Citizen Cartwright

Note to readers

Happy holidays, dear readers! I’m going to take some time off and will be with you next on Tuesday, Jan. 3.

Congress changing electoral law in response to Jan. 6

Included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill passed Thursday by the Senate and to be taken up by the House Friday is an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, the election law that then-President Trump tried to subvert after his 2020 election defeat.

 

The legislation “is the most significant policy response so far to the attack and Trump’s aggressive efforts to upend the popular vote,” says The Associated Press.

 

The legislation amends the 19th century law that governs, along with the U.S. Constitution, the way states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners. The goal is to ensure that the popular vote from each state is protected from manipulation and that Congress doesn't arbitrarily decide presidential elections when it meets to count the votes every four years, AP says.

 

A bipartisan group of supporters in the Senate and House have pushed to enact the overhaul before the start of the next Congress and the 2024 presidential election cycle. More than a dozen Republican senators have publicly backed the legislation, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.  

 

The legislation:

— Clarifies that the vice president has a purely ceremonial role presiding over the certification every Jan. 6 after a presidential election and that he or she has no power to determine the results of the election.

 

— Makes it more difficult for lawmakers to object to a particular state’s electoral votes. Under current law, just one member of the Senate and one member of the House need to object to automatically trigger votes in both chambers on whether to overturn or discard a state’s presidential election results. The bill would require a fifth of each chamber to object before votes would be held.

 

 — Ensures that there's only one slate of electors, a response to Trump allies’ unsuccessful efforts to create alternate, illegitimate slates of Trump electors in states that Biden narrowly won in 2020. Each state’s governor will be required to submit the electors, which are sent under a formal process to Congress and opened at the rostrum during the joint session. Congress couldn't accept a slate submitted by a different official, so there couldn't be competing lists of electors from one state. 

 

— The legislation revises language in current law that wasn’t used during the 2020 election but that lawmakers think could be abused. Current law allows state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states by calling a “failed election,” but the term isn't defined under the law. The bill says a state could only move its presidential election day if there were “extraordinary and catastrophic” events, such as natural disasters, that necessitated it.   

Also in the news

Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: Because of Ukraine, the democratic world has been strengthened

 

Senate passes 68-29, sends to House, $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund government through September, aid Ukraine

House passes legislation to require audits of any president’s income tax filings, on nearly party-line vote

 

House Jan. 6 panel releases its final report, says central cause of riot was ‘one man’: Trump

 

Facebook's parent Meta to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725 million

 

New label law has unintended effect of sesame in more foods

 

KHN: Emergency room doctors say private equity staffing practices are illegal, seek to ban them

Zelensky’s ‘Dear Americans!’ speech before Congress

I’m not finding much analysis of the Ukraine president’s speech this morning, except this, from The Associated Press, which leads: 

 

"Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dramatic visit to Washington was a moment for the White House to demonstrate to Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the United States would sustain its commitment to the war for, as President Joe Biden put it, 'as long as it takes.’

 

"It also provided the Ukrainian president, dressed in military green, the opportunity in the grand setting of the U.S. Capitol to thank Congress for the billions of dollars that are sustaining his country in the fight.

"'As long as it takes' is powerful rhetoric, but it now collides with a formidable question: How much more patience will a narrowly divided Congress — and the American public — have for a war with no clear end that is battering the global economy?”

 

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who's vying to be the next House speaker when Republicans take over in two weeks, has said his party won’t write a “blank check” for Ukraine once it’s in charge.

So I find the tone of Fox News’ article on Zelensky’s speech to be interesting. It’s written by Haris Alic, a politics reporter who "writes extensively for Fox News Digital and FOX Business about the U.S. House of Representatives, its leadership, and the various ideological factions existing among Republicans and Democrats,” according to his Fox News bio. He covered Biden and the 2020 campaign for Breitbart News, his bio says.

 

The beginning of Alic’s article:

 

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a direct appeal to Republican critics during his Wednesday address to a joint meeting of Congress, telling lawmakers that no country was safe in the face of Russian aggression.

 

"In a speech that won several standing ovations from both sides of the aisle, Zelenskyy predicted the war will hit a turning point next year just as Republicans are set to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"'The struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live,' said Zelenskyy. 'This battle cannot be frozen or postponed, it cannot be ignored hoping that [an] ocean or something else will provide protection.’

"The Ukrainian president said the world is 'too interconnected and interdependent' for the U.S. to 'stand aside and at the same time feel safe when such a battle continues.’

 

"'Your money is not charity,' he said. 'It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.’"

 

Alic says farther down in his article:

 

"Some Republican lawmakers, specifically in the House, have criticized sending more money to Ukraine. They've argued that sending more aid without proper accountability metrics in place or a plan for ending the war is improper.

 

"'I will oppose giving more money to Ukraine while our own southern border remains open to an invasion led by drug cartels,' said Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill.

 

"Zelensky during Wednesday's address challenged GOP lawmakers to think broader in their view of the world," Alic writes.

 

To think broader. 

 

Seems to me Zelensky has reason to believe the 10 hours he spent in the United States was worth his time.

 

Here is the video of Zelensky’s speech, from AP.

 

And here is the text of the speech, from the website of the president of Ukraine.

Also in the news

U.N. Security Council approves its first-ever resolution on Myanmar, demanding immediate end to violence

 

Putin acknowledges military failings in defense ministry speech, insists Russia eventually will prevail in Ukraine

 

AP explainer of the latest U.S. military aid to Ukraine

 

Senators struggle to reach agreement on amendments needed to get to final vote on $1.7 trillion spending bill

 

On eve of expected release of final report from House Jan. 6 panel, 5 GOP lawmakers release their own

 

How much income tax Trump paid, from Joint Committee on Taxation report

 

AP: Six months after the undoing of Roe, what’s changed, what hasn’t, what remains unclear

 

U.S. home sales fell in November for 10th consecutive month

 

Biden administration to release doses of prescription flu medicine Tamiflu to states from Strategic National Stockpile

 

Psychiatrist: 'Some causes of anxiety are physical. Here’s how to recognize them.'

 

Many older women getting Pap tests they don’t need

Trump tax returns to be released, IRS didn’t do audits

The House Ways and Means Committee voted on party lines Tuesday to release six years of the former president's tax returns. The returns will cover the period between 2015 and 2021, the years Trump was running for president and serving in the White House, according to panel members. The returns are to be redacted to remove information like Social Security and bank account numbers and released in several days.

 

Hours later, a report released by the panel’s Democratic majority said the IRS didn't follow its own policy because it didn't audit Trump during his first two years in office. 

 

An accompanying report released by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also found repeated faults with the IRS’s approach to auditing Trump and his companies. 

 

The reports released Tuesday renew one of the biggest questions that's surrounded Trump, says The Associated Press: Why did he abandon the post-Watergate tradition of White House hopefuls releasing their tax returns? 

 

Trump and those around him consistently have said IRS audits prevented him from doing so. There aren’t any laws that would have barred Trump from voluntarily releasing his returns even if they were being audited, AP says.

 

In response to the report findings, the Ways and Means Committee is proposing legislation to beef up the IRS’ approach, requiring an initial report no later than 90 days after the filing of a president’s tax returns. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will “move swiftly” to advance the legislation. 

 

Democrats say the IRS is ill-equipped to audit high-income, complex tax returns and instead targets filers in lower-income brackets — something the lawmakers have tried to remedy in their work on the panel.

 

“Because of the dismantling of funding to the IRS, they have not been unable to do their job,” says Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev.

 

Republicans have vowed to cut recent increased funding for more IRS agents. It's the first bill they'll consider when they take over the House majority in less than two weeks, says AP.

Also in the news

Taliban bar women from Afghan university education

 

Ukraine President Zelensky on his way to Washington to meet Biden, address Congress

 

Congress offers $1 billion for climate aid, short of Biden administration pledge 

 

Congress dropped from $1.7 trillion spending bill an amendment to create path to residency for Afghan refugees

 

EPA tightens rules on nitrogen dioxide (smog-forming) pollution from vans, buses, trucks

 

AP interview with Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, retiring after 48 years, 17,000 votes

 

AP explainer: How parties and states set timing of presidential primaries

FBI finds sharp increase in online extortion of teens tricked into sending sexually explicit photos

 

'Corporate recidivist' Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion over consumer protection law violations

 

KHN: Most U.S. hospitals sue patients or threaten their credit over medical debt

Will DOJ pursue House panel’s charges against Trump, allies?

It’s unclear how closely the special counsel’s office in charge of the Justice Department’s own investigation will follow the path mapped out by the House Jan. 6 committee — or whether Trump and others will face any criminal charges at all, says The New York Times.

 

The panel on Monday urged the Justice Department to consider prosecuting Trump for four different crimes involving his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election and his behavior during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

 

There's been some overlap between criminal statutes cited by the department and the charges the committee recommended, according to search warrants and subpoenas that have surfaced during the federal inquiry, the Times says.

 

The laws the committee cited:

 

— Obstruction of an official proceeding 

Both the committee and prosecutors have placed this at the center of their work, says the Times. DOJ mentioned that charge in a warrant used in June to seize the cellphone of Jeffrey Clark, a former department official whom the committee referred for criminal charges on Monday.

 

And prosecutors already have used the obstruction charge in nearly 300 criminal cases to describe how the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 disrupted the certification of the election that was taking place there during a joint session of Congress.

 

— Conspiracy to defraud the United States

This charge has been used in several Justice Department cases against both far-right extremists and ordinary rioters who appeared to have planned in advance to storm the Capitol.

This conspiracy charge may better describe the evidence against Trump, says the Times. According to the committee, he defrauded the public by making constant false claims that the election had been rigged against him.

 

— Conspiracy to make a false statement

The committee says this charge is warranted because Trump took part in a scheme to send to Congress and the National Archives fake slates of electors declaring that he was the victor in several key states that were actually won by Joe Biden.

 

— Inciting or aiding an insurrection

This is the most serious charge the panel has recommended against Trump and likely would be the hardest to prove, says the Times. 

 

While the Justice Department has won a conviction on a related charge, seditious conspiracy, against Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, and is set to try five members of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, for sedition, it hasn't charged anyone with insurrection in more than 900 criminal cases, the Times says.

 

On the other hand, a federal judge in Washington laid the ground for a potential insurrection case against Trump in a ruling in February that permitted a series of Jan. 6-related civil cases filed against the former president to move forward, says the Times.

 

Here is the text of the Jan. 6 panel’s summary of its report, from NBC News.

Also in the news

AP: Police use coronavirus technology to expand global surveillance

 

Supreme Court temporarily blocks end to Title 42 pandemic-era border restrictions

 

Congressional leaders unveil $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package

 

House Jan. 6 panel urges ethics review for McCarthy, 3 other GOP lawmakers

 

House Ways and Means Committee expected to vote Tuesday on whether to publicly release years of Trump ’s tax returns

 

NYTimes analysis: A diminished Trump meets a damning narrative by House Jan. 6 committee

 

AP: Republican leaders' usual embrace of Trump is muted after House panel’s criminal referral

 

FiveThirtyEight: Midterm results mean more Americans will live in a state controlled by Democrats than by GOP

 

Oregon prohibits sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars by 2035

 

California approves plan for carbon neutrality by 2045

 

Judge dismisses 8 of 10 claims in Kari Lake lawsuit, allows her to make case on misconduct by election officials

 

Fortnite video game maker to pay biggest-ever FTC penalty in settlement over children’s privacy, payments

 

Stat: Congressional leaders reach deal on Medicare, Medicaid, preparation for future pandemics

‘Historic’ deal reached at U.N. biodiversity conference

It's the most significant effort to protect the world’s lands and oceans and provide financing to save biodiversity in the developing world, says The Associated Press.

 

The most important part of the agreement at the Montreal conference early Monday is a commitment to protect 30 percent of land and water considered important for biodiversity by 2030, known as 30 by 30. Seventeen percent of terrestrial and 10 percent of marine areas are protected now, AP says.

 

The draft also calls for raising $200 billion by 2030 for biodiversity from a range of sources and working to phase out or reform subsidies that could provide another $500 billion. As part of the financing package, the framework calls for increasing to at least $20 billion a year by 2025 the money that goes to poor countries. That would increase to $30 billion each year by 2030. 

 

Christophe Béchu, France’s minister for ecological transition, who headed the country's delegation, says it’s a “historical deal. It’s a deal with very precise and quantified objectives on pesticides, on reduction of loss of species, on eliminating bad subsidies. We double until 2025 and triple [by] 2030 the finance for biodiversity.”

 

“All the elements are in there for a balance of unhappiness which is the secret to achieving agreement in U.N. bodies,” says Pierre du Plessis, a negotiator from Namibia. “Everyone got a bit of what they wanted, not necessarily everything they wanted.”