Citizen Cartwright

New evidence of Trump’s 'stranglehold' on the GOP

Two weeks ago, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy declared Donald Trump culpable in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Thursday, McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago seeking Trump's political support.

 

"The GOP is engaged in a delicate dance to keep Trump and his base of voters in the fold while not seeming too beholden to him,” says Politico. "Without Trump’s cooperation, the party fears losing a fundraising giant just as it pivots to a midterm cycle in which it hopes to regain majorities in each chamber of Congress.”

 

“What you’re seeing is not a particularly shocking move, which is taking the path of least resistance,” a GOP strategist told Politico. “There’s no real benefit to fighting this war if you want a future in politics.”

 

"Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP is due to a variety of factors,” says Politico. "Chief among them is what has happened to the party when he is not fully on board with it. The day before the Capitol riots, Republicans lost two critical Senate seats in Georgia. And, looking back, party operatives lay almost all the blame on Trump for putting far more energy into questioning his own election result in the state than in boosting the two down ballot candidates."

“In Georgia there is no question — and no one should say otherwise — he is the reason we lost,” a GOP official told Politico. “I’ve never been more confident in a post-election analysis.”

 

Trump’s advisers say the former president will be active in the 2022 midterm races. So some Republicans are praising efforts to give him a voice and ensure that his supporters still feel at home in the GOP, Politico says.

 

“We wouldn’t be smart if we discounted those 74 million votes” Trump won in November, says Jonathan Barnett, an Arkansas Republican National Committee member.

 

Then there’s the vengeance that Trump often seeks, says Politico. Even decamped in Palm Beach without his Twitter account, he's made clear he plans to wield his power against any Republican who crosses him.

And state and county Republican Party committees show Trump's "firm control of the GOP machinery,” reports The Associated Press. 

 

In swing states and Republican bastions, state and local Republican committees are stocked with Trump supporters who continue to be loyal. Critics of Trump have been pushed out or marginalized. 

 

Party committees from Washington state to South Carolina have moved to punish many of the 10 House Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment over his role in the attack on the Capitol, AP says.

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Biden: Climate day means it’s jobs day

In the most ambitious U.S. effort to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the president signed executive orders Wednesday to transform the nation’s heavily fossil-fuel powered economy into a clean-burning one, pausing oil and gas leasing on federal lands and targeting subsidies for those industries, says The Associated Press.

 

The directives seek to conserve 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters in the next 10 years, double the nation’s offshore wind energy, and move to an all-electric federal vehicle fleet, among other things. 

 

Biden's effort has risks for Democrats as oil- and coal-producing states face job losses from efforts to sharply increase U.S. reliance on clean energy such as wind and solar power.

 

Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050, speeding up what's already a market-driven growth of solar and wind energy and lessening the country’s dependence on oil and gas. 

 

The plan is aimed at slowing human-caused global warming that's magnifying extreme weather events such as deadly wildfires in the West and heavier rains and hurricanes in the East.

 

The actions also call for the federal government’s 17 intelligence agencies to create a first-ever National Intelligence Estimate of the national security risks posed by climate change.

 

In a change from previous administrations of both parties, Biden also is directing agencies to focus help and investment on the low-income and minority communities that live closest to polluting refineries and other hazards, and the oil- and coal-patch towns that face job losses as the United States moves to increase its reliance on wind, solar and other other energy sources that don't emit climate-warming greenhouse gases.

 

Biden pledged to create “millions of good-paying, union jobs” making electric cars, installing solar panels and wind turbines, and doing specialized work to cap abandoned wells, restore mine-scarred land and turn old industrial sites “into the new hubs of economic growth.″

 

“Today is climate day in the White House which means today is jobs day at the White House,” Biden said.

 

The White House is establishing an interagency working group headed by climate coordinator Gina McCarthy and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese to help communities grappling with the shift away from coal and other fossil fuels.

“We’re going to make sure that nobody is left behind,” McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday. “We need to put people to work in their own communities. That’s where their home is. That’s where the vision is. So we are creatively looking at those opportunities for investment so that we can get people understanding that we are not trying to take away jobs.”

 

Even before Wednesday’s rollout, Republicans were targeting vulnerable Democrats in states like Texas and Pennsylvania, where many jobs depend on oil or natural gas, over Biden’s recommitment to the Paris climate pact and his other reversals of Trump environmental policies, says Fox News.

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Senate vote suggests Trump will be acquitted at impeachment trial

The Senate rejected on a 55-45 vote Tuesday a Republican effort to dismiss the upcoming trial as unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. But the numbers show that Republicans are poised to spare him from conviction, says The New York Times.

 

Conviction would require the support of all Democrats and 17 Republicans, or two-thirds of the Senate. Voting with the Democrats Tuesday were GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Aaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

 

Murkowski told reporters that she feared it would be impossible for most of her GOP colleagues to truly consider supporting a conviction after they'd put themselves on record arguing that the trial shouldn't even take place.

“That’s why I thought it was a little unfortunate that we had this very spontaneous vote on an extraordinarily significant matter without the considered debate and analysis,” she said. “People had to make really quick decisions.”

 

Democrats who argued for the trial's legitimacy pointed to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who'd already resigned and to the opinions of many legal scholars.

 

Trump’s conviction was considered a real possibility just days ago, after lawmakers whose lives were threatened during the insurrection at the Capitol weighed the appropriate response to Trump’s role in it, says The Associated Press.

 

But House Republicans who backed Trump's impeachment have found themselves facing intense backlash, and Trump’s lieutenants have signaled that the same fate will meet others who join them, says AP.

 

Trump remains deeply popular among Republican voters and has more than $50 million he could use to support primary challenges against Republicans who back his impeachment or refused to support his failed efforts to challenge the election results using bogus allegations of mass voter fraud in states like Georgia, AP says.

 

Trump aides have spent recent days trying to assure Republicans that he's not currently planning to start a third party — an idea he's floated — and instead will focus on using his clout in the Republican Party.

 

“The political winds within the Republican Party have blown in the opposite direction,” says Ralph Reed, chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a Trump ally. “Republicans have decided that even if one believes he made mistakes after the November election and on Jan. 6, the policies Trump championed and victories he won from judges to regulatory rollback to life to tax cuts were too great to allow the party to leave him on the battlefield.”

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McConnell relents on filibuster fight in Senate power-sharing talks

The Senate Republican leader has dropped his demand that the new Democratic Senate majority promise to preserve the filibuster, ending an impasse that had prevented Democrats from taking full power after their election wins.

 

Even though McConnell did away with the 60-vote filibuster threshold to confirm President Trump’s three nominees to the Supreme Court, he wanted to prevent Democrats from doing the same with President Biden’s legislative agenda, says The Associated Press.

In his negotiations with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the new majority leader, McConnell, R-Ky., had refused to agree to a plan for power sharing without a pledge from Democrats to protect the filibuster, a condition Schumer had rejected.

 

McConnell said late Monday he'd essentially accomplished his goal, pointing to statements by two centrist Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, that said they opposed getting rid of the filibuster as enough of a guarantee to move forward without a formal promise from Schumer. Manchin and Sinema had held that position for months, says The New York Times.

 

Without the support of all the Democratic senators, a rules change would fail.

 

Schumer’s office said McConnell had no choice but to drop his demand.

“We’re glad Sen. McConnell threw in the towel and gave up on his ridiculous demand,” said Justin Goodman, a spokesman for Schumer. “We look forward to organizing the Senate under Democratic control and start getting big, bold things done for the American people.”

 

Democrats are under pressure from liberal advocates to do away with the filibuster so they can more easily pass Biden’s legislative priorities without the need for Republican votes. The Democrats have the slimmest of majorities in the chamber, 50-50, with Vice President Harris able to cast the tie-breaking vote.

 

As they go forward on Biden’s agenda, the pressure is likely to increase to jettison the filibuster if Republicans regularly use its 60-vote requirement to move forward as a way to stall or stop the Biden administration’s priorities.

 

The delay in putting together a power sharing agreement had created a bizarre situation in which most Senate committees were frozen under Republican control and new senators couldn't be seated on them, even though Democrats now have the Senate majority, says the Times.

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More GOP senators come out against Trump impeachment trial

The mounting Republican opposition indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit the former president, reports The Associated Press. 

 

Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans to convict Trump.

 

Arguments in the Senate trial start the week of Feb. 8. Leaders in both parties agreed to the short delay to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to prepare and the Senate the time to confirm some of Biden’s Cabinet nominees. 

 

Democrats say the extra days will allow for more evidence to come out about the rioting by Trump supporters, as Republicans hope to craft a unified defense for Trump.

 

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told Politico last week that concerns about the constitutionality of putting a former officeholder on trial were at the forefront among GOP senators — even those who are open to voting to convict Trump on the House’s charge that he incited the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that left five people dead.

 

Also last week, more than 150 constitutional law scholars said in an open letter that despite their political differences, they "agree that the Constitution permits the impeachment, conviction, and disqualification of former officers, including presidents.”

 

Meanwhile, federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats directed at members of Congress as the trial nears, including chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside the Capitol, AP reports in a separate article.

 

The threats, along with concerns that armed protesters could return to attack the Capitol again, have prompted the U.S. Capitol Police and other federal law enforcement to insist that thousands of National Guard troops remain in Washington.

 

Although much of the security apparatus around Washington set up after the riot and in preparation for the inauguration — including scores of military checkpoints — is no longer in place, about 7,000 members of the National Guard will stay to assist federal law enforcement, AP says.

 

About 5,000 members of the National Guard are expected to stay in D.C. until mid-March. There's also some concern about potential unrest surrounding March 4, the date some QAnon conspiracy theorists believe Trump will be inaugurated for the second time, Politico says.

 

The conditions facing the National Guard in Washington are an issue, and morale among the troops is low, according to Politico.

 

Between 150 and 200 of them have tested positive for the coronavirus, Reuters reported on Friday.

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