CNN reports that “a stir-crazy Trump has spent the last two days livid and fuming to aides and allies about what he views as a betrayal by McCarthy for standing by Cheney and not punishing her for her vote to impeach.”
Impeachment Managers Feeling Muzzled
Playbook: “Democrats who’ve struggled for years to hold Donald Trump accountable are at a crossroads again: Do they go all out to convict Trump by calling a parade of witnesses to testify to his misdeeds? Or do they concede it’s a lost cause, finish the trial ASAP — and get on with President Joe Biden’s agenda?”
Several of the House impeachment managers wanted firsthand testimony to help prove their case that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, our sources tell us. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden administration officials have been eager for the process to move quickly, we’re told.”
“It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.”
Associated Press: Trump impeachment trial to open with sense of urgency.
Biden Must Decide on Border Wall
Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to stop construction of the border wall temporarily … Stopping construction for good, however, is complicated.”
“Recently, government lawyers have withdrawn their requests for immediate possession in some of the cases. However, the cases remain pending, with several hearings set for March.”
Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial
“One of Washington’s leading conservative constitutional lawyers publicly broke on Sunday with the main Republican argument against convicting former President Donald J. Trump in his impeachment trial, asserting that an ex-president can indeed be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors,” the New York Times reports.
“In an opinion piece posted on The Wall Street Journal’s website, the lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, who is closely allied with top Republicans in Congress, dismissed as illogical the claim that it is unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former president.”
Big Majority Approve of Biden’s Pandemic Response
“Two in 3 Americans approve of President Biden’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll by ABC News-Ipsos, with widespread support for his efforts to pass a relief bill.”
“Biden’s 67% approval on handling the coronavirus contrasts sharply with how Americans felt President Donald Trump handled the pandemic. In October, 61% said they disapproved of Trump’s response to the coronavirus.”
McCarthy Told Cheney to Apologize for Impeachment Vote
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tried to get Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) “to apologize for voting to impeach former President Trump before last week’s highly anticipated House GOP conference meeting — a request she refused,” Axios reports.
“Cheney rolled the dice, refusing her leader’s ask and counting on her supporters to keep her as conference chair, the party’s No. 3 post in the House. Newly empowered, she’s now embracing her role as the Republicans’ Trump critic-in-chief.”
New York Times: Spurning calls to resign, Liz Cheney says GOP must move past Trump.
Coronavirus Variant Spreading Rapidly Thru U.S.
“The coronavirus variant that shut down much of the United Kingdom is spreading rapidly across the United States, outcompeting other mutant strains and doubling its prevalence among confirmed infections every week and a half,” the Washington Post reports.
Flashback to Trump’s Early Days
The Guardian: “Theresa May had travelled to Washington in 2017 with the intention of persuading the new US president to make a supportive statement about Nato. Little did she expect that she would be calling her husband, Philip, to warn him that images of the US president of holding her hand as they walked through the White House would soon be flashing around the world.”
How the United States Lost to Hackers
New York Times: “Three decades ago, the United States spawned, then cornered, the market for hackers, their tradecraft, and their tools. But over the past decade, its lead has been slipping, and those same hacks have come boomeranging back on us. Yet no one in government has seriously paused to recalibrate the strategy.”
“America remains the world’s most advanced cyber superpower, but the hard truth, the one intelligence officials do not want to discuss, is that it is also its most targeted and vulnerable. … At this very moment, we are getting hacked from so many sides that it has become virtually impossible to keep track, let alone inform the average American reader who is trying to grasp a largely invisible threat that lives in code, written in language that most of us will never fully understand.”
Lawsuits Take Lead In Fight Against Disinformation
New York Times: “In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media.”
“Litigation represents a new front in the war against misinformation, a scourge that has reshaped American politics, deprived citizens of common facts and paved the way for the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. … But the use of defamation suits has also raised uneasy questions about how to police a news media that counts on First Amendment protections — even as some conservative outlets advanced Mr. Trump’s lies and eroded public faith in the democratic process.”
11 Hours Inside the MAGA Bubble
Politico: “One America News is making a play for the pro-Trump audience, but it’s missing its star player. Here’s what I saw during a day-long binge.”
How Democrats Want to Fix the Postal Service
Washington Post: “On one side is Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who, with the backing of the U.S. Postal Service’s governing board, is expected as soon as next week to outline a new vision for the agency, one that includes more service cuts, higher and region-specific pricing, and lower delivery expectations.”
“But congressional Democrats are pressing President Biden to install new board members, creating a majority bloc that could oust DeJoy, a Trump loyalist whose aggressive cost-cutting over the summer has been singled out for much of the performance decline. The fight over the agency’s future is expected to be fraught and protracted, leaving Americans with unreliable mail delivery for the foreseeable future.”
Biden Faces New Border Crisis
New York Times: “More than 1,000 people who had been detained after crossing have been released into the country in recent days in a swift reversal from the Trump administration’s near shutdown of the border. Many more people are gathering on the Mexican side, aggravating conditions there and testing America’s ability and willingness to admit migrants during a pandemic.”
The Pandemic’s Toll on Housing
New York Times: “As the pandemic enters its second year, millions of renters are struggling with a loss of income and with the insecurity of not knowing how long they will have a home. Their savings depleted, they are running up credit card debt to make the rent, or accruing months of overdue payments. Families are moving in together, offsetting the cost of housing by finding others to share it.”
Schiff Says McCarthy ‘Has No Values’
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) told NBC News that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “has no values.”
Said Schiff: “Kevin McCarthy stands for nothing except the perpetuation of his own position. He has no values, and in my view cares about little except for hoping to be speaker one day.”
GOP Registration Drop Is Part of Larger Trend
“In the weeks since the January riot at the Capitol, there has been a raft of stories about voters across the country leaving the Republican Party. Some of the numbers are eye-catching and suggest that the GOP may be shrinking before our eyes, but a closer look at the numbers over time shows that a larger change has been working its way through the party for some time,” NBC News reports.
“In fact, when one takes into account shifts in the composition of the Democratic Party, the real story seems to be more about a deeper remaking of the nation’s two major political parties.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked to stop the violence, that is a person who does not have a role as the leader of our party going forward. We should not be embracing the former president.”
— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), in an interview on Fox News.
Biden Won’t Lift Sanctions to Get Iran to Negotiate
“President Biden said the U.S. will only lift sanctions on Iran if it stops enriching uranium and wouldn’t use sanctions relief as a way to lure Tehran back to the negotiating table over the 2015 nuclear accord,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Sunday for the U.S. to lift its sanctions as a prerequisite for returning to the 2015 nuclear deal.”
