week, and the week thereafter: (1) Q&A from the anti-abortion readers, (2) Account(s) from a reader or readers who have a personal experience with abortion, and (3) comments on #1 and #2. We hope that we can make this into a useful, rather than hurtful, exercise. And with that said, here's T.C.:

My husband and I have been married for 9 years and we are so blessed to have a healthy and happy 7-year-old daughter. Last year, at the age of 46, I became pregnant. We were shocked that this was even possible, given how unlikely it is to occur naturally after age 43. We were excited but also trepidatious because the probability of carrying a healthy baby to term is quite low for my age. My daughter asks for a sibling all the time, and so against the odds, I hoped it might be possible to make our family a little bigger. As we were wrapping our heads around the idea of having another child, about a week later, when I was 7 weeks pregnant, I started to have scary and very concerning symptoms. I had shortness of breath and my heart was beating erratically. I had no energy. I would get winded after climbing up one flight of stairs. As a physically fit person with a healthy diet, and a public health professional, I knew that those symptoms weren't normal. So I booked an appointment with an internal medicine specialist that works in the women's reproductive health clinic that I go to. Our healthcare system is so overwhelmed that they had to squeeze me in and I got only 10 minutes of her time. She listened to my heart and said, "Yes, I hear arrhythmias." Then she ordered a full set of labs, including biomarkers for heart failure and pulmonary embolism, an echocardiogram, a wearable cardiac monitor, and a fetal ultrasound. It took weeks just to get all of the tests performed, because it was very difficult to get appointments in cardiology, and I again had to insist the schedulers have me squeezed in.

While I was waiting for test results, I continued to feel terrible. I couldn't even get off of the couch to play with my daughter and I could barely do my job. My husband was terrified. I was calling my best friend a lot during that time, and I remember that she said to me, "Don't sacrifice yourself to give your daughter a sibling. You are everything to us, the whole world, and we can't lose you." One morning, as I was driving to get yet more lab work done, I had the thought occur to me suddenly, "What are you doing? Going for all of these diagnostic tests is pointless. You already know what you have to do." I told my husband that night that I thought I had to abort the baby. It was a real concern for me that physicians wouldn't be able to identify the problem with my pregnancy or the fetus until the second or third trimester, and then terminating the pregnancy at that stage would be even more horrible. My husband suggested to me to sleep on it and then talk about it more the next day. The next day, with his support, I called my clinic and requested a medical abortion.

A medical abortion is an awful experience. It is very similar to a miscarriage, which I have also had before, but even worse due to the medical inducement. The cramping pain is blinding, the bleeding is profuse, I had to vomit repeatedly, and it goes on for days. Meanwhile, I had to do this all in secret so that I wouldn't scare my daughter. No one would opt to endure one of these on a lark.

Once I recovered from the abortion, I could breathe normally again and my heart arrhythmias disappeared. The last of the test results came in the mail and everything came back normal. Nobody in the medical system ever figured out why I was having such difficulty breathing or what was causing my symptoms. Oh, and I was getting all of my care at the University of Minnesota. That place is not known for hiring slouches. It showed me the inadequacies of our crumbling healthcare system, and how little still that medical professionals understand about women's health. I have a suspicion that I may have ended up with pregnancy-induced cardiomyopathy, but I will never know.

After my experience, I am even more bewildered by the abortion bans that elected officials have passed. They seem unbelievably cruel to me and I will not quickly forget that cruelty. Doctors can't predict with absolute certainty when a pregnancy is going to be fatal. They don't know for sure when they need to "save the life of the mother." The gray area is enormous. I had to make a terrible decision, the least bad option of a range of bad options. Scientific evidence and medical professionals could not help me make it. To this day, I grieve the loss of that potential life, even as I know that I made the best decision available for me and for my family. I mourn the fact that my daughter would have made a lovely and loving older sister and now, that is not to be. Tears stream down my face as I type this. But, according to about a third of this country, I am a murderer.

I hope my story provides some additional insight to your readers about the political abortion debate. For those of us who are capable of bearing a child, it is not a debate, nor is it about politics, but rather, deeply personal and painful.

Thank you, T.C., it is very courageous of you to put yourself out there in this way. (Z)

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