Top News: GOP Calling Trump Coup Effort 'Legitimate Political Discourse' Should Still Be Frontpage News

 

February 13, 2022

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'A Better Texas Is Possible': Ocasio-Cortez Rallies for Cisneros, Casar "We flip Texas," said the progressive Democrat from New York at a rally in San Antonio, "we flip the country." by Jon Queally 'Love to Afghanistan' Vigils to Demand Return of $7 Billion Stolen by US "This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States," said an Afghan protest organizer in Kabul over the weekend. by Jon Queally Arrests at US-Canada Border Finally Bring End to Anti-Vax Blockade "How hard was that?" said one observer remarking on the ability of police to exert control over the nearly week-long demonstration. "Leave or be arrested." by Jon Queally

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Americans Must Recognize the Pain They Are Causing the Afghan People With some 23 million people in extreme hunger and a million children under age five in immediate danger of starvation, the U.S. should unfreeze all of Afghanistan’s Central Bank assets. by Kathy Kelly GOP Calling Trump Coup Effort 'Legitimate Political Discourse' Should Still Be Frontpage News The media has a responsibility to tell Americans that a major party now openly endorses using violence to overturn elections. by Peter Certo

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: No stock answers for Congress’ trading problems

 

BY ELANA SCHOR Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images CAPITOL GAINS — In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that he supports it, while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he’s prepared to look at it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has left the door open to backing it, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is said to be eyeing it. What is “it”? Across the aisle, momentum seems to be building for legislation that would restrict lawmakers’ stock trading. How Congress got here is easy to understand. After heightened scrutiny of trades by members of both parties, including reported Justice Department inquiries into four senators, it became impossible to ignore the potential for politically perilous — if not truly illegal — stock-market plays by lawmakers who are often privy to privileged information that the average investor never gets. How Congress can fix the problem is more complicated. About a decade ago, members passed a law that requires disclosures of their trades, but that didn’t stop several of them from landing in hot water thanks to spotty compliance. Now there’s a flurry of proposals out there to rein in lawmakers’ trades, so many that Schumer said today that he’s asked his Democrats to “try to come up with one bill.” The most frequently cited proposals would require members of Congress to choose mutual funds or other diversified investment options, while either divesting of individual stocks or moving them into “blind trusts.” Blind trusts are designed to turn over control of investments to third-party trustees, who manage the money out of members’ sight, and influence. But that hasn’t stopped several politicians from running into tough questions over the years about how truly blind their blind trusts are, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Manchin’s holdings in a coal brokerage steered by his son earned him $500,000 last year, according to financial disclosures. He has said he uses a blind trust for those holdings and adheres to Senate ethics guidelines. Yet the Washington Post has reported that the size of Manchin’s disclosed blind trust doesn’t seem to encompass the full scope of his reported earnings from the family business. Which gets us to the questions: Can Congress be trusted to set up its own blind trusts? And will the public be too, uh, blind to the contents of those trusts to tell what lawmakers are doing behind the scenes? Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who faced his own PR troubles over a blind trust during his 2012 presidential campaign, called the blind trust “an age-old ruse, if you will,” during his 1994 Senate run . “Which is to say,” he went on, “you can always tell the blind trust what it can and cannot do.” Now, that’s not a fair description of the current rules for blind trusts owned by federal lawmakers, which Romney wasn’t subject to in 1994 because he was but a Senate candidate at the time. An FAQ produced in 2015 by the Senate ethics committee, which approves blind trust arrangements for the chamber, states: “When interviewing a trustee, the grantor may communicate his or her overall investment objectives for the portfolio, but may not communicate specific directions about how to construct or manage the portfolio.” Even so, Frist ran into trouble in 2005 after reports emerged that he had delivered very specific instructions to his blind trust about selling stock in a family-founded hospital company, which would seem to fly in the face of that guidance. The Senate and House ethics committees may well have since tightened up their internal rules for approving blind trusts — but we haven’t exactly seen press releases trumpeting that. That’s because, though the House panel has made some strides since the establishment of the Office of Congressional Ethics, both chambers’ internal ethics are known more for their opacity than their transparency. Given that truism about the ethics committees, putting all lawmakers’ individual stock trades into the existing blind trust approval structure might shed less sunshine on lawmakers’ investments, rather than more. And perhaps it wouldn’t matter, if the majority of the members of Congress responded to a stock trading ban by simply selling their stocks or moving into mutual funds, as McConnell said he’s recommended to his Republicans. The truth is, we don’t know. But it’s time to start asking whether more blindness, as it were, would help eliminate congressional conflicts of interest, or just make us blinder to them. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.   HAPPENING THURSDAY – A LONG GAME CONVERSATION ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS : Join POLITICO for back-to-back conversations on climate and sustainability action, starting with a panel led by Global Insider author Ryan Heath focused on insights gleaned from our POLITICO/Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll of citizens from 13 countries on five continents about how their governments should respond to climate change. Following the panel, join a discussion with POLITICO White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López and Gina McCarthy, White House national climate advisor, about the Biden administration’s climate and sustainability agenda. REGISTER HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Congress inches ‘real close’ to government funding deal: Congressional leaders are zeroing in on a broad funding accord to set new totals for federal government spending into the fall. Top appropriators continued to close in on a bipartisan “top-line” deal today to set the overarching budget caps for military and non-defense agency spending, as well as ground rules for hashing out the details of a final package. Once they strike that compromise, spending leaders are expected to quickly wrap up a 12-bill bundle to fund the federal government through September. — Canadian truckers shut down busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing: A convoy of Canadian truckers and protesters objecting to Covid restrictions has caused Ottawa residents headaches for weeks. Now, they are disrupting the other side of the border. The Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ont., was closed to Canada-bound traffic today, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Canadian government, and trucks were told to cross at another bridge 60 miles away. Cars and trucks initially blocked the approach to the bridge in Windsor on Monday, and other vehicles jammed the area in solidarity. — McConnell critical of GOP censure of Kinzinger, Cheney: McConnell said today that it’s not up to the Republican National Committee to be calling out specific members of the party. “The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who ... have different views from the majority,” McConnell told reporters, when asked about the committee’s censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “That’s not the job of the RNC.” Police officers wait outside Dunbar High School as members of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia conduct an investigation of a security threat at the school. | Alex Wong/Getty Images — Emhoff whisked out of event following reported bomb threat: Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, was whisked out of an event today at a Washington high school by Secret Service agents following an apparent bomb threat. Emhoff was at Dunbar High School for an event in commemoration of Black History Month. He was in the school’s museum for about five minutes before a member of his security detail approached him saying, “We have to go.” Emhoff was removed from the building into his waiting motorcade. — House staffers confront reality of unionization: ‘No one knows how it would work’: While congressional staffers’ talk of unionizing its long-overlooked workforce has suddenly accelerated, they’re already crashing headfirst into the more complicated reality. Buoyed by an endorsement from Pelosi herself, dozens of senior House staff, mostly on the Democratic side, are searching for the next steps for their union drive. But it turns out that many of the problems with the Capitol as a workplace — notably, that there are more than 535 offices, each of which sets their own policies — are some of the same reasons it would be so tricky to collectively organize. — Hogan won’t challenge Van Hollen for Maryland Senate seat: Gov. Larry Hogan made the announcement during a regularly scheduled news conference today, telling reporters he would remain focused on the job of governor until his term ends in January 2023, at which time Hogan will consider getting into the 2024 presidential race.   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     AROUND THE WORLD WORLD ON CLIMATE CHANGE: UGH — A new POLITICO Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll reveals frustration from citizens that they are being left to take on climate action on their own, when they believe governments and the companies with the most resources (which also tend to bear the most responsibility for carbon emissions) should shoulder the burden. Ryan Heath has the first numbers from the poll, and visit POLITICO tomorrow for more, including widespread agreement that companies must shoulder more of the cost in lowering carbon emissions. NIGHTLY NUMBER $4.5 billion The amount that went missing in a 2016 hack of a cryptocurrency exchange. The Justice Department announced the arrest today of a couple in New York charged with conspiring to launder stolen Bitcoin linked with the hack. PARTING WORDS Civilians participate in a Kyiv Territorial Defense unit training session in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images FOOD FIGHT — International policymakers are looking with horror at the implications of a Russian invasion of Ukraine for global security and energy markets, but the consequences for world food supplies have attracted less attention than they deserve, Zosia Wanat and Sarah Anne Aarup write. Once the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is a farming powerhouse and conflict there would send instant tremors and price hikes through grain and food oil markets, just as European households are grappling with surging inflation. Ukraine is the EU’s fourth biggest external food supplier and provides the bloc with about one-quarter of its cereal and vegetable oil imports, including almost half of its corn. A major food producer itself, the EU should probably be able to adapt to the immediate shock of a rupture in bilateral trade. The potentially greater strategic concern hinges on Ukraine’s even more pivotal role as a supplier to the Middle East and North Africa. Analysts identify food supply as one of several significant underlying factors behind the Arab Spring revolutions that ignited a decade ago, and the EU has persistent fears about instability in its neighborhood. Egypt, for example, is a major buyer of Ukrainian grain.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Why Delta’s British invasion is fading

 

BY RYAN HEATH Presented by With help from Renuka Rayasam MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR — When the U.K. ended one of the world’s strictest Covid lockdowns on July 19 — 28 weeks long and the country’s third since the pandemic began — critics feared that Covid cases would double from around 50,000 per day to 100,000 per day. The opposite happened: The numbers dropped to below 25,000 a day. Japanese and Australian cities are currently in emergency mode over much lower case numbers, but it raises the question of why more socializing in Britain has coincided with less Covid. There’s no clear answer yet. Researchers are baffled. Adding to the mystery: Deaths are up, with average daily deaths doubling from 42 to 82 since the restrictions were lifted. Lisa Pickles prepares to vaccinate Ben Fleming from Halifax at a new “Pop Up” vaccination center in the Big Top of Circus Extreme in Shibden Park in Halifax, England. | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images Even so, the national mood is now “cautiously optimistic,” POLITICO’s London-based health reporter Ashleigh Furlong told Nightly. Herd immunity may be part of the answer. The U.K. Office of National Statistics says that when the lockdown ended, 93 percent of British adults had Covid-19 antibodies. That’s mostly thanks to a successful vaccine rollout that has delivered at least one jab to 9 in 10 adults. But it’s also because the U.K. has had one of the worst Covid outbreaks globally. Three other factors are contributing to the lower case numbers, Ashleigh said: — A shift to outdoor socializing in summer — A hiatus from major sporting events like Wimbledon and the Euro soccer championships, where many were mixing without a hint of social distancing even as restrictions on activities like indoor dining remained in place — The end of the school year caused a dip in testing numbers (students must regularly test while attending school), leading to a likely undercount in asymptomatic cases Brits are also disciplined isolators: Government surveys say as many as 1 in 17 people were isolating themselves at any given time over the past month, often after getting notified of a close Covid contact by the National Health Service contact tracing app. Moving forward, the British government plans to rely on “FOMO” to drive up vaccination numbers among the under-30 set. In September, nightclubs and other venues will be required to obtain proof of vaccination before letting customers in. A new government ad campaign launched today in conjunction with top nightclubs. At least one London club is serving as a walk-in vaccination center. The tactic is working in France, where a vaccine passport will be required to use transit or get into bars, restaurants and hospitals starting Monday. Vaccination numbers spiked after the plan was confirmed, causing France to jump ahead of the U.S. vaccination rate. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rheath@politico.com and on Twitter at @PoliticoRyan.   A message from AT&T: Accessible, affordable broadband helps communities reach their American Dream. That’s why AT&T is making a $2 billion, 3-year commitment toward helping close the digital divide, so more low-income families have the ability to succeed. Find out how.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Biden to extend freeze on student loan payments until Jan. 31: The Biden administration plans to extend the pause on federal student loan payments for borrowers until the end of January , an official familiar with the decision confirmed to POLITICO. The pandemic relief, which suspends monthly loan payments and interest for 40 million Americans, had been set to expire at the end of September. The Education Department plans to issue a “final” extension of the relief until Jan. 31, an official said. — Vaccine demand jumps in states pummeled by Delta: Demand for Covid-19 vaccines is rising in the states hardest hit by the Delta variant, but weary public health officials worry the renewed interest will fizzle. The number of Americans receiving a first vaccine dose each week has nearly doubled over the last month. The largest increases have come in areas where overall vaccination rates are low and hospitalizations and deaths are rising sharply. — Unions launch actions to clog Canadian border as it reopens to Americans: Canadian border agents launched work-to-rule measures today that threaten to jam traffic days before the country reopens to Americans. Union leaders representing 9,000 staffers with the Canada Border Services Agency have warned the strike actions will cause “dramatic disruptions” at airports, land crossings, commercial ports and postal facilities. The slowdowns will affect individuals and Canada’s supply chain, the unions said. — Dixie Fire becomes largest single wildfire in California history: The Dixie Fire burning in two Northern California counties is now the largest single wildfire in recorded state history, exploding in size overnight as drought-stricken lands continue to fuel the flames . The fire, which has burned for 23 days and forced mass evacuations, razed the Gold Rush town of Greenville on Thursday, destroying 91 buildings and damaging five others. Smoke from the blaze has blown to lower parts of Northern California, including the state capital of Sacramento where the air quality index reached “unhealthy” levels today. — DOJ defends Biden eviction ban in court, warning of Delta threat: The Justice Department urged a federal court today to keep the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium in place to help protect Americans from becoming homeless during a resurgence of Covid-19. DOJ was responding to a lawsuit brought by the Alabama and Georgia chapters of the National Association of Realtors, who argue the CDC lacked the power to impose the ban. — Larry Elder surges to GOP fundraising lead, but Newsom still lapping recall field: Republicans vying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the recall election will have to overcome an enormous fundraising gulf, but latecomer Larry Elder has quickly vaulted ahead of his GOP rivals , new campaign filings show. Elder, a longtime conservative talk show host, reported collecting nearly $4.5 million in July after declaring his candidacy last month. In mere weeks, his total eclipsed what fellow Republicans had raised in months, and daily filings show Elder has pulled in another $440,000 in the first few days of August.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     DEAR NIGHTLY DEAR NIGHTLY — Judge Renu picked two of your questions about the pandemic and answered them below. More answers are on the way. Send your questions to nightly@politico.com. We are planning to rent a house in Michigan with another family in a couple of weeks. Everyone going on the trip is vaccinated, except for my 9-year-old daughter. How much risk of getting Covid does my younger, unvaccinated daughter have? — Andy C. on vacation I feel you, Andy. Your question brings me back to the early days of the pandemic when pods and bubbles were all the rage. Except with a twist: Most of us can now get vaccines. I called Kavita Patel, a primary care doctor at Mary’s Center, a community clinic in Washington, D.C., and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. She said she would go on such a trip herself. Your daughter’s risk is substantially lower if everyone else around her is vaccinated. Still she had caveats — you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? The reality is that while Covid shots dramatically lower our risk, it will never be zero. A trip means accepting some risk. Vaccinated people can still transmit the virus. If your daughter is in any way at high-risk for Covid complications, I would rethink the trip. One other consideration: The Covid risk to your daughter is higher if you live in an area with high Covid transmission rates or are traveling to an area with lots of virus circulating. Just like the early days of Covid, it’s helpful if you and the members of the other family remain extra cautious in the days leading up to the trip: Avoid crowds. Stay vigilant about masks and hand washing. If anyone has symptoms, Patel said that person should stay home. If they won’t, she said she wouldn't go on the trip. Be careful during the journey itself: Wait until you get to the rental house before you take your masks off. That goes for your daughter, too. You probably hate me a little right now. A year and a half into the pandemic, it’s exhausting to keep having to make these sorts of risk calculations, especially when it comes to our kids. You want a more enthusiastic, Yes, go! Have a blast! Michigan is lovely this time of year! (Or so I hear.) But I hope this comes close. My son hesitates to have his boys over the age of 12 receive a vaccine. He believes there is a possibility of the vaccine affecting the boys’ reproductive systems and possible other unknown, long-lasting effects for his four sons. Are there any studies on this subject concerning the effects of the vaccine on children and how it may affect their reproductive health? — Grandpa Bill The idea that Covid vaccines affect fertility is one of the more enduring falsehoods about the shots. A few news outlets have tried to trace the origin of the myth. One found that it had roots in some evidence that women who got inoculated had heavier periods. Another theory is that it came from a false report conflating the Covid spike protein with one that’s related to pregnancy. Then somehow the myth spread to male fertility. Sounds like your son got caught up in that web of misinformation either online or through his friends. Because of that fear, which has become all too common, there are now studies looking at this very topic. One July study found that Covid vaccines have no effect on sperm counts. Also there is now plenty of evidence that vaccinated people can conceive — during Pfizer’s vaccine trials, 23 women volunteers got pregnant. To be clear: Doctors say there is no risk to fertility from Covid shots, but the misinformation your son has heard is prompting them to make an even more airtight case. Perhaps the most persuasive argument you can use with your son is that there is now evidence that getting Covid can be damaging to your grandsons’ reproductive systems. One researcher found decreased sperm counts in some male patients who died of Covid. The researcher also found that a patient with mild virus symptoms suffered from erectile dysfunction. These are tiny studies, but they point to potential virus complications. Patel agrees it is fair to question the long-term impact of vaccines. But an mRNA vaccine doesn’t linger in a person’s bloodstream 24 hours after they get a shot, she points out. Instead, what remains is the natural immune response that your body produces as the result of that vaccine. At this point in the pandemic, there is mounting data that the long term effects of the virus itself are far worse than the vaccine.   A message from AT&T:     NIGHTLY NUMBER 2.5 percent The proportion of Covid vaccine doses that have “gone to waste” in the U.S. after expiring, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today, calling it a “very low number.” If the denominator is vaccines delivered, that means that more than 1 million doses have been discarded.   SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TODAY: Power is shifting in Washington and in communities across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. The Recast is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel.     PARTING WORDS SOME LAUGHS, NOW WITH MORE MASKS — “Can’t we all agree that it’s better to spread a few jokes and laughs around instead of viruses and Covid?” So begins Matt Wuerker’s latest Weekend Wrap of political satire and cartoons, including ones on the continuing fight against the Delta variant, the negotiations on the infrastructure bill and the Cuomo report coming out of New York.   A message from AT&T: Susana Chávez became valedictorian of International High School at Langley Park while juggling numerous jobs throughout school. But what kept her powering through it all was her American Dream. With the help of accessible and affordable broadband, she was able to focus on her studies, get assistance from teachers and stay in touch with her mother back home. And thanks to Access from AT&T, we can connect low-income households like Susana’s, and more communities in areas we serve with their American Dream. Find out how.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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